This article contains spoilers for the Lightning Temple in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom offers players a familiar dilemma. If you’ve played Breath of the Wild, you likely remember when you got to the point in the main quest where Impa put four yellow dots on your map, and told you to have at the quartet of quests in any order you desire. TOTK does the same thing, and it can be difficult to figure out where to go first. I caved to inertia and handled it the same way I did in 2017, making my first trip a journey to the Gerudo Desert.
And I’m glad I did, because completing the Lightning Temple gives you access to an ability that instantly shifts the balance of combat encounters in your favor.
I wrote recently about how much I miss Remote Bombs, the set-it-and-forget-it explosives that Link had access to in Breath of the Wild. Without them, it feels like Link’s options for ranged combat have been slightly curtailed. In Breath of the Wild, if you ran into a powerful enemy, you could chip away at it from an unreachable perch by throwing and detonating bombs. Tears of the Kingdom takes that move out of the playbook, which makes the early hours a little more difficult. If you encounter enemies that are too strong, they may just be too strong (or you might need to take some time and build yourself a tank).
Finishing the Lightning Temple addresses this gap by giving you a powerful ranged attack that works great for taking out smaller enemies and equally well for stunning the big boys. You get introduced to it once you meet up with Riju, the young ruler of the Gerudo. She joins up with you for your dungeon-delving adventure and grants you a temporary AOE attack that you can use as long as you're with her. You simply walk up to her, press A, and then she'll start casting a spell that expands outward from her position. You just need to shoot an arrow near the enemy you want to target, and she'll hit the spot they're standing with a powerful lightning attack. And, usefully, if you aim your arrow so that it lands in between two or more enemies, the electricity will hit all of them.
It's an effective tool whether you need to put massive enemies in their place or do some crowd control on a gaggle of Gibdos. And, thankfully, you never have to let it go. Once you complete the Lightning Temple, Riju gives you a crest which you can activate at any time. So, if you need some help, you go into your inventory, click on the crest, and a spectral blue Riju will appear. She operates just like her flesh and blood counterpart. You just go up to her, hit a button, and she'll begin charging up her attack.
This is an interesting tweak on the power Link got in the first game after completing Vah Naboris. In Breath of the Wild, Link wielded a similar AOE lightning attack power himself. But, in keeping with Tears of the Kingdom's focus on building community, Link now has a companion with him who does the attack instead. It's a nice little reinforcement of the game's themes, and it's great for kicking big bad bosses' asses. Do the Lightning Temple early, and become more powerful than you ever imagined.