There are so many things that The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom gets right. Everything in the works works as you'd expect it to, especially the physics. Of course, you'll have to turn a blind eye towards Link's reality-bending abilities, but everything else is spot on. However, every game has something it can improve on, even one as highly regarded as Tears of the Kingdom.
Let me paint you a scenario – you're in the midst of a tense battle against a horde of Bokoblins and you see a nearby exploding barrel. Unfortunately, your bow broke after the last shot. You open the quick-menu, but the melee weapons pop up; so you exit, switch to ranged and open up the menu again. Then all you have to do is take aim, choose the Fire Fruit from your massive inventory and shoot.
Most players will agree that Tears of the Kingdom could have done with a more streamlined menu UI than the previous game – especially since creating and fusing items is a core tenet. It's instances such as the above that has caused players to wonder how the current menu UI of the game could be improved to better fit Link's new abilities.
One of the most common answers is the ability to select items as 'favourites' so they're always the first in line. "This simple feature would honestly fix so much. I feel like I spend a large chunk of my time in the game just looking through items. Having a scroll like ten seconds in the middle of combat is not fun. Even worse when you scroll past it without realizing, then you gotta scroll back," says Phoenix_Drop.
"I mean, outside of arrows, I've started to go into the actual materials menu to drop stuff because it's faster with the grid menu," suggested RhythmRobber. "Idk why they thought a hundred items in a horizontal menu was the best option."
Many seem to agree that the menus are the weakest part of the game, and it's baffling that Nintendo added so much to the sequel without even taking a second look at the UI. Then again I doubt Nintendo thought someone would make a giant statue with a flame-throwing penis.
"It's just interesting how they improved a ton of things from BotW, but then didn't look at the UX of that materials quick menu," continued RhythmRobber. "Like, it worked perfectly fine in BotW because the quick menus were only about 10 items long. They needed to rethink it for 100+ materials, but they didn't (beyond a barebones sort feature)."
While it is a bit tedious, the complicated menu UI isn't really spoiling anyone's fun. Tears of the Kingdom became the highest rated game on OpenCritic barely a few days after launch.