I Played The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom For Two Hours. Oh My God.

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A sequel is a dangerous thing—but Nintendo is up for the challenge.

A sequel is a dangerous thing. How do you give fans more of what they loved, improve on what came before, and avoid compromising what made it great? It's a tightrope walk that Nintendo has excelled at since 1988's Zelda II: The Adventure of Link—the follow-up to The Legend of Zelda—and the first entry of a franchise that would later include one of the highest-selling video games of all time. You might've heard of it: 2017's The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Esquire, along with just about every gamer on Earth, named Breath of the Wild the best Nintendo Switch title ever made. The open-world adventure, which follows a young hero tasked with saving a princess from a tyrannical warlock (classic!) was so jam-packed with places to explore and mechanics to abuse that longtime players arestill discovering new quirks. So how could such a well-loved, near-perfect video game surprise audiences with its sequel—which is easily one of the most anticipated titles of the past decade?

Well, gamers, that's what I'm here to find out. Earlier this month, Nintendo invited Esquire to try Tears of the Kingdom for about two hours. First, I must state that playing a video game in front of about a couple dozen Nintendo employees was a little daunting. But I'm a brave boy—just like our protagonist, Link—and I would've charged headfirst into a bokoblin horde with the game's least-durable wooden stick just to get my hands on Tears of the Kingdom. Because if Breath of the Wild made your personal «Best Video Games of All Time» list—get ready for Tears of the Kingdom. The game developers over