There are two kinds of people in the world: people who understood that The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s weapon degradation was a necessary component of a game built around experimentation, and other people who like to moan about things. Still, look, some of you out there really bounced off having to keep a few backup swords, and being unable to form any kind of attachment to a Good Weapon because nothing in that game had any permanence.
The thing is: games are built around rules, and one of the rules of BotW is that weapons have a health stat. Complaining about it is like complaining that the horsey in chess can’t just gallop to the other side of the board. Fortunately, if you’re on the wrong side of this argument, Tears of the Kingdom is trying very hard to make it not matter.
Firstly, there’s the fact that the FUSE feature has completely changed the game’s approach to combat and loot. As James says in the preview video above, your traditional weapons in Tears – rusty swords, pikes, big sticks etc – are now intended as platforms for whatever you stick on the end. You can, of course, just use a Big Stick as a Big Stick, and go around bonking people with it, but it’s going to be a much more effective bonker if you pop something on the tip, like a horn, or a big spikey ball.