You'd think that two years after its release The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdomfans would run out of new challenges that have special rules applied to completion. But although many people tried to win Tears of the Kingdom Content creator PointCrow, with only a stick, has the distinction of being a player who attempted to beat the game with just a stick. As in, the same special stick.
PointCrow is known for challenges like this one, like the one where he beat the game using only bombs, or the one where he tried to beat the game with no stamina. However, at first glance it seems that a single race with a stick is impossible. The game has an introduction that forces Link to use the Master Sword. There's also the matter of durability, which is especially important when we're dealing with the most fragile weapons in the entire game. But if the stick breaks, that’s it. Game over.
So how? The answer is simple: glitches. The full answer, I'm not kidding, is parallel universes. (Thanks to pannunkek2012 and his culture-defining Super Mario 64 runs.) It turns out that you can manipulate the Tears of the Kingdom save file system to have separate playthroughs that affect each other. So PointCrow does a “setup” save, in which he progresses normally, and a real save, in which he is limited. In the save settings, he goes through the prologue and the initial tutorial island, and this Link gains maximum stamina and hearts. From here, he starts a cutscene and pauses in the middle to tell the game to load an autosave from the flash drive. The game gets confused and creates a third save file that combines the states of the original two.
However, this creates new problems. There is a link in the merged save file that never provided the ability to enter the shrines. Luckily, this is something that's easy to fix with a save glitch, but to fix it you'll have to rely on an unstable version of the game that refuses to load certain areas. Like everything else, it has a technical workaround: it runs Tears of the Kingdom on a 1.0 preview build, and then updates the game midway to make sure it starts working correctly.
Interestingly, the prologue version of Link is coded in such a way that he cannot break any weapon he uses, presumably to avoid a scenario where the player gets stuck at the beginning of the game. But this is how PointCrow solves the problem of longevity, since the connection it establishes between universes is the same one that was there at the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but it doesn't eliminate all possible disagreements. The stick is still a weak weapon that makes battles cumbersome. But at this moment everything depends on perseverance and dedication. It also helps that there is a duplication glitch that gives him a large amount of consumables to improve his attack or stock up on rebirth fairies. He also uses a glitch that allows Link to move around the world. Some would consider these means to discredit the credibility of the series, but in my opinion he is a resourceful player who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his viewer. He also implements a kind of guarantee that at every fair he attends, he will block one of his spectators, creating an incentive not to rely on them too much.
PointCrow manages to get through many of the Tears of the Kingdombosses, but the fights look painful. The YouTube version of his journey doesn't force the viewer to sit through all the fights, which is good when some of them take several hours. One boss fight, Queen Ghibdo, takes an incredible 23 hours. The showdown at Ganondorf, which erases Link's hearts as it progresses, is a notable nuisance. An unbreakable stick is still just a stick. He can't necessarily clone items mid-battle.
So, is this possible? In short, PointCrow actually defeats the dragon version of Ganon. But the game forces the player to use the Master Sword as a final attack, so technically, It's not really a stick-only game. But what kind of pleasure is this?
When all was said and done, PointCrow banned over 1,000 people from their Twitch chat. TEAR.
