Besides a bunch of smaller functions, Zelda Notes has two major additions to both games: A navigation app, and an item sharing function. The navigation app is an interesting compromise between the original version, in which you had to discover everything by yourself, and an "Ubisoft" type of open world, where every point of interest is marked on your map. The navigation running on a separate device makes it less intrusive, and you choose yourself what types of points of interest you want to have on that map. For example, I am mostly just using the map for the Koroks. In Tears of the Kingdom there are 800 Korok locations, and many of them are not obvious to find. For example there are a lot of Koroks hidden under rocks, but there are even more rocks in the game without a Korok under them. As you need the Korok seeds to enlarge your inventory, previously you had to either literally leave no stone unturned, or use a third party map app. Having this now as official part of the game is great, especially since the app can also remove the found locations from the map automatically, being linked to the game.

The item sharing function didn't sound all that interesting, until I tried it. I don't have anybody to share game items with. But the name is deceiving, the function can be used for a lot of other things. For example I started a new game of Tears of the Kingdom, and used the item sharing function to transfer some items from my old save game to the new game. With some materials being hard to farm, I really didn't want to do all that farming a second time, and item sharing provided a convenient workaround. But you can also share items just with yourself, which transforms the function into an added inventory, which is extremely useful in the Zelda games. Everybody who played Breath of the Wild and/or Tears of the Kingdom had those situations where he found another weapon he liked, but his weapon slots were all already taken. Now you just send some lesser used weapons from the game to your mobile device, until you need them and send them back. I haven't tried it, but I was wondering whether you couldn't actually use that to duplicate items, by making a save, then sending an item, then reloading your save with the item now both in your inventory and on the mobile device.

The rest of the Zelda Notes app is cute, but with less impact. There are some added voice memories, an achievement system, game stats that can be compared with global play data, a daily "wheel of fortune" game bonus, added support for amiibos, and a photo studio. There is also an autobuild sharing function, which has potential, if Tears of the Kingdom still has enough active players to make this take off. Building complicated machines is a bit fiddly sometimes, and being able to download other player's blueprints and autobuild them could be quite interesting.

All in all, I didn't regret paying for those upgrade packs. And as I said, all together it encouraged me to start another run of Tears of the Kingdom. I have played the game to the end in 2023, but hadn't explored all parts of the map, and certainly not all Koroks. Maybe a map app was what I needed.