The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - It's A Long Way To The Top (Post-Launch Game Review)

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trave1605 years agoPeakD9 min read

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo EPD
Platform: Switch, Wii U
Genre: Action-Adventure
Release Date: 3.7.2017

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First time buying a Nintendo Switch, it took me 3 games before buying this. It was after several dozens of hours getting lost into the world that I've realized that Zelda was a really, really different game. Well distinguished from all the other well known open world games with RPG mechanics embed, Breath of the Wild elevates the status of good gaming exclusives. The kind that reminds you of how action adventure games are supposed to play.

Honestly after the long hours of trials and tribulations, this game lets you reap its rewards and immerse you completely into its world, overcoming hardships while being filled with constant wanderlust over its world of fantasy, and the sheer scope and magnitude of it all. With such a breezy combat design taking advantage of the sandbox archetype more than most games have, I honestly wished I bought a Switch much earlier now that I've played, and I now know why.

Of course, this being such a brilliant game, it needed to make big changes, some of that meant well taking different directions from what the prior Zelda games have done. This divided older Zelda fans in some ways, but honestly I never played much of games from the Zelda series, last one was from a Gameboy, Link's Awakening maybe?

Still this is a brilliant and technical achievement, aside from people playing Genshin Impact even though they still don't realize that was a bad copy-pasted version of BOTW, the influences far outreaches even that, including the new Ubisoft game, Immortal Fenyx Rising and some design philosophies taken for open world games that point on. For me, it proved that I can still enjoy sandbox after games like Half Life 2, Saints Row and Crysis. Funny how none of these games are even alike.

This game is another elsewhere story, taking place in an alternative timeline. Link has been in slumber for over a century till he wakes up to see Hyrule in a much different light. A great evil known as Calamity Ganon has taken over the land, many of his minions, monsters and all roam the land terrorizing people. Realizing that all is lost, the ghost of King Rhoam, last king of Hyrule instructed Link to set forth and save Hyrule by defeating Ganon like a typical Zelda game would tell you to do so.

Though this adventure is a long, arduous journey. There's so much to uncover, so much to do. Even if the game hints that you can make it a shorter experience, it wouldn't be a great experience without uncovering almost everything else around it.

World of Hyrule has so much for you to do. From fixing lightning rod problems, solving shrine riddles, helping out a love interest, collecting flies, etc. The game's affable world with affable characters and such charm, compounded by a force of evil such wicked, you'd be compelled to participating in trying to help them out.

Despite the hero story as you'd know, in the journey of it all, you meet so many interesting characters and be in a great narrative driven story that gets you very motivated to climb atop mountains, learn to fight dangerous foes on a near daily basis and overcome grave plights to save the day.

This game has quality as well as the quantity of good content to show for in terms of different side quests, activities, riddles to solve, enemy encampments to clear and so on. The different people you meet has these endearing moments that carry along with the main themes of the game.

Did I say how much of a great game Legend of Zelda is? That's because its greatness stems from so much of the sandbox archetype. Like shooting arrows and figuring out the trajectory of where it'll hit. Throwing all the swords that'll eventually break from constant hitting, and it's all a matter of attrition for both melee weapons, bows, arrows, yet you can magically summon bombs to throw enemies off their balance in funny fashion. Yeah, the consistency isn't maintained on this exact area, but the game is sure a lot of fun, just easier to ignore all of that.

Legend of Zelda is a daily activity while saving the world kind of game. The kind where you try to collect scales from a floating Chinese dragon that likes to cross bridges. You collect, fish, meat with protein, mushrooms, fruits, vegetables, monster parts, weird jelly stuff, rocks, soils, water, critters, etc. Like, it has this much of RPG elements imbued into the core game.

Zelda can also be a picky game, you can't do any of the stuff that the game challenges you to do, well, you're out of luck. Despite all that, just trial and errors later, prevailing through the game feels like a great achievement. Defeating all the monsters giving you tough time feels like a good relief. Getting new items like different arrow types, stronger weapons and finding horses to keep in stables.

The land of Hyrule is full of mysteries, relics and among other things to find. The game is full of surprises from finding a giant lady inside a flower pedal that enchants your armor, a weird deity that resurrects your horses to facing ridiculously giant boss battles in certain areas of the map.

Litte things like noise and temperature makes a lot of differences, you'll go to icy mountains and you have to wear clothes that'll keep you warm or use elixirs to keep you freezing. Gorro mountains which have you burning in flames unless you wear something that is fire retardant or a specific elixir of sorts for it. Sound is also important since you can capture critters, sneak up on animals for gathering or enemies for ambushing.

In order to increase inventory, you'll need to find Korok seeds scattered around.

The combat is something entirely different. It takes some tactics or intuition to overcome as well as better weapons and armor gears to face your adversaries. In the early hour playtime, I've died quite a lot but then once of course I've increased my arsenal, solve enough shrine puzzles to get spirit orbs for either increasing your stamina or your health bar. Doing this made me a lot unstoppable and even then, there were greater challenges to overcome within the long hours of playthrough.

Speaking of long hours, this game will take you over 50hrs to complete. Even then, there's more than 100hrs worth of content left to explore. This game exceeds even the Witcher 3 in terms of length. I guess Japanese games are still making you play countless hours to even very little respite.

Breath of the Wild is something I can't describe by a mere few words, not even these paragraphs. The game keeps letting you endure hours of turmoil to finish side quests that give you ample to measly rewards yet, you still want to give going somehow. That's the game. It works well to its strengths especially around the open world designs. Though playing it on the Switch, I could tell this game was exactly made for the Wii U in some ways, there were even some cut content but these are points for nitpicking, nothing much else.

I mean even for a game running in the Switch, the art direction and technical properties in action shows so much prowess for a handheld running with an anemic CPU and somewhat weaker GPU. Like, winds will howl and blow so much foliage around your sight. Simmering vistas of Hyrules, so many landmarks to behold upon. The best part is how the post-processing is done beautifully with everything else around you. Not to mention the animation quality is superb. Same goes for the physics.

The audio is amazing, with an indelibly incredible experience that not only immerses you into the game world but offers tactical use as well. The music is as good as any Zelda games will ever get and that's never a bad thing or anything less. The game also offers good voice acting as well, I mean that's not something even Nintendo would skimp on.

Overall, there's so much to look and hear from a handheld exclusive like this. It's really amazing. It's not short on surprises.

Of course, since this game already sold over 20M units, Nintendo obliged to sell out a 20 USD expansion pass with two DLC packs. But there's no additional story, just a new challenge mode. New chests to open, and new weapons and armor.

I guess some fans will be thrilled to purchase this, but Nintendo doesn't even cut prices of their games till I guess somewhere after 3-4 years. I'd wait till sales to get this. The entire bundle is like priced 80 USD. That's kind of ridiculous now.

If you don't own this game while playing a Switch, what are you waiting for? This is the best open-world adventure game to date. Most games would shoe-horn in RPG mechanics these days but Zelda has done it with respect to the main gameplay mechanics and the sandbox design.

Hyrule is a big world, has so much packed content for you to do. Korok seeds to find, shrines to solve, index knowledge to fill, killing giants and of course, at the end of the day, saving the princess.