dbarry_22's Game Review of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

A Major Step Forward For The Series
dbarry_22 - wrote on 06/15/17

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild revolutions the series with it's huge world and provides a wonderful experience making it truly a masterpiece.

Throughout the years, The Legend of Zelda series has gone in several different directions but always provided a great experience and story to play through. For me, ever since the original on the NES I've wanted a 3D game that let's go wherever you want and see the world how you want to see it. Ever since 3D Zelda games came about on the N64, we haven't gotten that. You'd be limited to one area of the map until you got a certain weapon, then a new area would be opened up to you. Finally with Breath of the Wild you get that chance. You choose where to go. You choose what to explore and when. It really empowers you and it's a great feeling.

I won't go too much into the story to try and avoid spoiling things for anyone. It starts out with Link waking up in a cave all alone and you head out and you're just out there in the world. It's somewhat intimidating. Over the course of the next 10-15 hours of the game you get the plot of the story. But in short, Hyrule is in ruins and you need to save the day. It's very close to almost all the other Zelda games in the series. Actually, when it came to the story I found it a bit lacking. Considering I put in over 150 hours into the game, there's actually not that much story to unearth. I went 20 to 30 hours at times without any kind of major advancements to the story. I thought that was alright since this game promotes exploring and I really enjoyed doing it. There two major goals to this story. First there's finding and completing shrines. This is your way of expanding your health and stamina. Every time you finish 4 shrines you can turn them in for a heart container or an upgrade to your stamina. The other goal is to take out devine beasts. I won't go into that but basically they can assist in you in defeating Ganon. When you choose to try and finish the game is up to you. When you think you're ready, you can just take him on. I of course did as much as I could but if you wanted to you could try and take him on without going everywhere in the game. The other thing you'll find yourself doing is finding korok seeds. There are small creatures that hide all throughout the game. You can find them in various ways. By collecting Korok seeds you can upgrade how many weapons, bows, and shields you can hold. You'll want to upgrade this slots because you'll lose these things often in the game. Trying to find them almost became an addiction for me.

I think the art style is wonderful. It’s ok that the game doesn’t have “realistic” graphics. I had issues with Wind Waker back in the day looking “cartoony” but eventually it grew on me. I liked this right from the start. There were issues with the frame rate in the lost woods and sometimes when you fight the really tall lizard/moblin type guys. I found that disappointing but nothing more.

I actually liked the music for the most part. It’s so peaceful and subtle which fits perfect with this game since most of it involves exploring. For example, there's an area in the game that has a volcano. While in that area, the music is a very subtle and slow version of the music from the dungeons in the NES version of LOZ. I liked it. But, when I got to Hyrule Castle and heard that awesome grand score it made me miss those tracks that you hum days later like the music from sailing in Wind Waker. Subtle was good, but it turned into not very memorable.

Now onto gameplay. I thought in general the gameplay was great. There was very little when it came to tutorials. Early on in the game you learn some Sheikah abilities. This gives you the ability to move metal objects around using telekinesis, throwing and exploding bombs, placing objects in stasis, and creating ice blocks in water. In general, the game just lets you take on enemies how you want to. You could use Sheekah abilities or arrows or swords however you saw fit. You had to figure out things on your own. It was so refreshing. However, it got a little stale in the sense that most enemies you just basically aimed for the eye(s) to find their weakness. I also got sick of my weapons breaking all the time. I actually understand and promote the idea of breaking weapons to make you experiment with stuff more but they just broke way too soon. It made me want to avoid fights in the game much more than I normally would have.

What I found best about this game was the exploring. Exploring in this game became so addictive it almost took away from the overall game. When there’s 20-30 hours between any sort of advancement in the story it started to make me wonder when the heck I was going to get this game done. I climbed so many mountains and trees that basically I kept my climbing gear on almost all the time. In general my approach to the game was open up an area map and then do everything I possibly could in that mapped area before moving on. Maybe that was exploring a town and doing all the sidequests, trying to find all the shrines and korok seeds, that kind of stuff. I actually think that was a good approach. I thought about opening up a ton of maps and then going from there but I decided that would be so overwhelming and I wouldn’t know where to go or what to do. It’d be hard to know if I looked over everything. But that is what's great about this game. You can decide on the approach of what to do. My approach isn't the "best" one, it's just an option. You can do whatever you want and it's great.

Overall I thought Nintendo did a good job of revolutionizing Zelda. They took a different formula and it worked. I thought the lack of real in depth dungeons was disappointing and shrines were catering to the A.D.D. of this generation but the puzzles inside the shrines were fun to do. Getting rid of pieces of heart and letting you decide on hearts or stamina was cool. The openness of the world was amazing. I did miss the hookshot and other items but for this game it was ok. It’s ok to be different. But, I fear Nintendo will just use this formula from here on out. I don’t need this exact same game over and over. Bring back big dungeons and add a couple items and maybe a more developed story and keep the huge open world and it could go from a masterpiece that this was to perhaps the best Zelda game of all time. If you enjoy the The Legend of Zelda series, this is a game you must experience, just expect to put a lot of hours into it. This might not be the best Zelda ever, but it's right up there in the discussion which is impressive.

5/5

PS - I do have one major complaint about this game. Why the heck is Link not left handed? He's been left handed basically throughout the entire series and they changed it. It was a quality about Link that most people knew about. As a left handed person I find this upsetting.