Oh, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, what do I make of thee? Although you breathe fresh air into open-world exploration, I can’t help but see a game deeply reverent of ancient traditions. Like games of old, you feature little in the way of character progression, rely heavily on fetch-questing, and tell a story that is generic and indistinct. It took a fair amount of soul-searching before I finally yielded and decided to enjoy you for what you are, rather than what I wanted you to be.
Exploration sits at the heart of any open-world game, and in this regard Breath of the Wild is genuinely remarkable. Many of the traditional functions of a map screen are folded directly into gameplay. If you need direction, you don’t consult a list of quest markers. Instead, you climb a mountaintop and scan the horizon using your Sheikah Slate—ancient technology resembling an undocked Nintendo Switch. Acting as a kind of spyglass, it lets you place your own markers and chart your own path.
WORLD EXPLORATION AND SURVIVALIST THEME
In Breath of the Wild, the world truly is your oyster. Anything unusual begs investigation. Progression becomes an organic process of spotting villages, ruins, shrines, or towers in the distance and following curiosity wherever it leads. You might notice a strange glow on a hilltop at night, and how could you possibly resist that temptation? The land is littered with alluring beacons—mostly optional, but foolish to ignore.
This approach led me to an entire forest shrouded in pitch-black darkness, where progress required carrying a flaming torch and lighting braziers along the way. Elsewhere, I washed ashore on an island stripped of all my possessions, forced to survive using only what nature provided. With my paraglider, I reached another island composed entirely of a massive stone maze, guarded by ancient machines capable of killing me in a single hit. These places are microcosms with their own internal logic—entirely optional, easily missed, and unforgettable.
Forward momentum is key. Lingering too long to grind yields little beyond the occasional rupee, cooking ingredient, or weapon destined to shatter after a handful of blows. In a game this visually pleasing, the scenery itself is a reward, but there’s often something tangible waiting at the end of the road as well.
That said, this design clashes somewhat with the game’s hardcore survival elements. Progress is frequently interrupted by the need to fast-travel back to settlements and resupply. Healing requires cooking, which in turn demands gathering ingredients and hunting animals. Cooking itself is an aggravating, one-meal-at-a-time experiment in trial and error. Without the right food—say, a spicy dish—you might simply freeze to death in the Hebra Mountains. To me, these treadmill-like systems hold the game back from true greatness.
There’s no real way around it except learning to tolerate—or even embrace—them. Ultimately, the player is the one who grows, not the hero. Link remains an empty husk, a silent vessel. Survival depends on adapting to shifting environments, understanding enemy AI, and creatively exploiting the physics system. Some of this is exhilarating. Some of it is simply tedious.
A STORY OF UNDEFINED EVIL
Emergent gameplay carries most of the narrative weight. The story you’re given merely sets the machine in motion; from there, your actions drive everything forward. The end goal is established early, and the rest is discovered piecemeal—memories, lore, skills, health upgrades, loot, photographs, and hidden bosses. Rushing straight to the finale is technically possible, but practically unwise. First, you must forge your own legend.
Hyrule has fallen to an ancient evil known as Ganon. Scattered across the land are remnants of a long-lost advanced civilization, now corrupted and controlled by this force. Ganon resides in Hyrule Castle at the center of the map, where a benevolent king once ruled. One hundred years later, Princess Zelda still endures somewhere within, waiting.
The most effective way to defeat Ganon is to seek aid from the four nations surrounding Hyrule, each plagued by a corrupted Divine Beast. By infiltrating these colossal machines and solving their internal puzzles, you gain control over them and weaken Ganon’s hold. These four dungeons stand out as the game’s finest moments—a masterclass in testing a player’s understanding of mechanics, systems, and spatial reasoning.
How much of this draws from classic Zelda lore, I can’t say. This was my first completed Zelda game—and, in fact, the first game I’ve ever finished on a Nintendo console.
That doesn’t mean the series is unfamiliar. Link’s silence, for instance, allows you to inhabit him however you see fit. You can favor brute-force melee combat, optimizing armor and damage. You can lean into elemental weapons to exploit enemy weaknesses. You can rely on the Sheikah Slate to deploy bombs and environmental traps. You can fight at range with a bow—or avoid combat altogether in favor of exploration.
Most players will likely dabble in everything, adapting to the situation at hand. That’s the survivor’s approach. Breath of the Wild can be harsh and unforgiving. Certain enemies—especially the centaur-like Lynels—instilled genuine dread in me. Melee combat borrows heavily from the deliberate pacing of Dark Souls, though without matching its precision. You do gain better gear and expand your health and stamina, but enemy damage scales just as aggressively.
Because experience points don’t exist, there’s little penalty for avoiding fights beyond missing out on loot and practice. However, the fragility of weapons, shields, and bows is a questionable design choice. Equipment shatters constantly, cannot be repaired, and forces you into a perpetual scavenger mindset. This can push you into combat just to stay armed—or end a fair fight prematurely when you simply run out of weapons.
SYSTEMATIC FUN
Balancing the harsh survival mechanics is a surprisingly playful tone. Breath of the Wild has a childlike sense of humor woven into its systems. Enemies will grab whatever weapon is closest—even a giant leaf—and use it with complete sincerity. Failed cooking attempts are labeled “dubious food.” The game feels like a playground designed around experimentation and amusement.
Online, you’ll find astonishing displays of creativity: players exploiting the physics engine to perform incredible stunts or devise ingenious combat solutions. These feats emerge not from glitches, but from a robust system that allows manipulation of gravity, momentum, and force. Attempting to replicate them often ends in failure—and those failures can be hilariously slapstick. It’s comedy born entirely of systems, something only games can achieve.
All of this unfolds within a stunning rendition of Hyrule. The world is polished to near perfection, encompassing diverse climates and landscapes. At one edge lies a vast ocean; at another, a bottomless ravine framed by towering peaks. Some vistas recall the oppressive void surrounding the playfield in Demon’s Souls.
At the center stands Hyrule Castle, dark and ominous, visible from much of the land. It looms as a reminder of what awaits, even as you procrastinate by exploring everything else. Breath of the Wild encapsulates much of what makes video games special, though its impact is more practical than philosophical. My thoughts rarely linger on its themes—but I constantly feel the urge to return, explore, experiment, and fail at impossible stunts.
I don’t believe Breath of the Wild is a perfect game. But just as Hyrule exists atop the ruins of a once-great civilization, this game undeniably rests on the foundations of a perfect world. Its vision of Hyrule is a masterclass in world design, and I see a brilliant future ahead for open-world Zelda—one built on these same foundations.
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