Also for: Wii U
Oh, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, what do I make of thee? Although you breathe fresh air into the act of exploring open worlds, I cannot help but see a game in reverence of ancient traditions. Like games of olden days, you lack most semblence of character progression, you involve a lot of fetch-questing, and the story is generic and nondescript. It took me a lot of soul-searching before I yielded, and decided to enjoy you for what you are, rather than what I wanted you to be.
It comes naturally to any open world game to revolve around exploring, and in this aspect Breath of the Wild is simply wonderful. A lot of the map screen's traditional functions are channeled into gameplay itself. If you need hints on where to go, do not consult your map for quest markers. Instead, climb a mountaintop and scan the horizon through your Sheikah slate (ancient tech resembling an undocked Nintendo Switch). One of its many uses is as a spyglass, allowing you to create your own markers.
This way, I stumbled upon an entire forest enshrouded in pitch black, where I had to run around with a flaming torch and light braziers to progress. Later, I sailed to an island where I was stripped of all possessions, and had to survive on whatever the land provided. With my paraglider, I reached another island entirely consisting of a stone maze, guarded by ancient machines that could kill me with one hit. All of these are microcosms with their own innate logic - locations that are completely optional and easy to miss.
Forward is the way to go. Staying in one place to grind for too long might try your patience, since you gain nothing by doing so, except the odd rupee (which is the game's currency), cooking ingredient or equipment that break after a dozen hits. In such an aesthetically pleasing game, the visuals are a reward of their own, but there's often a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as well.
This makes it a little frustrating when the game also involves hardcore survival. This interrupts your progress and forces you to fast travel back to settlements to resupply. You have to cook healing items to survive, which involves collecting herbs and sneaking up on animals. The act of cooking is an aggravating, one-meal-at-a-time experimental timesink. But if you lack a spicy hot meal in your inventory, for instance, you might freeze to death amidst the snows of the Hebra Mountains. To me, such treadmill gameplay loops holds the game back from greatness.
You can do little to get around it except to learn to love it. The player is the one really growing and progressing, whereas the hero, Link, is an empty husk and a silent protagonist. To survive, you need to adapt to ever-changing environmental conditions, figure out enemy A.I. behavior, and master the physics engine in creative ways. Some of it is a blast, and some of it's plain tedious.
Hyrule's been conquered by an ancient evil force called Ganon. The land holds many memories of ancient times, when an advanced civilization inhabited the land. The remnants of those time still remain, and Ganon has control over them, using them as guardians to hold sway over his domain. He resides in Hyrule Castle in the center of the map, where the good king once ruled. Now, one hundred years later, his only child, Princess Zelda, still sleeps somewhere within, awaiting your return.
The easiest way to defeat Ganon is to enlist help from the four different nations surrounding Hyrule, who are each and all tormented by a different ancient Sheikah beast. Taming these powerful colossi, by entering their massive interiors and completing a set of puzzles, you gain control of them and use them to weaken Ganon. These four dungeons are the highlight of the entire game - a textbook example of how to test a player's skills in every conceivable way.
How much of this is repeated Zelda lore, story and gameplay I wouldn't really know, because I've not played any Zelda game until now. (In fact, this is the first game, period, I've finished on a Nintendo console.)
That's not to say I know nothing of the franchise. Fittingly, Link is as silent as ever, allowing you to fill his shoes however you desire. You can go with an upfront melee combat approach, min-maxing armor and damage output. You could equip weapons with elemental powers that exploit enemy weaknesses. Or you could utilize your Sheika slate, which lets you throw bombs or use objects around you as traps. You could depend on your bow for ranged combat. Or just avoid most enemies altogether and focus on exploring.
I'd bet you want to learn a little of everything and adapt to current circumstances. A wise choice, and a survivor's choice. Breath of the Wild is pretty hardcore, and can at times be unforgiving. At the sight of some enemies, particularly the centaurian Lynels, my heart would sink. Melee combat mimics the movesets and sluggish animations of Dark Souls, without being nearly as good, but it gets the job done. You find better gear throughout, and slowly raise your maximum health and stamina, but this barely covers the enemy's increasing damage output and defense.
Since experience points play no part in Breath of the Wild you lose little, apart from loot and practice, by avoiding a fight. An unfortunate choice was to make weapons, shields and bows very brittle, as if the iron is tainted. Repairing them is not possible, which prompts you to constantly look for replacements. This could force you to fight just for the loot. It could also force you to flee - or automatically lose - a long and even fight, simply because you run out of weapons before the end.
To offset the hardcore survivalist approach, Breath of the Wild has a lighthearted atmosphere, with a great, childish sense of humor. From the A.I. system of stupid enemies grabbing the nearest weapons, even if it's a big tree leaf (you can use this to your advantage), to the way they censor your failed cooking attempts and call it "dubious food", Breath of the Wild feels like a playground designed around the joy of playing games.It comes naturally to any open world game to revolve around exploring, and in this aspect Breath of the Wild is simply wonderful. A lot of the map screen's traditional functions are channeled into gameplay itself. If you need hints on where to go, do not consult your map for quest markers. Instead, climb a mountaintop and scan the horizon through your Sheikah slate (ancient tech resembling an undocked Nintendo Switch). One of its many uses is as a spyglass, allowing you to create your own markers.
WORLD EXPLORATION AND SURVIVALIST THEME
In Breath of the Wild the world is your oyster. Anything out of the ordinary is worth investigating. World progression becomes an organic process of scouting out villages, ruins, shrines or towers in the distance and getting sidetracked on a whim. You might spot the light of something magical gleaming on a hilltop in the dark of night, and how can you resist such tempation? This world holds a seemingly unlimited amount of alluring beacons, most of them optional, but you'd be a fool not to seek them out.This way, I stumbled upon an entire forest enshrouded in pitch black, where I had to run around with a flaming torch and light braziers to progress. Later, I sailed to an island where I was stripped of all possessions, and had to survive on whatever the land provided. With my paraglider, I reached another island entirely consisting of a stone maze, guarded by ancient machines that could kill me with one hit. All of these are microcosms with their own innate logic - locations that are completely optional and easy to miss.
Forward is the way to go. Staying in one place to grind for too long might try your patience, since you gain nothing by doing so, except the odd rupee (which is the game's currency), cooking ingredient or equipment that break after a dozen hits. In such an aesthetically pleasing game, the visuals are a reward of their own, but there's often a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow as well.
This makes it a little frustrating when the game also involves hardcore survival. This interrupts your progress and forces you to fast travel back to settlements to resupply. You have to cook healing items to survive, which involves collecting herbs and sneaking up on animals. The act of cooking is an aggravating, one-meal-at-a-time experimental timesink. But if you lack a spicy hot meal in your inventory, for instance, you might freeze to death amidst the snows of the Hebra Mountains. To me, such treadmill gameplay loops holds the game back from greatness.
You can do little to get around it except to learn to love it. The player is the one really growing and progressing, whereas the hero, Link, is an empty husk and a silent protagonist. To survive, you need to adapt to ever-changing environmental conditions, figure out enemy A.I. behavior, and master the physics engine in creative ways. Some of it is a blast, and some of it's plain tedious.
A STORY OF UNDEFINED EVIL
Emergent gameplay makes up most of the story. What little narration you get is the starter motor, and then your gameplay becomes the driving force. You instantly learn the end objective, and the rest you pick up along the way, be it bits of story, lore, skills, health, loot, photos or hidden boss fights. You cannot expect to win by rushing directly to the main objective, although you theoretically could. First you need to craft yourself your own legend.Hyrule's been conquered by an ancient evil force called Ganon. The land holds many memories of ancient times, when an advanced civilization inhabited the land. The remnants of those time still remain, and Ganon has control over them, using them as guardians to hold sway over his domain. He resides in Hyrule Castle in the center of the map, where the good king once ruled. Now, one hundred years later, his only child, Princess Zelda, still sleeps somewhere within, awaiting your return.
The easiest way to defeat Ganon is to enlist help from the four different nations surrounding Hyrule, who are each and all tormented by a different ancient Sheikah beast. Taming these powerful colossi, by entering their massive interiors and completing a set of puzzles, you gain control of them and use them to weaken Ganon. These four dungeons are the highlight of the entire game - a textbook example of how to test a player's skills in every conceivable way.
How much of this is repeated Zelda lore, story and gameplay I wouldn't really know, because I've not played any Zelda game until now. (In fact, this is the first game, period, I've finished on a Nintendo console.)
That's not to say I know nothing of the franchise. Fittingly, Link is as silent as ever, allowing you to fill his shoes however you desire. You can go with an upfront melee combat approach, min-maxing armor and damage output. You could equip weapons with elemental powers that exploit enemy weaknesses. Or you could utilize your Sheika slate, which lets you throw bombs or use objects around you as traps. You could depend on your bow for ranged combat. Or just avoid most enemies altogether and focus on exploring.
I'd bet you want to learn a little of everything and adapt to current circumstances. A wise choice, and a survivor's choice. Breath of the Wild is pretty hardcore, and can at times be unforgiving. At the sight of some enemies, particularly the centaurian Lynels, my heart would sink. Melee combat mimics the movesets and sluggish animations of Dark Souls, without being nearly as good, but it gets the job done. You find better gear throughout, and slowly raise your maximum health and stamina, but this barely covers the enemy's increasing damage output and defense.
Since experience points play no part in Breath of the Wild you lose little, apart from loot and practice, by avoiding a fight. An unfortunate choice was to make weapons, shields and bows very brittle, as if the iron is tainted. Repairing them is not possible, which prompts you to constantly look for replacements. This could force you to fight just for the loot. It could also force you to flee - or automatically lose - a long and even fight, simply because you run out of weapons before the end.
SYSTEMATIC FUN
If you scour the Internet for creative ways to explore Hyrule or fight enemies, you'll come across some truly amazing feats of gameplay. They're all the results of an elaborate physics engine that allows you to briefly alter gravity and use it to your advantage. It's inspiring, and anyone will feel the temptation to replicate such moves. In doing so, you'll fail time and time again before getting lucky, and the results can get comically bad. It's slapstick of a kind that could only exist in video games, and it's driven by systems rather than glitches.
And such comedy is caught within the picture perfect frame that's Hyrule. This game can be breathtakingly beautiful, and is polished to perfection. It contains all the lively climates humanity has come to appreciate. At one edge of the world is the vast ocean and the other borders a bottomless ravine lined with high peaks on the opposite side. Such locations makes me recall the oppressive void that surrounds the playing field of a game like Demon's Souls.
And in the center of the world lies Castle Hyrule, dark and ominous, visible from most of the surrounding landscape. It's a constant reminder of future hardships, as you try to procrastinate by partaking in the carousel gameplay loop of exploring the surrounding lands. Breath of the Wild encompasses much of the wealth and beauty of video games, and leaves you with a lot to think about. It's just that the thoughts are pragmatic and not very profound. I mostly just long to go back to explore, be creative and fail to perform physically impossible stunts.
I don't think Breath of the Wild is a perfect game, but much like Hyrule exists amidst the ruins of a great civilization, this game sure as hell rests on the foundations of a perfect world. This Hyrule is a masterclass in world design, and I scout a brilliant future for open-world Zelda on the horizon.
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