Review
Played on: Switch 1 & 2Released: 2017
I planned to write this review back in 2017, but I never managed to finish Breath of the Wild. I struggled to properly connect with it, even though I love open world titles. The paradox being my problem with BotW was the open-ended structure. To clarify; it was structured in a way that never kind of pointed you in any proper direction after you flew down from the plateau. I would wander aimlessly, without even levelling up and be frustrated as to what to do and where to go.
Fast forward nine years, I randomly decided I wanted to play it again. Tempted by a Switch 2 upgrade available on the Nintendo store to upgrade our old physical version, I jumped in. Rather than restarting entirely I booted up my ancient save and began to reconnect with this massive Zelda entry.
Simultaneously, my daughter was very curious and began a new game herself. Inspired by seeing her complete the introduction level on the plateau and come to grips with its world, it inspired my own playthrough and I connected with it in a way I had not back when it was new.
With a few useful pointers from a friend and one of my daughter's classmates, I was equipped with the know how to finally reach the ending. I guess a Zelda newbie like me needs a lot of help!
Let's take a breath and closer look at this wild ride!
For those not acquainted with this title; Link awakens 100 years after the Hyrule kingdom is taken over by an evil entity called Ganon. With a desperate plea from Zelda, he is tasked to kill Ganon and rid the kingdom of his control.
The journey to do so begins with a limited open world scope; you exit a small chamber through a cave where Link has been kept in slumber. This sleeping place is situated on top of a massive plateau which stands in the middle of Hyrule. On this elevated area you receive guidance from an old man.
So far, so good for when it comes to open world games, I was used to this kind of guidance.
However, everything changes when you leave the plateau with your newly acquired, and awesome, glider. Landing safely, you have one marker on your map, a tiny village named Kakariko village to meet Impa. This is where you get a sense of open-ended structure of the game. Sure, the village is marked on the map, but getting there is up to you. Albeit, with a few tips given along the way.
It can seem quite daunting, with lots of enemies on the way which will kill you quickly unless you learn the combat. Wielding a sword, using your shield properly, parrying and dodging oncoming attacks is key to survival. You can use bow to snipe enemies from a distance, but as you first realise; you have few life hearts at your disposal.
Once You reach Impa, she'll tell you to activate each of the four Divine Beasts; massive animal shaped robotic structures which when conquered will weaken Ganon. They each have their set of sub-quests before they can be entered, upon doing so they have to be conquered from within by activating their various mechanical parts, basically puzzle solving surrounding rotating parts. Then they end in tricky boss battle. These divine beasts remind me of Shadow of the Colossus, review here, with their size and having to figure out how to climb about them!
The main tasks Impa gives Link is funnily enough where the game fell through for me the first time around. I just didn't know how to approach them. They're extremely vague. Where do I go next? How do I use Link's abilities, gain better weapons, know which route to take and how did I do I conquer each divine beast? After trying and failing and not quite grasping the structure, I gave up. Luckily, this time around I realised there are hints that I should pay close attention to.
The main goals are intentionally broad strokes of must be done, but which one of the divine beasts you want to take down first is entirely up to you. You don't even need to get help from the; you can just go straight to Hyrule castle and take on Ganon if you wish! It's an incredible free design.
Finding your way by trying and failing is part of the way to build the experience.
By all means, I find it a tough playthrough; not only to get my head around its lack of directions, but also how vulnerable Link is. The number of hearts and stamina you begin with is sort of the level system in a traditional RPG. You need to expand them to take on the stronger enemies.
Expanding hearts and stamina is done by completing shrines, four at a time to be precise. These four parts will grant you either more stamina or an extra life heart. I found the latter to be the most useful, especially if you're dying a lot in combat. It allows Link to stay in the battle longer and take more damage if you're bad at parrying or keeping your shield up. Increasing stamina eases climbing and especially gliding far distances, allowing you more airtime to get across the massive open world.
The shrines, replacing traditional Zelda dungeons, are basically puzzle rooms. Sadly, they're rather sterile and extremely similar looking rooms, not exactly encouraging the exploration part of my curiosity. They take usage of Links abilities; levitating objects, freezing water, stopping time and using magnetism.
On the paper it's cool set of skills, which allow you to be incredibly creative with the physics, but at the same time can be overbearing to fully understand and become skilled at. My advice would be; don't overthink it, just use the abilities freely and if it works, it works, there's often not an exact solution!
Each shrine will use a set of these abilities, however, after completing multiple of them, it quickly gets old. They feel grindy in nature.
Progression then, is cleverly hidden behind gradually getting your hands on increasingly better equipment and weapons. Sticks, spears, hammers, shields, bows and swords, all seem to increase gradually in their stats as you explore deeper into the realms of Hyrule. Although you often find equipment, raiding an enemy camp or finding a treasure chest, there's a heated debated of the infamous weapon durability system. Equipment will wear down until they break and disappear altogether.
It's a rather rapid durability system too, leaving you empty handed in dangerous combat situations unless you continue to stock up on weapons. I wish it was a little slower and perhaps had a possibility to mend them. It doesn't help that it's cumbersome discarding a lower stat weapon while trying to put a new one in a full inventory.
When it comes to controls BotW is familiar 3D Zelda ground, for good and worse. Veterans will have no complaints, but for a newly acquainted Zelda player like me reveals a clumsy layout in navigating weaponry, discarding items and keeping yourself focused in on a certain enemy. The solution, which I've seen in multiple Zelda's is a lock-on system for individual enemies, allowing Link to circle this opponent. A system I've always found rigid and clunky.
Don't get me wrong, there's Nintendo magic in the gameplay; engaging, challenging and entertaining, but it tends to lean into a lot of button combinations and awkward menus to navigate. Is a weapon wheel really that hard to implement these days? A far superior solution than the horizontal menus where we're forced to rummage through all our weapons to find the right one.
The open world highlights how free the gameplay is, allowing room to just try out lots of ideas and have fun with the physics. It's about learning what you see in the distance, avoiding dangerous areas and surviving rainfalls with lighting, freezing colds or burning heat with either clothing or elixirs. Making foods at campfires, collecting rupees through side-quests to buy clothing suited for your next task or mixing elixirs will allow Link generous timers to overcome dangers. Be it heat, cold, damage or armour, there's solutions to be found. You just need to work it out by yourself.
Even crazy stuff like lighting some flint and logs together to create an upwards draft to glide up a mountain, is incredibly clever usage of the physics-based world. Same goes for loosening rocks and making them tumble down on enemies below. Putting Zelda into a physics-based, free roam design has payed off and Nintendo have gone the extra mile in making sure it's clever and detailed in doing so.
I just wish I wasn’t bouncing awkwardly around in menus and strange button combinations doing so.
While I was charmed by the visuals on the original Switch, especially the first day a colleague showed handed me the handheld, I was never overly impressed. Sure, I get the vast draw distance, charming art style and so on, but it looked like an open world from a generation that proceeded it in terms of resolution, varying 30fps framerate and sparse detail.
To me, it looked rough on a big TV and the bare landscape of basically grass fields with some odd trees here and there really stood out as simplistic. The draw distance is well done, but it really loses a of the foliage detail quickly and the result are just bare mountains and hills in the distance.
Over time I grew to appreciate its minimalism to a certain degree; blowing wind, moving foliage, orange sunsets, weather effects and day cycles all add up to bring the immersion to a higher level. There are even some decent woodland areas once you begin exploring properly. Although it's various parts of the open world have a more gradual and subtle change as you move across them, rather than massively contrasted biomes, it has more variation than first catches the eye. Snowy mountains and volcanic rocks give a distinct experience both in visuals and gameplay compared to the grassy safe haven surrounding the plateau.
My main gripe though, is perhaps the lack of things to do. It's a ton of land to traverse, with little in it. It helps build a sense of a big journey, but there's a middle ground of filling that world with things to do too. Somewhere between this and an overfilled Ubisoft open world would've been nice.
One can argue that its unique appearance is the art style crafted on hardware limitations, giving it a simple yet charming personality, a trait Nintendo repeatedly excels at. At a glance, it's a living world and less oversaturated, earthly colours do it' job in portraying Zelda in a way we've never seen the games done before in scope. Scrutinise it and you find that it resides closer to an older generation in terms of graphical prowess. Take Immortals Fenyx Rising for instance, review here, it lends the BotW visual style but is more varied, filled with stuff to do and prettier.
The Switch 2 upgrade then, is a significant jump in quality. Firstly, the 30fps, which wasn't even stable, is upped to a rock solid 60fps. It makes a world of difference in gameplay responsiveness and image sharpness. Secondly, there's a significant increase in resolution, from 900p to 1440p. It's a locked 1080 for those handheld fans out there! It brings clarity distant objects and less roughness to edges close up. While it still has the same small number of enemies and simple geometry in general, it feels elevated enough to look more appealing on a big screen.
To compensate for the visual clarity, Nintendo have added a higher resolution set of textures! A welcome sight indeed as they bring detail to surfaces close by as the original textures weren't sufficient for the increased resolution and bigger screens. If you own the Switch version and still play it often, I can highly recommend this upgrade, even though you must pay for it. It breathes fresh air into its appearance.
This time around I just let go of my perception of how I expected an open world title should be, allowing Nintendo to show me how they want it. It has paid off and I've finally understood what all the fans of BotW have been talking about. There's lots of fun just messing about the world in general, while at the same time the massive battles of the Divine Beasts, battling weather conditions, doing side quests and building up your heart containers or stamina give depth such a vast game needs.
It's a smart approach to the Zelda concept; moving the franchise into an open world while at the same time retaining key elements of the franchise. It's not without some Zelda quirks here and there which fans will look past, but newcomers perhaps find some frustration.
On one hand you have the amazing world to explore, with epic boss battles, climbing one of the four Divinie Beats, the large Hyrule castle and tons of trerause chests to discover. On the flipside there's a rather empty open world, aggressive weapon durability, resetting of enemy positions every third hour, a tough learning curve for newcomers, repetitive battles with questionable button combinations.
As years have gone past since its release BotW has proven its place as one of the big open world fantasy titles alongside big hits like Skyrim and Witcher 3. Exploring is beautiful and rewarding over time, allowing you to delve into a world with lots of possibilities. If I'd rate it right up there with the depth and character building they offer, I'm not sure. Then again, Zelda never was an RPG.
I recognise it's greatness, but for me with its controls and fairly empty world it's a five. For a Zelda fan, I'm sure it's a six.
