Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. (Spoilers)
Let me start this with, itâs a Zelda game. The plot is the same as always, Ganonâs back, and heâs still bad, Zeldaâs there doing her thing behind the scenes, and Link hyaahâs his way to victory. The End. Thats the plot. However the way you proceed is somewhat different. The game is open world. How you clear the main plot points is up to you. The order is all yours. You can leave the start area and book it to Ganon, or you can explore everything without out touching the plot til you max out health and stamina.
Breath of the Wild drops in some nice new mechanics. Climbing is a fun way to get around. Unless itâs raining, in which case youâre stuck. It makes surfaces slippery causing you to slide down them. Shield surfing is a fun way to get around as itâs fast and lets you just shred. Thereâs even a side quest for shield surfing. You get some nice shields and rupees for clearing it. The paraglider lets you fall long distance and travel far quickly, provided you can start a fire under you to start an updraft or climb something tall.Â
There are no dungeons. Well not conventional dungeons, they did away with them and replaced them with the Divine Beasts: Naboris (Robot Humpy Camel), Ruta (Shotgun Marriage), Medoh (Birdo), and Rudania (Lizardo). These beasts are actually named after characters from other Zelda games, Nabooru (OoT), Ruto (OoT), Medli (WW) and Darunia (OoT) respectively. There are also 120 shrines, thats before adding the DLC shrines. The Divine Beasts are huge puzzles that you manipulate by causing certain parts to move allowing you to solve puzzles. Then you fight a blight. These blights are part of Ganon. Theyâre also harder to fight than Ganon. Once you kill the blight you get a heart container, and a special ability. The shrines are small puzzles that take a couple of minutes to beat and always provide a bit of loot. There are some shrines that are exceptions. Some require you to drop a certain item onto a pedestal or fulfill certain criteria, like standing naked on a pedestal during a blood moon. Seriously that one hurt, I left the game running for 7 hours to get a blood moon to occur. 7 HOURS THAT I COULD HAVE SPENT PLAYING MARIO KART 8 OR COMPLETING FINDING KOROK SEEDS. The DLC added 16 more shrines and the ultimate test of not dying. Once you beat the 16 DLC shrines you get another Divine Beast. This one is more like a conventional Zelda dungeon. Then you fight Maz Koshia. Heâs kinda easy to beat. you just have to watch where heâs attacking from. Then you get a motorbike. Iâm not even joking here, itâs called the Master Cycle. Itâs fast and turns well but you have to refuel it often. Just use a horse. The test of not dying requires you to return the master sword to the pedestal you grabbed it from and clear 45 levels of enemies, and you canât save unless you clear certain levels. On the upside it makes the master sword do 60 damage at all times rather than in the presence of Ganon and Guardians. Only issue is you have nothing. Just the runes on your slate, and weapons dropped by enemies.Â
Breath of the Wild ditches the traditional items that you pick up. Gone are the iron boots and the power bracelet, instead you have the bomb runes, magnesis, stasis and cryosis. These let you summon bombs, lift metal objects, freeze an object in time, and make pillars of ice in bodies of water. To get the runes you have to complete 4 shrines on the Great Plateau, netting you the paraglider, an item so useful that you canât leave the plateau without it as youâd fall to your death. You still have your normal arrows and stuff though, ice, fire, electric, bomb and regular arrows, you can hold as many arrows as you can find. Breath of the Wild also forces you to switch up which weapons you use as they break. Often. Spears, hammers, swords, axes, bows and shields all break, except the Master Sword, that canât be broken, but it does run out of energy, meaning you cant use it, though Iâm sure it could still be used as a sword. Shields take damage if you block attacks with them, deflect guardian lasers or shield surf on anything that isnât snow. As you progress further and collect more heart containers and korok seeds and stamina vessels weapons get more powerful to let you deal damage to enemies, this means you can find a hylian shield (base defense of 90) that has a massive defense boost making you hard to kill. The Master Sword doesnât get these bonuses.
I mentioned that in each Divine beast you get a heart container, this would take you to 7 hearts, to get the maximum 30 you have to beat 92 shrines as you must collect 4 spirit orbs to be able to trade for a heart piece. There are 120 shrines with these orbs, meaning the rest can be used to increase your stamina. The problem is that you max out at 30 hearts or 3 wheels of stamina, which is fine because you can over fill both of these with the correct ingredients when cooking, unless you pixked the 30 hearts in which case you canât you can just recover all of them at once, if you eat a âheartyâ meal. You can always over fill your stamina even if you have 3 wheels by eating meals that contain ingredients that boost stamina when cooked. I took the 3 wheels of stamina because I climb and swim more than I fight. Also because finding Korok seeds is easier when you can climb longer. Oh, and if you find all 120 shrines and beat them you get the Tunic, hat and shorts of the wild. These are Links traditional green garments. Pretty cool and useful.
Iâve brought Korok seeds up several times now. Korok seeds are the bane of my existence. You collect them and trade them to Hestu, the most hipster Korok, to expand your inventory. You need 441 to be able to carry the maximum number of weapons, bows and shields. Thatâs fine. I understand making it harder to upgrade stuff towards the end of the game. Whats not fine is the fact that there are 900 seeds around the map. NINE HUNDRED LITTLE TURDS HIDDEN IN OBSCURE NOOKS AND CRANNIES. Once you collect all 900? You get âHestuâs Giftâ. This âgiftâ is literally a golden turd. A GOLDEN TURD. The worst part? It was hinted at. The flavour text literally reads â This small seed was given to you by a Korok. It has a distinct smell. If you gather a bunch of them, you never know what may happen...â IT HAS A DISTINCT SMELL YOU SAY? YOU FIND ALL 900 AND GET THE GIFT. Want to know what the flavour text reads? It reads âA gift of friendship given to you by Hestu. It smells pretty bad.â IT SMELLS PRETTY BAD. HESTU LITERALLY HANDS YOU HIS OWN SHIT AS A GIFT. AND YOU CANâT EVEN FUCKING SELL IT. WHY NINTENDO? WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT TO US?!Â
Speaking of useless quest rewards, theres a compendium that you can fill by taking pictures using the sheikah slate. Itâs simple, see an item and snap a picture and itâll get added to the compendium. A nice little sidequest really. Until you complete it and get nothing worth while. Just an envelope with a picture you canât see in it. Nintendo is just screwing with us with some of these rewards.Â
The soundtrack for the game is just incredible Kataoka did an incredible job, all the tracks blend seamlessly. The music will queue you into whats going on, certain tracks play at night, or while riding horses (or both), while in combat, when in specific places. Itâs incredible, but no transition feels forced at all. Itâs just a good time when you listen to it.Â
I give this game 9.5Â âgiftsâ out of 10. It rains too much.