i've never been a zelda fan. prior to playing botw early this year, i thought it was just relatively uninteresting cause of the story of link, ganon and zelda being the same and maybe even kind of conservative. i still have those sentiments, but i ended up appreciating a lot more than i thought i would when i played botw because of the design and the experiences i had.

fighting vah ruta was probably the peak of the game for me, and even if it started to dip when i fought waterblight after a feisty battle with a lynel, i still thought it was a lot of fun. i made the mistake of making vah naboris my second divine beast knowing it's the best one in the game, and vah medoh my last only to be underwhelmed by teba's short story, revali, and the fight against windblight ganon being piss easy, i still enjoyed it a lot. the guardian aesthetic, getting the memories, experiencing hyrule castle by tower and by the lynels they house, then reaching the face of the perpetrator, i beat the crap out of him and dark beast ganon and despite being a bit annoyed the written story was a bit lackluster, i thought it was one of the best experiences i've had going in nearly blind. it was such an achievement and while i never beat the dlc, i thought it was still unparalleled and it was as good as everyone else.

fast forward to trailer 3 of totk dropping last april, and i thought we're reaching a pinnacle of the formula. i saw lots of unique places, intrigued by the zonai and rauru, the huge sandbox, the final battle against the revived ganondorf. granted it seems conventional and i thought zelda would be put in a different position here than cheerleading for link, but despite my reservations, i came for all of it.

i also started having lots more commissions these days, so by the time the game dropped, i raised up enough money to buy the game for the switch and booted it up, saw the zonai carvings, and did the tutorials and all. but at the same time, i noticed something was off. and it's that the tutorial didn't exactly hook me in? it feels like redoing botw point by point here, but in a budget way. it doesn't really pick up for me till the recall one, and its weird cause the missions with the old man sort of did. like we all agree rhoam is a bad father and all but i sort of had a connection, strangely enough. i also liked rauru in this section, and my utter disappointment with him not having any level of communicative presence besides the memories in the game itself cannot be understated, because they can help us settle into the new zonai tech stuff and rauru's sacrifice later on when we get to mineru's dungeon would leave a much larger impact. its a huge opportunity to do something botw wasn't able to do with their iteration, even if there was the narrative purpose of making link truly feel lost in the world with the only objective being to destroy calamity ganon, but this game runs with the theme of love for a community, and it would only do good i feel if rauru reflected that by connecting with link a bit more even as a navi or paimon sort of thing. would even make a change for the archetype being this old, jolly guy who despite his seemingly stern appearance, gives a smile and acts permissive. in fact, one of my many disappointments in the game is that when i read one of the zonai reliefs where he, mineru, and sonia mingled a lot, iirc even having parties and all, but we never actually see that.

the community thing was an idea i figured out after watching fatbrett's video and thinking about the mayoral election in hateno, the stable trotters, the soldiers fighting monsters, those were the moments i feel that made me love the people in this world (and the gerudo in botw, in a way, cause i wanted the thunder helm lol), but at the same time, it feels that the people who would benefit a LOT from interaction and conversation, the sages, don't really interact. they say like a few lines then look back to link, and it's a shame, because it's such a great opportunity to see genuine interspecies interaction. even more disappointed when the people you build your army with in the lookout landing, we never actually see fight ganon or the demon king's army. i thought it was gonna get to that point but the fact that it never did left me sour.

for a game that prides itself upon a building mechanic, it's weird that when we see the ancient sages' cutscenes, the information doesn't build, in fact, i'm pretty sure we know the story of the "demon king?... secret stone?" so it just baffled me that when i made sure to leave the lightning temple for last this time (best decision btw. i loved that dungeon's intro, feels like actual dungeon crawling, and with something to compare to now that i've beaten alttp by then haha) when we see the gerudo sage's flashback it's also the same as the other three sages, like we didn't already understand the story. even worse when mineru's is almost about the same, when we could easily see more about the zonai before rauru and if the three other dragons were zonai as well... maybe even seeing mineru's larger library of technology and engineering, but that didn't happen.

i think i've also made the mistake of getting the memories out of order, so i kind of figured out what zelda did, anyway, but generally i kind of.. wish she did more than being the equivalent of sora, donald and goofy in the frozen world, or i guess, stalling for time so that rauru can seal ganondorf. regardless, i think i got the master sword after the hyrule castle quest, cause i think it'd be appropriate to see real zelda after encountering lots of fake zelda and seeing that rather unsettling scene. would be sort of a small character arc for link imo. but the intended way was probably to get to mineru first, then deku tree, then light dragon. that scene was genuienly great, but i couldn't help but feel like it would've been muddled had i gone the intended route, like hope would suddenly strike link when he's at his worst and thought he's failed at reaching zelda.

now, forgot to mention the dungeons, and i felt... underwhelmed. people went on about how it's dungeon crawling and how it's more of botw's hyrule castle, except to me, it resembles more the divine beasts' formula than anything, and i am not really that much of a fan lmao. i've mentioned the lightning temple having my favorite intro because it felt like a real one, but then it just turned out to be pretty similar to everything else lol. i liked the bosses? they were really fun, and i really really loved the gerudo defense quest and the dive into the stormwind ark, but it's really just a shame that the dungeons themselves, besides not having the monotony of the look of the divine beasts, feel too similar to the divine beasts. and i don't even think there was much in the goron intro besides fighting yunobo and the ace combat stuff, it was creative, but at the same time, i felt it was a bit lacking in substance. i did have my laughs towards ronald reagandorf and all that, that was really amusing, but it was meh to me, overall, yunobo's arc didn't come off as anything because all his changes came from the mind control mask zelda gave him and that's what made him give crack to everyone and all. wasn't a fan of how lackluster these stories were going, and the fire temple having such low framerate didn't help with my experience.

zora's domain took it the worst though, cause it was my first dungeon here cause i liked sidon and the zora in botw, but i felt there also isn't much going on here. in botw, sidon actively looks for you as told by other zora, and pushes you to go into zora's domain first. i think it's left an impression, but in here, i felt there's something that was rushed? like he went through a character arc because yona told him that he used to be so cool? i was scratching my head, honestly, and didn't like that i had to repeat the sequence when i lost to the boss a few times.

for tulin, it's weird cause he wasn't even in botw that much - he was just teba's kid, and teba's a guy who takes a lot from revali minus special abilities, with those going to his son. i just wish tulin's arc wasn't... that small? like i felt they just squeezed something in there to fill time in, and i personally wasn't a fan of it for how standard it is. felt like an episode from old kids' shows i watched.

i've sang my praises for riju's quest, but it's only relatively better than the rest for having more interesting stuff than the others, imo.

mineru's temple is unconventional. it's also divine beast-like, but i think it uses a lot of the totk mechanics more, so i thought it was really unique and cool, but i also wish it was more than the puzzle and navigating with the construct and the wrestling match. even worse is when i already finished the yiga quest, and thought it was sicker there lmao. in fact most of my positives towards the game are probably going to the yiga clan. glory to master kohga.

also, admittedly, i really wonder what they were thinking of, going from the characteristic champions of botw to the faceless sages here - we don't even interact with any of them and neither does zelda besides her saying "help link, he's from the future, he will beat ganondorf when he's free". but i did like the gerudo sage for the reason being that knowing what she thought of ganondorf, one of her tribe, being the enemy to collapse all life. i liked her. the rest, i don't even know, they are as faceless as they come compared to the champions. nothing about mentioning how their likeness was used to build the divine beasts as well, to try and replicate their efforts when calamity ganon was released

i think the forgotten foundation was sick, but i don't really know why the sages just came back to their places when they should probably be going with link should he be taken by surprise once more. they don't show up till you reach the podium after the final diving section. i really really love the atmosphere and the encounters in that place, and the final diving music and the remnants of the cavern from the game's prologue and the detail of zelda's torch. the fight with the demon king's army was really cool, though i wish they put in lynels there, and some varied enemies, as well. and again, i wish we saw the sages communicate more, would be cool if this was the point where they work together and grow, but at this point, i stopped expecting they'd go back on that, maybe because structuring the game around that idea would be a bit more complex.

the fight between you and ganondorf is phenomenal. it's the best one in the game, which is funny when the best one in the last game is the lynel. what a damn achievement. that's all i'm gonna say, but i kinda wish it was harder to cheese him, lol. but figuring out his attacks was really fun and i loved his second phase music so much. not to mention the hp thing. my jaw dropped when i first saw it.

demon dragon was also sick. i liked how it looked similar to calamity ganon early on, but it's really weird there's barely any reference to it in the game proper. i think they took that critique about "naydra being more engaging than dark beast ganon" to heart and they went with it. probably the most memorable setpiece of the game. but i honestly wish it was earned. rauru and sonia appear in the end once more to restore zelda and link's arm, so i felt the status quo... didn't really change in the end. weird.

anyway, totk is a weird game for me. i loved the final act in particular and there's sitll much to appreciate for me in the main game because of all the side quests and the fun shrines. one of them was straight up the halo 3 warthog run, and that was sick. but i also grow really frustrated with the narrative as time goes on, and if that's what they settled with, i really wish i didn't give this game $70 lol. i liked the sky islands, but i really wish there was more to them. the depths were fine, and i like how the lightroots were placed on the bottom of the overworld shrines, but at the same time i felt the loop there was kind of repetitive. i gave botw about a perfect score when i finished it, but for this one, i... don't know, honestly. it's actually between a 6 and a 9.

"For courage is never forgotten."

Breath of the Wild is my first Zelda game. One of only two Zelda games, as I have yet to play any besides this and its sequel. I plan to do those, likely being A Link to the Past because its a game that interests me a lot, but also because I'm excited to know about the full scope and quality of the franchise given my current... rather strange impressions of it, mainly stemming from my personal criticisms and praises of both this game and Tears of the Kingdom.

This is a beautiful game. I'm aware of the stigma it gets from other Zelda fans about its lack of proper dungeons and a lackluster story, and I do get those sentiments, as I do not have high feelings for the Divine Beasts nor the narrative that the Champions present that make me care for them, but I do want to make it clear that I still praise its post-apocalypse aesthetic and how it utilizes it to contrast its empty worlds to its sprawling little towns and villages filled with people that give you relief.

One of my favorite things about this game is that despite the tragic story of the Calamity being a collective failure for Hyrule and everyone involved, it was still just a passing event like everything else. The only thing they can do is to live their lives onwards. This game, on the surface, can seem very depressing and melancholic given its empty fields and background, but when I look at the Yiga, when I look at the people around being goofy as all hell with absurd side quests that reward 50 rupees and allow you to live a joyful world despite the knowledge that you've lost all the people you love the more you tackle the memories, I can only say that its a very compelling message presented to us by Zelda team.

The soundtrack is also very representative of this, being quiet and minimalist in the fields compared to old Hyrule Fields and whatnot, but intensifying in boss fights or filling with instruments when you enter villages. It's a relaxing feeling of sorts.

I'm aware of how people were disappointed by Calamity Ganon and Dark Beast Ganon for lacking a proper final boss difficulty when they don't do as much compared to enemies like the local Silver Lynels, I was pumped when I went through them the first time. Of course, I was more aware when I had to replay the cutscenes with the Divine Beasts firing at Ganon and I suppose I now get what the problem is, but I do think its a neat way to wrap things a lil' bit.

Anwyay, I understand that it be so, but I do think its the best game I have on my console, maybe cause I have only few other games, including FF9 and TOTK but I'll get to those eventually. I've already finished the latter and I have something in mind, so yeah, check this game out. It's a must-have for anyone with a Switch.