My journey with Breath Of The Wild is an extremely difficult one. As a huge Zelda fan, I pre-ordered the Special Edition long before I could even get my hands on a Switch. And when I was able to buy one, of course, like a little kid at Christmas, I popped in the Botw card and started playing. And that's when it started. My first thoughts were that it looked pretty cool. However, disillusionment set in very quickly. It throws you into the world a lot early on without much help, in which every enemy could one-hit you, a weapon breaks in every fight and the performance is abysmal. I got as far as Kakariko and put it aside. It's just not a Zelda game, it's an Ubisoft game with a Zelda skin. Skip forward three years later, and there I was sitting by now even with a PS5 and a freshly bought new big TV, and I was wondering what the Switch would look like on that thing. So I plugged it back in and put the forgotten Breath Of The Wild in. A friend even told me they patched the performance a bit. Believe me I really went into it with a completely open mind and saw it purely as a game and not as a Zelda game and this is now my full experience report after playing through it today.
I'll give credit to the supporters for one point. It really is a free open world where you can play around and try things out. But that's about it. I often read comments praising the story. However, it is barely present. Ganon was there, devastates Hyrule and 100 years later we collect the Divine Beasts in four areas. It doesn't get more rudimentary than that. The world is mostly empty except for the same three copied and pasted enemy camps and the shrines as well as 900 (!) hidden Korok seeds. Seriously, anyone who has collected all these seeds and found them without a guide either deserves my utmost respect or belongs in a mental hospital. I stopped after about 280 because I got panic attacks from the wasted time. The performance is still bad in docked mode and having to change weapons two or three times in a fight is simply no fun.
Even if you just look at it as a game and leave the Zelda branding out of it completely, it's not good. They crammed 120 little shrines onto the map and had the audacity to not even fill them all properly. I have the feeling that at some point they ran out of ideas and filled up the remaining shrines with the combat trials. If you leave out these shrines, which don't add anything to the "story", you're left with maybe 20% of the game if you mean well. That means 80% is just filler material.
Why you can't just swap the item when you open a chest is a mystery to me. Instead, Link closes the chest, we have to throw away an item and are allowed to open the chest again. Also, items on the ground don't show us any stats, only lower, equal and higher, which means you either throw something away and check the new item, or you pick up the lowest item and see if the one on the ground is higher. The abilities with stacks only recharge after they have all been used up instead of each individual use recharging.
The four Divine Beasts are actually quite cool, but unfortunately far too short and without enemies and puzzles that really stick in the memory. In addition, they all use the same boring texture. You can tell from every angle that Nintendo didn't really want to make an effort. After seeing the minimap of Hyrule Castle, I was initially impressed, as this is the most visually appealing "dungeon" in the entire game. However, apart from the final boss, it offers no challenge, be it puzzles or enemies. You just run up to the throne room and off you go. And Ganon looks just as generic as his four Blight variants. In general, none of the bosses really felt like they were well thought out and required some tactics. The world bosses or, for example, the leader of the Yiga are much cooler. All in all, Botw was rarely fun for me. The rupees have almost no purpose except maybe the armour and the side quests are mostly irrelevant and give a fruit or milk.
I have some suggestions on how to make the game better, because everyone can complain but few have ideas:
- Either higher weapon durability or the removal of durability but weapons that are better against different types of enemies.
- Fewer but larger shrines in which each one directly gives a heart or stamina container.
- More divine beasts or bigger beasts. With the last points you would have a better ratio instead of 4 to 120.
- Every charge of the abilities and e.g. the charge of the master sword regenerate and not when the whole stack is used up.
- Show the stats of the items on the floor.
It really hurts my heart, because I really liked every Zelda, even such outsiders as Spirit Tracks and the then unpopular Skyward Sword. But they just wanted to go a new way with new features and overshot the mark. I always like to compare it to Majora's Mask. Here they also tried to modify the familiar Zelda formula and they succeeded because they didn't stray too far from the original. They added a time system and bigger side quests. But the basic principle was still beautifully designed dungeons, a semi-open world and the typical look and feel.
In Breat Of The Wild they added the following:
- Weapon durability
- Stamina (again, which was already stupid in Skyward Sword).
- Weather effects which affect the gameplay
- Cold and heat
- Crafting (without recipes that you learn after the first time)
- Omission of dungeons specifically designed for a dungeon
- Omission of well thought out bosses
- Ubisoft towers
And that definitely makes it the worst Zelda game in the series for me. I didn't like it as a game either, but it's up to your own taste. For me, however, the flaws definitely outweigh the good.
What I wanted to say is that I'd like to have a polite conversation with anyone who likes the game. I would like to understand why you like Botw, damn it, I want to like it too. So please don't take my review as a personal attack but just as an analysis of the game paired with my opinion. Love you guys.
I'll give credit to the supporters for one point. It really is a free open world where you can play around and try things out. But that's about it. I often read comments praising the story. However, it is barely present. Ganon was there, devastates Hyrule and 100 years later we collect the Divine Beasts in four areas. It doesn't get more rudimentary than that. The world is mostly empty except for the same three copied and pasted enemy camps and the shrines as well as 900 (!) hidden Korok seeds. Seriously, anyone who has collected all these seeds and found them without a guide either deserves my utmost respect or belongs in a mental hospital. I stopped after about 280 because I got panic attacks from the wasted time. The performance is still bad in docked mode and having to change weapons two or three times in a fight is simply no fun.
Even if you just look at it as a game and leave the Zelda branding out of it completely, it's not good. They crammed 120 little shrines onto the map and had the audacity to not even fill them all properly. I have the feeling that at some point they ran out of ideas and filled up the remaining shrines with the combat trials. If you leave out these shrines, which don't add anything to the "story", you're left with maybe 20% of the game if you mean well. That means 80% is just filler material.
Why you can't just swap the item when you open a chest is a mystery to me. Instead, Link closes the chest, we have to throw away an item and are allowed to open the chest again. Also, items on the ground don't show us any stats, only lower, equal and higher, which means you either throw something away and check the new item, or you pick up the lowest item and see if the one on the ground is higher. The abilities with stacks only recharge after they have all been used up instead of each individual use recharging.
The four Divine Beasts are actually quite cool, but unfortunately far too short and without enemies and puzzles that really stick in the memory. In addition, they all use the same boring texture. You can tell from every angle that Nintendo didn't really want to make an effort. After seeing the minimap of Hyrule Castle, I was initially impressed, as this is the most visually appealing "dungeon" in the entire game. However, apart from the final boss, it offers no challenge, be it puzzles or enemies. You just run up to the throne room and off you go. And Ganon looks just as generic as his four Blight variants. In general, none of the bosses really felt like they were well thought out and required some tactics. The world bosses or, for example, the leader of the Yiga are much cooler. All in all, Botw was rarely fun for me. The rupees have almost no purpose except maybe the armour and the side quests are mostly irrelevant and give a fruit or milk.
I have some suggestions on how to make the game better, because everyone can complain but few have ideas:
- Either higher weapon durability or the removal of durability but weapons that are better against different types of enemies.
- Fewer but larger shrines in which each one directly gives a heart or stamina container.
- More divine beasts or bigger beasts. With the last points you would have a better ratio instead of 4 to 120.
- Every charge of the abilities and e.g. the charge of the master sword regenerate and not when the whole stack is used up.
- Show the stats of the items on the floor.
It really hurts my heart, because I really liked every Zelda, even such outsiders as Spirit Tracks and the then unpopular Skyward Sword. But they just wanted to go a new way with new features and overshot the mark. I always like to compare it to Majora's Mask. Here they also tried to modify the familiar Zelda formula and they succeeded because they didn't stray too far from the original. They added a time system and bigger side quests. But the basic principle was still beautifully designed dungeons, a semi-open world and the typical look and feel.
In Breat Of The Wild they added the following:
- Weapon durability
- Stamina (again, which was already stupid in Skyward Sword).
- Weather effects which affect the gameplay
- Cold and heat
- Crafting (without recipes that you learn after the first time)
- Omission of dungeons specifically designed for a dungeon
- Omission of well thought out bosses
- Ubisoft towers
And that definitely makes it the worst Zelda game in the series for me. I didn't like it as a game either, but it's up to your own taste. For me, however, the flaws definitely outweigh the good.
What I wanted to say is that I'd like to have a polite conversation with anyone who likes the game. I would like to understand why you like Botw, damn it, I want to like it too. So please don't take my review as a personal attack but just as an analysis of the game paired with my opinion. Love you guys.