As someone who has never played a Zelda game before, I’ve been eagerly awaiting The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since the Nintendo Switch launch event. It’s an open-world role-playing game – exactly the kind of genre I love.
Unfortunately, Nintendo consoles aren’t really available in India and I didn’t want to buy a console without a warranty. This means that I have never played Zelda games until now. This time, with a Nintendo Switch at the office, I finally had the chance to play Zelda, and so Breath of the Wild was my introduction to Link and company.
The abrupt opening sequence of Breath of the Wild immediately got me hooked on the game. It simply shows the main character Link waking up from some sort of cryostasis with a mysterious voice guiding him. It doesn’t have the intensity of The Witcher’s prologue, but sometimes not revealing much at the start can lead to an equally rewarding experience. Once I stepped out into Hyrule armed with nothing but a tree branch – yes, saving the world in my underwear instead of fancy armor is possible – I was sucked into the game.
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While other open-world games insist on guiding players through a tutorial segment, in Zelda you have relatively less hand-holding. At its worst, it uses a standard trope of the series, rotating the camera to lead players to their destination. It’s a bit annoying for grizzled open-world veterans like me, but it’s the slight hint some players will need. There’s very little actually explained and the tutorials are managed by text boxes explaining how actions like switching weapons work. You’re free to figure out the rest and it’s a fun experience. I let out a loud cheer when I noticed that you can use environmental objects such as rocks to attack enemies, instead of walking up to each enemy and trying to crush them with weapons.
When done well, open-world games allow you to do virtually anything you want in any order you want – Morrowind comes to mind as an example – and it’s nice to see Zelda abandon any attempt of linearity for absolute freedom of the player. go. Even though the game gently encourages you from the start to progress, it doesn’t blame you for ignoring it. You can head in the opposite direction and get crushed by powerful monsters. That’s exactly what I did and got killed several times by monsters, until I finally found a way to defeat some of them, keeping my distance and the bow and the arrows.
When these broke – yes, weapons have durability, which means, much like last year’s Android flagship performance, they don’t last forever – I resorted to matching pots, which are supposed to work well as long as you can aim correctly. Turns out I’m very, very good at missing the target when throwing pots. So I spent a lot of my time running from monsters, and in doing so I discovered that simply praying at an altar can make enemies forget you exist. This is a rare, logic-defying moment I encountered early in the game.
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By the end of my first gaming session, I had learned some skills with the bow and arrow and had started landing critical hits to take out enemies, reducing my reliance on the old Hyrulean earthenware. Although I totally missed the ax you can pick up early on, I found a sword and shield in the end, and became somewhat proficient in defending my character – Link.
The other great asset of Breath of the Wild is its soundtrack. This makes exploring the world enjoyable without even interacting with anything. It might seem like the graphics aren’t as good as the latest AAA games, but Zelda’s art style is something you can’t compare with those games. I was very impressed with the art style of the game and spent quite a bit of time looking at the vistas, as well as various objects and characters in the game.
This is exactly why I love Breath of the Wild: it combines the charm of the franchise with stellar production values and a wealth of detail along with contemporary open-world cuisine. It is also executed in a way that grants maximum freedom from the first time you play it.
How The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was influenced by Skyrim, Witcher 3 and Far Cry
After a hard day at work, you can relax by strolling quietly through the world of Zelda without really embarking on a quest. I did this while hiding around goblin-like monsters. I found one at an outpost and took great pleasure in critically hitting it via archery about half a second before the monster could alert its friends. Nintendo apparently designed the game so that you could attempt the final dungeon and its boss without any of the powers and weapons you get during the full story. If I succeed, we’ll eventually find out how true this is, underwear intact.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is one of the best games available on Nintendo Switch, although that’s not saying much considering how few games are available right now. Based on the (admittedly little) time I’ve spent playing the game so far, it seems to be as good a role-playing game as any I’ve ever played.
It may contain familiar elements that we see in all RPGs, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play this game. I still have a long way to go if I want to complete this game (especially with my style game) but I can already say that I will enjoy every moment of it.
We also discussed our experiences with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Transition, Gadgets 360’s gaming and pop culture podcast. You can subscribe to Transition via iTunes or RSS or simply listen to this episode by pressing on the play button below.
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