I like being hip and being able to be up on all of the latest trends. This is the exact reason why I put in the tough work and completed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Was this a game originally intended for the WiiU? Yes, yes it was. Was this one of the first titles released for the Switch? Sure was. Jsyk, I was late to the party on owning a Switch too, so I am a very reliable source on this sort of thing.
I will say this about my video gaming experience: I’m not that well-seasoned. I owned plenty of systems growing up, a N64, Playstation 2, Wii, Nintendo DS, XBox 360, and now a Switch. My gaming library has definitely gravitated towards sports games and Pokemon. Nothing against Pokemon, but they aren’t exactly breaking any records for difficulty or anything like that. I played a Batman game once.
I bought a Switch a year ago because I liked the family gaming aspect of it. I also like Pokemon, so getting Pokemon Sword seemed like a fun idea. I had heard of Breath of the Wild, hereby called BOTW, and had some interest in it. I didn’t know much about Zelda. I knew Zelda was the princess. Link is the actual protagonist. I knew it was a deep lore, but hadn’t given it a chance growing up. I did here though that BOTW was an open-world game with some cool graphics and a fun story and great gameplay. I thought, “What the heck, I’ll add it to my wishlist!”
I had no clue what I was doing. Dude, I still don’t know what I’m doing and I’ve beaten the game. Link lives in the kingdom of Hyrule and he has just woken up from a 100 year nap. He has been tasked with saving his kingdom from the evil entity, Ganon. Ganon took over the four Divine Beasts in the kingdom. These beasts are giant creatures with immense power. Needless to say, Hyrule was screwed and Zelda took an injured Link and put him into a sort of hyper sleep to wake up just in time to take back control of the four Beasts and recover from some serious amnesia and defeat Ganon.
What I like about BOTW is the open-world concept. You can go anywhere. You can essentially do anything. You can speedrun the game and finish in under an hour, or you can take a year doing all the crazy shrines, find all the korok seeds, collect armor, weapons, train horses, defeat bad guys, etc. You do the tutorial for the game, which if you take your time is about an hour or two, and then if you want, you can storm the castle and defeat the big bad right away. You most likely will die trying that, but you can try it if you want. I like that. My issue with games I’ve played in the past has been the hand holding. This game was very hands off, but still gave me clear directives.
My least favorite thing about the game would be a lot of the shrines. Shrines are little temples throughout the kingdom that contain puzzles or valuable items for your quest. They also contain orbs which can be collected and then exchanged for more stamina or health. They are kind of a big deal. They can also be annoying as can be! I like puzzles, and especially love how this game gives you a task and then there are like 20 different ways to do it. These shrines, though, were frustrating most of the time.
My favorite part of the game was probably long treks in between quests. I liked defeating a major boss in the game and then needing to regroup and reprep so that I could take on the next big bad BOTW had to offer. I liked learning something new and then being able to immediately apply it and use it to more easily progress in the game. BOTW is one big learning session and I loved that about it. There were hardly any routes that were simply A to B. I liked being able to find new ways to get to places. I liked learning to avoid enemies by climbing these rocks, gliding over this body of water, or by taking the long way around a structure. It was adventurous.
I’d give the game 9/10. For a first foray into an actual game that takes some skill, I liked it and will definitely be playing it again. BOTW 2 comes up soon, and it is already on my wishlist and is one that I am looking forward to beating in a much more timely manner.
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