The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review (gameplay spoilers)

LarrytheFairy Wow, this is such a great game. We first found out about it on 2014, and after getting delayed a couple of times, it has finally been released. And it's amazing.

There will be no spoilers in this review, and I haven't even played much of the game yet.

So the last couple entries in the Zelda series have been fairly linear (Skyward Sword in particular, though it's still great). So Nintendo gave us this game, which completely throws you into a world where you explore and progress in the story at your own free will. It's the most similar to the NES Zelda, which I unfortunately have not played.

The world is gigantic, and there so much to do, yet everything still manages to spread apart. After you get out of the opening area, the game DOES tell you where to go, but you can explore of you want to, which I did and ended up WAY off course. The world is beautiful with a lot of different environments to explore. Another thing I like is all the different ways to traverse the world. In addition to walking, you can glide with your paraglider, surf on your shield, ride a horse (I don't reccomend this because horses are kind of a pain to ride in this game), and even use a boat. You can also be incredibely lame and teleport.

DO NOT play this game with a guide. Same goes with most Zelda games, but discovery is biggest appeal of this game, and that would be ruined by use of a guide. For example (DON'T READ IF YOU WANT TO DISCOVER THIS FOR YOURSELF), I found out by messing around that you could ride the boats by using a certain leaf weapon. That was easily the best moment of the game so far, well, that and the time I knocked down a beehive and used bomb arrows to 360 no scope the angry bees. Floating down stream on a boat felt all the more amazing since I figured out how to do myself. Another example would be when I found out that fire creates updrafts that you can ride with your paraglider.

Exploration and discovery are the main things this game has going for it, but there are some other things to note. The combat is cool. One common complaint with this game is that the weapons break, but I didn't mind that and I thought it made it more realistic (although weapons exploding into blue smoke clouds when they break isn't realistic). Like I said earlier, I went way off course, where I encountered some extremely tough enemies, but also better weapons. Some enemies were too tough however, like these three giants I discovered. The combat is relatively simply compared to earlier games like Twilgiht Princess, but the weapon variety and a few really cool moves make up for it. If you shoot your bow in midair, time will slow down so you can make a sweet headshot. Same applies if you pull off a perfect backflip when attacked.

This game also has shrines scattered around. They are basically mini dungeons. The first four shrines in the game give you access to these Runes, which I honestly forget exist, but they're still pretty cool. The shrines are forgettable for the most part, but a few have interesting concepts.

It isn't flawless, however. There are frame rate drops, but the game is still perfectly playable. It's hard to keep your arrow stock up, but that's a minor nitpick.

That's about it. I haven't been to any dungeons yet, so I can't give an opinion on that yet, but I know there are dungeons in the game.

10/10. Superb. I still consider Majora's Mask to be the best in the series, but this game is practically perfect in ever way. It's very difficult, however, so be prepared for that.

Stay tuned for next game review, which will be the controversial Paper Mario: Sticker Star.

Comments

Awesome review! I've seen and watched so many reviews of this game and they were all positive. Super excited to play this game. - cjWriter1997 (3/20/2017)

This post is HQ, yay - LarrytheFairy (3/22/2017)

Congrats - TwilightKitsune (4/9/2017)

You deserved it. - visitor (5/16/2017)

Great review, I wish I had a Switch to play this on. - Skullkid755 (5/15/2017)

Thanks - LarrytheFairy (5/15/2017)

The dungeons are very good - LarrytheFairy (10/2/2017)

How is there only a 0.000001 difference between our review scores for this - xandermartin98 (1/20/2018)

Honestly, I did this considerably better (no offense) - xandermartin98 (2/17/2018)