Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Well also, it probably helped that Nintendo doesn't release the exact same type of Zelda game every year.

First time I visited the Hebra region I just skirted round the perimeter. Now I've got Hero's Path I've gone back and explored it properly and really loved it.

It's great playing this game in blocks because each time I go back to it the love renews, and by not relentlessly completing every task I'm finding it comforting knowing there's more of this masterpiece left for me to experience. It'll be a sad day when I've finally done everything I wish to do.

Just completed my 4th playthrough of BotW! This was a no-death, no-warping, any percentage run.

That was a LOT of fun!! I even did the Tarrey Town sidequest!

OK, so technically I died once but that was because I set my Switch gamepad down thinking I had paused my game when I actually hadn't. When I got back to it the 'Game Over' screen was staring me in the face.

@bezerker99 That's no good bro', you're gonna have to go back and re-do that no death run from the beginning, I heard there's a really cool easter egg if you do it properly

@gcunit lol seriously. Since there's no warping allowed I've been riding a horse everywhere. Well, i put the controller down thinking the horse would go from this road to that road and then this road....i was at work and someone came into my office lol and i quickly put the gamepad into my desk drawer. Thought i had hit pause or at least the Home menu......nope. My horse took a wrong turn and ended up in Hyrule Field and got smoked by a guardian. Again was my fault for not hitting pause when I walked away from the GamePad. And i know, shouldnt be playing Switch at work but it's laid back here. They dont care what i do as long as i get my work done. (I work at a radio station so it's not real work anyways lol)

So. What do you do when you've done everything there is to do in the game? You ride your horse to Zora's Domain. I don't think Nintendo intended the gamer to do that though.

Fin.

Terrible ending asides, I enjoyed infiltrating Hyrule Castle and was surprised to bump into some mini-bosses from time to time. The Lynel inside the circular tower wasn’t all that much fun though...

Calamity Ganon was occasionally frustrating, in that you had to wait four or five minutes for the guard ability to activate again, which made the last five minutes or so a little bit joyless.

In one way I am sad it has come to an end, but I am also happy to move on after playing this game for two months. I did 78 shrines, found 102 Korok seeds, completed 40 side missions and got both the Master Sword and Hylian Shield along the way too.

I cannot believe how expensive some things are; why do I need 10,000 rupees for the last fairy fountain?!

I would give this an 8/10.

The rain did everything in its power to make the game unfun, the lack of (proper) dungeons is a notable absence, weapon durability is too feeble and makes finding a new weapon uninteresting and whilst I am very much a ‘it is the journey that counts’ kind of person, it doesn’t excuse the underwhelming ending.

It’s also strange that Link still doesn’t speak when Zelda, her Father and the four Champions do. And the story seemed to be far more focussed on Zelda than Link, especially in the memories.

Anyhoo, I am quite aware that Nintendo will likely follow the open world template in Breath of the Wild for the next game in this series however, just as long as we get to see a return of some of the classic Zelda design of yesteryear, I would be a fairly content man!

p.s. Is the expansion pack any good? I would like more story content - is this the case?

@Peek-a-boo Well, it's called The Legend of Zelda for a reason after all

I generally agree with you. I think it was a fun open world game, but it's my least favourite 3D Zelda game, bar Skyward Sword. The lack of themed dungeons with unique bosses, items, enemy variety, and other silly things to do in a giant open world (like fishing!), was pretty disappointing.

Alas, I've said enough about this game in the past 12 or so months.

I've not bought the DLC by the way, as it's a bunch of items, a challenge trial, a hard mode I believe and a bunch of other stuff that used to be included for free in Zelda games. I think the second pack (which you can't buy separately), has 4 (or 8?) new shrines, and a new boss fight. The boss fight looks neat, and I wish there was more of that in the main game, but it's not worth the €20 IMO.

@Peek-a-boo @Octane The second pack has 16 new shrines, as well as a fifth divine beast with a new boss at the end. It's fairly light on story but there are 5 new memory cutscenes like the ones you find throughout the game, which show a bit more of the champions' backstory. Personally I think it's worth the asking price.

@Dogorilla I knew it was a multiple of four! Though, it's not really a fifth divine beast, is it? You can't see it in the overworld as far as I know. And it's more like a big shrine you just teleport to.

@Peek-a-boo
I never really understood the problem people had with the ending. It wasn't terribly involved, but then, that matches the minimal storytelling style of the game in general. The true ending has a bit of post-Ganon interaction with Princess Zelda, which I liked, because I found the princess to be an absolute delight in BotW. Easily my favorite iteration of the character (Tetra from The Wind Waker is close, but I'm docking points for the game randomly damseling her near the end). Also, story-wise, it's one of my favorite games in the series (second only to Majora's Mask, imo). While it's pretty basic, I really liked seeing Zelda's struggle against her own destiny, and the little bits of character development we get for the guardians as individuals AND as a group. Most of all, I love that the story isn't a long string of nonsense, high-fantasy plot developments that involve tracking down random mcguffins.

Also, count me among the people who absolutely loves the way weapons and combat are handled in this game. It's so constantly engaging and dynamic!

Regarding rain... it's annoying, but it does add to that sense of being in a world where things aren't going to constantly bend themselves to your will. You have to work AROUND the weather. I think it ultimately feeds into that survival-lite thing the game has going for it. It's supposed to be disruptive, but I can understand that irritating people in a game that is SO focused on climbing and constant mobility.

I would like to see proper dungeons return in the next game. GOOD dungeons, with intelligent puzzle design, like in Twilight Princess (probably the one unreservedly positive thing I have to say about that game, aside from loving Midna's character), as opposed to the busywork in Ocarina of Time where you were constantly pushing blocks, shooting eyeballs on the wall, fighting roomfuls of random enemies, etc. With that said, I really liked the physics-based puzzles in BotW and would like to see them integrated into bigger Zelda dungeons.

Good to hear you enjoyed it overall, though! It's not perfect, but it's easily the most compelling first-party game I've played in a long time (especially considering most of Sony's games just don't resonate with me).

@Octane Yeah, the lack of fishing baffles me. It's such a weird thing not to have in a game like this.

@Ralizah I can only speak for myself, but when I say the ending was a bit disappointing, I'm talking about the final boss battle.

Calamity Ganon was a surprise, it's something I didn't expect to see in a Zelda game (design-wise), but at the same time it was an amalgamation of all the blights I had fought before (it's also weird that doing story missions rewards you with a less challenging boss fight, I didn't want any of that!). Anyway, it was alright. The second phase however was pretty bad. Ganon didn't really attack you, he was just a big boar. And all you had to do was hitting those highlighted spots. Pretty unimaginative, and kinda boring for the final battle.

It's weird, because they had been teasing the giant evil cloud Ganon for a good while. I really like that design, and up until the last moment, I thought I was going to fight something that resembled this:

Or, you know, a SOTC type of fight would've been really cool. Climbing all over a giant flying cloud whale Ganon? Sign me up!

@Octane Funnily enough, I enjoyed Skyward Sword more than Breath of the Wild however, Breath of the Wild is a better game. The Legend of Zelda series is my favourite of all time, and I appreciate each and every single game so far.

Upon finishing Breath of the Wild, it makes me want to go back to the old games such as A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening, which feel like the main inspiration(s) for Breath of the Wild.

@DarthNocturnal I didn’t have a Guardian Shield on me to deflect the spear and/or laser attacks back at Calamity Ganon, thus I used Daruk’s Protection to do so. I may have made it harder for myself somehow, but nothing else seemed to damage Calamity Ganon in his golden glow (second phase) self.

And I believe the gates came crashing down inside the circular tower when I fought the Lyrel one-to-one. It may well have been an optional fight, but I was trapped in there!

@Dogorilla I think I will give the game a rest for a time and hope for a sale of sorts for the DLC pack in the foreseeable future. I don’t particularly want to see another shrine for quite a while in all honesty...

@Ralizah I got the extra (good) ending as well, and it was just a few lines of dialogue from Zelda saying that the land of Hyrule shall eventually be restored back to how it used to be in time. I just felt that there wasn’t any meaningful display of how things concluded after Ganon was vanquished, and that the world and its inhabitants had nary any bearing on it, unlike the endings in previous Zelda games.

I agree that the physics based puzzles were good. The less said about those gyro ones though, the better...

I feel like Breath of the Wild is a stepping stone of sorts. Everything is in place for the next game in the series, and with proper dungeons, some QoL changes and a more urgent story similar to Majora’s Mask, it could be something worth becoming very excited about!

Although it isn’t my favourite in this long running series, I can sincerely understand why it is heralded as one of the greatest games of this generation. I had fewer things to grumble about with regards to Breath of the Wild compared to Super Mario Odyssey, that’s for sure.

It was a really good game, not a great one, for me at least. A solid 7/10. I just hope they can iron out the kinks in the next one. Having a world that isn't a mile wide but an inch deep would help, for one thing, along with the other complaints people have listed. It's a good template for sure, I just hope the finished product is better 4 or so years from now when we get a new Zelda.

@Octane Yeah I guess it's not really a divine beast, but it's a very similar type of thing

@Peek-a-boo Yeah, let's hope the gyro puzzles don't return. They were obnoxious and borderline broken.

While I'm trashing my favorite game of 2017, let me also say that I will be beyond thrilled if Nintendo never designs another stealth segment in any of their games ever again. The stealth mission in BotW sucked. I hated every minute of it. It's not as bad as the stealth missions in the Gravity Rush games, but it still wasn't fun at all.

Oh, and enemy variety is terrible. This iteration of Hyrule is utterly overrun with Bokoblins, Lizalfos, and Wizzrobes, and almost nothing else. Changing their colors doesn't make them distinct. Zelda enemies aren't care bears.

Despite this, the game has EXACTLY what I've always wanted from other open world and Zelda games, making it my favorite open world game and second favorite Zelda to date. I'll revisit this after I play Witcher 3 and Horizon: Zero Dawn, but I honestly don't think my feelings will change.

@Octane Calamity Ganon had a pretty cool design, but yeah, it was weird seeing this Bloodborne boss drop into my Zelda game. The second phase was a gimme, but I treated it as more of an interactive cutscene in the first place, so I wasn't expecting challenge. It wasn't a fantastic boss battle, but honestly, most Zelda bosses aren't (especially final bosses in these games, which tend to devolve into the same "slash at Ganon while Zelda shoots light arrows" affair at the end). I think Nintendo should have dialed up the difficulty on the Blights a bit if they weren't going to make them glorified puzzles like bosses in previous Zelda games, though. It says something when the weakest Lynel is still far more challenging than any of the bosses in the main story.

I don't know that Ganon should have remained a cloud, but you're right that more "cinematic" SotC-esque fights would have been perfect for the game. Especially for a game that feels like it draws extensively from SotC on an aesthetic level (ruined open world; lonely; lots of horses; tons of breathtaking natural scenery; often subtle use of music; big creatures stomping around; lots of climbing, with a stamina gauge causing you to fall off if you don't regain your footing in time; etc.)

I finally beat a Lynel. Only died once as well!

And then spent way too much time exploring the Gerudo highland area. Honestly I still have three towers unclimbed but I feel like I might save two of them for post-game. Give me some things to do along with the DLC I guess.

Guys... i have a problem!

After 50 hours exploring the world in this game, doing sidequests and slowly progressing in the history mode, i decided today to move forward in order to finish the game but i got stuck on vah rudania divine beast... the ball to activate the last "portal" does not appear... anyone has had the same issue ?

@Peek-a-boo I couldn't handle the motion controls in Skyward Sword unfortunately. It felt too much like a tech demo at times, it worked 90% of the time, but the other 10% made it a frustrating experience for me.

@Ralizah I think we share a similar view on the game, except that we're looking for different things in video games. Level design, enemy design (and variety), boss fights are very important to me. And I always liked Zelda for its (themed) dungeons too. I'd like to see big themed dungeons in the next game that incorporate the puzzles that can be found in the shrines, because I did genuinely enjoy the ones that weren't a combat shrine or laughably easy.

This game is incredible. I'm over 70 hours in. I've yet to meet Ganon, but every other mission in the main story is completed. But I just don't want to go to Ganon yet. So much left to explore!