Review #578: The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild

 Breathtaking.

 The Legend of Zelda franchise carries quite a pedigree, despite their resistance to change. Sure, the art direction may change, but the core of the games remain the same all throughout its history. And then came Breath of the Wild which is quite the breath of fresh air.

 The story... is there. Somewhat. The game begins with Link waking up inside a mysterious shrine, and, thanks to a voice in his head, manages to get outside, only to catch the attention of a mysterious old man who begins preparing Link to brave the wilds. It's told so soon that it's barely a spoiler, but it turns out that Link was gravely injured in a fight against Ganon, and now, 100 years later, he finally wakes up in the Shrine of Resurrection. Ganon has won, mostly, but now Link must set out to destroy Ganon and save Zelda. The set-up is fairly original for the franchise, and there's a rather colorful cast of characters... which sadly don't get much development. Most backstory is optional, which comes in the form of 12 memory fragments that you can find in order to joggle Link's memories. So, characters from the past don't get much screen time, which kinda sucks since they seemed like an interesting bunch, but their modern-day successors too suffer from lack of depth. I'd have loved to have Link's present-day sidekicks to take part in the final assault against Ganon, or get some sort of epilogue... but sadly, this game isn't about story.

 Breath of the Wild is a massive game. Hyrule is enormous, and as soon as you get all your tools, you're free to explore it in any way you want. Your first task in the game is to heed the old man's advice and travel to four different shrines, which you can tackle in any order, as the game teaches you about exploration: How Link has a stamina meter that gauges how much he can climb or swim before falling. How you can interact with the environment, cutting down trees, taking fruit from trees, cooking elixirs and food when you find a campfires, and having to be wary of Link's temperature, either drink a cool-resisting/heat-resisting elixir or wear the appropriate clothes. In each shrine you'll find a different rune, this Zelda's versions of your tools, Remote-controled Bombs, to break stuff, Magnesis, to manipulate metallic objects, Cryogenesis, to create pillars of Ice on water and, finally, Stasis, which locks an object(And, eventually, enemies too) in place for a short while. These runes will be your main tool in solving puzzles throughout the entire game, no more Hookshot or iron-boots here!

 And then, after clearing all four shrines, the old-man will give you the paraglider, a tool you can use to safely hover over the air... as long as your stamina holds on. Each Shrine also rewards you with an orb, and you can trade four orbs at any of the Goddesses' statues for a heart container or a stamina upgrade. Thus, the introduction to the game ends, and now you can do the game in any order you wish. There are four main dungeons in the game to clear... and you can tackle them in any order. Would you rather explore Hyrule and climb every tower first, in order to unlock instant-travel options and the complete map? You can do that too. Or maybe just focus on finding all 120 shrines in order to fully upgrade Link? That too. That was my prerogative, as I wanted to unlock the Master Sword first, which requires 13 hearts. If you think all of this is a hassle, that's fine, just go battle Ganon. If you're good at dodging and using your bow, you can fight him right from the get-go, no need to even set foot in Kakariko Village and initiate the main quest. There's over 100 sidequests too, if that's your thing, and VERY few of them have any pre-requisite before you can engage them.

 All this freedom is very refreshing, while Ocarina of Time was a very linear game, it brought me back to how that game made me feel when I was younger, and how Hyrule Field felt endless and full of possibilities. No two playthroughs will ever be the same. The game manages to even out the difficulty by tying your power to your weapon, so if you want to explore a tougher area.... just defeat one of the enemies there and grab its weapon, now if you've a good defense you'll be able to stand against any enemy encounter. That said, the game is on the tough side, like, very tough. You'll have to bring your A game here if you want to succeed. Not even upgraded armors can protect you from tough enemies. Thankfully, the auto-save system is very lenient, so you'll be able to retry battles until you get them right.

 The freedom in how you do things goes hand in hand with Link's mobility: He can climb pretty much on anything as long as you've stamina to spare. This limit, your stamina, became my biggest drive to find alternate ways to get to where I wanted. Honestly, since I was focusing on getting Health containers to pick up the master sword, I neglected Stamina until later in the game, so I had to be crafty with how I'd get where I wanted to go. Sometimes it's all about going around a tall hill... or climbing in the right angle so that Link can put his feet down and recover stamina while on a slope! That said, as fun as exploration was, nothing, NOTHING could ruin your day harder than rain... and storms. Rains make everything slippery, so if you're trying to climb a mountain, or one of the various Assassin's Creed-inspired scout-towers... you'll fall. So either wait until the rain stops or go do something else. Annoying. It could also happen that you're trying to do a quest that involves fire, and now you're outta luck too. Storms are just as bad as rain, but with the added annoyance of thunders raining down of you if you've got anything out of metal equipped.... although it can be an asset if you throw a metallic weapon against a group of enemies and watch chain-lightning do its stuff on them.

 So, if the game was just exploration it'd be a 10/10 GOTY. 8/10 on a rainy day. But fighting also takes up a big portion of the game, and it's alright... with a few caveats. Link's basic actions are slashing, block and parrying, and you can also use your bow and any of the various elemental arrows to shoot from afar. So far, so good. There's a decent variety of armors to equip on Link, most which you can dye for added customization, and Link is so frail in this game that you'll rather do your best to upgrade them as much as you can. So, what's the kicker? Swords, Shields and Bows... break. This means that you shouldn't get attached to any one piece of equipment because it will break, and rather often too. To be fair, pretty much every enemy is carrying a weapon, so if you lose a weapon defeating an enemy, at least you'll get another one back. But this means that you'll be avoiding combat with weaker enemies since you don't want weaker weapons or want to break your good weapons. Which is a bit counter-productive since you really want enemy loot. Since pretty much everything breaks, this also means that most quest-rewards are pretty much trash unless they are an armor piece.

 Add to this the fact that Link's inventory starts out pretty small. You can extend it for an increasingly higher amount of Korok Seeds, of which there are 900 hidden all throughout Hyrule, but this can take a while. In my case, I just focused on upgrading my Melee-Weapon inventory and getting the Master Sword, the only weapon that never truly breaks... but has a 10-minute cool-down after its 'power' depletes. I hated the durability system. And it had a pretty easy fix: Have Diablo-style weapons, with different affinities, elements, speeds and what have you, so that the player has to pick and choose. Maybe carry a hammer to break minerals. And you'll also want at least one weapon made out of wood in case there's a storm, etc. Much better than weapons breaking, even though, to be fair, I never once ran out of weapons.

 As stated before, there're four main dungeons... which are actually four mechanical beasts that must be freed from Ganon's corruption. These are a far cry from dungeons of old, being simple puzzle-ridden areas in which you must activate 5 terminals and fight a boss. That said, there's a small twist here... you can change the layout of the dungeon a bit, and you'll have to in order to get to every terminal. For example, you can change how the bird-dungeon is angled and thus affect slopes. You can rotate three cylinders, which make up a beast's innards, in order to to move into different rooms or platforms, etc. Clearing each dungeon, and defeating its boss, will give Link a new power. The Zora's being the most useful, being a instant-revive. But you can also get things like a free parry, from the Goron Dungeon, or the infinitely useful fly-jump from the Rito dungeon. These powers run on a cooldown, so you can't just abuse them.

 With that out of the way, another issue with the game is how hard money was to come by. The best way to earn money is by selling stuff... but you also need stuff in order to upgrade your armor at Fairy Fountains. You also need stuff to cook for food, in order to heal yourself. You also need stuff to finish sidequests. This 'stuff' is anything from monster guts, animal meat, insects, fruit hanging from trees to minerals gathered from rocks or fish caught in the water. A lot of the time you might end up hating yourself for selling all those Lizalfos' tails... since you didn't know your favorite armor piece required them for their upgrades! By the end I settled for selling minerals, since mineral rocks were pretty plentiful.

 Still, I think the biggest hump most veterans will need to get over is that the focus has changed from puzzles to exploration. Mind you, as simple as the dungeons are, there're plenty of puzzles to solve throughout most of the 120 shrines, but they are not too complicated(I might have consulted a guide one or twice, though). Puzzles are a lot more... mundane this time around too, often times having to make good use of fire and fire propagation, or finding the best way to manipulate objects around with your runes. The traditional puzzles, using the boomerang, the hookshot and the such are missed, but I think it's good to experiment every now and then. Although a few shrines require motion controls to be solve, and boy, we don't need to experiment with motion controls. They suck.

 Breath of the Wild was a fun large experiment with physics-based gameplay that succeeded in being a Zelda game unlike all others. It's a massive game, that gives players a lot of freedom in how they tackle every single challenge the game throws their way. It has a few glaring flaws: The annoying durability system, how few enemy types there are, how shallow dungeons and shrines are.... but I think, overall, it's one of the best games released on its generation, since it manages to be exactly what it wanted to: A grandiose adventure that moves at the pace set by the player.
 9.5 out of 10