The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

This is my longest review ever, sorry for the wall of text.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the latest main timeline Legend of Zelda game. The game had been announced during E3 2014, promised for the Wii U in 2015. Seeing as the game was actually released for both the Wii U and Switch in March of 2017, the fans of the franchise dealt with multiple delays and long periods of time with no news about the game. This, along with the few trailers and gameplay that we had seen throughout the wait, led to massive amounts of hype and thousands upon thousands of copies being sold, as both pre-orders and day one purchases. Personally, I was very excited for the game, and when it was gifted to me at Christmas of 2017, I played the entire game, as well as the DLC as quickly as I could. I 100% completed the game, except for the Korok Seeds, because who would want to put themselves through that torture?

After playing through the game over a two month period, I looked back and thought if the game was actually worth the wait, or worth the hype. And my conclusion was that Breath of the Wild is by far one my least favorite Zelda games, and a disappointment to one of my favorite franchises ever. Here’s why.

In my opinion, each Zelda game has set components that work in a specific way with each other to get the Zelda experience. These components are the gameplay, made up of combat and puzzles, the story, the music, and the exploration, the overworld and dungeons. Before we jump into discussing those components though, I need to say one last thing.

I’m aware that one of the main claims for Breath of the Wild was that it would break the norms and be a very different Zelda game, compared to the others, which followed a loose format. I’m also aware that all games in a franchise don’t always have to be very similar to each other, but I do think that players should have a basic understanding of what they should do based on experiences of prior games. Say that Portal 3 was released the day after this review comes out. I would buy it instantly, because I love the Portal games. If I go into that game and suddenly the portal gun shoots bullets and I have to kill alien enemies, then can you really call it a Portal game? That hypothetical is a bit more exaggerated than the changes that occurred between the previous Zelda games and Breath of the Wild, but there are, in fact, many major differences that break all conventions of 3D Zelda such as:

The inventory and breakable weapons.

The lack of obtainable dungeon items.

The completely open world and the fact that you can do dungeons in any order, or not do them at all.

The removal of the roll and inclusion of jumping and climbing.

During production, Mr. Aonuma said that Breath of the Wild would indeed break the norms of 3D Zelda, to try to go back to the roots of the Zelda franchise, specifically the first Legend of Zelda game from 1986. The changes I just talked about were never included in any Zelda game before, 3D or otherwise. I’m not saying that making changes to a game as it comes out with more releases is bad, that would be crazy. What I am saying is that taking too many steps with one game can leave the players a little bit confused. A number of the major changes that came in Breath of the Wild were definitely steps in a good direction for The Legend of Zelda, but I think many of them were steps in the wrong direction. We’ll talk about them during each part of this review though. Onto the first part.

The Gameplay

Zelda gameplay is always made up of three parts. Exploration, combat, and puzzles. Exploration has its own part of the review, so I’ll be skipping it for now. Combat in Zelda games has always been very focused on the sword and shield. Breath of the Wild introduces 2 new weapon styles to the mix to go along with the sword and shield: The two-handed weapon and the polearm. In previous 3D Zeldas, with the exception of Skyward Sword, the sword swings have been done by pressing the sword button, and moving the control stick. Moving the stick in different directions can influence the different directions in which Link swings his sword. Holding a direction and tapping the sword button in quick succession usually makes Link do a short 3 or 4 hit combo, then a finisher that does a bit of knockback. In Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, there were also the back slice and the helm splitter, additional sword moves that could put you in a better position or hit a weak point on the enemy. In Twilight Princess, there were six hidden moves that you had to find, the back slice and helm splitter being two of the six. These six moves had to be found at Sheikah Stones in hidden locations across Hyrule. The moves would help Link in many combat scenarios, and made for more exciting combat overall. In Breath of the Wild, each weapon type has a small combo and then a finisher, with no directional influence. I’m aware that most of the time, these different directional inputs didn’t affect the fight at all, but it was at least something different and interesting to look at. Link can also do a jump attack and a slam attack from high altitude with each weapon type. Additionally, if Link does a perfect dodge while Z-targeting an enemy, time will slow down and you can do a flurry rush, a multi-hit attack where the enemy cannot hurt you. Along with the bow and stasis+, these are the only combat options that Link is ever likely going to use. One could argue that the magnesis and bomb runes could be used in combat, but if you’re in a serious fight, when will you ever use magnesis or bombs? Speaking of weapons, a lot of the “difficult” enemies are only designed to be weapon sponges. The game confuses HP for difficulty. An enemy does not become more difficult if you add a few zeros to its max HP. It becomes tedious. Seeing as most enemies in the game only have a few different types of attacks, you learn them quickly and can do a perfect dodge almost every time. This leads to combat that is the repetition of waiting for the enemy to attack, executing a perfect dodge, and doing a flurry rush. Repeating this process over and over gets boring quickly. Seeing as this strategy is the easiest and best way to kill every non-boss enemy in the game, combat ceases to be a threat. Combat becomes even less threatening when you realize that it is nearly impossible to die at all as long as you have food. You can open the inventory menu at any point in the game, and heal back to full HP, or even above full HP, all while the rest of the world is frozen in time. You can jump off of Death Mountain and roll all the way down to the bottom as long as you pause every few seconds to eat a meal. The first thing that comes to mind to fix this glaring issue is to make it so Link has to pause for a few seconds in order to eat. One game I’ve played that does real-time combat wonderfully is CrossCode. In a game where combat is very fast-paced and enemies do tons of damage if their level is close to yours, healing is essential to most fights. You hold down a button to bring up a menu with 4 options: consumables, map, party options, and senses. The ones I want to look at are consumables and map. Consumables are the main way to heal during combat. You select which consumable you want to eat, then your character will stop fighting for a few seconds and do an eating animation. While she is eating, enemies act as normal, and will try to attack. If an enemy attack hits during the eating animation, you do not heal and the consumable is lost. Even better, the more HP an item heals you, the longer it takes for your character to eat. A regular sandwich, the worst healing item, takes barely any time to eat, and the Cross Sandwich, the best healing item, takes almost 4 seconds to eat. In the fast-paced combat of CrossCode, those 4 seconds have to be perfectly timed. This makes healing during a fight a challenge, where getting hit means you’ve wasted a healing opportunity, and have to reposition yourself before you can try again. Also, if your heal is successful, then there is a cooldown before you can eat another consumable. This means that you can never get all the way back to full health for free during any fight, making every fight with powerful enemies a challenge. Additionally, in Breath of the Wild, you can teleport away to any location you’ve unlocked at nearly any point, including during combat and during a fall or hitstun. If you have run out of healing items, and there’s no safe zone nearby, you can always teleport away to a shrine in a town to buy or cook more food. In CrossCode, the map icon is always greyed out during combat. There is no get-out-of-jail-free card. The worst part of this is that Breath of the Wild already has a system for detecting when Link is in danger: the combat music. If an enemy has noticed Link, then combat music starts playing. The best way to fix this issue is to make it so that Link can heal only once every 10 or so seconds, and has to do an eating animation in real-time before the heal occurs, and cannot teleport away. Then combat would be a real challenge. Also, Link would have to be standing with both feet planted in order to even eat at all. That means that there is no eating during hitstun because you’re running out of health while rolling all the way down Death Mountain, or setting up your table and bib while airborne because you accidentally blew up a bomb on yourself. Bottom line, combat is almost never a challenge in Breath of the Wild. Using the repetitive unbeatable strategy during fights, the ability to heal back to full instantly at any point in the fight, and the ability to flee for free at any point makes combat a joke. Going back to the enemies, the variety in Breath of the Wild is disappointing. Here’s a quick list of all the enemies:

Normal, blue, black, silver, and gold variants of the Bokoblin, Moblin, Lizalfos, and Lynel. The only difference between each color variant is their max HP. The lizalfos has fire, ice, and lightning variants as well, and the Bokoblin, Moblin, and Lizalfos all have stal-variants.

Bokoblin, Moblin, and Lizalfos variants of the cursed skull.

Decayed Guardian, Guardian Stalker, Guardian Skywatcher, and Guardian Turret, all very similar enemies with the same attack.

The sentries that appear during the Vah Rudania mission.

Guardian Scout I, II, III, and IV, the same enemy, with more weapons each time.

Normal, fire, ice, and lightning variants of the Chuchu and Keese. Each Chuchu variant also has big, medium, and small variants.

Normal, fire, and ice variants of the pebblit.

Fire, ice, and lightning variants of the wizzrobe. There is also a strong variant of each element.

Forest, rock, water, sky, snow, and treasure variants of the octorok.

The Yiga Blademaster and the Yiga Footsoldier.

As you can see, most of the enemy variety in Breath of the Wild is entirely based on color, stal, or elemental variants of normal enemies. If you exclude these variants and count only the distinct enemy types, you get 18 different enemy types. The very first Legend of Zelda game also had color variants of enemies, but even when you exclude those, you get 25 distinct enemy types. Yes, the enemies in The Legend of Zelda were less complex and easier to create, but there was a 31 year gap between The Legend of Zelda and Breath of the Wild. You’d think that, in that time, and in the 3 years of this game’s development, they would add more enemy types. The combat is already stale, and the enemy variety is as well. Especially since almost every enemy you find while just roaming the overworld will be some variant of bokoblin, moblin, or lizalfos. The same is true during night, with the stal variants of those three. Enough about the enemies though, let’s talk about the next issue. Weapon durability. Now, I’ll preface this part by saying that I don’t think durability is a bad thing in games. It works perfectly in games like Minecraft or Subnautica, actual survival games. In those games, each tool costs a low amount of resources to craft, so it makes you periodically make new ones or give the tools new batteries in order to work. This is also why durability doesn’t work in games like Terraria, because most weapons and tools take a higher amount of resources and time to craft, so making new ones or recharging them would be much more tedious. However, those of you who have played those games will probably have noticed a key difference between items in Breath of the Wild and items in those other games. That difference is that you craft tools with resources instead of finding them in the world. In Breath of the Wild, killing enemies and opening chests is your primary way of obtaining new weapons. But after you’ve played the game for a good amount of time, most of your weapons will already outclass the ones you find in bokoblin camps or chests. And the fact that you have to kill the enemies before they drop their weapons (if you don’t have an electric weapon) makes the cycle of breaking and replacing weapons more of a chore than anything else. In fact, most players subconsciously know this anyways. They avoid combat, not because they think the enemies are too strong for them, but because they are too strong for the enemies. Killing them would only waste durability, and the reward is never worth it, and the combat isn’t even fun.

Now, onto the puzzles.

Puzzles are mostly limited to shrines and shrine quests, and also, of course, dungeons. Let’s get the good out of the way first. I thoroughly enjoyed most of the shrines in Breath of the Wild. The only problems appeared in the main dungeons of the game: the Divine Beasts. First, I want to point out every single dungeon in every other Zelda game. The only visual similarities they share are in the ones that are required in the game design. In Breath of the Wild, every Divine Beast dungeon looks the exact same on the inside. Not to mention that the inside of all the shrines also look the same as inside the Divine Beasts. It’s the same texture that has been seen throughout every other dungeon and shrine in the game. I shouldn’t have to explain why that’s a bad thing. Additionally, almost all the Divine Beast dungeon puzzles can be completed by opening your map, moving the beast’s body one click at a time, and repeating that until the puzzle is solved. There are very few exceptions to this. Because of these two main reasons, I think the Divine Beasts are very, very flawed in their design, and would have to be reworked completely in order for them to work well. An idea I had while playing the game, in order to make them more unique, is to make each one much more different in appearance. Just to throw around my ideas, make the one that walks around in the desert able to burrow under the sand, and Link would have to hide inside to avoid suffocation, or make it so that a colony of sand insects is living inside the beast, posing a threat to Link. Make the lightning storm it generates become more of a threat. Make the one that flies around occasionally do aileron rolls or swoop around wildly, throwing Link off, and making him find a way back on board. Make the volcano that one of them sits in erupt occasionally, making Link take cover. Make coral grow inside the one that sits in the lake, have it infested with algae, just give us something that makes them not all look the same. My last complaint is that all of the NPCs in an area will remark about the great threat that their Divine Beast poses to their region and town, but the Divine Beasts’ supposed threat is not present. For example, Divine Beast Vah Ruta makes it rain constantly in the region it resides in, posing a threat to the denizens by creating floods. I recommend taking a page out of the book of Persona 5, making it so that when Link first enters the region, a timer starts counting down to when the floods will destroy all the towns in the area. If Link does not stop the Divine Beast before the timer runs out, it will result in an instant game over, and Link would have to restart from his last checkpoint, with slightly more time than what he had when he originally reached that checkpoint. This would really sell the idea that each Divine Beast truly poses a threat to its region, and would make each Divine Beast mission feel more unique and compelling.

To end this review on a high note, I want to finish on exploration.

The map of Breath of the Wild is absolutely the biggest, most complex, and well-designed map in any 3D video game I’ve ever played. The only problem I have with it is that it’s almost completely empty. Of course, there are pretty trees and mountains and flowers to be seen all over, and every single region is unique, complex, and easily distinguishable from the others. However, once you look past the beauty of the backdrops, you realize that there is barely anything to keep you interested while walking from A to B. It’s true that when you go looking for something, you usually find it, but the time it takes to find that thing is long and empty. The only things that can keep you entertained in these periods of walking are random enemy spawns, shrines, and korok seeds. Random enemy spawns are terrible and barely entertaining for reasons I explained earlier. Shrines are amazing, but they are spread very far apart and are semi-rare. Korok seeds barely take 30 seconds to get. My main enjoyment that came from exploring was scaling towers. Each tower has a unique challenge to reach the top, and obtaining the map of a region is always an amazing reward. I love entering an uncharted area, seeing a tower in the distance, and making it my goal to reach the top by any means necessary. The unique geography of the map also made just walking fun, occasionally. The spiral beach in the Akkala region was a fun challenge. Eventide Island was a fun challenge. The three giant twins quest was a fun challenge. I know that I’m only listing shrine quests here, but they were very unique, and it was fun to get to experience more refined parts of the map.

Just to list a few minor nitpicks I have with the game, I wish there was more music. The Zelda series has always had very good music, and a few of the games even have musical instruments as vital items to the story. Breath of the Wild was almost devoid of any real traditional Zelda songs. I also wish that they hadn’t changed Link’s main outfit color to blue. It just breaks one of the rules that literally everyone expected to never be broken, and there’s not even a good explanation. I wish there were more weapon classes. Because there are only three, plus shield and bow, every weapon is basically just a reskin of one of the five types. Introducing more types of weapons would make the games combat much, much more interesting because it would promote developing your own playstyle for combat. I also wish there were more Sheikah Slate runes for the same reason.

I know that I’m one of the very few people who have this opinion, but I think that The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild would need a lot more work before I can consider it a good game. Its strongest part was the open world exploration and its promotion of straying from the path. Almost everything else in the game was either mediocre or extremely flawed, especially the combat mechanics and the Divine Beasts. The majority of people who have played the game gave it a very, very high rating, and I can understand where they are coming from. A casual playthrough of the game would likely result in the player only doing the four divine beasts, a few shrines, and beating the game. Going all out and completing everything in the game truly reveals the flaws that a casual playthrough wouldn’t find.