The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
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 The shadow of Calamity Ganon rises over the ashes of Hyrule…
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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an action-adventure game developed and published by Nintendo. It was released as a launch title for the Nintendo Switch. It was the last Nintendo game released for the Wii U.
Plot
100 years ago, it was prophesied that Calamity Ganon would return after being sealed for 10,000 years. As Ganon's return was eminent, the Hyrule kingdom located and excavated ancient Sheikah tech that were once used to seal Calamity Ganon away during the first Great Calamity, a mechanical army of autonomous weapons called the Guardians, and the Divine Beasts. 4 members, one from each race in Hyrule, were chosen to pilot the Divine Beasts and were given the title of Champion. While Hyrule was preparing, Zelda vigorously trained to try an awaken her sealing magic to use to seal Ganon away while researching the ancient technology that the Sheikah tribe built. She went to two of the 3 Springs of the Goddesses to try to awaken her powers which fails, but later on the day of her birthday, Zelda travels to the Spring of Wisdom on the summit of Mount Lanayru, but is unable to awaken her powers. After returning from Mount Lanayru, Calamity Ganon is free from his prison and begins the Second Great Calamity. The Champions, Link and Zelda battled Ganon, but, however, learning from his experience that got him to be sealed thousands of years ago, Calamity Ganon takes control of the Guardians as well as the Divine Beasts and turns them against Hyrule. Many people (Including the King of Hyrule, the Champions, and Hyrule's Royal Army) lost their lives in the Great Calamity. Afterwards, Link and Zelda both try to flee to Fort Hateno to escape the rampaging Guardians but are soon attacked by a group of them. After defeating a handful of Guardian Stalkers to protect Zelda, Link is severely injured and is brought to the Shrine of Resurrection to be put in as stasis sleep while Zelda travels to Hyrule Castle to face Calamity Ganon, sealing him away for 100 years and thus ending the Great Calamity. 100 years after the events of the Great Calamity that destroyed most of Hyrule, Link awakens from an ancient slumber and guided by the voice of Zelda. She warns that Calamity Ganon is about to be freed from his prison and will soon destroy the world. Link must now finish what he started 100 years ago and stop Calamity Ganon once and for all.
Why It's A Breathtaking Adventure
- Hyrule is so large and vast, it is 12 times larger than what it was in Twilight Princess.
- Lots of weapons and equipment. Some have special powers such as having fire, ice, or thunder magic.
- It is the first sequel since Zelda 2, Nintendo confirmed that the game takes after the entire series.
- Numerous armor parts most of which have beneficial effects such as cold resistance or increasing attack.
- You can upgrade your armor's defense level by redeeming found items with a Great Fairy.
- The story is really interesting.
- Memorable and likable characters like the four Champions, Mipha, Daruk, Revali, and Urbosa make their debut here and they grant you their abilities as a reward for liberating their Divine Beasts to make venturing and battling more bearable. Kass, Sidon, Teba, Yunobo, and Riju, who also debuted in the game are special mentions as well.
- Lots of shrines to find in the world, which act as instant warp points to teleport to. Shrines act as mini-dungeons, each focusing on a specific puzzle or a mini-boss. Shrines give you Spirit Orbs after completing them, then you can trade 4 of them for an additional heart container or extend your stamina bar.
- The four Divine Beasts are spectacular events and act as the main dungeons of the game. Each Divine Beast you save helps you during the final boss.
- Tons of collectibles can be found.
- You can ride the "Sand Seals" (walruses that live in sand) to cross the desert which compensates for being unable to ride horses in this region.
- You can set five stamps on the map to mark where you want to go. This is very useful when finding landmarks in the distance.
- Link can cook food items to increase the amount of health they restore and get a temporary special effect such as increasing Link's defense or making him more resistant to heat or cold.
- A shrine radar that helps you find shrines nearby. An upgrade can be obtained to find monsters and items instead of shrines too.
- Not counting the CD-i games, this is the first Zelda game with voice acting, though Link has no voice actor.
- This marks the first time since the original game where players can go at their own pace and explore freely.
- NPCs react to Link differently depending on what he has equipped at the time or even when he doesn't have any equipment on him. One notable example being most NPCs reacting in fear and disgust when approached while wearing the Tingle outfit, referencing the fact that Tingle is one of the least popular characters in the Zelda franchise.
- Tons of bosses and now they have a proper health bar.
- Stunning, cel-shaded graphics.
- For the first time ever in a 3D Zelda game, you actually have the ability to jump without having to use an action command!
- Link can climb almost any structure in the game and gets a paraglider. You can combine the two to fast-travel by jumping off a tall structure or mountain and paragliding towards your destination. Climbing tall mountains also makes it easier to find buildings and shrines at a far distance.
- You can get the Master Sword once you find it and have 13 Hearts, though it needs 10 in-game minutes to recharge if used too much (unlike normal weapons, which just break when used too much).
- Amiibo can be really useful.
- A couple of characters from previous games return here, such as the Koroks, Great Deku Tree, Beedle, and Wolf-Link.
- While Fi from Skyward Sword does make an appearance here, she doesn't actually appear on-screen due to still being inside of the Master Sword. Though the Master Sword does make a certain sound in two cutscenes that proves this.
- The Monk Maz Koshia bossfight is absolutely amazing and it's regarded as one of the best boss fights in the entire series!
- Detonating remote bombs while next to them has a funny result where link enters a ragdoll state, so you could do it off a cliff or into lava.
Bad Qualities
- The weapon durability system has a somewhat questionable implementation, as weapons break very quickly, and sometimes the player won't have any decent weapon to replace the broken ones nearby.
- The durability system can also become annoying due to the very similar weapons given out, especially during battles.
- It can also be annoying as there is no way to tell if that weapon is damaged, so you could use that weapon during a battle, but then change this weapon to another weapon, and change into that weapon only to find out that weapon is badly damaged too.
- The Master Sword is also affected, though instead of breaking it becomes unusable for about 10 minutes until it's recharged.
- Even though there's proper voice acting and NPCs that have plenty of character and emotion, Link is still a silent protagonist that mostly just stands watching and rarely shows any emotion.
- There are technical issues that are common in very large, open-world games like this, the most notable one being the slightly stuttering framerate. Patches have largely eliminated these from the Switch version, especially in handheld mode, but the Wii U version never saw any real performance improvements.
- There are times when the game is too open-ended with no clear direction on what to do, that combined with how huge the game world it can cause players to get lost frequently, sometimes for over an hour. This isn't helped by Hyrule having large amounts of empty space where there's not much to do.
- Somewhat limited enemy variety, while there are ten varieties of enemies, six of them have different variants with simple palette swaps with greater attack power.
- The arrows have somewhat very poor range, unlike the previous Zelda titles, the arrows will go down firing from a far distance. Luckily, the Ancient Bow fires straight for at least 10 times longer than the royal bow, for example.
- Due to the completely open-ended nature of the game, the difficulty is very unbalanced because nothing stops you from going into challenges and enemy encounters you're clearly not strong enough to face or areas that you don't have the right equipment to explore safely.
- While the game has tons of different bosses, the ones found on the four Divine Beast bosses are kind of hit or miss, they are shadowy elemental monsters called "(insert element name here) Blight Ganon".
- Dark Beast Ganon, the final boss, isn't much better. There's not much you have to do except for obtaining the Bow of Light from Zelda and shooting at the targets.
- Rain makes climbing extremely agonizing unless you have a full climbing armor set and multiple foods to replenish stamina because link will slip down a specific distance frequently.
- Only a few music tracks are in the game, with most of them being ambient tracks.
- There are no proper dungeons, only the Shrines, Divine Beasts, and Hyrule Castle.
- Getting all Korok seeds is pointless due to the fact that you get a korok poop joke for doing so.
- Voice acting could be a little more convincing.
- The blood moon mechanic can be very frightening for first-time players and the timing of it can be very annoying as it seems to happen at random and if you’re fighting a strong enemy and a blood moon suddenly happens you’ll have to fight them again.
- Like Skyward Sword, this game has a stamina wheel, and while it's improved from that game, it's still a pain to endure and unnecessary. (However, there are several glitches that don't require you to use stamina, i.e. Whistle Sprinting and Moon Jump)
- The Yiga Clan can be very annoying, as they can appear at the wrong place at the wrong time (i.e. fighting a Guardian). Not to mention that once you defeat their leader, Master Kohga, and retrieve the Thunder Helm for Divine Beast Vah Naboris, the Yiga clan will keep attacking the player and there's nothing you can do about it to prevent them. ALSO, Master Kohga was a very disappointing boss.
- Running from Lynels is near impossible because if you get too far away they'll fire at you with their bow, and their accuracy is killer.
Reception
The game currently has a user rating of 4.58 out of five on GameFAQs and is already regarded as one of the greatest open world games of all time and the best Zelda game to date. It is considered the main reason the Nintendo Switch sold over 1.5 million units in less than two weeks after release (despite the game also being available on the Wii U), and, despite not being the console's best selling game (that title goes to Mario Kart 8 Deluxe), it used to be for a certain period.
Angry Joe gave the game a 9/10, making it the first game he has ever reviewed on a Nintendo console. The only reason he hadn't reviewed a Nintendo game until now (despite also owning a Wii U) was due to him not wanting to deal with Nintendo content ID claiming videos he made which featured footage from Nintendo games (as was the case with videos of him and his friends playing games like Mario Party 10).
Breath of the Wild went on to win several awards at The Game Awards 2017, including Best Game Direction and Game of the Year and it was also nominated for the Game of the Year award at the National Academy of Video Game Trade Reviewers Awards, but lost to Super Mario Odyssey, but it managed to win Original Light Mix Score (Franchise) and Art Direction (Fantasy).
As of December 2018, the game has sold 11.6 million copies worldwide.