Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Reviewed on: Wii U
Available on: Wii U & Switch
Released: March 3rd 2017
This is probably a bit of a strange thing to learn about someone who
has a big interest in retro games but I hadn't actually played a
Zelda game until very recently. The first one I tried out was Ocarina
of Time 3D on the 3DS, before moving on to The Wind Waker HD,
Majora's Mask 3D and Twilight Princess HD (which I happen to have reviewed), so I don't have the same nostalgia for the
series that a lot of other gamers have. That being said, because I've
only just got into the series it makes Breath of the Wild a
particularly exciting game for me because it's the first of the Zelda
series I've purchased on release and the first one I've been able
anticipate and get hyped for with other Zelda fans.
There hasn't been a proper new Zelda game through the entire lifespan
of the Wii U (Skyward Sword was the last major release and
that came out on the Wii in 2011) and this has made Breath of the
Wild one of the most eagerly anticipated games in a long time.
Taking all this into consideration, the question is, does Breath of
the Wild live up to the hype and does it deserve all the rave reviews it's been getting from major game journalism outlets?
Perhaps a more important question is, how does
Breath of the Wild compare to it's predecessors and does the
new open world format work in the context of a Zelda game?
This will be a spoiler free review, but I will be mentioning a few
gameplay mechanics and talking about the game's structure, so if you
haven't played Breath of the Wild yet and you want to avoid any
information at all about the game, stop reading now. Having said
this, I'm now going to talk about the story of Breath of the Wild
(but only what you learn within the first few minutes of turning the
game on) as I feel that it's important to give a basic summary of
what the game is about.
Straight after turning Breath of the Wild on it's said that one hundred years prior to
the start of the game an evil entity known as Calamity Ganon attacked Hyrule,
successfully destroying a lot of the area around Hyrule Castle and
almost killing the hero of the Zelda series, Link, in the process. An interesting bit of information
is that this is the first Zelda game where the main character is directly called
Link and you can't rename him. In the present day, Link wakes up in
the Shrine of Resurrection having lost all of his memories and he
sets out into the ruined world to learn who he is and about his
objective. Soon after exploring the area outside the Shrine of Resurrection, Link learns of the
destruction that Calamity Ganon has caused and sets out to stop him before he escapes
his imprisonment inside Hyrule Castle. Thus Link's adventure begins and he's free to roam the world as he pleases.
I don't want to start this review on a negative note but I did feel
like the story of Breath of the Wild wasn't a particularly big focus
of the game as a whole and it quickly becomes more of a background objective
rather than the driving force of the game. Hardly any plot
development happens throughout the entire experience and you pretty much
know exactly how things are going to progress and conclude from the
first hour of playing the game. When comparing Breath
of the Wild to Ocarina of Time, it's slightly disappointing that
Ocarina of Time has a better and more interesting story with greater development to keep you in suspense as to what will happen next. I do admit though that because of the more open design of Breath of the Wild it would have been difficult to have structured a linear story around this mechanic, so I suppose this is more of a problem with the open world structure as opposed to Breath of the Wild specifically, but it is still a slight issue.
With the story not being a large focus of the game, the whole reason
you're going to want to put time into it is for the gameplay itself,
and this is where Breath of the Wild separates itself from every
other Zelda game to date. The first thing you'll notice is how Link
can actually jump whereas in previous Zelda titles jumping wasn't assigned
to a button and was done automatically when walking off of a ledge,
this doesn't particularly make very much of a difference on it's own,
but soon after learning you can jump you also learn that you can
climb up walls and cliff faces. The way in which climbing works is
actually very similar to Shadow of the Colossus in the sense that you
can climb almost any surface but your movement is limited by the
amount of stamina you have. But after climbing up a mountain or a
tower what do you do then? Climb back down? Well this is where Link's
new Paraglider comes into play (basically it's the Deku Leaf from The
Wind Waker). It allows Link to float across long distances from great
heights which means that anything you see, you're able to reach. These new movement options add a lot more
freedom and verticality to the game which is an aspect that was somewhat lacking in
previous Zelda games; to accommodate this new free-form level design Breath of the Wild features a fully open world which is
a first for the series.
While having an open world is nothing
new in gaming, the way in which Breath of the Wild uses it's open world
is different. Rather than having a linear story taking place in an
open world (like Assassin's Creed or Grand Theft Auto's mission based
structure) Breath of the Wild starts with a tutorial section which
eases you into the amount of freedom you will have and then the world
fully opens up. At the very start of the game you're offered the
option of following a set of missions but this doesn't last long and
before you know it you'll find yourself having to explore on your own
and find your own objectives. Breath of the Wild's world is so open
that it's actually possible to go and defeat the last boss right at
the start of the game (but it's not recommended).
So with all this freedom, what's stopping you from
just going and finishing the game straight away? Well, while Breath
of the Wild doesn't feature a traditional leveling up system (with
experience points), it does have a similar system to this. Link can
get more health and stamina by completing trials which are inside
shrines (although to get a single upgrade you first need to clear four of them). These shrines are dotted all over the map and some you'll
just come across through exploration but some will require some
puzzle solving to make them actually appear. The shrines basically act
as mini dungeons which can be completed in around 5 minutes (unless
you get stuck on a puzzle) and they normally consist of using one of
Link's new abilities to manipulate the environment.
Link no
longer gains access to new equipment in the same way as previous
Zelda games. Before Breath of the Wild, Link would enter a dungeon
and explore it for a while before discovering an item (such as the Hookshot or a boomerang) which could then be used to solve puzzles in
that particular dungeon. In Breath of the Wild, Link gains abilities
such as Stasis, Magnesis, Cryonis and Remote Bomb for use in puzzle
solving sections, but the major difference is that Link gets all of
his new abilities at the start of the game rather than building them
up one by one throughout his adventure. While this does take away
from the feeling of progression quite substantially, I also feel like
boosting your health and stamina achieves this same feeling of
progression without gaining new equipment.
Another way the game gives the player a sense of progression is in
the discovery of new weapons and armor. This is one of the main
differences between past Zelda games and Breath of the Wild. Link no
longer dons the green tunic he is famous for wearing and can now
dress in lots of different clothes and armor you find on your
adventure. Each set of clothing offers certain benefits like higher
defense or environmental resistances, so it makes them worth seeking
out. Link can now use any weapon he comes across either by finding
them or by stealing them from enemies and this is another way Breath
of the Wild feels different. There are lots of different types of
weapons which all have unique properties, short swords can be wielded
with a shield but won't do a great deal of damage, spears offer great
range but because of being a two handed weapon can't be used with a
shield and heavy weapons such as hammers or great swords do massive
damage but are very slow to use and can't be wielded with shields. All
the different weapons cater to a variety of gameplay styles and this freedom
of combat is unprecedented in the Zelda series.
Link in Breath
of the Wild is also much more of an archer than in previous games, in
the past, the bow was more of a side weapon and couldn't be used as a
fully viable way of playing the game, however in Breath of the Wild
you can find more powerful bows, different types of arrows (which
admittedly isn't new to the series) and perform specific
moves while using the bow. One of my favourite things to do is to
jump off of a horse and equip the bow which will slow down time while
Link is in mid air and shoot several enemies before he hits the
floor. It's always a satisfying move and it can also be done by
jumping from a high ledge. It would be possible to play through the
entire game only using a bow, but just remember to stock up on lots
of arrows. Another new play style which was impossible in previous
Zelda games is the ability to be stealthy. The stealth in Breath of
the Wild is pretty basic but it is possible to sneak around enemy
camps and steal their weapons while they sleep and take them all out
with stealth attacks. More often than not, you'll be spotted after
performing your first stealth attack though, which is a bit of a
shame and I wouldn't say you can play the whole thing as a stealth
game, the level design and the game mechanics simply aren't designed
with this in mind. It's more of a strategy to use to give yourself an
advantage before attacking enemies normally.
Another traditional RPG mechanic making it's way to
the Zelda series is the ability to cook food. In previous games Link
would regain health by finding floating heart items but no such item
exists in Breath of the Wild. Link will now have to scavenge for food
by looking in trees, hunting wild animals or by visiting markets. He
can then combine the raw ingredients to create a meal which will heal
him and perhaps give him stat boosts depending on the ingredients. My
main issue with the cooking in Breath of the Wild is that it becomes
very tedious to cook multiple meals because of having to constantly
re-enter menus to select your ingredients, rather than being able to
batch cook lots of different meals. I feel like Link should have been
able to write a recipe book and click on a meal he's made before and
choose to cook however many he wants of that particular meal
(permitting he has the correct ingredients of course).
There are also bosses in Breath of the Wild, but to be honest, none
of them are very good. They all look the same and they all follow the
same structure which makes them predicable and boring. Considering
they're supposed to be climatic encounters, I feel like these fights
fall very flat, which is a shame considering some bosses in previous
Zelda games have been expertly designed and fun to fight. Each boss
starts with a first phase where it's a simple fight, they attack you
and you dodge them while attempting to hit them back; then they enter
a second phase where there's a puzzle element thrown in and you need
to use an item or one of Link's abilities to break through their
defenses and then after solving the puzzle section the boss basically
repeats it's first phase again until you've defeated it. The variety
in the different species you encounter in Breath of the Wild is
great, but this variety simply isn't carried over into the boss
fights and it's very disappointing. Even the last boss is quite
uninspired and it lacks the climactic weight that other Zelda final
bosses have been known to have.
With the amount of freedom you have in Breath of the Wild, you might
be expecting it to feel like you're wandering around with no clear
objective in mind, but I have to say, this is never the case. I've
never been bored while playing the game and that's because there's
always something you're working towards or there's always something
new you discover while working towards something else. It's a game
where you'll get sidetracked a lot, but in a very brilliant way. At
the start of the game you're told to seek out these huge towers in
order to fill in the blank spots on your map, you're also told to
keep an eye out for the shrines, so upon entering Hyrule's vast world
you already have an idea about what you want to do first. So you'll
eventually go up a tower and fill in the map thinking that you've
completed your objective, but then you might spot a shrine, or a town,
or a stable, or an enemy camp, or a suspicious looking object far off
in the distance and already you create a list of things you want to
do just from climbing one tower. This is the key difference between
Breath of the Wild and other games; in a game like Assassin's Creed
you would be told to visit all these different places, but in Breath
of the Wild, you find them yourself of your own free will rather than
the game directly telling you what to do next. It's very refreshing
to play a game that trusts the player to discover things on their own
and you feel like you're truly on an adventure and that you're
exploring and finding interesting things without having your hand
held constantly. This is perhaps the greatest thing about Breath of
the Wild and I can't praise it enough.
Later in the game you'll also be given new objectives such as finding the
four Divine Beasts (which play an important part in the game's story)
and locating Link's lost memories by going to specific spots in the
world which will activate a flashback. It's highly unlikely that
you'll be playing Breath of the Wild and run out of things to do
because as well as these main objectives you're also bound to find side
quests and interesting places to explore along the way.
In my review of Twilight Princess HD, I only had two major
complaints, one being that there was a lack of side quests and the
other being that there came a point when there was nothing to spend
Rupees on (the currency in Hyrule). Breath of the Wild completely
eliminates these problems, offering a ton of side quests (which I'm
still working on completing) and there's food, armor, weapons and
even your own house to spend money on. However, because Breath of the
Wild changes the Zelda formula quite substantially it also introduces
new problems.
My main gripe with Breath of the Wild is the fact that weapons break
so quickly, I'm the sort of player who gets attached to his weapons
and equipment and I want to keep it as long as I can, the problem
with this is I can't get attached to anything because it all breaks
after beating a few enemies. This also creates a problem where it's
more beneficial to just run from enemies rather than fighting them
because of wasting your resources with the risk of not picking up
anything good after beating your foes. I feel like an obvious
solution to this would be to have a blacksmith in every town who can
make your item either unbreakable or at least less breakable for a
fee (or by giving him certain crafting items) but the expense would
be raised the more powerful the weapon is.
As well as the weapon durability issue, another problem for me is the
lack of any major dungeons. The shrines in Breath of the Wild act as
mini dungeons and the Divine Beasts act as the game's main dungeons; but these Divine Beast sections are still very short and quite
mediocre when compared to the dungeons of past Zelda
games. I think a big reason why these areas just aren't appealing to
me is that they don't particularly have a theme, they all look very
similar visually and it just makes them uninteresting which is
disappointing considering they are one of the major objectives in the
game.
As expected from a Nintendo game, the graphics in Breath of the Wild
are incredible. The landscapes are vast and awe-inspiring when
looked at from a distance and for a game this big and open, there's
not a lot of noticeable texture popping. It features dynamic weather
that actually affects the gameplay in different ways (such as lightning hitting Link and doing high damage if he's carrying or wearing metal
equipment) and it looks amazing at all times. Normally games look
better when it's raining but I actually think Breath of the Wild
looks at it's best when the weather is sunny and you're in a field, something about the
bright and vibrant colours just really pop out in those
conditions.
I do think there's a little bit of a conflict in terms of the colourful visual style and the themes presented in
the game's plot. This is fundamentally a story about loss, with Link
waking up one hundred years in the future to find his old world gone
and replaced with ruins and dead comrades. Yet the visual style makes
light of this, perhaps reflecting Link's optimistic attitude to what's
happened. I feel like with a few adjustments, Breath of the Wild
could have been a much darker game, but it doesn't tend to focus on
the more sinister implications of it's own story very much. Whether
this is a good thing or a bad thing is down to subjective opinion,
but I thought it was worth bringing attention to. Personally I don't mind this because it's more of a creative choice rather than being an actual issue with the game.
There's some really good attention to detail with animations, enemies
will react differently to what's going on around them, so if you
knock an enemy down and steal it's weapon it might get up and look at
you in shock after realising what you've done. You can also knock a
skeleton's head off and kick it as a makeshift football weapon which
is also nice touch. It's things like this that give Breath of the
Wild the same character and charm that's synonymous with the Zelda series.
For how big the game is, it also runs extremely well (at least on the
Wii U, I have heard of issues with framerate on the Switch version),
with some minor slow down sometimes happening when you enter combat
with lots of enemies on screen at the same time. However this is the
only problem I've experienced and it happens so infrequently that
it's not a big deal in the slightest.
The load times in Breath of the Wild are particularly impressive,
when you're exploring the open world there's no loading at all, you
can go from a wide open field, up a tower, fly down into a village
and enter all the buildings there, all without the game ever needing
to load. The only times you'll see a loading screen is when you enter
a shrine, when you fast travel or when you die and these loading screens are very quick and
even offer you bits of information about the game which you might not
know about.
I've already mentioned the major differences to the controls of
Breath of the Wild from previous Zelda games. The addition of a jump
and sprint button as well as a climbing mechanic create a game with a
faster pace and a lot more freedom of movement (especially
considering the new vertical level design). But there are a few new
things Link can do that I've not mentioned. For example, he can now
shield surf, for faster movement down hills which is always fun to do
and he can now parry enemies if you know their attack patterns and
have fast reflexes. An alternative to parrying is dodging an enemy hit at the very last second which will slow down time and allow
Link to perform a flurry attack while the enemy is still in it's slow
motion state.
These new combat moves are great, but they come at the price of some
of the more subtle combat mechanics used in previous Zelda games. It
used to be that you could do a horizontal slice by pressing the
attack button without locking on, a vertical slice by locking on and
attacking and a thrust attack by pressing forward and attacking; doing a mixture of those things would result in a lot of different combos.
However this doesn't apply in Breath of the Wild and you'll perform
the same attacks regardless of you locking on or pressing forward. I
suppose the weapon variety makes up for this, but the inclusion of
this combo system would have given the combat slightly more depth.
The bow is now mapped to it's own button which is great because you
can very quickly swap between your close range weapon and long range
weapon or vice-versa. You can also quickly select a new weapon, shield or bow by pressing the d-pad and using the right analogue stick to cycle through the equipment you're carrying. However an annoying issue is that there's no way of quickly dropping items, you should be able to press a button while on this quick select menu to drop the currently highlighted item but instead you have to pause the game and cycle through menus in order to do this. It's not a huge issue but it's one that would have been easily fixed and because of the amount of new gear you find, you'll be bumping into this problem a lot.
This brings me onto my next issue I
have with Breath of the Wild. You spend quite a lot of time in menus
either equipping new clothes, looking at your new weapons or
cooking/eating food. This completely pauses the game and thus
interrupts the flow of what's going on. The menu can be
quite confusing at first and I don't find it to be particularly
intuitive. There's a menu for the inventory, map, picture album,
mission objectives, runes, game settings and most of those also have sub menus. I
feel like it's slightly over bearing and it could be organised in a more straight forward way. You should also be able to
position your inventory items how you want rather than using the
automatic sorting option (which doesn't make much sense with the
clothes and weapon organisation sometimes).
Some of the issues
I've just mentioned would be completely eliminated if the menu was on
the Wii U Gamepad (like in The Wind Waker HD, Twilight
Princess HD and how it was shown to be in preview footage back when
Breath of the Wild was exclusively on the Wii U) and it's extremely
disappointing that this isn't an option. The Wii U Gamepad is only
used to play the game off of the TV screen and has no other functionality. The
reason for this is obviously because the Switch version wouldn't have
this feature due to not being able to use both the TV and the second
screen at the same time and Nintendo don't want the Wii U version of
Breath of the Wild to have functions not available in the Switch
version (effectively making the Wii U version superior). But at the
same time, the Wii U is capable of doing this, and to scrap a
mechanic which would have made the game better just so the two
versions are the same just isn't a very good creative choice.
Generally though the controls are quite good, it took me quite a long time to adjust to them but I think that's because no other game uses this same control structure, if you stick with it you'll get used to it. You also still have the option to aim using the gyroscope controls which I actually preferred in previous Zelda games over using the analogue stick but for some reason in Breath of the Wild it felt a little bit too sensitive and I ended up just using the analogue stick for most of the game.
Generally though the controls are quite good, it took me quite a long time to adjust to them but I think that's because no other game uses this same control structure, if you stick with it you'll get used to it. You also still have the option to aim using the gyroscope controls which I actually preferred in previous Zelda games over using the analogue stick but for some reason in Breath of the Wild it felt a little bit too sensitive and I ended up just using the analogue stick for most of the game.
The sound design in Breath of the Wild is a lot more minimal than
other Zelda games, there's not a lot of music when playing when out
in the open world, but familiar tracks are present in the village and
town areas. This gives the game a more atmospheric feel and this game
proves that the absence of music can be just as powerful as the inclusion of music when it's done properly.
I feel like Breath of the Wild should have had full voice acting. It
has more than any other Zelda game to date has ever had but it's a
bit weird how some characters actually talk and some speak using text
boxes. It gives the impression of a half-hearted attempt to include this feature. It's not like Nintendo couldn't have afforded to hire
voice actors for all the characters either and I find that it takes
me out of the game a little bit when it keeps switching between the
two styles. I hope the next Zelda game goes full on with the voice
acting and just gives everyone speech rather than the unimportant
characters being shoved into the background with text boxes.
The voice acting is generally good but nothing to write home about,
with one notable example being quite bad at times. The voice in
question is Zelda's; I just feel like it's a little bit robotic and
not quite emotional enough, especially during the more intense or
climactic sections. It's not Resident Evil bad but it's also not the
best I've ever heard.
Breath of the Wild is a great game and it's fantastic as a launch
title for the Switch. While it does have several obvious issues such
as the weapon durability, boring boss battles, lack of any real story
development and the removal of substantial dungeon areas, it also has
a lot of extremely positive points; in-particular the well designed
open ended gameplay, incredible graphics, catering to different play styles and also fixing some the issues I've had with past Zelda games.
I look forward to seeing what Nintendo do next with the Zelda series
and you can be sure I'll be there getting the next game on release
like I did with this one. Having said that, I don't think this is the
best Zelda game (that accolade goes to either Twilight Princess or
The Wind Waker in my opinion) but it's different enough to the others
and offers a unique take on the Zelda formula that makes it
impossible to not recommend playing it (if you haven't already).
If you're a fan of open world games, RPGs or Zelda games, you'll have
a really good time with Breath of the Wild. Now it's back to Hyrule to finish all the side quests!
Pros:
- Breath of the Wild is one of few games to do an open world well, the
lack of hand holding and the feeling of exploration is incredible.
- The addition of different weapon types, emphasis on ranged combat
and stealth mechanics caters to quite a few different play styles.
- The graphics are fantastic, the world looks like a vibrant painting
come to life and there's very little slow down or frame drops.
- It's refreshing to see a different take on the Zelda formula, even
if certain design choices are questionable.
- Fixes some of the issues I've had with previous Zelda games (primarily the lack of side quests and having nothing to spend Rupees on).
Cons:
- The story never really goes anywhere and you can guess the ending of
the game after an hour of playing.
- Weapon durability is exaggerated and becomes a hindrance later in the
game, especially if you want to stick to one style of combat.
- Boss battles and main dungeons are quite lackluster and could have
done with a better visual design and more fleshed out gameplay
mechanics.
- No Wii U Gamepad functionality beyond playing the game off the TV.
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