Note: I've kept largely away from spoilers this time, but if you're sensitive to even the smallest of spoilers, don't read this, PLAY IT! You won't regret it.
Contrary to what you may infer if you've never played the original Legend of Zelda, it is not a flawless masterpiece. The game is rife with translation errors, opaque solutions, and odd difficulty spikes. You are guaranteed to at some point (more than likely at several points) require a guide. It is one of the most important games ever created, and started a franchise that is as beloved as it is contentious amongst its disciples, but Christ is it flawed. One of the most important things it did was create a sense of wonder and exploration rarely (if ever) seen in games at the time. It was easy to get lost in the game's Hyrule Kingdom, now plagued with monsters and formidable dungeons. There was a non-linearity to how the game progressed, allowing for dungeons to be attacked in a different order (although there is some sense of an intended order). The wonder and openness of the original Zelda is something still rarely seen in games (even in the age of open world fatigue), and it wouldn't be seen truly in another Zelda title until Breath of the Wild.
The game starts with Link waking up after a century long sleep in an abandoned tomb of ancient technology where he was healed of lethal wounds sustained in his and Zelda's first attempts at ridding the kingdom of Gannon. In his century long slumber, Hyrule has gone to a near post-apocalyptic standard before finally starting to see some kind of recovery. When Link exits the tomb, he finds himself on the Great Plateau. It has been talked about at length, but I have to agree: the Great Plateau is one of the greatest starting areas of any game, ever. The area acts as a microscopic version of the entire game, with frosty mountains, forest, ruins, and plains. The plateau is populated with wild boar, squirrels, pig-like enemies called bokoblins, and the formidable guardians who are extremely difficult to kill this early in the game. You are given the chance to learn about different enemy types, hunting, and the temperature system in a nice, pocketed area before being let go in the expansive wilds of Hyrule (and I do mean expansive). Here, you bump into an old man who directs you to the four shrines on the plateau and tells you if you complete them he will give you his glider so you can survive the massive drop on the plateau's edge, where you're free to explore the massive map of Hyrule. Going through these shrines gives you one of four tools and a spirit orb. The spirit orb acts as your level up currency, where four can be traded in to a Hylia goddess statue for either a health upgrade or a stamina upgrade. The four tools are all of your tools for the entire game. Zelda, like Metroid, has traditionally locked areas and content behind the acquisition of more tools. Breath of the Wild's largest breaking of the Zelda mold is by doing away with this structuring, something arguably key to the Zelda series and its identity. I won't pretend I don't miss the Zelda progression structure, but getting rid of it is absolutely imperative to why this game is so freeing and open.
Found in the four shrines you get a magnesis tool which allows you to pick up and move metal objects, a stasis tool that allows you to freeze things in time temporarily and allowing you to hit the object and stack hits to rocket the object away, bombs in both round and square variations (finally no longer a collected item and regenerating after a few seconds), and cryonis which allows you to create a pillar of ice out of any water source. Because of this, dungeons are largely nonexistent and instead replaced with shrines. Shrines act as small puzzles - usually having to do with the physics systems - or combat trials that reward you with a spirit orb once completed. There are 120 shrines in the game, sometimes hidden behind puzzles themselves. There are dungeons in the traditional sense, but only four of them and much smaller than previous games and with a similar theme. This becomes the trade off for the entire game: tradition for openness and flexibility. To be sure, this is not going to rub all players the right way, but Breath of the Wild creates such a unique experience I can't help but think it is justified. Using magnesis to create a seesaw or a bridge to a blocked off area when the game wasn't intending me to do so was incredibly rewarding. Stasis could be abused by freezing a climbable object, hitting it several times, jumping onto it, and rocketing yourself away. These tools allowed for a sandbox feel akin to the gravity gun in Half-Life 2.
Particularly, these tools allow you to play with the so called "chemistry system". The chemistry system is a way in which all different rules of the game are allowed to interact with each other. For example, steel objects create sparks when hit against flint, and also conduct electricity. This means starting a fire is as easy as dropping some firewood next to some flint and hitting it with your steel sword. It also means that you can utilize your steel sword in a lightening storm by using magnesis to throw it into a crowd of enemies to attract a lightening strike. In one of the shrines, instead of solving the electric puzzle by finding and collecting all of the different metal objects, I simply threw down a large portion of my steel weapons in my inventory and chained them together to unlock the door. This freedom of creativity is amazing. Sure, the game can be virtually broken by these systems, but that is part of the intoxicating fun of the whole experience. Another feature in the chemistry system is temperature. When things get too hot or too cold (such as in the desert or mountains, respectively), there are multiple ways of dealing with the debuffs (mostly taking damage over time). You can cook a meal with particular buffs, drink an elixir, change your clothing, or hold a fire enchanted weapon or ice enchanted weapon to heat you up or cool you down. You can even take a wooden sword, swipe it through fire, and take your homemade torch as a portable heater. Your glider can get in on the action as well by utilizing updrafts from burning fires which can change the way a battle plays out if you or your enemy has been using copious amounts of explosives or fire arrows. A quick jump over the fire and you can take out your glider, be thrust in the air, and utilize your vantage point for a quick succession of arrows. I never felt like I ran out of options to try in the entire 70+ hours I played.
One of the most impressive mechanics in the game is the climbing mechanic. Link can climb nearly any surface so long as he has the stamina to manage it, which can be leveled up to ludicrous degrees. The game, again, is nearly broken with this mechanic, but it never gets in the way of the fun. There were numerous times through my play through where, if I was making my way through a ravine full of enemies, I'd climb the stone walls and circumvent particularly dense clusters of enemies (maybe shooting a few cheeky bomb arrows down to create some disarray). Being able to look along the horizon and know that anything on it can be climbed over is one of the most liberating feelings I've ever felt in a video game, and indulging that desire is so often rewarded with strange sights, odd secrets, or even just the tame puzzle or two that it never gets old or feels like a promise the game isn't ready to keep.
It is becoming trite to keep saying this, so let's call the game what it is and get it over with: the game is a near masterpiece. Of recent games, I cannot think of many I would categorize the same. To be sure, it isn't without its faults. The plot, for instance, leaves a lot to be desired. The set up is great: waking to find the ruins of Hyrule, your only real objective is to find Zelda (who is holding Gannon at bay in Hyrule castle) and finish the beast off. You are able to find several memories by going to locations in which they happened, where you are told the nonlinear and incomplete story of princess Zelda's pathos with her destiny, something she hasn't lived up to nearly as well as Link. The dissonance between the two (and Zelda's harbored resentment towards Link) is palpable, and an interesting dynamic I wish had been fleshed out more.
But ambiguity in this game also lends it an air of realism and of excavation. You are piecing together fragments of a world a hundred years gone at this point, trying to remember people you've forgotten and whose legacy has been distorted following your perceived demise. And it isn't just you piecing things together: the world is rebuilding before your eyes. It's actually something contradictory in the story that, while you are trying to end the apocalyptic reign of Gannon (more like "presence" as he isn't really reigning over anything), the people of Hyrule are rebuilding and communities are beginning to prosper. You hear about a lot of despair walking around Hyrule, but you rarely actually see it. I struggled to properly understand this, because it really does seem like an oversight, but considering the work as a whole work that is saying something regardless of true intention, we can conclude something quite uplifting: the world was never waiting for Link. Sure, Gannon could at any moment come and end the world as they know it, and that is a definite fear they feel, but it doesn't bring life to a halt. People progress, societies continue to grow, and you get to witness it first hand. My favorite quest in the entire game is the side quest for Tarrey Town. In this quest, you are tasked with gathering supplies, workers, and different people of each of the cultures around Hyrule so a small town in one of the eastern regions can be built. The town is the only town in the game evenly made up of the different sentient species of the kingdom, and acts as a symbolic microcosm of the entire plot and themes of the game: those of a world in disarray and segregation learning to accept outside cultures and unite as a single people. It was fulfilling, and it left me awed.
There is an insane amount of stuff to talk about in this game, from the horse taming system to the cooking system, the breakable items to the korok seeds - I can't possibly cover them all concisely, and I shouldn't. I've largely kept away from spoilers this entire review because no matter your opinions on Zelda, you need to play this game. It is one of the greatest of the decade, and maybe the greatest Zelda game ever made.
10
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