User blog:TyrantRex/TyrantRex's thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Note: This isn't a proper review, but rather my thoughts and opinions on the game!

I recommend listening to this while reading this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln86ud26hhU

Background
If you have a Nintendo Switch, you are required by law to own Breath of the Wild no excuses! ...or at least that's what I'm told. In all honesty I wasn't particularly interested in this game, in fact I wasn't all that interested on the Switch as a whole until Super Mario Odyssey came out.

If I recall on my Ocarina of Time blog I said that while I liked the game it didn't exactly sell me of the franchise and I never liked open-world games. But one day I saw a used copy for $40, given that the regular price for Switch games is around $90 here no joke so I simply couldn't pass the chance.

The Game
I have a feeling that this game was Nintendo's attempt to make people take them more seriously and appeal to fans of open-world games. And given the Switch's ludicrous early sales, I think they succeeded at that. In fact my older brother just from watching me play a few times already called it better than Skyrim and Asassin's Creed, and he only watched like 5% of my playthrough.

The story of the game is about what you'd expect from Nintendo, "Bad guy is being evil go save the princess". Sure there's the whole backstory with the Divine Beasts but all of it feels like side stuff, though this has to do with how the game is structured. People say the game is completely open to the point that you can go to Ganon immediately after finishing the tutorial which is %100 true, if you want you can just ignore all the main objectives, quests, ect. and just focus on preparing for Ganon, meaning you can potentially beat the game without ever seeing any of the story past "Go kill Ganon".

This level of freedom in "Do whatever you want" is the main thing about this game everyone praised the most. I however, found it to be my biggest problem with the game, and is the reason I never liked open-world games in the first place. When I play a game I like to always stay focused on the main objective at all times, I almost always ignore every sidequest or minor stuff in the way, I prefer leaving them for until after I beat the final boss. Problem is, this kind of goes against the very nature of Breath of the Wild.

Breath of the Wild wants you to slow down and take your time getting distracted with all the small stuff you find on this massive world, go explore secrets, do sidequests, etc. I don't want to get distracted with all this stuff, I want to move on and stay focused on the main quest. This becomes a bigger problem because in order for the game to let you "do whatever you want", it almost completely loses track of the main objective, sure you're given markers on the map where the objective is, but never any concrete direction on what you're supposed to do next, and that's because everything is technically optional.

I honestly don't like this, I had to constantly check walkthroughs so I didn't get constantly lost. I know this just a me problem but I never really found the big appeal in just exploring for the sake of exploration, if I go for 40 minutes exploring the land but never find or do anything related to the main goal I feel like those 40 minutes went to waste. The only sidequest I did was getting the Master Sword and only because I knew it's very helpful for boss fights. That being said however, WHEN I'm on the right track, it's a completely different story. Basically, there are two main objectives besides killing Ganon: Find Shrines and save the four Divine Beasts.

The Shrines are literally mini-dungeons scattered all over the game world, each focuses on a main puzzle type with some being minibosses. Every time you beat a Shrine you get a Spirit Orb, you can trade four of those for either an extra Heart or increasing your Stamina meter. know I said I don't like getting distracted with side stuff, Shrines however are the exception, I absolutely loved doing these shrines, they're fun and you're properly rewarded for completing them by making you stronger over time. It also helps that their orange glow makes them easy to spot and keep track of wher ethey are I Finished the game with 52 Shrines beat, I probably could've done some more but by then I felt I had more than enough health to go face Ganon.

The Divine Beasts on the other hand are what I consider "the main quest", and it's an excellent quest. Story wise they all play out the exact same only with different characters, which again makes sense given that you can face them in any order and all are optional so none can be given more attention than another because you could potentially skip them. I like that the Beasts once again properly reward you for going after them, each time you beat one of them you get a power-up and each Beast will make the final boss easier. The powerups are very useful and if all Beasts are saved Ganon starts with half of his health gone. Personally I recommend going after the giant bird first, the powerup you get from it is by far the best one and makes climbing SO MUCH easier.

The main reason I liked the Divine Beasts quests is that when you start them you're given way more clear instructions and direction on what to do, which is exactly what I wanted. Another great thing, was the beasts themselves, looking at those giant mechs was amazing, then getting inside the Beasts and more or less rebooting them followed by a boss was great. The Beasts themselves are basically the main dungeons in the game, they're short lived but all were excellent and by far my favorite parts of the game.

The Divine Beasts in my opinion really show how much as a player you progress. The first Divine Beast I faced was REALLY hard, mainly because Link was still rather weak and didn't have any decent weapons at the time, the dungeon was tough and the boss killed me countless times. However every Beast after that I felt more and more confident and every time I struggled less and not just because Link was also getting stronger with each Beast. By the time I decided I was ready for Ganon I was fully confident and prepared for what was coming. In a weird way I think this fits with how Link is supposed to represent the player

So yeah... how do I summarize my opinion on Breath of the Wild? Weirdly enough, it's the exact same as my opinion towards Ocarina of Time. I said that my favorite parts of Ocarina of Time were the dungeons and didn't care much for the stuff in between, the same happened with BotW, I enjoy the game the most when playing Shrines and hunting Divine Beasts and more or less ignored all the rest. I put a total of 37 hours into BotW, that's the longest I've spent on a first playthrough in any non-RPG game ever, normally I have a problem with games being too long but that didn't happen with this game.

That being said, I'm STILL not sold on open-world games, heck the game being open world was my biggest issue with it. Kind of like how Ocarina of Time didn't sell me on Zelda despite liking the game, weird.