LogFAQs > #968972514

BotW review

Haven't written a big gamefaqs style review before but I feel like doing it.

This game came at a time where Zelda was getting stale. After OoT, nothing really made a huge success. MM was widely beloved but didn't really go mainstream, WW was hatred at start and only became a cult classic later, TP received mixed reactions for either being too similar to OoT or its gimmicks like twilight realm being annoying, SS wasn't very liked either, and the portables don't really carry the series even if they are good.

At a time, I read some articles from people who really liked the NES zeldas and thought modern zeldas sucked, for their bigger focus on puzzles and dialogue and less on combat and exploration. So when BotW was compared to Zelda 1, I was intrigued. I did like modern zeldas, and Zelda 1 is somewhere in the middle of my list, but I felt like this game had the potential to unlock some hidden forgotten magic from the 80s that could make the series popular in the mainstream again.

Oh boy how right I was. It's not the same game as Zelda 1, of course. This is 3D and 30 years younger. But it also sold like crazy, and it does capture some of the spirit of Zelda 1. The lack of order to do anything. How much of the content is optional and players aren't expected to do everything. The higher difficulty of combat. The feeling of exploring a hostile land. BotW is so different, so ambitious and so expansive it's like they refounded the series. There is Zelda before and after BotW. it came during the era of open world WRPGs, learned some things from them and expanded the formula even beyond that (or so I am told, I don't really play WRPGs).

Playing this game is magical. That's just the way I can describe it. Everything about it is just so fun. I love gliding over hyrule, raiding enemy camps, looking for shrines, stopping to find koroks (I got about 20% of them, and I don't need more than that, but the ones I found were a load of fun). Switch says I clocked 135 hours at this. It feels like much longer though, because those hours were so intense. I immersed myself in this, for two and a half months, playing almost every day, wanting to go home from work to play it more. Exploring the huge map felt daunting at first, but then I started getting lost in Dueling Peaks, Hateno and Lanayru and it just started flowing naturally. I'd move randomly in the map and check for different places, and almost always find something new. People who say this map is empty are blind. There is stuff everywhere. You can't walk on a straight line for 1 minute without getting distracted.

Link being able to jump and climb changes everything. The world is your playground. Heights were such an easy way to constraint the player in previous zeldas, now only shrines and divine beasts do that. Everywhere else, you are limited by your stamina bar and your curiosity, and the former can be avoided a number of ways. This makes the exploration almost addicting, you want to climb everything and go everywhere, because you can.

The combat is so good I'm not sure if I can even come back to other 3D zeldas. The actual weapon control is about the same as before, but enemies are beefier and tougher. However, you get near infinite options to compensate for Link's physical and numerical disadvantage. Abuse elemental weapons to stun key enemies, fly and shoot in slow motion, use stealth, snipe, use runes, blow up powder kegs. Even late in the game I was still getting creative, and still using mipha's graces because I got careless or made mistakes.

This game tries to be realistic, to its benefit but also detriment. The benefits come from the myriad of physical interactions between people and objects, and all the different hazards that didn't exist before. Sometimes those hazards get too unfun, though. The biggest offender to me is climbing during the rain. It's just unfun, and lacking of a way to counter besides Revali's Gale. It shouldn't have gotten through playtesting. Weapon breaking is the next one, it's not nearly as bad as some people online made it out to be, because the game gives you so many weapons it becomes an annoyance instead of a hindrance. But it's an annoyance that didn't need to exist with this intensity. I feel like some more flexibility should have been given, like repairing weapons, or buying them from shops (the lack of weapon shops is so weird) or crafting them. It's like Nintendo decided variety was good and they made a system that cornered the player and forced them to pursue weapon variety, however it is so extreme the player ends up not pursuing anything, just using whatever weapons the game decides they have to use now.

It does offer a delicious selection of weapons, though. There are 3 main types, but also elemental variations, wood and metal versions, guardian weapons and things like boomerangs. This is enough to mix and match weapon properties and have a lot of decisions to make during combat, provided you have paid enough visits to Hetsu. You will have to learn to be detatched and improvise with what the game gives, but coupled with the creative combat options, this improvisation will be very fun.