Breath of the Wild Is there any controversy with calling this the most impactful Nintendo title in modern memory? It's the bombshell that sprung from a series with a near unparalleled combination of mass market appeal and intense devotion. And unflinchingly hammered away vast chunks of the structure its predecessors had spent decades building. In some cases uncovering remnants of a past long forgotten and in others something else entirely. I can comfortably say that Breath of the Wild is the greatest single player experience I've had in many years and currently sits as my favorite single player video game, competing only with a super smash brother series for my favorite game of all time. It's also a deeply flawed experience crafted by a development team which bit off more than they could chew, the stretched, unstable bones of its harsh growth, creaking loudly beneath the surface. So I know this introduction isn't exactly subtle. It's a long video and the first one for me in this style and it's fair to give you clear expectations before you commit to watching it. I've got strong opinions about Breath of the Wild, both good and bad and I'm not going to make any attempts to be objective because I generally find analyses that embrace subjectivity both more interesting and more accurate. As a quick example, I like to be rewarded for my efforts in adventure games. I'm very extrenzically motivated as opposed to the intrinsic desire for a gameplay as its own reward. So a steady stream of interesting items and upgrades makes a big improvement to my experience. As we'll explore later, I'm not a big fan of a lot of Breath of the Wild's reward structure. And rather than trying to take a hypothetical position right in the middle of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, I'm simply going to write how I feel. In this case more negatively, that's what I mean when I talk about accuracy, it's not some kind of fixed truth, but it is a viewpoint that creator actually holds as opposed to having to try to manufacture one. This means that the upbeat, congratulatory watch some of you clicked on expecting isn't always going to happen and sometimes it will. Like I said, I enjoy the game overall, but please set your expectations accordingly. While I like Breath of the Wild, I won't be treating it as an object of reverence. This video is divided into discrete sections, which I've included timestamps for in the description, but fair warning, you'll get the most out of this if you watch it start to finish at your own pace. To some extent, the sections do build on top of each other and you'll be missing bits of context if you skip around too much. Apart from the obligatory spoiler warning, I think that about wraps things up. Let's begin. Beginning on a surface level, Breath of the Wild is a gorgeous game to look at. The 3D legend of Zelda titles have never been afraid to experiment with considerably different art directions, moving from a hampered but earnest attempt to emulate at the time contemporary Japanese anime stylings in Ocarina of Time and its direct sequel Majora's Mask, to the whimsical characters and a vibrant cell shading of the Windwaker, to a semi-realistic approach for Twilight Princess, to the overt impressionist painting inspiration scene in Skyward Sword. Breath of the Wild comes across as a distillation of the strongest elements of all the previous 3D Zelda stylings, which could easily be taken as a step backwards compared to the developers previous willingness to explore new artistic visions in some cases radically new, but I can't feel too strongly along those lines when the end result is this pleasant to look at. It also ties cleanly into the game's overall universe, which likewise serves as an amalgamation of the entire Zelda canon. Humans seem like a blend between the hero of Time titles, Twilight Princess, and Skyward Sword, the latter two of which also carried over some of their digital overtones alongside part of Skyward Sword's painted aesthetic. And the entire thing is rendered in the Windwaker's distinctive cell shading. Link himself is wonderfully designed and animated, coming as close to the expressiveness of the Windwaker's incarnation as this more grounded model will allow for a while simultaneously having much more balanced facial features than his last-outing in Skyward Sword. Other highlights include the various Zelda fantasy races, which were previously a collection of mostly identical creatures that somewhat fit within the bounds of suspension of disbelief, but certainly came across as very artificial and video gamey. One of the wild takes a huge step forward in this regard by providing varied models for members of the same species. This is most striking for the Zora, who now pull from sea creatures ranging from hammerhead sharks to whales, but we see a similar approach with the variety of bird inspirations seen on their reto, which previously looked very human with a lot of heavily repeated models. The Gerudo and the Gorons are based on humans and boulders respectively, so don't have nearly the same degree of flexibility on their base models, but they're still an impressive array of clothing, hair styles, and other differentiating factors between them that's traditionally mostly been reserved for highly-ins in previous outings. There may have been a bit more room to differentiate the Gorons by having them based on various types of stone, but there's also something to be said about the simple designs for their simple society, and I wouldn't be surprised if this was an idea the art department experimented with and ultimately discarded. The end result is still a very strong take on these characters. I'd say the same about the enemies in the game, a collection of extremely expressive and easy to read opponents, particularly the core group of pacoblins, moblins, and lasalphos. Their range of behaviors has been greatly expanded from previous games, which will go more into later, making their body language exceptionally important. These gangled designs with long snows and bent backs make it very easy to tell where they're looking as well as distinguish intent, and the generally large heads also facilitate the new era-week point they now suffer from, making these designs very strong mechanically as well as artistically, as well implemented as these models are, however, and enormous factor in the games aesthetic appeal is that this isn't to reintroduce self-shading to the series, and we can see just how much this adds if we look at a mod that turns it off. Self-shading is a lighting style that simplifies what would normally be realistic color gradients down into large, discrete chunks, similar to how you would color with a set of felt pens. It's a popular technique to emulate hand animation because the approach those animators take is similar. Complicated gradients and textures are usually prohibitively difficult and time-consuming to carry across frames, so the likewise be condensed into solid blocks. In fact, the name cell shading comes from the celluloid sheets animators drew on before computers changed the process. The windwaker was meant to look like a children's card to him brought to life, so cell shading was an actual choice, and because breath of the wild also drew inspiration from hand animation, Miyazaki films in this case, the return to cell shading was a good fit. In addition to obviously pulling inspiration from the series' previous loading, the parameters between the two games aren't exactly the same. Breath of the wild's algorithm seems a bit more relaxed, so models tend to have more individual colors on them, but the overall clarity the style provides still comes through very strongly. When combined with other aspects of the art direction, like heavily exaggerated particle effects and stylized but easily recognizable models, Breath of the Wild features a world that still somewhat grounded in reality, while also allowing for some of the same whimsical atmosphere the windwaker's hyper simplistic direction brought to the table. This was very intentional, with a developer specifically citing Link's cooking as two cartoonish for a realistic art style, but the windwaker as two cartoonish to intuitively convey Breath of the Wild's new physics and chemistry systems. Again, I respect Nintendo's willingness to consistently reinvent all those visual design, but if this were to be the game that solidified something of a consistent look for the series moving forward, I think I'd be okay with that. Not only does it work in a wide array of contexts, but it also sets up Breath of the Wild's visuals to age very gracefully, something I don't think any of the other 3D titles outside of the windwaker have fully accomplished. Audio design is also dripping with the trademark polish the series's known for, which isn't to say that it sounds like the previous Zelda titles. In fact, I'd say this is the one that most boldly differentiate itself from its 3D peers, in stark contrast to its middle-ground art style. A large part of this comes down to the game's music, both in terms of composition and implementation. Breath of the Wild focuses heavily on piano, a decision that would be fairly mundane if not for the fact that Zelda games have never done this before. Well-known piano compositions certainly have appeared in previous games, but there's typically been a far higher emphasis on orchestral brass, wind, and strings. This is particularly noticeable in its overall theme, perhaps the most enduring composition in any installment in the series. The Legend of Zelda unit versely features a majestic, upbeat tune during the World Travel, from the game you've actually been listening to, Ocarina of Times Land, to Windwaker's Sea, to Skyward Sword's Sky, and even Majora's Mask and Twilight Princess, the aesthetically darkest Zelda games still follow this convention. In comparison, here's Breath of the Wild's Overworld theme. Previously comforting landmarks lie in ruin, their inhabitants long dead, and most of the land is controlled by fearsome monsters and machines, presided over by the embodiment of hatred itself. Breath of the Wild is definitively presented in a post-apocalyptic setting, and yet while it certainly looks the part, it doesn't sound apocalyptic. A full century has passed since the great calamity, and the world's remaining inhabitants have had time to adjust to a new way of life. Many of them never having known anything else. Civilization, while scaled back, has largely returned to a delicate order, with roaming monsters and robots just another danger to consider during your travels, and the castle yet one more place that sensible people have void, and outside of its primary quest, the game largely regards the Apocalypse through the same lens as its inhabitants. History, the Apocalypse serves as a catalyst for the actual focus of the game throughout most of a typical playthrough, that of course being the wilderness that's risen to reclaim these crumbled societies, and the music differs to the sounds of this wilderness at every opportunity. Wind gently wrestles the grass, unseen birds chirping their nests, a muffled hum marks the presence of a fierce waterfall around the corner. Environmental sounds certainly aren't a concept unique to Breath of the Wild, but they're in a immaculate form here, and even the already-sparse music isn't afraid to drop away entirely, leaving nothing but the tranquil atmosphere of a world unconcerned with heroism, destiny, or malice. This tranquility for the player is interrupted every time it's interrupted for a link, but even in these cases it tends towards a gentle or interruption than we've typically seen, galloping on horseback creates playful, dancing piano twinkling rather than the expected fanfare. Village score is blend into the background, and dynamically shifts to even more subdued variants at night. Even the overall detanger theme takes a long time to build momentum, rather than risk shattering the player's immersion if they're simply passing a group of enemies by. To be sure, the game does have its dramatic moments. Climactic story encounters feel appropriately epic. The world's mini bosses brazenly announce their presence, and the guardians are accompanied by bizarre, distorted piano loops that invoke an almost digital feeling, especially effective when juxtapose against the stillness of a forest or field, and hammering home the twisted nature of these machines, and just how on welcome and unnatural they are in this environment. Sound design is excellent across the board in other areas as well, from the satisfying ping of a critical hit. To the friendly confirmation of a collected item, the voice work in the game, the first time the legend of Zelda has utilized full voice acting, has been a sticking point for a lot of people, but I'll save my thoughts there for when we dive into the story and characters. And overall, I think few people would have trouble praising the majority of Breath of the Wild's visual and audio aesthetic. While any still image of the game looks great, however, it's unfortunately far less impressive in motion. The visual style Nintendo went with fits the direction of the game, and is very pleasant to look at, but it was also clearly chosen to reduce performance strains on the hardware, associating is generally less demanding to render than photo realistic lighting, and the cartoonish art direction allows models with reduced polygon counts and simpler textures to still look like they're being rendered as intended. In fact, if you look for it, it's easy to spot just how low the polygon count on these models actually are. For comparison, Link's character model, the most important one in the game is made from about 12,000 triangles, whereas A-Loi from Horizon Zero Dawn, another open world game released in the same year, has hair made from 100,000 triangles. Despite Nintendo's efforts, however, Breath of the Wild's performance is still very far below the curve. Whether the base of 30 frames per second is acceptable or not, we'll have to be judged on an individual level. I'm personally not bothered by it, but in areas with a lot of meshes, effects, or reggauff physics on the screen at one time, it can dip well below this. Extremely unfortunate to see in a flagship title. Framemates are a bit more steady when in handheld mode, and if Nintendo provided the option to output the docked version of the game in the handheld resolution, I would probably take it. Zelda games typically have notoriously poor options menus though, and while Breath of the Wild provides a slight upgrade compared to previous outings, it's still very bare bones overall. The performance issues of the hardware also had a noticeable impact on at least one aspect of the art style I just praised, that being the game's shadows. Dynamic shadows are far more obnoxious and resource intensive to render than you might expect, which means they're often one of the first sacrifices when trying to get a game to stop chugging. In the early days of 3D gaming, you could just plop a circle into your character and hope no one noticed. But nowadays, that typically means reducing your shadows resolution, which Breath of the Wild very noticeably does. A lot of games suffer from this too some degree, and Switch games in particular, but Breath of the Wild is an especially jarring example because of how much optimization was needed as well as Associating's Bockey Colors exacerbating the effect. In Moment Moment gameplay, this generally isn't too noticeable, but it is very distracting in some cutscenes in particular. None of this is enough to spoil the game, and the same can be said for the poorly disguised assets whopping in the otherwise seamless world-loading or some fairly jarring pop-in, but it is certainly enough to make you wish that Breath of the Wild was running on more powerful hardware. Nintendo generally does an admirable job making games that feel well suited for the console they're running on, but that doesn't apply here. The ability to play in handheld mode is very good, but even here, with the exception of the less reliable D-pad, this game is far better suited for the Pro Controller. Of course, that doesn't mean that developers shouldn't have pursued this concept, and this isn't even a criticism of the Switch. It's reduced hardware specifications where a calculated sacrifice for the sake of benefits in other areas. It's more of an unfortunate set of circumstances, with no one particular factor to fully point the blame at. This is to say nothing of the Wii U's performance either, which is by all accounts even worse, although I haven't played this version myself to confirm this. Even on the Switch, the frame rate is poor enough to be a periodically occurring problem, but the draw distance isn't almost constant problem. Towers, shrines, and landscapes will always be visible regardless of distance, but this does not apply to many other major gameplay elements like enemies and treasure. Materializing foliage is ultimately fairly harmless even if it looks bad, but in a game centered around scoping out your path across vast stretches of terrain, and which gives you the ability to glide high above that terrain, the emission of gameplay altering elements from your view can have a significant detriment on gameplay. On the topic of which, we've discussed how the game looks, sounds, and runs, so let's get into how it plays. Dropping the player into a large world and telling them to go explore it was the core idea behind the original legend of Zelda, an idea that's been continuously eroded over the years. Nintendo has blatantly cited this game as their primary inspiration for Breath of the Wild, and while the inspiration certainly bleeds through, that's not to say the game's share identical structures or mechanics, or in many instances even particularly similar ones. That guiding line of player agency was always there for the developers to follow, though, as becomes apparent only moments into the game. We begin with a very short cutscene that provides the minimal context necessary. Link is asleep, a mysterious voice tells him to wake up, he's in a futuristic bath next to a pedestal he should probably go look at. It's not directly stated at this point that Link is suffering from amnesia, but he's clearly in an unfamiliar environment, which provides more than enough justification to guide the player through the same unfamiliarity. This opening lasts for about two minutes, after which you're given control of Link. Reasonably brief, especially compared to the last few 3D outings from the series, but still feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to provide a first impression to the player about the type of game this is going to be, a freedom focused experience with inspiration from the original legend of Zelda, which drops you into a multi-pathed field immediately. On the other hand, the flow of this opening has obviously been meticulously considered to the degree that booting up the game launches straight into this cutscene rather than a menu, and it would also be the grand opening of Nintendo Switch for a lot of people. It works well on its own, right? So I can't understand whether developers would include it and not opt to make it skippable. It is skippable in subsequent playthroughs, but only if you're willing to overwrite your existing save file, as Breath of the Wild doesn't support multiple saves at once. In any case, it won't be long until the game's design philosophy reveals itself. And after a short section that makes sure you understand the shika slate and basic inventory and world navigation, including the new climbing mechanic, you arrive on that iconic shot of links staring across high rule, and my god, this is how you hook a player. I avoided full gameplay demos prior to the game's release, meaning the shot wasn't spoiled for me ahead of time, and it was one of the most visceral emotional responses I've had not just to a video game, but to any form of media. Even after playing through Breath of the Wild multiple times, I always look forward to this moment, as well as the following gameplay on the great plateau. Before you're able to explore the vast world you've just been shown, you're required to complete a reasonably lengthy tutorial section that has you plundering the first four of the game's many shrines, collecting the majority of shika slate ruins you'll be using over the course of your adventure, and completing the first few of the game's story beats, culminating in the first of many choices between another heart of health or an upgrade to the stamina meter, and finally the paraglider and an exit into the world as a whole. It would be reasonable to find Breath of the Wild's lengthy tutorial section disappointing considering its focus on player agency. However, the blow is softened by the tutorial A, being very well designed, arguably even the best part of the game, and B, providing a good amount of player agency within its confines. As soon as you take back control of Link, you're presented with an obvious path to go down, which provides a basic weapon, a few bits of health restoring food, including some that reinforce the importance of the climbing mechanic, a boulder that you can push if you notice it, and your first campfire and a bit of story with the old man, who also has a baked apple lying next to the flame, a hint at the elemental interactions you'll be exploiting, while this path is very strongly directed, and I'd imagine the vast majority of players choose to follow it, you're never forced to do any of this, and do have the option of simply scaling down the cliff, and immediately running off to activate your first tower, although it is mandatory to do this before heading to the forest shrine scattered across the plateau, and it's also mandatory to complete all of these, and collect the paraglider from the old man before setting off into the world of Hyrule proper. This feels to me like a very reasonable middle ground, less free from than the original Zelda, but a very long way from Twilight Princesses and Forest Fishing. That said, the excuse the game provides for keeping you here is extremely contrived. The old man tells you that trying to jump off the great plateau without a paraglider would result in your death, and barring the glitch that allows you to survive fall damage by swapping items close to the ground, he's absolutely right. The obvious catch is that Link can climb in this game, and it's absolutely possible to descend on the cliffside in a way that would avoid fall death, so this excuse really doesn't hold up under even casual scrutiny. The player is trained right from the very start of the game to look for climbable surfaces, so many of them are undoubtedly going to attempt to get off the great plateau this way, and they'll be rewarded for their efforts by an immersion-breaking fog that inexplicably makes Link slip, and vanishes the moment he gets the paraglider. Again, no explanation provided. It's not a huge deal, but it is a very arbitrary restriction in a game that generally tries hard to avoid this pitfall, and would have been very easy to write around. Say the plateau is surrounded by the purple mist of Ganon's corruption, and put here specifically to try and contain Link. The old man has some last bit of power that's able to clear it, but doing so will alert Ganon, so he's waiting until Link proves he's recovered enough to begin his real quest. This would even help the rest of the story, which, as we'll see later on, feels maybe a bit convenient. Everything is starting to go wrong, all at once, right as Link wakes up, but we're never really given a justification why. It could be interpreted that Ganon did know about Link, and that's what set events in motion, Zelda seemed to know he'd returned. Oh, yeah, that mysterious voice was Zelda, by the way. What a twist. But making this more concrete would be an improvement. There are a lot of ways you could justify being trapped here for a bit, but the one intent of went with is kind of lame. At least it's goal of forcing you to stay on the plateau as worthwhile, since after activating the tower, prompted by Zelda regardless of whether you choose to engage with the old man the first time, he will appear now, and task you with completing your first four shrines in exchange for a paraglider, which are also where you'll obtain the majority of your shika slate rooms. You're strongly pointed towards the main nieces shrine, although again, you're free to do them in any order, where you'll acquire the room, learn what it does, in this case lift metal objects, and put it to use in a series of tasks. In order to pass this shrine, you need to learn how to move objects out of your way that they can collide with other objects, as well as their ability to create pathways for the player, with secondary lessons about using main nieces in combat and to collect treasure chests. Each of the other starter shrines is structured in a similar way. Bombs are now a permanent room instead of a collectible item, and their shrine requires you to destroy fragile stone, differentiate between round and flat bombs, at least that's what I think this platform is meant to test, although it's absolutely not required, and introduces the basics of pipes and launchers, as well as primed you to watch out for hidden treasure. Stasis is an interesting one that allows you to temporarily freeze an object in time, as well as build up momentum during the period while it's frozen, both of which are tested in the room shrine, and then we have cryonus, which spawn solid ice blocks out of water. These blocks can be climbed and used to lift objects, and you also have an opportunity to discover their shielding possibilities against long-ranged enemies. I've been speaking like many of the objectives in these shrines aren't extremely easy to bypass in other ways, which they are, but this really only serves to reward experience or cleverness while keeping the tutorial aspect of the shrines intact for less grizzled players. These rooms add considerably to the number of ways Link has to interact with Breath of the Wild's new real-time physics and chemistry systems, fantastic additions that could easily have formed the core gimmick of a new Zelda title and which I hope never leave the series. There's an incredible sense of sense that work behind these systems, they make so much sense and feel so natural that it's easy to forget just how much work would have gone into bringing them to life. Throw fire at something flammable, it burns, balloons lift objects, which can then be pushed by wind. If a blade hits a tree, that tree comes down. These effects are obviously stylized to the point of absurdity, electricity on metal doesn't literally work like this, but while the input output relationships in this universe may be exaggerated, there's still close enough parallels to hours to make them feel extremely logical and painless to predict, even though I'm sure that implementing and polishing these interactions from a development stand point wasn't painless at all. Are there small details that could be addressed? Absolutely. Ice melts too slowly for example, and while more fire will speed this process up, you're now being forced to choose between your in-game resources and your real-world time. Not the only instance where the game tosses this kind of choice at you and not a choice you should ever have to make. It's ultimately a fairly minor gripe though and doesn't significantly detract from the system. The runes tie into this fairly cleanly, their mandatory use throughout the game isn't as fleshed out as I'd like, since they're not usually interwoven with more than one other mechanic at any time, but their individual abilities are still well-defined and more powerful than might be expected at a glance. A few basic examples would include the ability to ride objects in stasis and extremely addictive bit of gameplay or bomb yourself for some extra airtime. These chests in the sludge are clearly intended to be collected by using magnesium to make a bridge as they're located right outside that shrine, but are actually possible to collect with any of the starting rooms, or, again, just by shield jumping. In previous Zelda games, this would probably be something you need to remember the location up for later, then return after you'd unlock the specific item. The theme of an intended solution with room for creativity will be a lingering one over the course of the game, and it's extremely refreshing to see and greatly distinguishes breath of the wild from its predecessors, although as we'll explore later, it does come with its own issues. The quest for these runes sends you all across the great plateau, which has been designed to mimic much of the full world on a smaller scale, meaning that you'll be climbing cliffs, braving the cold, fighting enemies, collecting treasure, and overall getting a fairly strong sense of what to expect after you leave. Mostly taught through Feeform gameplay with an incredibly restrained guiding hand by Zelda standards, going so far as to remove the persistent companion character that's been a staple of the series since Ocarina of Time. The old man and Zelda's voice do pop in once in a while to provide some rough guidance, including for optional lessons on techniques such as tree felling, and Zelda will continue this role in a very limited sense once the tutorial ends, but for the most part, you really are left free to explore the world as you see fit, with the world initially referring to the Great Plateau, and then the entirety of Hyrule. Another standout element of the Great Plateau compared to previous 3D Zelda tutorials is its hostility, that developers have packed in more than enough free roaming enemies and harrowing terrain to give players a legitimate challenge while also providing them with a multitude of tools to overcome this challenge. The ins and outs of these tools will largely need to be discovered through exploration and experimentation, though. Breath of the Wild does concede some of its immersion with pop-up tool tips, but they'll only appear after the player makes a relevant discovery. Combat will be covered in more detail later in the video, but as a basic precursor, it's easily broken, but not at this stage in the game, particularly for a new player. Link's low health and defense combined with the Nitu Scramble for resources made far more urgent by Breath of the Wild's new weapon-breakage system means that the Great Plateau actually plays far more into the surviving in the wilderness concept than most of the game will. Oddly making the tutorial area one of the most hardcore sections the player will experience. This is especially the case that they decide to engage in a lot of combat, which is never truly mandatory, but certainly highly encouraged. And I'd have to imagine the majority of first playthroughs will involve clearing the plateau of as many Bacoplins as possible. Even if you never swing your sword or axe or a tree branch a single time, though, you'll still be fighting against the world itself. There's a segment where you'll need to chop down a tree to create a bridge for yourself, then scale a cliffside, falling to your doom if you fail to manage your stamina meter correctly. Elsewhere, you're required to head up into the cold mountains to obtain cryonus, so you'll need to come up with a way to cross this frigid river, and then survive the continuous damage link suffers in harsh temperatures. The beauty of this implementation is that at every step of the way you're free to choose your own strategy to accomplish this goal. A very clean way to complete this cold section would be to cook spicy peppers into a dish that provides cold resistance, and then use magnesium to build yourself a simple bridge across the river. You're also free to cross this river, though, by chopping down trees to build a bridge to a raft, or once again, take advantage of the fact that you can ride objects you've used stasis on. Or, if you come to this section on your way back from getting cryonus instead of on your way to it, not the path you're guided towards, but certainly an option, you can just get across with that run instead, surviving the cold meanwhile can also just be done by brute forcing your way through with food, or by completing the old man's recipe and getting the warm doublet, or by hiking up the mountain using a torch, or other burning weapon to keep yourself warm, another instance of breath of the wild's robust set of state interactions. It's a puzzle that looks like a hike, and everything from your navigation path to completion of other puzzles to your understanding of the temperature system can be used for a solution. Between these experiences and many others, with that developers going so far as to hide a mini-boss on the starting area, an enemy that can be quite intimidating at this stage of the game, the great plateau alone can provide a compelling sandbox to the player for quite some time. At some point, though, you'll have your shrines completed, spirit orbs in hand, and be told to head off to what's revealed as the temple of time. Generally, a very important component of Zelda games, but here, just as much an understated ruin as anything else you've seen. Yet another reinforcement of this game's abandonment of tradition with nothing more than a goddess statue contained within. As you'll soon discover, these statues are found all across the world. There really isn't anything unique about the temple here functionally. It's time has passed. You trade in your orbs at this goddess statue for your first heart container, or stamina vessel, retrieve your paraglider from the old man, aka the spirit of Hyrule's former king, and Zelda's father, and at this point, you're free to go where you please. I'd say that the great plateau has entered the pantheon of iconic video game area, so alongside the likes of Super Mario Bros. 1, 1, or Green Hill Zone, and is undoubtedly going to be a focal point of game design study for years to come. It's core structure is fantastic, and there are so many little moments of polish that highlight the experience of Nintendo as a studio. This platform that simultaneously teaches you a mechanic, and lets you dictate exactly how much combat engagement you're comfortable with. This tree, which showers you with apples like confetti, as are a word for following up on the tree-feeling tutorial, the seemingly arbitrary crumbling walls, which are actually explicitly framing many prominent landmarks to increase the anticipation of being able to explore. Hyrule Castle, the dueling peaks that beckon you into Kakariko village, Hylia Island, which contains a shrine that's hidden from this angle, teaching you that they won't always be quite so prominent if you go here first. My absolute favorite of these has to be right after you get the paraglider, and are provided with two windows to jump out of for your first flight. One of them neatly frames your path to Kakariko village, and the other your path to Ganon. If you don't have strong convictions either way, that developers would prefer to direct you to the village, so a simple wooden launch platform gently draws your eye in that direction. Alternatively, if your new paraglider is too unfamiliar to feel comfortable with this kind of leap yet, you're also presented with a simple intuitive path back the way you came if you need more time to practice. It's an excellent, subtle use of environment designed to impart the game's core philosophy to the player, whether it's consciously picked up on or not. We'll go into other aspects of the game I have far more of an issue with, but my praise for the great plateau is almost universal. Once off it, you can rush Ganon immediately, you can head to Kakariko villages recommended by the king to have embassign you the main story quests or anywhere in between, beating the game in under one hour or well over a hundred. I would recommend the latter here, because Hyrule's landscape is phenomenal, easily the best I've played on. The terrain is very well laid out and beautiful to look at. Again, empowering the performance issues. The amount of polish and attention to detail on display here is extremely impressive. The variety of environments is about as expected. The overall mostly six to relatively realistic environments and the bases are all covered. You've got a wide array of grasslands and forests, a very sizable and oppressive desert, snowcapped mountains, relaxing sandy beaches, hot springs, rivers, valleys of volcanic region, et cetera. While the world itself does have some fantastic elements, they're generally still played fairly straight. The game's moral and landish creations have usually been put there by a sentient species. Before we head into those, though, we should probably talk about how you're going to get to them. As soon as Link leaves the great plateau, he has access to the vast majority of movement techniques he's going to be using for the remainder of the game, which have been greatly expanded from previous titles to better interact with this larger, more complex world. The stamina made a return from Skyward Sword and is incorporated into many of his movement options, including the primary trifecta of running, gliding, and climbing. A proper sprinting system likewise returns from Skyward Sword, which, at this point, I'm going to assume means that the role spamming days of old are officially behind us, a mercy considering just how much running around the world you're going to be doing here. It shoots through your stamina meter fairly rapidly, and if it runs out, you're stuck in a slow moving, exhausted state waiting for it to recover. Usually more of an annoyance, but potentially dangerous if you exhaust yourself during combat. This more open ground movement is augmented by a dedicated jump button, breaking the longstanding tradition of automatic jumping that Ocarina of time introduced. This doesn't mean Link is going to be challenging Mario's acrobatics anytime soon. His aerial control is essentially non-existent, and the range is comparable to what he's had before, albeit with a bit of a boost thanks to the new shield jump, but the jump's performance isn't really the standout feature here. What's more interesting is that it's yet another bit of hand holding that Nintendo stripped away from Breath of the Wild. If you want to get across that gap, then pointing yourself in this general direction is no longer good enough. You need to time the sprint and jump yourself. I fully admit that I might be reading into this a bit too much as there is a perfectly good utility reason for this feature. Link is going to be leaping off a lot of ledges and a jump button is the most logical way to avoid forcing players into a single trajectory. But intended or not, it still does play nicely into the game's broader design philosophy, with the nice bonus of providing an intuitive way to perform the jump attack from previous games. There is one aspect of it that I don't like, though, the transition into a dive animation whenever you're over a body of water. It's infrequent enough to be easy to forget about, and can mess you up if you're planning to glide over the water rather than jump into it. Which you're going to avoid like the plague whenever possible, because swimming feels horrendous in Breath of the Wild. You move like a snail on crutches, or deny basically all of your actions can't dive, which is a glaring step down for most 3D Zelda games, and even many 2D ones have no good way to make it feel better, because even the armor set created for the sole purpose of increasing Link's water mobility doesn't provide that much of a speed boost, and the water dash Link can use shreds through the stamina meter while still being pathetically slow. This is the worst that swimming has felt in any Zelda title I've played, and possibly the worst time I've had swimming in any video game. And while the world is mostly land, there are still more than enough oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds scattered around to make it an unpleasant aspect of Breath of the Wild's exploration. It's good that Cryonus allows you to circumvent this to a degree, and treasures can still somewhat be hidden under water thanks to Magnesis. I'll be it in a way that's much less satisfying to find, since all you'll ever need to do is flick the run-on and look for a splash of purple, but it's difficult not to be put off by the sharp downgrade to water and swimming compared to Link's previous outings. Especially when you consider all the ways Breath of the Wild's other systems could have interacted with it to create some really interesting scenarios. Slow-motion stasis launches, free from cryonus placement, guiding air bubbles around to keep flames let or avoid shocks. There was a ton of potential here that was let down by the lackluster water mechanics. Now, this wasn't done without reason. The massive map already takes a long time to explore thoroughly, and having underwater sections would place even more demand on the players, as well as taking up additional development time to create. That said, making the map as a whole a bit smaller in exchange for feeling more of its service area and introducing compelling mechanics could potentially have been a good trade-off. And while I enjoy Breath of the Wild's scope, there are several reasons I'm not totally convinced the decision to make the map this overwhelmingly massive was a net positive for the game, although we'll put it in that for the moment. Thankfully, the air is a lot more fun to traverse than the water, all because of the new paraglider. This is built on the back of previous creations like the decouly from the windwaker and sailcloth from Skyward Sword, but the freedom offered to the player here dramatically outstrips any previous incarnation. The paraglider is always easily accessible just by tapping the jump button in midair, and it slow to scent and reasonable airspeed means that if you can start from a high point, something this incarnation of high rule is decidedly not lacking in, you're able to take some beautiful gliding trips across the landscape. Paragliding is limited by linked stamina meter in addition to its natural descent, but if you come prepared with stamina refilling food, it's possible to glide for a very long time, a sense of freedom that's unparalleled in the legend of Zelda series and brushes the upper edge of adventure games in general. Skyward Sword had for your air movement in terms of in the moment used, but it was only available in fixed areas, whereas there's no point in the game that takes away the paraglider after you get it. There's no need to be so grandiose though, even a short glide off a rooftop or down a hail invokes the same feeling to some degree. The paraglider is fast and responsive enough to be constantly useful and fun, even outside of the obvious lengthy flights. It's hard to overstate just how much this adds to the game's adventurous spirit, especially early Iran when you're constantly surrounded by distant structures vying for your attention. Climb somewhere high, leap off into the open air, and set out for a new discovery. The introduction of such freeform gliding does have its pitfalls, which will touch on soon, but overall I think Breath of the Wild would be considerably less enjoyable with its absence, and we haven't even gotten into its additional functionality in combat or puzzles. Of course, gliding's value is limited if you can't consistently gain height in the first place, and while this can be done through simple upwards hikes or utilizing updrafts, including creating them yourself through the game's new chemistry system, a lot of the time this will be accomplished through links other prominent movement option. Climbing. With a few notable exceptions, Link can climb almost any surface in high roll, whether that's a house in a village, the side of a mountain, the body of a rock monster, a tall tree, high roll castle, this is the mechanic that truly turns this high rule into your playground, and going back to earlier 3D Zelda's after Breath of the Wild feels incredibly restrictive in comparison. However, while the realization that you can reach and climb the distant terrain you saw in that opening shot is wonderful, the actual act of doing so is less wonderful. Link's climbing speed is not very fast, and climbing also pulls from the stamina wheel, very quickly. While you can press the jump button to increase your climbing speed, it shoots through the wheel even faster. So, on a longer climb, it's generally smartest to save your jump until the last possible moment, where Link gets one final desperation leap to try and reach the top. At face value, this system makes sense, providing Link with the ability to scale almost any surface, but not going too far with it, and allowing him to improve this traversal more and more as he unlocks additional stamina. In practice, however, the purpose of the stamina restriction is quite limited. The game's non-linear nature and stamina upgrade system combined with easy to stockpile stamina restoration food means that developers have to assume that any climbable surface in the world is possible to fully climb regardless of where the player is in the rest of the game's progression. This makes it very difficult to introduce any kind of interesting climbing task into the game, as what's difficult for one player will be trivial for another depending on the path they've taken through the game to reach that task, and for the most part, the developers just don't bother. Sailing was told of a legendary mountaineer from the past who hit their treasure on the highest peak of the most dangerous mountain, left only for an extremely accomplished climber to find. This would lead the player to go through the game anticipating the moment when they finally had enough stamina to tackle that mountain and claim their prize. This sounds like a very legend of Zelda a bit of game design, and we see these kinds of teasers everywhere in the series, but no such concept exists, or could exist with Breath of the Wilds climbing mechanics. Now, not having it would be fine in its own right, Breath of the Wild breaks a lot of Zelda conventions, and while it doesn't entirely shy away from these kinds of antisobitory progress gates, it does minimize them for the sake of increasing player agency. There didn't need to be interesting climbing tasks for the sake of progression gaining, but there should have been interesting climbing tasks, which there are generally very few of. By the time you leave the great plateau, you've already seen the most polished climbing task the game has to offer, and that specifically because the developers could anticipate how much stamina the player was going to have when they attempted it. There are certainly more serious climbing tests than just this, but the vast majority of climbing in the game will have no such excitement, or really any at all. Mountain nearing seems to be the strongest argument for stamina usage, and at its best it makes a good case, forcing you to judge vertical distance and maneuver around the terrain accordingly. For every compelling white knuckle climb, there will be many more mundane ones, and the amount of skill involved in climbing isn't as high as I first expected either. There are no choices to make besides climb, jump, let go, jump off, open a menu, and pick up the odd plant. And while there is some skill involved with maneuvering into pockets to recover stamina, it's not a very deep skill, and can be learned quite quickly. The safest bet for climbing is essentially always to go up as slowly as possible, and then perform a final jump at the end. The only exception being if you're getting attacked on the way up, which accounts for a tiny fraction of the total climbs you're going to make. The real reason to press jump in the middle of your climb is convenience, and the most significant climbing-related reward for upgrading your stamina meter is more convenient. The ability to press jump more often and get this over with faster. That's not the only reward. There are certainly other climbing-related benefits to building stamina, but it's by far the most common one you'll be utilizing over a playthrough, and considering how fundamental the climbing and stamina systems are to the game, having this be their most frequent intersection feels ill-considered. This only gets worse when you think about how few direct methods of progressing your character, they're actually are in breath of the wild. Stamina is one of the main systems, and climbing is probably the biggest argument for its existence. And while the full utilization of climbing is held back by other parts of the game's design, still other parts are held back by it. The ability to climb almost any surface creates a lot of design challenges that developers had to come up with solutions for, including disabling it entirely in some instances. In shrines and divine beasts, this is justified by having very smooth polished surfaces, and you could say this is understandable, trying to design an obstacle course where the participant can clamber over every obstacle is a taller, however, spending a good chunk of the game's runtime with one of its core mechanics forcefully disabled is hardly an ideal scenario. It's a very blunt solution to a problem spawn from directly conflicting design elements. I'm not necessarily saying this wasn't the best solution available. Exclusively designing rooms that climbing couldn't break would come with its own pitfalls for sure, but it's still an imperfect solution. Climbing is one of the game's most distinctive and ubiquitous abilities, and you're going to be spending an awful lot of time not being able to do it, with in-segment specifically meant to test your abilities no less. In the overworld, however, while there are a few logical climbing restrictions put in place, including extremely steep surfaces and slick ice, breath of the wild generally restricts climbing through rain. This is by far one of the most blind aspects of the game I've seen pop up in discussions, and I've tried so hard to come up with a reasonable explanation for its existence throughout multiple playthroughs, and I just can't. Breath of the wild employs a dynamic weather system, which means in most parts of the world it will be raining sometimes, as you'd expect. During this rain, though, surfaces become too slick to climb, meaning that if you're in the middle of climbing a mountain and it starts raining, you may will need to just twittle your thumbs and wait for the weather to clear up, or abandon your climb completely, both of which feel absolutely terrible. I understand that the goal here was to periodically provide further navigation challenges to the player, and I'm very on board with that idea, but this was not the right way to do it. Its other major purpose is to provide a permanent obstacle to the player during certain gameplay segments, such as forcing you onto the road up to Zora's domain, or increasing the challenge of the trial of thunder shrine quest. But these isolated scenarios could easily be justified by the addition of a dedicated, monsoon weather state that's limited to these regions. This behavior did not need to be carried over into the broader world. I'm certainly not saying I don't like the inclusion of rain at all. Its emission would feel baffling, and it has some other interactions that I do quite like, such as suppressing the fires that you can normally use for a tactical advantage, or turning lightning arrows into area of effect attacks. Although, even then, there are a few overworld quests that involve transporting fire, which rain can smother, and the solution likewise just being to wait out the storm doesn't feel good. At the very least for these ones, you have nearby indoor areas too light campfires in, which link can use to pass the time. Even if it's fully possible to go to sleep to rain and wake up to more rain, multiple times in a row. Realistic? Sure. And realistically frustrating too. I've been speaking as if there weren't exploits available to get around many rainy slopes, which there are. But in addition to the ambiguity of whether they were even programmed intentionally, and some of them certainly weren't, most players are never going to know about these to begin with. There is something to be said for increased game knowledge, providing an increase to your mobility options, but this is another case where the payoff feels more like the way the game should have worked from the beginning. A bit of attention there admittedly, but we were definitely going to have to bring up rain at some point, and what better time than during the climbing discussion, where it contributes to an already flawed system becoming teeth-grittingly awful on a routine basis. I need to emphasize that the ability to climb is still a fantastic addition that's absolutely critical to making breath of the wild's world design function as well as it does. But there are a lot of areas I think could be improved from faster climbing speeds to less rain penalty to potentially ditching the stamina requirements altogether. In fact, looking at how the mechanic has functioned so far, I question whether the introduction of a stamina system into the Zelda series was necessarily a positive one, and I'd like to point to a few techniques in breath of the wild, including some unintentional exploits discovered by the player base that reinforced this question. The first is whistle sprinting, a technique that allows you to continue at a faster pace than links typical walk speed while waiting for his stamina meter to recover. If you know how to do this and can handle the extra bit of strain it puts on your hands, it allows for a faster ground speed and prevents constantly having to switch between walking and running across large sections of the world. The other two go hand in hand. Bomb lodging is an exploite of breath of the wild's physics system that allows link to sore through the air much faster and farther than he was originally intended to. Revoli's gale, on the other hand, is not an exploit. It's intentionally granted to link after clearing a major quest and allows him to build significant height from a grounded starting position. Both of these come with a hefty chunk of baggage. Revoli's gale is something I'll go into more when talking about all the champion abilities, but bomb lodging hilariously breaks a large portion of the shrines in the game can be used to totally bypass many obstacles that developers intended as interesting roadblocks for the player and allows link to move it a faster pace than the game's engine can even keep up with. There are a host of reasons that bomb lodging couldn't and shouldn't have been introduced to the game in any official capacity. However, I'm bringing it up because one of the major things I use it for is bypassing boring swims or cryonist judges. Revoli's gale likewise has many uses. However, in general gameplay by far the most common ones, at least for me, are to bypass smaller swims, assist with bomb lodging over a larger body of water, or bypass the tedium of climbing up a cliffside. Keep in mind, in these specific use cases, I'm rarely actually going anywhere I couldn't get to otherwise, but I am bypassing the tedious act of getting there. These techniques combine to give us a look at a link who can move through the world more efficiently with less stamina and comrades. And I don't think too many people comfortable with using them would say they make breath of the wild less fun to play. You are going to be spending extended periods of time running across terrain, which is made less enjoyable by constantly having to feather a stamina meter. I really wish there was a better system put in place here, whether that was removing stamina burn from links sprint all together while slightly reducing that sprint speed, or allowing him to, for example, settle into a slower sprint after the meter is used up. Essentially an automatic version of whistle sprinting, both of which I thoroughly believe would make a ground traversal more enjoyable and both of which reduce or eliminate the emphasis on stamina. These would have minor implications in some scenarios, notably combat, but I think that would be a small concession considering exploration gets a fire higher portion of total play time, and the impact would still be relatively minimal even in combat scenarios. Swimming and climbing, likewise needed to either be made more efficient or more interesting. Link receives armor that allows him to literally swim up a waterfall while it's equipped, showing that the essence of these absurdly fast and agile water creatures is something he absolutely can't access, and yet while swimming in water that isn't actively being pulled down by gravity, he still moves like a clumsy amateur. This is what breath of the wild considers to be the upgraded swim speed. He can also cross anybody of water at any time thanks to cryonus, the only major exceptions being when he's already been knocked into or recklessly dove into water with no way to get out and recover his stamina. A player may lose a few hearts to this over a run, particularly a first run, but it'll be a fairly uncommon occurrence with the permanent consequence of making the rest of the adventure more tedious than necessary. To recap, for running, the stamina system makes ground travel your most common activity actively worse. For swimming, the mechanic is already unnecessarily constrained and stamina only exacerbates the issue further, and for both systems, the moments where it serves a valid purpose pale and comparison to the moments where it unnecessarily gets in the player's way. Climbing is a bit more complicated, though, as I said, at its best it works well, and it does feel like there should be some kind of obstacle involved with scaling surfaces, being able to shim your way up the tallest mountain effortlessly at any time would trivialize it. At the same time, essentially any surface that you can climb turns stamina into purely an irritation. If you can make it to the top like this, the game essentially never provides a reason why you shouldn't also be able to make it to the top like this. Any act of traversals should ideally be either compelling or unobtrusive, but to breath of the wild frequently misses that mark with these mechanics, in many instances traversal as simultaneously uncompelling and intrusive. If the game supplied a steady stream of interesting obstacles that took the stamina system into account, its implementation would make a lot more sense. But this doesn't happen that often, and even when movement challenges do appear, stamina frequently doesn't play a substantial role. Navigating around this infested tower to find an opening is a good challenge, and I enjoy it, but it's a path-finding challenge. Link's stamina isn't a factor in solving it, even though this is an overt movement test, and stamina is supposedly the mechanic that adds challenge to movement. It is a factor in making the tower really slow to climb without stamina upgrades, though, despite the fact that there's no decision to be made on this tower besides go up. We see this happen all over the place, even when these obstacles are absent, and there are no interesting decisions to be made between points A and B. The stamina system constantly rears its head, even though it's adding nothing to the experience. One option might be to simply get rid of the stamina penalty for jumping, i.e. fully climbing versus fully jumping goes the exact same height, but then there's rarely ever a reason not to just spam the jump button. I think that would still be better overall, but it wouldn't be my first choice for a solution. In the same way that if you were complaining about how long it was taking to run through a field, my suggestion wouldn't be to add a roll button. It would work, but it's probably not exactly how you want movement in your game to look. Case in point, and a similar statement applies to swim dashing. With all this combined, I can't help but feel that the stamina system employed all over Breath of the Wild's most fundamental movement tools does more harm than good. That's not to say it's all bad, of course. While the game hasn't been designed to fully take advantage of it, stamina is a reasonable idea on paper, and the fact that you can enhance it at the cost of hard containers masterfully ties into the game's overall goals of increasing player agency and breaking longstanding conventions in the series. I hope such a trade-off becomes standard for Zelda. Possibly even making hard containers one of several resources to choose between. That said, even here, I'm not sure stamina is the ideal resource to include in this decision, because if it was fixed, creating challenges that took it into account would be much easier. Stamina also sometimes does achieve the goals that developers were likely aiming for, and the fact that it scales over the course of your adventure plays out well in certain instances. A fresh file won't have much stamina to work with, so if the player does stumble across an obstacle they can't climb yet, they'll be forced down a different path than they were planning, which given how much there is to explore and be distracted by in Breath of the Wild can lead to fun spontaneity, as you start filling in your map, though, and have firmware locations you'd like to make a beeline for extra stamina can help you get there. There's also a nice sense of logic behind exploration leading to better exploration as you find more spirit orbs and stamina ingredients, and stamina makes complete sense in the context of gliding, although this could easily be its own discrete resource. I'm not convinced stamina needs to remain in the series, but if it does continue, I think we'd ideally see some changes. My suggestions would start with completely ditching stamina restoration items, which would increase the impact of upgrading stamina, as well as make it possible to create late game challenges which use stamina as a significant factor. I'd also make it so that links climbing abilities ramped up considerably faster with a higher ceiling, reducing intrusiveness, and introduce more climbing-related obstacles, making the act of climbing more compelling. If there were frequent moving obstacles that you needed to time your jump around, for example, whether these were enemies or otherwise, that would be a good use case for the jumping mechanic. There are additional movement options we haven't discussed as well, including shield surfing, a very inspired idea that feels fantastic in action. It controls wonderfully, it's fast and exciting on the right terrain, it can be combined with a paraglider or the bow for some really smooth sequences. It's easy to picture breath of the wild without this mechanic. If it was never here, people wouldn't be clamoring for it, but I'm very happy it is here because it's great. I do wish that it was a bit more responsive on more types of terrain, though. Having friction severely hinder its momentum is certainly realistic, but Nintendo were very comfortable bending their physics for the sake of gameplay. Blately calling breath of the wild's physics system a series of clever lies told to the player. This is an area where I wish that had been willing to lie a little bit more, as well as possibly let Link kick like he was writing a skateboard to keep momentum for longer. A much more annoying issue is that shield surfing uses up that shield's durability, which means the player is granted an extremely fun tool, and then constantly made to feel anxious about actually using it. There are some considerations made to these issues, a few shields exist which do have low friction and or high surfing durability, and some terrain doesn't the grade shields at all, but I still think the mechanic could be further incentivized. Horse riding is back, switching from a ponna to wild horses tamed in the fields of high roll, and for the most part they've been implemented very well, finding a group of horses out in the wild, choosing the one you'd like, and figuring out a way onto its back can be really exciting, especially the first time. I got breath of the wild from my girlfriend as a birthday gift, and after clearing the great plateau, she immediately ran towards some horses and spent the next hour plus exclusively going after them. This gave me some insight into the thrill of the chase, however, I never really got to experience this myself. That compelling positioning and stocking kind of goes out the window if you think to try ice arrows, which I did immediately and forever damage some of that enjoyment as a result. I'd been rewarded for my idea with a more efficient process, but I definitely don't have as much fun feeling a stable as she did. The horse captures you've been watching, we're fun, but I only did this specifically because I was making a video and needed footage. If this wasn't the case, I'd really have no reason to take this kind of roundabout approach. This kind of trade-off is inevitable to some degree with how free form so many a breath of the wild systems are, and I think the game generally doesn't add a rubble job of making alternate solutions enjoyable, but as we'll see, horses aren't the only part of the game where this kind of issue can appear. The fact that I can just opt to not use ice arrows doesn't really solve the problem, although there will be better times than this video to go deeper into that concept. In any case, it's still fun to climb aboard a horse, successfully tame it, and see it respond to your commands for the first time, only enhanced more as you take it to a stable. Here, you'll realize that you can name it, see the different stats, and later style its hair, and change its gear. You also have the ability to build a bond with your horse, a small but inspired system. Mechanically, it's not terribly interesting, horses with higher bonds go off course less often, and you need a maximum bond with them before they can be customized. And building a bond likewise isn't anything special. You just need to ride around for a bit, and press a button when it gets upset. Despite the simple mechanics, though, it's still very effective at building a connection between the horse and the player, not just Link. The game makes horses just individual enough to let you feel invested in them. This isn't just a horse, it's your horse, and it helps that the act of riding them is better than ever. Their responsive, quick to get going, Link can smoothly and stylishly mount and dismount the Metamomance notice the follow major roads of their own chords, so you can dedicate your full attention to the environment, and horseback combat is great thanks to the longer reach Link has compared to previous titles. Which makes it such a crushing shame that a developers made horses so difficult to actually use. Much of the world is divided up by cliffs, deserts, mountains, and other terrain that horses can't cross, which is fair enough, but using them to get between these areas could still be a great option. The killer here is that as soon as you abandon your horse, the only ways to get it to back are to either return to exactly where you left it or go to a stable, where you're then forced to go through a series of menus, wait for the retrieval, and be lectured about some minor horse fact you've been told 10 times already. This would be damning enough, but you'll also constantly be dismounting to head up into harsher terrain, seeing something new in the distance, and setting out to go examine it. And the end result is that horses are rarely going to last longer than the initial trek from the stable to one or two points of interest before being swiftly abandoned again. When you come back to horse friendly ground, it's really going to be the same ground that you left, and stables are spaced far enough apart that heading to one to retrieve your horse is generally going to be a hindrance more than a help. There's a button on your controller dedicated entirely to the act of whistling, but all it does is make a horse that's already extremely close to you run a bit closer. It doesn't summon it from elsewhere on the map, and this decision is extremely puzzling. Nintendo may have been worried the players wouldn't thoroughly explore the world if they had the consistent option to move through it faster, but considering the game typically emphasizes the freedom to play how you want, and that breath of the wild was heavily associated with horses right from the very first teasers, it really seems like they should have had a better use case than they ended up with. If the intention was to force players to visit stables more often, a system that, for example, wore your horse down over time, preferably quite slowly, and required you to take it to a stable to freshen it up, would be a far better way to drive traffic there while simultaneously increasing the player's connection to their horse. If the intention was to make finding a stable feel valuable, this could be done through a reward system. Maybe you're given a stable card and told that if you do business with every stable and high rule, you're given some kind of unique item. Simply putting better supply shops and the like in stables, with more exclusive items, would also achieve both of these. These are just some basic suggestions, but they hopefully get a cross that you could achieve these kinds of objectives without crippling what should be a core feature of the game. A lot of the criticisms I've aimed at and will aim at this game are very subjective and solutions to them would involve trade-offs elsewhere, but this is when I'm very comfortable calling a flat-out mistake on Nintendo's part. Or potentially something more sinister, but we'll save that for the DLC talk. More positively, the sand seals in Gerudo Desert provide a sort of cross between horse riding and shield surfing, and it's a fun mechanic that feels good and creates a few interesting setbeases during your time here. Actually acquiring a seal, though, whether trained or wild isn't particularly convenient, so I don't find myself using them too often when exploring the broader desert. Raphs are likewise a somewhat niche tool that can provide a fun alternative to swimming or a cryonis hopping, but only if you've got a core leave on hand to propel them, meaning that you may be forced to sacrifice a precious inventory slot for the sake of somewhat more efficient reversal. With that said, Raphs are introduced as early as the Great Plateau, and are also one of the few travel mechanics seen there that aren't dulled as the game goes on. Tree-filling is replaced with a paraglider. This kind of magnesium sprays becomes obsolete as soon as you gain cryonis, and revollies gale nudges the already limited climbing challenges to name a few examples. Raphs, on the other hand, are always efficient, rare enough to maintain their novelty, and provide a broader range of options than other methods of water traversal. In this sense, they actually maintain their usefulness impressively well over the course of a playthrough. Keeping Raphs relevant may also be why the Zora Armor is so pathetic, but if this is the reason I wouldn't consider it to be a very good one, as there are far more bodies of water in high rule than there are Raphs. The ideal solution in my eyes would be to improve the Zora Armor, but also introduce another upgrade that improves Raphs as well, so that after everything was collected, Raphs were still the superior option when available. Buying some of the more outlandish options out there, this more or less covers how Link will be moving around high rule. I know it was a lengthy section, but considering how sprawling the map is, even small nuances with these systems have an enormous impact on the experience by the end of credits. And despite my gripes, I think it generally works pretty well, and it helps that Link usually controls about how you expect him to. This isn't universal, climbing a particular has a few hiccups, and every once in a while you're undoubtedly going to get stuck on something you didn't mean to climb or lose your grip unexpectedly. At one point, I also got well and truly stuck on the geography, but considering what a daunting task these movement options must have been from a technical perspective, I'd say Nintendo did an admirable job bringing them to life. I think that essentially all of these mechanics could have been polished up more, but the possibilities they create shine brighter than the flaws in acting on those possibilities. Of course, none of this actually matters if what you're running and gliding and seal surfing towards isn't enjoyable to begin with. So let's dive into those. Filling in your map involves climbing and activating high-rolls various chic attours, with each tower unlocking the topography of its respective region, as well as a new permanent warp point, alongside being accompanied by some sweeping cinematics that show off potential places to explore next. Completing a tower always feels satisfying, although I would have appreciated a few more unique challenges associated with them, the ones that provide more of a task to complete than just go up are considerably more fun. The act of navigating to and activating a tower is fun in and of itself, though, so I don't think this is a very big issue. The map is helpful, but unobtrusive, not overburdened with information that the player doesn't choose to add to it themselves, and you'll still need to actually travel across the region to fully fill it in. It's precisely useful enough to serve as an exploration guide without spoiling exploration, and the ability to assign your own waypoints and stamps is a simple addition that greatly improves the user experience. A few minor sticking points would be the inability to write your own notes, which previous games have done, and the low amount of simultaneous waypoints you can have, along with the blue one looking enough like the other markers to make it hard to find once the map starts getting filled in more. For the most part, though, I am a fan of the design of both the map and the towers, which moves us onto shrines, arguably the real heart of the game and a thorough playthrough that take on more of a gameplay role than even the main questline. There are 120 of these in total, and they serve as warp points, linked source of spirit, orbs, as well as a number of other roles, the most common of which being a scaled-backed take on previous games dungeons. Exactly where their scale settles on can vary a fair amount, and sadly, the same can really be said about their quality. Let's get the note of the way immediately. The open world nature of Breath of the Wild means that the shrines can be visited in any order apart from the first four on the Great Plateau, meaning that the classic Nintendo game design philosophy that serve the Zelda series so well in the past is severely hammered here. I brought up World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros. earlier, which I've traditionally seen used to demonstrate this concept, so for a change of pace, let's instead look at the first level of Kirby Squeaksquad, a very clean bit of design in its own right. I know Nintendo is technically just the publisher here, but their DNA has always been well into the series, and it's about as accessible as video games get. The player is dropped into an open plane, and to progress, they have to move right. They then come across a bump, requiring them to jump and move right. After this is the first enemy of the game, safely contained between two more bumps, giving the player as much time as needed to figure out a way across. Then comes a more dangerous uncontained enemy with an optional copyability. This one can still be jumped over, but it's harder because of its beam weapon, so inhaling or multi-jumping are more strongly encouraged. At the next obstacle, encouragement becomes insistence, they must figure out multi-jumping. Finally, another enemy with a more complex movement pattern guards the door, and it's okay for it to be harder because the player is at least guaranteed to know that they can multi-jump over it. The level keeps going, but I'll stop here because by now you've hopefully already noticed the theme of gradually introducing concepts and then testing them under increasingly stringent circumstances. On top of that, the level after this can make use of the lessons learned here, then the one after that falls in its lessons, and so on. This is very classic game design Nintendo helped pioneer, and has been employed all over traditional Zelda dungeons, but because these shrines can be visited in any order by any player, they can't build on top of each other the same way. There can't be lessons in some shrines to test in other shrines, because there's no guarantee that the lesson will be found before the test. This escalation design could still be self-contained within an individual shrine, but the problem is Nintendo decided 120 was the number required to satisfactorily fill the world. Even with the level editor-esque construction shared between all of them, this is still a lot of content to produce for an already enormous game. This means that many of them turned out very short, not providing too much time to introduce a clear concept and then build on it. The ones that do manage to escalate a clear concept across several stages tend to be my favorites, and will likely best scratch the traditional Zelda dungeon itch for a lot of players, which have generally heavily leaned on this design. Child of power is a reasonably lengthy shrine with a theme based around a generating momentum. The side rewards don't really tie into this theme, and it briefly makes use of the horrid motion controls Nintendo insisted on shoe warning to the game, but this may be the best use of them in any of these shrines just because of how short and relatively unobtrusive the segment is. Overall, I'm quite happy with this one, and it does feel like a miniature dungeon thanks to its length, hidden treasure, combat, and building of a clear idea. Two bombs, likewise introduces a basic concept, then escalates it by changing the apparatus from automatic to player-controlled. This second segment still doesn't strictly require two bombs, but it's useful to do so since you can see what's happening. From there, you move on to a final section, which does concretely ask you to synchronize both your bomb rooms. It's a strong concept that ends too quickly, and only fully materializes in the final segment with a task that isn't entirely connected to what you've previously been doing, but is still a success in my eyes. Blue Flame is both built on a compelling concept, transporting a blue flame across the area, as well as being long enough to build up on that concept in multiple clever ways. Transport the flame by hand, then arrow, then to a set of simultaneous targets, then to increasingly complex sets of simultaneous targets. If more of the shrines worked like this, the game would be better for it. That said, while a lot of them aren't this involved, there is still fun to be had in some of the shorter one-off entries. Pushing power has an obvious goal, get the ball in the hole, but provides a satisfying physics playground in order to achieve this. Windmills provides a bit of meat if you want to go after all the numerous optional chests, but even the core concept of rotating fans to fully cover all the propellers in a room serves as a satisfying logic puzzle. A balanced approach also does the logic room puzzle well, requiring the player to take the weight and volume of various boxes into account. For every good shrine, though, there's an equally underwhelming two or three to match it. Second scoop solution is obvious the second you step into the room, and yet the act of solving it is still tedious due to the limited, slow, and slightly wonky controls and camera of megnesis. The rune is still a great addition to the game overall, but it doesn't hold up well when too much is asked of it. Drawing parabolas is pure busy work if you understand the concept of these blocks being able to launch Link, which the player was taught about back in the opening shrines. Stalled flight has you get on top of a block and you stasis a single time, at which point the shrines. Trial of passage just requires you to remember that stasis and megnesis exist. Despite the shrines flashy appearance, you don't do anything interesting and are likely to get stuck waiting for the apparatus to slowly work its way back around to the right position. Three boxes has you grab the chests in the room and put them on a big switch. And that's it. If the title wasn't an immediate giveaway, you might get a tiny eureka moment out of this one, but even so mechanically it's still a notable step down from the shrine you first got the megnesis rune. Melting ice hazard was a shrine I wanted to love because of its similarity to blue flame, one of my favorites in the game. Your task this time is to safely transport an ice block through a fiery obstacle course and extremely strong concept, but significantly brought down by the lack of actual challenge. The block is big enough to survive just being thrown right through most of the fire. There's no ambient heat putting you on a clock and links own navigation is pretty straightforward. This was possibly the biggest let down I felt between first entering a shrine and leaving it. The most consistently iral inducing ones though are the shrines that lean heavily on motion controls, which are incredibly awkward to use whether you're playing with joycons or the pro controller. These are simply nowhere near as accurate or responsive as they needed to be. This right here is a bad tech demo. It shouldn't be getting passed off as substantial content in a AAA video game. Of course I've mostly been discussing these shrines as if they follow the same relatively rigid rules as previous Zelda dungeons, which they famously don't. Part of the charm here is the ability to creatively break them thanks to Breath of the Wilds, Physics and Chemistry systems. It's a compelling element to shrines for sure. You're probably not actually outsmarting that developers most of the time, they likely knew about most of these tricks, but it certainly feels like you are. I remember feeling extremely clever during my first playthrough, when I realized I could complete electrical circuits by using metal weapons in my arsenal. In this shrine, I'm supposed to be using blocks to create a wind current that will gradually push a ball into a socket, which will then give me enough time to run to an elevator the socket activates. Instead, I took those blocks, fashion a cradle, and golf to the ball in from the elevator. This one made me feel good too, but there are scenarios where alternate solutions can be pushed too far, breaking the shrines so much that they become mechanically worthless. Fire-based shrines are often particularly bad examples of this. They present what could potentially be interesting puzzles, but are usually breezed right through just by pulling out a couple of fire arrows. The electrical puzzles somewhat fall into the same trappings, and an argument can be made that solving your first puzzle like this has a detrimental effect on any you encounter later. However, the initial thought to try using your inventory does require creative thinking, and the same applies to any other tricks you pick up that can be applied to multiple shrines. Using fire arrows on the other hand does not require this initial inspiration, and almost always takes less creativity than the intended solution. Blue Flame avoided this problem by making the fire something that couldn't be generated from your inventory, and I assumed that developers didn't do this for every fire-based shrine because they wanted to emphasize their open-ended nature, but I think they took things too far, and more of these challenges should have used blue fire in some capacity. The very same wind current shrine I just praised actually demonstrates the issue with too much shrine freedom as well. I know now that you can actually just put the ball in the socket, stasis it, and run into position. I didn't think of this solution myself. I saw it on YouTube, so I suppose stupidity was actually a blessing in this case, because I think this more efficient solution is actually less interesting and satisfying. Not everyone will feel this way, some people undoubtedly came up with the same solution, and felt good about it, but keeping the puzzles so open all these leaves the possibility of disappointment on the table, just like too many ways to mount a horse can potentially harm the fun for some players. I don't think these downsize out the way the positives, and there's a lot to love about the creativity shrines offer, but they're not a strictly beneficial addition, and making more of them a bit less vulnerable to very simple work around what likely have been an improvement. While completing these shrines is inconsistent, the same can be said for gaining access to them. A decent portion are simply scattered around waiting for a link to walk up to them, but many will also require some additional challenge to access, whether that's an obstacle to overcome or a dedicated quest to unlock them, and the best of these are some of the better and more fleshed out moments in the game. Many of the riddle-based shrines are presented over by the Rito Cass and his accordion, and while some of these can involve a bit too much waiting around for a specific trigger, they're usually pretty enjoyable to solve. Asking you to perform tasks like Reddit deer onto a pedestal, fire an arrow into the sun, figure out an angle that lets you thread two stone rings with a single arrow, or hunt for a giant white bird. They're all presented as riddles, but just how core the cryptic element of these shrine quests are will very quite a bit. The archery task is essentially spelled out for you, and the incredibly conspicuous terrain hammers the objective home, so this one is less about deciphering and more about execution. The deer, on the other hand, is referred to as a beast that wears a crown of bone, so there's some of each here, you have to first decipher that you even need to ride a deer onto the pedestal, and then actually go catch one, and then the giant white bird is mostly deciphering. It turns out to be a perspective trick on some nearby mountain tops. I don't think that every one of these riddles is a slam dunk, but the variety here is still ultimately very welcome, and I'd call them a great addition to the game. Stranded on even tied is easily one of the best shrine quests Breath of the Wild has to offer, removing all the items you've acquired across your journey and forcing you into a lengthy back-to-basic survivalist section, and aspect of the game that will have faded for most players by the time they get to this point. It's genuinely refreshing to have weapons you've long since stopped picking up in the overworld become valuable again, and the island's layout is excellent. The terrain here is put to very good use during your quest to carry three orbs into the scattered pedestals. It's a great break from the established gameplay loop, and I'm always a little bit sad when it's over. It makes me wish that Breath of the Wild emphasize this kind of resource scarcity more often as the great plateau and even tied are two of the segments I find most compelling in the entire game. Another successful set of shrines comes from the three found deep inside intimidating labyrinths across high rule, which stand out enticingly in the distance. These can be fairly demanding, with a lot of enemies to fight and loot to discover on the way there, and having open ceilings with climbable walls is a neat touch that makes them appear far easier than they actually are. Make no mistake here. If you want your spirit orbs and pieces of the barbarian armor, you're going to have to take some covered paths to get there. The shrine hidden at the end of a darkened area provides another welcome change of pace, especially when it culminates in a stylish fight against one of the game's mini bosses. Mechanically, it's pretty plain. Following the bird statues is a very basic path finding test, and the boss is recycled from the overworld, but the impression this area leaves still absolutely justifies its existence. A slightly more involved navigation challenge comes via the lost woods, which you'll have trouble getting through to access the multiple shrines inside until you realize that you can always follow the sparks blowing off a torch. It's an understated puzzle with some red herrings thrown in for good measure. At first I thought there might be some kind of pattern in the swirling fog I was supposed to follow, and I also tried following the gaze of the trees, which had worked so well for me in the dark. Once through the lost woods into Korok Forest, I like the gauntlet link has to run with specific gear, which he's never allowed to remove or break. However, I wouldn't say that developers fully delivered on the potential that forcing a specific loadout for the sake of a shrine quest has. This equipment really just functions like anything already in links arsenal, and you still use your own arrows. The only thing I've been unusual is that everything is made of wood, which makes enemies with fire attacks more dangerous. It's still fun, but they could have gone further with the idea. In the Garuto Desert, a soldier has gone missing, found exhausted, and on the brink of death. You need a drink to revive her, which requires you to carry a rapidly melting ice block through an enemy-infested ruin, a very clever way to restrict links path without explicitly putting additional barriers in the overworld for the sake of this quest. I also love that rather than actually bringing her a drink, you just go tell her that it's ready, and she sprints off excitedly. The odd progression gate, the lighthearted ending to an apparently dire situation, this entire quest feels very Zelda. The trial of thunder tasks you with moving orbs onto a raised platform in the pouring rain, but leads the method of getting them there open. I think the intended solution is probably to golf them into place using stasis, but during this playthrough, I had octoroccal wounds in my inventory, and this was among the better uses I'd ever gotten out of them. You can't get to this shrine if you step on the crazy lady's flowers. It's very simple, but it does add some much-needed character to an open air shrine, something they typically lack. Based on what I've seen, she's become one of the better known tertiary characters, it's a short sequence, but very memorable nonetheless. The knee-drunk counter was one of the best moments of the entire game for me. Nestled away at the top of a foreloin peak, it's a once-mighty dragon, breath-reg it, tongue-rolling, a completely overtaken by Janan's corruption. Seeing one of these dragons roaming the sky for the first time was already a very awe-inspiring moment, but this was an entirely new level of discovery. You shoot the first bit of corruption off-nature's body, it takes off, and it's up to you to stock it across the mountain side, clearing enough corruption until its former majesty is restored. At this point, it freely offers you one of its scales, you throw it into the spring of wisdom, and a shrine reveals itself. What a fantastic epic sequence, even causing a permanent change in the world beyond the usual fast travel point shrines offer, as Neutral now be free to travel this sky alongside the others. This unfortunately gets offset by the reality of the dragons, these initially intriguing mysteries are mechanically just flying farmnodes, but the addition of a new element to high rule and the experience of adding it still rises above. It's among the most heroic you may to feel outside of the main quest. Still an heirloom is another time for Link's heroism to come through, and extremely involved quest that has you tracking down the thief of a sheka treasure before fighting a duel against a eagle blade master. It's a detailed quest with a surprisingly sad story behind it, but unfortunately Breath of the Wild's open world design harmed this one for me. This quest takes place in Kakariko Village, the first area you're directed to after leaving the Great Plateau, so it's probably intended to be completed early in the game, in which case this blade master will likely make for an intimidating presence, and be the first one the player has seen, essentially substituting for a boss. In my case, though this was one of the last shrine quests I completed, and by that point in the game blade masters had become a routine enemy I'd encountered in the wild many times, so any challenge or attention he was supposed to provide flew straight to the window. There is an argument that this was my fault for not being thorough enough when I first arrived in the village, but investing so much time into a quest creation only to have it potentially fall apart at the finale like this nevertheless seems odd. This was clearly supposed to be one of their premium quests, and I don't think it's comparable to say completing a Ruby quest past the point where Ruby stopped being relevant. If recycling in overworld enemy was the only way this quest could be completed within the game's time and resource constraints I can accept that. As it is ultimately still good content and diverting resources to a problem this minor that will never appear for many players likely wasn't in that developers best interest, but it is a flaw regardless. The standard shrine quests that may have gotten the most attention from that developers as recitalet warblers nest. This one has you going on a scavenger hunt for various retail around their village, then cooking up a specific recipe for another, and then traveling to another location and using a core cleave to repeat a melody they sing to you. A mechanic that to my knowledge doesn't get repeated anywhere else in the game. There's even a dedicated cutscene afterwards beyond the usual shrine summoning. This one is really good, but not all the shrine quests get quite such a glowing review. The Lost Pilgrimage has you following in a guanizingly slow NPC through a forest until it eventually comes across the shrine. You can't let it see you, so this entire quest consists of standing behind something and waiting before moving up slightly to stand behind something else. Really lackluster design that the cute factor doesn't overcome. Still an heirloom used the same idea and it was the weakest part of that quest too, but the trailing sections were shorter had more interesting content at the end and weren't the only thing required. Shining stone has you drop a luminous stone onto a pedestal, and even if you don't know what luminous stones are, you can probably safely assume that the stone sitting directly beside the quest. I don't really understand what the thought process behind this one was or what it was supposed to be testing. Lightning shot makes you fire a lightning arrow at a target. I came across this marker, noticed the colossal lightning bolts painted all over it, and shot without even stopping to think. Challenge over. This one was supposedly an actual shrine quest that an NPC gives you, but I found the shrine itself first, removing any sense of anticipation whatsoever, part of the double-edged sword of leaving these shrines so open. The same thing happened again with a landscape of a stable. I just naturally stumbled across the shrine in my travels, and it really wasn't particularly hidden. I had no idea this was even a quest until I spoke with the source NPC much later. I wish that more of the shrine quests have been designed to avoid this by making the source a requirement or near requirement to complete the quest. A fragmented monument is a good example of this, sending you on a scavenger hunt to photograph three shards scattered across a beach and present your findings to an NPC. You could stumble across any number of the shards before talking to the NPC, but you won't know what to do with them unless you've played the game before, in which case it's still a good solution because at shortens the time you have to spend solving a puzzle you clearly already know the answer to. You also have to speak to the NPC to finish the quest, which avoids moments where you're assigned a shrine quest only to have it immediately checked off on your UI because you already found that shrine. I'd say the shrine entry requirements are good more often than not, but there's still a frustrating amount of throw-away ones, and these aren't helped at all by the often lacking contents fan within. Shooting lightning at the picture of lightning wasn't just the end of the shrine in terms of getting into it, it was the end of the shrine period. There's nothing inside except a treasure chest and the requisite monk, and these blessing shrines make up a substantial portion of the total 120 in the world. At the end of an involved challenge, sure. Fair enough, you've already surpassed a different type of obstacle to earn your spirit orb, but something like this, or even simpler, that barely qualifies its content. I'm sure Nintendo knows how underwhelming some of these shrines can be, and given the inconsistency of their contents, it may well not have been intentional. This shrine has a defined entry challenge and content inside, this one only the former, and this one has neither. You just head right in. If there had been more development time, would some, or all of these blessing shrines have been replaced with more unique interiors? I suspect so, but it's only speculation, and ultimately I have to judge the product Nintendo actually shipped. The one type that we haven't covered yet is the test of strength shrines, which may be my least favorite content in the entire game. There are 20 of these divided into three difficulty tiers, and they don't scale with the player in any way. This means that a major test of strength can be a grindy while you'll break all your weapons against if encountered to early, and more agregously a minor test of strength will be irrelevantly easy if encountered to late. The major test issue is somewhat helped by the shrines being registered as workpoints when they're found rather than completed, meaning that it is possible to leave and come back later, but shrines are supposed to be fun to discoveries, and having to do this feels really bad. On top of this, the variation between each of these shrines is hitively small. Robots in higher tiered shrines have increased health and damage and more weapons attached to them, which functionally translates to essentially the exact same melee combat against all of them. They're just very small, timing, and positioning differences to account for. The higher level of arenas can also have a slightly different obstacle you need to put in the robots way when they charge at you, but once you catch onto this pattern, the room to use is blatantly obvious two seconds after you walk in. To the game's credit, it never explicitly points this out to you. There isn't even a tutorial for the lower level arenas that all you stone pillars. You might very well not catch onto that pattern right away. But you probably will at some point, after which that entire phase is just going through the motions, and apart from this, each of these fights plays out identically, and initial melee phase that sometimes closes the gap with lasers, a spinning charge that requires you to place an aforementioned obstacle in their path, a phase where they spin their laser in a circle, which creates an updraft, and a final desperation phase where they put up their shield and charge a laser. Once again, while there is a starting robot that guides length through basic offense and defense, things like catching an updraft from the laser don't get the same treatment. They need to be figured out independently, which is good. If you were told this, then the phase would be trivial, just glide up and shoot it in the eye. Having said that, the moment you do figure out this phase or any other, that's exactly the fate it suffers. It has the exact same solution every time. Now, you could say this is how all video game attacks work, and well, not universal, sure. That's generally true. Much like the shrine riddles I just talked about, though, these can generally be broken down into some combination of deciphering tests, figuring out what to do, and execution test actually doing it. Some of these phases do have at least a reasonable execution test attached to them, but others are essentially entirely deciphering, and these are the ones that really tend to fall apart. For a lot of players, first play through Zand definitely subsequent playthroughs. It's a format that's going to wear out as welcome far too quickly, and to make you feel robbed of a more interesting experience. The second you set foot in the shrine. From Nintendo's perspective, I absolutely understand the logic behind these. They can be slapped together with a modular template to fill out what would otherwise be more empty shrines on limited development time. The template that developers went with is not modular enough, though. I certainly don't hate the idea of combat-centric shrines, which can be quickly thrown together, but think this would have worked much better as a room filled with various different enemies, similar to what we've seen in previous Zelda games, or even in Breath of the Wild's own DLC content. This would potentially undercut the increased immersion these areas achieved compared to previous games. I'm certainly not saying that finding ancient minds or temples filled with puzzles was a problem that needed solving, but it's hard to argue that ancient puzzle rooms make more sense contextually. The robots fit into this context perfectly as well, but standard enemies would need some type of explanation considering these rooms have supposedly been abandoned for thousands of years. Would that be particularly difficult to explain, though? Probably not. And the game's own DLC feels no need to do so for its very similar concept, either. I can't say for sure whether this type of varied layout would cause more or less development strain overall compared to creating a new enemy type, but even just adding a couple enemies and blocks to each room alongside the robots, maybe toning those down slightly as compensation would likely work better. The tests of strength would be much more varied, the additional development impact would be very minimal, and these enemies could even scale like in the Overworld to fix some of the static difficulty issue. Referring back to the shrines as a whole, I know a lot of people weren't big fans of them sharing the same visual style and soundtrack, but I actually didn't mind this. It gave the experience of entering them a comforting and even somewhat meditative feeling. I'm obviously giving the game too much credit. The reason they all look and sound the same is because it made them easier to develop and feeling disappointed by this severe drop in variety from previous games is certainly valid, but it worked for my tastes. Overall, considering how much of a thorough playthrough will be spent hunting down and solving shrines, as well as what they're replacing, they should have been a major highlight of the game. Some of them do rise to this occasion, but there are far too many that didn't feel like highlights or anything close to it. More like just another box to check off the list with a very heavy, slow-moving pen. Shines were the developers best opportunity to construct imaginative set pieces for the player. Their self-contained areas that are canonically given permission to bypass any connection to the outside environment, storyline, anything at all. There's just so little imagination on display for so many of them though, at least once you get inside. Again, I think the shrine quests are usually at least good and the best of them are really good, but there are precious few of these. The most likely reason for this is that developers had to pump out 120 of these, and they had to pump out 120 of these because of how big the world is, so once again, maybe the world shouldn't have been so big. These shrines also contain a lot of treasure chests, but there's rarely anything interesting in them. Weapons are almost never an exciting find in a chest, as the range of movesets and special properties between them is so low, and they all break anyways. The first time you do find one of the more interesting ones, like your first elemental sword, is legitimately cool to discover. But this is a trick that the game can only pull once, not even necessarily once, as there's no guarantee that you haven't already stumbled across it somewhere else, and just how cool it is will still be limited by the fact that it largely plays like something you've already used and will break shortly after you get it. Breath of the Wild does attempt to give these weapons a bit more appeal by introducing a mild completionist element, done through its photo-compendium, and if you're a diehard fan of this system, the appearance of a slightly different spear will probably be reasonably interesting to you, which does have some merit. Personally though, it doesn't appeal to me that much, and I'd expect it to be a challenge taken up by a relatively small portion of the player base. The way chest work when your inventory is full, drags weapon rewards down further still. You'll always be booted out of the chest without the option to swap its contents into an inventory slot. Meaning if it's content you actually want, you're going to have to head into your inventory, remove something, and then open the chest a second time. You're going to be doing this constantly over the course of the game, and it quickly becomes extremely irritating. Thankfully, this generally won't be an issue for other reward types. For example, shrines also offer the classic Rupees, which are no longer constrained by a wallet. You can carry 999,999 right from the start of the game. Rupees have traditionally been fairly underwhelming filler rewards, and while they are somewhat more useful here than in previous Zelda games, they hardly qualify as exciting. Precious stones are another possibility, which may appear to be exciting, but they don't actually do all that much. They're used for armor upgrades to buy a few new pieces of gear, as well as to forge a handful of legendary weapons that are unlocked by clearing parts of the story quest. If you haven't played Breath of the Wild, that last one may have made your ears perk up, but these weapons are mostly pretty mediocre, and you never need all that many stones for the other purposes, not to mention that they're already handed out fairly freely in the overworld. This means that the majority of the time, any precious stones that you do find are just going to end up getting sold for Rupees anyways. You can also find Guardian Parts, which serves as an alternate type of currency and an armor upgrade, and these ones are more encouraging. They're hardly the most exciting reward in the series, but they can be used to purchase gear from the Acala Ancient Tech Lab, and the weapons and arrows here are always useful. Arrows are always useful, period, and part of the higher appeal of Rupees, so finding them in shrines feels at least okay, but just okay, which is really the most I can say about any of these. The same rewards issue appears in the overworld as well, but it's most on display in shrines, which are both the likelyest places to find chests, and also replace dungeons, which were previously known for providing game-driving items. The older dungeons held their fair share of filler rewards as well, but you were also usually promised something that provided a significant change to gameplay, so the fact that this almost never happens in shrines can feel jarring to series veterans, and while newcomers won't have the same contrast in mind, the monotony of the Shrine reward structure will still exist, with so many of them expecting something significant beyond spirit orbs, and everyone is unrealistic, and trying to maintain the uniqueness and significance of that quantity of chests would likely require major changes to the game's core, but as is the only ones that somewhat fit this criteria are the armor sets. Armor does provide the player with a permanently accessible change to their appearance and abilities, but it's a shame that there is so few of them you can obtain this way. The rubber armor protects you from electricity, the barbarian armor gives you an attack boost and stamina upgrade during combat, the climbing gear removes at least some of the tedium from climbing not too much, and the hero set gives you an upgraded beam attack. These are the only armor sets available through shrines, though, and every other reward falls into one of the earlier categories. The overall armor system in Breath of the Wild is a good idea with mixed implementation, many other sets are available in the overworld through various means, and they add some fantastic visual variety to the game, being able to run around as a glow in the dark luchador, woman of the desert, or heavily armored centurion, many but not all of which can be died in various colors, greatly helps break up the monotony of staring at the same character model for potentially 100 plus hours of gameplay, and many of these armor sets have additional effects beyond defense. Upgrading armor also provides a significant portion of Breath of the Wild sense of progression, as while Link does have a hidden level stat the ramps up enemy and weapons spawns over time, it's invisible to the player, and there are no stat levels or other traditional RPG progression mechanics in the game. Armor acts as a substitute for this, and it's a reasonably effective one, requiring you to thoroughly explore high rule for materials and being initiated with some genuinely funny animations, although I wouldn't consider this to be nearly as compelling as a more involved progression system. You can't have traditional stat progression while fully maintaining Breath of the Wild structure, the powerful weapon pickups near Ganon are the entire reason in an early boss kill as possible, which when combined with the durability system would break if Link also had a scaling attack stat. In this context, I understand such a system's absence, in which case the armor upgrades do make sense, but there's still probably could have been more progression of some kind of Link as a character rather than just his gear. The balance of armor upgrades is unfortunately very poor, which I'll elaborate on when we get to combat, but I can say that their additional effects don't always suit the delivery method. One of the most common effects attached to armor is protection from some form of environmental damage, whether that's cold, heat, extreme heat, lightening, etc. These are good use cases for armor, because they mean that areas of extreme weather are always more oppressive than usual, even though the player has a way to bypass their effects. This type of armor never has stats anywhere near as powerful as dedicated combat gear, so in any environment where you have to equip armor to survive, you're making yourself more vulnerable in other areas, a sacrifice in exchange for a game. You can get the same protective effects temporarily through consumable items, but in addition to losing inventory, these consumables can also provide benefits to combat or traversal, and they can't be active simultaneously, so the trade-off still holds. There are certain systems that start to infringe on this balance to some degree. For example, carrying a frostblade in the desert to stay cool, but these aren't generally the most powerful weapons in your arsenal, maintaining a trade-off to not putting on your armor, and after a certain point, this alone still won't be enough to fully protect you. Similar statements can be made for armor with combat-centric use. You can wear armor that boosts your attack, your defense, your proficiency with specific weapon types that makes certain enemies friendly towards you, but never all at once. You require to prioritize. Traversal armor on the other hand is less effective at design. As we've gone over, you're really facing any kind of significant challenge when swimming or climbing, and even for most of the rare occasions that you are, these encounters will neither be very dangerous or very long, so sacrifice and combat attributes in exchange for more efficient movement isn't generally a sacrifice. The result of this is that if you have a waterfall to swim up or wall to scale, there's almost never a reason not to open your menu, equip the armor, complete the traversal, and re-equip the armor you were wearing before. It's an uninteresting non-decision which severely interrupts the flow of gameplay by sending you into the inventory menu. The only real choice to be made here is whether you find the slower movement speed or being forced into your inventory more obnoxious. That's like the dark armor, which raise your movement speed at night, are a bit more sensical because they're best worn for extended periods of time. Even here, though, there's very little stopping the player from wearing them until they're in combat, opening the menu, equipping combat gear, winning the combat, opening the menu, equipping the movement gear, and continuing on. I say very little stopping the player rather than nothing stopping them because increased movement speed does offer some benefiting combat, but I think most players would agree that it's less of a benefit than increased attack or defense. These kinds of effects were using them as almost always objectively correct and also requires no significant trade-off elsewhere would have been much more effective as permanent passive abilities for link to unlock. That's not to say I'd like all of these armor sets cut from the game. If I found out Nintendo made night speed a permanent boost and removed the dark armor as a result, I'd be disappointed, but I would be happy to hear they made the first change and give the dark armor a more interesting ability instead. The armor sets aren't devoid of interesting abilities, but there is a shortage of them, especially because there's so much overlap between different sets. In my first playthrough, I unlocked the thunder helm before any of the rubber armor, and because they both provide shock resistance, it made that rubber armor one of the few compelling shrine rewards, considerably less exciting to discover. Now, having multiples of the same effect isn't entirely redundant, it does create more opportunities to obtain each effect depending on your playthrough path and there can be upsides or downsides. Strictly speaking, the thunder helm is the better option of the two since you can wear stronger chest and leg armor while still getting the same electrical protection. But it's also hidden behind a lengthy set of quests that will require different resources to complete than the rubber armor will to upgrade. The rubber armor also lets you run around with a giant fish on your head, which for many players will be all the motivation they need. I think for many others, though, they're bound to be at least a bit let down by whichever one they unlock second, and the same applies to many other items in the game. I was initially excited to unlock a shop where I could buy circuits, a brand new type of head gear. When I found out they just provided the same resistance as I already had sitting in my inventory, though, my excitement vanished. The targeted resistances in particular are useful, and an integral thing to have in the game, but it's hard to say they do anything particularly fun, once the novelty of Zelda with a temperature system wears off. Like I said, there are a few interesting armor sets in the mix. The ability to run around with an army of monster buddies is entertaining. I like being able to see enemy health bars with the champions tunic, and certain armor sets freaking everyone out is pretty funny, even if it has no mechanical effect on gameplay. For the most part, however, these are utility items and nothing more. One or two variables slightly changed in the code, and there are often alternative means of obtaining that utility. The Zora armor's waterfall climb and dash attack are the only truly new actions link gains access to, and as I alluded to earlier, what have been better suited as permanent character upgrades. This also sadly won't be the last time we'll have to talk about loot that's less engaging than the path up to it. There are many side quests scattered across high rule, with greatly varying levels of detail. The least interesting ones are basic fetch quests, spring me x amount of meat and I'll give you some rupees or a bit of food. That sort of thing. These are unremarkable, but also pretty harmless. They give slightly more substance to the NPCs, can often lead to some fun dialogue, and you can gradually fill the mode at your leisure as your adventure proceeds. It makes sense to populate a game of this scale with this kind of content, and while it's clearly mindless filler, it's filler I don't have an issue with. The rewards aren't always so weak for this type of quest, though, the most impactful of which is probably slated for upgrades. The setup is similarly mild, asking you with delivering ancient parts to an NPC, which are obtained from chests or by defeating guardians. In return, you're able to upgrade some of your rooms, a permanent change which directly improves links capabilities, and in the case of Stasis Plus actually grants a new one. Highly in home owners only requirements are first delivering wood, and then later rupees, but it allows you to get your very own house that you can continuously upgrade. I have to say that the mechanics behind this house are very half-baked, and you can hardly customize anything. You just unlock a number of elements with fixed placements. In terms of practical use, you can store a few weapons for later, and you can sleep to fully restore your health. Considering how abundant weapons and healing already are, I've never found either of these to be particularly necessary. Underdeveloped as it is, though, it's still something unique, which permanently affects the world, and it comes with good characters. Both in in particular is so ridiculously shamelessly over the top that I can't help but like him. The quest is an overall positive addition to the game when judged in a vacuum, but the ratio of development effort this would have taken compared to how much of an impact it actually has seems maybe a bit off. There are also some more substantial quests, although I do need to emphasize the sum. From the ground up, it's folded into the same storyline as highly in homeowner, with links traveling the world in search of inhabitants for a new town. All of them needing to have son in their name as his tradition. Apparently, for some reason, look, this is a legend of Zelda game. They may have abandoned a lot of traditions, but bizarre NPC requests remain in full force. These end up being members of each of the primary races involved in Breath of the Wilds made questline, meaning that you'll almost inevitably be working through this quest slowly and steadily as you play through the game. All you're technically doing here is chopping wood and speaking to NPCs, but it provides another through line alongside the main story content, which is a good inclusion. The reward is pretty compelling as well, as you gradually watch Terry Town form on what was once an empty patch of Earth, and by the end of the quest it will include vendors selling goods you can't buy anywhere else, along with more side quests to take on. This is an acceptable payoff, but a lot of this satisfaction in this quest comes from the simple joys of helping people and adding another small pocket of society back into the wilderness. The game leans on that kind of intrinsic motivation too often over the course of a typical playthrough for my taste, but I do think it works nicely here. The decision not to put a shrine in the town itself is a nice touch as well. The nearest one is conveniently close, but also overlooks it, meaning that you'll always have a good view of the developing town if you visit here in between quest segments. Hunt for the giant horse has you trekking into the desert too. I'll let you fill the blanks in on that one, which you then need to make a fairly lengthy ride back on to show the source NPC. It's a bit of a stretch to explicitly call the horse your quest reward. You can discover entertainment without speaking to anyone, but the quest tells you where to find it and for many people the result will functionally be the same. It's a very slow but strong horse, aka kind of useless if we're being honest, but still cool enough to make me break it out every now and then. The eighth hero in sends you on along journey once again, this time into the snowy mountains multiple times in search of artifacts to photograph. The quest is pretty funny as well, with the source NPC trying pitifully to woo link in his female disguise, and the reward ends up being the snow boots and sand boots, armor that increases link's movement speed in these environments. Not a bad payoff, per se, but it does fall squarely into the useful but uninteresting criticism I've levied towards a lot of the other armor pieces. You need to complete a variety of side quests to unlock the Thunder Helm, and some of this content is very wrote. Bring her some berries, bring her some flint, bring her some guts, bring her a jury and yada. With that said, it also does have you performing some engaging tasks, like tracking a polluter across an aqueduct system, or fighting what will be a new enemy for many players in order to get those guts. It's definitely not all great, though, and again, your award is the Thunder Helm, which I've already talked about. The priceless Morocco's both serves as what might be a reasonably challenging combat trial, if you discovered in the early game as intended, and also acts as your introduction to Hestu, an important NPC. He's conspicuously sitting beside the road into Kakariko Villa, gentels you that he's lost his Morocco's to a group of myth-level bacoblins that you'll need to kill to get them back. Complete this quest, and you'll finally uncover the point of those damn Corox you've been running into everywhere. The 900 Corox scattered across the map are reasonably solid method of filling in more of high rule. Each of them providing a mini challenge that grants a Corox seed for Hestu's Morocco's, which you can then use to upgrade links melee weapon, bow, and shield inventory slots. With so many Corox to find, a large amount of copy paste was inevitable, but the developers have made an effort to avoid players being bombarded with constant repetition. The simplest type of Corox just involves walking over to them and pressing A, and these are usually going to be either hidden in high places, most notably the very top of Hyrule Castle itself, or running around in a circuit you'll need to track down. An extension of this would be certain rocks that you'll need to lift to reveal the Corox underneath, some of which are themselves hidden under or behind other objects. There are some that ask you to play ballgames by throwing a rock into a circle, for example, or knocking a boulder into a hole. You might need to solve a block puzzle by using Magnesus to make two structures match, a decent idea that can unfortunately get a bit annoying when the block needs to be maneuvered with a lot of precision. The controls and camera of Magnesus once again come into play here, and it doesn't feel like this was supposed to be a dexterity test. There should probably have been a bit more lenience built into some of these. Yet another type has you matching the fruit on a set of trees, and I may be dumb for admitting this to the internet, but it took me literally hundreds of hours to realize this type of Corox seed existed. I ran right by them for my entire first playthrough and most of my second. Other Corox require you to move through a series of flowers, offer apples to a statue, complete a broken circle, navigate a brief time trial, or shoot targets, which can be obvious or hidden, one or several static or moving. This is the type that provides one of the most memorable Corox seeds with link plotting across a long abandoned horse riding course, and this is actually one of the only individually memorable Corox encounters that developers did make an honest effort to mix things up, generally trying to place similar Corox puzzles away from each other, and making as much use of the environment as possible, something that the time trial and flower chase variants do a particularly good job of. Having said that, the fact that so few of them provide anything as distinctive as this riding path, which itself is still not terribly unique, does eventually become an issue, as Corox seeds start to deliver diminishing returns, and their variety is exhausted many times over. Their novel enough to sustain a solid portion of a playthrough, and the variety is slightly better than I've made it sound. I haven't gone over every type of seed, and there are a few more individual ones that stand out. However, certainly for me, and I'd imagine many other players that novelty does fade away before the game is done, at least if played thoroughly. That's not to say the 900 number isn't gross overkill. It's clear Nintendo wasn't intending players to hunt down every single one, since less than half of them are needed for a full inventory upgrade, and the remainder will only get you Hesdu's gift, which... yeah, has pretty clearly been chosen to be worthless. I've heard a lot of complaints about this quote unquote, reward for collecting all 900 Corox seeds, and I agree with them to an extent. I think an emblem should probably be the maximum reward for such an arduous task, because if it was literally anything more substantial, even a new hat with purely cosmetic effects. How, let's say, negative effects. That would still be something quite a few more players would want to track down, putting themselves through a painful slog to do so, something Nintendo clearly did not want to encourage. On the other hand, a literal turd, something that openly mocks the player for their efforts, is a step too far. As some players were inevitably going to take this completionist challenge on. Another issue with Corox seeds would be that they're leaned on too heavily in order to provide at least one small discovery in each area. Corox are well suited as small bonuses, and this may well be what they were originally conceived for. But there are also many seemingly significant areas to discover in high rule that are only occupied by Corox. There comes a point where hiking into a new region and finding yet another one of these goes from fun to discouraging. Even more so if you made the hike knowing there was unlikely to be anything else, it was necessary to do this because there was so much world to fill, and Corox were the quickest way to fill it. So I'll say it again, maybe the world shouldn't have been so big. If you'll recall, this was a tangent from Breath of the Wild side quests, and while the ones I piloted so far are generally what I'd consider to be positive additions to the game, I've still had to attach a fair amount of caveats, and I'm already starting to run out of highlights. Appearance Love has you eastroping on a couple in Terry Town, and cooking up what's likely going to be a new recipe for you, the Monster Cake, which you can get a hint towards from the recipe book in Rito Village. Compiling quest makes you feel helpful by healing a sick child, their award as rubies. Weapon Connocier has you showing another child a series of increasingly rare weapons from a cross-high rule, always giving you something to keep in the back of your mind during your adventures, and the reward as rubies, and a diamond at the very end, so as we previously discussed with precious stones, probably rubies. Cascades you are riddle presented exactly like a lot of the better shrine quests in the game, except it's a cop-out, and your award as rubies. Special delivery puts you on a dangerous escort mission to ensure a letter safely travels down stream. This ends up uniting a couple, who link can meet back up with insurias domain, and who will reward him with the double jump ability. I'm getting, of course, it's rubies, and in this case a storyline that's more than a little creepy and plays heavily into the she's older than she looks trope. It's written to be very tame, but I still personally found it jarring, and I'm honestly surprised it was allowed into the game. Looking through the list of side quests in Breath of the Wild, almost all of them offer either rubies or some other basic consumable, rubies, rubies, carrot, rubies, rubies, seeds, rubies. This cuckoo fetching challenge is very reminiscent of the one in Ocarina of Time, which granted link a bottle as a reward, a very rare and useful item that Breath of the Wild doesn't include. In fact, in previous games, it was common to reward these kinds of involved side quests with some important collectible, whether that was a bottle, heart piece, or something more unique. And the fact that Breath of the Wild almost never does this has a significantly detrimental impact on the satisfaction of completing them. There are a few more substantial rewards we haven't covered already. You complete the Zora Armor set by photographing a Lionel for example, but these are very much the exception rather than the rule, and the much more committal quest in the same area that has you traveling far further away grants you fish. You're given this while you're standing by a lake full of fish. Now, not all side quests require some grand reward, and in fact, including too many might even go against the purely optional nature of this content, causing some players stressed from the perceived need to constantly go off-track from their goal. Even so, Breath of the Wild's cues considerably too far in the other direction. Having covered shrines and quests, we've now discussed the bulk of what you'll be spending your non-story time doing, but there are still a number of other activities to discover. The customary mini game selection returns, although a lot of their identities are somewhat diluted because between shrines, core oxides, and general travel, it's likely you'll have already done something similar by the time you reach them. Boom Bam Golf is an example of this. A game of stasis golf you can find tucked away in the corner of the world, because it's so far removed from the direction the game pushes you towards. By the time most players encounter it, they've likely already stumbled across similar concepts for core oxides. And the same can be said for shrines, multiples of which employ some form of golfing game. This one is a bit more stringent than the rest. It's a multi-shot challenge that requires the ball to remain on the course the entire time, but it's still not particularly novel, which reduces the enjoyment of finding and playing it. How could it be novel when it introduces no unique mechanics or assets of any kind? Nothing that you haven't already been doing, and this is an issue that arises for essentially all of the mini games in Breath of the Wild. You can go bowling with snowballs, a basic environmental interaction that's also used to kill enemies and open a shrine. You can deliver ice. Again, you can shoot targets on the flight range. Again, you can light the blue flame. Again, you can hunt deer, you can run fast, you can glide far, all of which you've probably already been doing. My personal favorites are the ones that ask you to demonstrate mastery of movement mechanics significantly more than usual, although even here, they feel more like compensation for being underutilized in the overworld. Yes, some shrines may demand a bit more control of the paraglider than normal, and sand seals are used in the main storyline, but those are tiny fractions of the total play time, which is also why I'm making a distinction between the paraglider mini game that has you tightly navigate through our branching obstacle course, a rare movement test, and the one that just has you glide as far as possible, a standard method of getting around. The same applies to horse riding. Mounted archery isn't anything unique to this mini game, but there's nothing else that tests it with anywhere near the same degree of rigor. And the other horse-based mini game that has you jumping over hurdles is a fairly unique challenge. The super gut check challenge comes close to meeting the standard as well, offering the exact kind of climbing test I was lamenting the lack of earlier in the video, but ultimately ends up reinforcing the issues with breath of the wilds existing stamina system. If you come across this challenge with too much stamina, it's trivial. With the right amount, it's actually pretty good, and if you don't have enough, it's unplayable. I talked about the potential of including stamina-based progress gates earlier in the video, but making this insignificant mini game one of very few instances which uses such a jarring, hard resource check potentially sets unrealistic expectations. Ooh, the game doesn't usually do this, so it must be guarding something really good. I don't have enough stamina right now, but I'll market for later. I'm really looking forward to finding out what's behind this. That's a really solid setup. The payoff of Rupees and a mushroom is decidedly not solid, even if it is repeatable to function as a Rupee farm. The flying mini games fall under the same criticism. They're not nearly as bad since they're not completely broken just by having stamina stockpiled, but everything else applies. And then there's the lottery. It's, I mean, it's a lottery. You choose one of three chests and you might get back more than you put in. Now, compare any of these mini games to something like is-a-z rapid ride from Twilight Princess, or even something smaller, like sinking ships from the Windwaker. Are these incredible pieces of content? No, they're mini games. They're not really supposed to be, and in fact, I'd say sinking ships is even pretty bad, but they are novel content and introduce new ideas to their respective games. I'd call Breath of the Wilds Dear Hunting Challenge more fun than a slow, boring battleship clone that's largely based on luck, but sinking ships is still by far the more memorable mini game. Similar to the rewards from quests, having mini games based on existing mechanics isn't inherently bad, and some of them are decent enough fun and isolation. It's the fact that there are only mini games based on existing mechanics that drags them down. mini games have never been an integral part of the Zelda experience, and with how much there is to do in Breath of the Wild, they're not the worst a mission the game could have, but it's nonetheless a bit disappointing to see them so transparently downgraded compared to previous titles. Once again, it was likely an esisserie sacrifice to spare enough development time to complete this enormous world, so once again, maybe the world shouldn't have been so big. Other content includes a fifth fairy, or god that allows you to revive dead horses, and he's either a trickster who wants you to think he's a psychopath, or a psychopath who wants you to think he's a trickster. Either way, he's a lot of fun to discover even if across all my playthroughs I've maybe used him three times. You'll also see mysterious beams shoot across the sky and land on the ground. These are intriguing when you first see them, but unfortunately end up suffering the same fate as the dragon, so they're called star fragments, and they're ultimately just another ingredient for recipes and armor upgrades. A relatively rare one, so they are more exciting to discover than many ingredients, but nothing more than that. They can also be a bit on the buggy side. Their physics calculations are disabled until Link gets close enough, and while it's usually just looks a little goofy, every now and then it can lead to some clearly unintended results. I never did find this star fragment. Numerous NPCs can be found to traveling high rules wilderness, mostly along the main roads, and these can provide conversation, merchant services, or little gifts, some of which first require you to save them from monsters before they're stunned. I like this addition because it punctuates the usually laid-back wilderness travel with a touch of urgency. There are words you're given are never good, but they still provide a bit of a tangible reason to hurry, and to these encounters are also infrequent enough to not agree justly disrupt the overworld's relaxed atmosphere. It also enforces that this is, in fact, a post-apocalyptic environment. If you never interacted with NPCs who were in trouble outside of the vague future threats that are provided in the story, the dangers of the environment would be somewhat undercut. There's another town to discover, the seaside lural and village, which has no connection to the main story whatsoever. It's unsurprisingly the least substantial or useful one by a significant margin, but I was still very pleased the first time I encountered it. And there is a bit of content to explore, even if little of it is particularly meaningful. It also helps to avoid the world feeling overly contrived. It makes perfect sense that little pockets of civilization would have spread across high rule over the preceding century, and of course they wouldn't all have some grand stake in the fate of the world. If anything, the game could use a couple more of these. There are new mounts to discover. We've talked about deer, but not bears, or skeleton horses, or the Lord of the Mountain. Mounds like these can potentially be a lot of fun. The footage you're watching now is from the last substantial playthrough of Breath of the Wild I did for this retrospective. Even after all this time, the game still managed to surprise me with Bacoblins mounted on bears, which I'd somehow missed up to this point. So naturally, I had no choice but to find one of my own and challenge their authority. This was a fantastic bit of intrinsic motivation. I could easily afford these enemies on foot, and if we're being honest, it might even have been easier, but damn it, I wanted Bear Combat. From an extrinsic viewpoint, however, these kinds of mounts are virtually no purpose. As there's no way to keep them around, and you're inevitably going to have to get off of them at some point. The Lord of the Mountain isn't even worse example of this. That enticing green glow you've noticed in the distance turns out to be a horse-like spirit, presiding over a gathering in a mountain top spring. It looks like you just might be able to try riding it, and sure enough, if you approach it very carefully and come prepared with enough stamina to resist its intense strength, you can, in fact, tame this awe-inspiring creature, and my god, it's so fast, it's so graceful, this is amazing. And then you try and register at a stable, and are unceremoniously told us not allowed. And the second you dismount, it's gone. Once again, in terms of intrinsic motivation, this can potentially be a very strong moment. Getting a chance to discover and ride the Lord of the Mountain for a bit will be rewarding enough for some players, then they might even feel that being allowed to keep it would cheap in the experience. As I've mentioned, though, I'm generally more extrinsically motivated, and for a player like me, the inability to maintain any mount besides horses is setting up a guaranteed moment of intense disappointment when I inevitably first try to register one. Horses are already underutilized as is, and I have a hard time understanding why being able to travel by deer, skeleton, or spirit would be something a game is focused on player agency as Breath of the Wild would prohibit. It might be because the developers were worried horses would be left by the wayside of this was an option, but they're generally more useful than the other mount besides the Lord of the Mountain anyways. And that one could easily have its stats brought more in line with its peers if balance was a major concern. I'm not sure the balancing the stats of a mystical spirit to those of a standard horse should necessarily be a major concern, so maybe extreme outlier stats like only having a single hit point would allow it to maintain its satisfying strength in other areas. You could also place it further from the starting region to increase the horses' chance to shine earlier in the game, maybe there could even be several legendary mounts along the world's borders. Breath of the Wild already contains unique horses and horses with maximum stat distributions that many players are likely to stick with once they're acquired, so maintaining the bond you forge with your first horse or similar factors already don't have much integrity. And again, you're not spending most of the game on them to begin with, so their ability to severely alter the player's experience is limited from the start. Being able to collect a variety of mounts would have been an excellent addition to Breath of the Wild's rewards for thorough exploration, and almost all of the systems needed for this had already been built. As is though, the vegetation growing on the Tory mountain ended up being more of a payoff than the source of the mysterious glow which brought you there, which is a shame. I've just brought up Staples, another structure the player can find a number of across the world, which often contains side quests and other little rewards and supplies. They're relatively straightforward and often contain dogs that can be interacted with. A small detail that adds to the world's immersiveness and might even be distracting if it was missing. If dogs are a little detail that improves immersion though, then the invincible animals often found nearby, which look nearly identical to the ones players have been conditioned to think of as food, our little detail that breaks it. Humans tend to have a built-in negativity bias, so if you experience a small praiseworthy moment followed by a small problematic one, the latter is the one that tends to stick more in your head. Sometimes these moments are unavoidable. Allowing link to kill innocent people, for example, would place far more of a burden on the story and mechanics of the game than the increased immersion would be worth. You could avoid this by simply not including NPCs, but hopefully the issues with that approach are self-evident. And I'd like why it's called that dogs and that positive to the game, even though they had to get the same invincibility treatment. Including the animals in this form though, wasn't necessary. The idea was obviously to increase the game sense of immersiveness, but at least to me, they have the opposite effect. Not having them at all though might feel a bit sterile, so some reasonable alternatives might be to make them killable, but have a penalty for doing so, maintaining the canonical depiction of Link as a character who isn't supposed to be acting this way, or to enclose them in patterns, a reasonable concept given the dangerous nature of the world. For some more substantial side content, let's talk about the Master Sword, Link's signature weapon and generally a mandatory item in 3D Zelda. I really like the way it's been handled in Breath of the Wild, while there are some NPCs that will nudge you in the right direction, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from stumbling across it at any time. And doing this was probably the biggest, oh, damn moment I experienced during my first playthrough. This obviously won't be nearly as impactful if you're not already familiar with the series, but even if you don't fully understand its significance, it's obviously a revered item that you may or may not have to anticipate coming back for later. The Master Sword is one of very few things in the game that is firmly locked behind a progress gate, and a fairly elegant one at that. Link doesn't have a visible level and the open world and philosophy of freedom discourage that developers from creating geographical barriers as much as possible. So, instead, pulling it simply drains a certain amount of Link's hearts, specifically needing 13 to unseat it from the pedestal. It's a check on the number of shrines and divine beast you've cleared rather than specifically hard containers, as there's a statue in one of the villages that allows you to swap between hard containers and stamina vessels. Breath of the Wild makes performing a lot of tasks in bulk a bit of a pain, and if you've invested in stamina, this one's no exception, but even though measuring both hearts and stamina would be superior mechanically, it wouldn't feel as thematically rich, so I understand why this approach was taken. The Master Sword is very powerful against guardian enemies, and lets you fire a beam attack if your health is full similar to the classic games, but its highest value comes from being the only weapon in the game that never breaks. It still does fundamentally use the same durability system as every other weapon, but comes back after a cooldown, and can never be thrown or dropped, even if you're here by electricity. Now, this isn't necessarily a universally positive design decision, but I'll save that for the upcoming combat discussion, and as a player, it's certainly an enticing reward. The highly enshield, also appears as an optional item, not nearly as ceremoniously being guarded by a mini boss rather than a unique mechanic, and getting no story recognition whatsoever, but it's still the most durable and powerful shield in the game. Does it do anything special? Not really, it's just iconic and strong, although it's still a solid fight, as well as one worthy of the danger you need to place yourself in, being guarded deep inside the Gannon-Infested Hyrule Castle. Hyrule also has some more one often since it's to come across. The man who talks to link off the ledge if he tries to jump off a bridge, a radical shield server at the top of a hill, killed in and his monster stand, which travels from place to place at night, selling a few unique sets of armor, a few joke weapons, and some other nicknaps, and of course there's the world itself, which is full of little scenarios that aren't mechanically distinct, but still serves to provide additional depth to this incarnation of Hyrule, from both a present and historical perspective. The Colosseum, as a good example of this, mechanically speaking, is just a room full of monsters and weapons, but it still feels like a significant discovery that imparts a bit more information about Hyrule in culture. There are unsettling statues hidden away in the depths of the jungle. Fort Hattenow was the site of a major guardian invasion during the calamity. This ancient tree stump was important, or the tree was, it gets its own location designation and has a village nearby, so it seems like it's supposed to have been important at some point, but we're never given any definitive information about this area, and this is a theme that gets repeated too often for my tastes. While I highlighted a few interesting landmarks, the reality is that most of what you'll find in these previously civilized areas are, generic ruins, without much more than a name on the map to tell you what their purpose used to be. Now, some of them do get at least a few hints and tidbits beyond this, the tree stump possibly included, but it's surprisingly uncommon. Contextually sure, this makes sense. They've been abandoned for a full century, and realistically, it's not likely that much in the way of journals, artwork, children's toys, or other items that gave the impression that anyone ever actually lived here would survive that long, without being degraded, or scavenged. But I still wish that developers had come up with some reasonable excuses to include even a bit more concrete information to discover, particularly through journals. If I find another new ruin on my travels and know there's almost no chance of anything inside other than an enemy or two, a low-grade weapon, or maybe at best a core arc, it does have a significantly detrimental impact on the excitement of that discovery, even the slim possibility of finding a journal or trinket buried or hidden behind something would significantly increase the anticipation of exploring a new area, as well as the reward for doing so when this did pay off. A single throwaway line from an NPC early in the game that talks about the, uh, I don't know, waterproof paper high-reliance figured out would be all the explanation needed to make this feel sensible in the game's universe, and while they still might feel slightly contrived, and would also make breath of the wild feel a bit more like other post-apocalyptic games on the market, I think those are reasonable trade-offs. Not everyone is going to agree on this. I do understand the appeal of minimalist storytelling through world-building, and for some people the mystery would be ruined if it was over-explained. For my taste though, learning even a bit more about this crumble society would enhance my appreciation for the world, not diminish it. By now, while I certainly haven't covered all the non-story content in Breath of the Wild, I haven't given it a reasonably thorough look, which would make this a natural time to jump into the story content. I'm not quite ready to do that yet, though, since I think the time has finally arrived to talk about the game's combat, both because it will be necessary to fully discuss that content, which contains the only truly mandatory fights in the entire game, and also because it plays into some of the issues I have with Breath of the Wild's design as a whole, and I'd like to tie these together as conclusively as possible. I'll also note that I'm mostly restricting this to a more average play experience. Breath of the Wild's mechanics can be pushed much further than this, but I'm generally avoiding that side of the game in this video. That type of gameplay probably deserves a separate discussion, and I simply wouldn't be qualified to lead it. I've learned more tricks than your average player, but talking about the world of advanced Breath of the Wild with any degree of proficiency is outside my skill set. I've generally considered combat in the Legend of Zelda to be one of the least fleshed out and enjoyable aspects of most of the games. This is a medley more true in Tudy, where outside of boss battles at largely devolves into mashing the attack button, and at most using one item to open enemies up beforehand. The 3D titles have suffered from similar problems, but I do think that they've generally made more sweeping improvements from game to game, with the hero of time titles being upstage by the Windwaker's expanded move set, and, again, by Twilight Princess, which further diversified links abilities, and also took what were previously reaction commands, and instead moved them into actions the player could initiate at any time, representing a sharp increase in player agency. Scoured swords at option of Wii Motion+, and 1-1 Sword Combat is so radically different from the other 3D titles that I don't feel it can be directly compared to them in the same way. It sits in his own category, but Breath of the Wild returned to more traditional hardware. And while in some areas, it does continue the forward momentum of previous 3D entries. This isn't universally true. Mely Combat is the largest stumble here, which I didn't initially expect after seeing the expanded range of weapons. Breath of the Wild has quite a few weapons, Nintendo's own terminology that excludes bows and shields, but they're all broadly broken down into four categories. One handers can be wielded with shields while maintaining solid melee damage, two handers are considerably slower, but offer more range and the highest damage output possible. Spears have even more range and fast attacks while sacrificing crowd control and single hit damage, and rods while usable for melee combat, specialized in mid-range elemental projectiles. On paper, this seems like the setup for a good, diverse combat system, but there's still too much overlap between the different weapon types. Ignoring rods, which are both much more rare and user-limited movesetment primarily to create an opening before being swapped out. Each weapon class allows Link to perform exactly a standard short combo, a dash attack, a charged attack, a jump slash, a plunging attack, and a throw. Even within these far higher emphasis will be placed on the combo, charge attack, and dash attack. And this isn't nearly enough to remain compelling over Breath of the Wild's runtime. To be fair, this doesn't tell the full story. The one-handed spin attack doesn't perform the exact same role as the spear single target flurry, but the repetition of your actions still absolutely starts to set in before the end of the game, made far worse by a more egregious issue, the almost total overlap with any weapon class. Essentially, every weapon within each class uses an identical or near identical move set, with the only differences between the being durability and damage output. There are some minor exceptions to this. Boomerangs will arc back towards Link when thrown. One-handed swords have a very slightly different combo compared to one-handed clubs, swords modeled on katana or wakazashi use a unique draw cut instead of the typical spin attack of most two handers. One of these, the wind cleaver, also fires a damaging air blast. The rods basic and upgraded versions are at least different in a way that goes beyond a stat being changed. These are ultimately mostly minor tweaks, though, as these weapons still use the same homogenous movesets in every other instance, and a lot of the time, these more unique attacks aren't necessarily designed particularly well. Boomerangs can't be reliably thrown in more enclosed environments, and while this isn't too objectionable, I do think their flight path should be at least a bit more robust. With so little variation available already, it doesn't make sense to constantly disincentivize one of the few truly unique attacks. The wind cleaver is much worse, as its projectile bizarrely can only be fired along a flat plane. It can't hit enemies above or below Link, even if he's locked onto them, which is extremely annoying. The issue stems from the fact that the wind cleaver can be thrown, which most projectile equipped hand weapons disallow in order to use that button for manual aiming, including the Master Sword, Rods, and the Korakleeve. Korakleeves incidentally could be argued as a fifth weapon type, but I'd say the more of a utility item with some niche combat application. Weapons can also have some inherent trait differences. The most notable of which would probably be elemental variants, but even within these, there are only three elemental typeings, and two of them, Frost and Thunder, are usually used for similar purposes, temporarily stunning enemies. There absolutely will be situations where their further differentiated as each element does have a variety of interactions, but these interactions aren't unique to the weapons, and once again, they use the exact same moves that's everything else. The elemental attribute is just a passive effect that has to recharge. Most weapons can also be found with some form of modifier, particularly later in the game, although it's hard to call any of these especially inspired. More damage, more durability, small number tweaks rather than anything genuinely new, including the bafflingly weak long-throw modifier, which is only vaguely useful even if the weapon is about to break. With all of this considered, there's disappointing little substance to the offensive aspect of Breath of the Wilds melee combat. But fortunately, this is somewhat made up for with a more interesting defense system than we've seen in previous 3D titles. When holding a shield, you can carry attacks with a well-timed A press, a system that returns from Skyward Sword, but with a much tighter window, which makes it reasonably challenging, while also providing a reward that justifies that challenge. It creates the expected opening after an attack is successfully carried, and on top of this, it can also completely disarm opponents and even deflect laser beams. I love that an extremely important and powerful option is quite challenging to master by the standards of the Zelda series. Newer players are still able to approach combat with alternate strategies, but a player who's comfortable with parrying is an entirely new league of combat prowess, and it helps enhance that power fantasy with some very satisfying visual and sound design. I do wish that I could give similar praise to the shields themselves. There are an impressive amount of beautifully modeled and textured shields to discover throughout your adventure, but for other visual variety, their combat functionality is nearly identical. There are a few unique effects attached to them, particularly for the higher leveled ones. The most prominent examples would be the Lionel Shields, which have melee damage on their parries and the Ancient Shield, which reflects laser beams automatically akin to the mere shield of previous games, and these are solid quirks that make the shields fun to collect and use. In the majority of cases, though, the functional combat differences between shields comes down to their durability and a single shield guard stat, which improves the shields ability to disarm and opponent after parrying them, stagger stronger attacks on block, and also augment this durability. The lack of variety between shields isn't nearly as problematic as it is with weapons, as their functionality is inherently going to be more focused and they don't work in tandem with every weapon class, but there was still room to take these farther with more unique actions, different passive bonuses, elemental properties, etc. Bringing up percentage-based damage reduction system into the game rather than all shields flatly blocking all damage may also have been interesting. Although that one might be strange too far from the expected feel of shields in the Zelda series. This is another element I wouldn't be too surprised to hear was experimented with and cut. I don't think the current variety in shields is horrible, but particularly early in your play through, it can be a bit disappointing to find several new types only to realize that they all function the same, regardless of what the flavor text implies. Whatever weapon Link is using, he also has access to a vase of maneuvers, done with that directional jump while in the lock on state. If one of these is used to dodging and coming attack with the right timing and positioning, Link enters the unique state called Flurry Rush, where time slows down and it allows him to get some additional damage, somewhat of an alternative to the shield barrier with a more restrictive follow-up. It's a good addition to the combat system, but even after spending a very long time with a game, I still can't say I fully understand what the activation window for it is. Sometimes it triggers when an attack is nowhere near you, and sometimes it doesn't trigger, even when it really looks like it should, which against certain enemies can get you unavoidably hit. Also, while it's not a terribly common issue, every now and then I ended up dodging sideways when I wanted to go backwards or vice versa, because the lock on camera decided to switch to an awkward angle I wasn't prepared for. I think a Z targeting system like this should favor a behind the back camera as much as possible, and Breath of the Wild defaults away from this far too often. On top of that, trying to switch between multiple targets can be incredibly in precise. There's no way to do so other than dropping the lock on, repositioning the camera, and trying again, which is a problem in its own right during group encounters, and also contents on the previous camera issue. The right analog stick could be put to good use here, but instead only serves to rotate the camera, which is not only very uncomfortable to do without using a claw grip, but would also almost never be necessary in the first place if not specifically for the off-kilter lock on system. I know Z targeting worked this way in some previous Zelda titles, but that's not really a defense. It caused issues there too. It's effects are just much more strongly felt here because of the new Dodge mechanics. We've now talked about melee combat, including weapons and shields, but that still leaves both, which received my favorite implementation out of any of them. They've been given a higher skill ceiling with the introduction of headshot bonuses, which field great to line up thanks to the continuation of gyroscopic gaming. I turn this off for my first playthrough, and in retrospect, is a decision I regret. It's a very natural way to make final adjustments alongside the right stick's broader motions, and makes archery feel very fluid. This is a much better use of motion controls than the massive twisting the shrines command of you. If you're still having trouble with headshots, you can make life much easier on yourself by taking advantage of Breath of the Wild's new bullet time, done by drawing your bow and midair. This system is a wonderful addition to Breath of the Wild's combat. It makes Link feel extremely dangerous, gives additional value to climbing by turning every raised surface into a power position, and while it's undoubtedly very strong, it's also kept in line by draining stamina. This means the bow is our oddly the component of Link's arsenal that makes the best use of stamina, as weapons only use it as a restriction during charge attacks, and shields aren't limited by stamina whatsoever. There was obviously potential to make more of Link's attacks during stamina, and I'd be shocked if it wasn't explored by that developers, but their final choice was generally aimed towards making Link attack freely, only using it to reign in small elements. This fairly sparing implementation continues the questions I raised earlier, but the necessity of including a stamina meter, but looking at the combat system as a standalone concept, I have no problem with this decision. Plenty of action games use some form of stamina meter to create a balancing act between attacking and recovering, but while this doesn't introduce some positive elements, it always comes with trade-offs. There's a reason plenty of games also don't include such a system. It would potentially give Breath of the Wild more strategic combat, but would also depart even further from the expected Zelda experience, probably too far from many players, and would make Link feel less agile and powerful than the developers clearly wanted him to. These are only a few of the questions Nintendo would have to ask themselves when creating the combat system, and at least stamina gets a few prominent roles between the two-handed charge attack and a bows bullet time. Both themselves are also more varied than any individual weapon class. Still not nearly as much as I would have hoped for, but on top of the usual damage output and durability, they can also have different draw speeds, arrow velocities, or aiming zooms, can shoot two, three, or even five arrows at once, and can also choose from six different types of arrows. Standard arrows, the three elemental versions, bomb arrows, and ancient arrows, extremely powerful and expensive variants that can one hit kill most enemies in the game with a good shot. The balancing on these upgraded arrow variants unfortunately hasn't been tuned very sensibly for multi-shot bows, nerfing the bonus damage to a point where the diminishing returns are so severe that it essentially negates the benefit of using better arrows and many scenarios. That issue aside though, ranged combat is overall quite solid in this game, and I still finding gliding in from a high place and headshotting an entire squad of McCoblins before links feet touch the ground immensely entertaining. The ability to freely switch between arsenal slots at any time with both bows and weapons, as well as two easily transition between melee and ranged combat adds some nice fluidity and makes it easier to take advantage of the variety that does exist in the game, particularly for melee combat. As said though, this variety is all things considered just too limited, which is even more of a shame because of the controversial durability system. With the exception of the master sword, every single item in links arsenal will break after enough hits, and the primary motivation for this was likely to force players to continuously mix up their strategy. I understand and agree with this conceptually, but the problem is that the limited variety between weapons means that there aren't actually all that many strategies to choose from. Another major reason I can think of for its inclusion is to give the various weapon scattered across high-ru and more value. If you can pick up the first traveler sword you see and keep it further rest of the game, every other traveler's sword in the game is now worthless to you, whereas if it's going to break at some point, that's no longer the case. There would be other ways to alleviate this problem, including making it possible to simply sell weapons to vendors, although that's a fairly weak cop-out solution that devalues weapon pickups even further. Many games with enemy drops function this way and is never an exciting option. Other alternatives might include creating a crafting system that used weapons as ingredients, or allowing them to be used for elixirs. These would take more work to implement, though, and would come with their own challenges. I can think of many, but just as an example, the carrying capacity of Link's inventory would be harder to balance as swords both needed to conform to their current convention and also needed to be carted around as ingredients. Maybe there could be some kind of dismantling action to let them be put into his larger materials in the inventory instead, and that would probably need to be justified with some kind of hammer or dissolving powder. This is just one system that would need to be changed, and you can easily see how things could spiral out of control for an already-strapped development team. Again, in theory, I understand the approach taken here, and in the early game it creates attention that I think works quite well, constantly pushing the player to scavenge their environment out of fear of resource depletion. There inevitably comes a point, though, and it doesn't take particularly long where your inventory has been upgraded a few times and is full of powerful reasonably durable gear. And this is the point where the pros of the durability system rapidly started to deteriorate, whereas its consequences loom for the remainder of the game, a fiddling with weapons selection before you chop down a tree or smash a rock, constant interruptions in the middle of fights, combat with mob creating resource depletion rather than resource gain, the possibility of being stuck with no reasonable way to fight a tough enemy. There are a lot, and I do mean a lot of rippling problems that the durability system creates, but I think the most egregious of all of them is that it turns weapons into an unexciting reward, whereas in previous Zelda games there were some of the most compelling rewards in the entire series. This one is made even worse after you acquired the Master Sword and weapon degradation slows to a crawl thanks to its constant availability, significantly easing that a man to even use other weapons. At the same time, simply removing weapon degradation from the game without major changes to other systems would create a host of its own issues. I'm on board with the mechanic, but even some minor alterations such as generally higher durability, a default melee attack link always has access to, and no durability loss on activities like what cutting and shield surfing would make its implementation less of noxious for a lot of players. At the end of the day, however, I don't think these kinds of band-aid fixes would be enough to fully bring out the potential in the durability system. There would likely need to be some radical changes made to resource distribution, weapon design, and a host of other elements in the game. These would, in all likelihood, have taken up more development time than the existing content, and development time was even more precious than usual because of how demanding this enormous world was to create, so I'll say it again, maybe the world shouldn't have been so big. Of course, this is only taking the direct methods of attacking and defending against enemies into account, but breath of the wilds, physics, and chemistry systems provide a lot of room for creative alternatives. You can freeze enemies and blow or push them off a cliff. You can shoot lanterns and drop them into explosive barrels. You can directly shoot those barrels with fire arrows or blow them up with bombs. You can stasis launch boxes at enemies, roll boulders onto them, and I'm really only scratching the surface. The amount of interesting scenarios that can spring from a set of simple, logical interactions is truly impressive. This is all great, but these options don't scale particularly well as the game progresses. Higher tiered monsters begin to spawn throughout the world as Link keeps cutting them down, and while equivalently better weapons also become available to compensate for this, the damage you can deal from environmental hazards remains fixed. By the time you start encountering these high levels, silver variants, even explosive serve as little more than ship damage. And unless there's an obvious tool, very close by to kick combat off, it's often way more time efficient to just use your standard arsenal. The fact that you'll have access to more durable gear by now and likely more inventory slots as well further harms the incentive to take advantage of the environment, as preserving your equipment becomes less of a concern. This is another instance where the great plateau introduces a cool concept, makes good use of it, and it's never seen in nearly so elegant a form ever again. Part of the reason to keep using these tactics would just be for the fun of doing so, and fair enough, it can be fun for a while, but the appeal of clearing out enemy camps does fade over time due to diminishing returns, the gradual erosion of its novelty, and the blood-mute mechanic. These are semi-random events where most overworld enemies respawn, meaning that it's impossible to ever permanently clear an enemy camp. They'll always be back at the next blood moon. For the most part, I think this is a good inclusion that stops players from accidentally wiping all challenge and certain resources from the map. Although I do wish that there were more areas that enemies could be permanently removed from, maybe little pockets of land that people are trying to set up settlements. Seeing Terry Town spring up is very satisfying, and the ability to transform the world more often like this on a smaller scale, with a quest condition no more complicated than running and kill some monsters could potentially add a lot to the game. Blood moons also trigger a cutscene every time, and while it is mercifully skippable, that doesn't mean it's harmless. We can all agree that was bullshit, right? Like, I know I'm making a very opinionated video, and people are going to disagree with different parts of it, which is totally fine, but... I mean, come on, tell me that wasn't bullshit. It may sound like I dislike combat and breath of the wild, but that's actually not generally the case. There's still a lot of fun to be had here, and I haven't even gotten into some of the other elements that make it enjoyable, such as the light stealth system that rewards sneakingness without ever making it mandatory, or the ability to jump cancel your attacks, adding to the melee systems death and flexibility. It also maintains the cranky sound design and generous hitstop the 3D titles have continuously leaned into, so while melee attacks in particular do wear out their welcome in context. In isolation, they still feel extremely satisfying to connect with. The combat system kept me engaged enough to want to really dive into and explore links fighting abilities, and that, unfortunately, started to become an issue in and of itself. Breath of the Wild's combat does not hold up well under scrutiny. Cooking is an obvious contributor here. I haven't talked about this system in any kind of detail, so let's do that now. Rather than forcing you into a narrow list of pre-prescribed recipes, Breath of the Wild allows you to gather up any 5 ingredients that would reasonably work together, toss them in a pot, and get a good result. The baseline result will be health restoration, very important because raw ingredients heal inefficiently, and pure heart pickups no longer exist, but you can also get a variety of temporary bonus effects. Higher stealth, attack and defense boosts stamina restoration, weather resistance, faster movement speed, et cetera. I can't say that there's an incredible amount of creativity in most of these effects, but I'm willing to give this a pass because the act of cooking ties so well into Breath of the Wild's freedom philosophy, encouraging players to experiment in an enjoyable way. Or at least it does for some of these bonus effects. For actual health restoration, still by far the most important and impactful use for cooking, this entire system is gutted by the decision to include hearty ingredients. These are items that can be cooked all by themselves, and the result is a meal that not only fully restores all of your hearts, but also provides bonus hearts on top of that. This is so absurdly above the power level of every other recipe, along with being extremely quick and easy to mass-produce that they've become essentially my only source of healing by mid-game and every playthrough I've done. It's not like I'm making any special effort to look for them either. They're less common than your standard herbs and mushrooms, but also aren't particularly rare. If I look through a list of all the recipes purely dedicated to health restoration that Breath of the Wild's developers accounted for, it's genuinely impressive. And I've maybe felt the need to create 10 of them in all my time in the game because hearty dishes completely blow any other form of health restoration out of the water. Breath of the Wild's cooking system is honestly a really good idea, but the tuning on it is just bizarre. Nintendo may have taken a cautious approach to ensure that nobody was ever at risk of being unable to heal, but I'd still say they overdid it. And this wouldn't be nearly as big an issue if healing had some degree of risk involved, but it unfortunately doesn't. At absolutely any time you're free to just open the menu, eat as much as you'd like, meaning one hearty meal a lot of the time, and close it again with no consequence. Not only is there no contextual item that you need to use, like bottles filled with potions, but as mentioned, bottles no longer exist at all, so the inventory restriction they created for on the fly healing has gone as well. This means that the life-saving fairies don't suffer this restriction either, while also being easy to find and collect thanks to their presence around great fairy fountains, so the already overly lenient healing system is easy to stack with further redundancy in case you do miscalculate. And all of this still doesn't break combat nearly as much as armor upgrades do. We've talked about links in visible level, which scales enemies up in the overworld with increased health and damage, while also providing link with stronger weapons to compensate. This would only compensate for enemies increased health by itself, though. They'd still be doing additional damage, and that developers' solution to this was to allow link to upgrade his armor at the four-grade fairy fountains across the world. I'm locking one additional upgrade tier per fountain found, and with each tier and piece of armor using different collectibles. A solid concept that directly ties power scaling into exploration without filling up an exploration meter or something equally blunt, but these upgrades aren't even close to properly balanced. They outscale enemies damage output to such an absurd degree that link becomes essentially invulnerable. If you just play the game in a way it supports and arguably even encourages, thoroughly exploring the world, upgrading whenever you've got some materials, maybe teleport into an area you remember to collect the last one or two of a material you need. By the time you're done you'll have to realize literally every enemy encounter in the game. There is an argument to be made for a player being able to dictate their own difficulty by the gear they wear, but I don't think requiring players to compensate for poor balancing is something a game should be praised for. Don't use that cool armor you found, and definitely don't engage with one of the few progression systems in the game. Because if you do, you're going to completely destroy combat. Does that seem like a reasonable thing to have to tell a player? I don't think it does. There are two more issues that play into this combat is too easy to break statement, which although they're not nearly as glaring, still deserve mention. Upgrading the stasis room allows it to be used on enemies in addition to physics-based items, and against more threatening and one-on-one encounters, this is very overpowered, allowing you to effortlessly score shots to their weak points. There's also no real penalty for missing your stasis attempt. The cooldown is so minimal that you can just keep matching a and it will activate as soon as the enemy enters your crosshairs. Now, to be clear, overall, I like that the stasis plus ruin exists. Being able to freeze up a cobbling right off its mount is the exact kind of wacky fun I'd hoped to see, and it's not unreasonable in group fights as it only works on a single enemy at once. I wouldn't want this functionality removed, but it would have been smart to design it so that mini bosses in particular weren't torn apart so thoroughly from its use. The obvious illusion would just be to further reduce this duration against these types of enemies so that headshots required to quicker aim, but a more ambitious approach could be to have the AI recognize and respond to the fact that it's about to get hit by stasis. Maybe it could guard its face, so you need to move quickly and save stasis use for when you're already at a favorable angle. This could be contextualized by, for example, having the chicest slate amid a harsh light whenever stasis is primed that enemies are shielding themselves against. On the topic of AI, the final crack and combat form means how exploitable some of the enemy types in the game are, which means that would be a good time to talk about the enemies Link is going to be facing. Starting with the least dangerous end moving up, we have wildlife. Most creatures in Breath of the Wild can be made hostile if provoked, but they generally don't pose too much of a threat. The only ones that will go out of their way to hunt you are wolves, which don't hit very hard and can be scared off very easily and bears, which are quite rare and very slow. A step up from that, we have the minor monsters, keys, shoes, pebbles, and octarocks. Despite also appearing in elemental versions, these first three are almost never a threat unless they're part of a larger battle. In individual keys hover politely in front of Link before they attack, and the flocks they sometimes form are easy to bat away by flailing at them as soon as they begin their charge. Chuchus are extremely slow and predictable, the only significant danger being the elemental explosions they can create, which are simple to avoid in isolation. These explosions are the most interesting part of these enemies, as they can be used against other enemies as well, and the same property even applies to the jelly they drop, which can also be infused with elemental properties after the fact. Considering their horrible mobility and that they rarely appear in enclosed spaces anymore, Chuchus were going to need to undergo some kind of change to make them even vaguely relevant, and I think the approach taken here was very good. It ties into their traditional role as a resource supplier while also embracing the chemistry system and freeform approach of their new home. Pebbles are also very slow, and on top of being instantly killed by bombs, they can also be picked up and thrown to act as bombs themselves. This generally isn't the most useful combat option, and there are fairly lackluster enemy type overall, although I only found out while making this video that enemies were also capable of using their explosive capabilities, yet another little detail that the game managed to surprise me with. Octorox are a bit more dangerous than the other minor monsters. They fire persistent long-range projectiles and can disguise themselves as treasure chests, which you need to remember to check for with Magnesis. The hiding various terrain and takes implicit evasive and offensive maneuvers, still relatively straightforward to take out by themselves, but these are the first ones that can start to make you sweat a little. Sprinting through an Octorox-infested area with low health in the early game is legitimately stressful, and thereby far the most annoying of the minor monsters of working in tandem with another category. The Octorox on Death Mountain may also be the first look you'll get at the vacuum mechanic you'll see the area's boss use, which can be beaten the same way by chucking in a bomb. This is a well-designed reward for exploring the area thoroughly, giving the player an opportunity to discover a puzzle that acts as a piece to a larger puzzle. All of it handled in a way that feels very natural and relies on the player to connect the dots themselves. In a neat touch, you can also throw in rusty weapons, and a better weapon will get spat back out at you. It's another of those little details that nobody would miss if it wasn't included, but makes the world feel that extra little bit more rich. Next up we have the monster grunts, or Bacoblins, Moblins, and Lesalphos. These are the enemies most players will be spending the bulk of the game fighting, and are also the ones I consider to be the most impressive from an AI standpoint. They fulfill the same general roles as in previous Zelda titles, with Bacoblins being the basic foot soldiers, Moblins a bigger and tougher threat, and Lesalphos more agile and tricky. What sets them apart in Breath of the Wild, though, is the greatly expanded number of actions each enemy is capable of taking. Bacoblins are the most diverse of all, dancing around campfires, dynamically picking up weapons and seeking out mounts, lighting those weapons on fire to increase their damage, hunting wildlife, throwing temper tantrums when they lose their weapons, eating apples when offered to them, hurling rocks when Link is out of attack range, taking his own bombs back at him. There's an ambitious array of behavior that'll exhibit in different scenarios, and I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of the ones I listed was news to a fair portion of the people watching this video, and it was far from a comprehensive list. Moblins may not be able to ride mounts, but they have no issue picking up the Bacoblin. They were just enjoying a friendly chat with and a hurling it at Link, which the Bacoblin is very much not on board with, and it's hard to overstate just how much I love this inclusion. This is one of my favorite attacks in any video game. Bacoblin's and Moblins can both use bows and throw rocks, but Liz's off was play the most with range out of the three. They'll dart around a visibly before closing in within attack, and this is further enhanced with elemental variants which can incorporate different projectiles. Tracking their movements during a group fight can successfully add stress to the encounter, although in single combat, it does have a tendency to devolve into an annoying waiting game. These community-in-esque creatures can also camouflage themselves for an ambush, and while I like this idea and think it makes a lot of sense, the vast majority of the time this just serves to give their species a bit more flavor rather than actually adding anything to the combat experience as they're still extremely easy to spot. It's an eat gimmick, and having enemies constantly pop out of nowhere would probably start to get annoying, but I do wish they were a bit better hidden in certain instances, as even at night in the middle of a snowstorm, they're not fooling anyone, and they could have been used to add more tension to harsh areas. You do get the occasional burrowing lasalphos, which somewhat fills that role instead, but effective camouflage would be both more thematically appropriate and more mechanically satisfying, as it would present a challenge to your observation skills. Unfortunately, because these are the enemies where the AI starts to get sophisticated, it's also where the cracks start to show more prominently. The sneak strike aspect of this stealth system is very abusable here, although that one's not such an issue because it falls off in group encounters, and may not even be unintentional, it's kind of hard to say. It's also pretty fun to do, and makes you feel like you're in a looney tunes cartoon, but other exploits are less fun, and more sloppy. Like the ability to farm arrows by positioning linked diagonally downwards from an archer. There should have been a check here that prompted a change in behavior after enough unsuccessful shots. enemies are also too lenient about being attacked from a distance to feel realistic. I'd have been very impressed if this kind of scenario prompted them to form into hunting parties and spread out, for example. Although I can largely forgive this one because there's an element of gameplay balance here, that developers likely limited some aggressive tendencies on purpose. I'll emphasize that overall, the AI here is among the better I've played against, and much like with the invincible stable animals, this is why the areas where the code underneath peaks through bothers me more than it usually would. It's very possible that's not a fair criticism, and also understandable that yet another custom behavior pattern to avoid something like arrow farming didn't make the caught considering how much work the programmers already clearly had on their plates, but it is how I ultimately feel. Skeletal variants of these monsters also appear throughout the overall that night, sharing much of the same behavior but requiring different combat patterns to kill efficiently. They're far more brittle than they're living counterparts, but can also reassemble themselves if their heads are left intact, which can be prevented either by scoring a headshot, or finishing off the heads separately. They've got some more fun little unnecessary details of their own as well, like being able to pick up their arms and use them as weapons. These are very bad weapons, and there's no real reason to do this outside of the very early game, but it's still a neat inclusion. This also applies to the custom animation for throwing their heads. Generally, Link uses an overhead toss for these kinds of objects, but here he dismissively kicks it away. It makes dispatching these things by throwing their heads off a cliff or into a lake even more satisfying. As an aside, the fact that many of the game's most common enemies die in water is an inspired design choice. Breath of the Wild has quite a few ways to generate knockback effects, and this both expands the creativity you can approach combat with, as well as saves Nintendo from having to animate and program a bunch of swimming behavior. Wiz Robes are a step down from the previous monsters, with much simpler behavior that mostly amounts to a theory of excluding across the air, firing elemental projectiles, and eventually changing the weather around them. I find their implementation a bit weird. They're usually by themselves, but seem designed to be dangerous in group combat alongside other enemies. Their environmental damage and evasive range to salt could potentially be threatening, and isn't the few instances where they do team up, but they're very easy to take down if the player has time to focus on them. I really like how genuinely creepy they are, but they feel underutilized in most parts of the game, which I can't say for the Guardians, Breath of the Wild signature enemy and a major cornerstone of its story. Coming in a variety of forms, from walkers to flyers to multiple turret variants, these do present a significant threat until the player has a firm grasp of peritiming or is equipped with powerful enough gear, as guardians are one of the enemy types that don't scale alongside Link. Their AI is nothing particularly sophisticated, mostly sticking to the same path until they find you then moving into optimal range or beginning to charge their laser, but I mean, their robots, the simplistic behavior is completely just defining context. I generally consider this to be a very well executed enemy type and love the ability to either parry them to death or systematically dismantle them, and if encountered in groups, they remain oppressive for much longer stretches of the game than most enemies well, especially since they're one of the few enemy types that Link can't reliably outrun on foot. It's good to have at least a few enemies that can force you into a fighter die scenario, and while this would be theoretically undercut by the freely accessible teleport in practice, there's not usually too much of a penalty for death and breath of the wild, you're just forced back to an earlier auto-safe. This means that escaping from a guardian by warping back to the nearest shrine or tower will often create more of a setback than if you've been killed, so you might as well stand your ground. While I stand by my praise of the ancient shield, it is arguably too effective against them, something like increasing the parry timing window rather than just making laser deflection fully automatic may have been a better way to handle it. Because as bought with giant agent cores, though, which are easiest to collect by killing guardians, there's a reasonable chance that the player has demonstrated some proficiency with guardian combat by the time they obtain the shield. If they haven't, though, it does create a loop that stops them from ever having to learn to fight guardians, so maybe there should have been variants in the overworld, which didn't entirely rely on their laser. This is pretty reasonable when you consider how much of the infrastructure for this was already in place. I also wish guardians had a slightly better defined start up to their death animations, since I found myself slashing at the air sometimes if there were also other enemies to focus on, but not a big deal. Next up are the Yiga, which as I subtly hinted at, I'm not nearly so fond of. There are only two variants, foot soldiers and blade masters, and foot soldiers in particular are possibly my least favorite enemy type in the game. They always use one-handed weapons in the same bow, always attack with the same tactics, always drop the same rewards, and their evasive yet mostly non-threatening nature means that they're more tedious to fight than anything else. You either run and catch them immediately, or have to track them as they teleport around. Hearing their signature laugh and seeing them proof into existence loses its novelty very quickly, although I do like the ones disguised as travelers. There's some fun dialogue in there before they're revealed, even if I caught onto their patterns fairly quickly, and it was rarely actually convinced I was going to be speaking to a normal NPC. I generally much prefer the blade masters, which are harder and less evasive with a more interesting move set. Requiring pinpoint peri or dodge timing and a good periglider used to get the most out of the fight. The lack of variety in their drops is still disappointing, but at least the wind cleaver is, despite my comments about it earlier, one of the more unique weapons in the game. When element that I don't like about any of the Yiga clan fights is that they teleport away instead of dying after being defeated. It teams up with a blood moon mechanic to make you feel like your efforts in the overworld are completely futile. He's just fine and is definitely going to be back later. You have accomplished nothing here. Previous Zelda games have obviously had respawning enemies as well, but could usually be dismissed as different enemies moving into the same territory. The uselessness of your actions has never been hammered home to the degree Breath of the Wild does. If they had a proper death animation, it could at least change the player's perception of their actions, even if there was no difference mechanically. And, considering Link can properly kill their leader later in the game, and is also shown killing a footsal during a cutscene. This doesn't seem like an age rating issue either. Then again, it's worth noting that none of these deaths directly appear on screen, and they're also not directly acted up by the players, so I could be wrong on this one. This moves us onto the game's mini bosses, enemies which are present for a few set pieces, but more often can be found freely in the overworld. Compared to the usual approach of railroading most mini bosses into dungeons, this is a fairly radical removal of safeguards that some players are absolutely going to get hung up on at the start of the game. Although, ultimately, I think it was a good decision. There's always another way around these enemies if you'd rather come back with better equipment, or not come back at all, but there's also nothing stopping you from hurling yourself at them over and over again if that better suits the way your approach challenges. The weapon durability system is unfortunately very antithetical to this, and another argument for a link to have a default attack besides bombs, but that's not an issue with the mini boss placement. We'll start with the Hinox, which will always be sleeping when you first encounter them. I initially really liked this enemy, it's got a reasonably diverse set of attacks ranging from a stalk to a butt slam to ripping a trio of the ground, and they have some other interesting behavior as well, like the way they freak out if they're wouldn't freeze our lid on fire, or how they learn to cover their eyes as they're closing in on you. That said, the upgraded stasis ruin is far too effective at locking them down, since the loop of stasis, eye shot, slash, and run away is extremely reliable. Particularly since they're almost always alone and in very spacious environments. Even if this hasn't been unlocked yet, I still wouldn't necessarily call these fights incredibly challenging, provided the player knows not to stay too close to the Hinox for too long. They're really easy to run away from. It does make for a good spectacle the first handful of times you encounter them though, and the ability to steal the weapons they're carrying, whether that's by sneaking onto their chest as they're sleeping or going for an eye shot into a quick swipe, is a very cool touch. Their skeletal stelnox form works in a similar way. This one doesn't sleep, but you can still steal its weapons by knocking its eyeball right out of its head. These ones can also attack you by pulling their own bodies apart, which is a really impressive detail that turns them into one of my favorite enemy types, even if mechanically it's a fairly standard attack. Then we have the talus, monsters made of living stone, which can attack link with hurled rocks or crushing blows from their limbs. With breath of the wild's mobility system, it makes sense to have a shadow of the colossus style enemy you need to climb up to reach its weak point, and they get some other twists added to them like different locations for that weak point, or elemental coatings which need to be neutralized. I love and do mean love the idea behind these enemies, but sadly even with their variations, the talus just aren't complex enough to remain interesting over a playthrough, especially because stasis plus once again obliterates them. The challenging part of a talus fight is supposed to be getting onto its back in the first place, because once you're up there, any reasonable two handed spin attack will knock off most, or all of its health. Without upgrading the stasis ruin, there can be some excitement of your facing a variant with a protected weak spot, because then getting into position can actually pose an interesting challenge. Even here, though, the simplistic attack patterns with low execution demand eventually become pretty easy to exploit. After this, there's the Malduga, a creature entirely unique to the desert region that swims around under the sand. This mini boss is... terrible, which is really disappointing to say, because it's one of the most distinctive enemy types, and it's supposed to serve as a refreshing experience for players coming into this region. It's intimidating to see moving around and has some extremely ominous accompanying music, but will never actually hit you if you're standing on any terrain other than the sand itself, and that developers have been careful to provide plenty of terrain in all Malduga areas. Just throw a bomb, wait for it to take the bait, detonate, hit it while it's stunned, retreat when it's recovering, and repeat until it's dead. It's an extremely simple exploit that's easy to find quickly and by accident, turning what could potentially have been a very cool encounter into a poorly designed, somewhat tedious loop. And then finally, we have the Lionel, and enemy I've often heard highlighted as the standout encounter of the game, to which I'd largely agree. They provided a degree of difficulty that's genuinely refreshing for this series, wielding several different weapons and relentlessly attacking with an array of extremely damaging moves. Mastering Lionel encounters, taking what was once a seemingly insurmountable task, and gradually whittling it down, is one of the more gratifying experiences in the game, especially because they're one of the few enemy types that you can't totally cheese with the stasis room. There are aggressive enough and have a high enough health pool that you'll still need to learn the timing of their attacks while enough to survive in between cool downs. They even have a unique amount state that allows you to get off some hits that don't drain your ability from your weapon, meaning that a player can go, hey, that kind of looks like a horse. I wonder if I can ride it and be rewarded for their insight. This is all really genuinely great stuff until you learn that you can keep them locked in an endless stun cycle, and it's very easy to do. Glide down and stun them, slash a few times, wait until they stood up and finish shaking their head, stun them, slash a few times, wait until they've, yeah, you can literally repeat this until they're dead. Now, to be clear, games have exploits, and the more complex a game is, the more exploits are inevitably going to appear. This stun lock in particular bothers me though, because not only is it not some obscure scenario lining up another headshot as a stunned enemy recovers is an obvious strategy that many players are going to try, but it's also a strategy that developers were clearly aware of. That's the entire reason this Lionel has invincibility until its head is finished shaking, but they didn't extend this invincibility long enough, or provide some other safeguard like having it cover its head during the end of their recovery phase, which would likely be a better solution anyways because excessive invincibility can have detrimental impacts on a player's immersion. They knew this was a problem to solve, but their solution was sloppy. There's a well-known quote from Sorin Johnson, a game designer for the Civilization series, which goes us follows. Given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game. It's a problem the Civilization developers are very aware of, with his co-worker Sid Meier earlier stating that one of their responsibilities is to protect the player from themselves. That is, from the player being able to create an optimized experience that harms the fun of gameplay, and this is something the breath of the wild doesn't handle very proficiently. If you never figure out that Malduga can't follow you off the sand, you might be in for legitimately tense encounter, desperately darting around and using your bombs to distract it from your footsteps. If you never learn that you can farm a cobbins for arrows, then resource depletion will be a much more significant issue in the early game, and you won't have the temptation to grind the game to a halt every time you see this scenario appear. If you never learn that you can permanently lock down a Lionel, or that you can upgrade your armor so much that it stops being a threat, or that you can effortlessly stalk pile a massive supply of risk-free, full heels, in case it does manage to hurt you, Lionel can potentially be a great fight. I had fun with it on a more surface level, enough fun to want to really dig in deep and master its mechanics, and as a result, as soon as I cross the threshold where preserving weapon durability is a major concern, every Lionel encounter is severely damaged. Those who would say I have the option to not use any of these tactics are correct, but I've again been putting a position where I either need to play in a way I know is suboptimal, or having unsatisfying combat encounter, and clearly neither of these options are the ideals scenario. I haven't been protected for myself, and I have optimized the fun out of the game, or at least the enemy type. Now, you may be going I never knew or cared about any of this stuff, which is a totally reasonable position to have, but I think if you're going to thoroughly evaluate a game, which again, you the viewer are by no means required to, you do have to push back against it a bit. Exactly how much you're supposed to push back before you're having a completely different discussion is admittedly pretty fuzzy, but I do think the Lion is at least past the first time super casual experience. It doesn't help that there are so few enemy types, apart from story encounters, I've just gone through all of them, and this would be bare bones even by the standards of previous Zelda games, but in a world as big as Breath of the Wilds, it leads to an overbearing amount of repetition, figuring out how to cheese any single enemy type under these circumstances means that you've now figured out how to cheese a significant percentage of individual enemy encounters in the game. Against a lot of the mini bosses in particular, this problem is fairly rampant, but thankfully not every encounter falls apart to quite the same degree. While you never need to engage with standard enemy groups in melee combat, for example, if you do opt to the fights generally get played at least reasonably straight. Even if we ignore the continued combat breaking through armor and healing, though, there are still only so many times you can fight the same two or three enemy types before the experience starts to lose its lustre, even with the additional attack options Breath of the Wilds environmental interactions create. This lack of variety is one of the linchpin problems I have with Breath of the Wild, and while it's almost time to move onto the main quest line, I need to say again that what I've been covering so far is not throw a side content, it's the meat of what the game has to offer. If you make a B-line for Ganon straight off the Great Plateau, you can beat Breath of the Wild in its first hour, and folding in the main story beats still doesn't leave you with a particularly long or satisfying game. The real heart of Breath of the Wild is exploration, but throughout that exploration, there isn't enough introduction or development of ideas, the Great Plateau introduces you to essentially all of them. Earlier, I praised the plateau for acting as a representation of the game as a whole, but this didn't end up meaning that it's non-stop, fountain of exciting new possibilities represented the way the entire game was going to play out. It meant quite literally that, no, this is the game, everything you're doing now is pretty much just what you're going to keep doing. During a thorough playthrough, while the truly beautiful environment around you may change, you're still fundamentally going to be performing the same few actions, facing the same few challenges, and getting the same few rewards. With the more unique moments, still leaning on very similar mechanics and being spaced very far apart. If you were to make a list of every unique piece of content I've praised throughout this video so far, it would sound like a solid amount, and it is, but there's a vast amount of high rule to explore. Breath of the Wild would have benefited tremendously from another, more gameplay-altering form of collectible, optional moves that upgrades seem like a good candidate, which the series has already seen multiple times. These would be dramatically superior rewards to essentially anything the game currently offers, even more so with multiple weapon classes that could each have new techniques to discover. This could even extend past just combat to more, say, mobility upgrades, and oh, if we're going to take that approach, how about doing it with runes? Maybe more classic Zelda items could be optional upgrades to the Shiga Slate, the hookshot in particular comes to mind here. It would make climbing less painful since you could grapple to a higher starting point, but also wouldn't break anything. It could easily be designed to only attach to services you can already climb, and as I discussed earlier, climbing doesn't lead to any meaningful progress gating in the first place. It would have some negative implications for the few proper climbing traversal tests that exist in the game, but far less so than Ravali's gale does. So if that upgrade is deemed okay to exist, then I failed to see why the hookshot would be an issue. But the game's director does. There's an interview with Hitemara Fujibayashi, as well as series producer Ajya Numa, where they talk about the hookshot in particular, and there are a few key points I took away from this. Many people on the team loved them, and thought they felt great, but they were ultimately discarded because they would have to be given out as a later game reward, and they'd be a retread of a mechanic the series that already seen. Both of which were concepts, Breath of the Wilds, Leeds, were generally against. Breath of the Wild was handled with a very scorched earth mindset. Nothing is sacred, burn it down and start again, and what rises up should be so dramatically transformed from its predecessor that it's almost unrecognizable. I really genuinely admire this. It must have been a scary prospect, but also an important one. By the time Skyward Sword came around, it was clear as all this pendulum had swung too far in the direction of restrictive, linear gameplay, and Breath of the Wild was a strong reaction to that. However, while this kind of reactive design can, and in this case, did do wonders for making a game feel fresh on release, that freshness inevitably fades, and the game must stand alone, or free of that context. Maybe under a less narrow viewpoint, some of those elements the team was so eager to burn, would have been good inclusions after all. Maybe pushing the pendulum so far in the other direction becomes less appealing once the pendulum's old position is forgotten. A memory that still reasonably clear at the time of upload, but is already fading, to say nothing of how Breath of the Wild will be perceived one, two, ten Zelda titles from now. The fact that the hookshot was old took priority over whether it was fun, a decision I question now, and will only come more into focus as the game ages. You may agree here, or you may not, but even if you do, it's still hard to blame Nintendo for this. Hindsight is a powerful tool that they didn't have, and the scope of this project was pretty ludicrous by any standard. So much so, in fact, that a lot of the watered down feel I've criticized about the game's content was known about and necessary, even the eureka moment behind the game's inception. Nintendo knew that what they referred to as additive gameplay, creating new ideas and mechanics for a specific moment wouldn't be very feasible. So instead, they largely focused on multiplicative gameplay, a series of universal mechanics that could be endlessly combined. It's a clever solution to the game's scaling issues, but frankly, I miss some of that additive gameplay, and its effects are very far reaching. The lackluster many games I talked about earlier, that's a textbook example. A lot of many games in the Zelda series have been additive, only being implemented for that one moment. Did you ever wonder why you can't pet the dogs and Breath of the Wild settlements? That would also be additive. The time spent programming a petty mechanic was considered unjustified since it couldn't be broadly recycled elsewhere. That's not speculation, by the way, Nintendo directly confirmed this. This was all of course necessary to fill the enormous world, a task so demanding that even multiplicative elements started to become strained, so I'll say it for the last time. Maybe the world shouldn't have been so big. I keep bringing this point up, but it's not because I dislike the scale of the map. In fact, quite the opposite. I consider running around such an enormous and beautiful incarnation of Hyrule to be the single biggest strength of the game, a statement I think many people would agree with. But Breath of the Wild's radical shift in format from previous Zelda games placed in an enormous strain on the developers, which Nintendo has been open about. Every element of the process from art to level design to animation to artificial intelligence had to be completely reworked and ran into a host of new technological challenges. Even with the concession to multiple activity, each feature still likely received less time to implement and polish than it normally would. The game being delayed multiple times isn't surprising considering the challenges they've openly talked about and others they likely haven't. Making the map smaller would have taken strain away from the quantity of content that needed to be produced and allow more time to be spent on its quality. I understand that phrasing is a bit confusing because part of what I'm talking about is more systems, but I'm referring to systems that didn't need to be developed primarily for the sake of mass producing content. I adore the large map, which is about 12 times the size of Twilight Princess is already substantial offering, but would happily trade it for a map 8 or 9 times the size with more developed content throughout. Which would still feel outrageously big if we never had this iteration to compare it with. Of course, the problem with this kind of thinking is that I have absolutely no way of knowing how much content we'd actually get in return for sacrificing 25% of the map. I think it would certainly correlate with more complex and high-quality shrines and less reliance on core oxides, but anything beyond that is a reach. Each player would certainly have a sweet spot somewhere in that trade-off though, and for my taste, Breath of the Wild leans too far in the direction of scale. High rule itself is wonderful, but so many elements suffered in order to implement it that I don't consider the result to be a full success. Again, note that I'm coming from the position of a largely extrinsically motivated player. If interesting and substantial rewards weren't so inherently powerful to my gameplay experience, then I'd probably get significantly more out of this version of high rule. And the fact that I still enjoy it as much as I do speaks to just how carefully it was crafted in many areas. A lot of Breath of the Wild's most distinctive content, though, comes around its main quest, so let's look at that. Breath of the Wild's main quest, I'm primarily consists of three sections, the Divine Beasts, Hyrule Castle, and Link's Memories. I'm going to run through the first two with a focus on gameplay, then I'll shift over to talking about the story content, which is a natural time to bring in the memories as well. After heading into Kakarigo Village off the great plateau and speaking to Impa, Link is tasked with taking down four Divine Beasts across the world. One agent that remains of the Zora, Goran's, Rito, and Garuto. All four of these quests fall the same course structure. I'll lead up in and around the corresponding city, a boarding sequence to get Link into the Divine Beasts, activating the five terminals within the Divine Beasts, a boss fight with one of Ganon's blights, and a reward bestowment, and shift in the Divine Beasts position within the world. A coverage section in the order, it seems that developers might have been nudging the player towards through geographical positioning, which I'd estimate to be Zora's domain, Goran City, Garuto Town, Rito Village. Then again, Garuto Desert is probably the hardest area, so maybe it's supposed to be last. You know what, just don't worry about this too much. Zora's domain is pretty clearly intended to be first, but other than that, it's fairly arbitrary. Zora's domain has an extensive lead-up period, with the fan favorite print side on guiding Link up a lengthy, rain-soaked path. It's a well-designed section that provides a balance between letting the player know they're progressing, done through side-ons, reappearances, and leaving the player to fend for themselves through some enemy filled hiking. Once Link arrives, he's given the Zora armor and told to go fetch 20 shock arrows from a nearby mountain, with the small problem that they happen to be presider over by a Lionel, bringing these arrows back completes the lead-up. This is a good sequence. But remember the shrine quest that was spoiled by finding it too late, the same thing can happen here. This Lionel is clearly supposed to be a massive threat that encourages tense sneaking around to collect the required arrows, and is also likely to be the player's first time seeing a Lionel if they follow the encouraged path, making for an interesting reveal. Out of sequence though, not only does the reveal fall apart, but so does the tension of the fight, as this will always be the lowest level Lionel variant, unlike most others in the world, it does not scale with you. The reveal in a subsequent playthrough obviously wouldn't hold up under any circumstance, but there was nothing preventing me from encountering the same scenario in my first playthrough. I just got lucky that the first time I played things fairly straight. It technically isn't even necessary to go there at all if you're already carrying shock arrows or have found a merchant who sells them. All the quest giver is actually interested in is that you have the arrows, making the trivial action mandatory, and the compelling one entirely optional. Scaling this Lionel and making the quest require some form of unique collectible would have gone a long way towards tightening things up, although to truly ensure a good reveal it would need a unique mini boss that scales appropriately. From what I understand, the Lionel is programmed a bit differently than the others in the game, it's more aggressive when it spots length, but that's just not enough. It's also possible to approach Zorra's domain from an alternate angle, which can skip side-on's introduction and the dangerous path entirely. To the developers credit, they did account for this possibility, but a player who accidentally takes this approach is robbing themselves of another wise well-done sequence as well as some of side-on's characterization. Avoiding this would have required extensive retooling of the quest, and maybe an unavoidable consequence for allowing this degree of player agency in which case strongly pushing the player along the intended path may be the most reasonable compromise available. That said, I also find it hard to accept that players can be punished like this for deviating from the intended path in a game that supposedly encourages just such a mindset. Someone can want to fully experience the game while also exploring the unusual freedom it offers, and by doing the latter they can unknowingly compromise the former. Goron's city tasks link with trekking through a lava field to rescue a missing Goron, which will also introduce the timed cannons that will later be used for its boarding sequence. It's the classic game design principle I alluded to earlier in the video, which gets more of a chance to shine here because these sections are played out fairly linearly, and it works well. This one is a step down in terms of a crafted experience compared to the Zorra equivalent, but this also means it works better in any part of the game, something that applies to the rest of these as well, and the terrain link has to traverse feel suitably oppressive. They also try a bit of a retread with a great plateau's cold section, because to get to the city in the first place you need to figure out a way to survive the extreme heat environment. Having one of the four divine beast regions introduce a different kind of environmental challenge makes sense. The mountains play with cold, and the desert plays with both heat and cold, but these are system's most players will be familiar with by the time they reach them, so their open-ended solutions won't be as interesting. This kind of shake up is good on paper, and something breath of the wild needed more of, but the solution is mediocre. The fireproof effect is a lot more restrictive to obtain, and forces you to find a specific animal, either to brew a fireproof elixir, or trade it for fireproof armor, and unless you want to burn through a massive stock pile of food, this is all you have to work with. Once you're in the city, this armor is easily obtainable, so at least there's no more hassle, but I'm still left thinking about how, once again, we're looking at an idea that played out better on the great plateau. I appreciate that developers tried to reintroduce this type of discovery, but I don't think this is a very good attempt. In Garuto town, the tribe continues their long-standing tradition of forbidding men from entering their city, so Link needs to see code of vendor in a nearby bizarre and get an appropriate disguise, which he's hilariously bashful about. This lets him into the city, where he's then tasked with recovering an heirloom from the Yiga, requiring him to head into their hideout. This is functionally a small dungeon, one of very few areas outside of shrines and divine beasts that earn the title, and is generally quite well designed with a heavy emphasis on stealth. The area is patrolled by a large number of Yiga blade masters that will trap you and spawn reinforcements of spotted. It's still possible to fight your way out, I like that it's not an automatic loss, but it's clearly been tuned towards the death sentence of the spectrum. Fortunately, you can sneak past the blade master as using bananas for some reason. Yeah, I'm not really sure what the rationale is here, but it's hilarious watching it usually intimidating enemy tiptoe towards a snack like Scooby-Doo. You'll find these same bananas stockpiled everywhere in the hideout as well, so I guess that's just what they do, okay? This area gets considerably easier and, frankly, less interesting once you realize that you can just stasis every Yiga you need to get past, but it's still not quite a free pass and doesn't completely spoil the fun. It's even finished off with a unique boss encounter, putting you against Master Koga, leader of the Yiga. He's intentionally much less threatening than you might expect, and the fight takes on a slapstick tone that mainly focuses on having him hit himself. Not really too much of a challenge, but still a very welcome unique boss that reminds me of just how much the game needed more of this kind of content. That escalating game design principle is missing entirely. A scavenger hunt for women's clothing has nothing to do with a stealth sequence, and neither have anything to do with the rest of the skills you'll be tested on throughout the remainder of this part of the storyline, but I certainly don't think this is mandatory to create an enjoyable experience, and the compelling standalone tasks. Reto village and start contrast is the worst of all these lead ups by an absurd margin. You're pointing towards a flight range consisting of a pit cave with target signing its walls that hams in a large updraft, and need to shoot five of these targets within the time allowed. That time allowed is three minutes, and completing it took me a few seconds. After that, you're done. I think we're supposed to be seeing that game design principle at work. The subsequent divine beast boarding sequence also uses aerial archery, but the lead up is so ridiculously forgiving that it doesn't properly train the player, and as we'll soon see, the boarding sequence is likewise so forgiving that training wasn't even really necessary. I have to wonder if there's maybe cut content here, because this is so insanely short, underwhelming, and poorly thought out compared to any other part of the divine beast quests. The concept of a target test that makes use of updrafts is great, and with better terrain and target placement, this could have been a fun challenge, but what we ended up with is very disappointing. During all of these lead ups, you'll get a good chance to see the divine beasts in detail, and I love that they're seamlessly integrated into the world at all times. It simultaneously makes them more awe-inspiring, and more believable than traditional dungeons, and is a legitimately great piece of world-building. A nice subtlety here is that Varuta, the Zora divine beast, is the only stationary one. If a player follows the encouraged path, it leaves a bit of room to be surprised twice, because it's still a very standout thing to discover, but not nearly as standout as the subsequent ones which move around their environment. The design of the cities also adds a lot to the world. Zora's domain and Rito Villager are probably the most memorable, but I've got a particular fondness for Gerudo Town's wall heavy layout, tailor-made to play around on with Link's climbing abilities. I wish I had nearly the same degree of enthusiasm for most of the characters encountered in these quests. We're told about how important they are, but they don't tend to have much of an in-game purpose beyond quest source. Yes, to be fair, that does describe a lot of NPCs in Zelda, but it's kind of an issue that I have with some of the other games as well. None of them are offensively bad, though. Any treason does at least get one a typically proactive character during the boarding sequences. Speaking of which, the sequence in Zora's domain has Link riding on Prince Side On's back as the divine beast hurls ice chunks at them, which are most effectively handled with cryonus, but can also be attacked if the player doesn't think of this option. He'll bring you up to the waterfalls pouring off the beast's back, which you'll need to ascend with a Zora armor in order to snipe a series of targets with the shock arrows you collected earlier. I quite like this sequence. It's not very difficult, especially if you realize that cryonus breaks all the ice, a consequence of being able to mash a mindlessly with no penalty similar to stasis, but it's still a fun and inventive set piece that definitely weaves multiple concepts introduced in this region together. Granted, none of these concepts were strictly mandatory, but the push towards them was strong enough that I'd still call it a solid use of that escalating game design I talked about. I'm not as into the Goron variant, which has Link guiding Unobo, the Goron he rescued earlier, up a guardian-infested path, using his horse whistle to start and stop his movement. There are several cannons along the way which I used to fire Unobo into the divine beast as it's cuttles along the side of Death Mountain, eventually fell in it. The cannons here work well as an extension of the earlier concept, and the idea of shooting a Goron in a bubble at a giant Mac is pretty funny, at least it's a nice spectacle, but the whistling mechanic comes out of absolutely nowhere, is never seen again, and I'd struggle to call it particularly fun. It mostly just serves to slow the game's pace to a crawl, is adding a non-secretor mechanic into a questline for the sake of variety inherently bad, of course not, but it's probably going to feel jarring, so should justify this by also being compelling. I'm sure plenty of people did find this mission compelling, but while I liked the debris manipulation aspect, I wasn't one of them overall. As a result, I don't like how disconnected this feels from the rest of the region, and think it probably would have worked better in Goruto Desert, which already introduced the idea of stealth in a more interesting way and could have incorporated NPC control as a natural extension of the concept. Fortunately, what we got in the desert instead is still pretty good, making use of the enjoyable sand seals and having the player multitask between staying in a protective circle and firing bomb arrows at the Divine Beast's feet. The spectacle here is, once again, extremely impressive, and while I think the fight could have been made even more interesting by adding hazards in the sand, that's a matter of tuning. Broadly speaking, I love this sequence, and my only real complaint is how quickly it's over, which sadly is about the polar opposite of how I feel about the reto-boarding sequence. The notion of taking to the skies for an aerial assault with a flying companion working in tandem with you is awesome, but the sequence never actually throws any significant challenge at the player. The lasers are absolutely effortless to avoid and your free-to-take as long as you need to approach and shoot the turrets. Those turrets are spaced far enough apart, the moving between them creates a lot of downtime, and the quote-unquote, help that your reto-companyen offers amounts to flying by and distracting them every now and then, which does not matter at all, because, again, they're never actually going to hit you. This questline makes two attempts to create a compelling aerial archery sequence and misses the mark on both of them, setting this boarding sequence high in the air makes it visually great, and gives it a lot of potential, but that potential was never even close to realized with any interesting mechanics. At this point, we're entering the Divine Beast themselves, which alongside Shrine's service stands for the more traditional dungeons from past Zelda games. They're shorter, and largely non-linear, the appeal of which we'll vary from player to player, but I can't imagine the lack of visual variety will have sat well with a large chunk of the player base. The Divine Beast's wholeheartedly abandoned the colorful designs of previous dungeons, stripping everything back into a standardized brown and red architecture that makes them look virtually indistinguishable from the inside. They don't even keep any of the standard elemental aesthetic, despite each of them leaning on a classical element from a mechanical perspective. I said that I wasn't bothered by the uniformity of the Shrine's, but Nintendo had an opportunity to add some more visual interest back into the style of content, and it's a shame to see a college-copped version of the same aesthetic used instead. They are saved from total visual boredom, though thanks to their continued integration with the outside world, allowing for some really impressive views as Link moves through both their interiors and exteriors. Before any of that, Link needs to receive a brief overview from the Beast's corresponding champion and go collect the map, which are now mandatory pickups because they're needed to control each Divine Beast's unique interactive element. These interactive elements will be manipulated in order to help activate several terminals per Divine Beast, the goal of this sequence. For the elephant inspired Varuta of the Zoro domain, this will be a spouting trunk that can be freely moved throughout its arc. Varuta has a predictable emphasis on water, and essentially hands the first terminal over on a simple magnetizes crank. I understand this is intended to be the first Divine Beast, but even if that was guaranteed to be the case, this would still be overly simplistic for a key puzzle in a major questline. There are only five terminals per Divine Beast and none of them are particularly long or complicated to begin with. Making one of them a freebie shapes a hefty chunk often already fairly sparse experience. The puzzles which play with enormous water wheels are a little more involved, manipulating different water streams through cryonus and the trunk respectively, and adding a bit of stasis interaction as well. Another can be accessed by traversing the moving trunk in real time, and this one works very well as a spectacle moment if nothing else. It's technically impressive and almost feels like something you shouldn't be doing, even though it's obviously been designed to work this way. The final terminal and keep in mind, I'm using first and final loosely, there's no set order, uses the same crank as before to open the ceiling, and then the trunk can be positioned to poor water on flames blocking the terminal. I'm not impressed by this one. A sequence this short should not be resorting to recycled mechanics, and no, this doesn't qualify as iterating on an earlier idea, although it's likely the player will find this after the other crank that's not a guarantee, and even if we assume it is, the action the player performs is exactly the same. The trunk movement is an independent action the player performs afterwards, and they likely won't even know that they're going to be moving the trunk until the ceiling starts opening, whether they deduce that from the environment or not, doesn't matter anyways, because it makes absolutely no difference to their actions. This isn't a flowing logic puzzle, it's too incredibly half-hearted tasks stacked on top of each other. The first of which literally isn't a puzzle if you've encountered the earlier crank as intended, and the second of which has such an incredibly obvious solution that it barely qualifies for the title either. The way the trunk is used here is as basic an application as there could possibly be. This feels like a puzzle anyone could come up with in a first brainstorming session that should have been used as a starting point for the real thing. The Goron's Varudania starts off with an interesting twist, plunging link into darkness until he gets his hands on the better guarded map. Gameplay wise, obtaining the map is based on transporting a flame, setting it in darkness wasn't necessary, but it pairs well with the concept and makes the introduction to this divine beast the most memorable out of the group. Varudania features a fire theme, and it's map allows it to be rotated 90 degrees and back as it moves around the volcano. Once again, some of the puzzles here are overly simplistic, particularly the one where you just burn a plank of wood holding some doors shut. This one is on par with or even worse than the Magnesus cranks, but there are a couple that make reasonable use of this beast's mechanics. There's a terminal where you need to properly rotate Varudania, transfer a blue flame to its exterior, use that to set an orb free, and then use rotation alongside your sheikus late to complete the orb's path. Another has you combine a few ideas together by burning a barrier to obtain a metal block, using Magnesus to position it, and then rotating the beast to get through a wall of flames. Are any of these great? No, but they do at least involve spatial awareness and multiple mechanics. Varudania Boris of the Gerudo Desert has the most possible configurations, with three internal cylinders and four orientations per cylinder, which are paired with an electrical circuit theme. I'd consider this one to make the most of its central gimmick as well as to be the most complicated, requiring you to transport electrical orbs through multiple floors and synchronize the cylinder's positions to complete extended circuits. The extensive use of moving platforms can make the pacing drag, and this is the divine beast that probably suffers the most from the uniform visuals that can make navigation needlessly confusing, but I'd overall still consider it to be a reasonably substantial and cohesive challenge, which leaves the Reto's Vama Dough, a bird that can be tilted in three orientations with a theme of wind currents. Too many of these puzzles are weak movement tests that ask nothing of the player beyond using the paraglider while the beast is tilted a certain way, but I do think that this specific terminal, which makes use of different runes, wind, and shifting Vama Dough around multiple times, is decent. That said, considering it's by far the most complex terminal in this divine beast, there really isn't that much to chew on here, and as I haven't been especially subtle about, this really applies to far too much of the divine beast overall. The developers decided to keep the same non-linear approach for these sections as they did for the rest of the game, and while I can't call that decision a mistake, I also don't think it was implemented very well. Most of the individual terminal challenges are lackluster, some of them incredibly so, and the very compelling idea of controlling these divine beasts doesn't get explored very thoroughly. This was the big opportunity to create some coherent, structured content that introduced ideas and built on top of them, scratching some of the itch that the previous Zelda Dungeons left behind, and was what I was expecting when I first entered these divine beasts. As soon as I saw the trunk mechanic for Varuta, as an example, my assumption was that I'd be using it to create a stream of water from one side of the beast to the other, solving a variety of puzzles to complete the path for the stream, and having to keep the various components orientations in mind as I worked my way through. Maybe moving the trunk back a few notches activates the waterwheel I needed to move the next piece of the path into place, but also breaks something earlier up in the path, so I need to go use a rune on it in a clever way, and then activate the trunk at an opportune time. Nothing like this ever happens. The closest thing to an interconnected throughline on any of these divine beasts is the electrical leaves running through the length of vanaborus, and even in this one you don't generally need to care what orientation they're in unless you're working on a specific terminal that makes use of them in that moment. Now, here's the catch. There's nothing wrong with structuring that a vine beast differently than I expected. Dungeons are one of the most deeply ingrained traditions the Zelda series has, and Nintendo made a very bold decision to shake up the formula, which I respect, and provided the new formula was done well, I was very open to a change. The divine beasts aren't disappointing because they took away linear progression and interconnected puzzles. They're disappointing because they took these away without replacing them with something equally enjoyable. I'd call a good half of the terminal challenges meaningless or close to it, and even out of the remainder I don't think there are any that I consider more than solid. I never came across a single terminal puzzle that made me go, wow, that's really clever, a sentiment I've experienced many times in previous Zelda Dungeons. I've heard a lot of people say that the divine beasts were the biggest letdowns in the game for them, and that's not the case for me. I certainly enjoy a good Zelda dungeon, but most of my personal highlights from the series take place in the overworld. I'm not in the group most primed to be let down by these, and I do enjoy some of the terminals, along with the beast's spectacle, but I can still easily recognize how far they landed from their full potential. Before we can close the book on the divine beasts, though, we of course need to talk about the boss fight against one of Gannon's blites at the end of each one. Waterblite Ganon uses a variety of long-range spear attacks in a waterlocked arena that encourages heavy use of cryonus, both to shield his attacks and to create openings of your own. In his second phase, he'll retreat to the ceiling and summon ice blocks to fire at link reminiscent of this beast's boarding sequence, which can likewise be hit away or shattered with cryonus, or, if you're crafty, frozen with stasis, and fired back the other way. It's a relatively simple fight, appropriate considering it's intended to be the first boss encounter of the game, and I'd generally call it well-designed, borrowing some underlying issues with these bosses that we'll talk about in a moment. Next up is Fireblite Ganon, who's probably my least favorite of the bunch. It has what I'd consider to be the weakest use of its elemental theme, which mostly amounts to projectiles and damage boosts along with a shield that can be disrupted by shooting its fireballs or throwing bombs at it. Overall, I just don't think this fight is very interesting, and most of its play patterns aren't all that different from what you see outside of the divine beast. The only thing players might hit a snake on is figuring out how to break the shield. Thunderblite Ganon and much like the divine beast it's found in is probably the one that I'm most impressed by. Its first phase makes fairly minimal use of its electrical theme, just firing a bit of easily avoidable ball lightning from time to time, but still distinguishes itself with agile movement and a large shield to hide behind. Its second phase is where it really takes off. Electrifying its sword and dropping metal spikes into the ground that conduct a lightning, which can be picked up with may nieces for a counter attack. Electricity is a dangerous element for an enemy to possess due to its disarming properties, and these spikes are one of the most clever integrations of the bosses theme into Link's counter play. Making this a generally more challenging and interesting fight than its peers. Although I will say that Breath of the Wild's camera and the way may nieces handles don't play very well with that high multi-tiered arena, which leaves us with Wind Blight Ganon, an aerial focused boss that rapidly teleports around the arena and fires projectiles at you. This had the makings of a potentially interesting fight. However, it also takes place in an arena with permanent static updrafts, and being airborne is an overpowered state for Link that players will always be looking for ways to initiate in general combat. The ability to access the air whenever you want seems to be what the fight is built around, but much like the rest of this questline, it doesn't seem like that developers really knew what to do with aerial combat here. Its reasonable to think taking to the skies would be an expected movement pattern that the boss designed would encourage and be prepared for, but... no, not really, doing so completely breaks the fight. You get all the benefits of bullet times massive damage out, but which Wind Blight has no safeguards against, and it also allows you to easily avoid its attacks. It's really not a very good shot. These little satellites are supposed to fire lasers that ricochet among them, but I've literally never seen that happen in this arena. The fight is over too quickly. At no point do you ever need to snipe projectiles out of the air? You never need to definitely dart from updraft to updraft. Maybe those updrafts lift you continuously higher so you can come down on the Blight's weak point with a plunging attack. Putting a weak point on the top of its head instead of the generic eye placement would be a fantastic way to emphasize aerial movement. Those satellites could even shoot your arrows out of the sky so that you had to use the plunging attack. Nothing else in the game ever demands that you use this move and it would make the fight feel so much more unique. As is, you can really ignore basically everything this boss is doing and just kill it with arrows, and this is a thread that runs through too many of these fights. The Blights are built along the same principle of freedom as the rest of the game, meaning that you can tackle them in ways beyond the heavily prescribed solution in most previous 3D titles. And I have mixed feelings about this decision. I like it with waterblight again, and for example, where the watery arena and ice blocks can be utilized to make the fight go much smoother, but aren't strictly required. Arrows and brawling can get the job done if you insist. Thunderblight Ganon works a bit differently. It uses patterns that have straight melee emphasis and strict gimmick interaction which trade places throughout the encounter. Even within these fights, though, there are moments where they don't feel distinct enough from the other Blights or even standard enemies, and this applies even more to fire Blight and especially Wind Blight Ganon. Arrowhead shots in particular are an extremely effective method of dealing with most phases of these bosses, so of course it's a strategy players are going to gravitate towards, and it's not as engaging as it should be because it's the same strategy you've already been using against everything else. Now, making boss fights too prescriptive is a problem in its own right. When Majora's mask was remade for the 3DS, the bosses were changed from a similar free-form approach to forest-weets bot targeting, and a lot of people did not like this change. I'd rather see more of a middle ground, with an efficient, interesting, encouraged strategy with room to even alternatives. Again, waterblight Ganon does this fairly well, and the Wind Blight changes I proposed earlier would also achieve this. The homogeneous feeling the Blights suffer from isn't remotely helped by their appearances, all-bearing strong resemblance to each other, as well as the architecture found all over the world. Considering that the champion characters in this game are mostly stuck with nothing to do, have elemental affinity and exist as imprisoned spirits. I have to wonder why we're not fighting possessed versions of them instead here. The fact that their spirits means there is malleable as needed. Again, its corruption could scale them up during the fight, for example, if size was the issue. And these boss battles are already being undertaken with the premise of freeing the champions. Now, this might be veering too far into unfair criticism, I mean the same way that it's not fair to criticize the game for failing to give link a shotgun. But considering it would lead to more memorable boss encounters, and increase the presence of the champions killing too quite sizable birds with one stone, I think it's a reasonable thought to have. The champions most impactful moments of agency are probably when they bestow their unique abilities upon link after being freed. And much like the Divine Beast themselves, these are a mixed bag. Mifas Grace and Daruk's protection will be the most common first two abilities to receive, and so essentially function as safety nets. With Mifas Grace granting a second and upgraded set of hearts upon death and Daruk's protection granting a more powerful block that can be active with outer shield. These are extremely practical upgrades, but it's hard to get too excited over them. Their primary purpose is to reduce the penalty for defensive errors. Breath of the Wild is the most difficult Zelda title in quite some time, so these are reasonably appropriate if maybe a bit over the top, but it doesn't feel like the significance of the reward matches the significance of the events around it. Although when bundled with story progression and an additional heart container, this is admittedly somewhat improved. Prospects get brighter when we turn to our boss's fury, which augments links charge attack with an enormous area of effect lighting burst, and I do mean enormous to the degree that it can easily hit an entire enemy encampment. It's frankly absurdly overpowered while it's active, and a discussion could certainly be had about its balance, but it's ultimately an exciting power-up that significantly and permanently alter the link's abilities in a unique way, which as we've discussed is a feature the game is in desperate need of, so I'm happy with its inclusion, fair, or otherwise. Revoli's gale requires a bit more discussion, as it simultaneously one of the most poorly considered and important upgrades link will receive on his adventure. It allows him to board enemy platforms without taking an interesting approach. It gives him bullet time on demand. It takes a lot of the clever tricks he would normally need to imply to gain height or traverse terrain and makes them largely redundant. It also just flat out break some parts of the divine beasts, which don't ban champion abilities in the same way that tries to. Figuring out shortcuts to activate the terminals is one thing, it can make you feel clever, but just flying over a gate you're supposed to be completing a puzzle to open, decidedly does not. On the other hand, the ability to bypass a lot of tasks, particularly the swimming end climbing I criticized earlier, is a blessing that makes the game dramatically more enjoyable to play, to the degree that retrovillages now my first destination every time I leave the great plateau, and again, it's one of the rare instances of link gaining a significantly new scale as the game progresses. Ravoli's scale is also probably the champion ability that most strongly highlights the flaws in the cooldown system they've been given. Mifa's grace has a single use before triggering a very long cooldown, but the others all have three uses leading into a shorter cooldown period. Mifa's grace and deruque's protection are more logical implementations since they're generally only ever going to be triggered in combat encounters unless you really go out of your way, but they're both as fury and Ravoli's scale are easy to use at any time, meaning that after one or two uses the temptation is always there to burn the remainder during downtime in order to make sure that you have sufficient charges available when you need them. Theoretically, if you have the patience after every encounter that uses a charge, you can just drain the rest, stand in place until they replenish, and functionally have infinite ability usage. At the cost of large chunks of your real world time, a cooldown after use is a reasonable way to prevent these abilities from becoming too spam-able, but they should probably passively recharge outside of combat to avoid this odd and set- devised behavior. The champion abilities were also a prime opportunity to address some of the other issues I've mentioned throughout this video, particularly once related to mobility. Mifa could have provided link with a significant passive upgrade to his swimming abilities, and the same goes for, say, deroke and climbing, or herbosa, and sprinting. If links other mobility options were less tiring to deal with, then Ravoli's scale would stop being such an necessity, and it could be used to, for example, create a horizontal wind blast rather than vertical, which could still be used in the air to improve links gliding without the more game-breaking aspects the current iteration introduces, and would also be the perfect way to provide the raft upgrade I alluded to earlier in the video. They could still keep some of their current aspects as well, and maybe even introduce more. It doesn't seem unreasonable for the best moment of a separate species essence to result in several changes to link. Maybe each champion could provide upgrades to both mobility and combat, which would make receiving these best moments much more interesting and reduce the repetitive nature-evilings actions throughout the game's runtime. At this point, the only enemy left to face is Ganon himself, who's taken over Hyrule Castle, one of my favorite areas in the game. It's not the same form of dungeon, which has solidified into a core part of the modern Zelda formula, and is instead more reminiscent of the combat challenges seen in earlier games, and also takes the form of a sprawling lab-breath, with numerous pathways both inside and out, completely infested with high-level enemies and sporting plenty of hidden treasure and secret passageways to uncover. It's design is, in a word, excellent. You're able to rush Ganon without ever stepping foot inside, particularly if you can traverse waterfalls with the Zora armor, although it's also one of the best showcases of and arguments for the situation of links climbing mechanics. Thanks to numerous surfaces, which aren't overly tedious to climb, but are made dangerous thanks to an ever-present army of guardians. With that said, if a player is looking for rich exploration, the area strongly encourages and rewards this with a collection of the game's strongest items, including the highly enchilled I mentioned earlier, as well as some additional bits of story content, like a journal from Zelda, which is the exact kind of century old record I mentioned wanting to see more of throughout the game. I do think it might be a little too easy to come across Ganon accidentally if you opt for an outdoor path. As there's no warning that you're about to enter his sanctum and it's fairly large, but it's a minor issue compared to all the things Hyrule Castle gets right. I can absolutely understand how some players would be disappointed in the total lack of traditional puzzle elements compared to how this castle has typically appeared in Zelda games, but I appreciate it for what it is. The removal of anything resembling the terminals found in the divine beasts gives the free form nature of this area much more room to breathe and let the designers really focus on the core concept. Get to Ganon, that's all you need to know. I love the purity of that vision. Once you do get into the sanctum, you discover what freeing all those divine beasts has netted you. No blights in the sanctum and less health on Ganon. If you didn't kill them ahead of time, they'll appear consecutively here to take down. With each fight largely playing out the same as at what on that divine beast but with some differences due to the altered arena. Appearing back to back like this can definitely start to make this segment drag. And weapon durability is a major hindrance that essentially discredits the notion that you can leave the great plateau and immediately go kill Ganon. In reality, you do need to go collect weapons first unless you feel like going through the hell of chipping away at everything with bombs. Taking these factors into account, removing the blights could be seen as an important reward if you consider allowing the player to break from the intended path at the expense of an unpleasant end game to be reasonable game design, which I think I do. You're not intended to do this, that developers aren't going to cuddle you if you decide to ignore most of the game. But you still can. I'll be it again with the caveat that weapon collection is essentially mandatory. The reduced health on Ganon is less impressive to me. This is the big climactic moment you've been working towards, potentially for a very long time. And to have it all lead to one short cutscene and a single number being changed was something I found pretty disappointing. I thought maybe there would be an outdoor battle that the divine beasts would join in on, or they'd provide a link with some last minute awesome abilities. Or essentially name any reasonable outcome of freeing, gigantic titans and their ancient commander's spirits, and it will probably be more interesting than what was actually put into the game. Thankfully, the Ganon fight itself does make up for this to a degree, showing off perhaps the most bizarre incarnation he's ever had. A cyborg spider-beast bristling with ancient weaponry who plummets out of a massive cocoon. Despite this visual style being over-saturated throughout the game, I still find myself liking the design of calamity Ganon quite a bit. It's an extremely bold choice that also allows plenty of room for a diverse move set, which he does thankfully have. He crawls around the wall. He swings his enormous weapons. He fires a variety of projectiles and area of effect attacks. He retreats into an armored shell that needs to be punctured with counter attacks or erbosa's fury. It's an interesting fight, but not without its problems. It's hard to ignore how many of these attacks are taken almost verbatim from the blades you've already fought, potentially just fought. And while this does serve to make calamity Ganon feel like a culmination of what came before, appropriate for an amgain boss, there are also plenty of other techniques that the player has been mastering throughout their adventure that calamity Ganon doesn't really test. At no point during this fight do you need to climb, swim, shield, surf, etc. In fact, the game places you in the most barren arena possible to ensure that none of these options are available. And frankly, these are much more interesting parts of Breath of the Wild than that one boss's big spear, along with being more representative of the game as a whole, and would have been more appropriate to create a final test for. You could make the argument that Hyrule Castle fills that role, but for the most part, it's not really structured around heavy movement testing. A lot of the fight's potential tension is also robbed by his strangely low damage output, as well as how incredibly effective shields are against the vast majority of his attacks. If you picked up the Hylian shield and aura reasonable arsenal of decent shields before facing him, then you can pretty much stand in place and block most things that come your way. This is the fight that really sells me on the idea of percentage based damage blocking on shields. He does have a few attacks that can get around the strategy, but not enough to be much of an issue. As is, Clamity Ganon is considerably easier to kill than most Lionel variants, which might be a necessary concession as Clamity Ganon is a mandatory fight and the Lionel's are optional, but it still creates a distance I can't totally overlook. I wouldn't consider this a brilliant fight by any means, but I do enjoy it and consider it to be one of the best boss fights in the game, which admittedly might speak more to the overall week showing by Breath of the Wilds bosses than it does to Clamity Ganon. And while we're talking about week boss showings, Dark Beast Ganon, my choice for the single worst moment in Breath of the Wild bar none. After defeating Clamity Ganon, you're taking outside and put on horseback for one final epic encounter. No more experimental cyborg. This is the bore that we know so well, bigger and more menacing than it's ever been. The music swells, Zelda delivers a rousing speech. You charge forward to obtain the legendary bow of light. And you shoot a couple targets on Ganon's body while it pods around aimlessly. What happened here? There's no tension. There's no challenge. There isn't even really combat. This is a shooting gallery. Dark Beast Ganon is so unbelievably clumsy and slow that not only has he never hit me, he's never even gotten within the ballpark of hitting me. There are no discernible phases apart from the different target positions, and there are no skills tested apart from archery and horseback riding. To even call the archery portion a test is a bit of a stretch because for all intents and purposes you have as much time as you possibly need to hit these gigantic slow moving targets with your infinite ammo. The same can be said for horseback riding. You really need no confidence with the skill whatsoever, which is actually good because it's fully possible to beat the game without ever riding a horse. So it's actually an odd choice for one of the very last things you're asked to do. At almost every step of the way, the developers have embraced freedom. We'll give you a suggested solution, but if you can come up with a better one, awesome. Go for it. Essentially the only time we saw this philosophy broken was that a vine-beast boarding sequences, which while I didn't always succeed, were clearly stripping this kind of agency away with the intention of creating a compelling, focused experience that required restrictions to ensure that experience was had. Dark-beast Ganon is even more restrictive than these, and there's no way you can reasonably call this a compelling experience. It's the exact opposite, and it's gut-wrenchingly disappointing because the concept of riding around this awe-inspiring incarnation of Ganon in an open field had all the potential in the world. It could easily have been setting up the most memorable boss fight in Zelda history. And instead, it's terrible. This isn't just my pick for the worst boss in Breath of the Wild, or the worst boss in the Legend of Zelda. This is the worst boss I've ever fought. It mighter in this title, purely from its non-existent mechanics, but when putting context as the last thing you do in the game with so much potential and build up behind it, it falls so much lower still. I have to believe this was due to some form of time constraint, because the idea of a studio full of talented developers looking at this and saying, yes, we've built something great here, we're going out on a high note, is just unfeasible to me. After this, the game is over. Zelda pops out, the credits roll, and you're treated to one more cutscene if you visit the various memory points around high rule. These memories are the only real gameplay element we haven't touched on yet. A dozen different points that can be found across the world with some assistance from photos provided by an NPC. The actual gameplay aspect of discovering these is quite limited. Your only concrete reward is provided after the first one, when Empire gives you the Champions tunic. The larger incentive to find these memories is to flesh out the story, with each memory unlocking a cutscene and collecting the bunch unlocking a few more. The game is played entirely in the present, but heavily leans on flashbacks to fill out its narrative. Although story still takes a heavy backseat to gameplay, even more so than usual for Zelda's generally simple story lines. Thousands of years before the game's events, the advanced Shika civilization repelled the continuously reincarnated Ganon from Hyrule, by building thousands of guardian robots as well as the fortifying beasts, each piloted by a champion from a different race. These champions worked together to beat Ganon down, creating an opportunity for their princess and her knight to seal the monster away. Fast forward to 100 years before the game takes place, and the return of Ganon seems inevitable. So Hyrule's royal family resurrects the ancient creations and assigns new champions to the divine beasts. The princess of Hyrule is, of course, Zelda, with Link serving as her appointed at night, and the wielder of the master sword. The blade that seals the darkness. Zelda is desperately attempting to access the same sealing magic as her predecessors, but is unable to do so, much to the dismay of her father, who believes it to be a result of splitting her time between training and her studies of the ancient technology, where her true interests lie. Ganon resurvisors before the magic, and having learned from his previous defeat corrupts the machines that the Hyruleans believed to be their saviors. The battle is lost horribly, and the champions are killed. Their spirits trapped in the divine beasts they once piloted. Much of Hyrule is lost with them, including most of the royal family, and Link takes Zelda and flees from the castle, being mortally wounded during their escape. As a guardian approaches to deliver the final blow, Zelda is finally able to call up on her ancestors magic to save them. She has Link taken to the healing shrine of resurrection, where his body will be fixed over the next century, leaves the damaged master sword hidden within the lost woods, and heads to the fallen castle, where she uses her newfound powers to pull both Ganon and herself into a stasis within its walls. One hundred years later, Link's wounds are finally healed, and he awakens on the great plateau with amnesia, where the king of Hyrule's spirit informs him that Zelda and Ganon are still locked away. He travels to meet Impa, an old ally, and member of the Shika tribe, who tasks him with freeing the still trapped spirits of the champions, so they can use the divine beasts to help defeat Ganon and free Zelda. They accomplish this, and the story ends with Link and Zelda setting off to rebuild Hyrule. This is a strong set up with a number of themes that can be drawn from it. I'm not going to dwell on this too long, as frankly, I'm not a great story analyst, but as an example, I interpreted a theme of corrupted purpose, which ran throughout the game. The Shika technology created for the purpose of protecting Hyrule eventually became distrust that has a potential threat, which led to the Shika abandoning it underground in order to appease those around them. This resulted in both the regression of Hyrule's society and the creation of the Yiga clan, former Shika who resented of the baseless suspicions raised against them, and now fight for Ganon. Zelda is unable to activate her ancestors magic while simultaneously being restricted from pursuing her natural curiosity, and while this is never explicitly stated, it can be interpreted as a corruption of the tri-force of wisdom holders' natural purpose. King Rome keeps telling her to stick to her training and prayer instead, and it never works. Maybe if he had fostered her curiosity instead, then the ceiling magic would have awoken earlier, and the great calamity could have been stopped. Ganon also creates the calamity by quite literally corrupting the purpose of the guardians and divine beasts. Now I could pull from any number of story elements to create any number of themes. The blue curtains might represent existential depression, or blue might just be the author's favorite color. But whatever your mindset, there is enough to breath of the wild story to pull meaning from, despite its relative lack of emphasis. Having said that, there's a difference between a story and the way it's told, and as we start to look deeper into breath of the wild story, issues start to appear, and one that constantly bothered me was that I've urging tones between the plot and the characters. This isn't referring to general NPCs. I've seen a lot of complaints that Hyrule citizens don't feel oppressed enough, but I don't have an issue with this personally. It makes sense that over the course of 100 years society has reached an equally re-employed point that allows it to function within the perils of the world. The destruction of Hyrule is no longer actively expanding because Zelda is still holding Ganon back. Zelda herself, on the other hand, along with the champions, should be far more distressed than they are. Each of them have been imprisoned and tormented for a full century by the time Lincoln counters them. Zelda locked in some form of frozen combat and the champion straight-up killed, and yet they all seem pretty damn chipper about it. They speak in the exact same leisurely tones after being rescued as they do beforehand, making it feel less like you're freeing their souls from eternal anguish and more like you're buzzing them into the apartment after they forgot their keys. I mean, Mifa tells you that she was sad, but you never see her sad, which is completely breaking the show don't tell fundamental a storytelling. Her segment here makes things worse if anything, since we've now confirmed the champions were indeed conscious and aware of their imprisonment this entire time. It was probably pretty horrible. I assume, again, she seems fine to me. I understand not wanting to drag the tone of the game down too much, but even ignoring the fact that Zelda games have never shied away from Dark Moments, including a couple in this one, there's still a middle ground between depicting the full horror of their situation and ignoring it entirely, with birth of the wild choosing almost exclusively to take the latter option and it takes so much of the bite out of a potentially gripping setup. I lied earlier, we do see Mifa sad, longing for a chance to see her family one last time, a chance she'll never get because she's bound to her duty. This actually made me feel something for her, and if I'd seen her in this kind of pain beforehand, I'd have been genuinely motivated to stay for from it. Except at this point that ship is sailed, I've already cleared this divine beast and will never directly interact with her again, so, oh well, and that's the closest any of the champions get to this kind of catharsis. The tertiary story characters likewise don't seem to be in too much of a hurry a lot of the time, and the entire main quest rarely feels like the stakes are that high, even though they actually are quite high. Open world games are particularly prone to a notorious problem that if you're a fan of game design analysis, you've probably heard mentioned before, that being ludonarrative dissonance. But simply, is the disparity between what the character is supposed to be doing, like stopping a second apocalypse and what the player is making them do instead, like choosing the snowballing minigame by zed targeting the NPC and sending slightly to the right. Breath of the Wild's premise does a fairly impressive job of minimizing this disparity by blatantly stating right from the start to that link, the character is not strong enough to approach Ganon yet. He should recruit help. He should gather resources, so when you, the player take on these tasks, it doesn't feel dissonant. It's not a perfect implementation, and was never going to be, but it is an admirable attempt to maintain the story's weight within the game's open structure, an attempt which is heavily undermined by how Nanchlan most of the rest of the script is. This makes it difficult to feel truly invested in saving the champions in particular, and the limited definition each of them are given doesn't help. Mifa is a gentle cleric who loves Link and wants to do the right thing. Daruk is a well-meaning yet overbearing goofball who wants to do the right thing. Urbosa is a stoic warrior with a soft spot for Zelda who wants to do the right thing. Ravali is hotty and arrogant, and thinks he should be in Link's position, but can ultimately put that aside to do the right thing. You've seen all these characters before, and while it may seem like I'm using the same kind of snarky over simplification you can apply to anything you dislike, there really is very little shown of them beyond these surface-level traits. Zelda is thankfully more thought-out, and I'd say she's one of the more fully realized incarnations of the character we've seen. She's kind, outgoing, and genuinely concerned for the future of her citizens, but also flippant, insecure, and sort of a brat, which are pretty reasonable traits to find in a teenager. She's by no means flawless, and seems overly attached to tradition. Although, again, it's questionable how much of this comes from her, and how much of it comes from her father, and I appreciate that they gave her studious and even mad scientist tendencies. Zelda holds the tri-force of wisdom, and compared to Link's courage and Ganon's power, she tends to be depicted less in line with that assigned trait in most games. likely a consequence of generally being fairly young. It might be a stretch to call a 16-year-old wise in the sense that we've come to expect that term to be used in a fantasy setting, but she certainly has a scholarly personality, which I think fits well. Despite being the namesake of the series, Zelda as a character has been handled with very inconsistent quality over the course of her appearances, and while I'd hardly call this version an all-time great video game heroine, I do think she's as successful in incarnation. She's also one of the few characters that manages to stand above two words that cast a permanent shadow over breath of the wild's narrative, character development. First off, let's just acknowledge that developing characters who are mostly already dead, and whose stories can be experienced in arbitrary orders was going to be a heavy task from the start, especially for the champions. Let's break down what the structure of each champions representation will actually look like. They'll show up in the past. They'll show up one time in the present, having been completely stuck in place between those times. They'll appear in the past again, and they'll appear for a brief moment in the present one last time to pump their fists and say a few words of encouragement, then stare at you silently as they disappear. This is the optimistic case, mind you, where a player goes through the entire game in roughly the order that developers intended. And even so, it's still not inherently obvious how any of these characters could change or grow within this structure. Nintendo just accepted this and didn't really try, but there could have been room to work with, particularly when Link interacts with a champion's spirits in their divine beasts. Ravali at least shows a shred more respect to Link than he did before his rescue. But even here, it's pretty minor, he still throws in snide remarks, and in the past he was already willing to follow Link and Zelda into battle. The single could potentially have been played up a lot more, maybe the champions were working together reluctantly in the past, with some kind of strife between the different races. We see that there's a bit of doubt towards Zelda already, maybe there could have been a lot more, even genuine hostility from some of them, which of course would also be passed on to Link as her knight. Maybe they had personal demons of their own, which contributed to their defeat, which they've had time to contemplate and reject over the previous century, coming to forgive and embrace Link and Zelda as heroes in the process. I'm not saying this approach would need to be applied to all of them, and in fact it wouldn't work to do so. It would be too formulaic. However, I hope I'm getting across the idea that there was more to do with these characters than Nintendo chose to. They made all of the champions very pleasant, yes, including Ravoli, and clearly really wanted players to like and be invested in them, while simultaneously creating a structure and narrative that makes being invested in them extremely difficult. There's a Zora during the Varuta quest who deeply resents Link, blaming him for me as death. In time, though, he comes to understand that he's in the wrong, and ends up respecting and forgiving Link on his own terms. This minor side character gets considerably more of an arc than any of the champions. There's another character who wants Link to introduce him to a Garuda woman, and after it works, and they become a couple, he ecstatically rewards Link with a few rupees. The woman chastises him for being so greedy, and he reluctantly relents and increases the reward. This guy also gets more of an arc than any of the champions. Sure, they're dead. You can make the case that their lives are over, and so their journeys should be too, but you can't throw these characters in people's faces as a selling point and say, hey, these are important members of the main cast, like them, and root for them, and by their DLC, while simultaneously denying them the most fundamental storytelling structure used to make characters compelling. There also goes that can still walk and talk just fine, and also have a large chunk of the story's runtime dedicated to their actions in the past, so this argument really doesn't hold much weight with me. Like I said, Zelda is fortunately handled much better, beginning as an insecure girl unsure of her ability to live up to her kingdom's expectations. Her earnest efforts to align those expectations with her natural interests are continuously slammed down by her father, and her attempts to follow the path he's laid out for her result in constant failure. She resents and rejects Link both as an embodiment of her father's oppression, as well as a person who seemingly fits into their role perfectly. The exact opposite of herself and a reminder of that failure. In time, their relationship evolves, and she comes to respect the similar struggles Link faces, although her doubt and powerlessness persist until after the great calamity has already begun. Removed from the oppressing forces in her life, her externally appointed destiny, her father, the walls of the castle itself, and placed into a position where she must act and act of her own accord, her doubts finally fade, and her magical wakeins. From this moment onwards, she becomes a proactive force, saving Link, protecting the master sword, and facing Ganon herself. I spent the first couple of years after Breath of the Wild came out, thinking it would have made for a stronger narrative if we definitively saw Zelda free herself from her father's oppression, as opposed to having him killed by an outside source. Upon further reflection, though, I think it's an important decision on Nintendo's part. Until she's cast into the wild, Zelda is a passive force and an unsure character, which is fairly unsettly paralleled by the silent princess flower we see in a few cutscenes. A flower that only appears in the wild and won't bloom domestically, as hard as the castle residents try. Fraying herself would have made for a stronger character, sure, but the initial lack of strength isn't an accident. The harms of trying to domesticate a wild flower are somewhat undermined if the flower actually grows pretty all right domestically, but would be slightly healthier outside. She can still be well defined, she can still be sympathetic and wanted to do what's best for her kingdom, but giving her the strength required to free herself, while still being trapped under the influences robbing her of that strength, would be a fundamentally different narrative. It would turn into a more well-worn and id argue less compelling story of empowerment, rather than the cautionary tale Nintendo gravitated towards. While I'm not quite sure I would, you could go as far as to say this is King Rome's story as much as it is Zelda's. After all, if you were to tell me the story of a man who tried unsuccessfully to grow a flower inside his walls, only to have it moved outside and bloomed freely, would you be more inclined to say the story was about the flower or the man? While it's possible that a story with these kinds of subtleties is inadvisable when combined with the non-linear and largely optional delivery methods the game uses, I do respect it. I've seen quite a few people criticize Breath of the Wilds story as very poor, and while I think the champions are handled atrociously, I can't agree with this for Zelda. She had some unconventional and relatively nuanced choices made for her narrative that go beyond what I've seen in most games in the series I've played. That said, I also can't blame anyone who misses this entirely, or comes up with a completely different interpretation than mine that's much less satisfying. If you don't subscribe to King Rome being the suppressing force for Zelda's magic as an example, it's easy to see her as a well-meaning but pathetic character who saves through Deus Ex Machina. The Legend of Zelda series has had some excellent stories and story moments, but if we're being entirely honest, it's also had plenty that are at best serviceable. Storytelling has never been Nintendo's greatest strength as a studio, and I'm fully open to the possibility that my interpretation is giving them more credit than they deserve. I have a hard time believing I'm saying existential depression and they're saying blue, but they might be calling those curtains more along the lines of sad. Even if my interpretation is less strong than what Nintendo has actually written, their storytelling method has still clearly buried a lot of that strength and left plenty of people cold from start to finish, and that still arguably a failure on their end. The way I've talked about King Rome up to this point may make you think he's a monster, or at least cruel, but if you read his journal, you know that's not true. He deeply cared for Zelda, but felt the need to put on a strong front for what he thought was in her best interests. He even came to realize how flawed his approach was and was going to attempt to mend their relationship the next time he saw her, a meeting that tragically never got to happen. It's a few lines of text that totally changes the context of his character arguably the entire story, and it's hidden behind a false wall in a labyrinthian dangerous area right at the end of the game, so you can hardly blame someone if they miss this. I will also say that the one element of Zelda's development I do strongly dislike is the incident that changes her opinion towards Link. He saves her life even though she was being mean to him. Link is the princess's personal bodyguard. What else was he possibly going to do in this situation? I don't understand why we're supposed to think this would be surprising or somehow reveal a different side of him to her. It's a weak excuse to close the gap between them and surely something more sensible and interesting could have been conceived. For the most part though, there's story has some substance to it, and it's a shame that several of the cutscenes between them are limited to inconsequential exposition instead of leaning more into this. What do we learn in this cutscene? Link is good at killing monsters, Zelda supports him, something bad is going to happen soon. We as the audience know this already, why is this time not being used to impart new information about their relationship or the world around them? There are good ones in here. I love that Link can fall into the role of unwilling test subject, ardent protector, or trusted confidant, but they still could have been done better. A lot of the most dramatic story events never actually get to happen on screen either. We never see the champions fall, we never ceiling get fatally injured, we're just told about or shown them after the fact, even within the interesting events that we are shown, they're essentially all flashbacks. Very few cutscenes depict situations the player can directly interact with, and this severely limits their impact. As a quick example, at some point Kakariko village could suffer an invasion. With one cutscene at the start to provide context, another to resolve it at the end, and the invasion played out in between. To be clear, I did not need Breath of the Wild to have a strong focus on story, but if we were going to get this type of cutscene, I'd have far other scene pivotal events in the present that were worthy of creating them for, rather than using them as an excuse to show pivotal moments without needing to back anything up with gameplay. That's not to say this never happens, but it's by no means common. And of course, eventually we were going to have to get to the voice acting. I know this isn't a universal opinion, but I'm very on board with the idea of introducing voice acting to the Zelda series, and when it's done well here, it feels like a massive boost to the game's production values. With that said, it's notoriously not always done well, and also isn't universally applied, only appearing in important story beats. I'll address the latter point quickly, having voice acting in place selectively like this is probably a worst case scenario. I'd have been perfectly content with Zelda's traditional approach of gibberish or silence, but having it appear one moment and disappear the next only draws attention to the fact that Nintendo is cutting a corner. Whether that's due to budget, time constraint, storage space, I don't know, but none of these are factors I want to be reminded of when I'm trying to immerse myself in a world. Reception to the voice acting's quality was generally mixed as well, and while I can't disagree with this, I do think an unfair amount of the blame has been placed on the actor's shoulders. We'll start with Zelda, because she's the one I've most often heard brought up as a sticking point. I actually do like the voice her actress adopted, and when it's being used properly, I think it sounds good. There is a bit of stiffness in there that may or may not have been entirely intentional. I know the actress is American and the character speaks with a British accent, so that may be a factor, but I also think it works well to sell the sense of repression Zelda constantly struggles with, along with her royal upbringing. Part of the issue with this though, not the entire issue mind you, is that this kind of restriction doesn't always match the situation. Take the scene here and compare the English and French deliveries, the latter of which seems to be the overwhelming favor among fans or what I've seen. All my friends, the entire kingdom, my father, most of all, I tried and I feel... I love them all the time. All right, Mum, close up! Come on in one more time, man. And be one of your guys. Now, there's always going to be subjectivity in a discussion like this, and I know there was some criticism of both performances among the respective language bases, but I'd have to imagine that at least in this moment most people would say the French version works better. This is Zelda at her lowest, having just lost her family, her kingdom, her hope in French, she sounds devastated, where in English, she sounds upset. However, I have a very hard time believing that an experienced voice actress doesn't know how to sound convincingly devastated. I have no experience in the voice acting industry whatsoever, and each line you're hearing in this video probably needed at least five takes, so please apply a heavy grain of salt here, but to me, this comes across as less of an issue with the actress, and more with the direction she was given. She should have been directed to do a more intense take before moving on, and for all we know she did, and it was rejected in favor of this one during the editing stage, which she likely would have had no control over, and looking at some of the other performances only highlights the suspicion for me. Urbosa has what I consider to be by far the worst performance of the main cast, going for a stoic and proud, but often coming across like a hammy stage actress. I should have expected as much, from the princess's own appointed night. She was out on a survey all day today, still as the sun's now, so spill it boy, have the two of you been getting along all right? Out of curiosity, I looked up the resume of the voice actress and listened to some of her other performances, and they were extremely impressive. This is a talented professional behind the mic who does know how to give a good performance. Again, I can't prove this in any way, but I have to imagine this delivery is at least partially a result of the direction, especially because the same actress also voices Ryu, who I don't think has the same issue. Now, am I here to claim that the mixed reception to Breath of the Wild's voice acting is unwarranted? No, I'm not. The cast usually have their moments, and there are a few standouts like, again, Ryu. Fortunately, I cannot appease an aborder suddenly. I have no choice but to entrust the rest to you. I think the direction and even translation play into this to some degree. Let's pop back to the same scene as before, and this time I'm going to show that direct French translation rather than just recycling the English subtitles. Now, full disclosure, I haven't spoken French since middle school, and even then Canadian French is pretty different, but I'm still comfortable saying the second clip sounds a lot more like an actual person, and less like the script to a video game. And the English version has a lot of these moments peppered through it. This translation seems heavily focused on filling out syllables to match the lip flaps, which the French version basically said to hell with, and it wasn't handled particularly gracefully. You can really hear the actors struggling to fit all those words into an unnaturally short time frame. Dealing with these lines is still ultimately the responsibility of the voice cast, and look, there are honestly still a lot of awkward deliveries without this context, but it does seem like context worth highlighting. At this point, I've come through most of the content in the base game, however, Breath of the Wild did receive two DLC expansions, so before I deliver my closing thoughts, I'd like to take a look at these, and see if they offer meaningful contributions to the game. I will know that Breath of the Wild also support several different amiibo, however, I simply don't own any, and having looked at them, I don't have strong enough opinions to justify the cost. Sorry if this video feels late on content. Let's start with the various armor sets introduced in the expansion pass. As aesthetically, I like these quite a bit, and there are a ton of fun throwbacks to previous Zelda titles. The Phantom from Spirit Tracks, Minnes helmet from Twilight Princess, Tingle, Phantom Ganon, Majora's Mask, these are all really cool things to have in the game. Thanks to someone fortunate design decisions, though, they're mostly reduced to novelties, with almost all of them granting abilities that can already be found on base game sets. I've already said that I find a lot of these upgrades to be less imaginative than I'd like, so to see so many of them recycled again is not something that makes me particularly happy. These overlapping sets are almost strictly worse than the ones they're copying, too, because they can't be upgraded, which means their base stats are all they're ever going to have. You can't even die them, which I think is kind of lame even in the base game, so I'm really not happy to see it here. The few that aren't essentially useless also introduce negative effects on the balance of progression, particularly the Phantom set. Each piece provides an attack-up bonus, the same as the barbarian armor, one of the most useful and difficult to obtain sets in the game. By contrast, the Phantom armor is found in Hyrule Field, a short hop away from the Great Plateau, with no progression gate of any kind. Just read the book that tells you where the armor pieces are, head over to the three nearby locations, and grab the chests. Their theoretically supposed to be protected by dangerous enemies, but it's really not difficult at all to get to the chests before they pose a threat, especially since you can just open the chest and then immediately pause and teleport away. Congratulations! You've now completely broken the early game with the Phantom armor's outrageous damage output and relatively high defense, and you might not even have meant to do it. It destroys the game's balance, then becomes utterly useless once you've acquired the barbarian armor. Note that Breath of the Wilds open nature always makes this kind of balanced destruction possible if you're setting out to do it. There's nothing stopping a player from rushing straight for barbarian armor pieces, the moment they get off the Great Plateau, but it's not a very natural movement pattern. There's still an argument to be made that the temptation to do this unsubsequent playthrough is in combination with the ability to run right past essentially all enemies isn't necessarily a great aspect of Breath of the Wilds design, but at least the way this armor is positioned makes finding it unreasonable early in our first playthrough fairly unlikely, something that can't necessarily be said for the Phantom set. There are a few unique abilities among the armor pieces as well, some of which are better considered than others. I think the Korok mask is a decent addition for example, which rattles every time a Korok seed is near without telling you it's exact location. It's potentially a little too useful in fact, I quickly found it becoming the only head gear I ever wanted to wear while running around high rule. The penalty-free armor-swapping strikes again here, but it does offer something distinct and fairly well-balanced, so overall I like this one. The same somewhat applies to Ravio's Hood, which increases the link sideways climbing speed. Realistically, this is usually going to be less useful than the standard climbing gear, but there may be some situations where it makes sense to pull the hood out instead. I do think this is the bare minimum that developers could have done to simulate a link between worlds while walking system though. Totally recreating that system is not a reasonable expectation, but some paint particle effects while while jumping as an example would be. This DLC costs a third of the base games price with monumental less content, so I don't consider the bare minimum to be an impressive value proposition. You've also got the island lobster shirt, where the hidden trade that increases your speed on a raft. This is a neat little nod to the windwaker, but again, it's just a number tweak. On top of that, making this a hidden technique means that the vast majority of players are never going to know about it. If a lot of the armor pieces had utility beyond what was listed in the menu, including some of that quite obvious, it might incentivize players to experiment, but most of them don't. Assuming that this is a largely cosmetic piece to fool around with for a few minutes is a reasonable expectation because in most cases you'll be right. The shirt's listed ability is just the same heat resistance that two other tops in the game already provide. So there's no incentive given to have it on for long enough to actually experiment with. And while secrets like this can be fun things to hide, the result here is an armor piece that many players are going to spend their entire playtime thinking is totally useless, and then the grand reveal only bumps it up to extremely niche. I'm honestly baffled by this decision. They've taken an already very underwhelming item and lowered its value even further in the eyes of most of their player base, attaching something like the hurricane spin or a unique wind technique to this instead of heat resistance would dramatically improve its use case. It would be a cool piece of armor that you wanted to wear, increasing your chances of discovering its hidden trait, and that hidden trait would also be more appropriate. It's not impactful enough to be a good highlight, but would work very well as a cool bonus to discover. This would require a modicum of work from anyone who wasn't on the art team, though, which Nintendo seemed completely unwilling to do for any of these armor pieces. It's once again the bare minimum, and I'm once again not impressed. The salvage set is similarly underwhelming, with its swim dash speed upgrade almost entirely surpassing the Zora armor until Link needs to climb a waterfall, again suffering from the assignment of these skills to armor rather than passive upgrades. I'm less critical of this one, though, because it's free, and decently fun to track down. Actually, all of the armor is, particularly if the DLC is being used on an existing safe file, as would have been originally done for many players. The discoverable quest journals hinted every armor pieces location and creates a fun excuse for a world tour. This hasn't been thought through carefully when seeking out the armor at the start of the game, though, which is fully possible and somewhat even encouraged to do. The moment you exit any shrine of the Great Plateau, you're immediately bombarded by a series of fairly obnoxious quest notifications. We already covered the problematic phantom armor, but Majora's mask has the same issue, possibly even more so. It provides the same disguise effect as the mask's kilton cells, but unlike those, it prevents a girl from multiple enemy types at the same time, and is easy to obtain much earlier in the game, dramatically lowering the danger of the overworld. There's obviously the possibility of simply not using items like the Phantom Armor or Majora's mask, but this comes with the same issue as the broken combat aspects of the base game. The developers are placing the player in a position where they need to decide between playing suboptimally or breaking the game's balance, and for many players neither choice will be fully satisfying. There's no aspect of the DLC armor besides the cosmetic factor that impresses me, and this is coming from someone who's gotten more use out of it than 99% of the player base ever will. I also won't ignore that good cosmetics are extremely appealing to some players. There will be a few people out there perfectly happy to pay the full price of the DLC just to spend the entire game running around as tangle, and if you include yourself in that group, I'm glad you got what you wanted. But I'd still hope you can see the issues with content that makes no effort to smoothly integrate into the base game, rehashes the same already underwhelming mechanics that can be found in the base game, and almost always winds up either useless or game breaking. The entire DLC coverage isn't going to be this scathing, but I need to emphasize just how much Nintendo hosted by with this content, and I need to do the same for some of the other more Trinketish DLC before moving on to the larger additions that I had better experiences with. The ancient bridal grants your horse a bit more room to gallop, relatively harmless, although a lot of its cosmetic appeal is taken away because it hides the main you've so carefully customized. It looks pretty cool standalone, but this probably could have been thought out more. The ancient saddle on the other hand, let's use some in your horse without needing to go to a stable. This should not be DLC. This is how horse mechanic should have worked in the base game, and Nintendo is correcting this mistake by allowing you to pay for it. Was it a mistake, though? Is this the reason that horses are so handicapped in the base game so that they could be sold back to you later? I'd like to think not, this would be my default suspicion towards many publishers, but Nintendo does generally seem to stick to making a game first, then doing the DLC after, rather than deliberately carving features out. It's a reasonable question to ask, though, and I don't like having to ask it. The game has received multiple free updates, mostly to improve performance, and this is a feature that could and should have been added in one of those. I do not like that this exists, although I'm slightly less hostile towards the other convenience features the DLC introduces. There's a travel mentality that essentially works as a new warp point you can drop anywhere, and a hero's path mode, though let's you see where you've walked so far on the map. These aren't necessarily features I would expect in the base game, but there's still quality of life improvements more than substantial content, and don't feel like good value for money. Master Mode is also locked behind the DLC, and while this is content that's been included with the base version of previous Zelda games, there's a bit more to this mode than usual, enemies are all a tier higher than normal, which obviously makes them hit harder, but also turns them into damage sponges, which is a sloppy way to inflate difficulty in most games, but in a specially bad idea with a durability system like Breath of the Wild uses. But said, that developers accounted for this in an interesting way, by placing floating platforms across the world that hold chests and easily killable enemies, giving Link access to higher level weapons than the base game. They don't drop armor, though, so the end result is combat against enemies that do extra damage, but still die in a reasonable amount of time, Link's offense scales up to match them, but his defense doesn't. This is a rough summary that doesn't always perfectly line up. At the very start of the game, you should just run away from everything, you can absolutely run into damage sponge walls, and fights still take longer overall, but I do like the way it was done. It's a much more inventive approach than just applying a flat damage upgrade to the game's enemies. There are also more enemies present in the world, most strikingly a new line on the Great Plateau, they can detect Link more easily, and kill him more easily as well. Link is protected against one hit KO is from Full Health and Normal Play, he'll be left with a quarter hard unless the initial attack is immediately followed up with elemental damage and impact after being sent flying, anything along these lines, whereas Master Mode removes that protection. There are some other minor changes as well, such as Guardians, Laser Timings, being less predictable, and the game providing less auto save slots, but the one change I do not like is the addition of regenerating health. All enemies that go a bit without being damaged can do this, and it happens quickly. Does it make the game harder? Sure. Most severely restricts the creativity you can approach a fight with, and takes away from the damage sponge fixes I praised a minute ago. The Mode creates a very specific meta that heavily favors tactics such as sneak striking, disarming with electricity, or freezing, the last of which is especially useful as it allows you to separate a single enemy from the pack to focus them down, which regenerating health makes almost mandatory. In some ways, I do like how much it shakes up the usual play patterns, but making some of your sore blows feel like they don't matter is a pretty grave sin to me that requires a lot of justification, and I don't feel like there's enough here. It also just feels kind of lazy, which really applies to a lot of this mode. Yes, like I said, they did do more than just tweak enemy stats, but let's be clear. This is a paywall for a mode that's typically free. That was baseline expected behavior, not something to be praised. Were shrine layouts remix to be more difficult similar to something like Ocarina of Times Master Quest? No, they just dropped tougher robots into a few of them. Did they create new enemy types that were harder to run away from, or had more complex attack patterns? No, they just upscaled their stats and added another handful to the world. Did they change the healing system to be less abusable? No, it's completely untouched. A lot of other Zelda games don't do any of this either, but as soon as you attach a price tag, the conversation around that content fundamentally changes, and while I wouldn't call Master Mode's conversation entirely negative, I also wouldn't call it great. DLC Pack 1 concludes with a trial of the sword. The first part of the DLC that feels like actual significant work went into it, and as a result, the first part of the DLC that I really like. It works in a way that's reminiscent of Even Tide Island. You can eat stat boosting food beforehand, but can't bring in any items. Everything has to be collected within the trial itself, progressing from sticks, all the way up to powerful swords and ancient arrows. It's divided into three sections, and each of those sections is further broken up by some respite rooms, filled with protective resources like ferries, food, and armor. Each trial has to be completed in one go. Death means starting over from the beginning, which might make the experience a bit tedious for some players, but does add a great sense of tension to tougher rooms. The variety of rooms is good, even if the lack of enemy variety brings them down a bit. And this content generally feels quite solid, both in terms of concept and execution, completing every trial permanently puts the master sword into its powered up state. And it really only serves to exacerbate the same issues I already had with it. Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I would have rather seen it given exciting new abilities instead of a number tweak. I really liked the trials themselves, but was less impressed by their payoff. All that's left is the Champions Ballad, and let's just get this out of the way. The story is just as mediocre as the base game, more probably even worse because Zelda is less prominent. This was pitched as their opportunity to dive into these characters and learn more about them, which ends up as follows. Each champion gets a diary in the overworld, which reveals a few small details about them. Each champion gets a new cutscene that shows them accepting the role of champion, and doing something kind of cool, and a final cutscene shows them all getting their Champions Garb and having the picture taken together. These cutscenes tell us essentially nothing new about these characters. This was the best opportunity the game was ever going to have to explore Daruk. We're in a section of the game focused around him and watching his very own dedicated cutscene, and the big reveal. The one thing Nintendo absolutely wanted to make sure you didn't leave the game without knowing about this guy is that he's scared of dogs, or both a new Zelda's mom, revollies overcompensating. Nepo likes her brother. There's nothing here, and while the final picture of them together is trying really hard to be charming, and I'll admit, does succeed to what agree. It mostly just makes me think about how basically everything we've learned about these characters is contained in this one tiny scene. You could discard everything in the game but the last 30 seconds of this cutscene and still have roughly the same idea of what these characters are like. Thankfully, the other side of their ballad is gameplay, which is better, and actually hidden behind some appropriate progression gating since you can't access it until you've completed the fortifying beasts. It begins with a new quest that has Link clearing out four enemy clusters across the Great Plateau with his new one-hit obliterator, a weapon that reduces him to a quarter of a heart, but also one shots every enemy. I was initially really excited for this challenge, but while it is decently fun, it's also largely spoiled by letting Link keep his bows and arrows, and considering it's a late game quest, I had plenty of powerful ones in my inventory, so I mostly just ended up shooting everything. Once again, sub-optimal versus game-breaking. Every time one of these clusters is defeated, it opens up a new shrine that also uses the one-hit obliterator. Collected soul has you dodging rolling balls in order to scoop another ball off a ramp using magnesium. I'm not a big fan of this one, it's very short and simple, and magnesium handles as clumsily as ever. I much prefer stop to start, an extended and very lethal obstacle course that makes use of multiple runes and tests traversal in a way few other parts of the game do. It's not insanely difficult or anything, and I'd have liked it to be longer, but this is a shrine that couldn't exist without the one-hit obliterator and uses it well, despite the lack of combat. That combat does re-arop in another major test of strength-thrifying, which is a weird choice considering it's rendered completely trivial by the one-hit obliterator. Oh, or not. I saw this fake out coming, but I still laughed. It throws you into a lower level with a lot more enemies due to feet, and while I'm glad one of these is a straight-up combat challenge, it is again harmed quite a bit by allowing bows. The final room is designed around our tree, so it works better, but I still think this concept would have been stronger if Link was purely limited to the one-hit obliterator, and the shrine was redesigned accordingly. The last of these shrines is dark, and not much more. It's an interesting concept for a one-hit kill shrine, but I don't think anything terribly interesting is done with it, and it's pretty easy. After these shrines are completed, four more hotspots appear on the map. Sadly, at the expense of the one-hit obliterator, which shatters to create them, and can never be used in any form ever again. I think it would be better if this could be revisited for some interesting overworld gameplay. With as many restrictions in place as needed to avoid breaking the game, each of these hotspots turns out to be a set of three map locations, 12 in total, which will each contain a unique challenge that opens another shrine, shrines that reward emblems rather than a typical spirit orbs. The locations of these shrines are given by map fragments on the pillars, while hints about how to make them appear are given by cast. Mifa Song requires you to take down a group of flying guardians in a hilly region, go through a very easy yet still satisfying waterfall swimming gauntlet, and solve a riddle by paragliding into a light beam on the water, all of which I enjoy to doing. This unlocks your first three shrines, and again, this is just for a point of reference, they can be done in any order. The secret stair is one of my favorite shrines in the entire game because there's no obvious prescribed solution, it's a pure test of your understanding of the game's mechanics. It can be reasonably simple if you have a strong grasp of them, sure, but I still love its design. For the playthrough I captured, I decided to try actually creating something that resembled a staircase, but during my first playthrough, I dragged a metal box back to the entrance and used a stasis launch instead. I've tried going on YouTube to see what the quote unquote proper solution is supposed to be, and I just keep seeing people do different things. It's a fantastic embodiment of breath of the wild emphasis on freedom. I like support and guidance as well, because it does something breath of the wild is really comfortable with. Takes a concept that was introduced in an earlier shrine and builds upon it. There's no guarantee that the player has come across the precursor to this shrine before, but the developers can reasonably assume the player has had time to get comfortable with their runes by now, and this shrine makes a strong argument for more of this kind of progression gating. The game is introducing the slightest hint of linearity and immediately benefiting from it. The melting point is when I don't like. There are a few solutions, but they all involve a lot of standing around waiting for ice to melt two different sizes. Daruk's song continues the format of a combat, traversal, and puzzle challenge. For combat, you need to defeat a giant talus, which is disappointingly done in the exact same way as any other talus. For traversal, you need to hike and glide your way over the volcano. This was probably the best setting to use these basic mechanics since the environment is more dangerous here, but it's still really easy. All these traversal challenges are honestly pretty easy, but the other ones are more fun because they provide an excuse to break out some underutilized movement techniques. Whereas there's been no shortage of climbing or gliding up to this point, and the unique movement option associated with this area, bomb-powered rail cards, would have been a much better fit. The puzzle at least is pretty good. You need to survive standing in this ring, and to do so, you'll need to move a metal box into position. It's just tall enough to save you. Of the three shrines here, I'd call moving targets by far the worst. It recycles the cannons from Varudania's quest in a very simple timing test, then tries to increase the challenge with motion controls. And I've already said what I think about the motion controls. Blind spots is a step up. It's a long shrine that has you clambering over a variety of moving blocks to stay out of harm's way. There's too much downtime here, and the concept isn't taken as far as it could be, but it's still a good concept. Block the blaze is probably my favorite of these three, using several techniques to get Link past fire jets, but I still wouldn't call it an amazing shrine. This bunch clicked with me less than me, fuzz. Oh, look, more motion controls. Or Bozo probably has my favorite shrine challenges. The combat portion is nothing special, you fight the Malduking, aka do the exact same completely safe pattern as you would against any other Malduga except it takes longer, but the traversal challenge has you riding the always enjoyable sand seals, and the puzzle is replaced with a trip back into the Yiga Clan Hydo-Jury-Treevan orb, which you then need to throw down the same mysterious holmaster Koga fell into. Yes, it's recycled content, but it's recycling a good area of the game, but I actually liked the excuse to go re-explore it. The shrines in this portion are good, too. Bigger small is a pretty elaborate electricity puzzle, which again iterates upon previous concepts and is satisfying way. It also has a horrible optional chest hidden behind the single most frustrating motion control task in the game that should never have gotten past playtesting, but at least it's optional. Dual purpose is another engaging electricity puzzle that has you balancing metal objects roles as both circuit components and pathways. I'd probably call these electricity challenges the most consistently solid theme because they inherently function as strong logic puzzles and worthwhile intersections of the game's unique mechanics, whereas many of the shrines perform at most one of these roles, and this might be my favorite of any of them. Inside the box brings back the motion controls, unfortunately, but it's one of the less offensive uses, at least if you're playing with a controller. As you're only moving a box around to figure out how many of each colored orbit has inside, it's honestly a pretty lame shrine that could easily have been done without motion controls, but it's not enough to sour me on the shrines as a whole. The other two might overlap a bit too closely, but they're still very good in their own rights. Ravali song is the only one that doesn't contain a true combat challenge, you just need to shoot Dinerals Horn. I'm not sure why Ravali doesn't get the flying guardians instead of Mifa, considering this is obviously supposed to be compensation for the lack of a proper aerial mini-boss in the base game, which the DLC didn't add. I'd like to say this is weakened comparison to the other songs, but Mifa is the only one who had a reasonably interesting combat portion to begin with, so it's actually pretty on par, which is not a compliment. I'm way more into the traversal challenge, any excuse to do some shield surfing as a boon to the game, but you wind these challenges down by going back to the same flight range and completing almost exactly the same, bafflingly easy target shoot as during the divine beast lead up. Overall, not great. Master the orb, though, is a solid shrine that once again takes advantage of progression getting, requiring you to juggle a number of different ruins and techniques to get an orb down a track. Actually, all the shrines here do the same thing, with the other two combining wind currents with a bunch of different techniques to get through them. The four winds in particular feels like a very explicit continuation of path of hidden winds. When I look at all the shrines together, their average quality is noticeably better than what appears in the base game. Not nearly as much as I'd hoped, some of them are too simple or have more significant flaws than I'd like to see considering these were the ones that designers could really sit down and focus on, but my overall experience was pretty positive. The bosses suck, though, all of them. They're just rehashed fights against the blights with set inventories for a link. The worst part is that this is explicitly stated to be some kind of dream or mirage. And if they were going to construct a scenario that didn't need to adhere to reality in a DLC pack that supposedly focused on the four champions, why on earth wouldn't the sequences include the champions? You could fight along side them, you could fight as them. This isn't real, the setup was right there, any and all ideas are on the table here. Lazy and disappointing. Your reward is similarly underwhelming, just a reduction in cooldown time for the champion abilities you already have. Useful, absolutely. Revolize Gail in particular makes the game far more efficient to play. Imagine it if, interesting, you know the drill by now. After all the blights are defeated, you return to the shrine of resurrection. And in a surprise that I really liked, it turns out to be an elevator, which pulls you down into a new divine beast. This one's gimmick is continuously rotating central crankshaft with selectable direction for the rotation. And unlike what we've seen previously, every one of its terminals utilizes this gimmick in some form. The terminal count has been reduced from 5 to 4 in order to align each of them with one of the elemental themes from a previous divine beast. And this has been compensated for by making each of them longer and more complicated. There's also a central underlying theme of putting clockwork back together, which always utilizes the central crankshaft. There's still no cohesion between the terminals, they're solved independently, but this is the first time each terminal has been made individually interesting enough to justify that choice. Usually making use of the clockwork system to access them and then employing a number of other techniques inside the puzzle room. The wind room has you freezing and altering the rotation of a giant fan. The electricity room synchronizing some spinning chambers to complete a circuit. The fire room navigating a ball through a convoluted pipe over lava. The water room draining and raising the water level for use with cryonus. These don't compare to the best of what the series has to offer in terms of dungeon design, but they're still considerable upgrades from the base game. And this is hands down my favorite divine beast. After the terminals have all been activated and you use the clockwork system one last time to open a door. You're brought in for a boss battle against monk Moscow Shia, who is likewise my favorite fight in the game. It's a multi-stage audio deal with a lot of imaginative attacks that sees him cloning himself, teleporting, becoming a giant, firing the guardian laser, throwing metal orbs that he electrifies and rolls around the arena by tilting it. He utilizes an interesting mix of new techniques, techniques you've seen before, and techniques that you've kind of seen before and can exploit if you realize this. And it's enough for me to call him a legitimately great boss fight. The only one in the game I'd give that title to. I also love the moment when he first moves. You've been coming across the static figures all game and seeing one of them clenched their fist at me was really surprising and exciting, which makes the fact that he stuck the landing all the more gratifying. Your reward for these endeavors is the Master Cycle Zero, an incredibly poorly thought-out item that's so fun I almost don't care. For perspective, DLC Pack 2 introduces both a fix for horses, as well as something that you serves horses in basically every possible way. It's fast, it's resilient, it can handle rough terrain, it does require fuel, which really only exists to make the supply of junk you've collected by now have a bit of use beyond selling it, and it won't stick to roads automatically, but these are very minor concerns. It handles extremely smoothly, barring the decision to map its throttle to the phase buttons, which does make simultaneous driving and melee attacks difficult, but overall it's a joy to drive around high rule. At the very least, horses were abandoned for something that adds a lot of fun to the game, even if it needs to be acquired during a new play through to fully enjoy. A lot of people would have initially gotten the Master Cycle on their complete or nearly complete save file, myself included. While it is a substantial enough reward to put at the end of the DLC by doing so, Nintendo ensured that anyone who obtained it under these circumstances wouldn't actually have that much to do with it. As a retrospective addition to the game, it works a lot better. Most of Breath of the Wild's DLC is very clunky with no clear best time to obtain it, but this doesn't apply to the Champions Ballad, and it feels like core content. Overall, though, I don't think this is a good showing from Nintendo in terms of what they delivered as DLC compared to what they could have delivered. The trial of the sword and the Champions Ballad have good gameplay that rises to great in its best moments, which is always the most important consideration, but a lot of the rewards are questionable, and the story content is an absolute joke. The armor sets are horribly uninspired, badly designed, and seem like Nintendo knew they'd sell through nostalgia alone, so felt no need to put any effort into making them interesting. And everything else straight-up should have been in the base game, or it could have an argument made for it. You've likely noticed the tone of this section getting considerably harsher, and that's because a lot of the issues in the base game are fairly understandable in the context of its production. By the time development began on DLC, however, Nintendo's pipeline was far better established, and their resources far less limited. This content certainly did not cost a third as much to produce as the rest of the game, and the blatant corner cutting used is far less defendable. This kind of full-season pass is a relatively new market for Nintendo to dip into, and the classic defense of the company has always been that no matter how bad their corporate side gets, the games will always be good. Parts of this DLC live up to that defense, but others don't, and they feel like they don't because Nintendo realized that they could get away with it. Why should they spend the time to create new mechanics for Phantom Ganon's armor? Why should they integrate it with the rest of the game instead of chucking in in a chest somewhere? Everyone likes Aquarina of Time, right? At the moment, I'm aware that it's nowhere near as bad as what a lot of publishers try to pull with post-launch content, but it is worrying. And if they continue with this business model in the future, I can't help but be concerned that it's a trend that will continue. Nintendo's never exactly been shy about leaning into nostalgia, and it's not inevitable that this will be pushed to the point of becoming genuinely anti-consumer. And frankly, I think many people would say we've already reached that stage. So no, I don't like Nintendo's approach to the DLC, and in some areas I think it even attracts from the base game, but not enough to significantly detract from my impressions of the base game. So let's return to that and win this video down. At the start of this video, I called Breath of the Wild my favorite single player game, based on the script you've been listening to, I wouldn't blame you if you forgot this at some point. The game is loaded with elements that either don't speak to me personally or that I take legitimate issue with. However, while I certainly don't claim any encyclopedic knowledge of video game history, when I say no such combination of beauty and freedom has ever appeared in the medium, I wonder how many people would challenge that. At the same time, this came at a great cost, almost everything that isn't directly related to these core strengths feels at least to some degree like a step backwards from its predecessors. Breath of the Wild sacrificed so much to obtain its core vision, and it worked. The developers achieved something nobody had ever seen before, a genuine revolution. The reality of revolutions, though, is that they fade. And even a few years after release, we're already seeing Breath of the Wild's ripples begin to materialize across the video game landscape. The great and painful thing about being an innovator is that you create footsteps for others to follow in, with the back-breaking labor port into your exciting new idea relegated to the realm of standard design practice shortly after it makes its way into the world's hands. That's not to say that Breath of the Wild doesn't currently maintain its throne or that it won't be remembered as an important game, but I'm not nearly so confident that history will treat its standalone quality with the same kindness that contemporary audiences have. There are many keenly felt trade-offs that went into its creation, trade-offs that fundamentally will not be required by its successors. Even here, though, I admit that I'm torn, because even outside of this context, Breath of the Wild's peaks and valleys are just so extreme. It's a game that couldn't manage more than one regional mini-boss, but also took the time to add a unique idle animation for each of the monster masks that Link can wear. Whatever the future holds for it, though, for now, I find it hard to stay stuck in those valleys for too long. I said at the beginning of this video that I was not going to treat Breath of the Wild as an objective reference, and I think I stuck to that. But the reality is that I do have some reverence for it. A common threat I've noticed in critiques of the game is childhood, with reviewers making illusions to childlike wonder, or how the game made them feel like a kid again. And yeah, I get it. The simple joy of video games is something I tapped into everlessly when I was younger, but has gotten significantly less common over the years, and Breath of the Wild did enable that feeling. That's a powerful trait, which can overcome a lot of critical examination. I've also talked about the framework of Breath of the Wild now being firmly in place, and the most exciting part of this is that it applies to the Zelda development team as well. With all of these radical changes complete, I'm greatly looking forward to seeing what they're able to do now that there can be more of a focus on refinement and polish. It's an interesting new era for the series, one that I'll be watching very closely in the time to come. Speaking of which, thanks for watching everyone, as I said, this is the first encompassing retrospective I've made, and I'm interested in trying my hand at more of them in the future. So please give me your honest feedback. It's always appreciated, but particularly in a case like this. If you liked the video, please consider liking, subscribing, hitting the notification bell, the usual plucks. And if you'd like to get more of me, you can follow me on Twitter at Mr. Mochrock, Twitch, a Mochrock Twitch, one word, and I also have a Patreon. Patrons, Twitch subs, or YouTube members get perks like early video access, content polls, a discord server, and more. Later, people! We've just taken a look at all the best animations in Smash, and as per tradition, there must also be the worst. Now, the animation in these games overall, but the ultimate in particular is, today's contenter comes to us from the best selling video game of all time, and recent Smash combatant. Do you have a talk from Minecraft? Genericize too soon.
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October 1, 2022 17:53
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