Reviewing Breath of the Wild – Is the Open-World Adventure As Good As Everyone Says?

Console: Nintendo Switch

Time played: 75 hours

It’s been nearly six years since the Nintendo Switch’s flagship game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, was released in 2017, but I had never picked it up until just last month. With the sequel to the game, Tears of the Kingdom, due to come out this May though, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to give the best reviewed video game in the history of the Switch a try.

As someone who primarily plays games on the Switch, why did I wait so long to play such an acclaimed title? Well, it’s mainly because I had watched a couple friends play through the first few hours of BOTW and thought it had too many puzzle elements for my liking. I also wasn’t thrilled with the idea that weapons constantly seemed to break during battles.

So, were my concerns justified? Well, yes, partially, but at the same time, I can also acknowledge that BOTW is probably the best Zelda game ever made and a top game for the console.

It’s easy to to talk about what BOTW gets right. This is how an open-world game should be done. You’re free to explore Hyrule in whatever manner you choose, and while completing shrines to earn Spirit Orbs can lead to more Hearts or Stamina for Link, neither is a necessity for beating the game. After completing BOTW’s tutorial area, you can paraglide in any direction of the map and go about things however you see fit.

You can also tame and ride horses. Though “Goodboy” here wasn’t the best-behaved horse.

Of course, there are still major story beats that feel important, like reclaiming the Divine Beasts and getting the Master Sword, but these can be approached in any order. BOTW is definitely a game where players are meant to spend their time exploring, and not simply rushing from one main dungeon to another.

To me, this is the best aspect of the game – climbing that next mountain peak to find what wonders await at its top, or sneaking up on a camp of enemies and raining down a surprise attack of arrows and bombs. There are also some great side quests. For a bit there, I was more motivated to complete Tarrey Town by finding prospective residents and wood to build houses than I was to save the whole kingdom from ruin at the hands of Calamity Ganon.

This is also a beautiful game. Some critics love to bash the graphics abilities of the Switch, but BOTW shows how a video game on this platform can be great visually. The art style of the game perfectly fits with what a Zelda title should look like.

But, let’s delve into those initial concerns of mine that I had before devoting 70+ hours to the game. Because, for me, BOTW is not a perfect game. I don’t mind some puzzle aspects in video games, but some of the shrines that I completed in BOTW were a little too headache-inducing for my liking. I found myself getting frustrated at points, especially when I knew what the game wanted me to do, but was unable to accomplish it without many attempts.

Trying to move the joy-cons in such a way to finish these types of puzzles was definitely the least fun I had in the game.

I don’t mind looking up solutions to puzzles occasionally, but I had to watch YouTube videos for help on completing shrines or finding all of the terminals in Divine Beast dungeons more than I would’ve liked to. Personally, I like the puzzle aspects in a game like Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope more, where I found things to be the right balance between difficult enough that you feel a sense of accomplishment upon completing puzzles, but not ever reaching the point of frustration.

I think that my concern about weapons breaking all of the time wasn’t quite as justified, because this is something that I did get used to during my playthrough, but it was still a little annoying. I also wasn’t crazy about having to constantly change my armor to suit the environment of wherever I was heading. I would’ve really appreciated a feature that allowed me to automatically set whatever I’d be wearing when I teleported to a given area instead of constantly having to manually change.

Pictured: Link shortly before his shield broke (again).

People often complain that Pokémon games are always basically the same story (with the exception of the new Pokémon Legends: Arceus game last year), but Zelda games are usually very similar to one another in terms of the story too – Ganon is evil and must be stopped by Link, with the help of Zelda. I think that the open-world aspects of the game are so good though that the story isn’t really super important.

In fact, I can see how for fans of Zelda-type games, any of the issues I had wouldn’t be so significant. For me, too, I can appreciate the aspects of this game that have influenced other titles, like Arceus, and showed how an open-world format can be great. I might not have loved BOTW, but it’s easy for me to see how lots of gamers could. It’s definitely a title worth playing and I’m glad I finally gave it a chance.

Grade: 8.5/10