What’s clear is that he must defeat the all-powerful Calamity Ganon before it destroys the world around him. Link has awoken from a 100-year snooze, remembering nothing of how he fell asleep in the first place. Of course, this Zelda does have a plot of its own and it’s a good one: filled with intrigue and genuine emotion. And that is to create a story that’s unique to you and no one else. Despite its steep learning curve, Breath of the Wild‘s harsh cycle of trial and error has a point. Persistence is the only guarantee of success and those moments will be especially fleeting to start out with. You’ll get there eventually, but not without mistakenly lobbing your best weapon into some long grass and losing it first. Especially since its controls for jumping, fighting and rifling through your inventory are persnickety and tough to master. While I’m not talking about a Dark Souls difficulty level here, this game is built to be tough – and that’s kind of alienating at first. That’s all to be sussed out on your own in what is often a quite brutal fashion. It ushers you outside the so-called Cave of Awakening and says, ‘Go on then! What are you waiting for?’ The Great Plateau you start on may well be a tutorial area, but it rarely tells you what to do or how to survive. Certainly, it stands up to Ocarina of Time and A Link To The Past in a way that few recent installments have.įor its opening three hours, Breath of the Wild feels like a knee-jerk about-face from the nagging companions and endless tutorials found in both Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. It’s this refusal to hold your hand that marks Breath of the Wild as the Zelda series’ finest game for quite some time. Still, there’s only one way to find out right? Or there could be a giant beastie that you have to leg it away from like there’s no tomorrow. Step off the beaten track and you could be greeted with a new power-up, weapon or material for crafting. Every corner of it has been crafted to reward your curiosity. Bosh!ĭespite being quite enormous, though, the latest incarnation of Zelda’s storied realm never feels populated at random or sprawling for the sheer sake of it. Do a bit with ice, a bit with lava, a bit with loads of lush forestry, and then sprinkle a load of icons over the end result. It’s easy if you’ve got the time and budget. So, what makes Breath of the Wild so special compared to all those games it’s cribbed from? In a word: Hyrule.Īnyone can make a massive realm for you to schlep across over the course of 50 or so hours. The original Legend of Zelda might have invented the concept, but sure has taken a long time to catch up with its current incarnation. You start a game in some small corner of a vast landscape and must become its master in order to reach the end credits. Skyrim, The Witcher III and even this week’s Horizon: Zero Dawn promise different variations on an almost identical theme. Breath of the Wild might be the first Zelda to go open world, but it’s certainly not the only game out there to offer questing on an epic scale.
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