​

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild has been anything but a simple exhale this past couple of weeks. It has been a titanic sized tornado that has blown away a significant majority of those that happened to be in its presence. It has truly been a long time since we have seen a game be this polarizing or have such an enormous presence in everyone’s daily buzz. And it has been longer still, that we have had so many critics and gamers alike asking themselves just what makes this experience so enrapturing.

In the essence of gaming, what do we look for regarding what makes it great? What do we seek to take from it in our experiences? Who is it for, and is it better if it does not even ask that question? Or could it be that instead, it has all the answers to questions you did not even know you had? Breath of The Wild raises questions in the skeptics’ minds while it seems like the blatantly obvious answer to everyone who has played the game.

We can start finding these answers in one of the most common themes I recognized in all the surrounding buzz of this New Zelda game. Let’s look first at this quote from Jason Schreier’s review at Kotaku.

“For decades now, Zelda games have been about what you can’t do as much as they are about what you can. You can’t pick up that rock until you find the Power Gloves. You can’t go swimming until you buy Zora’s Flippers. See that big gap? You can’t cross it until you get the Hookshot. Since Link to the Past, just about every Zelda game has followed this same rhythm: You start off in a narrow world that gradually expands as you make progress. – Skip to paragraph 4


The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, in contrast, is all about what you can do. This is a game that says “yes” to anything you ask of it. From the very beginning, you can swim in any lake, pick up any boulder, and cross any pit. When you try some crazy experiment, the game will oblige. You can climb up any wall, mountain, or tower in the world, which allows you the freedom to explore the map in a way that no Zelda game has matched. Breath of the Wild never asks you to wait for a new item before you uncover its secrets. It just keeps saying yes.”

Kotaku's review standards.​

In gaming’s current state we have been surrounded lately by this faux sense of freedom that all of these new open world games offer. We are supposed to marvel at the crowded and spattered excessive sidequests we have the ability to take on, the vast empty plains we can traverse to get to our next objective or these elongated stories that only the best of the best manage to keep enticing enough to continue all the way through.

Rarely do these games give the absolute sense of freedom that remains the biggest buzzword the masses of PR throw in your face. And yet, we have this game here that appears to have finally achieved just that. Looking at IGN’s review of the game it is the very concept Jose Otero leads off.

“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s sheer freedom and sense of adventure is a remarkable achievement. Right from the start, the vast landscape of Hyrule is thrown completely open to you, and it constantly finds ways to pique your curiosity with mysterious landmarks, complex hidden puzzles, and enemy camps to raid for treasure and weapons. The fact that you can tackle any one of these things at your own pace and almost never get pulled to the main path is liberating, but the way all of Breath of the Wild’s systems fit elegantly into complex light survival game is even more impressive.”

From IGN's Gameplay Showcase at E3 2016​

The very same is echoed in a majority of the reviews for Zelda. You may be thinking that it could be the freedom alone that became the big buzzword for this game and led to its success. And while it is certainly a driving factor, there is a lot more at work in this machine that is Breath of The Wild.

Nintendo knows that Zelda is a childhood franchise to many. It’s what sparked a lot of creative wonderment in the minds of those that first picked up a controller in their youngest years. In their efforts these past few years, there has been a hollow sentiment that Nintendo was banking on nostalgia all this time and that the magic was too difficult actually to recapture. So as the gamer had to grow up, so did Nintendo. Zelda itself needed to strip itself of the aging green tunic for modernized mechanics. But the real beauty of it all was modernizing itself in a way that didn’t leave behind the quirks and mechanics that made it so enchanting in the beginning.

“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild delivers the revolution that has undoubtedly been desired within Nintendo and, it seems, among many fans. This is still quintessential Zelda, but the old formula has been drastically overhauled to the point that it's almost been ripped up and re-written from scratch. What we have, then, is the most ambitious title in the history of the franchise; most importantly it delivers on its staggering potential.”

A true return to form and tour de force for Nintendo’s unreleased console, the Nintendo Switch, and Wii U. Returning to the roots of an unknown environment, pure adventure, and intrinsic difficulty, Breath of the Wild is far more linked with the original title than any of the games that would follow after. And indeed, all of those qualities turn out to be strengths for the game. Without a doubt, this is how The Legend of Zelda franchise should have progressed all along.

When I look at Breath of The Wild as an outsider, I see the core of a Zelda game that I recognize from my youngest memories in gaming. As I progress and continue to explore the world and its smallest quirks, I appreciate how expertly crafted it is.

I have watched streamers route speedrun paths that contradict others but save the same amount of time. I have seen casual players die over and over to seemingly unfair enemies while I saw the elite conquer areas without so much as losing a single heart. I watched a man throw his metal sword in the middle of a bunch of monsters during a storm and watched the lightning strike it to kill the enemies. I’ve observed that fire swords can keep Link warm in cold weather, and noticed the minute changes to his expressions in varying weather conditions.

Failed to fetch tweet https://twitter.com/MarachiiSoup/status/841579100577923073​

It’s this culmination of all the small things that truly complete this massive game and set the standard for why it’s so bewitching. It did not have to do anything new to succeed. It had to refine and nail what makes its competition so successful and put its charm into those elements.

“This sense of wonder is something that I haven't felt so strongly since I played A Link to the Past when I was seven years old. Ocarina of Time was able to capture some of that same magic in my teenage years. Now that I’m in my thirties, I don’t think that I expected it to be possible for a game to make me feel like that again. I’ve been reviewing video games for twelve years now, and I’m used to describing games in a certain way. “This game controls well. This mechanic is innovative. The graphics are stunning. The skill tree feels limited.” That type of language doesn’t adequately convey how Breath of the Wild made me feel. Nintendo may have changed so many long-standing traditions of the Zelda franchise, but the spirit of discovery is as strong as it’s ever been no matter your age. I didn’t think I’d feel the Zelda magic this strongly ever again, but I couldn't be happier to be proven wrong.

Jontron 10/10​

With all these adjectives that tug at your heartstrings, you’d think the game truly was this untouchable angel of a game that had no issues. But not everyone is so easily pleased and with good reason. Critics and opinions are what drive developers to continually innovate, fix issues, and stay away from huge mistakes and unwanted mechanics. We’ve seen this argued consistently within our community, a sentiment that while I do not entirely agree with, can find understanding.

Another mechanic is the re-introduction of weapon/shield durability, and let me just start off by saying it's easily the worst gameplay mechanic Nintendo has put in the game, and I hope whomever made the decision to make it so awful was fired. The biggest problem is that every weapon, shield, and bow in the game breaks. Period. Not a single weapon you come across in game actually lasts more than a 4-10 enemy kills, depending on the health of the enemy and if your weapon has a durability buff. The super cool, special Hylian Shield? Breakable. The super special Lightscale Trident wielded by the champion of the Zora's, Mipha? Breakable, but can be re-acquired. Every bow you come across? Breakable. But surely the Master Sword at least lasts forever, right? Y'know, the Master Sword? The ultimate weapon? The one thing that can can stop evil in the world of Hyrule? WRONG. IT'S BREAKABLE. It's not even as durable as some of the other weapons you get, some weapons have a durability up buff that lasts longer than the Master Sword does. Thankfully it's not as bad as other weapons, because when your Master Sword “Runs out of energy (AKA breaks), it'll recharge after 10 minutes. But that's simply something that shouldn't happen in any game, let alone a Zelda game where it's the ultimate goddamn world changing weapon. It's not even that difficult to fix! Nintendo's solution to the durability problem is the simple and wrong one, pick up everything you see until you run out of inventory space.

GBAtemp's Review Banner for Breath of The Wild​

Just as the smallest things can bring a game together, the minor things drive a rift into your enjoyment that you take from the experience. I don’t think Tom’s review, or Jim Sterling’s review, or anyone that had bad impressions to take away from Breath of The Wild, are inherently wrong in their thinking. I, in fact, give them credit for being willing to discuss the things that irked them enough to put that effort into bringing them to light for other people to see. And even with those critique’s, they still enjoyed the game enough to think of it highly. They still managed to take something away from the game that made them enjoy it, even after their heaviest complaints.

Sure, their voices were cynical. We know who they are, we understand how they feel, and there is a sort of endearment to how they have such sharp tongues and angry approaches to things, but that shtick is still valid in a critical atmosphere. It’s necessary even to keep companies always driving to do better and better things for their games.

Your expectation of others opinion does not define overall experience. The beauty of gaming is its ability to personally craft experiences for every individual that encounters that game. Something many games struggle to do, and others do so immensely it stirs up the conversation we are having at this very moment.

Breath of The Wild's current standing on Metacritic​

Breath of The Wild ranks among the greatest video games of all time on Metacritic, which seems to mean a lot to people. Do you know what it was standing side by side with before a couple of reviews took it down to 97?

Tony Hawks Pro Skater 2.

Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast.

The current top 4 ranked games on Metecritic​

Is this truly how we measure gaming perfection? The half-assed, tacked on numbers at the end of a review? Or is it in fact much more important to go back and read the words that make up the review itself. See the sentiments and base your opinions on that? Share the experiences of the bigger voices and create your own with your voice and your playstyle?

I asked a lot of questions at the beginning of this long article. “In the essence of gaming, what do we look for regarding what makes it great? What do we seek to take from it in our experiences? Who is it for, and is it better if it does not even ask that question? Or could it be that instead, it has all the answers to questions you did not even know you had?”

Ask yourself this when you look at Breath of The Wild. Ask yourself this when you read a review you don’t agree with right before you leave that snide comment. Ask yourself what your experience seeks to benefit from one voice over others.

Is Breath of The Wild a perfect game? If you ask the majority, it seems to be pretty damn close, and the gameplay sure does speak for itself. But that leads me to my final question.


Is it perfect, simply, to you?

​

 

[skawo]

I obviously don't mean small things like the autojump.

Proper dungeons and items, yes. Thing is; can that setup even work in open world design? It might not.

 

[guedesbrawl]

While I'm loving Breath of the wild... I just can't understand why people give it a 10/10, even it they don't mean "perfect". There's just a lot of stuff wrong with this game.

*No raw number for durability, which affects strategy negatively.
*Durability is very much manageable, but it is an upsetting gameplay mechanic despite the actually good design in its entirety (besides the above issue)
*The sense of reward from doing sidequests and opening chests has been dropped significantly now the pieces of heart are locked to shrine rewards. Money is easy to hoard, ores are money in disguise, weapons break. Armor is the only truly good thing you get from chests and by far the rarest given that a good chunk of the game's armors are found in shops.
*Too many areas that the main story doesn't cover. Akhalla, Faron, the northern Hedra... heck, The Rito and to a smaller extent Goron areas were also underused. The area between Hedra and the Gerudo desert only is passable because of the Yiga Hideout
*Dungeons are too small and simple. Shrines "make up for that", except they don't, because the setup destroys the atmosphere and sense of reward from conquering dungeons that past games had. Big mazes that you slowly unravel, getting keys and possibly a dungeon item to open up chunks of the area bit by bit. Enemy variety is extremely low in dungeons this time as well, not to mention the difficulty is close to zero in dealing with those.
*The story is extremely upsetting. It tells you about the failures of 100 years before the game, and then proceeds to show you how awesome it would've been to play THAT adventure instead of the one you're stuck with. The characters you get to help enter the dungeons highlight this extremely well when you compare them to the champions. The Rito one is especially glaring.
*Food system is completely broken and you can use it to its fullest from the first minute in the game.
*Combat system can get stale as neither Link nor most of the enemies evolve in any way besides numbers. There are pleasant exceptions in elemental stuff (both weapons Link gets and a few monsters like Lizalfos that get cool variations).
*The Great Plateau is incredibly unbalanced in terms of weapons: Your inventory slots are few, enemy variety is low, weapon variety is low... and durability is ALSO low.
*Horses being locked to stables force you either to waste time on food or keep warping too far away from your goals. As unrealistic as it was, a "Epona's song" was very much necessary.
*Rain is awful. To deal with Rain you NEED to give up on whatever you are doing to find a place that you can actually use for a campfire. It's a completely unnecessary mechanic, realism aside, due to how much it hampers exploration.
*Aiming with stasis'd objects is awful, and necessary in a particular shrine.

It did a lot of things right and is genuinely fun, but i simply can't see how ANYONE would ever give this a 10/10. It's to me a 9/10 like almost every zelda.

 

[FierceDeityLinkMask]

While I'm loving Breath of the wild... I just can't understand why people give it a 10/10, even it they don't mean "perfect". There's just a lot of stuff wrong with this game.

*No raw number for durability, which affects strategy negatively.
*Durability is very much manageable, but it is an upsetting gameplay mechanic despite the actually good design in its entirety (besides the above issue)
*The sense of reward from doing sidequests and opening chests has been dropped significantly now the pieces of heart are locked to shrine rewards. Money is easy to hoard, ores are money in disguise, weapons break. Armor is the only truly good thing you get from chests and by far the rarest given that a good chunk of the game's armors are found in shops.
*Too many areas that the main story doesn't cover. Akhalla, Faron, the northern Hedra... heck, The Rito and to a smaller extent Goron areas were also underused. The area between Hedra and the Gerudo desert only is passable because of the Yiga Hideout
*Dungeons are too small and simple. Shrines "make up for that", except they don't, because the setup destroys the atmosphere and sense of reward from conquering dungeons that past games had. Big mazes that you slowly unravel, getting keys and possibly a dungeon item to open up chunks of the area bit by bit. Enemy variety is extremely low in dungeons this time as well, not to mention the difficulty is close to zero in dealing with those.
*The story is extremely upsetting. It tells you about the failures of 100 years before the game, and then proceeds to show you how awesome it would've been to play THAT adventure instead of the one you're stuck with. The characters you get to help enter the dungeons highlight this extremely well when you compare them to the champions. The Rito one is especially glaring.
*Food system is completely broken and you can use it to its fullest from the first minute in the game.
*Combat system can get stale as neither Link nor most of the enemies evolve in any way besides numbers. There are pleasant exceptions in elemental stuff (both weapons Link gets and a few monsters like Lizalfos that get cool variations).
*The Great Plateau is incredibly unbalanced in terms of weapons: Your inventory slots are few, enemy variety is low, weapon variety is low... and durability is ALSO low.
*Horses being locked to stables force you either to waste time on food or keep warping too far away from your goals. As unrealistic as it was, a "Epona's song" was very much necessary.
*Rain is awful. To deal with Rain you NEED to give up on whatever you are doing to find a place that you can actually use for a campfire. It's a completely unnecessary mechanic, realism aside, due to how much it hampers exploration.
*Aiming with stasis'd objects is awful, and necessary in a particular shrine.

It did a lot of things right and is genuinely fun, but i simply can't see how ANYONE would ever give this a 10/10. It's to me a 9/10 like almost every zelda.

"but i simply can't see how ANYONE would ever give this a 10/10." & then "It's to me a 9/10 like almost every zelda."

Kinda answering your own question there buddy.

 

[FAST6191]

I obviously don't mean small things like the autojump.

Proper dungeons and items, yes. Thing is; can that setup even work in open world design? It might not.

On the one hand I would look at most of the missions in the GTA games and compare them to even a mediocre mission in COD or battlefield or something and it will not end well (and I am not a fan of a lot of the more efforts from those franchises). On the other I recall having long and windy things that took me ages to go through as far back as Might and Magic, more recently Kingdoms of Amalur and Two Worlds 2 did fairly well on comparatively low budgets. A lot of people would look to Elder Scrolls but I am not sure that is a great plan, if anything Nintendo probably looked too closely at that for this.

 

[invaderyoyo]

While I'm loving Breath of the wild... I just can't understand why people give it a 10/10, even it they don't mean "perfect". There's just a lot of stuff wrong with this game.

*No raw number for durability, which affects strategy negatively.
*Durability is very much manageable, but it is an upsetting gameplay mechanic despite the actually good design in its entirety (besides the above issue)
*The sense of reward from doing sidequests and opening chests has been dropped significantly now the pieces of heart are locked to shrine rewards. Money is easy to hoard, ores are money in disguise, weapons break. Armor is the only truly good thing you get from chests and by far the rarest given that a good chunk of the game's armors are found in shops.
*Too many areas that the main story doesn't cover. Akhalla, Faron, the northern Hedra... heck, The Rito and to a smaller extent Goron areas were also underused. The area between Hedra and the Gerudo desert only is passable because of the Yiga Hideout
*Dungeons are too small and simple. Shrines "make up for that", except they don't, because the setup destroys the atmosphere and sense of reward from conquering dungeons that past games had. Big mazes that you slowly unravel, getting keys and possibly a dungeon item to open up chunks of the area bit by bit. Enemy variety is extremely low in dungeons this time as well, not to mention the difficulty is close to zero in dealing with those.
*The story is extremely upsetting. It tells you about the failures of 100 years before the game, and then proceeds to show you how awesome it would've been to play THAT adventure instead of the one you're stuck with. The characters you get to help enter the dungeons highlight this extremely well when you compare them to the champions. The Rito one is especially glaring.
*Food system is completely broken and you can use it to its fullest from the first minute in the game.
*Combat system can get stale as neither Link nor most of the enemies evolve in any way besides numbers. There are pleasant exceptions in elemental stuff (both weapons Link gets and a few monsters like Lizalfos that get cool variations).
*The Great Plateau is incredibly unbalanced in terms of weapons: Your inventory slots are few, enemy variety is low, weapon variety is low... and durability is ALSO low.
*Horses being locked to stables force you either to waste time on food or keep warping too far away from your goals. As unrealistic as it was, a "Epona's song" was very much necessary.
*Rain is awful. To deal with Rain you NEED to give up on whatever you are doing to find a place that you can actually use for a campfire. It's a completely unnecessary mechanic, realism aside, due to how much it hampers exploration.
*Aiming with stasis'd objects is awful, and necessary in a particular shrine.

It did a lot of things right and is genuinely fun, but i simply can't see how ANYONE would ever give this a 10/10. It's to me a 9/10 like almost every zelda.

Yeah, it's a really good game, but there are too many flaws to be 10/10. The durabilty feels like a permanent stain.

 

[Pluupy]

Not sure what leads you to those conclusions. The villages are absolutely reminiscent of other Zelda games. The cuccos are still there. Shrines and puzzles are 100% Zelda but slightly more difficult.

I think it's the fact they're spread out that puts me off. The whole "looseness" of the gameplay rather than the structure I am used to with Zelda games. It's possible the generosity of this game is a bit too much for my taste.

 

[Subtle Demise]

Yeah everyone loves The Legend of Far Cry 5: The Breath of the Phantom Pain: No Durability Collector's Edition.
I must admit I enjoy most of these open world games that have been trending these last few years, but they're starting to get same-y IMO. There's only so many ways you can disguise the formula.
I mean it's fun to take over enemy bases and shit and become super powerful and totally destroy the story missions on these games, but I've been doing it since the first Just Cause came out. Not to mention every Far Cry since the second one, the last Red Faction, every Saint's Row game, and now even Zelda and Metal Gear aren't safe from this growing trend, which is a radical departure for both franchises.
From the looks of things, the next Mario game is going to do the same thing as well.

 

[netovsk]

It's not that the game is perfect, or will appease everyone as much as Nintendo wants it to, but it gets everything right and is sure way much better than most 8 or 9 games I've seen recently. Giving it less than a 10 says it's just as good as games like world of final fantasy, the latest call of duty, horizon zero dawn, and buddy - Zelda it's clearly on another level.

The way they diversified challenge outside of just "kill loot repeat", the world breathes and interacts, not once as I beat the game I thought "ok that was a stupid idea" or "well this sucks", the way they made sure every item or weapon or quest is meaningful even later in the game. The dungeons themselves are smallish puzzle sessions instead of a long meaningless drag. Nintendo gives you all the tools you need right from the beginning this game has very little backtracking (Dinrah scale being one of the few I recall).

This game is an absolute masterpiece, everyone knows no game is perfect because there is not a standard to comply as games constantly push their own boundaries even further, and this game right here is nothing but the new benchmark of the industry.

 

[Joe88]

Do I think BotW is a perfect game? No. I also don't think a game has to be perfect to receive a 10/10, though, and nor do I think it's likely there ever will be a perfect game in the literal sense of the word. BotW is not perfect, but it is innovative and a masterpiece. What many thought of as really good or great previously released open-world RPGs were put to shame by BotW. Frankly that's why I find it funny that Skyrim is coming to Switch, that's a game completely out of its depth on the system already unless it includes mods.

And how exactly did it put games like tes/fallout and witcher series to shame?

 

[Xzi]

And how exactly did it put games like tes/fallout and witcher series to shame?

It puts vanilla Skyrim and Fallout 4 to shame in sheer fun factor, if nothing else. It also gives you far more freedom, whereas those games feel quite limiting despite being open-world. Not to mention Skyrim and FO4 are far buggier than BotW now, let alone at release. Lastly, difficulty. There is none in Skyrim/FO4. You're a god of death less than halfway through. Whereas BotW offers different challenges for different people, and a fairly steady curve of progression.

Witcher 1 was good, Witcher 2 was great, and Witcher 3 is where CDPR really brought everything together. I rate BotW higher than the first two, but a little bit under Witcher 3, which is still a massive achievement considering the disparity in graphics shinies (technical term).

 

[Deleted User]

The word perfect makes me anxious. To me this game was like MGS V with swords - kojima banter. It was an exceptionally fun game to play on my Wii U but I wouldn't call it a 10/10

 

[Kioku]

Just got the master sword.. Missing the Goron dungeon. Explored almost the whole map, haven't done many shrines though. Oo Lacking good armor... Bows... Low on resources.. Yet I keep coming back for more.

 

[Bladexdsl]

it's not perfect but it's damn close!

 

[s157]

I'll give BotW a 10/10 once I manage to beat Calamity Ganon solely by throwing sticks at him.

 

[Yepi69]

And people around here said gaming was dead.

 

[Deleted User]

No. I personally think it's far from perfect (go read my thoughts on it in the user reviews, shameless plug). The gameplay is super fun and the world is interesting and has a lot to do but the story sucks donkey dick, theres hardly any music, the beasts suck and aren't good replacements for dungeons, the main quest is very short, the shrines get way too samey after you do like 10, almost every puzzle in this game is solved with the magnet rune, I could go on for days about everything this game does wrong because it just doesn't do a lot right.

It's easy to ignore a lot of the games problems because it really does nail a couple things but the illusion is broken if you just take a step back. This is coming from a lifelong Zelda fan whose favorite games in the series are Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess, believe me, I'm not just some hater

 

[HaloEliteLegend]

I'm of the kind that says perfection can coexist with perfection. The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece for me, but so is Breath of the Wild. Yet they both coexist as very different games, but masterclasses in what they set out to do. Drawing comparisons isn't exactly feasible (I'm gonna use Witcher 3 and Breath of the Wild to make my point). Witcher 3 sets out to do different things than Breath of the Wild. A game should be judged by its success in what it's trying to do (its goal), and then by the impact of that goal on the industry or world. A "10/10" game for me (however subjective scores may be) is one that accomplishes those two things. It succeeds in its goals and its goals make an impact, on the industry or in popular culture.

This metric allows multiple games, even those from the same genre, to coexist in greatness, rather than be eternally, subjectively compared to other games in its sphere. This metric awards well-designed games that make waves of all kinds. Is the game well designed and enjoyable? And did it have an effect on the world around it? It answers all the worries and complaints of everyone. Is it deeply satisfying? Check. Is it an example for other devs? Check. Is it a social phenomenon (i.e. Pokemon)? Check. Did it alter the course of gaming? Check.

These two lenses - design realization and impact - are the most wholesome way of examining the merits of a game and avoid the problem of apples to oranges direct comparisons.

Ocarina of Time and Breath of the Wild can both boast success in their goals as well as an impact on the industry and culture. Therefore, they're both twinkling stars among the masses, even though they're from the same series. Witcher 3 boasts success in its own ways and has also made a huge industry impact, just like Zelda. It joins OoT and BotW in the same gaming stardom.

 

[NyaakoXD]

I think that 10/10 is just about how much the reviewer enjoyed the game, tbh. Sure, they can put up pros and cons and stuff, but it really comes down to if the reviewer enjoyed it enough to put it up as a 10/10. Again, just what I think.

 

[CoolAlpha]

OK, I got 8-9 hearts, I finished the Zora Domain, but... where are the dungeons???
Zora Domain was a big disappointment to me, the shrines are so small and not exiting at all

 

[DarkWork0]

OK, I got 8-9 hearts, I finished the Zora Domain, but... where are the dungeons???
Zora Domain was a big disappointment to me, the shrines are so small and not exiting at all

The Divine Beasts (4 of them) are all dungeons.