Pure magic. Breath of the Wild is a benchmark for the medium, and a masterclass in game design.
There isn’t a whole lot I can add to the praises or critiques of Breath of the Wild as it has been played by a majority of people (whether they are familiar with the franchise or not) and this is a game completely dependent on how much you, as the player, are willing to explore and toy around with the mechanics. I never really got around to this game earlier as I’m not too fond of open-world games, I feel that their worlds usually lack a purpose to be designed how they are and come off poorly executed, which often leads to me streamlining the story. The weird thing about BotW is that it severely underperforms in areas that other open world games excel in, yet this lack of story and other crucial parts of a game somehow lead to the most enjoyable experience I’ve had with a game.
There’s a lot of cases to be made about the flaws of this game and I certainly agree with most of them, but that still didn’t stop me from having fun during the 80-90 hours I put in. I honestly cannot name a single time where I got fed up or bored of the game, and that is something I can’t apply to any other game. Gliding down from snow-covered mountains, surfing on your shield down a steep hill, flying through the air by utilising stasis, killing bokoblins in a multitude of ways at their huts, getting brutally massacred by the sudden appearance of a guardian or two (or the other way around), climbing up rocky cliffs, walking or riding a horse through lush green plains, these should get repetitive and consequently boring after a while, but it never happened to me, even with the narrow range of enemies.
I find that the only way someone would not have fun with this game is if they limit themselves and their mind. This is a game where creativity takes centre stage, but unlike a typical sandbox game, this creativity is intertwined with the regular gameplay. If you can dream up a way to pass a certain shrine, kill an enemy, climb a tower or something else, put it into practice and you’ll find that it most likely works. Much like cooking up a meal in this game, by combining different ingredients you can either make something that is gourmet level, or garbage, and after all, that’s the fun of it, isn’t it?
There isn’t a whole lot I can add to the praises or critiques of Breath of the Wild as it has been played by a majority of people (whether they are familiar with the franchise or not) and this is a game completely dependent on how much you, as the player, are willing to explore and toy around with the mechanics. I never really got around to this game earlier as I’m not too fond of open-world games, I feel that their worlds usually lack a purpose to be designed how they are and come off poorly executed, which often leads to me streamlining the story. The weird thing about BotW is that it severely underperforms in areas that other open world games excel in, yet this lack of story and other crucial parts of a game somehow lead to the most enjoyable experience I’ve had with a game.
There’s a lot of cases to be made about the flaws of this game and I certainly agree with most of them, but that still didn’t stop me from having fun during the 80-90 hours I put in. I honestly cannot name a single time where I got fed up or bored of the game, and that is something I can’t apply to any other game. Gliding down from snow-covered mountains, surfing on your shield down a steep hill, flying through the air by utilising stasis, killing bokoblins in a multitude of ways at their huts, getting brutally massacred by the sudden appearance of a guardian or two (or the other way around), climbing up rocky cliffs, walking or riding a horse through lush green plains, these should get repetitive and consequently boring after a while, but it never happened to me, even with the narrow range of enemies.
I find that the only way someone would not have fun with this game is if they limit themselves and their mind. This is a game where creativity takes centre stage, but unlike a typical sandbox game, this creativity is intertwined with the regular gameplay. If you can dream up a way to pass a certain shrine, kill an enemy, climb a tower or something else, put it into practice and you’ll find that it most likely works. Much like cooking up a meal in this game, by combining different ingredients you can either make something that is gourmet level, or garbage, and after all, that’s the fun of it, isn’t it?