This review contains spoilers
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an open world “Fuck me in my asshole, I’m actually going to shit if I get instant killed one more time” fantasy game developed by Nintendo both as a Wii-U console exclusive as well as later on ported to the Nintendo Switch. This is one of those games I feel most everyone knows about, but I’ll throw out some info tidbits I found online and summarize my experience leading up to playing this game. Development for this game started straight after Skyward Sword was released for both the Nintendo Wii and the Wii U (and later re-released as an HD Port for the Switch itself) and apparently took inspirations from Shadow of the Colossus and The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, of which I could only confirm from Wikipedia so no clue if it’s totally reliable but if so, I could also see it. I could also see influences from Dark Souls in my opinion (though I’ll relate why later on). However, according to both the ‘Pedia (take with a grain of salt perhaps) and the Wiki, along with the fact I’m always unsure if my sources are incorrect, that this game was meant to shake up the franchise in its entirety, wanting to include more non-linearity after getting positive reception on stuff like A Link Between Worlds as well as the idea to use physics puzzles and removing a Spider-Man like grapple shot (which I would’ve LOVED to have seen in this game). The scale grew bigger and bigger, and what was supposed to be a 2015 release turned into 2016 and then finally released in 2017 to magnanimous approval from everybody and their grandmother.
The Legend of Zelda series is a series that’s well known to pretty much everyone as one of the most famous IPs ever, if you haven’t ever played the games you’ll sure as fuck remember the theme song; but the truth is I’ve always had this nostalgic love for the series though I’ve only ever played the very beginning of Wind Waker on Gamecube loads of times because I didn’t know what else I was doing. Fast Forward I still haven’t played Wind Waker even though I own a copy of that and Skyward Sword for the Wii, when my sister eventually gets a Nintendo Switch for christmas with a bunch of games around the 2017-2018 mark I believe? One of those includes Breath of the Wild, and having heard it was god’s gift to Earth and one of the best video games of all time, and after being badgered to get a switch so I could play games with her, I pick myself up a switch too with Smash Bros Ultimate and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3. Though I would play some games every now and then, I didn’t really pick up the Switch much due to my main consoles being the PC and the PS consoles; throughout the years I’d beat Deadly Premonition: Origins and Luigi’s Mansion 3 (two switch games that I still have to write up a review about) along with get a couple of others but I never touched this one because “big open world game, don’t have time”. However, I wanted to knock off at least one game per console this year, and so I decided that this year I would beat this game with the DLC, and it even strengthened further when everybody I knew (including my sister) got Tears of the Kingdom and raved about it. Starting it off was difficult but eventually one of my friends (shoutout to the pimp Wrathne, thank you for your help) backseat gamed my ass and helped me along before I eventually took a trip overseas and finished it in their living room funny enough (didn’t take the trip cause of the game, just something I wanted to do anyways to be honest, though that's why I wasn't able to review it immediately).
So how do I feel about this game? Truth is, very mixed; I like certain aspects of the game and I respect a lot of what it does, and I’ll admit that when it works I end up liking it a bit. However, there’s a lot here that I don’t like, specifically the combat and the gameplay. When you first start off in the Great Plateau, it feels fine. You get used to cooking food, weapons that can break instantly, doing shrines, using your Sheikah slate, climbing your environment, etc. What I can say is that I can certainly see the Shadow of the Colossus stuff with this game, the loneliness as you ride your horse in this big open world that is almost empty save for pockets of survivors and try to survive the post-post apocalypse? Can’t even say at this rate, but for the most part a lot of the stuff works. Cooking and combining ingredients trying to find the best recipe to tackle your next objective is great and these ingredients are in abundance throughout the entirety of Hyrule, shrines for the most part are inoffensive but because I suck at puzzles I break out the guides, I don’t care for the stamina bar (as if you run out of it, whether it’s from flying or swimming you’ll get fucked up and probably die and it feels artificial as hell) while I’m trying to climb towers (which like Far Cry and other games reveals portions of the map) much. However, in this case I’ll say that with both the shrines/towers that one thing I like about this game is that despite these sort of holdbacks, it’s fascinating to see using your tools available that you can conquer them with a bit of ingenuity (for example, I barely upgraded my stamina and got all the towers due to experimentation from climbing nearby mountains in big chunks while taking breaks before gliding down) so it’s nice to see a game that can feel a bit like an immersive sim in regards (don’t shoot me for throwing the term out there please) in the amount of ways you can figure out a solution. However, speaking of the shrines, if you’re not a god in this game already you’re going to need to go out of your way to grind out these puzzle shrines as they not only give you extra loot but they give spirit orbs, and if you get four of these spirit orbs and bring them to a Goddess statue you can choose to upgrade your health or your stamina bar. This will feel like a necessity considering the difficulty curb of the game’s combat and obstacles.
As said earlier, it feels fine when starting off in the tutorial area but once you get the paraglider and fly down? You WILL get fucked up as the difficulty soars in a way that I don’t really like or feels fair. A lot of these enemies can fuck you up, some of them in even one hit due to an arbitrary number next to weapon. Hell in a lot of cases even with these weapons, if you hit them with it, a lot of times it doesn’t feel like they die, like it’s kind of spongy. I don’t really like this practice in a lot of games, as it feels cheap and inconsistent though unlike games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey or Borderlands it at least doesn’t throw a bunch of stats and arbitrary numbers in your face via UI (other examples of this is comparing gear ala Horizon or the newest God of Wars) and at least keeps that simple. Regardless though I fucking hate it, not only do I hate this sort of combat style, I actively think it brings the game down in quality. Remember that Dark Souls comparison from earlier? I don’t mean it in the sense that “Ohh game is difficult compare to Dark Souls hahaha” but like it feels like it could be straight out of it from the lock on, to the boss meters, I don’t know how to explain it because I’m a plebian but it feels like it’s there, and whilst I play the Soulsborne games and love them, I’m not interested in a Zelda Souls game (though obviously I’m ok with there being strategies to actually fight these guys/weaknesses and such, I just don’t like their damage output). Regardless though it’s here, and you can find yourself getting outnumbered and outgunned pretty quickly so upgrading your health/stamina feels like a necessity in order to even stand a chance at the beginning of the game. This leads into another personal thing I don’t always really care for, I don’t care for grinding and I don’t feel like it should be a necessity to actually get anything done; this will be the majority of your game time as you go around and grind out these shrines or ingredients (which aren’t just needed for cooking, but if you want to stand a chance in the Volcano, Desert or Cold regions you will need to upgrade certain outfits as the divine beasts are in these areas and your health will plummet really fast if you don’t get these outfits or eat large portions of food every couple of seconds). You can also do side quests for rewards (like rupees), but I found the majority that I saw of these are basic fetch quests with no real substance to them so I avoided them (though I like that you don’t need to do them at all for some arbitrary level up bullshit so again, thank you Nintendo for not being like Ubisoft and their recent output). However, I decided to take the easy route and instead just grind out Snowball Bowling, which you get 300 rupees for every strike and let me tell you something, grinding this out isn’t fun either though I can’t really blame anyone but myself I suppose for wanting to get quick cash to buy outfits needed to survive and by the end of it I really wanted to curb stomp Pondo for his what should be legalized gambling scheme.
To upgrade these outfits (which by the way I only found out they exist from my buddy Wrathne, shoutout to you for backseat gaming and making my experience actually playable and less frustrating), you’ll need to find and unlock all four fairy fountains, which not only provide you with instant revives in case you die (collecting the fairies surrounding the fountain I mean) but also unlocking these shrines can have them upgrade the stats of your armor so you stand more of a chance of not dying. Again, it’s a lot of grinding and frustrating, arbitrary steps that I feel that I shouldn’t need to take just to survive. For some people, this loop is great and I respect that; however it’s not something I enjoy. I’m going to post links to some grinding stuff that I found, as well as outfit locations down below but my final thought on this is how the fuck was I supposed to know these things exist without getting help? That actually frustrated me, I understand it’s an open world, but either I missed out on the clues for these outfits entirely or there is nothing and other than potentially wasting hundreds of hours figuring out the solution (of which I don’t have the time), I’d prefer if somehow someone just gave a vague hint of “oh you’ll need something to wear in order to survive up in certain climates, maybe this place has something?”, or maybe I’m just dumb and I need handholding or something but again if I didn’t have a backseat gamer I would’ve been stuck and frustrated.
The next thing I want to point out that I don’t care for are the Divine Beasts, especially the one in Gerudo Town (the one I surprisingly did first, also the most difficult) due to their overly complicated puzzle nature that I can’t figure out in the slightest but other ten year olds can (which I’m not hating, I think it’s amazing that kids can beat this stuff to be honest). For me, Gerudo one was just a giant cluster fuck of dislike from me, from the annoying sand seal chase to the puzzle to the actual final boss; for the chase it feels like a frustrating balancing act in which I either overshoot the circle going too fast or I’m not fast enough and it’s a pain in the ass balancing this and aiming for the beast’s legs. Keep in mind, I’m also an old man shouting at the clouds I guess so if you like it that’s ok, but these are all kind of annoying to deal with though the others are easier in scale. So what are Divine Beasts used for? Well, if you complete all four then you lower the final boss’s health down to half and make the final fight in the game a lot easier to manage, and that’s another point I’ll give the game credit for.
You don’t have to put in all this work, you can get booty stomped on the way out sure but you can literally go straight from the tutorial to the final boss of the game at Hyrule Castle and duke it out if you really know what you’re doing. It’s a strange thing, I don’t care about the gameplay for the most part but as much as I roll my eyes at “Expansive open worlds” the amount of freedom in this is insane, as well as the amount of details that I both know as well as know that I missed. In fact, the level of detail can be frustrating sometimes, like lightning effects while there’s rain can destroy you if you wear anything metal from weapons/shields (which I only discovered defending myself from a Yiga assassin in a lightning storm..) to trying to use a bomb arrow in the volcano region will just result in you blowing yourself up instantly due to the hostile temperatures. In fact, for this note I specifically wrote down “Fuck the lightning shit, that can suck my dick”, because it got rather frustrating sometimes. In fact, trying to remember each and every little thing to write up this review is impossible, so I want to apologize in advance for missing both probably basic shit that I will miss, because this game is so massive in scope that it’s baffling. In fact, before I finish on my DLC thoughts, my feelings on weapon degradation? I didn’t hate it in Far Cry 2, and generally I don’t have a problem with it like other people though if you do, that’s perfectly ok. I also missed out talking about the horses and the Amiibo functionality; horses you can find in the wild and if you sneak up on them and tame them, then bring it back to a nearby stable you can name it and bond with it as well as call them nearby, and if you have the right Amiibo functionality (or if you’re like Wrathne and just bought cards) then you can use them once per day to unlock anything from extra food/materials to overpowered weapons and armor (helping you but kinda breaking the game but fuck it, I don’t care) to special outfits I’m not sure you can unlock in game to being able to summon Epona and Wolf Link (though Wolf Link disappears if you fast travel, RIP sadly). Also collecting Korok Seeds and bringing them to a certain NPC will expand your inventory to include more Bows, Shields and weapon slots but if you attempt to bring the guy EVERY seed on the map you will get…special Korok poop as a gag reward? There’s lots of rewards for doing every shrine or certain collectible tasks so keep an eye out for that I suppose.
To finally finish this section, I’m going to bring up the DLC gameplay wise and ask the question: Is it worth the money? Well it really depends. Most of it is just DLC outfits (IGN guide link below) that may or may not give certain benefits cosmetic wise but sure as hell look cool and require going through steps to get some of them, referencing the past like Dark Link, having the titular mask from Majora’s Mask, etc. Overall, this stuff wasn’t bad, and felt decent enough for the most part collecting, with even the tie in quest to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 delivering some gear if that’s really your thing. However, the two main DLC quests are the Champion Ballads and the Master Sword Trials; I’ll start by saying that the Champion Ballads, whilst difficult, is doable and I actually managed to finish it twice, once for me and once for my home E, Wrathne. Honestly the most difficult parts in this DLC, only playable after getting all the divine beasts, are the first area with the instant kill but you can instantly die section, fighting the Molduga for one of the Gerudo trials, and the final Divine Beast. Overall however, it’s really just more puzzle trials and in exchange you get the ability to use your Divine Powers (unlocked from beating the Divine Beasts in the first place) and when you beat the final boss, you get ... a motorcycle? I mean I won’t complain, it’s a lot faster than your horse but in order to fuel it you have to feed it monster parts or something which is cool. The master sword trials on the other hand? If you had made your way through the Lost Woods next to the volcano region, and solved your way into the forest, while also having thirteen hearts or more to pull the Master Sword out of the ground (which in itself is a good weapon to have as with the weapon destruction, most will disappear but this one only goes temporarily once used up and comes back later) then you’ll unlock this trial. Put it back into the slot and you’ll be asked to go through 50 or so rooms of combat with absolutely nothing but what you can scrape up out of the rooms, and let me tell you this. Fuck no, I tried once but if you’re into everything being difficult then you’ll love this because you cannot save except every once in a while according to the guides and if you die? Game over, start from the very beginning and lose all your progress. What’s the reward for this? Your master sword apparently goes from 30 damage to 60 damage. Cool, but not worth my time in my opinion; but if you’re resilient enough and want to try it out god bless.
The plot is a rather simple one, but complex in the background. In the Zelda timeline, which has been hypothesized by fans around the world as to what game takes place in what timeline and how/when (which was later ironed out and released by Nintendo into an official timeline between three separate ones), this game takes place after all three of them merge. In fact, this game takes place millenia after those three timelines, longer than 10,000 years or so and long enough that machinery like Guardians (made by some race called the Sheikah) used to roam the kingdom apparently so if you’re wondering if you really need to know the older games to know this one, you don’t. Little mentions will pop up as an “Ayy I know this” moment here and there but it’s not at all a big forefront which is good for me because I hate trying to catch up sometimes.
Regardless, again you play as Link as you wake up in an area called the Shrine of Resurrection on the Great Plateau, a floating piece of land around 100 years after a mysterious event named “The Calamity” brushed through the kingdom. Link wakes up not knowing what the hell is going on, and kind of roams around until an old hunter gives him tips and tells him to unlock some shrines in exchange for a glider to get out of the area. However, after you do all of this a part of the backstory is revealed: This old hunter is actually the former king of Hyrule, King Rhoam, also Zelda’s father who reveals that this Calamity (or Calamity Ganon) was prophesied to come back and in preparation, the Kingdom brought about four champions (from the Zora, Rito, Gorons and Gerudo races), as well as unlocking some magical force within his daughter and hiring you to protect her at all times in order to help seal away this great evil. However, bad shit happens and Calamity Ganon wakes up real early causing some apocalyptic event; all the champions get slayed, Link nearly gets murked and Zelda stays within Hyrule Castle to fight against Ganon’s influence for the next hundred or so years. Rhoam tells you to meet up with Impa, a Sheikah elder who is supposed to give you the next clue on what to do, and if you follow this, then she’ll tell you that you need to salvage the Divine Beasts from their corruption and use it to weakon Ganon in its state. Truthfully that’s kind of it for the basic plot, you could choose to go straight to Ganon and fight or you can put in the effort to weaken him (getting involved in hijinks like cross dressing to infiltrate Gerudo Town, a place known for its aversion to males as Ganon always comes back as a Gerudo), and if you follow the Captured Memories you can get a post credits scene which I’ll describe here in a bit.
Before going into the final section, I would highly recommend going after the Captured Memories, as they not only unlock more of the backstory but they really flesh everyone out and feel impactful as a result, specifically in the relationship between Zelda and Link. They are fucking adorable here, and even though Link is a silent protagonist I can actually feel how their fondness for each other grows, how they take care of each other, and how Zelda is a likeable doofus who not only has self doubts about her importance in the fight against Ganon but also how she tries to get Link to eat a frog. I’m not sure if there’s a lot of ways I can truly describe everything but the characters in this game are charming and have their own unique personalities, I personally believe that this is Zelda’s story of not only overcoming adversity but becoming more than just what other people tell you that you should be.
Regardless you can go to the Lost Forest and take the Master Sword, but after potentially activating the Divine Beasts back, Link goes to confront Ganon once and for all in the ruins of Hyrule castle surrounded by corrupted guardians and weird goblin looking bodyguards. After Ganon is defeated, he transforms into Dark Beast Ganon and races out of the castle to try to destroy everything. However, Zelda gives him “The Bow of Light” or something and after hitting Ganon in certain spots, the evil is vanquished and the spirits of the King/the Champions disperse, leaving Zelda and Link to rebuild the future of Hyrule.
If you did the Captured Memories, you get a post credits scene not only showing Zelda declaring the rebuilding of the kingdom, and the presence of the rare blue flower, the Silent Princess shows up in a field, one that Zelda has been trying to preserve for the longest time. I only noticed this little detail after Wrathne pointed it out as another character building moment, one that I interpreted as Zelda finally coming to grips with her future, her place in it, as well as confidence in herself to fulfill her goals. Again I’m not an intellectual, so I’m sure I could’ve said it a lot better or in a much more cohesive way, and if someone describes it in a way that’s better I might update this section, or I might not. Either way, to finish off the story section, I like it a lot; there’s a lot of emotional vulnerability in its simplicity, there’s no complicated web of lies or conspiracies or whatever but it’s a journey about overcoming your obstacles and it goes to show how simplicity can really work in a game’s favor. There’s a lot of heart, and truth be told the plot and the remaining atmosphere were the main reasons that I stuck to the game, even if it sort of blended in meta narratively with the gameplay (which I felt was way too much of a struggle sometimes).
The shortest section, as always, will be the Art Direction/Soundtrack/everything else involved in the game. The art direction is great, Hyrule is varied in it’s landscapes from it’s beautiful and windy grasslands, to it’s hostile and cold mountains (my favorite being the creepy Lost Woods and that freaky fucking tree), everything in this world is unique in its design and its effect on it’s gameplay and while I don’t want to break out fancy terms like “IT FEELS LIKE A LIVEABLE AND BREATHABLE WORLD” and whatever nonsensical shit everyone likes to throw out there it does make it memorable, which when mixed in with the Shadow of the Colossus-like atmosphere it’s pretty good. Keep in mind that’s not for everyone, one of my coworkers thought it was a worse version of Shadow of the Colossus but I didn’t truly mind this aspect as it kind of fit, though the emptyish open world can be kind of lacking sometimes. I’m not sure how to describe my feelings there, but I’d say it’s mostly positive; however when you do see people it’s quite hilarious because according to a Twitter post (or X post? I don’t fucking know anymore) from someone, every NPC in the game is built off of custom Mii’s, which is hilarious and I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out after hacking Tears of the Kingdom (which uses a lot of the same systems that this game does). Also to finish off this section, having played the series fully for the first time, I didn’t know races like the Rito or the Zora were in the other games but without knowing that each one provides their own interesting culture pieces that make them unique and interesting.
So overall, the art direction and world design are pretty solid on my end, though I kind of flutter around on the NPC scarcity sometimes but I feel in due time I’ll probably forget about that entirely, the sound design is where I feel like I have the most issues. Not with the voice acting or lack thereof, not in the actual weapon sounds, not in the soundtrack or even most things; as always the sound design is amazing but my actual issue with it is that I wish there was more of it. Granted you don’t need to constantly repeat the same Zelda theme over and over again, but by god I wish there was more music other than two memorable ones (other than the Zelda theme is the Revali theme, which I only heard sampled by a guy named JuneJissle as a beat remix, will post in links). I’m not Anthony Fantano so I can’t really sit here and describe to you the music stuff and the instruments, nor am I some fucking Picasso artsy guy, but if you’re worried this game won’t have interesting stuff in this regard than you won’t have to worry about this section. It’s not going to be some hyper realistic graphical set piece but it’s unique in its own design in a way that only Legend of Zelda can do and for the most part that’s all you really need. As such, the composers Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata and Hajime Wakai did a great job making their ambient piano pieces for the game.
So to wrap up on what happened after the game got released/final thoughts; Breath of the Wild was one of those games that shook the world when it first released, and influenced everything from Genshin Impact to Elden Ring, bringing the whole “Dark Souls for Kids” thing back to full circle. This game is the one game I personally believe blew the switch up, and after this game was released there were spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (a hack and slash prequel game) to Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (a remake of a 2D gameboy Zelda game) and more to fill in the Zelda gap left between this game and the development of it’s sequel, Tears of the Kingdom (which originally started out as a DLC ala Saints Row 4 before it’s scope demanded it become a sequel). This game would for years to come be one of the greatest games of all time to most everyone; however I’ll state my obvious feelings here. I don’t like this game like everyone else, in fact I feel like this game is just further reinforcing the change in the landscape of gaming in general. It’s not a game for me, I’m an old man shouting at the clouds, I suck at this game and no matter how much I tried to meet the game to its level it just didn’t do it for me. That being said, it’s ok and if you view this game as a 10/10 that’s a totally valid feeling and I’ll respect it, it sits with The Witcher 3 in my regard with this feeling: I can see it but I don’t feel it. However, I will admit that even with this, the game now runs concurrently with a positive memory in my head now: I went overseas to a different country to visit a bunch of my friends and having beaten this game in my friend’s living room I’ll always associate that with my positive memories; however I also tried the sequel in the same friend’s living room and it’s safe to say that whilst I won’t be buying Tears of the Kingdom for a decent amount of time, that it feels a lot better gameplay wise to this game in every way and that I would deem it superior in this regard and would rather recommend that game over this game. I doubt I’ll ever play this game again, maybe I will who knows, but I’m glad that I did give it a try because though the grinding sucks and nowadays it feels like standard open world cookie cutter stuff to a certain degree, I have a strange appreciation for this game, one of respect but general mid feelings for. However, I also heard that this format is how the main series will be going forward for a long time, and if that is the case then I probably won’t be too invested long term because regardless of my Tears of the Kingdom feelings, I haven’t played it long enough to beat it or gain a true opinion on it and the older I get, the less time I have and I don’t want to play more of Breath of the Wild-style gameplay in this way. I don’t know, I guess I’m just having some weird old people mid life crisis at the ripe age of 25 lol. To finalize my thoughts, even though there's a lot of positives, the review was going to be a straight three out of five, but I feel like everything else surrounding the gameplay and even pieces of the gameplay brought it up to a 3 1/2. There will be times where I kind of bounce back and forth mentally between a 3 and a 3 1/2 mark but keep in mind that regardless of my review, again I respect how other people love this game. I guess I'm just an old man screaming at the clouds and this game isn't for me. Who knows maybe I'll like Tears of the Kingdom more, though regardless because of this game I wanna hit up and cover Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker on Gamecube as my game of the year for that console just to see how a lot of things differ. So in the meantime, I guess sorry for the paragraphs and I'll see ya later, also final shoutout to Wrathne again for the help you cool as fuck playa.
Links (no pun intended):
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/189707-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/75175050 (Farming White Chuchu)
https://gamerant.com/botw-fireproof-lizards/ (Farming Fireproof lizards)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Smotherwing_Butterfly (Farming Smotherwing Butterfly)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Great_Fairy_Fountains (Fairy Fountain Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOIQv5lWok (Chuchu Farming Location)
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-guide-walkthrough/2017/6/1/15723316/botw-shrine-map-location (Shrine Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7P2Lk5A-c64 (Hidden Shrine thing)
https://www.gosunoob.com/zelda-breath-of-wild/heat-lava-resistance-armor/ (Flamebreaker Armor to survive in Volcano Region)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVVcvs1WGlM&ab_channel=OnehandedMan (How to get into Gerudo Town)
https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Gerudo_Secret_Club (Follow this for the Desert Voe outfit, though it’s apparently in Tarrey Town too)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkw9oQeRlE (Hidden Mechanics Video)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Snowball_Bowling (Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zCam0cZcU18 (More Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=clNEiG3zsqE&pp=ygUZYm90dyBzbm93IGJvd2xpbmcgZmFybWluZw%3D%3D (Even more Snowball Bowling)
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-walkthrough/hyrule-castle/#c14_5 (Hyrule Castle Walkthrough)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/DLC_Side_Quests (DLC Side Quests)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXvQpKBj7Y (Details and Easter Eggs)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7p6DMevgbyw (More Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.thegamer.com/legend-zelda-breath-wild-easter-eggs/#lurelin-village-outset-island (Even more Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NezKA3r8XFA (JuneJissle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFf8rQjFSd4&ab_channel=junejissle (More JuneJissle)
https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/5/22215263/breath-of-the-wild-npcs-are-miis-nintendo-legend-of-zelda-switch (Mii NPCs)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild (For potential stuff I missed)
The Legend of Zelda series is a series that’s well known to pretty much everyone as one of the most famous IPs ever, if you haven’t ever played the games you’ll sure as fuck remember the theme song; but the truth is I’ve always had this nostalgic love for the series though I’ve only ever played the very beginning of Wind Waker on Gamecube loads of times because I didn’t know what else I was doing. Fast Forward I still haven’t played Wind Waker even though I own a copy of that and Skyward Sword for the Wii, when my sister eventually gets a Nintendo Switch for christmas with a bunch of games around the 2017-2018 mark I believe? One of those includes Breath of the Wild, and having heard it was god’s gift to Earth and one of the best video games of all time, and after being badgered to get a switch so I could play games with her, I pick myself up a switch too with Smash Bros Ultimate and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 3. Though I would play some games every now and then, I didn’t really pick up the Switch much due to my main consoles being the PC and the PS consoles; throughout the years I’d beat Deadly Premonition: Origins and Luigi’s Mansion 3 (two switch games that I still have to write up a review about) along with get a couple of others but I never touched this one because “big open world game, don’t have time”. However, I wanted to knock off at least one game per console this year, and so I decided that this year I would beat this game with the DLC, and it even strengthened further when everybody I knew (including my sister) got Tears of the Kingdom and raved about it. Starting it off was difficult but eventually one of my friends (shoutout to the pimp Wrathne, thank you for your help) backseat gamed my ass and helped me along before I eventually took a trip overseas and finished it in their living room funny enough (didn’t take the trip cause of the game, just something I wanted to do anyways to be honest, though that's why I wasn't able to review it immediately).
So how do I feel about this game? Truth is, very mixed; I like certain aspects of the game and I respect a lot of what it does, and I’ll admit that when it works I end up liking it a bit. However, there’s a lot here that I don’t like, specifically the combat and the gameplay. When you first start off in the Great Plateau, it feels fine. You get used to cooking food, weapons that can break instantly, doing shrines, using your Sheikah slate, climbing your environment, etc. What I can say is that I can certainly see the Shadow of the Colossus stuff with this game, the loneliness as you ride your horse in this big open world that is almost empty save for pockets of survivors and try to survive the post-post apocalypse? Can’t even say at this rate, but for the most part a lot of the stuff works. Cooking and combining ingredients trying to find the best recipe to tackle your next objective is great and these ingredients are in abundance throughout the entirety of Hyrule, shrines for the most part are inoffensive but because I suck at puzzles I break out the guides, I don’t care for the stamina bar (as if you run out of it, whether it’s from flying or swimming you’ll get fucked up and probably die and it feels artificial as hell) while I’m trying to climb towers (which like Far Cry and other games reveals portions of the map) much. However, in this case I’ll say that with both the shrines/towers that one thing I like about this game is that despite these sort of holdbacks, it’s fascinating to see using your tools available that you can conquer them with a bit of ingenuity (for example, I barely upgraded my stamina and got all the towers due to experimentation from climbing nearby mountains in big chunks while taking breaks before gliding down) so it’s nice to see a game that can feel a bit like an immersive sim in regards (don’t shoot me for throwing the term out there please) in the amount of ways you can figure out a solution. However, speaking of the shrines, if you’re not a god in this game already you’re going to need to go out of your way to grind out these puzzle shrines as they not only give you extra loot but they give spirit orbs, and if you get four of these spirit orbs and bring them to a Goddess statue you can choose to upgrade your health or your stamina bar. This will feel like a necessity considering the difficulty curb of the game’s combat and obstacles.
As said earlier, it feels fine when starting off in the tutorial area but once you get the paraglider and fly down? You WILL get fucked up as the difficulty soars in a way that I don’t really like or feels fair. A lot of these enemies can fuck you up, some of them in even one hit due to an arbitrary number next to weapon. Hell in a lot of cases even with these weapons, if you hit them with it, a lot of times it doesn’t feel like they die, like it’s kind of spongy. I don’t really like this practice in a lot of games, as it feels cheap and inconsistent though unlike games like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey or Borderlands it at least doesn’t throw a bunch of stats and arbitrary numbers in your face via UI (other examples of this is comparing gear ala Horizon or the newest God of Wars) and at least keeps that simple. Regardless though I fucking hate it, not only do I hate this sort of combat style, I actively think it brings the game down in quality. Remember that Dark Souls comparison from earlier? I don’t mean it in the sense that “Ohh game is difficult compare to Dark Souls hahaha” but like it feels like it could be straight out of it from the lock on, to the boss meters, I don’t know how to explain it because I’m a plebian but it feels like it’s there, and whilst I play the Soulsborne games and love them, I’m not interested in a Zelda Souls game (though obviously I’m ok with there being strategies to actually fight these guys/weaknesses and such, I just don’t like their damage output). Regardless though it’s here, and you can find yourself getting outnumbered and outgunned pretty quickly so upgrading your health/stamina feels like a necessity in order to even stand a chance at the beginning of the game. This leads into another personal thing I don’t always really care for, I don’t care for grinding and I don’t feel like it should be a necessity to actually get anything done; this will be the majority of your game time as you go around and grind out these shrines or ingredients (which aren’t just needed for cooking, but if you want to stand a chance in the Volcano, Desert or Cold regions you will need to upgrade certain outfits as the divine beasts are in these areas and your health will plummet really fast if you don’t get these outfits or eat large portions of food every couple of seconds). You can also do side quests for rewards (like rupees), but I found the majority that I saw of these are basic fetch quests with no real substance to them so I avoided them (though I like that you don’t need to do them at all for some arbitrary level up bullshit so again, thank you Nintendo for not being like Ubisoft and their recent output). However, I decided to take the easy route and instead just grind out Snowball Bowling, which you get 300 rupees for every strike and let me tell you something, grinding this out isn’t fun either though I can’t really blame anyone but myself I suppose for wanting to get quick cash to buy outfits needed to survive and by the end of it I really wanted to curb stomp Pondo for his what should be legalized gambling scheme.
To upgrade these outfits (which by the way I only found out they exist from my buddy Wrathne, shoutout to you for backseat gaming and making my experience actually playable and less frustrating), you’ll need to find and unlock all four fairy fountains, which not only provide you with instant revives in case you die (collecting the fairies surrounding the fountain I mean) but also unlocking these shrines can have them upgrade the stats of your armor so you stand more of a chance of not dying. Again, it’s a lot of grinding and frustrating, arbitrary steps that I feel that I shouldn’t need to take just to survive. For some people, this loop is great and I respect that; however it’s not something I enjoy. I’m going to post links to some grinding stuff that I found, as well as outfit locations down below but my final thought on this is how the fuck was I supposed to know these things exist without getting help? That actually frustrated me, I understand it’s an open world, but either I missed out on the clues for these outfits entirely or there is nothing and other than potentially wasting hundreds of hours figuring out the solution (of which I don’t have the time), I’d prefer if somehow someone just gave a vague hint of “oh you’ll need something to wear in order to survive up in certain climates, maybe this place has something?”, or maybe I’m just dumb and I need handholding or something but again if I didn’t have a backseat gamer I would’ve been stuck and frustrated.
The next thing I want to point out that I don’t care for are the Divine Beasts, especially the one in Gerudo Town (the one I surprisingly did first, also the most difficult) due to their overly complicated puzzle nature that I can’t figure out in the slightest but other ten year olds can (which I’m not hating, I think it’s amazing that kids can beat this stuff to be honest). For me, Gerudo one was just a giant cluster fuck of dislike from me, from the annoying sand seal chase to the puzzle to the actual final boss; for the chase it feels like a frustrating balancing act in which I either overshoot the circle going too fast or I’m not fast enough and it’s a pain in the ass balancing this and aiming for the beast’s legs. Keep in mind, I’m also an old man shouting at the clouds I guess so if you like it that’s ok, but these are all kind of annoying to deal with though the others are easier in scale. So what are Divine Beasts used for? Well, if you complete all four then you lower the final boss’s health down to half and make the final fight in the game a lot easier to manage, and that’s another point I’ll give the game credit for.
You don’t have to put in all this work, you can get booty stomped on the way out sure but you can literally go straight from the tutorial to the final boss of the game at Hyrule Castle and duke it out if you really know what you’re doing. It’s a strange thing, I don’t care about the gameplay for the most part but as much as I roll my eyes at “Expansive open worlds” the amount of freedom in this is insane, as well as the amount of details that I both know as well as know that I missed. In fact, the level of detail can be frustrating sometimes, like lightning effects while there’s rain can destroy you if you wear anything metal from weapons/shields (which I only discovered defending myself from a Yiga assassin in a lightning storm..) to trying to use a bomb arrow in the volcano region will just result in you blowing yourself up instantly due to the hostile temperatures. In fact, for this note I specifically wrote down “Fuck the lightning shit, that can suck my dick”, because it got rather frustrating sometimes. In fact, trying to remember each and every little thing to write up this review is impossible, so I want to apologize in advance for missing both probably basic shit that I will miss, because this game is so massive in scope that it’s baffling. In fact, before I finish on my DLC thoughts, my feelings on weapon degradation? I didn’t hate it in Far Cry 2, and generally I don’t have a problem with it like other people though if you do, that’s perfectly ok. I also missed out talking about the horses and the Amiibo functionality; horses you can find in the wild and if you sneak up on them and tame them, then bring it back to a nearby stable you can name it and bond with it as well as call them nearby, and if you have the right Amiibo functionality (or if you’re like Wrathne and just bought cards) then you can use them once per day to unlock anything from extra food/materials to overpowered weapons and armor (helping you but kinda breaking the game but fuck it, I don’t care) to special outfits I’m not sure you can unlock in game to being able to summon Epona and Wolf Link (though Wolf Link disappears if you fast travel, RIP sadly). Also collecting Korok Seeds and bringing them to a certain NPC will expand your inventory to include more Bows, Shields and weapon slots but if you attempt to bring the guy EVERY seed on the map you will get…special Korok poop as a gag reward? There’s lots of rewards for doing every shrine or certain collectible tasks so keep an eye out for that I suppose.
To finally finish this section, I’m going to bring up the DLC gameplay wise and ask the question: Is it worth the money? Well it really depends. Most of it is just DLC outfits (IGN guide link below) that may or may not give certain benefits cosmetic wise but sure as hell look cool and require going through steps to get some of them, referencing the past like Dark Link, having the titular mask from Majora’s Mask, etc. Overall, this stuff wasn’t bad, and felt decent enough for the most part collecting, with even the tie in quest to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 delivering some gear if that’s really your thing. However, the two main DLC quests are the Champion Ballads and the Master Sword Trials; I’ll start by saying that the Champion Ballads, whilst difficult, is doable and I actually managed to finish it twice, once for me and once for my home E, Wrathne. Honestly the most difficult parts in this DLC, only playable after getting all the divine beasts, are the first area with the instant kill but you can instantly die section, fighting the Molduga for one of the Gerudo trials, and the final Divine Beast. Overall however, it’s really just more puzzle trials and in exchange you get the ability to use your Divine Powers (unlocked from beating the Divine Beasts in the first place) and when you beat the final boss, you get ... a motorcycle? I mean I won’t complain, it’s a lot faster than your horse but in order to fuel it you have to feed it monster parts or something which is cool. The master sword trials on the other hand? If you had made your way through the Lost Woods next to the volcano region, and solved your way into the forest, while also having thirteen hearts or more to pull the Master Sword out of the ground (which in itself is a good weapon to have as with the weapon destruction, most will disappear but this one only goes temporarily once used up and comes back later) then you’ll unlock this trial. Put it back into the slot and you’ll be asked to go through 50 or so rooms of combat with absolutely nothing but what you can scrape up out of the rooms, and let me tell you this. Fuck no, I tried once but if you’re into everything being difficult then you’ll love this because you cannot save except every once in a while according to the guides and if you die? Game over, start from the very beginning and lose all your progress. What’s the reward for this? Your master sword apparently goes from 30 damage to 60 damage. Cool, but not worth my time in my opinion; but if you’re resilient enough and want to try it out god bless.
The plot is a rather simple one, but complex in the background. In the Zelda timeline, which has been hypothesized by fans around the world as to what game takes place in what timeline and how/when (which was later ironed out and released by Nintendo into an official timeline between three separate ones), this game takes place after all three of them merge. In fact, this game takes place millenia after those three timelines, longer than 10,000 years or so and long enough that machinery like Guardians (made by some race called the Sheikah) used to roam the kingdom apparently so if you’re wondering if you really need to know the older games to know this one, you don’t. Little mentions will pop up as an “Ayy I know this” moment here and there but it’s not at all a big forefront which is good for me because I hate trying to catch up sometimes.
Regardless, again you play as Link as you wake up in an area called the Shrine of Resurrection on the Great Plateau, a floating piece of land around 100 years after a mysterious event named “The Calamity” brushed through the kingdom. Link wakes up not knowing what the hell is going on, and kind of roams around until an old hunter gives him tips and tells him to unlock some shrines in exchange for a glider to get out of the area. However, after you do all of this a part of the backstory is revealed: This old hunter is actually the former king of Hyrule, King Rhoam, also Zelda’s father who reveals that this Calamity (or Calamity Ganon) was prophesied to come back and in preparation, the Kingdom brought about four champions (from the Zora, Rito, Gorons and Gerudo races), as well as unlocking some magical force within his daughter and hiring you to protect her at all times in order to help seal away this great evil. However, bad shit happens and Calamity Ganon wakes up real early causing some apocalyptic event; all the champions get slayed, Link nearly gets murked and Zelda stays within Hyrule Castle to fight against Ganon’s influence for the next hundred or so years. Rhoam tells you to meet up with Impa, a Sheikah elder who is supposed to give you the next clue on what to do, and if you follow this, then she’ll tell you that you need to salvage the Divine Beasts from their corruption and use it to weakon Ganon in its state. Truthfully that’s kind of it for the basic plot, you could choose to go straight to Ganon and fight or you can put in the effort to weaken him (getting involved in hijinks like cross dressing to infiltrate Gerudo Town, a place known for its aversion to males as Ganon always comes back as a Gerudo), and if you follow the Captured Memories you can get a post credits scene which I’ll describe here in a bit.
Before going into the final section, I would highly recommend going after the Captured Memories, as they not only unlock more of the backstory but they really flesh everyone out and feel impactful as a result, specifically in the relationship between Zelda and Link. They are fucking adorable here, and even though Link is a silent protagonist I can actually feel how their fondness for each other grows, how they take care of each other, and how Zelda is a likeable doofus who not only has self doubts about her importance in the fight against Ganon but also how she tries to get Link to eat a frog. I’m not sure if there’s a lot of ways I can truly describe everything but the characters in this game are charming and have their own unique personalities, I personally believe that this is Zelda’s story of not only overcoming adversity but becoming more than just what other people tell you that you should be.
Regardless you can go to the Lost Forest and take the Master Sword, but after potentially activating the Divine Beasts back, Link goes to confront Ganon once and for all in the ruins of Hyrule castle surrounded by corrupted guardians and weird goblin looking bodyguards. After Ganon is defeated, he transforms into Dark Beast Ganon and races out of the castle to try to destroy everything. However, Zelda gives him “The Bow of Light” or something and after hitting Ganon in certain spots, the evil is vanquished and the spirits of the King/the Champions disperse, leaving Zelda and Link to rebuild the future of Hyrule.
If you did the Captured Memories, you get a post credits scene not only showing Zelda declaring the rebuilding of the kingdom, and the presence of the rare blue flower, the Silent Princess shows up in a field, one that Zelda has been trying to preserve for the longest time. I only noticed this little detail after Wrathne pointed it out as another character building moment, one that I interpreted as Zelda finally coming to grips with her future, her place in it, as well as confidence in herself to fulfill her goals. Again I’m not an intellectual, so I’m sure I could’ve said it a lot better or in a much more cohesive way, and if someone describes it in a way that’s better I might update this section, or I might not. Either way, to finish off the story section, I like it a lot; there’s a lot of emotional vulnerability in its simplicity, there’s no complicated web of lies or conspiracies or whatever but it’s a journey about overcoming your obstacles and it goes to show how simplicity can really work in a game’s favor. There’s a lot of heart, and truth be told the plot and the remaining atmosphere were the main reasons that I stuck to the game, even if it sort of blended in meta narratively with the gameplay (which I felt was way too much of a struggle sometimes).
The shortest section, as always, will be the Art Direction/Soundtrack/everything else involved in the game. The art direction is great, Hyrule is varied in it’s landscapes from it’s beautiful and windy grasslands, to it’s hostile and cold mountains (my favorite being the creepy Lost Woods and that freaky fucking tree), everything in this world is unique in its design and its effect on it’s gameplay and while I don’t want to break out fancy terms like “IT FEELS LIKE A LIVEABLE AND BREATHABLE WORLD” and whatever nonsensical shit everyone likes to throw out there it does make it memorable, which when mixed in with the Shadow of the Colossus-like atmosphere it’s pretty good. Keep in mind that’s not for everyone, one of my coworkers thought it was a worse version of Shadow of the Colossus but I didn’t truly mind this aspect as it kind of fit, though the emptyish open world can be kind of lacking sometimes. I’m not sure how to describe my feelings there, but I’d say it’s mostly positive; however when you do see people it’s quite hilarious because according to a Twitter post (or X post? I don’t fucking know anymore) from someone, every NPC in the game is built off of custom Mii’s, which is hilarious and I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out after hacking Tears of the Kingdom (which uses a lot of the same systems that this game does). Also to finish off this section, having played the series fully for the first time, I didn’t know races like the Rito or the Zora were in the other games but without knowing that each one provides their own interesting culture pieces that make them unique and interesting.
So overall, the art direction and world design are pretty solid on my end, though I kind of flutter around on the NPC scarcity sometimes but I feel in due time I’ll probably forget about that entirely, the sound design is where I feel like I have the most issues. Not with the voice acting or lack thereof, not in the actual weapon sounds, not in the soundtrack or even most things; as always the sound design is amazing but my actual issue with it is that I wish there was more of it. Granted you don’t need to constantly repeat the same Zelda theme over and over again, but by god I wish there was more music other than two memorable ones (other than the Zelda theme is the Revali theme, which I only heard sampled by a guy named JuneJissle as a beat remix, will post in links). I’m not Anthony Fantano so I can’t really sit here and describe to you the music stuff and the instruments, nor am I some fucking Picasso artsy guy, but if you’re worried this game won’t have interesting stuff in this regard than you won’t have to worry about this section. It’s not going to be some hyper realistic graphical set piece but it’s unique in its own design in a way that only Legend of Zelda can do and for the most part that’s all you really need. As such, the composers Manaka Kataoka, Yasuaki Iwata and Hajime Wakai did a great job making their ambient piano pieces for the game.
So to wrap up on what happened after the game got released/final thoughts; Breath of the Wild was one of those games that shook the world when it first released, and influenced everything from Genshin Impact to Elden Ring, bringing the whole “Dark Souls for Kids” thing back to full circle. This game is the one game I personally believe blew the switch up, and after this game was released there were spin-offs like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity (a hack and slash prequel game) to Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (a remake of a 2D gameboy Zelda game) and more to fill in the Zelda gap left between this game and the development of it’s sequel, Tears of the Kingdom (which originally started out as a DLC ala Saints Row 4 before it’s scope demanded it become a sequel). This game would for years to come be one of the greatest games of all time to most everyone; however I’ll state my obvious feelings here. I don’t like this game like everyone else, in fact I feel like this game is just further reinforcing the change in the landscape of gaming in general. It’s not a game for me, I’m an old man shouting at the clouds, I suck at this game and no matter how much I tried to meet the game to its level it just didn’t do it for me. That being said, it’s ok and if you view this game as a 10/10 that’s a totally valid feeling and I’ll respect it, it sits with The Witcher 3 in my regard with this feeling: I can see it but I don’t feel it. However, I will admit that even with this, the game now runs concurrently with a positive memory in my head now: I went overseas to a different country to visit a bunch of my friends and having beaten this game in my friend’s living room I’ll always associate that with my positive memories; however I also tried the sequel in the same friend’s living room and it’s safe to say that whilst I won’t be buying Tears of the Kingdom for a decent amount of time, that it feels a lot better gameplay wise to this game in every way and that I would deem it superior in this regard and would rather recommend that game over this game. I doubt I’ll ever play this game again, maybe I will who knows, but I’m glad that I did give it a try because though the grinding sucks and nowadays it feels like standard open world cookie cutter stuff to a certain degree, I have a strange appreciation for this game, one of respect but general mid feelings for. However, I also heard that this format is how the main series will be going forward for a long time, and if that is the case then I probably won’t be too invested long term because regardless of my Tears of the Kingdom feelings, I haven’t played it long enough to beat it or gain a true opinion on it and the older I get, the less time I have and I don’t want to play more of Breath of the Wild-style gameplay in this way. I don’t know, I guess I’m just having some weird old people mid life crisis at the ripe age of 25 lol. To finalize my thoughts, even though there's a lot of positives, the review was going to be a straight three out of five, but I feel like everything else surrounding the gameplay and even pieces of the gameplay brought it up to a 3 1/2. There will be times where I kind of bounce back and forth mentally between a 3 and a 3 1/2 mark but keep in mind that regardless of my review, again I respect how other people love this game. I guess I'm just an old man screaming at the clouds and this game isn't for me. Who knows maybe I'll like Tears of the Kingdom more, though regardless because of this game I wanna hit up and cover Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker on Gamecube as my game of the year for that console just to see how a lot of things differ. So in the meantime, I guess sorry for the paragraphs and I'll see ya later, also final shoutout to Wrathne again for the help you cool as fuck playa.
Links (no pun intended):
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/189707-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/75175050 (Farming White Chuchu)
https://gamerant.com/botw-fireproof-lizards/ (Farming Fireproof lizards)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Smotherwing_Butterfly (Farming Smotherwing Butterfly)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Great_Fairy_Fountains (Fairy Fountain Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_tOIQv5lWok (Chuchu Farming Location)
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/zelda-breath-of-the-wild-guide-walkthrough/2017/6/1/15723316/botw-shrine-map-location (Shrine Locations)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7P2Lk5A-c64 (Hidden Shrine thing)
https://www.gosunoob.com/zelda-breath-of-wild/heat-lava-resistance-armor/ (Flamebreaker Armor to survive in Volcano Region)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVVcvs1WGlM&ab_channel=OnehandedMan (How to get into Gerudo Town)
https://zelda.fandom.com/wiki/Gerudo_Secret_Club (Follow this for the Desert Voe outfit, though it’s apparently in Tarrey Town too)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jtkw9oQeRlE (Hidden Mechanics Video)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/Snowball_Bowling (Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zCam0cZcU18 (More Snowball Bowling)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=clNEiG3zsqE&pp=ygUZYm90dyBzbm93IGJvd2xpbmcgZmFybWluZw%3D%3D (Even more Snowball Bowling)
https://www.zeldadungeon.net/breath-of-the-wild-walkthrough/hyrule-castle/#c14_5 (Hyrule Castle Walkthrough)
https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild/DLC_Side_Quests (DLC Side Quests)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXvQpKBj7Y (Details and Easter Eggs)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7p6DMevgbyw (More Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.thegamer.com/legend-zelda-breath-wild-easter-eggs/#lurelin-village-outset-island (Even more Details and Easter Eggs)
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/NezKA3r8XFA (JuneJissle)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFf8rQjFSd4&ab_channel=junejissle (More JuneJissle)
https://www.polygon.com/2021/1/5/22215263/breath-of-the-wild-npcs-are-miis-nintendo-legend-of-zelda-switch (Mii NPCs)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaBreathOfTheWild (For potential stuff I missed)