The Legend of Zelda is a franchise created by Miyamoto and Tezuka, they also created other sagas for Nintendo. It’s one of the favorites for experts and fans in the industry, usually with positive rates and commentary.
Nintendo has been relaying on Zelda over 35 years, has become one of main reasons to get a new Nintendo in every console cycle. This time is the turn for The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, released in 2017 and winner of the Game of the Year.
Created by Nintendo Entertainment Planning and Development, and published by Nintendo itself.
These years were influenced by the tendency to create open worlds, focused on that set, arrives Breath of the Wild. It offers a very big map to explore, all kind of landscapes, snowy, desertic, volcano, mountains and a lot of green plains. Yeah, Hyrule looks better than before.
The main attraction in the game looks to be the exploration, classic gameplay from previous titles, and some additions to refresh the feeling of a new Zelda. Climbing is the first new mechanic easy to note, Link is able to jump and climb almost any kind of material in the game, making climbing very important to progress in the kingdom.
Highlights for The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild
Story
Link wakes up in a restorative chamber, is not able to remember a thing, suffering amnesia and hearing voices from the Sheika tablet, an ancient artifact, decides to go out and get some answers.
A few moments after seeing what remains from the kingdom, he encounters an old man that explains a little thing and how to cook. Then he begs for help to get a treasure.
After a lot of petitions and errands the true is revealed and once again, the fate of the kingdom or what remains at least is put on Link´s shoulders to see how he can defeat Ganon and save the princess Zelda to save Hyrule.
Gameplay
The gameplay is focused on exploration and puzzle solving for every shrine across the realm and areas around itself.
The Sheika tablet allows the player to access a certain amount on modules that provides special functions to manipulate on the environment such as bomb and magnetism runes. The shrines offer a puzzle rewarded by a spirit orb, a key item, that is exchangeable for heart containers or stamina vessels.
The action in battle uses the classic sword, shield, arrows, bow and new skills available by modules such as ice pillar, bombs, magnetism, scanner and stasis.
The weapons have a certain number of uses, after that the weapon breaks. Furthermore, a big variety of weapons are available to beat kogoblins trough Hyrule; short swords, claymore, spears, axes, clubs and staves.
As personal experience, this is my first Zelda game, so I don’t have any references with previous releases, provided that, the action in battle feels a little slow at least in my opinion.
A new feature that makes exploration so interesting is the climbing almost any wall or material. So that’s why all the marketing campaign about Link climbing mountains in the posters, makes the adventure easy to get into it.
Open World
The vast terrain to explore may be overwhelming at the beginning, its easy to get lost and difficult to read the map due to the great number of mountains. However, is very friendly and entertained to do, players will lose track where to continue the main story line anytime there is too much to explore in Hyrule.
The weather will be a key to know how to move around, strong winds, thunderstorms, heavy rains, overwhelming heat waves, blizzards and mist, every change in the environment needs their own way to mitigate its effects. Furthermore, there isa another special feature at nights, the crimson moon brings monsters into berserk mode and higher hostility levels.
A great variety of items to gather are used for all kind of activities such as strengthen equipment with certain fairies, to cook and to learn recipes. The content is there over the map, how the player decides to approach it is his own decision.
Graphics
This title was released with the Switch at 2017 and continues being the game with better graphics until now if you put aside the sequel. The Nintendo EPD decided to use their own graphic engine Havok to develop this adventure and make the best use of it.
The incredible result is achieved after years polishing and after 6 years in the market Breath of the Wild feels superior to any other game in the hybrid console.
It runs smoothly and clean, the vast plains and beautiful world that’s showed on this post-apocalyptic Hyrule is superior, there is no other words to say it. As mentioned before, the optimization was the key to reach this level graphically.
Sound
The high quality isn’t limited to the graphics, the sound effects are on point as well. Despite the voice acting isn’t one of the main focuses for Nintendo, this adventure features a full voiced main storyline, well developed narrative and music.
Manaka Kataoka y Yasuaki Iwata are on charge for the original soundtrack; the background music and sound effects provide the mystery needed to enjoy the long journey after waking up with amnesia.
Performance
Tested on Nintendo Switch Lite, The Breath of the Wild it´s an ambitious open world that based on the time polishing and outstanding optimization has set the bar too high for any other game on the hybrid console.
The game runs smoothly and after 50 hours on it, didn’t find any glitch or error. However, the load screens for quick travel and after a game over, are a little long usually takes between 8 and 10 seconds.
Temperature isn’t high even after long gaming sessions and doesn’t suffer frame rate drops, a refreshing feeling for the common performance problems in the Switch, overall, for online games.
Conclusions
- Breath of the Wild is now a quality reference for videogames development, a high graphics quality thanks to the long time dedicated to polishing and optimize the game.
- The classic plot returns, Link saving Hyrule, Zelda is missing, Ganon doing his stuff, despite the repetitive story, it feels different or evolving.
- The exploration is the key for the open world games, with a lot of stuff to do the players will need to pour a great amount of time on it.
- A total masterpiece in gameplay, story, graphics, sound effects, and performance.
