Someone flew over the cucco's nest

Five and a half years after the last new desktop title in The Legend of Zelda saga, Breath of the Wild arrived to break its own schemes. Expectation had soared since E3 2016 and her reviews were fantastic.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Now, after the hype of the launch, we compile our experience. Will it really mark how an open-world adventure game should be made like Ocarina of Time did at the time? Will it still be the recommended game for this Christmas and throughout the life of Nintendo Switch?

Game introduction

As usual in the franchise, Link reawakens with a hangover to discover that he must save Hyrule and Princess Zelda by defeating Ganon. You can't leave today, then your work accumulates! This time we are at a very late point in the chronology of The Legend of Zelda and melancholy is the main reason. In a world after a cataclysm in which the Hylians did not know how to use ancestral technology to their advantage, we have forgotten all our past and we will remember it in more or less depth as we play.

But in this adventure we don't have a couple of tweaks to the hero's item system and abilities but a deep rethink. And all of them come to return to the saga the capital letters to their concepts of exploration and maturity. Although the game is obviously not perfect, it gets us to abandon ourselves in its world to discover it piece by piece. So much so, that in most cases you propose something and end up in another very different place and situation because in the meantime very interesting sites and plans have appeared.

A different open world

Back in 1998, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time marked a moment in the Zelda saga and in 3D video games. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were the first 3D games in the series and, in order to achieve a semi-open world that works as it did in 2D TLoZs, they made many decisions that have inspired many other developers. Among them was the implementation of the item system, which being as functional (as the bow, the hook, the masks…) limited access to areas of the game for which we were not ready. Thus, the player can explore a little but is forced to advance only where his current objects allow him. Also the progression of the story makes more sense and the difficulty for the player increases progressively.

Later, when others faced the compromise between progression and freedom, for example, matching the levels of the enemies to that of the player and letting him hang around, TLoZ continued with his approach of limiting the passage through items. It was already being repetitive and we all knew that until we found the next object in the area we couldn't move forward, until Breath of the Wild came to change everything.

In Breath of the Wild after the first tutorial, also quite free, we have all the basic objects to get to any point on the map. We can go in underpants and a torch to Hyrule Castle to discuss a topic with Ganon, and we can literally choose to experience everything that is offered to us or nothing at all, in the order that we want, and the adventure continues to have ( more or less ) sense. Thanks to all the new mechanics to move and interact with the surroundings, we can reach all areas and face all struggles in many ways. We have been surprised to see how all the people who have played with us have solved the same situations in such different ways.

All this denying the voices against the performance of the Nintendo Switch: no waiting times on the entire map except in scenes and when entering sanctuaries and divine beasts.

Gameplay

How do you get the difficulty to suit the player? Yes, through fight and movement mechanics and enemies with well-distributed levels that we can avoid.

Physics and skills

Gameplay is the main course of this experience. The delay in bringing Breath of the Wild has been largely due to the development of the physical engine, and thank goodness they have taken their time. Any object that we think can move, anywhere on the map, can do so very realistically. Our actions and those of the enemies affect those objects and both as characters, and when we understand those relationships and use them to our advantage, the game feels like a unique experience.

Along with the physical engine, Link's abilities have been greatly increased in Breath of the Wild. With good planning, climbing and paragliding can take us anywhere. Of course, in moments of rain we are so prevented from climbing that we can get to frustration ( first world problems ). The rechargeable power system integrates seamlessly with those mechanics and, along with the number of hearts, its possible expansion by solving shrines gives meaning to the progression in the game.

Weapons system

One of the great gameplay innovations, praised and criticized alike. We no longer have any or almost permanent fighting items: all weapons we collect break after an average of 20 hits.

Sorry, but it's time to loot this time. Due to the limited inventory of weapons and these are broken, the game manages to level the difficulty. The enemies have weapons as powerful as their level, so after fighting with strong enemies we get better weapons that will be broken using them like the others. Thus, if a player faces higher level enemies, he receives a reward for it, but this does not determine his experience permanently (I now have strong equipment and the game becomes easy) since when using it with weak enemies, his equipment it will break and the one you get in return will be weak.

There are people who have been overwhelmed with this feature, but like me many believe that it manages to allow various paths of difficulty and progression just as Dark Souls does allowing many paths with very different difficulties.

Certainly minor tweaks would make changes to the experience, but if we need it we can also increase the inventory capacity to our liking. The possibility of enlargement offers us challenges in many parts of the map that we would go running looking for another point in history. And like everything unlockable, if we get tired of it, well, nobody forces us to do it in the first place.

Therefore planning our inventory is essential as a player. Going without arrows or powerful weapons to a divine beast will make us think more to solve situations, but there is always a way to solve them. This is precisely why we say that the game treats the player as an adult, because it provides solutions that he must plan and execute. All this without taking him by the hand as if he were not able to add 2 + 2, something rare lately.

Kitchen

We no longer find pieces of heart that fill the ones we have at the top and give us a vinaigrette . This time it is time to hunt, collect, go to a saucepan, think of combinations and, literally, make heart guts. To the inexperienced player it may seem at first that the elaboration of foods and elixirs is quite complex, but it is a question of using ingredients that provide only the effect that you want to add, or these will be canceled. When the difficulty increases, we will find ourselves looking for truffles, durians and all kinds of resources that will allow us to survive, and with a good handling of food and weapons we will hardly ever die.

It is very wise to use the effects of food, since if we cook the dishes with certain effects we will be able to go for a few minutes in areas where we could not go even because we do not have the luggage that resists the environmental conditions of cold or heat. In the same way, food that restores or adds energy allows us to climb areas that are still inaccessible to us without having to go around sometimes quite long.

Kitchen mechanics will undoubtedly be the most useful tool for when we want to make quick games in which we skip parts of the game and objects necessary for progress in certain areas.

Sanctuaries and divine beasts: Puzzles

The biggest asset of TLoZ deliveries has always been the design of dungeons. These are usually varied challenges, with themes for each area and that teach us and force us to use the item we receive in them.

In Breath of the Wild, there are changes in this section. Dungeons and mini-dungeons are now the only theme in ancient civilization, and do not give us radically different items that extend our abilities by leaps and bounds. Of course, they offer rewards that make them more or less worth performing, depending on our style of play.

Some dungeons are simple, others are serious challenges, and some are epic because the challenge is outside, before entering it. We especially love the challenge on Frontia Island: everything is taken from us and we must progress on an island where the difficulty of the enemies increases very quickly, and we without the inventory that we had accumulated. The test lesson: inventory planning is key, but don't let it stop you from always working on your skills .

With this and other exceptions, puzzles make us think but if we go for them all they become repetitive. Its theme contributes to the general history but not to the area and what happens there.

Graphic art

We don't know how many out of ten optometrists recommend Breath of the Wild, but we should do the survey. Not only is the world now immense: it is a gift for the eyes. We constantly find small places to stop, build a small house, forget about the Ganon theme, and that's it.

The 3D comic is a well-worn evolution of the Wind Waker aesthetic. And here Nintendo plays its cards well: thanks to this it achieves a very good performance on its consoles. Rather than looking for hyperrealism with complex textures that should run at low resolution, they choose a style that allows them simpler textures at higher resolution.

This time, we can't say that Nintendo's signature only works: it hits the spot in visuals.

History

This time, however, history has suffered in the readjustment of the commitment to gameplay and freedom. In desktop Zeldas, history has always been an important part of forgetting the linearity of the game, but in BotW the story must be told when the player meets it at their own pace. We are even able to skip entire parts of the story and, after entrusting ourselves to save Princess Zelda from Ganon… not waste time and do it all at once.

The decision for this to work has been to take advantage of the amnesiac awakening situation 100 years after the important events. So these can be counted as messy memories that we can search for and give order and meaning to, and today's history can also be taken in pieces because it only looks back.

And so does it work? It does so taking into account the situation of freedom that it must resolve, but it does not seem to us that it does so as Majora's Mask faced a very similar challenge in its day. The memories appear suddenly and many times when we are in the middle of something that has got into our heads to do, and the reconnection with the History Channel does not become emotional. On the other hand, when we decide to review the memories and make sense of them, there we do get on paper and we are struck by what they want to explain to us.

Tingle

They haven't put Tingle. Has anyone found it? google Tingle Breath of the Wild. Trolls. TINGLEE!

Magnitude

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a huge game. The map, the main challenges, the secondary ones, the characters, objects, collectibles… This game accepts the hours that we want to put in without feeling almost ever repetitive and always having something prepared in the next corner. Since all aspects have been taken care of in detail and in quantity, if something does not motivate us we have enough work discovering the elements that do.

That is why in a few years we will continue to play Breath of the Wild and consider it one of the most important games on Wii U and Nintendo Switch.

Final words and conclusion about Zelda: Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a game to remember in the Zelda saga and arguably among the best and most innovative of 2017. Get together existing mechanics in an adventure that works and absorbs both the player and any spectator. Its console sales title has been cemented with a sales ratio of 1: 1, in which as many games have been sold for Nintendo Switch as consoles (even some more, since some have bought the limited editions and then individual games so as not to have to open them).

We recommend reading: Nintendo Switch Review in Spanish

The freedom and depth it offers makes it a highly recommended game for all audiences and player types. We certainly have hours to roam around Hyrule and discover how the experience changes once we have the full DLC.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

Open world and freedom - 100%

Gameplay - 95%

Kitchen - 100%

Dungeons - 85%

History - 75%

Graphic art - 100%

93%

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a work of art that immerses us in exploration. All sorts of players will find in the post-apocalyptic Hyrule a litter box to unleash their curiosity.