• 6 years ago
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    I feel like a new chapter as started for me as a gamer. I'll be looking at the medium in a different way from now on. I know that sounds really pretentious, but in order to understand what finishing this game meant for me I have to explain how much gaming became a part of my life.

    Playing videogames is probably my all time favorite hobby. For a long time it was listening to music, but I think during the last few years gaming took the first spot. Whenever i'm bored or not doing anything important, it's always a given that I put a game running and i'll have my free time well spent. I've been playing since I was 5 years old, a much simpler time where games were so basic and even then I could not understand most of them. That motivated me to understand them better, so I played every game I could get my hands on and now...here I am. I finished The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

    I've played many games in my life, from countless series and genres, but the one series that stook with em forever was The Legend of Zelda. The first one i've played was Link's Awakening, and at the time it was the best game ever for me. I haven't played that much games at that time, so advancing in Link's Awakening was extremely difficult for me. I remember getting stuck in the sixth dungeon, because I had no ideia the game had a selective Z-Axis. Never the thought occured to me that gaming back then even knew how to do that, so I couldn't solve a puzzle that consisted of basically using the hookshot to get from one platform to the other. I was a dumb innocent kid, like we all once were.

    And then my brother got Ocarina of Time...and my perception of gaming completely changed from that point on! Never has a game showed me the potential of the medium as much as the 1998 masterpiece. I've played Super Mario 64 before, but since I was more into adventure games Ocarina of Time was like a revelation. Completing a dungeon was so satisfying, and discovering new abilities and secrets was so fun. It was a very immersive experience, I felt like I vanished into the game's world while I was playing. Never has a game had that impact in me, and after completing the game I wanted to play videogames for as long as I could in search of similar experiences.

    It never happened. There were other games that influenced my tastes alot, like Final Fantasy III (NES) and Dark Souls, but I never had an experience quite like Ocarina of Time. Not even other Zelda games could live up to it, they're great games (most of them) but could never reach that level of greatness for me. It didn't help that after the enormous success of Ocarina, both financially and critically, Nintendo decided to basically repeat it for every following 3D Zelda game. Fast forward to 2012, when word was out that the new Zelda game was gonna go back to it's 1986 roots: non-linearity, pure freedom of exploration and use of powers and abilities in different ways. Not only that, Nintendo also promised to break series' conventions and rejuvenate the franchise for a new generation. Something this series desperately needed! My hype was skyrocketing year after year, even though they barely revealed anything about the game..until E3 2016 came.

    Nintendo revealed the first trailer for the new Zelda game, titled Breath of the Wild...and it was absolutely amazing! I felt like a kid again, watching a videogame I dreamed about being shown in front of me...it was real! It quickly because my favorite videogame trailer of all time. I watched it so many times - the great gameplay, gorgeous visuals, breathtaking music and serious potential. It was at that point, along with the following hours of gameplay shown, that I finally found a game that could beat Ocarina of Time for me. It seriously looked like the greatest game of all time!

    The following nine months of wait were probably the longest ever for the gamer in me, I simply could not wait for it to come out! And now it has, and I beat it...it feels like a dream come true. I can finally say I beat Breath of the Wild! And now that I can finally say I did, let me make this clear: this is one of the greatest games i've ever played. Bloodborne was dethroned as the greatest game of the generation, to make room for Breath of the Wild. This is the new standard for action-adventure games, and the absolute best open world game ever made!

    The beginning for this game might very well be my favorite ever. You wake up in this mysterious place, a voice talks to you, you get the most essential tool in the game and this voice tells you you're this world's only hope. So you get out, and you see this enormous world just begging to be explored. But you can't explore all of it yet, you have to learn how to play the game first. So the very first area is basically the tutorial, and it's excellent. The area is huge, you can explore it at your leisure and do the required objectives out of order - teaching you the nature of this games' "non" progression. If you speak to the lone citizen in this plateau he will tell you what you need to save Hyrule and where to get it. The rest is up to you. The game puts complete faith in you, not quite as much as the original but the same philosophy is here.

    This is one of the most organic game experiences you'll ever play. Everything to the world design, placement of secrets, puzzle solving, discovery of mechanics, combat, what weapons to use and when, how to approach and defeat enemies...the game puts faith in you that you will figure out everything for yourself, and it's beautiful. Gone is the ridiculously excessive handholding of previous Zelda games, as well as the insulting linearity, and now Zelda finally makes you feel like you're going on an adventure again. Another great thing about it is how freeform it is, you can approach any situation in a multitude of ways. The variety of things you can do to raid an enemy camp, and ways you can solve puzzles is true testament to this game's willingness to shake the Zelda formula.

    Exploring this world is an absolute joy, like the one in The Legend of Zelda. You can tell the original game was the base foundation for Breath of the Wild, it basically took its basic concepts, and the freeform design philosophy, and ramped it up to eleven! Hyrule is bigger than the world of Skyrim...let that sink in. But a huge world with stuff to do and find is not enough, it needs to be well structured, have interesting geography and fun ways to interact with it - Breath of the Wild wipes the floor with every other open world game in this aspect. The amount of stuff to find and do in this game is simply mindblowing, but what makes it really special is how all of it is structured. You'll eventually run across a plain with seemingly nothing in it but grass/rocks/sand/snow, and geographically it makes sense and makes the world look and feel real, but while traversing aimlessly in the world you'll always come across something interesting that will motivate you to go check out. And after that you'll see something else in the distance...rinse and repeat. The way they distributed all kinds of resources, enemies and secrets throughout the world makes it feel very dense instead of an empty wasteland. Seriously, this is the best structured world in a videogame to date!

    And it's not just exploring it, but traversing it as well. The amount of ways is staggering. You can ride a horse or any other animal, use your paraglider from a high point, shield surf (OMG THIS IS AWESOME), swim (not so awesome), fast travel and most important of all...climbing. This mechanic was crucial to making this world so fun to explore, because it opens up so many ways you can arrive to your destination. It also adds a level of verticality that opens up many possibilities, which Breath of the Wild gladly explores.

    Now, I am fan-gasming all over this game...but I don't want to give the impression that the immense hype and enjoyment made me blind. The game has problems, some of them i'd consider quite serious.

    Exploration is beautifully done because the game gives you everything you need to explore it in the tutorial area, allowing you to go literally everywhere from the very beginning. But what this also means is that that feeling of growing as you're playing, getting more weapons and tools to expand your possibilities which made previous Zeldas so special, is kind of gone. You get Magnesis, Stasis, Cryonis, Bombs...and that's it. You're set to explore everything and solve every puzzle. I personally loved this change of pace and thought it was executed brilliantly, but I can't deny that I missed being rewarded with a new weapon or tool as I explored after a while. I honestly thought there'd be a way to expand your abilities after a certain point in the game, but it never happened and I can definitely understand why some players would find that extremely dissapointing and unrewarding.

    Another problem I have with the tools the game gives you is that they're almost never used to their potential. They compliment the exploration beautifully, but when it comes to puzzle-solving it always felt "half-assed". What I mean by this is that 98% of the puzzles in this game are designed with only one tool in mind. You have a puzzle where you have to use bombs, another where you use Magnesis, the other needs ice blocks...they almost always require only one of them, which made them so ridiculously easy and one dimensional. Luckly the game's freeform nature still shows here, in that just because you only need one tool doesn't mean you can't get creative and use the others to help you find different solutions. They're not entirely bland and unsubstantial thanks to this, but if you're coming into Breath of the Wild expecting puzzles at the same level as previous Zeldas like I did then you'll most likely be sorely dissapointed.

    And this brings up the dungeons themselves, called Shrines in this game...and their mostly not good. The concept itself is brilliant, and complements the world of the game, but the content in these Shrines is too easy and simplistic to sing any praises. There's 120 in total, spread across Hyrule, and the only thing you get is an Orb which allows you to exchange for Heart Containers or Stamina Vessels. First of all, not all of them are puzzle based. In fact, a quite large number of them have simply nothing in them other than a treasure chest or a single enemy. The game has these sidequests that are called Shrine quests, in which you solve a riddle in the overworld itself in order for the actual Shrine to appear. But what the game does is provide the actual puzzle only in the overworld, and then you actually get into the Shrine all there is is a single treasure chest and the Orb to collect. And then there's the Test of Strength Shrines, which require you to fight a single enemy. The worst thing about it is that they're all the same, and you always fight the exact same enemy...in every single one of them. And there's about 20 of these in the entire game. Along with the Shrines tied to a quest, I think they're around 40 or something. This absolutely reeks of rushed development, to be able to put as much Shrines as possible. The fact the other Shrines that try to put up challenging puzzles are usually not that challenging also doesn't help.

    Now the combat system. I like the game's combat, I found it to be enjoyable in its simplicity all throughout the game and noticed how rewarding it can be to kill them in different ways other than using your weapons. It's actually mindblowing when you figure out the multitude of ways you can kill an enemy, either with your weapons, tools, surrounding objects or using environmental conditions to your advantage. With that said it doesn't hold much water when compared to other action or ARPG combat systems like Bayonetta, Ninja Gaiden, Devil May Cry, Souls, Nioh, Nier: Automata or Final Fantasy XV. When we're talking about combat mechanics, there really isn't much to it. It feels like an evolution of 3D Zelda combat, and it definitely feels better than any previous Zeldas, but I get the feeling they could've done alot more. Shield Parry makes a return from Skyward Sword, but it functions alot better and the timing needed is very precise which is good, and there's a new move called the Flurry Rush. I like the idea, but I found it to be a bit too easy to abuse. The timing needed to trigger a Flurry Rush can be a bit questionable at times as well, but overall it works well and it's rewarding to use. Probably the best thing this game does with combat is its bow mechanics and controls, they're simply excellent and the best i've seen in a game by far. The gyro controls really work beautifully when you're aiming at a target, and triggering the slow-motion in mid-air to shoot multiple targets is so awesome and satisfying.

    Another new mechanic that this game introduced to the series, and it impacts combat quite a bit, is the durability system. This is probably the most talked about and most criticized change in the game, I honestly feel the durability of weapons is a good idea and it fits with the survival nature where you have to explore and scavenge whatever you can find to survive...with that said, it needs some serious tweaking. Weapons generally break pretty fast, even late ones that are supposed to be really strong, so it's important to always have a few at your disposal. Problem is that at the beginning of the game it only gives you like 6 slots or something to store weapons, and what means is constantly picking up weapons after your current ones break. Not bad on paper, but what will happen many times is you kill an enemy and it drops its weapon which just happens to be stronger than all your saved ones. So what I usually did in this situation is go to my inventory and drop either the weakesnt one I have or the one i've been using the most because its close to breaking. And this happened WAAAY too many times, whether at enemies dropping them or finding a new one in a treasure chest, and it started to frustrate me! To the point where after a while you start to think...and you realize that fighting enemies is mostly a nuisance. Why would I waste my time fighting those enemies, when all i'm gonna accomplish is driving the weapons I worked hard to get closer to breaking? It really takes away from the satisfaction of finding an awesome weapon, you know you're gonna save it the entire game because you don't want to waste it on common enemies. And this eventually reaches that point where I never actually use it...it's fun to search and find them because exploration is so great in Breath of the Wild, but ultimately it's inconsequential.

    I think it's about time I talk about other things besides than the gameplay. The presentation of this game is very good, art design is beautiful and for a game rendered in 720p it looks beautiful and better than most 1080p games i've played. The art direction and creative designs really go far with this game. Sceneries look breathtaking, reaching a high point and just looking at the world itself is literally a sight to behold. The soundtrack is mostly good, it's not the typical bombastic soundtrack most Zeldas have that makes its presence known. It's very subtle and minimalistic, which could dissapoint many people but I enjoyed it alot. Not having a song looping in the background while walking through the overworld was a godsend. My problem is that the soundtrack reaches its highest point on the main theme, which is absolutely beautiful, and that makes the rest of the tracks rather weak by comparison. And some tracks are just downright weird, like the battle theme and the battle against a Talus. This is definitely no Ocarina of Time, but the change in direction made sense.

    The story is, like most Zelda games, very barebones. You wake up 100 years after the villain destroyed Hyrule, and your job is to remember what happened during that time, to save Zelda and defeat Calamity Ganon. The beautiful thing about it is how it's all told, most of it is completely optional and very easy for someone to miss the bigger picture. I find this kind of storytelling perfectly fitting with Zelda and gaming in general, literally puts the story in charge of the player. I did went out of my way to collect all the memories and save the four champions, and all I can say is that the little story that is there is nothing to write home about. This is the first Zelda game with voice acting, and SURPRISE it's bad. I don't get why Zelda speaks in a british accent, when no other person talks like that. The characters themselves are actually good, they're likeable and have personality. It's just a shame the plot isn't at that level. I think my biggest problem with this game's lore is the fact that the technology in this game makes absolutely no sense. It's never explained in the game how it actually came to be, other than "oooh it's maaagic science!". Most people won't be bothered by this, people just accept this as fantasy-science fiction and they roll with it but in my opinion they could at least attempt to detail how some of this ancient technology works and how it came to be.

    ...man that was ridiculously long. By far the longest review i've ever written on the internet, but with reason. I wanted to go into detail for this game because this is a very special one. This game was extremely important for me. It was the game that I was most hyped for ever, and it would be a shame if it didn't live up to the hype. But boy did it deliver! This is why after finishing the game felt like a new chapter has started, because I will never be as hyped for another game ever. I could be wrong, but i'm fairly certain it won't happen. I will never see videogames in the same way, not just because i've grown up and have way less time to spend playing them but also because I will never play a game that will be as fun or engross me as much.

    After much thought...i'm sorry Ocarina of Time...the throne is no longer yours. I never thought this day would come, but if there's one game that had a chance to do it was this one. Breath of the Wild is the greatest game of the generation, the greatest game of its genre and my new favorite game of all time!
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    • MasterCrash
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      MasterCrash
      Editing … Print it, cover it and sell it as a book
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    • Sudertum
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      Sudertum
      Editing … Will never get how some people can write so much text! Prefer making lists...
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    • Ulty
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      Ulty
      Editing … Oh this is nothing, my Dark Souls II review already has 9000+ words :D
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    • Rich .
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      Rich .
      Editing … Shame it's an exclusive. I'd like to play it but I'm not buying a Switch purely for Zelda.
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    • Ulty
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      Ulty
      Editing … You're not interested in #Super Mario Odyssey? #Xenoblade Chronicles 2? Or any of the possible Nintendo IP's? If not then no it's not worth spending $400, but if you're basing your decision on lack of games don't because Nintendo products never get pricedrops. The New 3DSXL is still the same exact price since I bought it in 2015.
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    • MasterCrash
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      MasterCrash
      Editing … And so are the games :c
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    • Gries He
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      Gries He
      Editing … 4/5, would read again
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    • Ulty
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      Ulty
      Editing … I'm honored, Gries.
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    • Gries He
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      Gries He
      Editing … Obviously I don't share your enthusiasm for Zelda games (quite on the contrary), but it's fascinating to see you fangasm all over this game nonetheless :)
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