Excessive overall impressions
Over time i've been feeling that the Zelda series as much as I enjoy it has lost its feeling of grandeur, Ocarina of Time is nearly 20 years old at this point and that's roughly two decades of the series chasing its shadow. This isn't to say the myriad of sequels in this time frame have been bad, far from it, there's little else out there that does what Zelda does leaving it to occupy a pretty uncontested niche among action adventure titles, as such it still feels rather unique when a title comes out complete with a ton of charm and polish as expected from the Zelda team.
Regardless by the time I played Skyward Sword I couldn't shake that simply the way the game felt to play was kind of antiquated, in particular the way Link controlled (minus motion control aspects) stuck out to me as being still locked into that 1998 template and this is without considering the games formula still dating back further to the SNES right down to 3 dungeons, thing happens, more dungeons, endgame. Meanwhile other Nintendo franchises started doing a lot more to either reinvent themselves or simply deliver a top tier slice of their respective genre without the strange flaws bogging down modern Zelda, from the gamecube era's Metroid Prime, the Wii generation's Mario Galaxy duo and heck even the WiiU has examples of series doing what they do best at their peak (DKC Tropical Freeze) or successfully expanding on their formula to great effect (Pikmin 3). And this is without factoring the new series gradually rising up, Xenoblade for instance immediately delivered me the feeling of exploration adventure that Zelda had been struggling with. (and i'm just sticking under the Nintendo umbrella here, it gets ever crazier when the rest of the industry comes into play)
Yet Zelda still gets all the fervour from fans and critics alike and as you may tell I was beginning to think "but has it really done anything recently to warrant it?", from my angle Mario had truly eaten Link's lunch by this point, the mainline 3D platformers after the Sunshine misstep had been a much more solid stream of top quality, both series usually occupy a similar spot running side by side as Nintendo's biggest and most recurring ones, Zelda though had been getting gassed and falling behind.
Enter Breath of the Wild, the result of a long development period and a platform switch, so far so Twilight Princess. We all saw the claims from the Anouma to rethink the conventions of zelda, we'd seen the demos, the trailers and now we were seeing the reviews pour in to almost unanimous gushing praise. After just under 80 hours with the game having wrapped up the last shrine I feel fairly comfortable saying that this is the strongest Zelda game since Majora's Mask.
It's worth noting from the start that my own reaction to the switch to open world gameplay was one of both approval and doubt, approval in that the series needed a refresher and this was a logical way of going about it, doubt because I'm one of those people who finds open worlds to more often lead to busywork and a loss of focus. If I were to consider what I thought the most impressive open world games are in the business I'd lean towards GTAV and The Witcher 3, both of which I enjoyed but never fully loved. As a gameplay first kinda guy Rockstar's efforts will always hit me as "jack of all trades, master of none" endeavours in regards to its shooting/driving and so on, Witcher meanwhile was like smashing my head through a wall to gain entry, it took me a long time to click but ultimately as strong as it was it felt too bloated and I had my fill around Skellige. Zelda immediately gets off on the right foot with me in its regards to open world, it's very much mechanics orientated, it doesn't come close to offering the variety of GTA or the story beats of Witcher but for me that's more than fine, this is the spot Zelda finds in a currently oversaturated genre and it was in fact a pretty large gap that had been left unfilled.
Adventure is the name of the game and all that it entails, the freedom to fully explore, the risk of danger and the thrill of discovery. I could probably tackle each one of these points on their own, Freedom is pretty self explanatory, once off the plateau that teaches you the basics of BotW without shattering your hand holding it so hard like some previous Zelda titles you have the entire kingdom to explore if you so want, obviously it's wise to stick with the basic direction you have to start with but the important thing is that the options are there, a game open enough to let you run straight to calamity Ganon and get wrecked (or even wreck him and save Hyrule in about an hour). As for danger part of me feels the need to credit From Software's Souls titles for reintroducing the idea to modern games that it's totally okay to get completely murked when off exploring, having that risk is part of the fun. I think this was one of the main things people were getting at a few years back when Dark Souls first rose to prominence and started giving us the old trope of "Zelda should be like Dark Souls!" (shortly before the days of *insert game* is the Dark Souls of *insert genre*). It was more that DS more channelled the Zelda 1 and 2 philosophy here as opposed to giving us puzzling dungeon action, the whole more like souls angle could've used some narrowing down but I get the idea. Back to challenge, there are Bokoblins on the plateau area that deal more damage than Twilight Princess' Ganondorf, what a pleasant turn around.
Discovery is done so well here that anyone who even so much as suggests that the Shiekah Towers are just like Ubisoft towers should be banned from playing anything but Ubisoft's open world template titles for the next year. I'm not saying anything we don't already know here about how the reveal of the map's topography doesn't burden you with ten trillion icons of collectables and other filler, instead you just get a context for your surrounding environment and a nice vantage point to MANUALLY choose what spots interest you and mark them down. This difference alone is something that takes even BotW's sometimes fetchquest esque sidequests and seemingly excessive 900 Korok Seeds (more on them later) to retain that feeling of discovery and not come across like a a glorified shopping list, it's still up to you, listening to what people say, taking a note of the interesting quirks in the environment and not a glowing line to follow in sight.
As for things relating back more to the core of the Zelda series (that being items and dungeons in particular) BotW mixes things up here as well, not necessarily for the better but in ways that fit the open world formula. The various runes replacing Link's usual array of Hylian gadgets are an almost understated reason to the feeling of freshness in BotW, powers like cryosis, magnesis and stasis offer new types of puzzles, there's no "ah that'll be for my upcoming hookshot" or "time for the obligatory boomerang puzzle", instead all these new skills are given to you in quick succession from near the start and will reside with you for the rest of the game working together to create the most connected set of tools Link has had at his disposal. As such the puzzle design across the entire world can make use of all of these, while frontloading these does remove the thrill of discovering a new item it's much more beneficial for the open nature of the world. It also means that the many shrines dotted around the land are capable of being bite-sized challenges in a vein more similar to Super Mario Galaxy.
For more involving puzzling areas there are the divine beasts, probably the game's most controversial approach outside of weapon breakage (oh and here's my hot take on that, it barely matters, no need getting attached to weapons in a world drowning you with them). Let me get the bad out of the way, Divine Beasts aren't really are substitute for dungeons of old, they give a nice nod to those days but its formulaic terminal hunt doesn't quite scratch the itch a puzzle filled labyrinth does. This doesn't however mean that they are bad, oh far from it. See factoring in the world itself you have these eye catching beasts reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus' colossi, upon first gaining access to one (side note: each pre beast entry segment is a cracking set piece) I expected the game to finally cheat and break its established rules in regards to scale. Which is to say I expected to stroll in and that the game would load up an isolated interior area suspiciously larger than that of the beast itself. Nope, we get these things to scale, while I'm sure there's some shortcuts in play here to help create this illusion it doesn't matter much, it's just damn cool to see the commitment to their place in the environment, to scamper across the interior and exterior of the beasts and the ability to manipulate the beasts with some limited map functions creating more dynamic puzzles. The more freeform puzzling in general is rather fantastic, the series has heavily been "do it this way or not at all"so to have moments where it felt like I was gaming the system to solve puzzles (some shrines in fact revel in offering you this option). With all this in mind I don't really take umbrage with what the beasts offer.
Shit, this is getting a lot longer than I planned, I wasn't gonna go full review here and I haven't even got around to how much I love the climbing system that has shades of Shadow of the Colossus right down to increasing stamina increasing my brazen leaps, or the artistic vision that brings the world to life even on an underpowered WiiU, or the armour sets that let me be rid of that hat, or the gosh darn Lynels.
Okay let me just get in my piece about Korok Seeds because they're some of the most impressed I've been by mere collectables since DKC2. Like many things in the game, their existence is not explicitly taught to the player, the world is full of all sorts of small puzzles that you'll overlook at first until you start noticing the familiar setups recurring, each time you figure out one of these many korok staples you remember just how many similar situations you just walked straight past and then wonder if those other anamolies in the world were also a type of puzzle. Then there's the seeds themselves in which the reward is two fold in that it often ensures that your trip off the beaten track got you something more than say a nice view and that the seeds themselves build towards worthwhile unlocks. It's also a rare case where having a number like 900 doesn't come across like overkill at all when you consider that it's not expected for the player to come close to collecting all of them, heck even half of them! It basically ensures that for the keen eyed players no matter where their detours take them they'll always have the opportunity to find the bits and pieces to expand their inventory. A collectable to fit every type of players adventure (right down to ultra completionists getting the BEST REWARD) with tangible benefits for even just a few.
All sounds pretty gushing right? well obviously there's flaws here, plenty of them, a game this big in scope is bound to hit them. Likewise to my praise I could rattle off stuff like the world being too big (evident in the rather redundant Gerudo highlands in particular), too many repeated combat shrines, too few enemy types, some cookie cutter sidequests with lacklustre rewards, the previously mentioned dungeon stuff, frame rate woes and more.
But it's hard for me to really be that irked by the sticking points here, even if the world's magic loses some sparkle after 40 hours the fact it even made it that far before the gamey elements became more obviously apparent is a win in itself. I'd hold off giving it a perfect score if I were to assign numerical values to this (something I'm increasingly thinking is a blight on game discussion right there but it has its moments) as I can imagine a more refined follow up and it doesn't shake off all my open world woes. When it comes down to it though this is a truly bold game, to finally reinvent the series, to instil so much wonder in so many players, to stick to its guns in the face of making some controversial changes, this here is a game that absolutely deserves its praise even if I reach the end of the year and end up liking other titles more (can Mario eat Link's lunch again?). My time with this game was well spent, fond memories of banana loving assassins, a tragic horse demise complete with revenge story and happy ending (cheers horse God), a totally boss bird with an accordion dropping riddles and much more.
Zelda has reclaimed it's top status, roll on the DLC, if I've learnt anything from Dark Souls and Bloodborne it's that great DLC can be the difference maker that takes a title from nearing the top to the peak itself.
