zelda: breath of the wild review

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As a long-term fan, it’s a treat to see Nintendo take its gift for problem solving outside of the Zelda comfort zone - a place the series has arguably inhabited since Ocarina of Time. One of the things Skyward Sword really got right was dragging larger action beats and puzzles out into the overworld - with its vast open canvas, Breath of the Wild supercharges this idea. Then you have to contend with weapon degradation, asking you to really cherish what you have and master whatever ends up in your hands. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users. More than this, Hyrule never slips into tick ’em off chores popularised by Far Cry or Assassin’s Creed.

It’s in pushing into untouched territories, solving their mysteries to unlock their artefacts, that you can carve your own route to the final boss. The rulebook isn’t just torn up. The rolling plains of Hyrule Field stretched out beneath you. "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild" really is all about exploration: the amount of freedom in the game is absolutely incredible, the open-ended nature of the gameplay is magnificent, and the fact that you can play however you want to is brilliant. The shrines also simplify the Zelda dungeon formula in an almost mobile game-like manner, resulting in satisfyingly quick puzzles that can usually be completed in less than 15 minutes or so. Link’s latest adventure is a bold and much-needed reinvention of the beloved franchise. Where you find people, you find side quests with meaningful rewards. It pulls ideas from other games, like crafting or survival, yet makes them feel perfectly at home in its beloved universe.

The series has always had something of a fairytale quality to it - its grand landscapes and worlds suggestive of so much more. Scrambling up surfaces makes you intensely aware of the world above you and invites designers to hide secrets in the weirdest places.

This review contains light spoilers for the early hours of Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild isn’t perfect - the right combo of visual effects can hurt the frame rate in a way that is rare in Nintendo’s first party efforts - but it asks you to forgive far fewer rough edges compared to its peers. It manages the difficult trick of giving you the broad strokes of the epic - the mountainous skyline, 300 foot waterfalls, the odd ribcage of some continent-sized beast - but, unlike Xenoblade, delivers nuance up close. Today’s obsession is attaching inflatable octorok guts (think Metal Gear’s Fulton balloons, but way, way grosser) to logs and clinging to the bark as I serenely float over the fields like the old guy in Up.

Even the act of filling out Breath of the Wild’s map instils a deep sense of adventure. In fact, it takes a gigantic, too-heavy-to-carry sword to that time-tested … Well, Breath of the Wild doesn’t want to play by the rules.

The sight of dawn over a shimmering lake. And while we were blown away by what we saw, Nintendo was mum about the game throughout 2015, showing no gameplay during the year, delaying the game several times, and notoriously not showing it at their E3 press conference, even though the game had once been slated to launch in 2015. Breath of the Wild takes this idea, cuts out the fluff, and expands upon it. Breath of the Wild offers a more open and expansive world to explore, but it also demands more of its players than other Zeldas, forcing you to get better and smarter to survive. It speaks to our imaginations, calling us on to adventure. Instead, I trekked across Hyrule activating the specific towers found in each region, which not only help fill in the details of the map but also provide crucial fast-travel points. It was scary, yes, but Nintendo, with far more poise than they showed throughout any of the Wii U's years, fearlessly took the new "Zelda" title in several directions, and we ended up getting a game that may well be one of the best in the company's storied history. In most RPGs, numbers determine almost everything you can do. Breath of the Wild has something that’s been missing from the series for years: surprise. This added to the overall pressure of the game: there's the pressure to be really great, the pressure to live up to the "Zelda" name, and now, the pressure to give gamers a reason to go out at launch and buy themselves a shiny, new Nintendo Switch. With health-replenishing hearts removed from the world you depend on cooking to whip up healing meals and buffs. New York, The moment I realized The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild might actually be my favorite Zelda adventure ever struck me like lightning — literally. Not since that game’s leap to 3D and introduction of lock-on targeting has a Zelda game made this many breakthroughs. I found myself especially taken with this feature, scouring the world for new vegetables and meats, and seeing what I could make of them. Visit our corporate site. I want to uncover new secrets and abilities. If this involves tanking your way to Ganon with 100 bomb arrows and a knapsack packed with health-restoring steaks, then so be it. A town won’t appear on your map until you actually go there, which you can only do by finding it on your own. Link chugs elixirs to endure extreme hot or cold, but once in those regions you will soon find clothing that negates those concerns. More so than just about any game series, Zelda’s heart lies in exploration, that moment of seeing a towering mountain in the distance and realizing that eventually you’ll be able to reach the top. (Though it never approaches the daunting difficulty of games like Bloodborne or Dark Souls.). Nintendo did the same thing they did with Twilight Princess and released it as both the final great game for th... Read Full Review, I finished the main game and played for over 40 hours with plenty of exploring and side content (still lots to see and do). The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review Link’s latest adventure is a bold and much-needed reinvention of the beloved franchise By Andrew Webster Mar 2, 2017, 6:00am EST Do give it a shot, you really should. Instead, it tells (or shows) you what needs to happen, and lets you fill in the rest. This marks a fundamental shift for the series. A moon that almost out-creeps Majora’s Mask’s. Not only is Breath of the Wild’s map large; it’s also dense. In these moments, Breath of the Wild feels like Wind Waker on a horse. You can see the dividing lines between the various regions that make up Hyrule, but none of their details. Musical themes that whisk you back to where you first heard them. Breath of the Wild scraps this logic. That this is the first Zelda you can win by exploiting barbecued meats is a glorious thing. People still exist, in small towns and stables, but much of Hyrule is beset by hordes of monsters who have bivouacked into the hills. Former editor of Official Nintendo Magazine and Official Xbox Magazine. Thank you for signing up to GamesRadar+. In fact, throughout Breath of the Wild you sense Nintendo gleefully taking apart action-RPG conventions. I want more. As heavy rain began to pour, a strong wind rustled the tall grass, and in the distance I could hear the crack of lightning.

Receive news and offers from our other brands? It’s only once you start exploring that it fills out. If you were to stick to the story you’d only visit half the regions available on the map, and see only a sliver of those to boot. If you’re a level 5 character in a typical RPG, you definitely don’t want to head into a dungeon filled with level 10 enemies, and there’s a whole range of items and abilities you can’t use until you grind long enough to meet the appropriate level. Early on these shrines serve as tutorials, showing necessary details about Link’s powers — like his ability to temporarily halt time or use bombs — but later they essentially become puzzle boxes, which approach Portal-levels of cleverness. Link can now cook, for instance, gathering ingredients in the wild, using them to make food that replenishes health or buffs abilities. Yesterday was all about trying to bring down helicopter sentries by starting grass fires and heaving bombs skywards by lobbing them into the resulting updraft.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild review: "It's taken 18 years, but Nintendo has done it again: this is the adventure game to beat" By Matthew Castle 02 March 2017 Comments This lack of direction can be disorienting at first.

Every day I find time to use Link’s metal-lifting magnesis power to pick up metal crates and thwack them into moblins. Nintendo’s finest work since Super Mario Galaxy. More recent Zelda games have become bogged down with needless hand holding, an overabundance of tutorials, and overly complicated narratives. You’ll often find him shivering or sweating because of the weather, his health depleting. So much can happen in ten minutes of BOTW that it’s tempting to slip into list mode. This effectively walls off large portions of the world until you’ve achieved a numerical level of success. In short order, it became a pivotal part of the game, and my main method of transportation. If you spot a mountain, a castle, or virtually anything else, you can climb it. Link gets more health and stamina as you progress, and you can acquire stronger weapons and armor, but he never gets stronger himself. The way dropping meat by a dog earns you a loyal pal. We'll begin emailing you updates about %gameName%. It’s the most challenging Zelda I’ve played in many years, but also the most satisfying. It asks you to do just enough to prove you have the survival chops, but refuses to let stress get in the way of the fun. With the steel unequipped, I was able to safely make my through the storm. The most freeform Zelda yet, without sacrificing the charm, fun or quality you expect from the series. Zelda games have always been large, but Breath of the Wild feels uniquely grand, a massive open world filled with so much to do that I suspect most players — even those who complete the main story — will miss large swaths of the map. It collaborated with Monolith Soft, makers of Xenoblade Chronicles, and the resulting world comes as no surprise. It’s a beautiful Nintendo take on a mechanic that so easily becomes a chore elsewhere. The thrust of the game, then, is evening the odds - using all these wonderful new tools in creative ways, while kitting-out Link to a point where he won’t get smushed to a paste. You know the deal: find the dungeon, do the dungeon, earn a power to assist in the final assault.

A Hyrule where volcanic air ignites the wooden blade in your grip and rain makes your hands slide like warm butter off cliff walls. Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss. It was a moment so genre-defining that I’m not sure Nintendo ever stepped out of that mountain’s shadow. For the Zelda team’s first ‘true’ open world this is a staggering achievement. Every time I restarted, the same thing would happen. Breath of the Wild is more open and natural than its predecessors, letting you discover things — like how lightning works — through experimentation. But as Hyrule misbehaves, so Link can misbehave in it. Even better, unlike typical Zelda puzzles, those in Breath of the Wild’s shrines often have multiple solutions. Will it rain halfway up and doom the expedition? Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer, Today's best Zelda: Breath of the Wild deals, We check over 130 million products every day for the best prices.

Weapons, too, give way.

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