[ENG/ESP] Review - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

---

**Greetings, Hive!** The first time I heard about this platform was last year around this same time, it immediately caught my attention but it wasn't until about 3 or 4 months ago that I could start on it because I didn't have internet service at home. One of the first things I thought of doing was a series of reviews from my favorite videogame franchise: The Legend of Zelda, the reasons were simple, it's a subject I master and it was going to help me to get familiar with Hive, so on April 19 I started with the A Link to the Past’s review. I must say that I was more than surprised with the receptivity that all the reviews have had in the community, all this work has made me very happy because it has also helped me to rediscover my passion for videogames and also to get into videogame analysis, something that has always interested me a lot. For now, this post is the last one in this series of analysis of the main games of The Legend of Zelda saga, and of course the title I will be talking about today will be nothing more and nothing less than The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. So without any further ado, let's start!   Throughout videogames history there are a couple of these ones that have left a before and after in the industry, when we think about this idea it’s easy to come to mind titles like Super Mario Bros, Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy VII, Bioshock, Skyrim, GTA V, etc, and while there is a significant number of games that have done this, it is not the predominant factor in the industry, we have the joy of seeing these titles every so often and usually since they are announced a gigantic hype builds around them, public expectations are huge and the internet is often ruthless, a misstep is all what it takes for a developer to make a year’s work a total mess, that's why it’s less and less common to see AAA titles that dare to change the established formulas, everyone (and rightly so) prefers to stay in a comfort zone, in what they know will work.

---


---

It is here where these video games that change the industry and define the era in which they exist appear. The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is one of those games that decided to risk everything to break what characterized Zelda to date, and I repeat myself... It’s a VERY risky choice; Zelda in particular is a franchise with a very difficult audience, just take a look at what happened with the release of The Wind Waker and how Nintendo desperately tried to revive Ocarina of Time through Twilight Princess. The development of Breath of the Wild began in 2010, as a game planned for Nintendo's new console the Nintendo Wii U, the main goal was to develop an interconnected world in which players would have a much greater freedom of exploration than in previous installments, so they took inspiration from games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, while the combat system took elements from the Dark Souls saga. One of the most important things in this release is the physics engine that drives the game, this engine is extremely natural and works in almost infinite ways, allowing the player to solve the puzzles and combats in the most creative ways possible. After numerous delays since its announcement in 2013, the game was finally released on March 3, 2017 for the Nintendo Wii U and as a launch title for Nintendo's new console: the Nintendo Switch.

---

Breath of the Wild was the first Zelda game to be set in an open world (and I'm not 100% sure, but I think it was also the first open world game that Nintendo developed) and the result was exceptional in many ways, to date it’s the game with more perfect reviews in history, and hundreds of critics and magazines hail it as the best video game ever created. While Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece in many of its sections, for me there are certain details that make it not quite reach the pedestal of the best video game in history.  

---

Usually the first thing people talk about Breath of the Wild is its gigantic world, and for good reason. I'm not exaggerating when I say that this game offers you total freedom at its maximum expression, every corner that our eyes see is reachable in some way or another, its extension seems almost infinite and can even feel intimidating on more than one occasion. We add to this that in this adventure Link has an ability that doesn’t seem like a big deal but is what makes it possible for us to explore whatever we want: climbing. With the right equipment Link can climb about 90% of the natural or artificial structures in the game. Whether it's running, riding horse, climbing, gliding through the air, boating, we can go anywhere we want, Hyrule is our playground, the exploration becomes so incredible that while I was playing it and decided to go somewhere, on the way I got lost because something else caught my attention and I forgot about my initial destination.  Each place is interesting and it has details related to the lore of the saga or the game, not to mention the beautiful landscapes that the game gifts us, however more than once I felt that the world was very empty, it lacked much more life, although I understand that this is due to Nintendo Wii U’s hardware limitations. Most of the time our exploration will be rewarded with either a Kolog Seed or a Shrine. And talking about shrines...   It can be said that in this game the shrines take the place of the dungeons from previous installments; within them we can find various challenges that can range from solving a puzzle, completing a platforming segment, or having a fight with a mini boss. Once we have completed the respective challenge of the shrine we will be rewarded with an orb that we can use either to increase our life or our stamina. There are a total of 120 shrines scattered throughout Hyrule, some in plain sight and others hidden and will appear when we meet certain requirements. Believe me, finding and completing them all of the shrines is a challenge and you will spend quite a few hours of gameplay on this.  You may wonder what happened to the classic dungeons to advance in the plot? Let’s see… They're still here, but at the same time they're not... I mean, these aren’t mandatory to complete the game's story (in fact, you can go fight the final boss as soon as you start the game, whether you can get there is another thing...), but if you want to enjoy the full experience I totally recommend you complete them. There are 4 dungeons in total, each of them located in the tribes that live in Hyrule: the Gorons, the Zora, the Gerudo, and the Rito. This is one of the points where the game fails for me. The design of the 4 dungeons is very similar to each other, and while they offer some pretty interesting puzzles overall they feel very bland, it's much more exciting to get to the dungeon itself than complete it. As is tradition, at the end of the dungeon we'll have a boss confrontation, these monsters are a manifestation of Ganon's wrath and... They're pretty disappointing. The design of the 4 bosses is literally the same with some differences between them, but nothing else. Each one of them has a different way of fighting, but don't expect a big challenge either. Undoubtedly the most interesting thing about the dungeons is the story that is related to them and the Champions, through the dungeons we can learn about the history of the Champions and how their relationships with Link and Zelda were.   As I previously mentioned, the combat system took a lot of influence from Dark Souls, apart from the already known Link's moves we can now make a series of super-fast attacks in slow motion that we can activate if we make a parry with our shield or if we dodge an attack at the exact timing. At the beginning of the game the combat can be quite challenging and the enemies do a lot of damage, the bad thing is that once you get used to the attack patterns of the enemies the level of challenge decreases a lot because the variety of these is not too wide in relation to the amount of time we will be playing, so it tends to become repetitive.

---

One of the most controversial aspects of the game is the weapon durability system, which basically means that as we use a weapon, it will tear until it breaks and leaves us unarmed. Yes, just as you read, now weapons break, so we will have to be properly equipped if we don’t want to be unarmed in the middle of a fight. If we have more weapons in our inventory there won't be much of a problem, if we don't, then... Let’s improvise. This system has its pros and cons, I think the best thing about it is that it gives a lot of variety to the gameplay and makes you want to experiment with the huge amount of weapons in the game, we have traditional swords, two-handed swords, axes, boomerangs, bows, spears, rods, we can even fight using a broom! But it's a bit annoying that there is no way to know how much life our weapons have left or the lack of any way to make them last longer. At first this is a bit overwhelming, but the truth is that as you progress through the game you get used to it and even learn to enjoy switching weapons constantly. 

---

From the beginning of the adventure we will have the Sheikah Slate, a technological artifact that will give us access to interesting abilities such as bombs that will detonate when we decide to activate them, freeze water, control metal objects through magnetism, and even paralyze an object to hit it and make it accumulate kinetic energy and shoot it out. This, added to the incredible physics engine of the game, gives infinite possibilities to experimentation to solve puzzles or even to the combat, there is no a "correct" or pre-established way to do something, the game allows you to let your imagination run wild.  

---

Music... I think I'm the one with the problem here. Music in a video game is a determining factor for me and especially in a Zelda game because I’m a musician and it was Zelda Ocarina of Time that inspired me to become a musician. Music is one of the saga’s most characteristic aspects; however in this installment it was decided that most of our adventure will be lived in silence, accompanied by sounds of nature. I understand the reason for this decision and the truth is that it seems logical to me, however I wish that in some way or another, music had been given a little more prominence. Of course, the fact of being in silence most of the time makes the impact of the soundtrack much greater when it appears, apart from the fact that the compositions are excellent, as usual. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiTsXcrxZfg&ab_channel=DystifyMusic 

---