This the game that launched thousands of Switches. Its the best game on the console, and the most captivating Zelda game I've played in a long time. This is a game that perfected how its world works and reacts, gave Link all-terrain climbing skills, made a massive open world then took off the handrails and lets the player go anywhere nearly from the start. Want to climb that mountain in the distance, yeah the one with the frost peaks on top, do it. Seriously, Link don't need no pick axe, no climbing gloves.  Run against wild horses, hop up and tame one? Go for it. Fight some tough monsters, even though they can kill you in one hit? Yeah, use your back flips, parries and such to turn the tables on them, its all Dark Souls in Hyrule!!  Want to swim in Lava? Wait, don't do that, it never pays off.

Its a zelda game that takes chances.  An open world game where you scavenge gear and food from your foes and the environment. Tracking down the sometimes hidden shines to make your character's life stronger or stamina bar to climb better. You must solve the puzzle of the shines first, though small in size there are over a hundred of them. This game has probably the best tutorial in recent video gaming, and its done with little hand-holding. You get the special abilities to interact with the world very early on, and these building blocks are used for the rest of the game, right up until the end. I kept expecting extra powers to come then I realized, the game had no need to limit you- the world of Hyrule is all yours, right from the beginning. 


Graphics: 10
I thought one part of the Witcher 3 had some of the most beautiful locations in video games. Now this game has them. This game's places are gorgeous and/or foreboding, and its not running on PS4 or XBOX One. The merge of just light touches of fantasy and sheer size is jaw-dropping. The enemies can be small pig-faced kobolds to giants, I just wish the game had even more foes! 
The weather effects are fantastic. Heat rising from lava, along with sparks of magma. The creepiness of skeletons rising from the dirt at night. The time you go into a shrine to find it pitch black. I loved the thunderstorms and it was hilarious when I discovered the outcome it could cause!


Sound: 8
Breath of the Wild is like the first Tomb Raider, sound is not constant, but used to add feeling or tension in. The music in it stands out, and is lovely. I expected a lot of callbacks to classic Zelda tunes, and a few are here, but most of it original music. The voice acting is pretty good, but there is not a lot of it, only important characters and in cut-scenes. No, Link doesn't have a voice actor, even though there are clearly times hes talking. But it works. The lesser characters will get little grunts and noises that are similar to the type in past games, such as Midna's gibberish.

Addictiveness: 10
I couldn't stop playing this game. I would wake up at odd hours and just go full ham, using the time however i wanted- sometimes to find shrines, sometimes to track down some of the mysteries the game carefully suggests but never shoves in your face - or just cut grass for the bugs and rice inside. Sometimes i just spent 30 minutes cooking stuff. The best times I had were the exploration, and I loved finding the hundreds of things hidden in Zelda: BotW. This isn't like Mario Odyssey, where the meat of the game is in scouring for a couple of tasks, there are many, many many things to do in this game. Who knew I could cook (well only in video games)?

Story: 7
This is sort of a soft-reboot for the series. You will see familiar races and characters, but while the quest is simple in explanation, recover what recover what memories you can, get as strong and tough as you can and defeat Ganon with or without the help of the Divine. The subtely of the story is a strong point, rather than a detraction. Fans familiar with the series will already know things about some characters, or at least one version of them, while newcomers won't have to worry about a backlog of lore and needless baggage. This game is very easy to jump into, but if you want more, there is things you can do, free of will, to find out more. Not a lot more, but thats a design choice, and a risky move I think that paid off.

Depth: 10
Did I mention theres a ton of stuff to do in this game? I put 80 hours into this, easily, still didn't get everything done. I got addicted to it, and when I saw the end game approaching, slowed down my story so it didn't have to feel like the end. I collected special outfits and upgraded their powers, found rare weapons, and was often surprised by the secrets I found, the world is really that big.  
One of the best things I liked was the game's approach to the villagers you run into. Each town has their own citizens, who have their own schedule, and their own unique dialog to things like rain, blood moons, and just a lot more stuff than you'd expect them to say. 
You can use any weapon or shield your foe drops, or you find in the (wait for it) wild. There is a ton, so don't bother collecting them all, you'll never have enough inventory.

Difficulty: 8
It must be mentioned, the most polarizing part of this game is the breakable weapons and shields (your armor does not, thankfully), and cannot be repaired. This is very vexing to some people. The game encourages you not to use a certain weapon as a crutch, and experiment. You do eventually get a small collection of repairable gear - but honestly I didn't use it  - the cost was too high for me. There is one weapon that is unbreakable though, though it has its own limitations.  I had played games with breakable gear before, so I was somewhat acclimated to this idea, but some downright hate it.

Zelda BotW is its most difficult at the beginning, when many foes can kill you in a hit or two, and even once you get 6 life hearts and you'd feel like you're getting somewhere in previous games in the series, that is nothing here. You'll still run into things that will straight up murder you at 6 or 8.  Finally, you'll get to a place where you start turning the tide, maybe you go in a zone thats full of dangerous monsters and get a great weapon from the Stalfos, maybe you luck out and get something nice from a shrine, or a Divine power gives you a small edge. Once you get into mid-game, the game's difficulty begins to fall back slightly, and by the end, it gets fairly easy. Perhaps it should be that way, but it was most exciting in those first 20 hours or so, when you didn't feel safe.  The enemy AI must be commended though, for they are more intelligent than in many other games. I was 'economically' using bombs to kill foes without wasting my arrows or weapons, then started noticing they ran from bombs or kicked them at me! if you start a fire, they will run. They use tactics like flanking also.

Overall: 9.5
I cannot see any reason why someone who had a system to play this would not get this game. Hate story in games? Thats fine, you'll still do great in this game since its skippable. Just want to cut grass all day and collect bugs? There is no invisible walls forcing you to stay in one area, or even on a single quest. This is a fantastic open world game that I didn't see any glitches on, and its massively fun and engaging. Play it.

Heck Yeah! Great review for a great game!

Keep it up! Looking forward to your next review

I'm late to reply to this, but I want to say something anyway.

First off: you did a good job on this review, as always. I do have two things I want to complain about, but neither are gripes with your review, but rather they're gripes about the game.


This is a game that, despite not being a Zelda fan, and having a strong dislike for Nintendo, I was quite interested in and even excited for. I considered buying a system just for this game.

Then I saw some gameplay.

It's big, that is undeniable. However, once the wow of the first fifteen or so minutes ended, it began feeling like the game had just went big for the sake of being big like, well, most open world games lately. Big isn't inherently fun, and in the end it makes this game seem all the more boring (based on my personal preferences, mind you).

And my biggest issue with it is that everyone talks about how gorgeous the graphics are, but I find them to be unsightly. Now they're smooth, so props for that, but the shading is so surreal and Idk...water colorish? It's just plain ugly to me, and I feel the previous Zelda games, even the Cel Shaded ones that I complained about, were much better looking.

But very few people seem to agree with me, so what do I know? Regardless, you put a good review together. Nice work, man.

I dunno, I've played a lot of open-world games, and this is one of the few that actually made me want to explore. I liked it didn't take all the guesswork out of finding things, like Witcher 3 did. Too bad I can't share some of my pictures with you, the water effects and storms I found quite nice, as well as some of the viewpoints from the labyrinths and massive statues, sort of Tomb Raider ish. But you know what you like man.  Come over and I'll let you play it yourself