Switch: The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild

With Breath of the Wild, Nintendo have completely reinvented one of its biggest properties in a way that still feels true to the Zelda franchise. 

BotW is an incredibly in-depth RPG, with the same quirks and nuances that have long been mainstays of Zelda games. It is also perhaps the most challenging Zelda yet, with an unforgiving combat system and truly tough bosses. 

Instead of steadily presenting you with your tools and tricks like Zelda games of the past, BotW almost instantly hands you everything, gives you a vague quest and lets you find your own path. Playing the game feels an incredibly freeing experience and you are rewarded for mixing up your playstyle.

Upgrading Link is relatively simplistic but the lack of experience means that there is no need to grind your way through scores of enemies. Leveling up is instead tied into the Shrines, a series of puzzles, and the main boss fights. Only health and stamina can be upgraded, with all other stats being tied into weapons and armour. This makes upgrading Link a far easier task, whilst also putting focus on procuring the best equipment. 

Wild’s story is quite slight, the basic premise revolving around saving Zelda from her 100-year long battle with Ganon. The game offers so much freedom in both how you act out its quests and generally choose to spend your time that at no point does it really feel lacking. You can spend days taming horses if you so please, or become the best chef in Hyrule. You can fully dive into the Shrines, hunting them down and completing their intricate puzzles. Or you can choose the straight-laced story-focused path and devote all your time to stopping Ganon. It’s really up to you at the end of the day, and that’s where the true beauty of Breath of the Wild lies.

You quickly discover how versatile the gameplay can be, with many different variables in each encounter existing to allow you to mix up your playstyle. Will you use bombs to knock enemies off a cliff or your magnetic abilities to throw boxes around? You can fire arrows from a distance, or charge in for a straight up assault. The temperature controls also make for interesting gameplay, penalising you for using certain weapons, and encouraging you to switch up your armour. Potions are also a highly important part of the game, and at times can be the difference between life and death. 

All weapons in BotW have a limited durability, which adds a new element to gameplay. Even the all-powerful (and unbreakable) Master Sword has limitations placed upon it that prevent it being used constantly. The best way to play is to consider what weapons to use against certain enemies, saving the best for bosses whilst using lesser equipment on weaker foes. This throwaway style means you don’t develop attachments to particular equipment and actually get to experience the full breadth of what the game has to offer. 

The design style makes great use of cell shading to create a beautiful hand-drawn effect, with visuals that could be right out of a Studio Ghibli film at times. Cutscenes and main gameplay merge seamlessly and the world is created mostly without loading screens. The voice acting throughout is mostly stellar, though at times the dialogue can feel a bit stilted. It can also be slightly jarring when the characters switch from speaking aloud to written dialogue and it’s odd that you can’t turn off the subtitles during cutscenes, with them proving distracting at times.

Controls on the Switch are mostly effortless and easy to master. I was making use of the Joycons throughout and only noticed occasional issues with the controls - mainly as a result of struggling to access the entire control pad with my relatively small hands. I noticed no significant differences between playing the game on TV and as a handheld, switching between both fairly effectively. 

As a whole, Breath of the Wild feels truly revolutionary. It’s full of depth and yet at the same time each aspect of the game is so simple to learn and master that it never feels weighed down. You can truly play however you choose and that at its heart makes it the perfect game to launch alongside the Switch.