Playing A Game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild WiiU

When I started this quest, it was intimidating in every dimension: the enormous map, full of surprising terrain and weather effects; the ferocious monsters, demanding thoughtful combat preparation and reflexes; the breadth of activities to do, from townsfolk's quests to secrets hidden throughout the landscape; and the mysterious story, blending a post-apocalyptic world with Zelda-flavored myths.

Unfortunately, in all of these aspects, Breath of the Wild's intrigue does eventually run out.

  • While the game world is beautifully crafted, and the map is a joy to explore, returning to its scenic vistas in later quests becomes tedious.
  • While the early game is defined by monsters that can destroy Link without batting an eye, equipment upgrades eventually trivialize even the mighty Guardians.
  • While the game's towns are dense with side-quests, it doesn't take long to find that there are only a few towns to visit, and the total quest count remains somewhat low.
  • And while recovering Link's memories seems interesting at first, the backstory ends up being pretty underdeveloped and disappointing.

I want to clarify that, up until Breath of the Wild's "endgame" crests, it is a splendid, incredible experience; not just a reinvigoration of the Zelda franchise, but an exemplary game on its own. There are dozens of hours of fun in running across its grassy fields, recovering its ancient artifacts, solving the hylians' hum-drum problems, and slapping bokoblins around with glowing laser swords.

From now on, Breath of the Wild is the bar that other action-adventure games should be striving for.

It's just a shame that the final dungeon, the final boss, and the final cutscene are all so ... drab. And that there's never really any sense of narrative payoff -- almost all the characters you meet are lifelessly flat, and tales of the ancient past never fully develop.

I also need to call out the game's graphical performance (on Wii U, although as far as I know it isn't dramatically different on Switch). The resolution is noticeably low, and the frame rate can get abysmal, particularly in populated towns. The game is at its worst when a moblin starts to ragdoll, and the screen can freeze for a full, excruciating second. ... it's bad.

Then again, it occurs to me that Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask also ran like total shit on N64. And they're still remembered pretty fondly. So there's that. (At least Breath of the Wild has a pretty great draw distance.)

Despite some performance issues and its story's shortcomings, I extracted nearly 100 hours of enchanting and/or exhilirating adventure out of Breath of the Wild, with no regrets. It's pretty great.

Better than: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
Not as good as: in terms of content richness, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - Special Edition and its DLCs; although Breath of the Wild's own DLCs could change this.
Can't wait to play the high-performance remaster: ten years from now, assuming that Nintendo is still in business by then.

Progress: Rescued the four things, killed the evil shit, all 120 shrines found

Rating: Awesome