Breath of the Wild review

First of all, apologies to Seppo whom I accidentally had removed from the list of recipients. However, the main reason I'm writing to you is my Zelda review. Here it comes:

Breath of the Wild Review

Nintendo Switch and new Zelda were released couple of weeks ago. It’s probably obvious that I bought them both. And took Friday off from work so that I can immidiately start playing it. Now that I have over 50 hours play time behind me, I feel that I’m ready to write something about my experience. This review concentrates solely to the game and I’ll write a separate review about the console later. You probably know already that I am a Nintendo fan but I try to stay as objective as possible.

The world is incredibly wast and it has lots of things to do. I found this picture that compares the map size to previous Zelda games and also to Skyrim. Based on the picture, the world map is much larger than in any previous Zelda game and also larger than the one in Skyrim. The best thing is that there is incredibly much to do. Many times I just forget my main objective and start inverstigating something completely irrelevant. And try to get into places that seem to be interesting. The game does not limit you at any point in any way. You can walk to main boss almost at the beginning. Speed runners have proven that the game can be finished in less that an hour if you are good enough.

Fighting with enemies has also been improved a lot. In previous Zelda games you could basically confront most enemies head on. Of course there were different tactics to use on different enemies, but the main idea was the same: you either used your bow or sword to defeat your enemies. I have not much experience on other role playing games, but I think that this is the case in most of them. In BotW you have to learn to use your surroundings (like in the Batman begins) in combats. Many times impossible looking enemies can be defeated with correct tactics. Alternatively, even simple bogoblins may be difficult to beat at the beginning of the game when your only weapon is a tree branch. In addition to all this, also your weapons break during battles so you have to be careful which weapon to use on which opponent.

This chapter is about graphics which is undeniably an important part of a game. Technically speaking BotW graphics aren’t that advanced. The game runs with 30 fps and scales the resolution dynamically to keep this frame rate. At best, the resulotion is 900p and can drop to 810p when more things are happening on the screen. Frame rate has never been a problem for me. It seems that I’m incapable to see different frame rates as long as they are sufficient. 20 – 100 fps videos look all the same to me so 30 fps is fine in my opinion. But honestly, I think that all this measuring of pixels and frame rates is pointless. The game either looks good or bad. Measuring pixels won’t change that. The style of the game is quite close to Skyward Sword with some added details. There has been several different styles in Zelda games from somewhat childish look of the Wind Waker:

... to more realistic look of Twilight Princess:

This is something in between and I think that you have to agree that it looks pretty good:

The story of the game is made somewhat optional. As I said before, the player can walk directly to the final boss and beat the game. But that is not the correct way to play this game. I don’t want to spoil too much but the main idea is that the hero has lost his memory and there are different ways to find out what has happened in the past. For me, solving this was quite satisfactory.

For those who have played Zelda games (and liked those), you will definitely like this one. It has lots of familiar themes but it also updates the concept in many ways. I’m not sure if I have lost my objectiveness at some point while writing this review, but my objective opinion is that this is the best game that I have ever played. Compared to many review that I have read, I do not think that it is perfect, but damn good. And you should buy it.

Br,
Olli