2nd August 2017, 7:23 PM
So I got the game for Wii U a good week and a half ago, though I'm still quite early in it as I've only played it for parts of a few days -- I was busy with vacation, Splatoon, etc. I did spend a few hours playing the game today, though, so I should say a few things. (Sorry, this is very ramble-ey, but... oh well.)
So far, I got off of the plateau the first day, went south towards the tower south of the start point, then stopped playing partway there after dying a bunch. Today I got to that tower, found a stables and a horse, found and did a few shrines, then started heading towards the next story point, to find Impa. I got up the tower in that area and did a few shrines there along the way and then stopped. So yeah, I'm early but kind of get the idea of the game.
So what do I think? Well, the game has great graphics for sure, and it's easy to play though some of the controls are a bit annoying. I've always hated dual shoulder buttons on controllers, and keep hitting the wrong ones when trying to do the thing for the other button... bah. Also of course it's quite disappointing that they removed all Wii U gamepad integration; seriously, just putting the map on the bottom screen would have been fantastic and there is NO excuse not to do it! "We must make the two versions identical" makes no sense when they are not the same console. At least the motion control elements remain, though I wish that there was an option to look around with the tilt controls all of the time (as in Splatoon), I'd use it! For looking up and down particularly, motion works a lot better than an analog stick. Instead, much like the Wii U version of Wind Waker, you need to use the first-person view to use motion, or the items (bombs, icemaking item, magnet, and such). Why limit motion to only certain items and not just let people use it? It doesn't make much sense, and you'd think that given that this is the third Wii U main Zelda game like this (I presume, if TP HD is the same) they'd have improved on the aiming. Ah well.
Anyway, as for the game itself, this is an open-world game, all right. I've never liked this genre as I'm sure you all know, and I don't love this game either; they're too open-ended to hold my interest. Open-world games feel unfocused and usually lose me very quickly. I don't like having to make choices and these games are all about choice, first. And second, the concept often seems to be "more space" instead of "better gameplay"; just letting you climb all the hills doesn't make the whole game better, it just means you can do the same three things in more places... except really often open-world games are more limited than a more focused experience, since when you are making such a huge world something has to give and it's usually a better story, better and more carefully designed areas (because when you need to make a huge world less attention goes into each bit of it), fewer puzzle elements in the game beyond "how do I get there", and more.
So how does BotW do on that score? In most ways it's a traditional open-world game, just with a fantasy setting, some light Zelda elements here and there that mostly are just namedrops, and a nice map system that lets you put markers on the map where you want, instead of just filling a map with far too many icons. The world is huge, but empty; it takes forever to get from point to point! Fortunately the game does have a pretty good quick-travel system, as you can instantly travel to any tower or shrine that you have reached, but even so getting from place to place takes a long time. While some elements of the controls are similar, the core gameplay of BotW is totally different from any Zelda before. I knew it would be of course, and I am having some fun wandering around, finding shrines, and fighting the badguys, but it's hard to not compare this to other Zelda games and find it wanting.
The game has a large and open world and, unlike past 3d Zelda games, doesn't have a helper character constantly telling you what to do and where to go. Some people love this about the game, but I'm fine with those characters myself and think that they are usually helpful; you need something to help you navigate a game! This game has some things to help you do that, but not a dedicated helper character. But because of that design, people have compared BotW to the original Zelda for the NES. There is some truth to that. However, while I like the original Zelda game, between its high difficulty and too-open design, it is far from my favorite Zelda game. It isn't even my favorite Zelda-ish game on the NES, in fact; StarTropics is, because I prefer its linear style and absence of annoying randomly hidden stuff you need to find like Zelda does. BotW does have far more there to help you than NES games do, fortunately. You have an indicator which helps you find nearby shrines and shrines are often put in not-too-hard-to-find places, quest markers telling you where to go for quests, you can place indicators when in the first-person view that add a marker on your map at the point that you mark, towers (that you go up to reveal the map) are large and easy to find, and more. I know it's early, but I haven't gotten lost yet.
However, about that map... I really wish you could change the colors of the markers you leave, because it'd be nice to be able to mark, like, 'this is a thing to return to' versus 'I got this but it was here'. Or maybe you aren't supposed to mark that latter type? I'd rather do that if I can though...
That's good, but still, the sheer size of the world already has gotten me kind of bored sometimes because of how spread out everything is. Another issue is that from what I've seen and read about the game, BotW has a relatively limited number of enemy types; you see the same few enemies a lot. I referenced this earlier, with how a more linear game -- like all past 3d Zelda games -- has a constantly changing set of enemies and experiences to see as you progress through the game. This game, however, has a huge world, but in some ways less variety than a traditional 3d Zelda game. Combat is simplified versus TP; basically you seem to be able to swing around weapons and that's about it. The game has fewer items and fewer combat moves. The big addition is a physics engine. Now you can roll rocks down hills, start small fires, blow things up, and more. I've only seen a little of this myself, but having seen more online, yes, you can do some cool things... but still, like always with open-world games, it's just a lot of scenarios drawing from that same limited playbook! I'd much rather have fewer but more carefully designed encounters that are each more interesting and fun, versus more things that all blend together because there are so many of them and many are not as special. The different environments do change things up, I'm not far enough in for combat encounters to feel repetitive yet, and I know that there are some monsters which require different strategies such as the Guardians, giant rock monsters, etc... but still, while this game is good, it's not a design style I'll ever like as much as a conventional Zelda game like OoT or TP.
On that note, while there are a lot of reasons why Zelda is one of my favorite videogame franchises, including the action, puzzles, exploration, and more, I need to talk about the "puzzle" element of BotW. Where previous Zelda games have a series of puzzle-heavy dungeons to play through, BotW has a large open world. The puzzle elements come in the aforementioned shrines and in the games' four dungeons, which I haven't seen but kind of sound like expanded shrines conceptually. Each of the 100-plus shrines is very small, and gives you one or two puzzles to solve, or one enemy encounter to defeat. I like the shrines, and if I actually stick with the game for a long time (which is unlikely?) could see wanting to find a lot of them; these are the part of the game that feels the most Zelda-like in the ways that I like Zelda games. But then they end after a couple of minutes and it's back to the too-big-for-its-own-good overworld... ah well. Traditional Zelda dungeons are definitely better, they usually don't leave me wanting more like BotW shrines do. They also don't usually have much in the way of combat in them, which works with how short they are, but hurts them compared to past 3d Zeldas -- the nine shrines I've gone through so far, all combined, would not be as great as the first dungeon of a traditional 3d Zelda, I think, though the puzzles (or fight, in one) in them are often pretty cool stuff.
Another way this game is very different from past Zelda games is how it handles items. You get all of the key items right at the beginning of the game, which I really dislike in a Zelda game; you should get things as you progress through a game, not just be given everything right at the start! Yes, this is also something I don't like about A Link Between Worlds, that you can just get the items in any order. Good game design is about having a steady increase of challenge and area design as you move through a game, not just a flat line! No, I don't like scaled difficulty. This game isn't scaled, fortunately, it just lets you go anywhere while only lightly guiding you, so BotW has that over stuff like the TES games (Oblivion and on), at least. However, there are only four of those key items, which is way too few. Now, some weapons are usable in interesting ways, to light things on fire, blow things around with bursts of air, and that's great, but isn't a full replacement. You also have a VERY limited inventory at the start; if there's a way to expand that I badly need to do it, because the weapon inventory particularly is way too small. When you combine the tiny inventory with the constant need for new weapons because of the annoying weapon-durability system that requires you to constantly switch weapons while fighting because of how fragile everything is, it gets annoying fast.
The other thing the game does is it lets you collect a lot of types of foods and monster parts... and fortunately they use their own separate inventory section, and you seem to be able to hold a lot of the stuff right from the start, unlike weapons. That is good. You can then cook at certain points to make food or potions. It's an okay idea, though I've always greatly disliked crafting. At least this crafting system is fairly simple and isn't the main focus of the game... thank goodness. The issue here is, there is no ingame recipe list at all, so either I've got to just not care much about what I make, try to memorize it all, or look up a list online. This is really bad game design with no excuse, you need an ingame recipe book in anything like this.
Finally, graphics and sound. As I said, the game looks great. For overall art style I do think that TP has the best art design ever in the franchise, but this game builds on the "cartoony but with a bit of realism" style of Skyward Sword, but probably because of the better hardware it looks even better than that game does. This is a really nice looking game. Aurally, however, the game seriously lacks, as most of your adventure is done to just sound effects! Previously the Zelda series always had some of the best soundtracks ever in gaming, but this one ditches that in favor of a very understated, minimalist soundtrack. It works I guess, but it's completely forgettable and average in ways Zelda music never has been before and that is very disappointing.
So overall, a few hours in, Breath of the Wild is a good but flawed game that takes the Zelda series in a direction I wish it hadn't. It was probably inevitable that Zelda would eventually succumb to the open-world tide, but while there definitely are things I like about this game and I will keep playing it, I, at least, wish that Nintendo had made another traditional 3d Zelda game. But with the rapturous reception this game received, will we ever see one of those again? That's sad to think about... but we'll see, I guess.
With this game, here's the question I am thinking about above all others: if this was some other game, nearly identical to this one but not Zelda, would I be playing it? And if I was, would I stick with it? I'm leaning towards "maybe" and "probably not" as the answers to those questions. However, is that because of my just not giving it enough of a chance, because of my very longstanding bias against open-world games? ... Maybe? Right now I don't know.
So far, I got off of the plateau the first day, went south towards the tower south of the start point, then stopped playing partway there after dying a bunch. Today I got to that tower, found a stables and a horse, found and did a few shrines, then started heading towards the next story point, to find Impa. I got up the tower in that area and did a few shrines there along the way and then stopped. So yeah, I'm early but kind of get the idea of the game.
So what do I think? Well, the game has great graphics for sure, and it's easy to play though some of the controls are a bit annoying. I've always hated dual shoulder buttons on controllers, and keep hitting the wrong ones when trying to do the thing for the other button... bah. Also of course it's quite disappointing that they removed all Wii U gamepad integration; seriously, just putting the map on the bottom screen would have been fantastic and there is NO excuse not to do it! "We must make the two versions identical" makes no sense when they are not the same console. At least the motion control elements remain, though I wish that there was an option to look around with the tilt controls all of the time (as in Splatoon), I'd use it! For looking up and down particularly, motion works a lot better than an analog stick. Instead, much like the Wii U version of Wind Waker, you need to use the first-person view to use motion, or the items (bombs, icemaking item, magnet, and such). Why limit motion to only certain items and not just let people use it? It doesn't make much sense, and you'd think that given that this is the third Wii U main Zelda game like this (I presume, if TP HD is the same) they'd have improved on the aiming. Ah well.
Anyway, as for the game itself, this is an open-world game, all right. I've never liked this genre as I'm sure you all know, and I don't love this game either; they're too open-ended to hold my interest. Open-world games feel unfocused and usually lose me very quickly. I don't like having to make choices and these games are all about choice, first. And second, the concept often seems to be "more space" instead of "better gameplay"; just letting you climb all the hills doesn't make the whole game better, it just means you can do the same three things in more places... except really often open-world games are more limited than a more focused experience, since when you are making such a huge world something has to give and it's usually a better story, better and more carefully designed areas (because when you need to make a huge world less attention goes into each bit of it), fewer puzzle elements in the game beyond "how do I get there", and more.
So how does BotW do on that score? In most ways it's a traditional open-world game, just with a fantasy setting, some light Zelda elements here and there that mostly are just namedrops, and a nice map system that lets you put markers on the map where you want, instead of just filling a map with far too many icons. The world is huge, but empty; it takes forever to get from point to point! Fortunately the game does have a pretty good quick-travel system, as you can instantly travel to any tower or shrine that you have reached, but even so getting from place to place takes a long time. While some elements of the controls are similar, the core gameplay of BotW is totally different from any Zelda before. I knew it would be of course, and I am having some fun wandering around, finding shrines, and fighting the badguys, but it's hard to not compare this to other Zelda games and find it wanting.
The game has a large and open world and, unlike past 3d Zelda games, doesn't have a helper character constantly telling you what to do and where to go. Some people love this about the game, but I'm fine with those characters myself and think that they are usually helpful; you need something to help you navigate a game! This game has some things to help you do that, but not a dedicated helper character. But because of that design, people have compared BotW to the original Zelda for the NES. There is some truth to that. However, while I like the original Zelda game, between its high difficulty and too-open design, it is far from my favorite Zelda game. It isn't even my favorite Zelda-ish game on the NES, in fact; StarTropics is, because I prefer its linear style and absence of annoying randomly hidden stuff you need to find like Zelda does. BotW does have far more there to help you than NES games do, fortunately. You have an indicator which helps you find nearby shrines and shrines are often put in not-too-hard-to-find places, quest markers telling you where to go for quests, you can place indicators when in the first-person view that add a marker on your map at the point that you mark, towers (that you go up to reveal the map) are large and easy to find, and more. I know it's early, but I haven't gotten lost yet.
However, about that map... I really wish you could change the colors of the markers you leave, because it'd be nice to be able to mark, like, 'this is a thing to return to' versus 'I got this but it was here'. Or maybe you aren't supposed to mark that latter type? I'd rather do that if I can though...
That's good, but still, the sheer size of the world already has gotten me kind of bored sometimes because of how spread out everything is. Another issue is that from what I've seen and read about the game, BotW has a relatively limited number of enemy types; you see the same few enemies a lot. I referenced this earlier, with how a more linear game -- like all past 3d Zelda games -- has a constantly changing set of enemies and experiences to see as you progress through the game. This game, however, has a huge world, but in some ways less variety than a traditional 3d Zelda game. Combat is simplified versus TP; basically you seem to be able to swing around weapons and that's about it. The game has fewer items and fewer combat moves. The big addition is a physics engine. Now you can roll rocks down hills, start small fires, blow things up, and more. I've only seen a little of this myself, but having seen more online, yes, you can do some cool things... but still, like always with open-world games, it's just a lot of scenarios drawing from that same limited playbook! I'd much rather have fewer but more carefully designed encounters that are each more interesting and fun, versus more things that all blend together because there are so many of them and many are not as special. The different environments do change things up, I'm not far enough in for combat encounters to feel repetitive yet, and I know that there are some monsters which require different strategies such as the Guardians, giant rock monsters, etc... but still, while this game is good, it's not a design style I'll ever like as much as a conventional Zelda game like OoT or TP.
On that note, while there are a lot of reasons why Zelda is one of my favorite videogame franchises, including the action, puzzles, exploration, and more, I need to talk about the "puzzle" element of BotW. Where previous Zelda games have a series of puzzle-heavy dungeons to play through, BotW has a large open world. The puzzle elements come in the aforementioned shrines and in the games' four dungeons, which I haven't seen but kind of sound like expanded shrines conceptually. Each of the 100-plus shrines is very small, and gives you one or two puzzles to solve, or one enemy encounter to defeat. I like the shrines, and if I actually stick with the game for a long time (which is unlikely?) could see wanting to find a lot of them; these are the part of the game that feels the most Zelda-like in the ways that I like Zelda games. But then they end after a couple of minutes and it's back to the too-big-for-its-own-good overworld... ah well. Traditional Zelda dungeons are definitely better, they usually don't leave me wanting more like BotW shrines do. They also don't usually have much in the way of combat in them, which works with how short they are, but hurts them compared to past 3d Zeldas -- the nine shrines I've gone through so far, all combined, would not be as great as the first dungeon of a traditional 3d Zelda, I think, though the puzzles (or fight, in one) in them are often pretty cool stuff.
Another way this game is very different from past Zelda games is how it handles items. You get all of the key items right at the beginning of the game, which I really dislike in a Zelda game; you should get things as you progress through a game, not just be given everything right at the start! Yes, this is also something I don't like about A Link Between Worlds, that you can just get the items in any order. Good game design is about having a steady increase of challenge and area design as you move through a game, not just a flat line! No, I don't like scaled difficulty. This game isn't scaled, fortunately, it just lets you go anywhere while only lightly guiding you, so BotW has that over stuff like the TES games (Oblivion and on), at least. However, there are only four of those key items, which is way too few. Now, some weapons are usable in interesting ways, to light things on fire, blow things around with bursts of air, and that's great, but isn't a full replacement. You also have a VERY limited inventory at the start; if there's a way to expand that I badly need to do it, because the weapon inventory particularly is way too small. When you combine the tiny inventory with the constant need for new weapons because of the annoying weapon-durability system that requires you to constantly switch weapons while fighting because of how fragile everything is, it gets annoying fast.
The other thing the game does is it lets you collect a lot of types of foods and monster parts... and fortunately they use their own separate inventory section, and you seem to be able to hold a lot of the stuff right from the start, unlike weapons. That is good. You can then cook at certain points to make food or potions. It's an okay idea, though I've always greatly disliked crafting. At least this crafting system is fairly simple and isn't the main focus of the game... thank goodness. The issue here is, there is no ingame recipe list at all, so either I've got to just not care much about what I make, try to memorize it all, or look up a list online. This is really bad game design with no excuse, you need an ingame recipe book in anything like this.
Finally, graphics and sound. As I said, the game looks great. For overall art style I do think that TP has the best art design ever in the franchise, but this game builds on the "cartoony but with a bit of realism" style of Skyward Sword, but probably because of the better hardware it looks even better than that game does. This is a really nice looking game. Aurally, however, the game seriously lacks, as most of your adventure is done to just sound effects! Previously the Zelda series always had some of the best soundtracks ever in gaming, but this one ditches that in favor of a very understated, minimalist soundtrack. It works I guess, but it's completely forgettable and average in ways Zelda music never has been before and that is very disappointing.
So overall, a few hours in, Breath of the Wild is a good but flawed game that takes the Zelda series in a direction I wish it hadn't. It was probably inevitable that Zelda would eventually succumb to the open-world tide, but while there definitely are things I like about this game and I will keep playing it, I, at least, wish that Nintendo had made another traditional 3d Zelda game. But with the rapturous reception this game received, will we ever see one of those again? That's sad to think about... but we'll see, I guess.
With this game, here's the question I am thinking about above all others: if this was some other game, nearly identical to this one but not Zelda, would I be playing it? And if I was, would I stick with it? I'm leaning towards "maybe" and "probably not" as the answers to those questions. However, is that because of my just not giving it enough of a chance, because of my very longstanding bias against open-world games? ... Maybe? Right now I don't know.