The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

2017 was a great year for gamers, with lots of fantastic new games being released. However, it wasn’t as competitive as it was in 2016. On the other hand, the gaming industry has also seen the emergence of many new genres. The niche culture of cyberpunk has gradually become more visible, and the release of the two films Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner 2049 has also attracted a lot of attention. In the same year, CD Projekt RED released the promo video for Cyberpunk 2077, which really put the cyberpunk genre on the map for all gamers. However, 2017 was dominated by an IP that has been around for 30 years: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which was also the fifth game to be rated 10 by IGN after Overwatch. Despite the release of PUBG, the multiplayer battle royale game that went on to become a global phenomenon, none of these games won Game of the Year.

The Legend of Zelda™: Breath of the Wild for the Nintendo Switch™ home gaming system and Wii U™ console – Official Site

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an action-adventure game that Nintendo’s Planning and Production Department developed with Monolith Soft. It’s the 19th game in the main Legend of Zelda series and was released on Wii U and Nintendo Switch on 3 March 2017. The game is mainly about how, 10,000 years later, the Kingdom of Hyrule, which was once glorious and advanced, is no longer. However, when people started digging in different parts of the kingdom, they found the remains of mythical beasts and guardians that were thought to only exist in legend and had long been forgotten. Princess Zelda and knight Link decided to follow the example of the ancients, but they were caught off guard by an attack from the calamity Ganon. The four heroes were killed, the castle was destroyed, and the Guardian was taken over by evil forces and turned against the people, destroying the kingdom of Hyrule. Link was badly hurt while trying to protect Zelda and was taken to get treated, while Zelda was on her own and used her powers to stop Ganon in the castle. A hundred years later, Link finally woke up after recovering. The king tells Link that Zelda has been holding Ganon under lockdown in the castle for a hundred years and is reaching her limit. Link must save the Hyrule kingdom before Ganon grows in power and destroys the seal. During his adventure, Link battles Ganon with the help of the revived sacred beasts and successfully defeats him. Link and Zelda have finally brought peace to the kingdom, and now they must rebuild it, which is going to be a challenge given how much damage evil has done.

The official home for The Legend of Zelda – Home (nintendo.com)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild didn’t get off to a great start because the Zelda series had been a bit lacklustre for the past 30 years. Even though The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was a huge success, people had stopped paying attention to the series because it had been too long since a sequel as strong as Ocarina of Time had been released. On top of that, with Nintendo’s 2017 debut games being pretty sparse, it just so happened that at the same time, Nintendo’s rival Sony released three high-quality, critically acclaimed masterpieces: Nioh, Neil: Mechanical Era and Horizon: Dawn. It’s obvious which one is more cost-effective for consumers. But after playing in the world of Zelda, I think the sum of the above three games is enough to rival Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild doesn’t focus on the narrative, but this straightforward plot is easy to follow. Nintendo’s goal wasn’t to tell Link’s story, but to let players immerse themselves in it and create their own adventure. The game will tell you what you need to know pretty early on, but before that you need to rescue the four mythical beasts. You can also decide the order of these four missions at your own pace, according to what you prefer.The way the character develops in this game is different from what you’d find in most modern ARPGs. In those games, the character development system is based on attribute value growth and skill unlocking. But that system doesn’t work here because it’s hard for the designer to control when the player will challenge which difficulty level. The open world in Breath of the Wild is spot on, with endless grasslands, lush forests, volcanoes with rolling heat, and the blue and vibrant sea. The weather and time effects, like rain, wind, snow and sunrise and sunset, make the open world of Breath of the Wild look really beautiful. To make sure you have everything you need to succeed, it’s important to collect a variety of resources in the wild. From mushrooms and berries to bows and arrows and minerals, there’s almost always something you can use at a certain time. So, exploring is full of the joy of a harvest. But sometimes there are also unknown dangers lurking. A big treasure chest hidden in the gravel might be a monster waiting for someone to come along and bait it; a big rock that looks normal but is actually a giant rock monster. There are lots of sudden deaths in Breath of the Wild, but the game has lots of checkpoints, so it’s not really frustrating when you die.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Guide – IGN

The best thing about this game is the way it challenges you with puzzles and levels. If you know your way around the Zelda series, you’ll know that it’s always had pretty tough puzzles. In fact, some players might not be able to get through the game without checking the strategy guide. While this kind of design might put off a lot of casual players, for fans and core players of the series, the challenge of extremely difficult puzzles is one of the main reasons they love the series so much. In this new Zelda game, Nintendo has kept some pretty tough puzzles for the core players, but judging by the overall tone of the game, Breath of the Wild has actually made it really accessible to a lot of casual players. As you progress through the game, you’ll gain access to a series of magical abilities called runes. Some of these runes can attract metal objects like magnets, while others can freeze water and create ice. Some can temporarily stop time for a specified object, and some can conjure up a powerful bomb out of thin air. These items can be used in your daily adventures and battles, and they also provide lots of space for exploration in the game’s various puzzle-solving levels, where there is not just one way to solve the puzzles.

Nineteen years ago, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time made a huge impact on the gaming industry. Its innovations in game mechanics have had such a big impact on the whole industry that today many game companies and producers see it as the bible when it comes to game design. In this sense, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may not yet have the same historical status as Ocarina of Time to be comparable to it. Apart from Breath of the Wild, I don’t think there will be another Zelda game that can be compared to ‘Ocarina of Time’. ‘Breath of the Wild’ manages to blend the series’ traditions with modern and popular game elements so perfectly and use them so ingeniously that it still has a charm that most games just can’t match. Nintendo has done it again with the Zelda series, and this is enough to make the gaming industry view ‘Breath of the Wild’ as another gaming miracle in the making, just as we view Ocarina of Time today.