4/5 ★ – TNGLiam's review of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Expansion Pass.

Platform: Switch Time Played: ~15 hours Status: Beaten I remember playing The Master Trials DLC for Zelda: Breath of the Wild back in 2017 not too long after the base game’s launch, and I remember having an absolute blast with it, but when The Champion’s Ballad came out at the end of that year, I never got around to playing it as it had been so long since I had last touched the game. But now almost six years later, I finally got around to playing it during my retread through Breath of the Wild, and while it isn’t the best content that the game has to offer, it was still a fun experience. When it comes to The Master Trials, they are such an intense and difficult experience, but it feels oh so rewarding to pull through to the end. The amount of times my whole body tensed up as I came so close to death but managed to defeat the enemies and make it to the next room. I also really like the layout of the rooms, having the walls and ceilings be the same as typical Sheikah Shrines but the floor and obstacles around the room being from the overworld; for whatever reason that just looks really cool to me and is visually striking. And at the end of this awesome challenge you get a permanent upgrade to the Master Sword, pretty great if you ask me. I personally found The Champion’s Ballad to not be as strong of an experience, although I’m pretty sure it is liked more by fans. My favorite part of this DLC was the initial quest where you had to defeat the monster hoards with the One-Hit Obliterator; it gave a similar vibe to The Master Trials, running around the Great Plateau trying to stealthily one-shot enemies when they can one-shot you at any moment. It felt very rewarding and I was very excited to be able to utilize the weapon afterwards, only to have it stripped away from me once the quest was completed… What a rip-off if you ask me. Getting to do the four bonus shrines after being rewarded with enough Spirit Orbs for an extra Heart Container was also pretty rewarding, but the resulting quest afterwards, traveling around the whole map looking for trials in the overworld to complete even more bonus shrines to unlock an upgrade of one of the Champion’s abilities felt a little cumbersome and tedious. I won’t say that it wasn’t fun, but it was such a long quest, around 10 hours of playtime if I recall correctly. There were definitely parts of it that I enjoyed; going through the illuminated rings via shield surfing comes to mind. Getting to fight harder versions of the base game’s bosses as also pretty fun, except for Thunderblight Ganon, that fucker was frustratingly difficult. And at the end of it all you’re rewarded with not only upgraded Champion’s abilities, but also some great fully animated and voiced cutscenes featuring the Champions before the Calamity. So while it was worth it in the end, the journey to get there, once again, felt tedious. Besides the main quests from both DLCs, a bunch of costumes that serve as references to past games were added, such as the Majora’s Mask, Midna’s Mask, and the Phantom Armor, along with costumes that reference Tingle and Makar from Wind Waker, which are also great inclusions. And for those who bought the Expansion Pass instead of getting both DLCs separately… you get a Nintendo Switch t-shirt, even if you got the game on Wii U. Oh, and a couple items to help you early on. That’s it. All in all, I think that the Expansion Pass for Zelda: Breath of the Wild was pretty great. While nothing absolutely substantial was added through the DLC, a fair amount of fun and engaging content was. I’m glad that I decided to postpone starting my playthrough of Tears of the Kingdom just a little bit longer so I could finally experience this last piece of content from one of my favorite games.