5/5 ★ – jdraco's review of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

The Legend of Zelda used to be a series that I didn’t give a shit about A series that I would always just brush past and not give a second thought to But all of that changed the moment that I played Breath of the Wild… This game is genuinely unbelievable; it set the fucking standard of what an open-world game should be, and since then, no game has been able to match that standard From the opening title drop, where Link walks out onto that hill and you can see Hyrule Castle in the distance, you know exactly what type of game you’re going to get A game that gives you the absolute freedom to go wherever you want, to do whatever you want, to play however you want The world is your playground, and the sky is the absolute limit This game has the best exploration and freedom of any video game that I’ve ever touched in my 21 years of existence I just absolutely love how you can look in the distance, see something that looks cool, and immediately just work your way over there and explore it for yourself And I know that sounds really simple, but it’s just so endlessly satisfying to come across these constant cool things while traversing this gargantuan map that the game gives you Like, of course you’ll come across a bunch of shrines in your travels, but you’ll also come across things like ruins, or giant leviathan skeletons, or just fucking dragons flying around who will completely fuck you up if you get too close to them You truly just never know what you’re going to find, and that feeling of wonder and awe while exploring the world in this game is one of the many, many things that this game does flawlessly And the freedom that the game gives you to tackle the world and everything in it is another thing that’s done flawlessly as well Any situation, puzzle, enemy encounter, or whatever it may be can all be dealt with how you want to deal with them If you want to kill an enemy by just beating the shit out of them with a mop, then you can Or if you want to kill an enemy by using the stasis rune on them and then hitting them off of a cliff, then you can If you want to glide down on an enemy, take out your bow to go into slow motion and then shoot them down with 8 million bomb arrows all at once, then you can The possibilities are just endless, and that was just the combat alone; the puzzles you can go even further with My favorite example of the freedom in how you tackle the puzzles was in the Vah Naboris divine beast, where there were 2 conductors that needed to be powered by electricity But I could only get one of them powered and couldn’t find a way to get the 2nd one powered That was until I realized that the weapons that I had in my inventory could all conduct electricity, so I then made a line of all my weapons, shields, etc., all going from the one conductor to the other And then I eventually, with my line of weapons, shields, and bows, made my way to the other conductor, powered it, and completed that little puzzle And I actually can not put into words just how happy and satisfied I felt in that exact moment It was an absolutely orgasmic feeling that truly only comes around once in a good while (that sounds incredibly depressing now that I'm saying that out loud to myself) But that’s just what this game does. And I didn't even mention this yet, but this game also gives you the freedom to just try and beat the entire final boss from the jump if you want to Yeah, you can genuinely just tackle this game however you want to, and it’s absolutely amazing In my first playthrough, I kind of just played through normally. I got a few shrines, did a Divine Beast, and would get a few more shrines and complete another Divine Beast until I eventually beat the game But in my playthrough this time around, I decided to get as many shrines as possible before completing 1 divine beast, and I genuinely managed to get 117 shrines and the Master Sword all before I completed 1 divine beast… That is fucking crazy. It is wild that the game even lets you do that, but I absolutely love it for, again, just letting you play however you want You can truly tell that the developers of this game just wanted to make something completely unique and bold and never-before-seen for the Zelda series And they absolutely delivered in every way; they poured everything that they had into this game, and it fucking paid off in dividends And I absolutely love the survival aspect of this game You truly do feel like you're in “The Wild,” and your goal is to just survive by any means necessary by gathering/hunting for food, knowing when to fight enemies and when to avoid them, cooking your food and turning them into meals, and creating campfires when you need to, even in the rain if you can find a dry area There are just so many aspects that go into the survival in Breath of the Wild that just make it an unforgettable experience to play And every single area on this map feels completely thought out, like there isn’t a single stone unturned Even in a map that spans 100 trillion real-life miles, they still managed to cram almost every square inch with shrines, enemies, cool scenery (like the levitation skeletons), towns, and stables. Again, there is not a single stone that was left unturned in terms of the map that the game gives you And one of the many things that I love about exploring the map is bumping into the NPCs Because when you bump into NPCs while you’re traveling, sometimes they’ll give you hints about where certain things are in the world Like, for example, you’ll just bump into a guy riding his horse and talk to him, and he’ll tell some shit like the Zora Domain being 1200 paces to the north, or that Dueling Peaks stable is right next to a swamp, or just whatever information about the land that they can give And there truly aren’t enough words in the English language capable of describing how much I love this It makes the world of this game feel so authentic, so lived in, it makes the NPCs feel like real characters, real people who exist in this fictional world I just love it so much. And I’m not even done glazing this game yet Because I also love the shit out of the shrines in this game They’re all just these little dungeons that usually contain a puzzle or a combat challenge that you have to overcome in order to get the prize at the end of them (a spirit orb) And these are so fun to try and solve, and sometimes it isn't even about trying to solve a puzzle inside the shrine; sometimes the puzzle takes place in the overworld, with you having to do something in order to actually unlock the shrine Eventide Island is the absolute best example of this, because it’s basically just this island that takes away all your weapons and gear from you and has you trying to survive on this island filled with enemies while trying to collect these 3 balls that you need to place in a pedestal in order to summon the shrine And this one is really hard, but also very satisfying because you truly do have to survive and use every resource that the island gives you to try and unlock that shrine And then there are also these big-ass mazes that you can just come across in the overworld as well, all 3 of which house shrines in them, and it’s fucking awesome, not necessarily navigating them, but just the fact that they’re in the game and the fact that you can just come across them while exploring is just so damn cool… I fucking love this game. I can’t help it. I know you probably want me to talk about maybe a few downsides that I had with the game, but I truly can’t think of any Except for, I guess, maybe the story, voice acting, and cutscenes being kind of weak Yeah, I really didn’t give much of a shit about the story or any of the characters, and really, anytime that I got to a cutscene, I would just go on my phone because I was bored as shit Also, the cutscenes, for whatever reason, are in like 480p, which was weird as hell to me because I played the Switch 2 version, so I thought that it would be higher quality, but it wasn’t at all, which is just kind of funny to me Anyway, the story not gripping me really isn’t this game’s fault necessarily; I just didn't click with it and couldn't really get engaged This really doesn’t matter at all, though, because the gameplay genuinely makes up for the lackluster story in every conceivable way Again, I just fucking love this game; it’s just so good. So good that it’s genuinely hard to put into words, like I know I say that all the time, but I actually mean it. I really don’t even know where to begin when talking about this game, because I could probably talk for hours, but then if I did, this review would be longer than a fucking phonebook I think I said everything I really needed to, though This game is absolutely remarkable; it’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and if you haven’t played it at least once by now, then I’m going to come over there and smack the shit out of you 5/5