On March 3, 2017, gaming giant Nintendo released this game and has since been one of the highest acclaimed games released on the company’s newest console the Nintendo Switch, ranking first place on IGN’s list for “Best Nintendo Switch Games”. Receiving a 97% rating from Metacritic as well as from Google users, it’s not hard seeing why this game was and still is, one of the hottest games Nintendo has released in recent years. According to the online web article, “Nintendo sold more copies of Zelda for Switch than actual Switch consoles”, written by author Sam Byford and published by The Verge, Nintendo has publicly announced that it had sold, “906,000 Switch consoles in March along with 925,000 copies of Breath of the Wild”; making the game more purchased than the console itself.
With an introduction out of the way, what is the game anyway? If you’re hoping the Legend of Zelda games are linear with one after the other in the stories they tell you’ll be surely surprised to learn each game is its own entirely. Certain characters stay consistent throughout the games naturally, such as Link and Zelda ( Link being the Mario to the game’s Zelda, or Peach if you will), but as far as storyline goes and how the events of the game plays out is as much of a difference as each game’s different art style. What makes this game unique and what I feel has made it stand out ever since its very beginning is the fact you as the player are meant to feel completely apart of the game. By the main character you play as Link b eing someone who doesn’t audibly speak themselves or in the case of Breath of the Wild, even remember his own past or knows who he is and why he is so significant to his world, you are able to know as much as the in-game character does and are able to create your identity in the game through your actions as you play accordingly to how you’d like to.
Being an open world, free-roaming gaming experience, the first few missions might feel linear in storytelling and feel like a typical gaming experience where you start at A and complete B to go to C, but once you get what’s essentially the tutorial out of the way the game is all open for you to explore. The consequence of doing so? Nothing, as the game’s writers effortlessly made the story be consistent enough to not need to be told in a typical linear fashion for you to grasp it fully as well as make you feel in control of your overall gaming experience. But it isn’t just about running through the wilds of Hyrule to defeat the evil and save Zelda w hile collecting all the treasures you can. The game will draw you in with its beautiful soundtrack and stunning visuals and effects while further immersing you into this fantastical open-world adventure with storytelling and having the pacing for how the events in the gameplay out to be dependent on how you go about your gaming experience.
With so much to do like solving brain-teasing puzzles, looting the wilds to sell your goods for gems at merchants, discovering tall towers to oversee and scout the nearest points of interest, slaying hordes of monsters that progressively get more challenging, to just simply paragliding around and playing casually there simply isn’t a shortage to all you can do in this critically acclaimed piece. Just be sure to prepare yourself for countless times of death, as my personal experience of the game goes, anything from getting too tired from scaling up a mountain and falling to your demise to accidentally rolling into an enemy’s attack and getting one shot to death is bound to occur. Video game director for Breath of the Wild, Hidemaro Fujibayashi, told IGN in an interview, “I can’t say at this point if it will be in sequels or in continuations, or what form it will take, but I definitely have lots of ideas and lots of motivation right now.”; thus fans of the series can rest assured that more games in the Legend of Zelda series are guaranteed.
