Discussion Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Review

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It's interesting and a bit daunting to try and discuss one of the highest rated games of all time almost 10 years after it's come out. To try and come up with anything original or additive to say, especially someone (unfortunately) not well versed in the franchise. So I'll start with a hot take, I think the weapon degradation is a positive here, the game is better for it than if it didn't have it, and it is totally in line with how the rest of the gameplay systems are designed. BOTW is so systems and physics driven and the way you have to play in response to weapon degradation further emphasizes those elements. I really think the flow of running up on a camp, using an ability, then firing a couple arrows, then going to melee, having your weapon brake and scrambling to pick up whatever weapon the enemy dropped works better than no weapon degradation. Than just having a few weapons that never brake, just locking into a couple favorites, and getting to where you never really need to alternate, never need to scrounge around, afraid to chuck a sword over a cliff at something cause you don't want to lose it. I understand people's frustration with the system but to me it makes so much sense here in my opinion.

To me not having it would feel too static for a game that in every other aspect feels sooo free flowing and organic, that's one of the things that struck me in my playthrough, just how organic and natural the world and moving thru it feels. You're constantly foraging, always utilizing the world, its terrain, its weather, and its elements to your advantage in combat, exploration, and puzzle solving. And somewhat unexpectedly for me, not really knowing what I would gravitate to here, but I think it's BOTW's Hyrule that's easily the best part of the game. I think this open world is an astonishing achievement of world design. In its scope and scale, in its atmosphere and ambience, in its verticality and sparsity, in how you traverse and utilize it, and how varied it is and just how it looks. I can't really emphasize enough how good this world design is, it's just a joy to explore, traverse, and even more shockingly for a 2017 Switch game, it is an absolute joy to look at. I'm shocked how good this game looks playing it for the first time in 2026. It's obviously not photo realistic or high fidelity by any means but man the ambience is soooo unbelievably good here. The sweeping vistas, the sunrises and sunsets of the day/night cycle, the atmosphere of the dynamic weather, the different biomes and regions and how the flow into and contrast one another it's just a flat out a fantastic looking game.

And it's that world design and atmosphere and ambience and soundtrack and verticality that makes exploration so good. And the thing in BOTW that enjoyed doing the most. It's one of the best at "oh I'll just go right over there, see what that is and then I'll stop playing" then finding yourself halfway across the map the other direction 2 hours later. Yeah, the combat is good, it's heavily carried on that physics system, the elements system, and all of the tools at your disposal but thru my full 90ish hours I enjoyed it the whole time, only skipping over enemies right at the end, finding new ways to use all the tools at your disposal I think keeps it fresh beyond what the bones of the combat might have done on their own. And the shrines, the puzzles they were also good. Obviously with there being so many not all are mind-blowing by any means but some were very good and again after basically 100 hours I never tired of finding and solving these shrines and I think that's really impressive for just how long you spend with those core objectives. Maybe it seems odd to relatively quickly brush over two of the largest mechanical elements of the game (combat and shrines) but I really think that's how good this open world is, just how good the world design is. And that's coming from someone whose Zelda experience is embarrassing minimal but whose open world experience is quite high. And for Nintendo to pivot to this trend that they really hadn't dabbled in to often to achieve something this impressive, is again astonishing in my opinion. And I was certainly excited to finally play BOTW but also in the back of my mind I was worried that the near decade of universal hype would set my expectations too high, and while it's not my #1 favorite game of all time I would certainly say it met and even exceeded all of the expectations I had for it. For the analyzing I could do of its systems or mechanics or themes (all of which are excellent in different ways) it simply just comes down to one thing - Breath of the Wild was a joy to play.

9/10