Review for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Game for Nintendo Switch and Wii U, the video game was released on 03/03/2017
Finally here we are: after years of tribulation the new Zelda is here in our hands. Perhaps not everyone will remember that E3 2011, in which Nintendo presented a splendid Zelda tech demo "tricking" us all in the hope of a new title of The Legend of Zelda for Wii U, the console unveiled during that fair. Unfortunately we all know how it actually went: we got a remaster of Windwaker and a remaster of Twilight Princess (both still of excellent quality and of which you can read our review by clicking on the title of the game), but we would not have known about the new chapter. nothing yet for a long time.
When doubts began to form in the minds of gamers, Nintendo picked up the situation by stating that the new Zelda would be an exclusive Wii U. Also in this case, however, the great N retracted, presenting The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as a title for Wii U and Nintendo Switch simultaneously, as was the case with Twilight Princess on Gamecube and Wii.
On Wii we have, however, in the corner and at the end of its life cycle, obtained a title of "own" Zelda with the excellent Skyward Sword, so hope is the last to die: if Breath of the Wild will be considered a Wii game U despite its port on Switch maybe in the future we will see a Zelda created specifically for Nintendo's new hybrid console, of which you can find here our impressions.
So let's see together what the new Link adventure has in store for us, which differs a lot from previous iterations in terms of game mechanics.
Look, there's a pig flying around a castle
The story goes that once, many years ago, the lands of Hyrule were inhabited by many races that coexisted in peace with each other thanks to the presence of the legendary Sheikah tribe that provided the whole world with its advanced technology. But one day the peace of Hyrule was severely tested by the advent of an evil and powerful beast which was called "the Ganon Calamity". This infamous beast brought destruction wherever it wandered, and was eventually challenged by the Hero and the Princess, who defeated Ganon thanks to the Sheikahs. To accomplish this, they used four gigantic mechanical war machines, called Divine Beasts, along with an army of mechanical guardians, all built in secret in ancient times. Despite the victory, a prophecy announced Ganon's return after 10000 years.
The prophecy naturally came true, and although the descendants of the Hero and the Princess were ready to fight back, no one was able to imagine that Ganon could use his powers to take direct control of the army of automatons. Ganon, in command of the Divine Beasts and the mechanical army, defeated Link and forced Zelda to use her powers in order to seal him within the perimeter of Hyrule Castle.
Today Link wakes up, with no memory, in a Hyrule 100 years later, where nature has grown around what was once part of civilization, returning the world to a wild state dominated by plants and greenery. It is thanks to a mysterious female voice that he will be guided on his journey to recover the memories and fulfill his destiny of defeating Ganon once and for all, before he frees himself from his seal and returns to bear death.
An apple a day keeps the doctor away
The gameplay of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild changes radically from the normal chapters of the saga we have been used to until now. Link can now move around a boundless, post-free and highly detailed Hyrule. Wandering through the wilderness and full of nature of what was once an inhabited and full of life land, it is possible to notice the details of old houses, ruins that were once temples, and details that will make us travel with the mind, clamoring us to rebuild what once was the civilization of the past. In a situation without any tutorial, left to itself (and this also applies to us), Link can now jump (!), climb anywhere, swim, or crouch to move silently. As long as he has an ounce of energy available in his stamina bar he can run freely or perform one of the aforementioned actions.
This time to accompany us we will not have our trusty shield, nor our trusty sword, much less the green robes of the hero we are so used to. Around Hyrule we will be able to find weapons of all kinds, shields and clothes inside the crates or stealing them from enemies, however the first two categories of equipment have their own resistance that will lead them, sooner or later, inevitably to break, at least until we start finding legendary or repairable weapons. With the attack button we will be able to perform very different combos depending on the weapon held (and by holding down the attack button we will be able to carry out the inevitable Link charged attack that hits in the area). By paying attention to enemy attacks, we can also dodge their attempts to hurt us at the last moment. The melee attack, however, is not our only option: armed with a bow we can shoot arrows from a distance, choosing among various different types of tip (for example there are also magical, fiery, or explosive), but if necessary we will also have the option of throwing our melee weapon at the enemy, doing serious damage but greatly lowering the resistance of it.
Between a fight and the other against Boblin, mechanical monsters and so on, we will certainly need to restore our life energy. However in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild we will not be able to find hearts and rupees simply by mowing the grass or destroying the pots that we will find in our path, we will have to find food instead. We will be able to collect apples and acorns from trees, hit foxes, birds or deer with arrows, and light fires to cook food and make their healing power increase significantly. With fire we are not limited to just cooking food, but we can also try to create strange and mysterious potions with the most varied effects using the materials at our disposal.
If successfully created we can count on the help of potions that can increase our speed, our stamina resistance, or maybe hot potions that protect us from freezing environments for a certain period of time. However, it will be entirely up to us to find out how to create every single potion or every single recipe, with the risk of often finding ourselves in unpleasant situations, such as seeing poor Link prey to shivers of cold as his life falls visibly.
Of course, even if exploration is king, Link's adventure wouldn't be such without the inevitable Dungeons. Armed with a mystical Sheikah tablet that will act as a key to each shrine, Link will very often find underground sites around the world watched over by ancient sages whose job is to protect the knowledge and power of bygone times. Their interior is very limited in size, and compared to previous Zelda chapters they last a few minutes by presenting the challenge of one or two small puzzles, and then bestow the reward of a sphere of power (which we can exchange to get a new heart holder or a boost to maximum stamina).
These shrines are present in much larger quantities than in the long-standing dungeons, and to cope with the puzzles we will have a set of some Sheikah powers obtained from the tablet. Link will be able to create columns of ice from water surfaces, stop the time of an object for a few seconds, move metal objects or boulders at a distance using a magnetism similar to Jedi powers., and create spherical or cubic bombs that will explode at our command. These powers can be enhanced later so as to make it easier to solve other more complex puzzles, but after a few hours of play we turned up our noses, thinking that these small sanctuaries were now what remained of the majestic dungeons of the Zelda chapters of once.
Fortunately we had to change our mind: we will find huge dungeons further on, complete with fierce bosses that will not make us regret the old mazes in the least. Let's forget the individual rooms to be opened with small keys: the new dungeons are a gigantic ecosystem, where everything is “powered” by a single, ingenious enigma to be unraveled slowly. If you are a person with little sense of direction, however, you could be burned by the three-dimensional map of the dungeon which we must admit is not entirely clear. We found it interesting, during the dungeons, the fact that they will often present puzzles that can be solved through the gyroscope of the pads, thus making this feature useful on both Joy-Con and Wii U Gamepads.
During the exploration we will unlock control points on which it will be possible to teleport at will, but we will also have the opportunity to move on the horses we found and tamed ourselves, so as to travel as many kilometers as possible in a short time. Taming our nags and bonding with them to make us obey will be vital due to the enormity of the world, much larger than an Elder Scrolls title and which comes to be about 12 times the world explored in Twilight Princess. It will be very important to find the towers scattered around the world, which will unlock entire sections of the map so as to avoid getting lost and to be able to more easily follow the indicators of the main quest, the sub-quests, and the markers that we ourselves can place using the function of telescope of the Sheikah tablet.
Of course, there is no shortage of secrets and collectibles to be discovered: scattered around the world there are countless Koroks to "find" in various ways, by solving environmental puzzles or simply by finding hidden points in the environment. Finding the Koroks will guarantee us obtaining some tradable seeds with extra spaces for the inventory of weapons, bows and shields. In addition to this, the exploration will allow us to gradually fill in a compendium including all the fauna, monsters, materials, treasures and any other curiosity about the game world, while carrying out the quests will give us access to the memories of Link, interesting videos in which we will gradually discover his past history, his moments with Zelda, the arduous trials and his feelings, so as to obtain prizes that are anything but of little importance.
Are those I hear Spanish voices?
The first thing we will notice, as soon as the game starts and the introduction begins, will be the presence of a dubbing. For the first time ever in Zelda history (if we don't consider Hyrule Warriors) all characters except Link speak well-made Spanish. We admit ourselves that we were quite blown away by the novelty and that it took us a while to get used to it, especially to the annoyance of listening, in the Spanish version, to the kingdom called Irùle, as we wrote, when with Hyrule Warriors the pronunciation seemed to have become official. of the lands of The Legend of Zelda. Nintendo España instead chose for a different pronunciation just for us, which could make many turn up their noses, however it is a detail. The voices are accompanied by a very suggestive background soundtrack, which accompanies the classic Zelda jingles recreated in a piano key to light and exciting pieces of atmosphere.
Graphically, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild makes an excellent impression, even if it does not reach the high quality standards we had made the mouth to observing the very first teaser shown at E3 a few years ago. The lands of Hyrule are boundless, and it is possible to admire them in all their beauty, both from the horizon that shows everything without technical limit, and from close up, where it seems that the blades of grass caress us and the wild animals feed on the our side. If this chapter is noteworthy as an atmosphere and magic, it must be said, however, that in TV mode the resolution reaches only 900p and suffers from some sporadic drop in framerate especially in the presence of water, thus not showing the teeth as it should. On the contrary, played in the portable mode of Nintendo Switch, Breath of the Wild looks gorgeous, with a very stable framerate, an open-mouthed resolution and colors that warm the heart. There is not the slightest doubt that qualitatively Zelda performs more in Handheld mode rather than on a television screen.
Its openworld nature, complete with an alternative ending in reaching certain conditions, make The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild a real hour-eater, with a longevity that is impossible to complain about and with possibilities that do not put stakes (it is even possible to go to the final boss directly from the beginning of the adventure). There is also support for the Amiibo, which once a day will give us some useful items or, in the case of Link Lupo's Amiibo, they will make us support the protagonist of Twilight Princess himself in his bestial form, who will fight alongside us with an amount of heart carriers equal to what we had achieved in the Twilight Princess remaster on Wii U.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is pure poetry. Nintendo takes one of the most beloved sagas in the world and transforms its gameplay, throwing us into the unknown like a lion does with its cub, with no explanations on what to do or how to do it. We are in the company of nature, on a magical, evocative journey that reaches the limit of introspection, allowing us to create in our mind stories and assumptions about every detail that we will encounter on our path. Link has never been so true in his expressions, in his daily gestures and in his ways of acting, his humanity manages to penetrate inside us, giving us complete involvement. The cornerstones of Zelda remain anchored to the saga in perhaps a little different forms, but the feeling of the series remains and this made us breathe a sigh of relief. Ganon is back, and after so many years we are back too, ready to fight alongside Link to forge our destiny.
► The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an Action-Adventure game developed and published by Nintendo for Nintendo Switch and Wii U, the video game was released on 03/03/2017
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