First thing first; I like Breath of the Wild.
I have over 400 hours logged on my Switch, which definitely puts it up there with The Wind Waker as one of my most played Zelda games.
I like the story (more on that later), I love the graphics and art style (more on that later) and I enjoy the refreshing gameplay (more on that later). But even though I am my own person and can like whatever I want, Breath of the Wild is the only Zelda game where I feel as if I shouldn't like it.
There is plenty wrong with this game but overall I still enjoy it, I just can't shake the feeling of my opinion being 'wrong'.
To me, it's fine to like a bad game as long as you know it's bad. I have squeezed much enjoyment out of fundemetally bad or broken games because at least one thing compelled me enough to see it through...
For example, I really like the Wii game Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon.
FD is a post apocalyptic third person adventure game presented in an anime style.
It stars a young boy named Seto as he journeys across a colourful-yet-deeply-melancholy and twisted Japan on his way to Tokyo Tower.
On his way, Seto meets a small handful of interesting characters, each with their own story. The game isn't afraid to hit you hard with depressing scenes of unfair death and sudden loss. It isn't afraid to scare you and make you feel ill-prepared for the dangers of the world. It also isn't afraid to be breathtakingly beautiful and will at times give you pause just to drink in the gorgeous world it presents as a reprieve from all the heartache.
FD is a rather special game to me, the story, characters and world are all very well constructed and completely hit the emotional resonance the were designed to hit...
But bloody hell is FD a chore to play!
The game doesn't have a lock on which makes it very difficult to hit enemies in many instances, especially when you're attacked by a horde.
The game also has absolutely abysmal slowdown. It is honestly some of the worst slowdown I have ever experienced in any game ever. It doesn't even take much to slow the game down either, if the enemy is big enough or numerous enough then the framerate will tank hard rendering the game virtually unplayable (especially in the late game).
The camera isn't very good either and it cost me a fair few continues.
The level up system for Seto isn't very well implemented either and forces you to grind for experience way more than is acceptable for a third person adventure game.
This isn't helped by the fact that your weapons break and can often leave you completely defenceless with no way to grind and no way to backtrack to collect more...
The menus are hard to navigate and I didn't figure out how to do certain things until much later on in the game where menu fiddling became a necessity.
Oh, and the motion controls are sloppy as hell.
I cannot recommend FD to anyone, it isn't a good game to play.
However, I stuck with it because I fell in love wih the world, the characters, the story and the gorgeous music. I suffered through the hardship of playing because I needed the resolution promised at the end.
I like FD in spite of all of its problems. I like it, but I still know and understand that it's a bad game to play.
Breath of the Wild doesn't feel like this to me.
Instead, BotW feels like a game I like, that I know is bad, but it doesn't compute in my head as to why it is bad.
I can mention many things I dislike about it; breakable weapons, the world not having enough lore, the story being too bare-bones for the scope of game, unlikeable characters, the fruitless exploration and the unvaried overworld...
These are pretty big flaws... so why do I like it, why is this the only Zelda that I feel 'wrong' for liking?
As a massive fan of The Wind Waker, it's clear I don't care what other people think of my opinions on Zelda.
For some, The Wind Waker is the very worst of Zelda, and many will have trouble making sense of how I could possibly like it.
I have probably lost entire years of my life to The Wind Waker if I were to combine all of my playtime across the Gamecube and Wii U. The Wind Waker isn't just my favourite Zelda game, it's my favourite game of all time and I don't care what people think about that.
This isn't to say I'm blind to the flaws the game has. If I'm speaking objectively then I'd say, personal opinions aside, that The Wind Waker is nowhere near the best the series has to offer.
Even though I enjoy the Triforce Quest (in both versions) I can completely understand why people would hate it.
Even though I enjoy the sailing I can completely understand why people would hate it.
Indeed, after playing Twilight Princess years later, it was difficult for me to play The Wind Waker because the finishing blow in TP made combat so much less of a chore. The inclusion of the finishing blow instantly made The Wind Waker's combat feel archaic to me...
But I still enjoy The Wind Waker's combat regardless.
So, if I can see, accept the opinions of and fully acknowledge why people would hate the one game I love so dearly and not let that harm my experience or relationship with it, then why am I so conflicted on BotW, a game I only 'like'?
BotW is a game very different from anything to have come before it in the series, even if the core values are still intact, so it could be easy to just conclude that this new direction for the series is alien to me and hard for me to process...
Here's the thing though, it isn't that.
I've played quite a few open world games in my time and I've found a lot of them to be as deep as a puddle.
To me, it usually feels as if the content is stretched too thin across the world, like butter over too much bread...
Skyrim had this problem for me. I never became invested in the story and the world was a very drab and generic one to me.
Most of the time I spent in Skyrim was made up of aimless wondering and just adding fast travel points to my map. I didn't care what I was doing or why I was doing it.
Zelda, of course, is a different case for me, but BotW made me feel similarly about it as I did for Skyrim.
I consider myself a rather hardcore Zelda fan.
I know a lot of the lore, have played all but Four Swords, own a lot of merch and care about the franchise enough for it to be a big part of my life...
This is why I feel about BotW the same way I do about Skyrim.
I was never invested in Skyrim's world, I'm not an Elder Scrolls fan, so a lot of the lore went right over my head. I merely played Skyrim out of curiosity because it was a big shift in the culture of which I am a part.
I have no idea if Skyrim is the Ocarina of Time of the series in terms of lore or Other M.
I have no idea if Skyrim ruins established canon or lore because I just wasn't interested, as such, the game just felt dead, bland, empty and lifeless and uninteresting to me.
While I felt that way about Skyrim from the very beginning, I started to feel that way about Breath of the Wild about fifteen hours in.
As I said, I care about the lore of Zelda, and having followed the series for about thirty years (yes, I'm that old), playing new entries in the series has become increasingly about the history and future of Hyrule to me. I feel as if I am a part of the world and I am always eager to know more about it.
I don't want to play the next Zelda just because it'll likely be a high quality product, I want to play it because the world in which it is set is very important to me.
This then, is where BotW began to make me feel 'wrong' for liking it.
BotW barely has any bloody lore.
Honestly, the Great Plateau is wonderful with it essentially being Hyrule Field from OoT, with Castle Town's map from OoT fitting well into the Great Plateau's ruins.
This was a wonderful start to the game, so much time had passed and that passing of time made my heart sing with the idea that I'd be able to soak up so much new lore and history...
Then I left the Great Plateau... initially this wasn't so bad. I didn't do what a lot of people did, which was go off and do their own thing, I wanted the story so I followed Rhoam's advice and made my way to Kakariko Village.
Again, I loved that the village was a Sheikah village and I loved the feudal Japanese style of the place. I couldn't wait to learn more.
After Impa marked the Beasts on my map I made my way straight to Zora's Domain because I love the Zora race and I was curious to see what their Divine Beast looked like.
Again, I loved what I saw, BotW's version of Zora's Domain is perhaps the best version of it ever. I loved that the Zora were still pissed at Link and blamed him for Mipha dying.
This coming after King Rhoam's tale of how Hyrule fell and Impa's story of Calamity Ganon...
I was having an awesome time!
Then stuff started to go wrong.
I was excited to get the rest of the story but I also wanted BotW to last me a while so I decided to explore and tackle some towers.
This is where my love of the world began to dwindle a little. Everything was well designed and things were catching my eye and yes, my curiosity did pull me around the map in a natural way, but I wasn't finding things I wanted to find.
When I say that the world didn't feel varied enough, I mean that I wanted more than desert, volcano and snowy regions.
Ocarina of Time is a much smaller game yet Hyrule feels way more varied there than it does in BotW...
Where are the creepy swamps and graveyards?
Where are the mini dungeons like Kakariko's well?
I started to notice this but at this point I still had a lot of the map still to uncover. However the world was starting to feel a little 'surface level', like how I'd felt about Skyrim because I didn't bother to follow or care about the story.
The problem here, was that I was following BotW's story and sucking up all the lore I could find (memories included), in a game bigger than Skyrim, and I was quickly beginning to feel the same sense of dissatisfaction I'd felt in a game where I hadn't bothered to follow or care about the story...
Do you see the problem?
What brought this to a head was when I was searching a new area of my map I'd filled in via a tower.
The tower in question was the Woodland Tower, and as I looked at the newly added place names on my map, I saw somwhere I really wanted to go; Rauru Hillside.
Surely a place named after the Sage of Light is gonna have some awesome lore attached to it...
Did it bugger and nor did anywhere else.
I had a conversation about this recently with SMS in the SB and how I was disappointed with the lack of meaningful lore in the world, and that most places seemed to be named just for the sake of reference.
SMS quite rightly said that in history places are named after people due to their actions in life and their importance to society etc. The place could have been called anything else and it wouldn't have made a difference to the place itself.
Thus finding nothing of note at Rauru Hillside shouldn't really be a disappointment, especially since there have been 10,000+ years since.
Well, yes, okay. I can buy that. But if I were to ask why a place is named after a famous person like Martin Luther King, people would probably know. I could also look up why, either via the internet or books...
My point is, there's a reason in our history for places to be named after people etc.
My problem with BotW is that this history isn't in a game with a 10,000 year backstory!
This, again, made BotW feel surface level to me.
If you're going to give a world a 10,000 year backstory then fill it with something!
BotW's 10,000 year gap was the perfect opportunity for Aonuma to challenge another Zelda covention, the convention of the story being an afterthought!
We could have had so much tasty new information that could have given rise to new theories and portential games and events in the timeline. We could have read about numerous characters who we've never met in other games but were important in the last 10,000 years. How cool would it then to have been, for those of us who wanted to find such lore, to see those names pop up in future games?
Events, places, people, items... so much could have been added into BotW in terms of lore to make it a rich and statisfying game for fans like myself, instead what we got was surface level.
I imagine a counter argument for this would be that we got a lot of information on other things such as the battle at Fort Hateno.
Well, yeah, we do but the battle of Fort Hateno is part of the game's immediate 100 year plot. We have to know and see and learn about that event because the character we're playing as pretty much died there.
The battle of Fort Hateno and the information we get on that is not the same as names being randomly sprinkled across the map for the sake of reference.
Even information on the Akkala Citadel is scarce, even though it was pretty much the scene of Hyrule's last stand.
Akkala Citadel is way more interesting than Fort Hateno too, but Link wasn't defeated there so we aren't given much informtation about it.
But Spirit! There is lots of information in the Creating A Champion BotW companion artbook/encylopedia!
That's true, but that's the kind of stuff that should be in the game! Not in an overpriced artbook where the lore is mostly conjecture from the writing staff and quasi-canon at best.
I wanted more from BotW, I wanted it to care about itself, but the slapdash way the lore has been handled makes it feel like a somewhat lazy product. It feels as if Aonuma himself didn't care and was content in naming places after characters etc as reference, rather than doing so with meaning.
If he doesn't care then why should I?
Lore aside, let's talk about actually playing the thing.
This section will be a little shorter because playing BotW doesn't bother me as much as caring about BotW's lore.
However, I am going to say something I've already said; BotW's gameplay feels surface level.
Before some of you get the pitchforks out, I'll clarify that only 'some' of BotW's gameplay feels surface level.
In my opinion, everything other than than the physics system feels surface level.
The way elements interact with one another is great. I love that you can't use bomb arrows in hot places like Death Mountain because they'll detonate in your face.
I like that you can throw a metal weapon at an enemy during a storm and get them hit by lightning.
I like that you can cheese almost every puzzle in the game, or at least do it your way, if you're feeling creative.
I love that you can freeze an enemy and do massive damage by throwing them off a cliff or hitting them with a fire weapon.
I love that if you use a fire arrow on an animal it'll drop cooked food instead of raw.
I love all of that stuff... but that stuff is stuff that has been put into the world, enemies, mostly.
As for the land itself and everything else... surface level.
And I'm sorry to keep saying it but that is how it feels. You walk somewhere, you climb something... that's it.
In previous Zelda games I got the sense that I was really interacting with the world, shaping it and changing it to progress. I don't get that sense in BotW at all.
In BotW I can cut down a tree or burn some grass, but they'll grow back. I don't feel as if I'm making a difference to the world, I don't feel as if I'm progressing in BotW because nothing really ever changes in the world either as part of the plot or via gameplay.
All that does change is that the impressive Divine Beasts stop moving and aim big ugly red laser sights at Hyrule Castle. I liked them much better when they were moving around.
The world is beautiful. It looks gorgeous and it is probably my favourite looking Zelda game to date, but when I look out at the world it's like I see the developer codes.
I can see where the ground is coded as flat and where it is coded as climbable.
It looks gorgeous and alive and creatively designed but for all the pains it goes through to make you feel as if the world is actually breathing it just feels artificial, it feels surface level because I can either go over there and climb that or do the same over there and over there and over there.
Contrast this with TP''s Lake Hylia where you can dive underwater and swim or walk around one the lakebed with thr Iron Boots, solve puzzles, bomb rocks, find chests with meaningful content. Go into a cave, hookshot around to solve a puzzle for a chest with meaningful content.
I don't get that in BotW. Instead I get to climb around and find a shrine or a Korok seed, which brings me onto exploration.
I mentioned previously that my natural curiosity did lead me around the map at certain points during my playthrough, but this occurred during my honeymoon phase, before I realised the shortcomings.
Let's start with exploration; the world is beautiful and the ruins were interesting to explore until you see more and more and more and more that all look either the same or similar and all you can do is climb over them or find a chest. There are no puzzles to find for them, they're either just there ready to open or half buried.
The game really did drop of a cliff when I realised all I could do was climb over things as far as finding things in the world went.
The puzzles in the overworld for shrines can be okay but they're never taxing, I know that the puzzles in the shrines are where BotW keeps its puzzles but they all just feel so disjointed to me. Nothing I do in a shrine changes the world in any way. This isn't like fixing a bridge in TP and paving the way forward, this just isn't anything.
The Spirit Orbs for completing shrines gimp the game in my opinion too.
Making Spirit Orbs currency for heart pieces and stamina robs the overworld of meaningful collectibles.
So let's talk about collectibles... well, you don't need to find all the 120 shrines and you don't need all of the 900 Korok Seeds in the world either. Both shrines and Korok seeds are all behind simple overworld puzzles or rocks and smaller offering statues etc that don't even count as puzzles in my opinion, which means you won't need to interact with a massive portion of the world.
What we'll find in chests are materials for crafting, jewels and weapons.
Materials and jewels from chests are as annoying as rupees and Miiverse stamps because they're largely meaningless. You'll likely have more than enough jewels and materials just by walking through the world and tapping A, so they're all largely superfluous.
Weapons are the best thing you can hope to find in chests (other than armour in shrines), but the effort to acquire them is usually not worth it.
BotW has enemy camps with locked chests and taking out the enemies unlocks that chest.
To take out enemies you must fight them with your weapons and after a while your weapons will break.
So...
You see an enemy camp, you fight the enemies and break two weapons with buffs that do 50 damage.
The chest unlocks and you open it.
Congratulations, you got a spiked boko club that does 10 damage and has no buffs.
Was it worth it?
People say the weapon breaking forces you to use different weapons. It does, but in a game about player choice, what if I just wanna use swords but they all broke and now all I have are spears?
That isn't player choice.
Right now, in BotW I have some really good weapons and rare amiibo drops ready to take on anything!
But I won't!
Because if I do I'll break my good weapons and the ones I get in return (if I even get one at all) won't be worth the price paid for the prize.
So now I'm lugging around great weapons ready for a fight that I'll never use, which renders them pointless...
So in a surface level world I'm now not even interacting with the interesting physics system because of another system that has been layered over the top that contradicts it...
And while we're on the topic of fighting enemies, let's talk about combat...
Honestly, I prefer TP's combat, hell, I even prefer TWW's combat!
In TP we had Hidden Skills, we had Wolf Link and we had items that we could use to vanquish enemies.
In TWW we had items that could steal collectibles from enemies and a parry move that could be used to disarm enemies, evade injury while doing damage and rid enemies of their armour.
BotW has the physics system, which does make combat more fun, but other than that we have bows, swords, clubs and spears. All with just the one combo. There are no Hidden Skills in BotW.
We have a shield parry, but we had one in TP too, it was different, but the concept isn't new.
We have the flurry rush which has some odd timing contraints as to when it actually triggers, and we can do bullet time in the air with a bow.
All of the combat is fun in BotW but it isn't very deep at all unless you make use of physics system, and like i said before; why fight at all if you're just going to break your weapons for an insufficient reward?
So, with all that said, why do I like BotW?
I don't know!
I did say I liked the story and I do! I honestly do!
But... I don't think BotW told its story well.
I love the concept of a Champion from each race to defend Hyrule.
I love the idea of each of them having a mech.
I love that Calamity Ganon is a force of nature.
I like that the Sheikah are front and center.
I also find the idea of Link failing really interesting, it reminds me of The Valley of the Flood where a hero failed and Hyrule got flooded, it also makes OoT's third timeline split feel less alien because we're actually seeing Link lose.
I like how Zelda has a relationship with her father and I like that she is having a struggle of her own.
I like the idea of all of these things but BotW doesn't do any of them justice.
There was a fan theory that the Divine Beasts would combine to fight Ganon, which I liked but BotW didn't do.
There were other theories and assumptions too and just none of them happen, this is a danger of hype even without those, BotW's story still feels unfulfilling.
I've said it before but since this is a definitive blog I'll say it again; BotW's story is like a pebble being thrown into an ocean.
The concept of the story is fine but it isn't detailed enough and the majority of the plot happens in the past, which means all that happens for the player as a necessity in the present plot is shooting Ganon in the face.
It feels as if BotW's story would have filled a smaller game like Majora's Mask fine. In fact, just replace the four giants withe Divine Beasts...but the fact that BotW's story is part of a game that varies in length for individual players gimps it entirely and it never has a chance to grow or really even be important even if you are hanging on its every word because everything has already happened.
I like the story, it just shouldn't have been in BotW...
I love the art style too. BotW is probably my favourite looking Zelda. I like cel shading and BotW's artstyle is delicious; not too abstract, not too realistic (though a lot of the NPCs have distractingly ugly faces).
I love the lighting, the sunrises and sunsets are gorgeous. When the sun is high and the weather is clear the colours really pop and the world looks breathtaking, a friend of mine has described BotW as a screenshot simulator and he is so right, it is so beautiful!
I love looking over the world, even though i can see how artificial it is and how unvaried it is, none of that stops it looking awe-inspiring
While we're here, if you wanna know where my favourite ever location is to drink in BotW's beauty is, then stand with your back to the entrance of the Muwo Jeem shrine.
Gorgeous.
Perhaps now a lot of you have a good idea of why I'm so conflicted on this game; it doesn't do what I like well and it doesn't do what I dislike well either.
It is far too shallow given the IP's long history and the game's own backstory.
A lot of it is enjoyable; such as exploration and the combat but none of it is deep enough.
The story is great in concept but not done justice and the plot in the present for the player to experience is virtually none existent.
Great moments and ideas for characters and their races are never given enough weight and when something interesting is mentioned it is only fleetingly.
The game looks breathtaking and I love looking at it. I love just existing in this Hyrule, as I do in the Great Ocean.
This is a Zelda game, a very new one. An alien one. One that does a lot of good things but none as well as it should.
BotW is a Zelda game that threw out a lot of core concepts that had depth and weight and replaced them with new concepts that are too surface level to make the title as compelling as it should have been.
Were this not a Zelda game would I still have seen it through to the end?
Yes, but probably at a much slower pace. The game is still a quality product despite the lack of depth, but were it not for the Zelda title on the box, I can't say I'd be as interested to finish it as I was by virtue of it being a Zelda game.
In the end, I think BotW is an enjoyable disappointment, a contradiction of a game to me personally by virtue of being a fan of the series. I wanted more and it didn't deliver.
Because of BotW's lacklustre approach to lore, I doubt I'm going to care or be as excited as I once was to try and pinpoint where the next Zelda game takes place on the timeline.
I loved timeline theories, but with how lazy Aonuma has come across with his shallow attempt at depth in BotW, I honestly now find it very hard to care if the bloke in charge of the series doesn't either.
Please don't hate me if you disagree with literally everything I said. I still like the game, it just isn't the one for me like The Wind Waker is.
If this is the game for you then I'm very pleased Aonuma managed to tap in to what you wanted, none of what I've said is intended to challenge or disrespect anyone's opinions, I just wanted to get my personal thoughts and opinions out onto the page.
