Genre: Action-Adventure
Year: 2017
Developed by: Nintendo EPD
Published by: Nintendo
Platforms: Switch, Wii U
#15
Feeling Like: Breath of Fresh Air
It’s not so crazy that Nintendo made one of the best games ever in 2017. They’ve been a titan in the industry for as long as many of us have been alive, single handedly saving the industry from collapsing in the mid 80s and introducing classic after classic. They have their dry spells, sure, but what developer doesn’t? When it comes to the highest of highs, I don’t think anybody can touch Nintendo.
What IS crazy is they went and made Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom which is even BETTER than Breath of the Wild. To quote Silvio Dante, “That? I could not believe!”
I’ll try to focus at the task at hand instead of gushing about its sequel.
Breath of the Wild was a massive departure from the usual Zelda formula. I suppose Nintendo had to go this route, as some were starting to murmur that the traditional Zelda style was getting stale. I don’t think anybody expected them to make this big of a U-turn.
Open world? Barely any dungeons? Breakable weapons? Crafting? On paper, this sounded like it had potential to be a complete disaster. Thankfully, it was anything but. The moment I stepped out from the cave and looked to my right, I knew I was in for something special. When I entered the abandoned church and a quite piano chime kicked in over my speakers, I was completely transfixed. The freedom of exploration, discovery and navigation is unparalleled, stronger than any other game I’d played to date. There was something around every corner, and every vista was beckoning me, daring me to venture forth.
Persona 5 was so good that it came 2nd to Breath of the Wild in my Game of the Year for 2017. As much as I loved Joker and his Phantom Thieves, it was always going to be Breath of the Wild. Here’s what I said.
Please excuse my hyperbolizing. I get really excited for Zelda games.
It’s not every day that something is released that the populace almost immediately agrees that it could be the best. Not just good, not just great, but the best.
That’s the conversation that inevitably happens when Nintendo releases something new, fresh, exciting, part of a highly established franchise and they do it on the fastest selling console of all time. The stars really did align for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
I’ve never seen a better risk/reward system. This is THE open world experience, others seem tame by comparison now. The ability to climb anywhere opens an incredible amount of variety, not just in direction, but in type of rewardsas well.
Example: I can go climb that mountain. Oh, I didn’t have quite enough stamina. Let’s hit a shrine or two and increase it. There, now I have enough and I’m on my way back to the mountain. I have the anticipation of getting to the top, the satisfaction of increasing my stamina meter, the pleasant memories of the puzzles in the shrines and now, the reward. I get to the top and what do I see? Maybe a treasure chest. Maybe a Korok seed. Maybe a new type of enemy, holding a new type of weapon. Maybe a tree containing a secret. Maybe another shrine. Maybe something that will progress the main story. Maybe a new cliff to launch off of with my hand glider, reaching an area I couldn’t before. At the very, very least, you’re going to get an incredible view of a masterfully created world. Oh, look over there, you can see a whole section that you wouldn’t have otherwise. Maybe I’ll make a spot on my map to check it out later. Or maybe I’ll go check it out, only to be distracted by some other fantastical section along the way.
The music may be sparse, but effective. I’ll never forget standing in the ruins of a Hylian church and hearing the chiming of the piano, as if even the soundtrack has been long forgotten but is begging you to remember.
Many have issues with the weapon degradation, and I can see their point. It’s a new, potentially frustrating feature to deal with in a game that’s already pretty tricky. But, I give it a pass – it just meant that I had to use a bigger variety of weapons, and tactics. Running in guns ablazing when approaching enemy encampments wasn’t a viable option any longer.
I haven’t had as powerful an experience in a Zelda game since Ocarina of Time.
It’s not a bold choice to have this as my game of the year, but for Nintendo to create a true open world Zelda certainly was. You don’t even have to tackle any of the four main dungeons to beat the game. As soon as you’re off the training area, a quest reminder pops up to confront Calamity Ganon. This is a game that fully respects the player’s time, choices and creativity. Your powers, unlike previous Zeldas, are mostly given to you in the first few hours. How you use these powers in combination with the environment is completely up to you, and there’s almost always more than one solution to a problem.
I haven’t even begun to justify how much I enjoyed Breath of the Wild. How much I enjoyed the shrines, and the puzzles dwelling within. How much I enjoyed taming wild horses, or scaling mountains. Or using the map, which properly indicates contour lines and geography. Or finding the Master Sword. Or surfing on my shield. Or utilizing the physics engine in an uncountable number of ways to defeat enemies and traverse the world. Or hearing the remixed Dragon Roost Theme at Rito village. Or the callbacks to previous Zelda games. Or the art style. Or Tarrey Town. Or Eventide Island. Or the animated cutscene memories that you simply must find to get a sense of what once was.
It’s all here. I cannot wait to tackle the DLC, or see what else Nintendo has up their sleeve. It’s not a perfect game, but it’s in a class of its own. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is my game of the year.
Tears of the Kingdom uses the same map, but adds the sky and the depths (and more) to further establish Nintendo as Kings of the genre. I don’t know where they go from here, but I also didn’t know how they would improve upon Breath of the Wild either. It’s always a good time to be a Nintendo fan and it boggles my mind how amazing these two games are. It makes other open world games feel pedestrian, or even amateur-ish by comparison. Combat, exploration or even just taking in the view are as enjoyable as possible. It’s one of the few single player games I would play again, and again.
The 500 