Yet there are still pockets of serenity and beauty spread throughout the gorgeous, tantalizing landscape. These are all constant reminders that you are always at the mercy of the world itself. Additionally, the day/night cycle is constantly running, and makes meaningful differences: nighttime brings monsters that spring up from the ground, it's easier to spot some useful bugs and plants, and other secrets that are best discovered for yourself.
Random events like rain and thunderstorms slow down your movement across slick surfaces, and dangerous lightning bolts can strike with little warning if you’re wearing any metal. But no matter how much stronger you get, the world and its resident Mother Nature is always more powerful than you will ever be. Going in with the right equipment makes all the difference.Īs you continue to improve Link’s stamina meter and skills you can reach even more of these varied locations. It doesn’t matter, for example, if you can glide into the chilly mountains if you’ll freeze to death before you hit the ground. You can use it to effortlessly glide across lakes and gaps or ride updrafts into new areas, and I often used each long trip across the map as a way to scan the marvelously lit horizon in search of clues or meditate on what I need to do next.įrom overhead you get a glimpse of what’s even more evident from the ground: each individual area has its own little ecology, and systems built around extreme hot and cold temperatures and high altitudes mean you have to take the time to think and prepare in order to travel safely through them. That paraglider is easily one of the most useful tools in Breath of the Wild because it's so versatile.
When I finally did, what took place when I finally reached my objective was a great twist that blew my mind – including finding an easier alternate route I’d missed. For instance, a tantalizing island far off the coast of the mainland was just out of my paragliding reach for the first several hours until after I’d upgraded my abilities.
Zelda breath of the wild review how to#
Like many open-world games it delivers on the implied promise that if you can see it out in the distance, chances are you can eventually reach it – but here, figuring out how to get there is more often than not a satisfying puzzle in itself, and one that never gets old. It is the heart of what makes this action-adventure game truly special and addictive. What elevates Breath of Wild above its contemporaries is its sheer freedom.But what elevates Breath of Wild above its open-world contemporaries is its sheer freedom, both in its non-linear questing structure and in your ability to climb almost any surface and travel in any direction once you leave the starting area. Each object you encounter, from sticks to apples to rocks and metallic blocks, is made of a material, and those materials usually respond to forces like fire and magnetism as you’d expect. But the realistic touches don’t end there. The trees bear fruit, grass fields can be set ablaze, and even enemies and animals behave in a believable manner, based on the skittish and aggressive reactions I’ve seen in the wild. Not only is it vast, beautiful, and filled with a diverse set of locations from grassy fields to craggy alpine mountains, but it follows surprisingly realistic rules that let you pull off solutions so intuitive that you might be surprised they actually work.
The untamed, post-apocalyptic, techno-fantasy land of Hyrule is the main character in Breath of the Wild. I’m in awe of this scope and scale of this adventure, and I often find myself counting the hours until I can get back in. I’ve been running around for over 50 hours and I still have plenty of mysteries left to track down and lots of wonderfully crafted puzzles to solve. The fact that you can tackle any one of these things at your own pace and almost never get pulled to the main path is liberating, but the way all of Breath of the Wild’s systems fit elegantly into complex light survival game is even more impressive. Right from the start, the vast landscape of Hyrule is thrown completely open to you, and it constantly finds ways to pique your curiosity with mysterious landmarks, complex hidden puzzles, and enemy camps to raid for treasure and weapons. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s sheer freedom and sense of adventure is a remarkable achievement.