'Breath of the Wild' Thoughts After 3 Hours

Thu 02 Mar 2017, 00:46

If you don't wanna know a thing about the game before you get the game, you shouldn't read past the first paragraph (the stuff about the Wii U version.) I haven't gotten very far into the game so I cannot do any story spoilers anyway.

Wii U version is fine. If you can't/don't want to get a Switch, you don't need to. I think it looks good, despite being 720p. It's a very pretty game with the colors and so. The only thing I can complain about on the Wii U is that the framerate is a bit wonky sometimes. I recorded a simple video that shows the framerate. I'd say it's 95% a solid 30 fps, but then sometimes, you are at some places and you have the camera angled perfectly and then the framerate drops heavily and noticably.

This is easily the most I have died in the first 3 hours of a game I have played. I died probably 10-15 times. Mostly from just doing stupid things like jumping down a mountain, but also going into combat and vastly underestimating how hard the enemies can be. It also doesn't help that you need to constantly swap out your weapon and need to eat to get health back (not a huge fan of this aspect.)

The game is very quiet because there is generally no background music. There is some music in combat and when doing certain things, but just running around, looking at the nice environments, there is no music, just the breeze. Having no music makes the game very boring in my opinion. There is also some voice acting which I really disliked.

I had a lot of fun discovering that you can climb up and down basically any mountain or building, and trying out a bunch of cooking to make meals. I also like the visuals. I think it fits. I think it's a good balance between realism and fantasy.

But other than that, I find the game pretty boring. I don't have fun looking for weapons. I don't have fun running from point to point. I don't have fun listening to no music. I don't have fun exploring the world, which is my problem. I don't like these ridiculously open world games. I like very linear games, or open world games with very clear "GO HERE DUMMY" markers, like Fallout 4 and Final Fantasy XV. Breath of the Wild seems to want you to go up to a really high vantage point and make you, the player, mark out the spots you need to go to, and then follow your own map markers. I'm sure some people love this, and really feel immersed in the universe, but I just don't care - I just find it annoying.

Lastly, and this is something I've been saying ever since the first trailer or something, this is not a Zelda game. To me, the game doesn't make sense as "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild". It just doesn't work at all. But if you think of the game as "Breath of the Wild", a whole separate IP, then I think it makes a ton of sense and the fact that the character you are playing is called Link is just a coincidence.

This is just what I think so far. I have decided to not play any more on the Wii U version as I'll be getting the Switch version this Friday probably, so I'm gonna play on there instead so I have something to play on the Switch until Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.

If I end up liking Breath of the Wild, I will definitively let you know - don't worry. And we can all look back at this blog post and just laugh at how delusional I was.

But until then, I think the game is very mediocre and I don't find it that fun.