Games
Nintendo’s latest Legend Of Zelda adventure is a gaming masterpiece – here's why you need to play it.
Every time Nintendo releases a new Zelda game it’s a special occasion. From A Link To The Past to Ocarina Of Time and Wind Waker, each new Zelda adventure is met with excitement and incredible levels of hype.
This time though, Nintendo might just have managed to outdo itself. The Legend Of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild is such a perfectly constructed game that it might just be the best game in the series to date – yes, even better than Ocarina.
Here are five reasons why you need to play it when it's released on Nintendo Switch and Wii U on March 3.
1. The game world is enormous and alive
Most open worlds in games come in two flavours: massive ones with not a lot to do in them, and small ones with a lot of content packed into them.
Breath Of The Wild is one of those rare beasts – a game that has a vast world map but actually packs loads of things to see and do into every corner of it.
From the numerous villages and farms to the intimidating mountain ranges and the dense forests, this version of Hyrule is huge, varied and always interesting to explore.
2. It really is wild – this is nature at its best
It’s called Breath Of The Wild for a reason, you know – everywhere you go you encounter animals big and small.
Climb up a hill and you might see some sheep grazing or a fox wandering around. Lift up a stone and you may uncover a lizard, which scuttles away unless you can catch it. Head to a lake and there could be some wading birds there, which fly away as you approach them.
Sometimes you can get more hands-on with nature. Get near a horse and you can hop up onto it, calm it down and ride it around the landscape. It’s a beautiful thing and though Link had his trusty steed Epona in other games there’s something special about the idea of finding a horse in the wild and earning its trust.
Nature isn’t always so pleasant, mind you. On your travels you could also stumble upon a Bokoblin camp, but you can always sneak up on these hostile creatures and give them a swift kicking.
Wherever you go there’s always a feeling that the world around you is alive, rather than just a bunch of set-pieces waiting for you to trigger them.
3. It’s perfect for handheld gaming
You wouldn’t necessarily associate a big open world game like Breath Of The Wild with handheld gaming. Its environments are so huge that the idea of spending 20 minutes with it on the bus doesn’t seem very practical.
The truth is though, it works brilliantly. As the game lets you save from exactly where you’re standing (rather than from your last key checkpoint), even making a little progress towards your next goal still counts.
The Switch’s brilliant sleep mode also lets you resume the action almost right away. From the moment you press the power button you can see Link standing where you left him within literally four or five seconds.
The shrines are the best places to enjoy a quick play – there are around 100 of these dotted throughout the land and they work like mini dungeons. Each features one or two puzzles and so they can be finished fairly quickly. They’re perfect for your morning commute – solving a new shrine on the way to work could be your new daily routine.
4. It’s full of nods to the past
We don’t want to spoil anything here because you should really discover it for yourself, but Breath Of The Wild does a good job of making sure long-time Zelda fans are rewarded for their loyalty with plenty of references to past games.
Certain characters make unexpected returns. You can find outfits from previous adventures and the music – one of the most important things about a Zelda game – will occasionally call back to old themes from back in the day. And just like before, you don’t want to attack a Cucco.
These references aren’t so in-your-face that Zelda newcomers will feel left out, mind you. If this is your first adventure you’ll still enjoy meeting these characters and encountering the other elements for the first time, even if you have no idea they’re references to older games.
For the fans, though, some of the callbacks will have you grinning away to yourselves.
5. It’s got incredible depth
Since the game map is so large it sort of goes without saying that you’re going to spend many hundreds of hours playing before you finally see everything on offer in Breath Of The Wild.
It isn’t just the size of the adventure that’s so important, though – it’s that there’s such a wide variety of different sub-missions and tasks that you’ll be taking on as you play through it.
One minute you’re combining ingredients at a cooking pot and experimenting to try to come up with different recipes. The next you’re trying to gather enough rupees to buy a house so a demolition company doesn’t knock it down. Then you'll be taking on one of the numerous hefty mini-bosses who just appear as you’re wandering around.
The fact that it isn’t just ‘go here, do this, then do this’ from the opening title to the closing credits ensures that Breath Of The Wild keeps you busy with loads of different things to see and do.
And when you finally finish the game, you’ll look back on everything you’ve done and you too might decide that, yes, it was better than Ocarina Of Time after all.
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