Breath of the Wild (Again)
I’ve already spoken about why I really hated Breath of the Wild, but in the context of the Zelda franchise overall I think there is more to say. Before I spoke about the tedium, the challenges, the lack of player direction, and the aesthetics. However, after playing other Zeldas, I want to talk about how the game lacks dungeon design, progression, and openness.
Dungeon design: the shrines are some of the worst Zelda content in all of the Zelda franchise. Straight up. I criticized Twilight Princess for being easy. In light of Breath of the Wild, I was far too harsh. At least Twilight Princess was enjoyable. Two of the shrines are a memory game. Many are broken through trivial use of the physics. The motion controls of Skyward Sword was woven into the design of the game. Here, there are just incredibly stupid motion control shrines plopped in wherever. Why am I golfing? It sucks.
Seriously, I’ve played so much Zelda, and maybe 1/6 of the shrines I played I would consider quality zelda gameplay. The rest are genuinely boring, tedious, annoying, or broken.
People don’t take romhacks seriously because they aren’t made by professional studios. Ridiculous. I can point to several romhacks and fan games that takes way more care with their level design.
Breath of the Wild is startling in its absolute lack of progression. Enemies just scale to you, so you don’t even get noticeably stronger as the game goes. I played for 20+ hours and didn’t notice any significant change in power or tankiness. Because you’re given everything you need at the outset, there’s never things that open up to you later. Rather than an adventure that slowly unfolds, we instead just have a long haul trudge of blandness.
Except that isn’t quite true. Like Link Between Worlds, the openness is a lie. The game absolutely is story-locked everywhere you can see. (And yes I know you can go straight to Ganon who cares) You can’t just enter the divine beast. That would be fun, you see. No first, you gotta meet the Zoras, and do some random task so you can fly up waterfalls, and then use that to sneak around a Lynel to get lightning arrows and then you can get into the dungeon. It takes a long time.
There’s constant roadblocks stopping you from going where you want and how you want. The path to anything of significance is littered with annoying stuff you gotta do first. It’s not a choice. There’s no way around it. And while this is generally true in most Zeldas, most Zeldas don’t pretend to be wide open. I find this shifting of player expectations to be jarring and confusing.
See, I expect that in a linear game like Skyward Sword, and people whine on the internet about it. But in Breath of the Wild, it’s just as bad except the dungeon/overworld design is much weaker.
Like I said before, Breath of the Wild is awful and I hate it. I encourage people who enjoyed Breath of the Wild to try out better Zelda games which is nearly all of them.
