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The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild Discussion (Nintendo Switch) [game]
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9.62/10 from 40 user ratings |
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01/29/17, 18:20 Edited: 02/12/17, 21:42
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Okay, after three days of doing nothing but playing Zelda, I've completed my first actual dungeon (so you know which one I'm talking about before highlighting or not highlighting the spoilers below, it's the one most directly-East of the Great Plateau.)
If that's too vague, then spoiler for the actual name of the town it's near, before I really talk about it: Zora's Domain
Okay, holy shit. This was pretty much my entire day, starting at the Riverside Stables and making my way East across Lanayru, over to Zora's Domain. It was cool to see the game shifting a bit towards a more linear, guided progression towards an end goal (although you can still totally go off the path anyways). But since they gave both a story and gameplay reason to mostly stay on point, that's what I did.
It took a while to get there, but it was worth the wait. Next-generation Zora's Domain is just as massive as everything else in the game thus far, and really puts Twilight Princess' version to shame. It's really some of the most gorgeous scenery I've ever witnessed in a game.
Anyways, I thought using ice blocks to climb waterfalls was cool -- and it still is -- but swimming up them is even cooler! From Zora's Domain, the whole lead-up to the dungeon was awesome. Swim up waterfalls to the top of the mountain, where I had an epic mini-boss battle which was also part of a side quest. Some amazing views of the entirety of Zora's Domain from above, before diving off the mountain(!) into the water below.
This next part was a real surprise for me. I had a feeling that I would go inside the divine beast and it would be a dungeon, but I wasn't expecting to first have a boss-fight of sorts, against the dungeon. That's pretty much how it played out, though, and it was awesome. And then the dungeon itself. I don't know if this is representative of the rest of the ones in the game, but they've really shaken things up a ton. It was unlike any previous Zelda dungeon and I'm not sure I've seen anything quite like it in any game, Zelda or otherwise. Length-wise, it was short compared to a traditional dungeon but I don't feel like that detracted from it at all.
It's really brilliant how it all sets up. You've got a series of puzzles that make use of all of the abilities you've gained up until this point, plus knowledge learned through various Shrines. Oh, and you can manipulate the level design of the dungeon itself! It really encourages you to think a lot about how to solve each puzzle, and the dungeon at large. I made a lot of mistakes in terms of what I *thought* I had to do to solve some puzzles, but through failure I figured out the right solutions eventually. For example, I thought the water spouting from the elephant trunk would count as a waterfall that I could swim up, but alas, it did not -- that would have been cool! The actual solution was cool too, though. Just...different.
Also, there was something just mindblowing about being on this huge structure that was still technically part of the huge open world, being able to climb outside it and glide around it, all the while being able to manipulate parts of it. The whole concept of "what makes a Zelda dungeon?" seems to have been rebuilt from the ground up, and I think it's definitely for the better.
Dungeon boss fights absolutely seem to have taken a cue from Dark Souls, at least this one did. It wasn't super hard (though I have so many buffs in my inventory making things a bit easier!) but it had that same formula of a big health bar, and a shift in direction at the midway point. No more "attack the weak point [X] # of times". The best thing I can say about it is that are probably tons of other ways to defeat it other than the way that I did. There never seemed to be any indication of "you have to do this, you have to do that".
So now, I've got some sweet new rewards for completing that part of the main quest, and tons of side quests around Zora's Domain just opened up as well. So much to do, where to go next?
I probably won't get this detailed about anything the rest of the way, but I really needed to write about this! Everything about the lead-up through its conclusion felt totally fresh, while still being undeniably Zelda at its core. I could not be more impressed by everything this game has had to offer thus far.
The question right now is not whether it's going to surpass Ocarina of Time for me, but by how much. |
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