Switch well worth purchase just to play this game
AFTER the uncharacteristically inept marketing blunder that was the Wii U, Nintendo are clearly set on making amends with their new flagship console, the Nintendo Switch. As if the constant barrage of physical and digital advertisement weren’t enough, Nintendo have brought out even bigger guns in the form of a brand new instalment in their venerable RPG series - The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
I have to admit, entering the magical and mysterious world of Hyrule one more time - cast again as Link, the protagonist for the masses - filled me with both a sense of unbridled, childish excitement as well as a sobering dose of apprehension. Any niggling fears were immediately dispelled in the first ten minutes of playing Breath of the Wild. There are so many superlatives to describe this game that using only one or two would be doing it a grave injustice.
Not only is the land of Hyrule a vast and diverse world brimming with intrique and wonder, it is a delightfully interactive environment where most wild solutions and impulsive decisions will actually work. Grass fields can be kindled into raging wildfires, trees will bear fruit, hot air currents will carry Link and his para-glider skywards, and all objects will behave in ways befitting to their materials. Metals and other materials will respond to forces such as fire and magnetism exactly as you would expect.
One incredibly refreshing aspect of this theme is that the game rarely holds your hand - if at all. There are near-innumerable unexpected events that can happen. For instance, the game never informs you that holstering your shield after blocking enemy arrows will add them to your inventory, nor that clipping an enemy’s wooden weapon with an arrow set ablaze will also ignite it, working to your detriment by adding another layer of difficulty to the encounter.
While the quirky boss’s of previous Zelda games certainly had their charm, the dark and twisted monstrosities that lay in wait at the termination of Breath of the Wild’s four main dungeons are a more serious twist that accurately reflect the age group of the gamers that grew up alongside this legendary series.
Breath of the Wild is stunningly beautiful - Nintendo’s finest moment and a credit to the people who painstakingly developed and perfected a game that is, simply put, the textbook definition of an instant classic. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild might simply be the most compelling argument ever made in favour of buying an entire console just to play a single game.