With one week left, here are our thoughts on the early goings of Nintendo's latest.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/preview/44145/the-first-five-hours-of-the-legend-of-zelda-breath-of-the-wild
As the clock strikes now, I’m allowed to tell you about my first five hours of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Five hours in Breath of the Wild is a weird barometer because you can get so lost in the massive world of Hyrule. Even on just the introductory Great Plateau, it’s a vibrant world with multiple climates, locales, and enemies. You can climb up a rocky mountain, travel through snowy hills, or rustle through a forest. In all of those areas you can just mess around. Fight Bokoblins. Collect mushrooms. Cook meals. Chop down trees. Harass wildlife.
It’s hard to even know when my five hours ended. It likely ended somewhere just off the Great Plateau as I meandered to the next story beat that promised more detail of what happened 100 years ago in this familiar but very different Hyrule. I’ll be general here since, well, spoiling this game seems like a bad vibe.
This world is massive and honestly, pretty daunting. Your possibilities are numerous and, despite being guided to go a certain way, you can go off the beaten path to your heart’s content. The best part about those divergent paths are that there’s almost always a pleasant reward for exploring. Sometimes the reward might be a lame weapon, but maybe there’s a treasure chest with a fantastic weapon (I think the treasure chest spawns are randomly generated to some degree). You could find a Korok. Uncover a mini-dungeon-like Shrine to complete. You could find a Bokoblin camp rife with materials. All of those rewards can be used to build up your Link. Breath of the Wild doesn’t feature any RPG level-up system, but the rewards you gain in game sort of act like experience points that you can use to upgrade your health, stamina, inventory, and more. It’s a pleasant flow because even if you’re not following the critical path, you’re doing something beneficial and fun. A word to the wise related to this, though, until you know exactly what a material is used for, make sure you hold onto it and don’t just sell stuff to make some rupees early on. The rupees will come but certain materials are hard to find.
As of the five-hour mark, I’m relishing Breath of the Wild. The final game was my first time playing Nintendo’s latest adventure and it’s lived up to the high expectations that unfurled from the first gameplay shown at back at E3 2016. I wish I could say more about it, but alas, you’ll have to wait for the review next week before I can do that. And hey - as of this posting, the new Zelda is a week away from release.
Topic: The First Five Hours of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Read 1511 times)
