The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was on my list of games to play for a very long time similarly to previous Zelda titles which were being released on different consoles. This is what made getting to play them a bit harder since this was still pre-Wii U and pre-Switch time. Few years later after the game's release, I finally delved into the open world Breath of the Wild offers.
Open your eyes
The game starts with Link waking up after a regenerating 100 year slumber. After walking out of the Shrine of Restoration Link finds himself on the Great Plateau which is already relatively large area to explore. The Great Plateau is on a high cliff so Link can't leave it before he finds out what his quest is - to defeat Calamity Ganon a huge beast he failed to defeat 100 years ago that devastated Hyrule.
When you reach this point after hours of game play you might still think that this game will be similar to previous Zelda games but it is the moment when you will fully realize it is not as you are suddenly given a freedom that seems to be very rare in games.
Once you makes it out of the Great Plateau it is up to you if you will follow up on one of the main quests or you will just go explore. Each of the locations you are supposed to reach is marked on a map on your Sheikah Slate (one of ancient technology gadgets, helping you on your way). The blinking dots are, as you will notice, in unmapped areas.
In order to get a map you need to climb a Tower and scan the area. This may sound easy, and at first it is, but the further from the central Hyrule the harder it gets to reach and climb the Towers. Thankfully when you triumphantly reach the top of the tower and activate it, you will be able to use it as a fast travel point. From the Tower you can look around and find places of interest that you can mark on the map thanks to Scope function (by pressing the right thumbstick) and then just start a new adventure of getting there. It felt like going geocaching when doing this, just going straight in the direction of the coordinates. Reaching the destination this way may turn out to be a very difficult but it is doable as Link can climb and swim or fly over things on a paraglider. He can get anywhere!
Link cannot do these activities indefinitely though, they all depend on his stamina. When you run out of it, Link either starts walking if he was running, starts falling of a cliff if he was climbing, drowns if he was swimming etc.
Shrines
There is plenty of places of interest for you to discover but the obvious ones are Shrines - there's 120 of them or even more. In order to find some Shrines you need to complete a quest/puzzle. The Shrines on the Great Plateau serve as a tutorial ones each giving you a rune - an ability you can use. The first two runes allow you to create either spherical or a rectangular bomb out of a thin air and detonate it. Another rune gives you the power of Magnesis which allows you to move metallic objects. The fourth rune - Stasis - allows you to stop time of an object for few seconds. The Shrines outside of the starting area are some sort of mini dungeons that offer a trial - mostly physics based puzzles that usually take minutes to finish. Often you will need to use Link's rune abilities, sometimes the puzzles will be controller motion based and some are combat trials where you 'just' face a Guardian.
The Shrine puzzles can be solved in variety of ways so you don't need to find the one and only way to solve them which is good. Either saves you frustration or makes it more fun. At the end of each shrine a monk will give you an Spirit Orb. Four of these Orbs can be traded for a heart container or stamina container. At first finding Shrines will be easy but later on finding them or reaching them will become a puzzle of its own.
Surviving
The world you will be exploring has rules and if you learn them you will survive. Most of the rules you'd expect from real life. The first time you will try to enter a snow covered chilly area you will find out that Link starts to lose hearts while shivering with cold. At this point you might realize that the temperature indicator on the screen has a reason to be there. The first storm may be also a revelatory experience when a lightning hits you before you realize what is wrong (Link having a metallic object equipped).
Items in Breath of the Wild break. This will force you to change weapons often, discover their advantages or disadvantages or sometimes simply decide not to use them and save them for either different activity or different encounter. For example, if you want to chop trees you may want to use an woodcutter's axe, if you want to mine ore you may want to use use iron sledgehammer and if you want to break someone's shield you want to use a heavy weapon. There's plenty weapons around and enemies also drop them and I don't mean as a 'drop' when they are defeated. If you stun them, they will release their grips on weapons or shields so you can snatch them and use them against them.
Day and night are also different. During the night there are undead monsters lurking that will come out of nowhere (the ground). Note that undead monsters don't die. On the other hand flesh and blood monsters also need to sleep and you can sneak up to them.
Fauna and flora differs in different regions and some can only be encountered during the night or certain weather. If you think this is something for decorative purposes, you are wrong. One of the activities you will most likely do a lot in the game is - cooking. Eating food is what recovers Link's hearts. Cooked food can recover more hearts or even give him special abilities (resistance to cold, higher attack etc.) and for that you need to look for different kind of ingredients.
There is no cooking tutorial but each ingredient or monster part has a description which will give you a hint on what it does (it follows a simple logic). Once you figure out the rules for cooking you can prepare all the meals and elixirs you will need on your adventures. While trying you might end up preparing a 'Dubiously looking food' (that is actually edible).
In order to survive in the wilderness you will also need to learn how to fight. At first just picking up a tree branch and beating up Bokoblins with it will be good enough but for stronger enemies you may need to either come up with a combat strategy or learn how to parry. You have access to melee weapons and ranged weapons (just bows). There's a wide variety of them and you will always want to have certain types in your inventory. The inventory slots are very limited. There is a way to get more but at a cost - you need to find the creature that can give you more slots in exchange for Korok leaves that can sometimes be hard to find (mini puzzles).
Verdict
Breath of the Wild feels definitely like a Zelda game even though it is vastly different. It feels more like playing a game from decades ago when you were simply thrown into the game and it was up to you to figure out what to do and where to go next. There are no endless tutorials and you don't need to blindly follow a scripted story. Instead you are free to roam a huge open world and if you wish you can complete the 5 given main quests one day. I highly recommend doing the Divine Beast quests because those are nice little dungeons. The world in Breath of the Wild has its mechanics and it is up to you to adapt. While Link doesn't get any better in terms of stats for example, it is you who gets to know the world and mechanics better. The more you discover the easier is to survive. If by a chance you haven't played this game yet, go get it and play it.
And if by a chance you can't play BotW just yet, go visit Breath of the Wild world in VRChat. Honestly, the way how the game works this would be great in virtual reality. Doing backflips wouldn't probably work but there are many things that would work and I treated the game more like a VR one rather than a traditional one.
Ren (stsungjp on Twitter)
