LogFAQs > #933450549

I'm also reminded of how I said I loved beautiful outdoors environments in Firewatch and The Witness, and that's probably the biggest thing that keeps me in this game. I never want to leave. I think Breath of the Wild actually helps cure my seasonal depression a little bit; I'd really like to be outside and hiking around right now, but when I'm too cold and sad to do that, BotW is particularly soothing; the world is just so goddamn beautiful. I'd snap my fingers and transport myself to this world and live there forever if I could, even accepting the lack of modern convenience, video games, and not having Ganon trying to destroy the world. Uggggh I just wanna live in this world so damn badly. It's outrageously pleasant and idyllic and doing anything in it is enjoyable, and while it's not a replacement for real life, it does kind of beat it in some ways, because in real life I can't climb on and jump off of steep cliffs without consequence and I don't have a magic parachute that I can use to glide over valleys.

The gameplay is also quite an exciting evolution over previous Zelda games, I think. I've always loved exploring Zelda's worlds to find hidden secrets and boy, does BotW have those! You don't have to search the world for everything - the game is surprisingly short, actually, if you just get straight to the point - but if you do you can hardly walk five feet without stumbling over something of interest, and just about nearly inch of the game is worth exploring for some reason or another - and there's a lot of game to cover. So Zelda exploration, check. What about dungeons? I feel like a lot of people are kind of turned off by the way BotW handles these, but I'm not. I've never been that in love with the standard style of Zelda dungeon in use since LttP, anyway; the puzzles tend to be far too tame and the dungeon layouts too linear and easy to figure out (some Zeldas are better than others - LA, MM, and ALBW all do pretty well in their own ways), and I'm just not really that sad to miss them. BotW went for what I think is a much more natural and interesting approach for its main dungeons, throwing out the idea of series of rooms and having just these big mechanical beasts that have a series of puzzles inside them to work out - I spent a lot more time figuring these out than most Zelda dungeons, honestly, and figuring out how the spaces worked when you rotated them around was a real joy. The shrines are pretty decent, too, I really like how a lot of them can be solved through clever uses of the game's awesome magnesis and stasis tools - this game has a lot of uses for them that aren't always entirely intended but can be used anyway. Again, the puzzle-solving aspects of this game feel very emergent, where different elements of the game interact in unexpected ways and puzzles don't always need to be solved in the most obvious way. My only complaint is that the shrines can get a little repetitive and the way they all look the same makes them feel very... well, samey. But it's a minor complaint, I don't expect them to all look unique; it'd just be nice if they changed up the color palette sometimes, I guess.

Combat's great too! Look, I know that people are really bothered by the weapon durability system, and I get it - it's just a generally bad feeling to have weapons break on you and to always be worrying about managing your inventory and saving your best weapons for later. This bugged me at first, but then I just... let go. I embraced the zen art of just using my weapons as I felt appropriate, letting them break once they had served their purpose, then picking up some new weapon to bash a lizalfos over the head with. I found a real joy in always needing to explore to find new weapons and being able to just pick up any old crap off the ground and use it in a pinch. Eventually the whole weapon durability thing started to feel like a plus - I think the game would be stale if you could just find the most awesome weapons and keep them forever and never need to find new ones. The fact that they break means strong weapons always remain rewarding to find, and I like that. I don't mind that this game has an uneven character progression or anything like that, I think it suits the game just fine. You can really sort of beat this game as fast or as slow as you want, and that's great. This game's even kind of difficult if you don't get yourself fully geared up - for a long time I wasn't able to find the armor upgrades I needed and I was taking a lot of damage and had to just eat food to get through fights, but as a result I learned to get better at this almost Dark Souls-like combat system - I almost started to get good at it, I daresay. I really suck at this type of game, but regardless, combat always felt intuitive and exciting.

I haven't actually beaten this game yet. I've done most of the major quests of this game, and I watched my mom play the final area and boss, so I know what's there and I haven't felt a need to tackle it yet. I've just wanted to try to complete as many sidequests and find as many things as I can before I complete the game, because... I don't want it to be over, I guess. I've spent a long time playing now and I just kinda don't want to go to the end because I'm not done fucking around with everything else. Of course, Breath of the Wild 2 is coming soon, so I guess it's time I probably finally got around to wrapping this up. But uh, wow, I could probably think of more topics to cover about this game but... yeah I think I got most of it. It's just kind of a perfect video game? Yeah. Pretty much a perfect video game.

I'm just fucking with you all though. The real reason I love this game so much is that I get to dress Link up in a cute girl's outfit and then go hang out with very attractive bird and fish people. If it wasn't enough to already be a perfect video game, damn. Kass is my new husband now. It's like they created him for me specifically. It's like Nintendo knew that my specific tastes are beautiful video games with lots of exploration + hot bird people.

If they knew that they made this game for me, they'd probably be really mad that my heart belongs to one other game in particular. My pulsing, rhythmically beating heart.