Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. A painfully long five year development period gave way to this absolutely gorgeous, innovative, awe-inspiring game. Being the newest of the Zelda series, Breath of the Wild (BotW) introduces a stunning new way to play a Zelda game that, in the opinions of most players, shatters the competition when it comes to their favorite Zelda game.

You can explore every inch of the world, including every place you can see in that introduction photo. As Mufasa would say, “everything the light touches” is able to be visited and scoured for items, non-playable characters (NPCs), and enemies. Having a completely open world Zelda game is totally new to the series, and it has been wildly successful with not only myself, but a large range of audiences.

Not only has BotW literally reached new heights by allowing Link to jump (which he has never been able to do without a certain item before), but he can also scale nearly every vertical surface in the world, giving the player an entire new dimension in a Zelda game to explore.

I know how satisfying it feels to seemingly break the game’s usual story sequence by climbing into somewhere you’re not “supposed” to climb into, but BotW accounts for so many things, and NPCs have confronted me and discussed how I didn’t take the usual route to them.

You’re also rewarded with secrets and possibly items for your exploration, as you may scale a certain coliseum and find some hidden chests or maybe climb a giant fish statue and find a Korok Seed, one of the game’s collectibles.

BotW is such an amazing new edition to the Zelda series, and I am so glad that Nintendo decided to really open themselves up to a Zelda game with open world characteristics that is still Zelda with Zelda characters, enemies, and lore. Everyone should get a chance to experience this Hyrule and climb to new heights in their gaming experience.