Our Top 7 First Impressions from Breath of the Wild!

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Well, we’ve played it...so what did we think?

(Disclaimer text: Previewed on a pre-release Nintendo Switch console and physical copy of Breath of the Wild, both provided by Nintendo)

For those of you afraid of spoilers, we’ll only be showing you footage from the first 4 or 5 hours of our playtime. Don’t worry, we won’t show you any plot points, dungeon locations, cool loot or complete puzzle solutions. We can safely say the game is huge and we’ve seen much more than this.

#7: The Combat is Fun!

Past Zelda titles are known for being fantastic games, but “amazing combat” is rarely one of the things that people will tell you they love about them. Well, Nintendo’s definitely taken the time to make combat in Breath of the Wild a punchier, more satisfying affair. The leaps and backflips fans will remember from link’s other 3d adventures have been given a modern makeover - with a few new twists. This, along with the huge supply of ways to dispatch your foes, makes for surprisingly varied and crazy looking fights.

#6: It’s not too easy

Don’t get me wrong here: it’s not really difficult - but while playing I never got that nagging feeling like I was playing a game for kids. There are plenty of ways to get yourself killed - especially if you decide to increase you stamina before your total amount of hearts. Venture unprepared into the cold and you’ll freeze to death quickly, or get too ambitious with your climbing and you’ll run out of stamina and fall to your doom. Enemies outside of the starting zone can kill you in 1 or 2 hits - and even the scrubs cans offer up a few surprises too, like when this guy kicked my own bomb back at me; I did not see that comin’. (Video #3 10:46)

#5: Performance can vary...

One of the only disappointments we experienced with Breath of the Wild was the occasional framerate dip. Certain areas of the game caused noticeable drops in the performance, which was a bit of a downer considering that this is a launch title. It was never distracting enough to really pull us out of the fun - but … you know…As other outlets have reported, these dips in performance seem to be most present in TV Mode as opposed to handheld - which is consistent with what we experienced. This is probably due to the slightly lower resolution in handheld mode - but either way, something to think about.

#4: It’s fun to play an open World Zelda title

This may sound kind of silly, but it’s worth mentioning. Although some of the tropes we’ve grown so tired of from sandbox games are definitely here, adding the fundamentals of the Zelda games into the mix feels like a “Breath” of fresh air for both. It’s fun to get lost Skyrim style, taking out camps like you would in Far Cry, and then to stumble upon a small dungeon with carefully designed Zelda puzzles.

#3: Physics + Zelda = Awesome

This is a another “no brainer” kind of point, especially since a lot of games have been doing this for a long time, but adding physics to the combat and puzzles is nothing short of amazing. Much like Half-Life 2 a decade ago, the slower, more thoughtful puzzle moments and the combat encounters have both greatly benefited from elements that can swing, roll, slide & explode in a realistic fashion. Yes, part of what makes this so great is the novelty of having these things in a Zelda title - but it’s really cool nonetheless.

#2: Swapping weapons takes some getting used to

As you’ve no doubt heard, Link has a pretty wide selection of toys to play with this time around. You’re constantly - constantly - picking up all kinds of stuff, but your biggest turnover will be in the weapons department. Almost all the weapons you pick up early on will break after only a few uses - or after you literally launch them in the face of some poor sap. This means you’ll also be constantly be scrambling to equip a new ones mid battle - which is a mechanic that you’ll definitely spend a bit of time getting adjusted to.

#1: It can be really beautiful

Occasional framerate hiccups aside, Breath of the Wild can be a really beautiful game. Trotting peacefully through overgrown ruins or stalking deer in the tall grass: moments like this are overflowing with atmosphere - and experiencing them with headphones, curled up on the couch makes for a really special sense of immersion.

Well, that’s our impressions after a few hours with the game. We’ll do our best to answer any question you have in the comments, and be sure to subscribe for more great content every day.

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