I started noticing that there are plenty of folks trying to sell off their Nintendo Switch, and this is across the board, including the original and updated (improved battery life) versions of the Nintendo Switch as well as the Nintendo Switch Lite. Judging by the games that are bundled in these secondhand sales, not many of these Switch owners ventured beyond the games that they bought along with their consoles.
In any case, I don’t think my Nintendo Switch (Gen 2) would suffer the same fate, having discovered a game that I should have taken notice earlier on: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It is a departure from Zelda games of old and has much more in common with a particular genre of games that I’ve spent hundreds of hours on the console and PC. Yup, I’m talking about open-world games such as Fallout 4.
Like Fallout 4, the hero, Link, starts out from an underground shelter having spent a long time in stasis and as a result, is a man out of time (a hundred years to be exact). Once he’s out, there’s much to do and explore in the Kingdom of Hyrule and a lot of this is done in a non-linear fashion. The game nudges players to go about with plenty of trial-and-error.
Combat is tough, especially when your are not used to not having guns, and in the game, weapons break and need to replaced. Dealing with the environment can be tough as well; there’s both the cold and the heat to deal with, and cooking up food and elixirs to heal up and to get stat boosts are necessary. How to handle all this? Why, by trial-and-error of course.
The initial area in which the game starts with is large, with other areas to be opened up. The game borrows a mechanic from another open-world title, Shadow of Mordor, with Towers that can be discovered and act as guides to a particular area and function as locations where players can teleport to.
The game borrows yet another mechanic from another open-world title, Red Dead Redemption, with horses as a mode of transportation, with different breeds offering different levels across common attributes and temperament.
Basically Breath of the Wild is a best-of compilation of open-world gameplay mechanics in an unlikely console (one would think this is a genre best suited for the likes of the PlayStation, Xbox and PC) and in an unlikely game franchise (The Legend of Zelda titles are usually linear). Highly Recommended.
