I never could’ve imagined that one day I would come downstairs to find my non-gamer (even anti gamer) wife starting her own save file because the game looked fun. She said she loved that there was no pressure to go anywhere or do anything in the game. I think it’s one of the most accessible games for this reason, but also there is a depth to it for more serious gamers.
I think what helps make it so accessible is not just that you can go anywhere and do anything -- it's that you can progress the game while doing anything. Zelda games can be really difficult for people that don't spend a ton of time gaming, they usually operate by very strict rules. And if you can't do exactly what they want you to do in the way that they want you to do it, well sucks for you that's where your game ends. BOTW throws out all those rules and allows for much more natural problem-solving techniques that don't require 30 years of gaming history to understand.
I recently got my girlfriend to play this game as well, she hasn’t been able to put it down. I’ve been trying to get her to play games for a while and this is the first one that hit home for her. She’s even better at it than I was my first play through
11:56 This. This is exactly how I felt when I played through Breath of the Wild the first time. It captured my imagination like no game had in years. The exploration and discovery aspects were great.
I enjoyed the review, but im glad Botw didn’t have an exp system. Exp systems can end up making games too easy or require too much grinding, also limiting where you can go easily. Yes, there is a progression system in botw, but a lot of that depends on the gear you have. I like the fact that progression is very much skill based, while you get more powerful through spirit orbs, getting more powerful is optional, and it just means you can make more mistakes in combat (there is a tighter margin of error w less hearts and stamina) than anything else. (And I totally vibe w you on the it being one of the greatest games you’ve ever played but not your favorite Zelda game)
So much this. I even disable normal skill XP gain in Skyrim via mods, because I like more freedom over my progression. Suddenly being able to use any gear, crafting skills, and battle tactics without worrying about leveling the "wrong" skills or training one skill too much ahead of the others opens up so much depth to Skyrim.
I think, having had the exact same experience as Bandit here, the problem with the progression on Breath of the Wild was simply that everything had an expiration point to it, and that happened halfway into the game rather than at the end. I found the best weapons and finished upgrading the armor I wanted to upgrade and then couldn't really find anything to do with them, because I had nothing new to gain from anything but finishing more shrine puzzles. A lot of games have EXP because its expiration point can very easily be tuned to either be at the end of the game or outlast it. It's a super-basic idea, but it's an easy way to avoid this problem. I think Breath of the Wild 2 can make its goals work, they just need to figure out how to ensure you're still finding things you want to do really late into the game, even without the base incentive of EXP/SP gains. One way might be to have the traditional element of finding new tools/abilities in major story-point challenges, (dungeons or whatever form they want to mold them into), and have those new additions give you new things to work on once you get them.
Botw does Actually have An exp System. it's Just hidden. It determines Things like, Leveling up Enemies, and It Upgrades The weapons And items You find.
@@dr.blockcraft6633 The hidden "XP" mechanic increases Link's strength only in the sense that most of that strength is tied to his weapons, which start spawning with modifiers. It also makes enemies scale up to disproportionately strong for the damage * durability of the weapons they carry, which makes fighting them a net loss in durability trade. Full-fledged XP mechanics would cause the player character to level up, usually gaining more HP, automatically increasing their damage with all weapons, or giving them "perk" or "talent" points to spend on a shiny build tree.
One thing that pissed me off about this game was link's absolute lack of reactions. He was basically charlie Chaplin in skyward sword but now he's a dear in headlights. See the ghost of his friends without even knowing they were dead? Nothing. Seeing Zelda after hearing her distant voice and only seeing her in flashbacks? Nothing. Run to her and hug her, dafuq??? Him being the player avatar as an excuse is getting old
I did feel like his model's face was more blank in this one. If anything, him being the player avatar is all the more reason to use his expressions a lot, as it's one of the few ways to have him convey emotions.
@@ebeatz974 : That said, every recall story scene was him regaining that specific memory. He seems to maintain his motivation to overcome the threats to Hyrule, and his interactions with the spirits of his friends don't indicate any confusion or detachment from his past self, so I'd have to assume Link recalls his memories in full. I wouldn't expect his reactions to be dramatic, just more unique to each experience.
@@theoaremevano3227 13 memories (what is in the game) would not make him remember is life in full he might remember the people but he by no means could have remembered everything
Story wise, I gotta say that Skyward is my favorite Zelda game. It seems like the linearity was something that breath of the wild ran away from as fast as possible. I hope that the next game is somewhere between the two. Well said.
Breath of the wild, in my opinion, has gotta be one of the best experiences of all time just the music, gameplay and environment get put together in such a delectable well executed piece of art. The only problem is the lack of gameplay content in the openworld.
@@PraisetheSunn.-. elden ring and botw are interesting to compare because both are amazing games, but both are kinda disliked by a lot of the hardcore members of the Zelda and souls communities respectively for various reasons, but absolutely adored by newcomers.
I think that’s where the biggest splits come up in the community. I agree, this game is an amazing experience to go through. However, that’s all it is. An experience. It’s not a narrative to play through. Which is my personal favorite part of Zelda. Playing a video game and feeling like I’m in an interactive movie. Loved botw. I enjoyed it so much I played it through 4 times back to back. (Got the game in quarantine) But it’s the only Zelda game I don’t think I’ll ever replay again. Purely because it’s not an enjoyable narrative experience.
This game actually made me realize I had depression and brought me out of it. I never even completed any main quests. I spent months collecting and upgrading the outfits, doing side quests like building the village and my house, and trying to get the best possible weapons and shields. Each task completed brought me joy. I just loved exploring the beautiful world and "leveling" Link up so he was as strong as possible. I only fought when necessary for upgrades, but I was very proud of myself for learning how to land on Lynels to beat them up and doing the perfect shield block to shoot the laser right back at the Guardians. I do see the flaws, but it's still one of my all time favorite games.
This game has grown with all of us. Waiting so long, and received it, wait for it, 5 years ago. It has all grown in our hearts, and it can only get better. My first game was, in fact, botw. But my actual favorite is Twilight Princess. Anyways, your channel, is my favorite. Godspeed, Bandit. Godspeed.
Thank you. My favorite is Twilight Princess and I am glad it's yours because most people who start with botw all the sudden think it's the best zelda game ever. Don't get me wrong I love botw but when people play it, and automatically think it's better than any other zelda game it makes me mad. So I am happy to see that your favorite zelda game is Twilight princess.
It makes me so happy and excited to see others love and appreciate my favorite game of all time: Twilight Princess. It really is such a wonderful and amazing game. It’s the reason why I have such high standards for the games I play lol
I must say, it's quite awesome to see a significant other become invested in your favorite games! My wife has always been a Zelda fan, but I recently helped her dip her feet into Monster Hunter games, and now we play together all the time!
You talking about your girlfriend's experience made me tear up because it reminded me of my own. Yeah it wasn't my first Zelda game but I didn't compare it to the others and it was such a wonderful experience. Fantastic video man :)
There actually is an XP system in BotW, but it’s a hidden one. It is what controls enemy and weapon scaling in the game. The first 10 of each enemy and boss is worth a certain number XP when killed, and the total XP controls when you start seeing things like Silver Bokoblins. It’s part of what allows the world to be completely open, without having to close off areas that might be too difficult early game. Good video btw, I very much appreciate your final conclusion. BotW is actually what brought me into the world of modern games. For most of my life I just couldn’t get into 3D games. Things like camera controls always annoyed me. I thought that my brain would forever be stuck in the 2d world of the 8 and 16 bit games I grew up with. Mario Odyssey was able to wet my appetite, but BotW brought me fully into the world of modern games. After that I bought Dark Souls Remastered and am now playing through Elden Ring, something I never could have imagined before. It is one of the many reasons that it is my favorite game of all time.
I think ultimately my feelings on Breath of the Wild are thus: It's not a perfect game by any means; it can be tightened up and improved. However, it also deserved all the 10/10s that it got because what they HAD to get right they did spectacularly.
Think about any GOAT tier game like RDR 2, The Witcher 3, Fallout NV, Elden ring and many others these games are very far from perfect but what made them so good is that they are simply unforgettable experiences that even major flaws can’t even scratch it, nintendo not only made major changes to the Zelda formula but the transition was absolutely incredible that it changed the gaming industry.
I don't understand giving 10/10 to something that isn't perfect. This isn't a comment shitting on Botw( is one of my favorites of all time), it more about the rating system
@@manuelredgrave8348 i think it's not a game rating because there is no perfect game. A 10/10 describes the fun you had with the game, it's about the experience and the feelings you had. He even said "my feelings" at the beginning. We are humans and it's all about the feelings for us. Experience wise BotW was a 10/10 for me also, never felt better while playing a game, but the game itself has its flaws. Every game has.
I love BotW as a game for everything it's done, but at the same time, I absolutely hate it as a Zelda game. It's hard for me not to compare it to the older games, especially when it didn't give me any of the experiences I want when I play a Zelda game, but what it did give me was amazing. I just hope that the traditional formula isn't gone for good. I'm happy if this is a new style of Zelda game, similar to how we still get new 2D top down Zelda games between big releases, but if every Zelda game in the future is a big empty world with no dungeons, then I'd be losing a series I love.
Just finished watching the whole thing, and I think you covered the nuance of this game well. I’ve enjoyed the narrative and general music of other games a lot more similar to you, yet the gameplay and customizability of BotW is still super amazing. It’s so much easier to do a challenge run with one’s own made up rules in this game than almost any other game, the physics can be absolutely insane, things like Japanese Twitter clips continue to amaze at how insane and cool they are; in many ways, I think BotW is the new Mario 64. Mario 64 broke some new ground, yet when you look at it from a story perspective, or even level design, sometimes it just feels lacking. And yet people love the game to death decades later, not because of how it had an amazing story and characters but simply because it was a fun game: a great base upon which other challenges and experiences or even mods could be based. I think BotW is already proving itself to be in a similar boat. Like you, I think I look forward to a return of several Zelda staples in the sequel. Yet, I personally have enjoyed my 5 different full playthroughs of this game, because it still manages to have many moments that are fun and good, and memorable music and characters and challenges, and many hidden details to discover, even if sometimes just for the lore and not really the weapons or Koroks… it has a lot put into it, and even if it’s different and “lesser” in some departments, it’s one of the greatest bases to create your own experience, and to teach new gamers ideas they haven’t dealt with before. I’ve similarly watched certain friends try BotW who had only played select few types of very linear games before and to see one learn strategy and make choices of where to go, when all they had ever known before was “I always am told where to go and what to do”, was a refreshing experience, and I think it even helped their irl decision making skills by making them consider more kinds of options than just whatever seemed the most obvious choice every time. BotW is an amazing game, base, and even tool. I may enjoy certain things of other Zelda’s or games more, but it accomplishes much that the others can’t do, because of how much freedom BotW offers. Good, nuanced review, good Bandit-Man. May you be blessed with a canon, smart, rehydrated Ganondorf in the sequel
It really is special that this was your first Zelda. Welcome my friend, come on in there are copies of Majora's Mask on the table in the back. Strap in and grab a tissue, ya might need it. =]
I'm a bit older than you, but OoT was my first Zelda game, and the first game I really took the story to heart and it showed me what video games could be. I have serious nostalgia with that game, so your intro on it was so good ❤️
I LOVE that you talk about the trailer for this game. I went in with the exact same expectation that an epic story with a possibly very tragic resolution would unfolding before our very eyes as we played. That trailer bamboozled us however. It should be on Watch Mojo's top 10 anime betrayal's (just kidding). I'm genuinely glad someone else felt similar to me though. I would also like to say I have a similar bias as you. TP was my first Zelda but it was still the most influential game in my childhood, and like you with OoT, TP shaped what I hold as my standard for what I admire and seek out in an action adventure game and other Zelda game's. I also loved seeing OoT having a lot of elements that inspired TP and how it embodied so much of Zelda as a whole when I played it as a kid on the 3ds. I may still love TP most but I'd say OoT is still the most "Zelda" title in the series that really nails what a Zelda game is. I like BotW, but it has little to no feeling of being a Zelda game. It's just too different. That's not to say BotW is a bad game though, on the contrary, it's genuinely good that it has it's own identity. But I think ultimately the greatest strength of BotW is that it feels like a skeleton for future Zelda game's. What I mean is BotW lay's the groundwork for future title's to come in and expand upon and enrich the open world experience. Hopefully those hypothetical future game's even reintroduce all the old elements that make a Zelda game feel like a Zelda game. I hope that last statement made sense. Anyway I thought you did an excellent job on the video as usual. I really enjoyed what you had to say about the game, the good and the bad. Here's hoping BotW2 manages to recapture some of that Zelda spirit and live up to expectations. Thanks for everything Bandit. I hope you have a wonderful day.
i grew up playing all sorts of games up through middle school until i took a hiatus due to joining extracurricular things in high school. it wasnt until around 3 years after my high school years (2017) that i had enough disposal income to invest in gaming again. by that time i was so out of practice with games and the evolution of them had out paced me to the point where most single player games were overwhelming and confusing and i had to look up walkthroughs so often that the experience became unenjoyable for me. i just played visual novels and multiplayer shooter games because they were straightforward enough. i finally got a switch in 2019 and played breath of the wild for the first time and to this day, the brilliance of its design amazes me. even when i had no clue where to go or what to do, i never felt like my time was being wasted and i never felt pressured to look up a walkthrough to find the next relevant mission. i just happened to stumble upon it because the way theyve crafted the world guides the player subconsciously to the next step of their journey. it's elegant and graceful while still giving the player (in my opinion) the sense of taking on a task greater than themselves. basically, you summed up my thoughts perfectly. while breath of the wild isn't my favorite zelda game in terms of story and investment in that story, i can't rightfully say it didn't captivate me in a way no other game of its day could. i hold it as my favorite installment simply for the love it breathed back into me for the single player experience and the care that went into making an experience i believe no other game has even come close to, even now. twilight princess is still my favorite story out of the zelda games ive actually played (skyward sword's story knocks it out of the park but i wasn't able to finish it and just resolved to watch a playthrough of it) but breath of the wild is truly something special and it holds a place in my heart now and probably forever. here's to hoping tears of the kingdom brings back what i loved about twilight princess (cough dungeons cough) while keeping the magic of breath of the wild intact!
Honestly one of the best reviews for BOTW I've seen. The eye of the beholder portion was what set it apart; getting to get the perspective of someone with no bias, limited experience of video games in general, and observing how she responded to a brand new experience. I always tell myself I wish I could recreate the feeling of starting this game like I did in 2017 for the first time.
my story with bote is that i got it when i got a switch i.e march 3rd 2017 and playing through the great plateau was very fun and seeing the old man become the king and realizing the scale of what was happened was really cool and i did not get to ganon until i got every memory or divine beast and once i did defeating him and riding on hyrule field shooting light arrows on ganon felt magical in fact this might get a bit controversial the final ganon fight was probably one of if not the best moment because of how much of a badass you feel and once i saw zelda i literally was crying by how much of a good game it is and i am still playing to this day finding more stuff. One thing i can say is money well spent.
so, agree with that. grew up playing Wii games like super Mario, Mario kart, Wii sports etc. until our Wii broke and my mom bought a Wii u. a fortunately enough my sister found botw on the used Wii u rake at GameStop and we loved the game. so much I bought a switch so we could play the second one totk can't wait till May twelfth.
Great review! I do think I diverge a bit from the point of view that "everything you find in the world is shrines/korok seeds/enemy camps". While it is, in a way, technically true, what really hooked me on the game is everything preceding it. Breath of the Wild is a "journey is the destination" kind of game for me, where I think the "rewards" are what plays second fiddle. The things I remember the most about the game are the labyrinths, the seven heroines, the forgotten temple, the cave with the giant skeleton in it, the climbing mini game, and of course the journey to these places, and the perils I faced reaching them. For example, when you encounter Naydra, I didn't think "okay, another challenge that will lead to another shrine", I was like "HOLY F, WHAT IS THIS, A DRAGON FIGHT IN THE SKY?!". Like, it was the same with the Spring of Courage, while it was technically also "yet another shrine", just coming there and get blasted in the face with 100 shock arrows was incredible.
This is honestly the best video game review I've ever watched!! Loved the take away as well! I've actually never played botw before, or any Zelda game for that matter. But I absolutely can't wait to!! God bless bro
Awesome review! I absolutely love this game to death. When I originally played Botw as a kid, it captivated my imagination like no other game I have ever played before. I remember the joy i would get from finding new villages and the fear from sneaking around my first lynel. This game has an unparalleled beauty, charm, and overall gameplay that my friends and myself in my old school just never managed to stop talking about! I do see your points about it having a slightly empty world or the enemy's not being diverse enough, but I think that Nintendo has managed to make a game that pushes you, very gently, to explore and connect with the word in a way that almost no other game has. Like you mentioned before, the music isn't your classic head bopping epic Zelda music, but instead tranquil and quiet, letting the player truly be curious and fully connect with the world. Thus, you have one of the most beautiful games ever created.
I bought a switch and BOTW in summer of 2020. It was my first Zelda game and my first time playing a video game in a long time. I found that the events of the calamity paralleled the events of the pandemic. It was fascinating and inspiring to see the residents of Hyrule going on with their lives and making the best out of their situation while a menacing threat lingered nearby. The game allowed me to explore mountains, rivers, valleys and vast lands. I fell in love with the characters, the stories, the lore, the music and the Zelda franchise. It has been two years since I started playing the game and have currently spent 500 hours in that world. The game made the pandemic a bit more bearable and I am so glad I discovered it. I still don't play alot of video games but this is certainly my favorite game of all time.
I am pleasantly surprised of how accepting I was of this review. Agreeing to a lot of the points and as a first time viewer of this guy, a ‘breath of’ fresh air for me at least. Love your humor and explanation of your opinions and although I love the game til the day I die, I completely understand your ideas, joys, and frustrations. As a fellow gamer and internet person to another. Great video and now subbing
I was pretty late to the party with BOTW, playing it last year and now replaying on Master Mode. So it's actually really awesome to see a review now, and the last section truly shows the impact this game can have. For me, the reason why this is one of my favourite games--and what I'd say is the best overall game I've played--is how memorable this world is. Be it hilarious deaths, emotional moments in the memories or many 'firsts', there's so many things I can look back on fondly. Reaching the first stable and village, beating my first guardian, getting that last memory. One of my favourite moments though was going to Satori Mountain for the first time. I hadn't ever seen this on social media before, so I remember my breath being utterly taken away. I was entranced, and it struck me just how beautiful this game was. I personally don't find the world empty as well because of how fantastic the environmental storytelling is. There's so much to see in the architecture, the ruins--the little details are rewarding to me even if I didn't find anything there in particular, like an item or korok seed. I know you mentioned as well about quantity vs quality on NPCs, but I actually love what they did with them. I'd like more attention given to some significant characters, but simultaneously I loved seeing just how many NPCs explored this world and you'd see popping up, even following their own rituals. The way they'd fight monsters on their path, hide and run from the rain; they felt real and immersive to me, with some really standing out. The game certainly isn't without flaws, but it executes what it got right so brilliantly that I only see them as stepping stones to perfecting this formula. It excites me that they did so well with this game after such an evolution, and it makes me hopeful for what's to come. I'm definitely eager to see what the sequel could improve on in particular. Fantastic video! It was definitely entertaining and came at a perfect time for me.
Breath of the wild was the first Zelda game I had ever played. I remember growing up and watching my friend's older brothers play ocarina of time and playing Zelda in Brawl but not knowing much about her or link. But when I got my hands on that game for the first time it felt like something had just, clicked. For me, the openness of the world, combined with the soft music, and the mystery behind the story is what drew me in and kept me coming back. I loved the fact that the story had already happened. To me that was the most interesting thing about the game, and unraveling what happened and experiencing this sense of loss and almost regret as you watch the cutscenes as you find them is honestly unparalleled for me. It's what reignited my love for games that I hadn't really experienced since Spyro on the PS1
Me: Agreeing with all of Bandit's cons. Also me: Still my favorite game. When you've played this game for 100, 200, 500 hours. You cannot deny the pitfalls of this game. And that's ok. No game is perfect. Half of the map is essentially empty yet this game gives me a priceless experience of freedom and adventure that I always come back for. My Hope's for its sequel are great. I'm even afraid to hope that 2 will succeed botw. But I guess we'll find out at a later date and can't wait for all the other videos you'll make then. Perspective is key, and yeah I'm vibing with you dude it get it cx When I think about botw being my favorite I don't compare it to the other Zelda games. It's just such an unfair comparison. It's like asking me to compare my favorite horror movie to my favorite action movie. Its impossible to say one experience is better than the other because the feelings that are being felt are so different.
I actually didn't know this about you. I'm glad you made this video. :D In a general sense, I think Breath of the Wild had plenty of flaws, but in the long term, I think it's still a blessing that it is what it is. Breath chose to put everything it had into FREEDOM, all of it, for better or for worse and while it's a game experience that may work a lot better for some people than it does for others, it's an EXCELLENT base to build a sequel off of, finding all the best applications for freedom and finding all of the places where a different approach is more ideal. The only pro I'd kind of disagree with is how Link feels to control in certain cases besides those you mentioned. He feels pretty superhuman at some times, but at others can fall pitifully short on seemingly minor jumps or swimming very small distances. It felt like they wanted a bit of Shadow of the Colossus in there, with Link feeling like he couldn't just power through everything, but it only applied to certain actions, which made Link feel kind of jarring sometimes. In combat, he felt weird to me as well, and I hope they can tune him up a bit in the sequel and make some of the cool alternate combat options scale up so that they aren't useless at the end of the game compared to just bashing enemies with your weapons. Your experience with gameplay incentives and rewards is 100% exactly the same thing I experienced when playing the game too. I got haflway in, and just stopped taking interest in anything outside of concrete objectives like shrines. All the overworld enemies basically fell into that category too. With absolute freedom of movement, nothing stopped you from just ignoring them on your way to your actual destination, and the inherent cost of going out of your way ran contradictory to the usual incentives to jump into action. As for the shrines, the fact they could be tackled in any order also meant no progression or expansion of ideas because there was no way to predict the player's path from one to the next, so puzzle ideas started and then ended in one room, not really giving you the satisfaction of reusing those cool ideas in a later challenge. A couple reviewers I've seen made excellent points about this. I also found that the freedom of traversal wasn't really addressed in some places where the game just expected you to take a certain path to get somewhere. The nature of movement completely incentivized high-altitude travel, but there were a lot of places where it felt like you were 'meant' to travel via the most obvious path, which just didn't make much sense. Having to throw out part of the game to make it more interesting is a bit of a clash in design choices. By the same token, having everything basically work on every enemy hurt the feeling of variety in terms of the threat they posed. While not having every enemy die to a single, obvious win button is good, not having them resist any form of attack for the most part meant they also didn't set themselves apart strategy wise, so creative attacks were more of a diversion from boredom than a satisfying solution to something that would otherwise pose a problem. But all that ties in with the choice to focus on freedom and all that came with it, and because they pushed it to its limits, I feel they've FOUND those limits and produced a great roadmap for what to keep and what to change in the sequel. :) I also think this idea expressed at the end of the video IS something I can vibe with, because I feel it can be applied to many, many games out there, all subject to comparisons and all potentially having this kind of brilliance when you can get past all that. I hope more people can come to have that type of perspective so they can realize how a game they really have a lot of issues with can still be beautiful and significant and that's never a bad thing.
It's so amazing how your video, which you literally called a review, feels more like a conversation than an essay. I cant tell if it's the friendly approach to presentation or how you pause to say "let me pull out my notes" before going on a data dump, but it feels really natural.
Fantastic video, you captured my thoughts perfectly on the game, I had all of the same criticisms and praises for this game, but I also found it to be so beautiful and magical, great video
I was introduced to Zelda franchise by watching my older cousins play Ocarina of Time. They quitted gaming when we began our University careers and jobs about 10 years ago, I didn't, so I kept playing each new Zelda releases and got myself some of the previous releases too. A couple months ago, my cousin contacted me to know if I could lend him my copy of BotW since he got himself an old Switch. I gladly lend it to him. Last time I saw him he had your same opinion about BotW being different from the previous releases. I'll tell him to watch this video of yours, hopefully he gets your vibes and sees now BotW as a new whole game rather than comparing it to the previous releases. Cheers mate! Great content and GREAT REVIEW!
Hi Jordan I'm a huge fan of the content u do! Ur my fave youtuber I think botw is the second best zelda game, first being ocarina of time! Ocarina of the was the first zelda game I ever played, I was 6 years old! My fave part of the game was after u become adult Link. Anyway, keep up the great work! 😁
botw also happened to be my first "real" video game experience, coming from a Mario Kart, mobile rhythm game "gamer" for perspective. i genuinely did not expect to like it as much as i do, nor did i expect to get as obsessed in the series as a whole like i have. the first time i opened up that game, i didn't know wth i was doing, i mean i took a week to realize i was supposed to find the tower on the great plateau and just walked around the place aimlessly looking for ways to get into the shrines. i am now on like my 6th play through of the game and have fallen in love with getting Link's memories each time, to see the way the characters slowly open up and you get to learn things like Zelda's issues with her father not understanding her intentions or even finding the good side to Revali and him becoming my favorite character, so much so that i've named myself after him. i find myself falling in love with it all over again each time i wake up in the shrine of resurrection and being excited to start a new game each time i beat Ganon.
Breath of the Wild actually does have an XP system. You gain XP by defeating enemies, clearing divine beasts, etc. and better items start appearing when you do that. It's also what makes stronger enemies start appearing.
Breath of the Wild was my first Zelda game I actually played myself. I had watch others play through the previous games but had never played, or finished play in the cause of OoT, any other Zelda game. I loved BotW a lot, I spent so much time just exploring the world and finding shrines and completing quests. I started playing when it came out on my brother's switch with his game and I think it took me over 2 years to finish it cause I just took my time. I didn't let myself watch any tutorials or cheat unless I was just that stuck because I wanted to learn how to play the game myself. I really enjoyed your review of BotW, I find your style to be very entertaining and I can't wait until BotW II comes out and all the videos you'll make on it. Keep up the good work.
Great video. I love the conclusion you got to. I played the original NES Zelda when I was young, then life happened, and never played a game again. I bought BotW to my son, and he begged me to play it. I just fell in love with it. And since I wasn’t expecting anything in particular, for me, the game is just perfect. Just being able to get your best horse, and traverse the map, galloping and admiring the scenery is just wonderful to me. I feel this Hyrule is like a second home. I love the inhabitants. I love the towns. I love the animals in the fields. I love to see a fox and think “Oh, there must be a korok nearby”. I’m waiting for that second part like May’s rains, as we say here. I think your girlfriend gave you the perspective you lack from your gaming habits. And I’m glad for that. Cheers!
super thoughtful and i think u released this at the perfect time in the life of the game and the franchise. Every game hits us at a particular time in our lives and this review kinda captures that whole vibe. I was 100% vibing and completely agree and understand what u meant there~!
I am absolutely vibing with the conclusion, when i first played botw i had gotten covid and was in quarantine, i had gotten it and a switch for christmas, so the whole time i was sick I played it non stop, and it turned what should have been horrible memories of being miserabily sick into memories that i wish i could relive again, i will never forget the feeling of discovering botw for the first time and everything in it, and i wish i could forget it all judt to play it for the first time again, but its not at all my favourite zelda game, the story being so understated and optional is hugely dissapointing for me since one of the main reason i love zelda is its stories, and the lack of proper dungeons was also dissapointing, but it's definitely one of my top favourite video games i've ever played
Great video! Honestly I could see every point you were making. Ocarina of time happened to be my first zelda game too and I've played most of the games since. When I received my switch and BOTW game in 2017 from pre order... I was so excited I pulled an all nighter and didn't even go to bed anytime after that! I can say it was an amazing experience and every time I replay the story my walk-throughs gets better and better! I can definitely gush and gush over this game but I'll stop for now ha
I honestly truly adore the Freedom that BotW gives you. One of my first memories of gaming is also observing someone play OoT, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart. But it was honestly weird to say that hearing some of your cons hurt me a little bit (it's not like you were personally attacking me with disagreements! The human brain is a funny thing.), because I appreciated BotW for a lot of those things. I really liked the combat, and being proud of myself for overcoming enemies that could one shot me in the past! I enjoyed the skin variations of the same monsters because it highlighted that I'd gotten better, Much Better than I was 5, 10, or 15 hours of game play later. Scouring Hyrule Field for guardians even after 200+ hours of playing in is still such a flex for me because I remember when I was scared every time I'd hear that opening piano! And I LOVED the non-linear aspect of the game, because side quests were always some of my favorite things to do. I'm a procrastinator irl, so naturally I bring that same energy to advancing the plot in many games 😂. BotW spoiled me with choice, choice to do everything at my own place because there wasn't a clear direction or path, so it Forced me to think outside the box in terms of doing stuff in the game. It was always amusing to me to accidentally stumble into the plot when doing a random thing for an npc, or finding shrines, because it was so fun to me to be able to do whatever I wanted, Whenever I wanted. I've had to check myself with playing Skyward Sword HD with being irritated that certain side quests are blocked behind a progress wall, because I'd gotten used to that lax game play. As someone who also loves this series, I'm glad that your gf gave you a perspective that you didn't have before, because I love BotW for the things it pivots from formula-wise, and for the things that are familiar. And I actually really liked the story/premise of this game, because we get to experience the consequences and aftermath of not winning. The feeling of emptiness adds depth for me, because it really emphasizes "Damn. The Calamity really DID take away so much.." It really made me feel for Link, as the memories and landscape helped me learn all the things he'd lost. BotW was the first truly open world game I personally played, and I'm forever grateful that I had some familiar faces, races, and concepts to ease me into a new gaming experience. Anyways, I know this was long so thanks to anyone who decided to read this, and a special thanks to Bandit if you decide to read this too. Thanks for making this video!
I remember one day coming across a video of breath of the wild. it was from Stampy, A guy I cherished back then and still cherish now it was a video from back when the game released and I watched the videos filled with wonder as I had never experienced the game before then. That Christmas I got the game. It was wonderful finally getting to experience the adventure I had been wanting ever since I started watching the videos in March. Now that I’ve played the game so many times I’ve developed formulas and algorithms for playing the game, there’s hardly any wonder left the game. I know from other games that I just never have this wonder and there’s just not as much mystery as there is breath of the wild. This is why I’m sure that the sequel will overtake breath of the wild as my favorite Zelda game.
my favorite zelda game is majoras mask, i love how each side quest can be woven into the main story through the reward of masks and how even playing a game doing only the minnimum effort only the things you need to do to complete each dongeon and beat majora you still interact heavily with the community of termina, i love everything about the game and i think it is amazing
Your reflections on le gf's experience are really interesting. Despite being a hardcore fan of the franchise since the N64 era, this has always been my approach to every game. I never compared them too much to each other, only in terms of how deeply the story affected me. Perhaps this is why I never understood why so many critizised the game for its non-linear story or the fact that the master sword has been demoted to a fancy optional waving stick. I used to think it's just very easy to impress me with a good game, since I seemed to really enjoy games others rejected for the same reasons you discuss in the video. But perhaps I'm more impressed by others just because I don't compare the game to all previous ones but view them as individual works of art in their own right, sharing lore and story elements.
I agree the lack of enemy variety and ganon’s boss battles were mid, but I just love this game. It’s not perfect at all even elden ring has its flaws(that lock mechanic🤬)
Totally vibing with you, Bandit! I’ve tried playing it and am having trouble wrapping my brain around the controls. Summer vacation is coming and BotW is on my list of games to play. (Third grade teacher…fyi…those kiddos are always shocked to find out I play video games.) I think you watching your girlfriend play for the first time let you see this game without any preconceived ideas of what it should be. We have a history with the franchise and automatically have some bias on how we think it should be. Seeing the awe and wonder of someone play without those notions can be eye opening. I think it’s one reason I’ve watched and rewatched DeeBeeGeek play BotW multiple times. His sense of awe and wonder helped me to appreciate the game in ways I hadn’t been able to watching other play throughs. The joy and excitement give me the warm fuzzies each and every time. It’s like watching my students make connections in things I’ve taught to “the real world”. Those moments of wonder are amazing to see and can change your own perspective about things. That either made no sense or total sense depending on if you were vibing with me. 😉
I got this game for Christmas from my girlfriend - and I only got 15 hours in before she picked it up and put hundreds of hours into it. I didn’t even get to finish it - I just watched her finish it. It was her first Zelda game, she’s since read every Zelda Manga and through questions to me - she knows everything about all the games. My now 5 year old has watched her play it all and has picked up the game himself - and has mastered shield parrying everything (puts us to shame) and wanted a Zelda themed 4th birthday. It’s not the experience of the game I had been looking forward to for years - but because of how it was designed it became something we could enjoy as a family and has brought us thousands of hours of enjoyment in and out of the game.
My first Zelda game? Well, the first one I ever watched someone play was the GameCube port of OoT when I was 5. But when I turned 8, Wind Waker was introduced to me--though I didn't think much of it until I turned 14. At that point, 14 was an age that I was mentally wanting adventure and getting out of the house more (which didn't happen very often then). Wind Waker did that for me and I was mostly satisfied with that want. Soon enough, I developed a higher drive for adventure that hasn't died even after a decade, but now it's in a more controlled manner. Now that I'm in my mid-20's, I'm having more chances to go to places I've never been to than I did as a teenager. Wind Waker has been my favorite game out of the whole series since that time. When BotW released towards the end of my sophomore year of college, it lit up that sense of adventure again, but in a bittersweet way, knowing those blissful days of being a teenager would never return and that myself from then would never experience it the way my 20 year old self did. It's sad, sure, but, I definitely see BotW as more of a 'grown-up,' bittersweet take on Wind Waker, and I've come to accept that.
The fact that nearly all combat encounters completely lose meaning later in the game was a really annoying thing for me as well. After a while I was just skipping every non-mandatory combat encounter unless I needed their materials specifically.
I first tried to play A Link to the Past when I was like 7, since it was the first zelda game my mom played and she wanted to introduce me to the series, but the first one I beat was Wind waker. Majora’s mask is now my favorite in the series because of the story it tells. I continued to fall in love with the series more than my mom ever did. My mom, when she first picked up Breath of The Wild was so unbelievably ecstatic. My opinion of breath of the wild is so similar to yours. It’s a phenomenal game on its own, but when you bog it down with expectations and tradition it takes away from the beautiful experience that the game holds.
This is a truly beautiful video, especially the last chapter. It took guts for you to admit that you might have been wrong about the game as a whole. My experience with the game has been rather different. I grew up loving Zelda, but without ever properly getting into a game before high school, it was more a love of the concept. My babysitter’s son had Link to the Past on SNES when I was very little, and it was one of the first video games I was ever exposed to (along with Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country). My brother and I had Oracle of Seasons on GameBoy Colour, and though I never put enough time into figuring it out and beating it, my love never waned. Ocarina of Time was pretty big at the time too, but we didn’t have an N64 so I resorted to watching my friends play at their houses. We later got Twilight Princess on Wii, but I still hadn’t quite matured enough to tackle a Zelda game full-on and figure it all out. Proof of my love for the IP was evident in my attempts at writing Zelda fanfic (which basically ripped off the Redwall stories and placed them in Hyrule). I then got Ocarina of Time on 3DS, and although I beat it and enjoyed it, it felt more like something I needed to do to prove to myself that I was in fact a Zelda fan. It didn’t cast the same spell on me that I knew it had for so many when it was first released. I got my Switch decently late (January 1, 2019), and held off playing Breath of the Wild for a while. I don’t know why I did that. Maybe part of me was scared that it wouldn’t live up to the impossible expectations for the series that had built up over time. But I always knew it would be there, and in late 2020 I finally took the plunge. Looking back, I think it was a good decision. The pandemic gave me the freedom to devote the amount of time to the game that I feel it truly deserves. I’ve always been a big fan of exploring in open world games (like GTA) just for the sake of it, but even at that the realism sometimes made it feel like a chore. Breath of the Wild transported me to another place, where I was just as happy foraging for specific items to customize my clothing in a given colour as I was finding the next shrine on my path to defeating Ganon. 500 hours and 900 Korok seeds later, I can confidently say it’s my favourite game of all time :)
BotW is my favorite zelda game because it expanded upon what I like best about Zelda games: the exploration and world. When I first played Oot as a kid, my favorite moments in the game were sneaking into hyrule castle, rescuing Epona from lon lon ranch, walking around kakariko town, and other stuff like that. I, honestly, disliked the dungeons in the game and dreaded having to go through them. I felt like I lost control in the game when I had to stay in the one dungeon and complete it unlike everything else in the game that I could jist leave to do something else, or were short enough to not drag on. I've grown to appreciate the dungeons more now, but that sense of exploration and discovery I have in zelda games outside of dungeons is still my favorite part of them. That's why BotW delivers on everything I personally think makes zelda great. The shrines bring quick, fun puzzles and challenges that allow me to quickly get back into exploring in a way that I couldn't if there was a longer dungeon in my way.
Is it weird I got a little choked up when you spoke about your gf loving with this game? I bet it was amazing to see her experience it. :' ) Just made me remember how excited I was to play this game and how long I waited.. and it turned out to be everything I wanted, and lots of things I didn't want too. If that makes any sense lol. I love this game so much. Good review man, thanks for sharing.
Great engine and mechanics. Looks pretty enough but feels like it's a game cut in half. It feels like its just the kid section of OoT like the 4 beasts were supposed to be there to unlock getting the master sword. Also lots of areas where it looked like there was meant to be stuff and storyline but nothing in game.
BOTW was my very first Zelda game and the game that got me excited about video games again. I started playing it in early 2020 when we were first being told to stay at home. I had so much time on my hands and I really fell in love with BOTW, the world, and its lore. I see and agree with a lot of the negative aspects you pointed out, and yet I can't help but hold this up as one of my favorite video games of all time. I spent nearly a year playing & deep-diving into the world & lore before I finally killed a guardian. After that, I'd finished all four guardians and beaten Ganon within a month. This game is so special and offers so much for people who are casual & serious gamers.
This is a solid review, and I'm on board with most of it. While I also loved playing this game, here are a few added nitpicks I had that you didn't mention: 1. DO NOT PUT THE "CROUCH" BUTTON ON LS CLICK. I can't tell you how many times I've died by accidentally crouching in front of an enemy. There's a reason many games put "sprint" there instead. 2. Inventory UI is clunky. A. For how many times you will inevitably need to drop equipment, it's darned tedious to do. The solution could have been a simple "Drop" button prompt while pulling up the D-pad item selectors. B. Cooking likewise gets tedious. The solution could have been a simple "Cook again" contextual prompt at a pot, which would toss in the same ingredients you used last time. 3. Champion's weapons are anticlimactic. The big emotional anticipation of getting a unique reward is usually deflated by "Your inventory is full." Then once you get the weapon, your instinct is to never use it because you don't want to break it. 4. Link's total silence is now awkward. I know that Link as silent protagonist is a long tradition, but in a game that deliberately breaks with tradition in so many other ways, Link needed voiced dialogue. The half measure of giving Zelda and others voiced lines while Link is mute makes the cutscenes and memories painfully awkward. Zelda appears to prattle on endlessly in one-side conversations because Link can't respond. If you're going for a more cinematic approach to story, just go for it.
I watched Arlo, I watched MockRock, I'ma watch you and I will watch any other gametuber who makes a BotW Retrospective Review and I will love every single one, so keep making 'em! Thanks.
Regarding the No Climbing Walls Inside Shrines thing: in my headcanon, during his 100-year slumber in the Chamber of Restoration's jacuzzi Link has been infused with some Sheika nanotechnology that allows him to grip any surface (either that or his underpants are an advanced version of the Climber's Bandana). The shrines are specifically designed by the Sheika to test the Chosen Hero, so their walls contain technology that blocks the climbing technology from working. As for why there are no Like-Likes, Leevers or Peahats in the game... I'm stumped!
mate, I love BotW retrospectives. been waiting for yours and I'm glad you did it. I listen to Arlo's when going to bed, along with KingK. Would love to see retrospectives for all Zelda games from you ;)
Twilight princess is my favorite Zelda game. When I was younger I would spend hours running around the map exploring. Breath of the wild gave me what I was thirsty for in that game- a large open world to explore for hours on end, finding new enemies, new places to explore, new items, and it was so amazing. The feeling of your first play through of botw, discovering everything, it’s incomparable to any other game. I really hope they can capture that and even add onto it in the second game, with more places to explore and more things to discover.
My thoughts on BotW can be best summed up in the immortal words of Jorgen Von Strangle: very impressive, highly original, DON'T DO IT AGAIN. It's one of my favorite games, and yet I don't want it to be the direction that the Zelda series goes in going forward. Too much of what I love in a Zelda game fell by the wayside in the name of the open world.
This video was an experience of a lifetime botw will always be one of my favourite games just because of how breathtaking it is I would play it over and over
you pulling out the first cartradge you ever played on made me want mine back, (the first for me was a link to the past). And my uncle gave it back to me. My dad was also excited because him and i played on it a lot.
I have a very particular relationship with BOTW that I've actually thought about making into a video. Long story short, it was the first game I played after a long time, which meant it was sort of a new start for what I thought about video games. Before my hiatus from gaming, I was an avid gamer. Not really involved or on top of the conversations in the communities, but I still liked games a lot. Maybe too much at times. After coming back to BOTW as my new "first game," I've gravitated toward games with facets of exploration and wonder more than the "simpler" platformers I used to focus on like Mario. It changed what I wanted out of storytelling to a degree too. I wasn't worried about potholes or lore implications- I just wanted to experience this new thing. My fresh start put me in a position where I was both Bandit and his girlfriend. This video you've made, Bandit, actually makes me want to make the video I've been thinking about for a while, so I won't ramble on until I do. Thanks for making neat stuff to inspire conversation!
That end but with your girlfriend’s story really warmed my soul! Botw is my favourite Zelda game (tied with WWHD & MM) and it’s because of how free it is and how perfectly it controls. I’m having a somewhat similar experience of watching my boi play it for the first time (and it also happened to be his first triple A Nintendo franchise he’s played other than Pokémon) through a series on my channel aptly named Non-Zelda Fan Plays Botw and while I can’t say he’s fully appreciating every little detail, he’s definitely gotten way better at understanding how a 360 degree camera works and he’s eager to play whenever we’re hanging out. It really makes me happy ☺️
SO! Remember how we spoke briefly on Patron about our similarities in our GF's and their recent play throughs of the game? She is still on the same bend of getting all the seeds~ but she did get all the shrines and just loves exploring / playing through the game. I think the only difference is that she played other zelda games in the series, TP being her favorite. (coincidentally mine as well, next to Majora's Mask and that dark-theme, which is arguably as dark). Still.. I completely, 100% agree with you on the fact that it is very enjoyable to watch a person experience a game that you yourself have played, which may have had a different experience form your own play through, but all the same quite fun and honestly enlightening to the whole perspective is everything mentality. As everyone of us has our own about everything. Keep on keeping on brother man, will continue to support and appreciate the content you put out. :>
Funny story: I started an experiment in which my older sister (who is conveniently in the same condition regarding video games as your girlfriend) had to clear the Great Plateau section on her own with at least as possible to no help from me. It was amusing to watch her, but my favorite moment was when she got stuck in the Ja Baji Shrine and finally figured out how to destroy the blocks that block the ladder. She came to the solution completely on her own and her little gasp when she had the idea makes me still smile. It's really amazing how concepts that are common for adventure game veterans are in the eyes of a complete rookie. The experiment is still ongoing and my father is the next victim By the way, BotW features a hidden Xp system. Its more like a ranking system that determines when stronger enemies and weapons spawn. Another youtuber made a video about the topic
Honestly, the story about your girlfriend finally playing BOTW really got to me and made me happy to my core. That's how fondly I remember Ocarina of Time and Majora's mask, and to know that she didn't much care for games before having played it is awesome. I love video games and especially Zelda, the world and characters and lore are so in depth and exciting, I've lived Zelda since I was a kid. I can't wait to see where it goes next.
I think my favorite example of BotW at its peak is Eventide Isle. You have to go out of your way to land on it with either extremely high stamina or learning the Korok Leaf sailing method, and when you get there it strips you down to just your runes and items. Then you have to use your wits to get the shrine orbs into place, including getting one off a Hinox. It really challenges you to think outside the box to get that shrine to appear. Eventide was almost better than the Divine Beast Dungeons.
My niece saw me playing this when she was 6 years old. Its one of the few games she could play because it was intuitive and she didn't HAVE to read (we have a family-inherited learning disability) in order to get through it or find useful items in the game. It why she now loves gaming. She is currently playing through skyward sword (a challenge for her) and Legends Arceus, because breath of the wild showed her she doesn't need to be limited by words. I will be buying her the sequel when I order my own copy.
OK, I love asking this question. Favourite moment of playing this game for the first time. It could be little, it could be big. For example, mine was cresting a hill near the start of the game, having not come across anything but monsters since I left the platue. I'd tried (and failed) to clear out a monster camp, I'd run away from my first Talus (that was a nasty surprise), and I'd already gone through a blood moon (so terrifying). The world was scary, the world was lonely, the world wanted to kill me. But, as I crested that hill at night, wondered up to the three trees on top, I began to hear music. And when I got to the trees I look down and saw the lights of Kakariko village at the bottom of the hills. That was such a warm feeling, of finding homes and people. I camped on that hill that night to ride in at dawn, which I imagined an adventurer would do. Let me tell you, when I saw my first merchant on the way in I was very happy😊
My grandmother bought the n67 when I was born 97, she wanted something to do with me as I grew up since we lived on a rural Canadian farm I wouldn't have had any hobbies in common without that. She's turning 70 soon, still play together, the roles have reversed it's me playing now while she watches. But I still make time for our game every chance I get. Oot and majora hold a special place in my heart and always will.
When doing this kind of comparison, one thing that I always do is to recover the felling that I had the first time I play the game. That's when you really can tell if the game it's good, because the second time forward you always biased by your previous playthrough. For instance, the shrines seems shorter now, because I know exactly what to do. But the first time, some of the shrines take a good amount of time. Anyways, great video. Love it.
ive been playing zelda games since the very first. and ill say botw is my favorite. the ability to just go do stuff really was all i did in the past. it was only after link to the past that the idea of "oh go here" was there and thats what i did. i barely went off the path since the games really didnt let you. so when it came back to "go there, but do you really wanna?" i was happy. it felt alot like the first in that youre not trying to protect the world, youre exploring the remains of a destroyed land where the bad guy won long ago.
Breath of the wild was my first zelda game, and introduced me to the series. It's not the perfect game, but the feeling of wandering the open fields and the first scene where link walks out onto the Great Plateau will never seize to amaze me. I do wish that there were more enemies to fight and harder dungeons, but this game will always be special.
@@theoaremevano3227 Anyone who says anything like that is just being arrogant. No one person gets to decide what a real Zelda game is, or a real Star Wars movie, etc.
@@TheAlibabatree : I agree it's too simplistic to say what IS and IS NOT rather than what you'd prefer. In general, people are trying to say that a game 'rates highly for them among other games they've played, but lower among games in the same series', a common feeling, but that doesn't mean it's actually bad at being part of that series. :)
I love this video because I understand what you’re saying, but have a completely opposite experience. My experience with video games was a lot like your girlfriend’s-until I married a gamer and he convinced me to try BOTW. It took me a while to get into (controlling a camera when you have zero experience navigating a virtual 3D world is… something) but once I “got” the game, I was hooked. I’ve since played a few other Zelda games and found them enjoyable, but I can’t help but compare them to BOTW. I love the puzzles and stories, but none of them have quite the same magic of discovering a world and I can’t help but miss it.
What was your first Zelda game?
Vowv
°
BotW...
Breath of the wild
Ocarina of time
I never could’ve imagined that one day I would come downstairs to find my non-gamer (even anti gamer) wife starting her own save file because the game looked fun. She said she loved that there was no pressure to go anywhere or do anything in the game. I think it’s one of the most accessible games for this reason, but also there is a depth to it for more serious gamers.
Well. It's not the only game that does tht 😆 thts not unique
I think what helps make it so accessible is not just that you can go anywhere and do anything -- it's that you can progress the game while doing anything.
Zelda games can be really difficult for people that don't spend a ton of time gaming, they usually operate by very strict rules. And if you can't do exactly what they want you to do in the way that they want you to do it, well sucks for you that's where your game ends.
BOTW throws out all those rules and allows for much more natural problem-solving techniques that don't require 30 years of gaming history to understand.
@@piusdoe8984 miss the point of the comment and video i see
@@piusdoe8984 Point flew way past you didn't it? *Pat pat* it's ok 🙂
get her started in elder scrolls online, she can fish and make a house.
I recently got my girlfriend to play this game as well, she hasn’t been able to put it down. I’ve been trying to get her to play games for a while and this is the first one that hit home for her. She’s even better at it than I was my first play through
11:56 This. This is exactly how I felt when I played through Breath of the Wild the first time. It captured my imagination like no game had in years. The exploration and discovery aspects were great.
I thought I had outgrown gaming.
Breathe of The Wild got me back. So much fun, and so satisfying. Excellent review!
I enjoyed the review, but im glad Botw didn’t have an exp system. Exp systems can end up making games too easy or require too much grinding, also limiting where you can go easily. Yes, there is a progression system in botw, but a lot of that depends on the gear you have. I like the fact that progression is very much skill based, while you get more powerful through spirit orbs, getting more powerful is optional, and it just means you can make more mistakes in combat (there is a tighter margin of error w less hearts and stamina) than anything else. (And I totally vibe w you on the it being one of the greatest games you’ve ever played but not your favorite Zelda game)
So much this. I even disable normal skill XP gain in Skyrim via mods, because I like more freedom over my progression. Suddenly being able to use any gear, crafting skills, and battle tactics without worrying about leveling the "wrong" skills or training one skill too much ahead of the others opens up so much depth to Skyrim.
I think, having had the exact same experience as Bandit here, the problem with the progression on Breath of the Wild was simply that everything had an expiration point to it, and that happened halfway into the game rather than at the end. I found the best weapons and finished upgrading the armor I wanted to upgrade and then couldn't really find anything to do with them, because I had nothing new to gain from anything but finishing more shrine puzzles.
A lot of games have EXP because its expiration point can very easily be tuned to either be at the end of the game or outlast it. It's a super-basic idea, but it's an easy way to avoid this problem. I think Breath of the Wild 2 can make its goals work, they just need to figure out how to ensure you're still finding things you want to do really late into the game, even without the base incentive of EXP/SP gains. One way might be to have the traditional element of finding new tools/abilities in major story-point challenges, (dungeons or whatever form they want to mold them into), and have those new additions give you new things to work on once you get them.
Botw does Actually have An exp System.
it's Just hidden.
It determines Things like, Leveling up Enemies, and It Upgrades The weapons And items You find.
@@dr.blockcraft6633 I wouldn't really call that an exp system, more of just difficulty scaling, botw's version of linear level progression.
@@dr.blockcraft6633 The hidden "XP" mechanic increases Link's strength only in the sense that most of that strength is tied to his weapons, which start spawning with modifiers. It also makes enemies scale up to disproportionately strong for the damage * durability of the weapons they carry, which makes fighting them a net loss in durability trade.
Full-fledged XP mechanics would cause the player character to level up, usually gaining more HP, automatically increasing their damage with all weapons, or giving them "perk" or "talent" points to spend on a shiny build tree.
One thing that pissed me off about this game was link's absolute lack of reactions. He was basically charlie Chaplin in skyward sword but now he's a dear in headlights. See the ghost of his friends without even knowing they were dead? Nothing. Seeing Zelda after hearing her distant voice and only seeing her in flashbacks? Nothing. Run to her and hug her, dafuq??? Him being the player avatar as an excuse is getting old
I did feel like his model's face was more blank in this one. If anything, him being the player avatar is all the more reason to use his expressions a lot, as it's one of the few ways to have him convey emotions.
His Reactions for Cooking is very different
uhhhh, did you not follow the story? He lost his memories...
@@ebeatz974 : That said, every recall story scene was him regaining that specific memory. He seems to maintain his motivation to overcome the threats to Hyrule, and his interactions with the spirits of his friends don't indicate any confusion or detachment from his past self, so I'd have to assume Link recalls his memories in full. I wouldn't expect his reactions to be dramatic, just more unique to each experience.
@@theoaremevano3227 13 memories (what is in the game) would not make him remember is life in full he might remember the people but he by no means could have remembered everything
Story wise, I gotta say that Skyward is my favorite Zelda game. It seems like the linearity was something that breath of the wild ran away from as fast as possible. I hope that the next game is somewhere between the two. Well said.
I’m kinda happy about this. I miss having daily vids on this game!
Breath of the wild, in my opinion, has gotta be one of the best experiences of all time just the music, gameplay and environment get put together in such a delectable well executed piece of art. The only problem is the lack of gameplay content in the openworld.
I agree. But when eldin ring released it blew all my expectations of video games out of the water
@@PraisetheSunn.-. totally, but I still think botw stands it’s own.
@@PraisetheSunn.-. elden ring and botw are interesting to compare because both are amazing games, but both are kinda disliked by a lot of the hardcore members of the Zelda and souls communities respectively for various reasons, but absolutely adored by newcomers.
I think that’s where the biggest splits come up in the community. I agree, this game is an amazing experience to go through. However, that’s all it is. An experience. It’s not a narrative to play through. Which is my personal favorite part of Zelda. Playing a video game and feeling like I’m in an interactive movie. Loved botw. I enjoyed it so much I played it through 4 times back to back. (Got the game in quarantine) But it’s the only Zelda game I don’t think I’ll ever replay again. Purely because it’s not an enjoyable narrative experience.
Woah that’s a lot of stuff!
This game actually made me realize I had depression and brought me out of it. I never even completed any main quests. I spent months collecting and upgrading the outfits, doing side quests like building the village and my house, and trying to get the best possible weapons and shields. Each task completed brought me joy. I just loved exploring the beautiful world and "leveling" Link up so he was as strong as possible. I only fought when necessary for upgrades, but I was very proud of myself for learning how to land on Lynels to beat them up and doing the perfect shield block to shoot the laser right back at the Guardians. I do see the flaws, but it's still one of my all time favorite games.
This game has grown with all of us. Waiting so long, and received it, wait for it, 5 years ago. It has all grown in our hearts, and it can only get better. My first game was, in fact, botw. But my actual favorite is Twilight Princess. Anyways, your channel, is my favorite. Godspeed, Bandit. Godspeed.
Thank you. My favorite is Twilight Princess and I am glad it's yours because most people who start with botw all the sudden think it's the best zelda game ever. Don't get me wrong I love botw but when people play it, and automatically think it's better than any other zelda game it makes me mad. So I am happy to see that your favorite zelda game is Twilight princess.
It makes me so happy and excited to see others love and appreciate my favorite game of all time: Twilight Princess. It really is such a wonderful and amazing game. It’s the reason why I have such high standards for the games I play lol
@@rhysannia If you ask me, Twilight Princess is underrated.
I must say, it's quite awesome to see a significant other become invested in your favorite games! My wife has always been a Zelda fan, but I recently helped her dip her feet into Monster Hunter games, and now we play together all the time!
You talking about your girlfriend's experience made me tear up because it reminded me of my own. Yeah it wasn't my first Zelda game but I didn't compare it to the others and it was such a wonderful experience. Fantastic video man :)
I love how this video shows the evolution of your channel, how much it has improved since your old botw videos!
There actually is an XP system in BotW, but it’s a hidden one. It is what controls enemy and weapon scaling in the game. The first 10 of each enemy and boss is worth a certain number XP when killed, and the total XP controls when you start seeing things like Silver Bokoblins. It’s part of what allows the world to be completely open, without having to close off areas that might be too difficult early game.
Good video btw, I very much appreciate your final conclusion. BotW is actually what brought me into the world of modern games. For most of my life I just couldn’t get into 3D games. Things like camera controls always annoyed me. I thought that my brain would forever be stuck in the 2d world of the 8 and 16 bit games I grew up with. Mario Odyssey was able to wet my appetite, but BotW brought me fully into the world of modern games. After that I bought Dark Souls Remastered and am now playing through Elden Ring, something I never could have imagined before. It is one of the many reasons that it is my favorite game of all time.
I think ultimately my feelings on Breath of the Wild are thus: It's not a perfect game by any means; it can be tightened up and improved. However, it also deserved all the 10/10s that it got because what they HAD to get right they did spectacularly.
i agree!
I totally agree with that
Think about any GOAT tier game like RDR 2, The Witcher 3, Fallout NV, Elden ring and many others these games are very far from perfect but what made them so good is that they are simply unforgettable experiences that even major flaws can’t even scratch it, nintendo not only made major changes to the Zelda formula but the transition was absolutely incredible that it changed the gaming industry.
I don't understand giving 10/10 to something that isn't perfect.
This isn't a comment shitting on Botw( is one of my favorites of all time), it more about the rating system
@@manuelredgrave8348 i think it's not a game rating because there is no perfect game. A 10/10 describes the fun you had with the game, it's about the experience and the feelings you had. He even said "my feelings" at the beginning. We are humans and it's all about the feelings for us. Experience wise BotW was a 10/10 for me also, never felt better while playing a game, but the game itself has its flaws. Every game has.
I love BotW as a game for everything it's done, but at the same time, I absolutely hate it as a Zelda game. It's hard for me not to compare it to the older games, especially when it didn't give me any of the experiences I want when I play a Zelda game, but what it did give me was amazing. I just hope that the traditional formula isn't gone for good. I'm happy if this is a new style of Zelda game, similar to how we still get new 2D top down Zelda games between big releases, but if every Zelda game in the future is a big empty world with no dungeons, then I'd be losing a series I love.
Just finished watching the whole thing, and I think you covered the nuance of this game well. I’ve enjoyed the narrative and general music of other games a lot more similar to you, yet the gameplay and customizability of BotW is still super amazing. It’s so much easier to do a challenge run with one’s own made up rules in this game than almost any other game, the physics can be absolutely insane, things like Japanese Twitter clips continue to amaze at how insane and cool they are; in many ways, I think BotW is the new Mario 64. Mario 64 broke some new ground, yet when you look at it from a story perspective, or even level design, sometimes it just feels lacking. And yet people love the game to death decades later, not because of how it had an amazing story and characters but simply because it was a fun game: a great base upon which other challenges and experiences or even mods could be based. I think BotW is already proving itself to be in a similar boat.
Like you, I think I look forward to a return of several Zelda staples in the sequel. Yet, I personally have enjoyed my 5 different full playthroughs of this game, because it still manages to have many moments that are fun and good, and memorable music and characters and challenges, and many hidden details to discover, even if sometimes just for the lore and not really the weapons or Koroks… it has a lot put into it, and even if it’s different and “lesser” in some departments, it’s one of the greatest bases to create your own experience, and to teach new gamers ideas they haven’t dealt with before. I’ve similarly watched certain friends try BotW who had only played select few types of very linear games before and to see one learn strategy and make choices of where to go, when all they had ever known before was “I always am told where to go and what to do”, was a refreshing experience, and I think it even helped their irl decision making skills by making them consider more kinds of options than just whatever seemed the most obvious choice every time.
BotW is an amazing game, base, and even tool. I may enjoy certain things of other Zelda’s or games more, but it accomplishes much that the others can’t do, because of how much freedom BotW offers.
Good, nuanced review, good Bandit-Man. May you be blessed with a canon, smart, rehydrated Ganondorf in the sequel
Botw is already 5 years old? Damn. It was my first zelda game....I feel old now man....
I Know right!
SAME
👵🏿
It really is special that this was your first Zelda.
Welcome my friend, come on in there are copies of Majora's Mask on the table in the back. Strap in and grab a tissue, ya might need it. =]
Wait till it’s twenty
I'm a bit older than you, but OoT was my first Zelda game, and the first game I really took the story to heart and it showed me what video games could be. I have serious nostalgia with that game, so your intro on it was so good ❤️
I LOVE that you talk about the trailer for this game. I went in with the exact same expectation that an epic story with a possibly very tragic resolution would unfolding before our very eyes as we played. That trailer bamboozled us however. It should be on Watch Mojo's top 10 anime betrayal's (just kidding). I'm genuinely glad someone else felt similar to me though. I would also like to say I have a similar bias as you. TP was my first Zelda but it was still the most influential game in my childhood, and like you with OoT, TP shaped what I hold as my standard for what I admire and seek out in an action adventure game and other Zelda game's. I also loved seeing OoT having a lot of elements that inspired TP and how it embodied so much of Zelda as a whole when I played it as a kid on the 3ds. I may still love TP most but I'd say OoT is still the most "Zelda" title in the series that really nails what a Zelda game is. I like BotW, but it has little to no feeling of being a Zelda game. It's just too different. That's not to say BotW is a bad game though, on the contrary, it's genuinely good that it has it's own identity. But I think ultimately the greatest strength of BotW is that it feels like a skeleton for future Zelda game's. What I mean is BotW lay's the groundwork for future title's to come in and expand upon and enrich the open world experience. Hopefully those hypothetical future game's even reintroduce all the old elements that make a Zelda game feel like a Zelda game. I hope that last statement made sense. Anyway I thought you did an excellent job on the video as usual. I really enjoyed what you had to say about the game, the good and the bad. Here's hoping BotW2 manages to recapture some of that Zelda spirit and live up to expectations. Thanks for everything Bandit. I hope you have a wonderful day.
i grew up playing all sorts of games up through middle school until i took a hiatus due to joining extracurricular things in high school. it wasnt until around 3 years after my high school years (2017) that i had enough disposal income to invest in gaming again. by that time i was so out of practice with games and the evolution of them had out paced me to the point where most single player games were overwhelming and confusing and i had to look up walkthroughs so often that the experience became unenjoyable for me. i just played visual novels and multiplayer shooter games because they were straightforward enough. i finally got a switch in 2019 and played breath of the wild for the first time and to this day, the brilliance of its design amazes me. even when i had no clue where to go or what to do, i never felt like my time was being wasted and i never felt pressured to look up a walkthrough to find the next relevant mission. i just happened to stumble upon it because the way theyve crafted the world guides the player subconsciously to the next step of their journey. it's elegant and graceful while still giving the player (in my opinion) the sense of taking on a task greater than themselves.
basically, you summed up my thoughts perfectly. while breath of the wild isn't my favorite zelda game in terms of story and investment in that story, i can't rightfully say it didn't captivate me in a way no other game of its day could. i hold it as my favorite installment simply for the love it breathed back into me for the single player experience and the care that went into making an experience i believe no other game has even come close to, even now. twilight princess is still my favorite story out of the zelda games ive actually played (skyward sword's story knocks it out of the park but i wasn't able to finish it and just resolved to watch a playthrough of it) but breath of the wild is truly something special and it holds a place in my heart now and probably forever.
here's to hoping tears of the kingdom brings back what i loved about twilight princess (cough dungeons cough) while keeping the magic of breath of the wild intact!
Honestly one of the best reviews for BOTW I've seen. The eye of the beholder portion was what set it apart; getting to get the perspective of someone with no bias, limited experience of video games in general, and observing how she responded to a brand new experience. I always tell myself I wish I could recreate the feeling of starting this game like I did in 2017 for the first time.
my story with bote is that i got it when i got a switch i.e march 3rd 2017 and playing through the great plateau was very fun and seeing the old man become the king and realizing the scale of what was happened was really cool and i did not get to ganon until i got every memory or divine beast and once i did defeating him and riding on hyrule field shooting light arrows on ganon felt magical in fact this might get a bit controversial the final ganon fight was probably one of if not the best moment because of how much of a badass you feel and once i saw zelda i literally was crying by how much of a good game it is and i am still playing to this day finding more stuff. One thing i can say is money well spent.
so, agree with that. grew up playing Wii games like super Mario, Mario kart, Wii sports etc. until our Wii broke and my mom bought a Wii u. a fortunately enough my sister found botw on the used Wii u rake at GameStop and we loved the game. so much I bought a switch so we could play the second one totk can't wait till May twelfth.
Great review! I do think I diverge a bit from the point of view that "everything you find in the world is shrines/korok seeds/enemy camps". While it is, in a way, technically true, what really hooked me on the game is everything preceding it. Breath of the Wild is a "journey is the destination" kind of game for me, where I think the "rewards" are what plays second fiddle. The things I remember the most about the game are the labyrinths, the seven heroines, the forgotten temple, the cave with the giant skeleton in it, the climbing mini game, and of course the journey to these places, and the perils I faced reaching them. For example, when you encounter Naydra, I didn't think "okay, another challenge that will lead to another shrine", I was like "HOLY F, WHAT IS THIS, A DRAGON FIGHT IN THE SKY?!". Like, it was the same with the Spring of Courage, while it was technically also "yet another shrine", just coming there and get blasted in the face with 100 shock arrows was incredible.
This is honestly the best video game review I've ever watched!! Loved the take away as well! I've actually never played botw before, or any Zelda game for that matter. But I absolutely can't wait to!! God bless bro
Awesome review! I absolutely love this game to death. When I originally played Botw as a kid, it captivated my imagination like no other game I have ever played before. I remember the joy i would get from finding new villages and the fear from sneaking around my first lynel. This game has an unparalleled beauty, charm, and overall gameplay that my friends and myself in my old school just never managed to stop talking about!
I do see your points about it having a slightly empty world or the enemy's not being diverse enough, but I think that Nintendo has managed to make a game that pushes you, very gently, to explore and connect with the word in a way that almost no other game has. Like you mentioned before, the music isn't your classic head bopping epic Zelda music, but instead tranquil and quiet, letting the player truly be curious and fully connect with the world. Thus, you have one of the most beautiful games ever created.
I bought a switch and BOTW in summer of 2020. It was my first Zelda game and my first time playing a video game in a long time. I found that the events of the calamity paralleled the events of the pandemic. It was fascinating and inspiring to see the residents of Hyrule going on with their lives and making the best out of their situation while a menacing threat lingered nearby. The game allowed me to explore mountains, rivers, valleys and vast lands. I fell in love with the characters, the stories, the lore, the music and the Zelda franchise. It has been two years since I started playing the game and have currently spent 500 hours in that world. The game made the pandemic a bit more bearable and I am so glad I discovered it. I still don't play alot of video games but this is certainly my favorite game of all time.
I am pleasantly surprised of how accepting I was of this review. Agreeing to a lot of the points and as a first time viewer of this guy, a ‘breath of’ fresh air for me at least. Love your humor and explanation of your opinions and although I love the game til the day I die, I completely understand your ideas, joys, and frustrations. As a fellow gamer and internet person to another. Great video and now subbing
The best Botw review has to be from Arlo. A full 3 hrs, just a fantastic review.
I was pretty late to the party with BOTW, playing it last year and now replaying on Master Mode. So it's actually really awesome to see a review now, and the last section truly shows the impact this game can have.
For me, the reason why this is one of my favourite games--and what I'd say is the best overall game I've played--is how memorable this world is. Be it hilarious deaths, emotional moments in the memories or many 'firsts', there's so many things I can look back on fondly. Reaching the first stable and village, beating my first guardian, getting that last memory. One of my favourite moments though was going to Satori Mountain for the first time. I hadn't ever seen this on social media before, so I remember my breath being utterly taken away. I was entranced, and it struck me just how beautiful this game was.
I personally don't find the world empty as well because of how fantastic the environmental storytelling is. There's so much to see in the architecture, the ruins--the little details are rewarding to me even if I didn't find anything there in particular, like an item or korok seed. I know you mentioned as well about quantity vs quality on NPCs, but I actually love what they did with them. I'd like more attention given to some significant characters, but simultaneously I loved seeing just how many NPCs explored this world and you'd see popping up, even following their own rituals. The way they'd fight monsters on their path, hide and run from the rain; they felt real and immersive to me, with some really standing out.
The game certainly isn't without flaws, but it executes what it got right so brilliantly that I only see them as stepping stones to perfecting this formula. It excites me that they did so well with this game after such an evolution, and it makes me hopeful for what's to come. I'm definitely eager to see what the sequel could improve on in particular.
Fantastic video! It was definitely entertaining and came at a perfect time for me.
Breath of the wild was the first Zelda game I had ever played. I remember growing up and watching my friend's older brothers play ocarina of time and playing Zelda in Brawl but not knowing much about her or link. But when I got my hands on that game for the first time it felt like something had just, clicked. For me, the openness of the world, combined with the soft music, and the mystery behind the story is what drew me in and kept me coming back. I loved the fact that the story had already happened. To me that was the most interesting thing about the game, and unraveling what happened and experiencing this sense of loss and almost regret as you watch the cutscenes as you find them is honestly unparalleled for me. It's what reignited my love for games that I hadn't really experienced since Spyro on the PS1
Me: Agreeing with all of Bandit's cons.
Also me: Still my favorite game.
When you've played this game for 100, 200, 500 hours. You cannot deny the pitfalls of this game. And that's ok. No game is perfect. Half of the map is essentially empty yet this game gives me a priceless experience of freedom and adventure that I always come back for. My Hope's for its sequel are great. I'm even afraid to hope that 2 will succeed botw. But I guess we'll find out at a later date and can't wait for all the other videos you'll make then.
Perspective is key, and yeah I'm vibing with you dude it get it cx When I think about botw being my favorite I don't compare it to the other Zelda games. It's just such an unfair comparison. It's like asking me to compare my favorite horror movie to my favorite action movie. Its impossible to say one experience is better than the other because the feelings that are being felt are so different.
Hey good retrospective! I think I agree for the most part with a lot of the things your saying.
I actually didn't know this about you. I'm glad you made this video. :D In a general sense, I think Breath of the Wild had plenty of flaws, but in the long term, I think it's still a blessing that it is what it is. Breath chose to put everything it had into FREEDOM, all of it, for better or for worse and while it's a game experience that may work a lot better for some people than it does for others, it's an EXCELLENT base to build a sequel off of, finding all the best applications for freedom and finding all of the places where a different approach is more ideal.
The only pro I'd kind of disagree with is how Link feels to control in certain cases besides those you mentioned. He feels pretty superhuman at some times, but at others can fall pitifully short on seemingly minor jumps or swimming very small distances. It felt like they wanted a bit of Shadow of the Colossus in there, with Link feeling like he couldn't just power through everything, but it only applied to certain actions, which made Link feel kind of jarring sometimes. In combat, he felt weird to me as well, and I hope they can tune him up a bit in the sequel and make some of the cool alternate combat options scale up so that they aren't useless at the end of the game compared to just bashing enemies with your weapons.
Your experience with gameplay incentives and rewards is 100% exactly the same thing I experienced when playing the game too. I got haflway in, and just stopped taking interest in anything outside of concrete objectives like shrines. All the overworld enemies basically fell into that category too. With absolute freedom of movement, nothing stopped you from just ignoring them on your way to your actual destination, and the inherent cost of going out of your way ran contradictory to the usual incentives to jump into action. As for the shrines, the fact they could be tackled in any order also meant no progression or expansion of ideas because there was no way to predict the player's path from one to the next, so puzzle ideas started and then ended in one room, not really giving you the satisfaction of reusing those cool ideas in a later challenge. A couple reviewers I've seen made excellent points about this.
I also found that the freedom of traversal wasn't really addressed in some places where the game just expected you to take a certain path to get somewhere. The nature of movement completely incentivized high-altitude travel, but there were a lot of places where it felt like you were 'meant' to travel via the most obvious path, which just didn't make much sense. Having to throw out part of the game to make it more interesting is a bit of a clash in design choices. By the same token, having everything basically work on every enemy hurt the feeling of variety in terms of the threat they posed. While not having every enemy die to a single, obvious win button is good, not having them resist any form of attack for the most part meant they also didn't set themselves apart strategy wise, so creative attacks were more of a diversion from boredom than a satisfying solution to something that would otherwise pose a problem.
But all that ties in with the choice to focus on freedom and all that came with it, and because they pushed it to its limits, I feel they've FOUND those limits and produced a great roadmap for what to keep and what to change in the sequel. :) I also think this idea expressed at the end of the video IS something I can vibe with, because I feel it can be applied to many, many games out there, all subject to comparisons and all potentially having this kind of brilliance when you can get past all that. I hope more people can come to have that type of perspective so they can realize how a game they really have a lot of issues with can still be beautiful and significant and that's never a bad thing.
It's so amazing how your video, which you literally called a review, feels more like a conversation than an essay. I cant tell if it's the friendly approach to presentation or how you pause to say "let me pull out my notes" before going on a data dump, but it feels really natural.
Fantastic video, you captured my thoughts perfectly on the game, I had all of the same criticisms and praises for this game, but I also found it to be so beautiful and magical, great video
I was introduced to Zelda franchise by watching my older cousins play Ocarina of Time. They quitted gaming when we began our University careers and jobs about 10 years ago, I didn't, so I kept playing each new Zelda releases and got myself some of the previous releases too. A couple months ago, my cousin contacted me to know if I could lend him my copy of BotW since he got himself an old Switch. I gladly lend it to him. Last time I saw him he had your same opinion about BotW being different from the previous releases. I'll tell him to watch this video of yours, hopefully he gets your vibes and sees now BotW as a new whole game rather than comparing it to the previous releases. Cheers mate! Great content and GREAT REVIEW!
Hi Jordan I'm a huge fan of the content u do! Ur my fave youtuber I think botw is the second best zelda game, first being ocarina of time! Ocarina of the was the first zelda game I ever played, I was 6 years old! My fave part of the game was after u become adult Link. Anyway, keep up the great work! 😁
I like how you put "intro; to the intro" because you didn't want the 3rd stone bell sound to be absent. Zelda fans; appreciate this man.
botw also happened to be my first "real" video game experience, coming from a Mario Kart, mobile rhythm game "gamer" for perspective. i genuinely did not expect to like it as much as i do, nor did i expect to get as obsessed in the series as a whole like i have.
the first time i opened up that game, i didn't know wth i was doing, i mean i took a week to realize i was supposed to find the tower on the great plateau and just walked around the place aimlessly looking for ways to get into the shrines.
i am now on like my 6th play through of the game and have fallen in love with getting Link's memories each time, to see the way the characters slowly open up and you get to learn things like Zelda's issues with her father not understanding her intentions or even finding the good side to Revali and him becoming my favorite character, so much so that i've named myself after him. i find myself falling in love with it all over again each time i wake up in the shrine of resurrection and being excited to start a new game each time i beat Ganon.
Breath of the Wild actually does have an XP system. You gain XP by defeating enemies, clearing divine beasts, etc. and better items start appearing when you do that. It's also what makes stronger enemies start appearing.
Breath of the Wild was my first Zelda game I actually played myself. I had watch others play through the previous games but had never played, or finished play in the cause of OoT, any other Zelda game. I loved BotW a lot, I spent so much time just exploring the world and finding shrines and completing quests. I started playing when it came out on my brother's switch with his game and I think it took me over 2 years to finish it cause I just took my time. I didn't let myself watch any tutorials or cheat unless I was just that stuck because I wanted to learn how to play the game myself.
I really enjoyed your review of BotW, I find your style to be very entertaining and I can't wait until BotW II comes out and all the videos you'll make on it. Keep up the good work.
Great video. I love the conclusion you got to. I played the original NES Zelda when I was young, then life happened, and never played a game again. I bought BotW to my son, and he begged me to play it. I just fell in love with it. And since I wasn’t expecting anything in particular, for me, the game is just perfect. Just being able to get your best horse, and traverse the map, galloping and admiring the scenery is just wonderful to me. I feel this Hyrule is like a second home. I love the inhabitants. I love the towns. I love the animals in the fields. I love to see a fox and think “Oh, there must be a korok nearby”. I’m waiting for that second part like May’s rains, as we say here. I think your girlfriend gave you the perspective you lack from your gaming habits. And I’m glad for that. Cheers!
Man I can’t wait till you hit 1 mill
Actually this is the first review I see of the game so I'm glad it is yours rather than anyone's else.
super thoughtful and i think u released this at the perfect time in the life of the game and the franchise. Every game hits us at a particular time in our lives and this review kinda captures that whole vibe. I was 100% vibing and completely agree and understand what u meant there~!
I am absolutely vibing with the conclusion, when i first played botw i had gotten covid and was in quarantine, i had gotten it and a switch for christmas, so the whole time i was sick I played it non stop, and it turned what should have been horrible memories of being miserabily sick into memories that i wish i could relive again, i will never forget the feeling of discovering botw for the first time and everything in it, and i wish i could forget it all judt to play it for the first time again, but its not at all my favourite zelda game, the story being so understated and optional is hugely dissapointing for me since one of the main reason i love zelda is its stories, and the lack of proper dungeons was also dissapointing, but it's definitely one of my top favourite video games i've ever played
Great video! Honestly I could see every point you were making. Ocarina of time happened to be my first zelda game too and I've played most of the games since. When I received my switch and BOTW game in 2017 from pre order... I was so excited I pulled an all nighter and didn't even go to bed anytime after that! I can say it was an amazing experience and every time I replay the story my walk-throughs gets better and better! I can definitely gush and gush over this game but I'll stop for now ha
I honestly truly adore the Freedom that BotW gives you. One of my first memories of gaming is also observing someone play OoT, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart. But it was honestly weird to say that hearing some of your cons hurt me a little bit (it's not like you were personally attacking me with disagreements! The human brain is a funny thing.), because I appreciated BotW for a lot of those things. I really liked the combat, and being proud of myself for overcoming enemies that could one shot me in the past! I enjoyed the skin variations of the same monsters because it highlighted that I'd gotten better, Much Better than I was 5, 10, or 15 hours of game play later. Scouring Hyrule Field for guardians even after 200+ hours of playing in is still such a flex for me because I remember when I was scared every time I'd hear that opening piano!
And I LOVED the non-linear aspect of the game, because side quests were always some of my favorite things to do. I'm a procrastinator irl, so naturally I bring that same energy to advancing the plot in many games 😂. BotW spoiled me with choice, choice to do everything at my own place because there wasn't a clear direction or path, so it Forced me to think outside the box in terms of doing stuff in the game. It was always amusing to me to accidentally stumble into the plot when doing a random thing for an npc, or finding shrines, because it was so fun to me to be able to do whatever I wanted, Whenever I wanted. I've had to check myself with playing Skyward Sword HD with being irritated that certain side quests are blocked behind a progress wall, because I'd gotten used to that lax game play. As someone who also loves this series, I'm glad that your gf gave you a perspective that you didn't have before, because I love BotW for the things it pivots from formula-wise, and for the things that are familiar. And I actually really liked the story/premise of this game, because we get to experience the consequences and aftermath of not winning. The feeling of emptiness adds depth for me, because it really emphasizes "Damn. The Calamity really DID take away so much.." It really made me feel for Link, as the memories and landscape helped me learn all the things he'd lost.
BotW was the first truly open world game I personally played, and I'm forever grateful that I had some familiar faces, races, and concepts to ease me into a new gaming experience. Anyways, I know this was long so thanks to anyone who decided to read this, and a special thanks to Bandit if you decide to read this too. Thanks for making this video!
I remember one day coming across a video of breath of the wild. it was from Stampy, A guy I cherished back then and still cherish now it was a video from back when the game released and I watched the videos filled with wonder as I had never experienced the game before then. That Christmas I got the game. It was wonderful finally getting to experience the adventure I had been wanting ever since I started watching the videos in March. Now that I’ve played the game so many times I’ve developed formulas and algorithms for playing the game, there’s hardly any wonder left the game. I know from other games that I just never have this wonder and there’s just not as much mystery as there is breath of the wild. This is why I’m sure that the sequel will overtake breath of the wild as my favorite Zelda game.
my favorite zelda game is majoras mask, i love how each side quest can be woven into the main story through the reward of masks and how even playing a game doing only the minnimum effort only the things you need to do to complete each dongeon and beat majora you still interact heavily with the community of termina, i love everything about the game and i think it is amazing
Your reflections on le gf's experience are really interesting. Despite being a hardcore fan of the franchise since the N64 era, this has always been my approach to every game. I never compared them too much to each other, only in terms of how deeply the story affected me. Perhaps this is why I never understood why so many critizised the game for its non-linear story or the fact that the master sword has been demoted to a fancy optional waving stick. I used to think it's just very easy to impress me with a good game, since I seemed to really enjoy games others rejected for the same reasons you discuss in the video. But perhaps I'm more impressed by others just because I don't compare the game to all previous ones but view them as individual works of art in their own right, sharing lore and story elements.
I agree the lack of enemy variety and ganon’s boss battles were mid, but I just love this game. It’s not perfect at all even elden ring has its flaws(that lock mechanic🤬)
Totally vibing with you, Bandit! I’ve tried playing it and am having trouble wrapping my brain around the controls. Summer vacation is coming and BotW is on my list of games to play. (Third grade teacher…fyi…those kiddos are always shocked to find out I play video games.) I think you watching your girlfriend play for the first time let you see this game without any preconceived ideas of what it should be. We have a history with the franchise and automatically have some bias on how we think it should be. Seeing the awe and wonder of someone play without those notions can be eye opening. I think it’s one reason I’ve watched and rewatched DeeBeeGeek play BotW multiple times. His sense of awe and wonder helped me to appreciate the game in ways I hadn’t been able to watching other play throughs. The joy and excitement give me the warm fuzzies each and every time. It’s like watching my students make connections in things I’ve taught to “the real world”. Those moments of wonder are amazing to see and can change your own perspective about things.
That either made no sense or total sense depending on if you were vibing with me. 😉
I got this game for Christmas from my girlfriend - and I only got 15 hours in before she picked it up and put hundreds of hours into it. I didn’t even get to finish it - I just watched her finish it. It was her first Zelda game, she’s since read every Zelda Manga and through questions to me - she knows everything about all the games. My now 5 year old has watched her play it all and has picked up the game himself - and has mastered shield parrying everything (puts us to shame) and wanted a Zelda themed 4th birthday.
It’s not the experience of the game I had been looking forward to for years - but because of how it was designed it became something we could enjoy as a family and has brought us thousands of hours of enjoyment in and out of the game.
I didn't play BotW until recently, so you're actually right on time for me! :)
My first Zelda game? Well, the first one I ever watched someone play was the GameCube port of OoT when I was 5. But when I turned 8, Wind Waker was introduced to me--though I didn't think much of it until I turned 14.
At that point, 14 was an age that I was mentally wanting adventure and getting out of the house more (which didn't happen very often then). Wind Waker did that for me and I was mostly satisfied with that want. Soon enough, I developed a higher drive for adventure that hasn't died even after a decade, but now it's in a more controlled manner. Now that I'm in my mid-20's, I'm having more chances to go to places I've never been to than I did as a teenager.
Wind Waker has been my favorite game out of the whole series since that time. When BotW released towards the end of my sophomore year of college, it lit up that sense of adventure again, but in a bittersweet way, knowing those blissful days of being a teenager would never return and that myself from then would never experience it the way my 20 year old self did. It's sad, sure, but, I definitely see BotW as more of a 'grown-up,' bittersweet take on Wind Waker, and I've come to accept that.
The fact that nearly all combat encounters completely lose meaning later in the game was a really annoying thing for me as well. After a while I was just skipping every non-mandatory combat encounter unless I needed their materials specifically.
I first tried to play A Link to the Past when I was like 7, since it was the first zelda game my mom played and she wanted to introduce me to the series, but the first one I beat was Wind waker. Majora’s mask is now my favorite in the series because of the story it tells. I continued to fall in love with the series more than my mom ever did. My mom, when she first picked up Breath of The Wild was so unbelievably ecstatic. My opinion of breath of the wild is so similar to yours. It’s a phenomenal game on its own, but when you bog it down with expectations and tradition it takes away from the beautiful experience that the game holds.
This is a truly beautiful video, especially the last chapter. It took guts for you to admit that you might have been wrong about the game as a whole.
My experience with the game has been rather different. I grew up loving Zelda, but without ever properly getting into a game before high school, it was more a love of the concept. My babysitter’s son had Link to the Past on SNES when I was very little, and it was one of the first video games I was ever exposed to (along with Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country). My brother and I had Oracle of Seasons on GameBoy Colour, and though I never put enough time into figuring it out and beating it, my love never waned. Ocarina of Time was pretty big at the time too, but we didn’t have an N64 so I resorted to watching my friends play at their houses. We later got Twilight Princess on Wii, but I still hadn’t quite matured enough to tackle a Zelda game full-on and figure it all out. Proof of my love for the IP was evident in my attempts at writing Zelda fanfic (which basically ripped off the Redwall stories and placed them in Hyrule).
I then got Ocarina of Time on 3DS, and although I beat it and enjoyed it, it felt more like something I needed to do to prove to myself that I was in fact a Zelda fan. It didn’t cast the same spell on me that I knew it had for so many when it was first released.
I got my Switch decently late (January 1, 2019), and held off playing Breath of the Wild for a while. I don’t know why I did that. Maybe part of me was scared that it wouldn’t live up to the impossible expectations for the series that had built up over time. But I always knew it would be there, and in late 2020 I finally took the plunge. Looking back, I think it was a good decision. The pandemic gave me the freedom to devote the amount of time to the game that I feel it truly deserves. I’ve always been a big fan of exploring in open world games (like GTA) just for the sake of it, but even at that the realism sometimes made it feel like a chore. Breath of the Wild transported me to another place, where I was just as happy foraging for specific items to customize my clothing in a given colour as I was finding the next shrine on my path to defeating Ganon.
500 hours and 900 Korok seeds later, I can confidently say it’s my favourite game of all time :)
BotW is my favorite zelda game because it expanded upon what I like best about Zelda games: the exploration and world. When I first played Oot as a kid, my favorite moments in the game were sneaking into hyrule castle, rescuing Epona from lon lon ranch, walking around kakariko town, and other stuff like that. I, honestly, disliked the dungeons in the game and dreaded having to go through them. I felt like I lost control in the game when I had to stay in the one dungeon and complete it unlike everything else in the game that I could jist leave to do something else, or were short enough to not drag on. I've grown to appreciate the dungeons more now, but that sense of exploration and discovery I have in zelda games outside of dungeons is still my favorite part of them. That's why BotW delivers on everything I personally think makes zelda great. The shrines bring quick, fun puzzles and challenges that allow me to quickly get back into exploring in a way that I couldn't if there was a longer dungeon in my way.
Is it weird I got a little choked up when you spoke about your gf loving with this game? I bet it was amazing to see her experience it. :' )
Just made me remember how excited I was to play this game and how long I waited.. and it turned out to be everything I wanted, and lots of things I didn't want too. If that makes any sense lol. I love this game so much.
Good review man, thanks for sharing.
Great engine and mechanics. Looks pretty enough but feels like it's a game cut in half. It feels like its just the kid section of OoT like the 4 beasts were supposed to be there to unlock getting the master sword. Also lots of areas where it looked like there was meant to be stuff and storyline but nothing in game.
BOTW was my very first Zelda game and the game that got me excited about video games again. I started playing it in early 2020 when we were first being told to stay at home. I had so much time on my hands and I really fell in love with BOTW, the world, and its lore. I see and agree with a lot of the negative aspects you pointed out, and yet I can't help but hold this up as one of my favorite video games of all time. I spent nearly a year playing & deep-diving into the world & lore before I finally killed a guardian. After that, I'd finished all four guardians and beaten Ganon within a month. This game is so special and offers so much for people who are casual & serious gamers.
This is a solid review, and I'm on board with most of it. While I also loved playing this game, here are a few added nitpicks I had that you didn't mention:
1. DO NOT PUT THE "CROUCH" BUTTON ON LS CLICK. I can't tell you how many times I've died by accidentally crouching in front of an enemy. There's a reason many games put "sprint" there instead.
2. Inventory UI is clunky.
A. For how many times you will inevitably need to drop equipment, it's darned tedious to do. The solution could have been a simple "Drop" button prompt while pulling up the D-pad item selectors.
B. Cooking likewise gets tedious. The solution could have been a simple "Cook again" contextual prompt at a pot, which would toss in the same ingredients you used last time.
3. Champion's weapons are anticlimactic. The big emotional anticipation of getting a unique reward is usually deflated by "Your inventory is full." Then once you get the weapon, your instinct is to never use it because you don't want to break it.
4. Link's total silence is now awkward. I know that Link as silent protagonist is a long tradition, but in a game that deliberately breaks with tradition in so many other ways, Link needed voiced dialogue. The half measure of giving Zelda and others voiced lines while Link is mute makes the cutscenes and memories painfully awkward. Zelda appears to prattle on endlessly in one-side conversations because Link can't respond. If you're going for a more cinematic approach to story, just go for it.
I like the pro vs con vs overall review I think it encompassed a lot of nuance in a game review
I watched Arlo, I watched MockRock, I'ma watch you and I will watch any other gametuber who makes a BotW Retrospective Review and I will love every single one, so keep making 'em! Thanks.
Regarding the No Climbing Walls Inside Shrines thing: in my headcanon, during his 100-year slumber in the Chamber of Restoration's jacuzzi Link has been infused with some Sheika nanotechnology that allows him to grip any surface (either that or his underpants are an advanced version of the Climber's Bandana). The shrines are specifically designed by the Sheika to test the Chosen Hero, so their walls contain technology that blocks the climbing technology from working. As for why there are no Like-Likes, Leevers or Peahats in the game... I'm stumped!
"We're all thirsty for an intelligent villain to return... And to see if he rehydrates."
Yes.
mate, I love BotW retrospectives. been waiting for yours and I'm glad you did it.
I listen to Arlo's when going to bed, along with KingK. Would love to see retrospectives for all Zelda games from you ;)
Twilight princess is my favorite Zelda game. When I was younger I would spend hours running around the map exploring. Breath of the wild gave me what I was thirsty for in that game- a large open world to explore for hours on end, finding new enemies, new places to explore, new items, and it was so amazing. The feeling of your first play through of botw, discovering everything, it’s incomparable to any other game. I really hope they can capture that and even add onto it in the second game, with more places to explore and more things to discover.
My thoughts on BotW can be best summed up in the immortal words of Jorgen Von Strangle: very impressive, highly original, DON'T DO IT AGAIN. It's one of my favorite games, and yet I don't want it to be the direction that the Zelda series goes in going forward. Too much of what I love in a Zelda game fell by the wayside in the name of the open world.
This video was an experience of a lifetime botw will always be one of my favourite games just because of how breathtaking it is I would play it over and over
you pulling out the first cartradge you ever played on made me want mine back, (the first for me was a link to the past). And my uncle gave it back to me. My dad was also excited because him and i played on it a lot.
I have a very particular relationship with BOTW that I've actually thought about making into a video. Long story short, it was the first game I played after a long time, which meant it was sort of a new start for what I thought about video games. Before my hiatus from gaming, I was an avid gamer. Not really involved or on top of the conversations in the communities, but I still liked games a lot. Maybe too much at times. After coming back to BOTW as my new "first game," I've gravitated toward games with facets of exploration and wonder more than the "simpler" platformers I used to focus on like Mario. It changed what I wanted out of storytelling to a degree too. I wasn't worried about potholes or lore implications- I just wanted to experience this new thing. My fresh start put me in a position where I was both Bandit and his girlfriend.
This video you've made, Bandit, actually makes me want to make the video I've been thinking about for a while, so I won't ramble on until I do. Thanks for making neat stuff to inspire conversation!
That end but with your girlfriend’s story really warmed my soul!
Botw is my favourite Zelda game (tied with WWHD & MM) and it’s because of how free it is and how perfectly it controls.
I’m having a somewhat similar experience of watching my boi play it for the first time (and it also happened to be his first triple A Nintendo franchise he’s played other than Pokémon) through a series on my channel aptly named Non-Zelda Fan Plays Botw and while I can’t say he’s fully appreciating every little detail, he’s definitely gotten way better at understanding how a 360 degree camera works and he’s eager to play whenever we’re hanging out. It really makes me happy ☺️
SO!
Remember how we spoke briefly on Patron about our similarities in our GF's and their recent play throughs of the game? She is still on the same bend of getting all the seeds~ but she did get all the shrines and just loves exploring / playing through the game.
I think the only difference is that she played other zelda games in the series, TP being her favorite. (coincidentally mine as well, next to Majora's Mask and that dark-theme, which is arguably as dark).
Still.. I completely, 100% agree with you on the fact that it is very enjoyable to watch a person experience a game that you yourself have played, which may have had a different experience form your own play through, but all the same quite fun and honestly enlightening to the whole perspective is everything mentality.
As everyone of us has our own about everything.
Keep on keeping on brother man, will continue to support and appreciate the content you put out. :>
BOTW was my first Zelda and it was so magical exploring the massive open world for the first time
Also i ramble too and actually love longer videos it almost feels like an in person conversation when RUclipsrs make jokes and trail off!
Funny story: I started an experiment in which my older sister (who is conveniently in the same condition regarding video games as your girlfriend) had to clear the Great Plateau section on her own with at least as possible to no help from me. It was amusing to watch her, but my favorite moment was when she got stuck in the Ja Baji Shrine and finally figured out how to destroy the blocks that block the ladder. She came to the solution completely on her own and her little gasp when she had the idea makes me still smile. It's really amazing how concepts that are common for adventure game veterans are in the eyes of a complete rookie. The experiment is still ongoing and my father is the next victim
By the way, BotW features a hidden Xp system. Its more like a ranking system that determines when stronger enemies and weapons spawn. Another youtuber made a video about the topic
Honestly, the story about your girlfriend finally playing BOTW really got to me and made me happy to my core. That's how fondly I remember Ocarina of Time and Majora's mask, and to know that she didn't much care for games before having played it is awesome. I love video games and especially Zelda, the world and characters and lore are so in depth and exciting, I've lived Zelda since I was a kid. I can't wait to see where it goes next.
I think my favorite example of BotW at its peak is Eventide Isle. You have to go out of your way to land on it with either extremely high stamina or learning the Korok Leaf sailing method, and when you get there it strips you down to just your runes and items. Then you have to use your wits to get the shrine orbs into place, including getting one off a Hinox. It really challenges you to think outside the box to get that shrine to appear. Eventide was almost better than the Divine Beast Dungeons.
My niece saw me playing this when she was 6 years old. Its one of the few games she could play because it was intuitive and she didn't HAVE to read (we have a family-inherited learning disability) in order to get through it or find useful items in the game. It why she now loves gaming. She is currently playing through skyward sword (a challenge for her) and Legends Arceus, because breath of the wild showed her she doesn't need to be limited by words.
I will be buying her the sequel when I order my own copy.
Hot pickle, Bandit, good review, thanks for talking about this old game
OK, I love asking this question. Favourite moment of playing this game for the first time. It could be little, it could be big.
For example, mine was cresting a hill near the start of the game, having not come across anything but monsters since I left the platue. I'd tried (and failed) to clear out a monster camp, I'd run away from my first Talus (that was a nasty surprise), and I'd already gone through a blood moon (so terrifying). The world was scary, the world was lonely, the world wanted to kill me. But, as I crested that hill at night, wondered up to the three trees on top, I began to hear music. And when I got to the trees I look down and saw the lights of Kakariko village at the bottom of the hills. That was such a warm feeling, of finding homes and people. I camped on that hill that night to ride in at dawn, which I imagined an adventurer would do. Let me tell you, when I saw my first merchant on the way in I was very happy😊
Thanks for your ultra fast review now I finally buy this latest game!
My grandmother bought the n67 when I was born 97, she wanted something to do with me as I grew up since we lived on a rural Canadian farm I wouldn't have had any hobbies in common without that.
She's turning 70 soon, still play together, the roles have reversed it's me playing now while she watches.
But I still make time for our game every chance I get.
Oot and majora hold a special place in my heart and always will.
For me one of the most annoying things in botw is the lack of ability to swim underwater. And also, the lack of dungeons. Such wasted potential.
When doing this kind of comparison, one thing that I always do is to recover the felling that I had the first time I play the game. That's when you really can tell if the game it's good, because the second time forward you always biased by your previous playthrough. For instance, the shrines seems shorter now, because I know exactly what to do. But the first time, some of the shrines take a good amount of time.
Anyways, great video. Love it.
64 ennemi for the game on the N64! Gosh, they are good!
ive been playing zelda games since the very first. and ill say botw is my favorite. the ability to just go do stuff really was all i did in the past. it was only after link to the past that the idea of "oh go here" was there and thats what i did. i barely went off the path since the games really didnt let you. so when it came back to "go there, but do you really wanna?" i was happy. it felt alot like the first in that youre not trying to protect the world, youre exploring the remains of a destroyed land where the bad guy won long ago.
Breath of the wild was my first zelda game, and introduced me to the series. It's not the perfect game, but the feeling of wandering the open fields and the first scene where link walks out onto the Great Plateau will never seize to amaze me. I do wish that there were more enemies to fight and harder dungeons, but this game will always be special.
Oh wow no way it’s already been five years 😳
Yeah I don’t know where I heard this, but someone had once said “Amazing game, great Zelda game” which I feel is the best way to describe it.
Given the context from the video, did you mean to type "Amazing game, 'bad' Zelda game"? instead of great?
@@theoaremevano3227 Anyone who says anything like that is just being arrogant. No one person gets to decide what a real Zelda game is, or a real Star Wars movie, etc.
@@TheAlibabatree : I agree it's too simplistic to say what IS and IS NOT rather than what you'd prefer. In general, people are trying to say that a game 'rates highly for them among other games they've played, but lower among games in the same series', a common feeling, but that doesn't mean it's actually bad at being part of that series. :)
@@theoaremevano3227 Well that’s fine. Botw is definitely rated as one of the best games in the series.
Great job I always enjoy your videos
I love this video because I understand what you’re saying, but have a completely opposite experience. My experience with video games was a lot like your girlfriend’s-until I married a gamer and he convinced me to try BOTW. It took me a while to get into (controlling a camera when you have zero experience navigating a virtual 3D world is… something) but once I “got” the game, I was hooked. I’ve since played a few other Zelda games and found them enjoyable, but I can’t help but compare them to BOTW. I love the puzzles and stories, but none of them have quite the same magic of discovering a world and I can’t help but miss it.
Link to the past! :D it is still my favorite one
Kass’ theme is so good and the songs even better, especially the dlc ones