- Originally played in May 2023 – Review written after, only posted now.
I just rolled credits on this game after what my Switch tells me is 100+ hours of gameplay. Not sure how accurate that really is but I’ll go with it. I will go out and state from the start that this is my favorite Zelda game of all time. That’s even with me trying to factor in for recency bias. I just loved my time in this world. Sometimes repeating a certain task over and over would get a little boring, but I’d take a break and come back and try out something else and get drawn right back into the world. There will be spoilers in this review so you’ve been warned.
First off, I started with getting my stamina meter filled up as quickly as I could. It just seemed like if you really wanted to avoid enemies you could do that, so hearts weren’t a vitally important thing to have. It also allowed me to get access to the Master Sword relatively early in the game which I was appreciative of. In order to fill up your stamina or hearts you have to do shrines in this game, similar to the BotW. Every four shrines you complete you can exchange the orbs you get for a meter upgrade.
The puzzles in this game are really interesting and allow you to explore a wide range of abilities that you gain access to. They are some of the more enjoyable content in the game, and are in a way the main thing you will be doing throughout your playthrough, as long as you care about increasing your stats. My main problem with the shrines is the way they are paced. I feel like there should be a set order for the first twenty or so shrines. The ones that really teach you things you want to know with the game. The odd thing is that those shrines are just scattered around the world and you’ll get to them when you get to them. I got to one that taught me the bow after like 100 shrines. It was ridiculous. That, to me, is a mental way to design an open world game. Perhaps have some sort of story or mechanic in place that will guide you to a few shrines in a particular order. Granted, I didn’t really care since I managed all the shrines easily, but it felt really odd getting into the late game and finding these basic shrines.
It’s a little wild to think that the Korok seeds are still in this game. Finding hundreds of pieces of poop is a crazy mechanic. You can exchange them for upgrades to the amount of equipment you can carry, which is a plus. They are also nice little diversions to hold you over as you traverse to a new region of the map. So I really have no problem with them, I just don’t know if I can get myself to collect the whole lot of them.
That is what this game world is about though. It’s about exploring and using the mechanics of this new moveset to see what you can do and get away with. The game will allow you to break the puzzles if you can, it doesn’t gate you in that way at all. It respects you and it respects the sandbox the developers have created to allow you to go off on your own adventure in any way you see fit. Take the main path through the cloud islands, or just use your Fuse ability and drop some devices to make a hovercraft to skip it all. Go into a shrine and just completely ignore the intended solution to a puzzle and cheese your way through it in some silly fashion.
Other fun objectives that you can do involve a builder, Addison, that you’ll constantly run into who is just holding a sign up with the proper support. Your goal, if you want to help him, is to use objects around him to provide support to the sign, each one slightly different, so that when he lets go it’ll still be standing, then he can properly support it in a more permanent manner. Doing each one of these will give you different small rewards. I would just find it fun to complete each one of these little puzzles as I went along my journey.
This is actually the first Switch game that I’ve played for any length of time on my TV instead of handheld. Even BotW would only be a handheld game for me. This is because I never bought a pro controller or anything. I tried using the little adapter thing for the joycons and played BotW a few times, not for long, and just found it cumbersome. With this game, at the end of the Switch’s lifecycle, I thought I should finally buy a pro controller and got a bundle with the game. So I kept it on the TV the whole time. Besides finding out that the Switch doesn’t have HDR, which is wild, I loved playing this game on the TV and having a proper controller really opened my eyes to using the Switch as a “real” gaming console for the first time. Perhaps it will finally graduate from being just a handheld console.
Outfits
Something I have to give a shoutout to with this game is that there are so many outfits. You can find sets from prior games, or just random ones from different regions of the map. I actually kind of just love this with this game. I think it’s cool that you can change Link’s look and put an outfit from Skyward Sword or something on it. If you want to control your dives from the sky even more, just quickly swap on some gear that gives you better maneuverability. You can then hit up some of the Great Fairies and have the gear improved for late game.
Gear
To talk about a modern Zelda game is to talk about weapons and gear breaking. They go hand in hand and a lot of people really hate that about the game. I think that it’s a part of what makes this game what it is. Listen, you’re never hurting for a weapon in this game. After the start I was never left with just one weapon in my inventory, outside of certain challenge areas. I think that once you move past that notion this mechanic will not be that big of a deal to you. Weapons breaking and the new ability to Fuse objects to weapons is what makes it really work better when compared to BotW. First off, it’s a repeatable mechanic that you will interact with many times in your adventure. Just like anything else in the world, think about what you need and find a creative solution to your problem. You can Fuse objects like rocks or special items to your swords to increase their power dramatically.
This is a mechanic that I really didn’t explore to its full potential I must admit. I keep it basic and to a minimum. I like to store stuff so I really wouldn’t go that wild with the items I already had in my inventory. Maybe attach a bomb to an arrow if there is a large group of enemies. Or if I pick up a really good weapon I’ll attach a high level Fuze item to it and save it for a boss fight.
New Powers
The powers in this game are what really make it special. I remember not being sold on the game leading up to its launch until I saw the demo where they use Fuze to start building a craft to go across the water. That really drew me into this world of creativity that they were going for. They then showed off the Ascend ability and that really blew my mind. Like, take climbing, a whole mechanic from the prior game and just admit that people hated doing it. I remember in this game that I went into a well and couldn’t figure out how to get out of it. I think I just warped to a close shrine to get out of it, I had completely forgotten about using Ascend to fly through the ceiling. It was really the one mechanic that I had to rewire my brain to know when I could use it. This is also the one ability that I would love to have in BotW for a second playthrough of that game.
What is really interesting about the Fuse and later the Autobuild ability is that you can use Zonai devices to create machines that you can use for different tasks in the world. I created a hoverbike out of two fans and a steering wheel that I would constantly use with Autobuild to create this device where I could fly around the map. You’re allowed to then just use this to go wherever your battery will allow you to take it. It provides for a true sense of freedom in exploration where you are trusted by the game to just do it your own way.
Hyrule
The playspace in the middle of this 3 tiered sandwich is the world of Hyrule that was pulled out of Breath of the Wild. I am one of the people that hasn’t played that game since its initial release so I have years of time where I’ve forgotten little things here and there. So the world felt familiar, but also new to me. Coming into the game and hearing it’s the same map really felt like a cheat from the developers. Like, you go six years and can’t even model a new land for us to explore?
That’s the thing though, by the end of my playthrough I actually loved that it was the same map. It means that these characters are all the same and their stories are evolving. An upheaval has thrown parts of the map into the sky and created large holes that reach deep down into the depths. So things have changed. Towns and landmarks may be the same, but the stories and adventures you’ll go on feel completely different.
Something that really bothered me and I have some traumatic memories from BotW is navigating and climbing up large mountains or structures. This is almost completely eliminated through the Ascend ability, where you can launch yourself up through a ceiling or rock and come out the other end. That, added with building machines where you can fly, or launching yourself up into the sky using a sky tower all aid in traversal in a really convenient and fun way. It makes me really wonder what it will be like going back to BotW after having finished this game. I don’t even know how I’ll get around now. I barely ever used a horse in this game, even though you’ll have all the horses you collected in BotW available at your stables.
The Sky
The sky is definitely the most interesting part of the whole map. It’s a place where structures and environments are scattered about reaching into the clouds. They allow for an incredible sense of verticality and challenge to navigate puzzles and plan ways to move from one structure to another. There are also plenty of Shrines up here that are good starting places to jump from and hang glide from to get around the map below. It’s a beautiful idea to have these massive structures that shoot up into the sky for you to explore. What is really wild is when you find yourself at a high elevation in the sky and think that you’re at the top, but you look around and find an even higher place off in the distance. What’s fun is working out just how you’re going to get there and planning out that journey in whichever way you want.
The Depths
The Depths is one of the more intriguing areas of the game world. You first drop down a hole and the depths are completely dark except for some roots that are glowing. There is an exploration of them happening by some Hyrulians and your task is to explore them and to understand what is actually happening down there. As you find roots it will light up the surrounding area. There is also Gloom all over the place, if you take a hit by an enemy or stand in Gloom you will start to have Gloom rot and your hearts will get locked out. You can also find plenty of Zonaite that you can use to increase your battery pack.
While I did explore the whole of the Depths, and I did activate every Lightroot, I found that this was the least inspired area of the whole game. I enjoy the concept of this massive underground area to explore, I just found that it would get boring exploring the whole thing. The environment doesn’t change up like it does in Hyrule, it just always looks the same no matter where you go. This is where I would make my hovercraft and just fly from one Lightroot to another. You can, however, find some really nice armor down here, maps to which you’ll often find in the sky in hidden chests here and there.
Temples
There are four main temples in the game. A lot of people praised it for being the resurgence of classic Zelda temples, which I actually don’t believe is true. It is true that they are better than the temples in BotW, that’s for sure. They just aren’t a classic Zelda temple in any way. These are usually a more simplified temple structure that doesn’t require backtracking or unlocking a new device to complete a puzzle room or anything like that. The person you team up with for the temple will have the ability that you need and so you can just do the puzzles in any order and fight the main boss of the area. I’m not knocking the design, I actually enjoyed all of the temples and appreciated that they weren’t some big, boring, multi-tiered event that took hours to complete. You don’t have to look up guides or anything like that. They were enjoyable.
Story – unlocking the past
The story of this game is probably what surprised me the most about the title. I really wasn’t expecting anything from it and It honestly ended up being what I liked most about the game. I was immediately drawn into what was happening with Zelda. Anytime she showed up in a cutscene I was glued to the screen. Her going back to the founding of Hyrule and becoming a Sage of Time was fascinating. As well as the sacrifice she makes to restore the master sword and carry it into the future so that Link could find it again and use its power to ultimately defeat Ganondorf. So the main story I loved. Once I got my first taste of the flashbacks of Zelda by finding the dragon tears in the glyphs around Hyrule, I set out to find them all. Typically that is something I would wait to do in most open world games, where I like to fully explore one section of the map at a time. I guess it’s a good thing since it opened up the whole world to me and made me not so committed to one area. I probably would have burned out with the game if I did it that way too.
The other side of the coin would be all the side quests and things like that, which I didn’t enjoy as much as the main story. They were enjoyable, but I didn’t feel a need to complete every single one of them. Perhaps I’ll keep noodling with the game and try to 100% it, but who knows how many more hours that would take.
Graphics
I honestly can’t believe that this old ass console looks this good. I’m constantly amazed by the draw distance and how floating islands are visible across the map. The art style and the way the developers understood the limitations of the platform and worked the design around those are truly amazing. You also just wonder what this game would have looked like if it was on a console as powerful as the PS5. Granted, the game does run at 30 FPS, sometimes even down to 20 FPS, but for some reason it doesn’t feel like a 30 FPS game. I have no idea how they got it to feel so good and smooth. Perhaps it’s the art style and animation, it doesn’t feel like a modern PS5 title that runs at 30. Some trickery is afoot.
Final Score – 9.8
Why “just” a 9.8 for this game? I would say that they slipped a little bit with the design of the Depths. It just got a little boring and lazy to me. I get the purpose of it, and you don’t really need to explore the whole thing, so perhaps some of that is one me. In the end though, this is easily one of my favorite Zelda games of all time and easily the best game on the Switch. And I love the Zelda character in this game, but who doesn’t?
Ghost Ba Bomb 