The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild met my high expectations
Recently I picked up a Switch 2, my first Nintendo console since the Wii. I actually didn't really get the console with the intention of playing lots of Nintendo exclusives, but with the amount of praise that this game receives online, I felt like I had to check it out. Breath of the Wild is my first Zelda game, and I had pretty high expectations for it going into my playthrough. I think for the most part it managed to meet those expectations, and I have a lot of good things to say about the game. For reference, I played the Switch 2 edition of the game.
I think one of the games biggest strengths is actually the structure of the main quest. Once you get to the point where you're objective is to free the divine beasts, you kind of have to find and complete shrines so that you can increase your stats. A lot of my exploration didn't happen because a quest or NPC told me to go somewhere, it happened because I was running to a tower or shrine, and then stumbled across something else that looked cool. I get that some people won't like this, but really felt like the game gave me the opportunity to explore, while at the same time feeling like I was making progress on the main quest. I really liked this aspect, and although I'm sure it exists, it's not something that I've seen in other open world games before.
Initially I found the combat to be kind of challenging in the game. The character movements felt really good, but I think that especially with the amount of health and weapon options that are available early in the game, encounters with enemies could be quite punishing. As the game progressed however, I found the combat to be quite rewarding and fun.
I'm not typically someone who will do a ton of side quests, and I didn't do a ton in Breath of the Wild. For me, I don't really feel like this detracted from my experience, but let me know if you think I missed out. I put more energy into looking for and completing the shrines, and had a lot of fun with the puzzle mechanics involved there.
I don't really have any big criticisms of this game. The weapon durability thing was annoying, although honestly I eventually reached a point where I was finding enough good weapons that I didn't really mind it anymore. Probably my biggest gripe was there not being a good way to keep track of recipes/elixirs. I get that experimentation is part of the point here, but I got tired of just having to guess how many hearts the food I cooked would restore.
In conclusion, I liked Breath of the Wild a lot, and I think it deserves the praise it gets. I'm not sure it completely blew me away, but it's definitely one of the better open world action/adventure games that I've played, and I think that it's going to age well for me. I'd definitely recommend it to anyone who owns a switch, and it made me interested in playing some other Legend of Zelda games in the future.