Breath of the Wild - A Retrospective

[Music] how do you define a masterpiece is it merely just a measure of quality or is there something else that separates it from the norm i guess it's really up to the individual to decide breath of the wild has been praised by everyone as a modern masterpiece video game outlets praising it for a variety of different reasons and those who call it overrated whilst giving valid criticisms of the game are mostly rooted in the hype that surrounded it it is easily the most influential zelda game neck the most influential nintendo game since ocarina of time and yet that isn't why i would consider it a masterpiece good game design has nothing to do with how i view breath of the wild it's not my favorite game ever made not even my favorite zelda but to say that it isn't special or that it still doesn't have some of that same magic that was there when i first played the game five years ago would be unfair if i were to under exaggerate a bit if i were to condense this several hour long critique into one short summary at the beginning of the video it would be that while now my favorite breath of the wild is the game that i am the most passionate about there's a lot to talk about and unlike my previous zelda videos i will not be holding back anything i will be going into excruciating detail over every single element of this game that i deem worthy enough to add to the discussion the only game that i will be leaving out is the wii u version of the game mostly because i've never played it and i never will with all that said and done grab some popcorn and a drink and let's begin this breath of the wild retrospective [Music] what is breath of the wild's focus you may say that it's exploration but that's really not the case since it was also a focus with games like the wind waker it's also not really about breaking the conventions of zelda that was more of a catalyst than anything the one thing that breath of the wild exceeds at and arguably its main focus is player choice let me give you an example the final boss of the game allows you to use either the bow of light which has infinite ammo and no drawbacks to using it whatsoever or you can use the ancient arrows i discovered this on one of my earlier playthroughs when i believed that i switched to the bow of light but was actually just using the same bow and arrows that i had been using previously there are no real benefits to using ancient arrows over the light arrows but the fact that even now at the end of the adventure you still get to make a choice and what weapon you use shows how much the game still respects the person playing at no point are you forced to do something in a way that you don't want to do it the reason that i'm getting this out of the way is because the vast majority of my criticisms and praises of the game rest on this fundamental concept of player freedom there's also a secondary focus of the game that sort of underpins this concept that being discovery this is why a first playthrough is always the most special it's because you never know what you're gonna find there's always something across the river or across the mountain and all it takes is a little bit of hard work to cross it i wouldn't say that it's the main idea of the games and subsequent playthroughs are far less special than the first but the game isn't suddenly worse because of it with that out of the way let's talk about how the video is structured just in case you don't have five hours to spend watching the entire thing in one sitting the next nine of the main body sections of the video will focus on one specific area of the game however this one is more focused on some of the important mechanics that the game is built around so while skipping around won't be too detrimental a lot of the foundations are going to be laid in this section so i would recommend watching this one before thinking about skipping around [Music] some things like the rune abilities will be saved for a later section where i feel it's more appropriate and convenient to talk about when talking about the visuals the real nitty-gritty technical stuff the game looks fine there are a few times where the frame rate will drop particularly in heavily populated areas like korok forest generally speaking i don't really mind the poor frame rate in these areas since you're never in any real danger what's a little more distracting than this is some of the pop in enemy pop in is generally fine since you can see them from a far enough distance that you can decide whether or not you want to engage in combat with them and since they're so small when they do just randomly show up it's not that bad there is however one notable exception to this high knox's will only show up when you're super close to them so the only way to make their fights feel less cheap is to make it take a little more effort to wake them up as it's the only real way of preventing unfair deaths some foliage spawns in but that's kind of to be expected one thing that's really odd to see is geometry pop in in order to keep the flow of being able to go from one end of the map to another with no load time seamlessly there are low poly versions of the landscape to make it easier on the system however suddenly going from a low quality version to a high quality version is fairly sudden and looks really off it just takes me out of it you know at least when playing in docked mode for some reason the game runs pretty much perfectly in handheld mode sure quark 4 still lags a bit but it is nowhere near as bad as it is when docked even more shocking when lowering the tv resolution forcing it to output at 720p didn't help performance at all heck i even tried 480p and even though it did run about as well as it did in handheld mode who the frick wants to be playing this game in standard definition eu the only thing that makes sense to me is that when the higher ups at nintendo send them that email they decided that since it was a hybrid console that people would most likely be playing in handheld mode at launch they put more effort into optimizing it for handheld play with talking about having less effort put into it i obviously don't know if this was the case but it makes sense to me more evidence can be found in the trailer for breath of the wild sequel that we got at e3 last year the game is clearly being played in docked mode at a higher resolution and frame rate plus it just flat out looks better perhaps they couldn't get the game's performance to be at its peak because of the porting job but i guess we'll never know now disregard everything that i've just said because holy moly does this game look freaking gorgeous the lighting is sublime i love that grass shine that happens whenever the light hits it the way that the towers and shrines all affect the water when they're glowing leaving a trail of orange or blue depending on whether or not you've cleared it it's just so cool the character designs are all fantastic zoras look more like fish burritos are actually birds this time around the whole game does a great job at blending the wind waker cell shading and twilight princess's realism it's one of the first ways in which this game takes an element of skyward sword and improves or adapts it another way it does that is with ancient technology first of all i love the idea that this technology is super old and these people have never experienced it have discovered it after 10 000 years i feel like this makes it fit into the series as a whole a lot better i think that pulls it off a lot better than its predecessor 2 since that game was focused on being an origin story for the series together are a bunch of cool robots that utilize technology that you never see again after that point here though it's perfect and baked into the very identity of the game and its story the designs are also really cool the guardians are large and intimidating towers and shrines stick out like sore thumb meaning that no matter where you are you can immediately tell what it is you're looking at i also love that everything has a sense of logic to it whenever you get a ball you can see the shaft that it comes out of nothing just appears you can kind of make out how everything works in every single shrine which just makes the world more believable and immersive shrine's interiors are so visually distinct from nature that it feels like you're stepping into another world this game also happens to have my favorite enemy designs in the entire series they all look like actual creatures i didn't have in the world and not just mindless beasts that serve under ganon this game is so artistically stunning that it makes up for every single graphical shortcoming would i have liked if the game ran better and didn't have distracting pop in sure but at the end of the day the game has such an amazing art style that i couldn't care less the music in this game is one of the few areas where i am a massive contrarian i absolutely love this soundtrack so when people make a bunch of stupid claims it annoys me one sentiment that i've seen is that the music is just a bunch of random notes on the piano i don't care if it's just a joke since i've seen so many people over the years say the same thing at least 100 give or take a few and i find it hard to believe it was just one guy so i prepared a quick example of what random notes being played on the piano actually sounds like [Music] as you can tell that sounded really bad the music that's being played actually sounds good now that that's out of the way this is breath of the wild's overworld theme [Music] it's fairly different from the adventurous feelings of ocarina of time and skyward sword different from whatever emotion turbine field was trying to strike it's honestly the weakest overall theme in the series since it just feels like music for the sake of it but whatever it also lacks the qualities that evoke curiosity like in the wind waker or twilight princess [Music] instead it just kind of wanders [Music] it doesn't really go anywhere but it does move keep in mind that i have no idea what the frick i'm talking about i mean music theory what is that matpat's new channel there are a few different ambient tracks in the game that i really enjoy like waterfront or castletown ruins however my two favorite ambient tracks are the mountains theme which was the first piece of music that we ever heard for the game i just think that it really fits and it's a super nice song to just put on in the background however my favorite piece of ambient music in the game is the cave theme the way that the piano and synth combine representing the natural beauty of the cave and the technology that lights deep inside along with a very soothing melody makes it oddly nostalgic for me i guess it's not that odd considering that it's five years old jesus was the time go however these ambient tracks don't actually make up the whole soundtrack since several tracks fit with the whole classic zelda music category i made a list just to show that this game does indeed have some real bangers they are in alphabetical order attack on vametto attack on vanderborus attack on varuda flight ganon fight themes dark be scanned and fight daruk's theme encounter with the great deku tree gerudo town day gerudo town night goron city day goron city night great perry fountain guardian battle titano village day titania village night hyrule castle exterior hyrule castle interior kakariko village day kakariko village night cass's theme khorak forest day khorak forest night lordland village day lorryland village night melania's theme mifa's theme parasailing ravalli's theme reno village day rito village knight shrine theme stables terrytown verbose's theme valmetto ivana boris avarudania varuda yika clan hideout zora's domain day and zora's domain knight the thing with this game is that these themes are far and few between so whenever a more prominent piece of music plays you know that something special is happening i'm not even a big fan of some of these pieces gerudo town day hyrule castle interior and both zora's domain pieces aren't really up my alley but to say that just because i don't like a few pieces means that the whole soundtrack sucks is a bit stupid now you might have noticed that i missed two pieces and it's because i have a little bit more to say about them in particular firstly the main theme it's probably my favorite piece of music in the entire series it fits so well with the main ideas of the game and i love how it uses almost every instrument from the rest of the game the only real issue that i have with it is the pause in the middle of the song and i mean yeah they did say in an interview that it was supposed to represent link's first breath after waking up the shrine of resurrection which was cool and all but this pause sounds so unnatural and ugly here's an example from the 2018 zelda concert which i feel utilizes to pause better [Music] you could argue that the original piece uses it to show how sudden and i don't know where it was or whatever but i personally prefer the natural fade before slamming into the more energetic part of the song since it's like hyrule is on the edge of its seat waiting for this moment when the hero finally wakes up or maybe i'm looking into this too much who knows the other theme that i failed to mention is the battle theme it's easily the best in the series starting off non-intrusive and it's dynamic with the mood always changing now i'm not going to pretend that i discover this next thing that i'm about to bring up i discovered it whilst watching some breath of the wild music analysis video that i can't seem to find for the life of me it was voiced by masked nintendo bandit and that's all i remember about it [Music] anyway whenever you land a hit the battle theme has a percussion hit but now you actually landed the attack but rather when the next beat of the song is that attention to detail is just insane to me and it really has the chaotic feel that the piece is going for and this brings us to the next point of discussion the combat zelda games have never really had the best fighting mechanics it was always the least enjoyable part of the game from a casual play through perspective fighting enemies was never really a challenge and your options were always so limited that it made every combat encounter feel the same the first two n64 games established combat and it's forgivable considering that they were pioneers wind waker introduced a parry system that really wasn't that enjoyable since it was timing based and you couldn't do it yourself it was only ever really useful on more powerful enemies essentially meaning that the game didn't allow you to have the fun of using on any enemy that it didn't choose twilight princess was a step in the right direction with a bunch of cool moves that you could perform at will though combat was so easy due to enemy ai then it made them feel a bit more worthless on anything that wasn't a dark nut skyward sword had some pretty enjoyable combat encounters however something that i failed to mention previously was that everything is based on directional swings so even if everything was fun and engaging it still lacked depth due to how limiting working with only one direction is breath of the wild finally took a proper step in improving the combat first of all due to the weapons breaking system which i'll get to in a bit forces you to use a variety of weapons there are spears two-handed weapons and single-handed weapons they all have the same basic controls but they all feel different to use spears are generally best for ranged combat two-handed weapons like large swords or axes are slow to swing but do heavy damage and single-handed weapons are a bit more balanced and are the only weapon that lets you use your shield you can also parry and the window is relatively small unlike skyward sword which was far too forgiving there are also flurry rushes and to be honest i really don't see what the big deal is a lot of people say that it ruins combat because it's too easy to perform look i'm sorry that you being good at a video game ruins it for you the timing is actually pretty strict there are multiple times where i've dodged but it was never in that perfect window so i didn't get it the timing is so strict that it's always satisfying to perform it's this ball time mode that really makes the combat so much fun and since you can enter it when you have your bow out too it makes the combat approachable in a variety of ways what there isn't much variety of is enemies see what i did there honestly there's a bare minimum amount of enemy types i would like more but i don't think that there isn't enough in the game you're pretty much limited to the basics goblins moblins zazolfos the skeleton versions of them that only come out at night keys elemental keys like electric or ice choo choose who also have elemental variations like keys and wiz robes who once again have elemental versions there are also bosses which you'll get into way later on but there are also guardians mostly located in the central hyrule area there are a few different types with the most notable being the stalkers they are absolutely terrifying in the early game they're fast and can easily fire lasers at you and so you'll just kind of have to hope that you can escape if you get spotted by one later on in the game they become a lot easier to defeat which is pretty satisfying given how difficult they were in the early game there are the sky watchers which are relatively few of and they're a lot easier to escape from than regular guardians and defeating them takes a bit longer too they're decayed guardians which are mostly just there to keep you on your toes whenever you're near some ruins since you'll never know if it's alive there are also the stationary guardians that are only found in hyrule castle at least to my knowledge they're basically just more powerful versions of the decayed guardians inside of shrines is guardian scouts the more powerful ones being saved for the test of the shrink shrines whenever just randomly thinking about the enemy variety it does feel like there's a very small pool to pick from but when laying it out like this yeah there's a lot more in this game than i feel like a lot of people myself included give it credit for so far i've been relatively positive but that's about to end difficulty progression is one of my biggest problems with this game it starts out pretty difficult you only really have access to weak weapons so you need to pick your fights carefully a lot of the world is really difficult to access at this point in the game so there are really only a couple of reasons that you can safely traverse through as the game progresses and you get cooler weapons that do more damage more hearts more stamina the more the world opens up to you this is pretty much the only positive thing that i have to say about the progression to illustrate the problem that i have let's look at a general fight that you can have on the great plateau compared to something you have at the end of the game and keep in mind that this is pretty surface level to avoid repetition in some camps you'll need to keep moving to avoid being hit by arrows you'll also need to be careful when sneaking in hits since you can easily be killed you also can't wail on enemies due to your weapons breaking which encourages you to bring your surroundings into combat since you're so weak and have relatively poor weapons it makes every victory all the sweeter once you get off the plateau you're still weak so you need to plan out every combat scenario if it's night time stealth kills become a lot easier however even with powerful weapons it still isn't guaranteed that the enemy will die from the sneak strike so you always need to be careful if you're quick enough you can rob the enemies of their weapons which makes killing them a bit easier also real quick i love the animation that plays whenever you take their weapons and never cease to get a quick smile out of me all this is without even bringing up elemental attacks on the path to zora's domain there are results that while weak have electric weapons that pack a lot of damage this challenge makes every combat counter fun and engaging throughout the early game it also makes getting good at combat satisfying and rewarding that's a lot of positivity that i just showed in your face so what's the problem to answer this i'll ask another question what's the difference between a red bokoblin and a silver pacoblin the silver one has more health that's it it isn't more aggressive doesn't have different attacks it's the exact same as a regular one except now it's a damage sponge if you take the weapon away there are no differences so saying that they have stronger weapons is a poor argument at the end of the game you can kind of just throw yourself on enemies with no consequences you'll have really good weapons and a huge stock of arrows and food to instantly heal you completely nullifying all challenge that the game once had instead of having to conserve resources you can just barrel through all them with no consequences this brings us to cooking it's a double-sided coin one side positive and the other side negative first the positives it is a really cool system being able to find all sorts of different materials and slapping them together in a cooking pot to see what happens is really neat it's also really tactile with you having to physically hold the items go up to the cooking pot and drop it in there's no sub menu so it doesn't feel like you're exchanging ingredients you are legitimately cooking i remember on my first playthrough i was trying to figure out how to beat the cold to get to the cryonic shrine i found some peppers near the entrance to the mountain and the text that came up when i collected them said that they had the power to reduce the cold so i ate a couple and attempted to make my way there but it wasn't working i was still taking damage and i didn't want to waste all my food to brute force my way to the shrine eventually i discovered the old man's hut and there i discovered the cooking pot when i did find the pod and ready's diary to learn how to cook i spent the next five minutes trying to figure out how exactly to get the ingredients out what ended up happening was i accidentally pressed a button on the controller to make myself hold it since reading these instructions down here is for the week of mind without them i need to confirm that i was indeed holding them i realized that i was now able to cook them once they were cooked it finally lowered my cold resistance allowing me to get to the shrine this is the joy of cooking in this game explained with a story and i hope you're ready for more stories throughout the video since it's usually the most optimal way of explaining something i personally found it impossible to make this video without these dumb stories so i apologize in advance anyway cooking has a lot of different properties that you can exploit like anything in the wild that you find beginning with hearty makes meals a temporarily increase your heart count similar things happen with sneaky or speedy combining a hot-putted frog with monster parts will give you a speed boost elixir which can be really helpful when out exploring some food combinations will result in dubious food which is probably my favorite meal in the game solely because it's pixelated and presented as one of the most vile things in existence however the problem with cooking is that towards the end of the game it gets pretty overpowered there are no consequences to eating in the middle of battle and it's also far too easy to make meals that auto heal you five hearty durians and you've got 20 extra hearts to play with and not only that there's a spot right next to the fahren tower that has a ton of them so it's always easy to replenish your supply a simple fix to these two main problems are as follows firstly make it so you need to combine dishes to strengthen effects instead of just being able to get overpowered stuff instantly for example combining two hearty during dishes with a couple more hearty durians gives you more recovery hearts the second fix is to make eating happen in real time if this were the case then you need to always be aware of your surroundings in order to make sure that now would be a good time to heal instead of pausing the game a split second before you take damage either on pause like it's no big deal simply making the material section in the food section on pau's time would do a lot in making eating more strategic without having to really change any game elements it would also mean that even though you have a bunch of overpowered meals you need to make sure that you're in a safe spot to actually eat them i'm fine with the game becoming easier by the end after starting out hard but they took it a step too far here whilst we're semi on topic about the combat and stuff let's discuss one of the most controversial elements of the game weapon durability this is by far the least compelling criticism of breath of the wild if you ask me that's right i'm on the defender side of the argument i could give you a list of reasons that it isn't a big deal but to keep this video as short as humanly possible i'll just explain it like this i saw this message far more than this one the game throws so many weapons at you that even after getting your storage upgraded by hes2 i still didn't have room for all the cool weapons i found the weapons breaking also forces you to engage with all weapon types at some point in the game as well as trying to find creative ways around certain combat scenarios i feel like this is the biggest problem that i have with people criticizing the summit of the game is that it acts as if the game isn't built around the system you are constantly showered in elemental swords and ancient weapons and shields and they break quickly sure you are always supplied with better and better weapons so it's best if you just use your good stuff since there's always a chance it gets replenished i see a lot of people bringing up repairing weapons which is really dumb like skyward sword system but much worse what's to stop you from going straight to a blacksmith the second this text appears on screen sure they would probably require materials and rupees and if we're basing this hypothetical system to work like the champion weapons and i guess that material wise it wouldn't be too bad but the only use that a lot of materials in the game have are to get rupees so it'd be easy to log around a bunch in case of an emergency at that point why even have weapons break at all it's so easy to come across gems and oars and you can easily get rupees so it really wouldn't be that bad to repair a weapon it truly would be a stupid system to implement in a game that is built around weapons breaking and constantly giving you more than you know what to do with i know i just repeated myself a few times here but that's just how frustrating this argument is to me i guess one thing that kind of goes hand in hand with weapon durability is the upgrade system look i didn't really have any other place to put this with the natural segway to it okay across the world you can find great berry fountains and since there's no magic meter and you can heal yourself at any time by eating the great fairies have been given a different purpose by upgrading your armor first you need to give them a certain amount of rupees in order to free them after that by getting the monster parts or whatever they ask for really you'll be able to make your armor better one fairy can only upgrade equipment a single time however so you'll need to visit all the berries throughout the world in order to fully upgrade yourself i really like this system since it gives use to everything that you find throughout the world which makes it so that no matter what it never feels like you're wasting your time when collecting materials one final thing to mention at this point in the video is the story of all the criticisms leveled against the game the story is by far the biggest criticism that i have seen for it and the way that everyone talks about it you would assume that there isn't even a story in the game once again i'm gonna be a contrarian because breath of the wild has a really great story if you ask me when you really think about the story itself you realize that it's actually really depressing not quite as sad as majora's mask but knows how the game will ever match it the basics are that everyone was horrifically slaughtered 100 years ago during an event known as the great calamity because the heroes failed to stop it this leads into one of the biggest focuses of the story zelda i've seen a lot of complaints that she's whiny and my rebuttals that she is a teenager under a lot of stress and once you realize that it makes her far less annoying i think it makes her more relatable overall the cutscenes do a pretty good job at showing you what kind of person she is making her the most fleshed out character in the game we know her desires and struggles and assuming you save this memory for last it also makes it pretty emotional zelda isn't the only character in the game though there are also the champions so let's get them out of the way the champions don't really get anything more than a superficial glance all things considered which is a little disappointing considering that all of them are skilled warriors tasked with piloting giant robotic animals but whatever i don't really mind that they aren't characterized that much since throughout the game they are more often than not portrayed more so as symbols while we're on topic i might as well talk about link every time somebody says link has no personality a keaton dies but not because i killed them that's fricked up i think that when you say link needs to speak in order to have a personality it's pretty dumb and ableist he does give facial expressions he isn't a block of wood like in the n64 days not only that but the dialogue boxes when talking to the steel lady having literally every option be a steel pawn doesn't mean anything but dawn of the old man these choices clearly mean nothing i hope you understand what i mean you don't need to have a voice to have a personality link is a goofball in this game he's serious when the time calls for it for the most part he's pretty chill and snarky now he's not as expressive as in the wind waker skyward sword but i personally really like this incarnation of the characters specifically because of these options you have to pick from during dialogue sections if i may nitpick just for a second though i hate the reason that he doesn't speak in the past is because he's silently bearing every burden or whatever it's super lame why couldn't it have just been that he's a more reserved person who doesn't like to speak does there really need to be some grand reasoning behind it also in japanese all the adventure logs are written in first person which is another opportunity to flesh him out as a character but whatever i guess we're struck with third person forever nintendo of america one of the biggest ways that the game tells a story is through the world itself there are ruins everywhere and it sparks the imaging imagination there are ruins everywhere and it sparks the imagination to wonder what exactly happened there for example there's a village in the middle of some watery ruins it looks really similar to other ruins that you know are destroyed by the guardians but there are none around here so based on the environmental clues you could come to the depressing conclusion that the village was surrounded by guardians and everyone was mercilessly killed as the guardians then went away the game never tells you this though you just need to use your imagination like spongebob told you to do those many years ago another example is this mountain from the moment you step out of the cave you can see that there's a giant unnatural hole in it but the game never actually tells you what happened to make it based on the fact that it's in the hebrew region and the divine beasts shoot giant lasers and of all meadow happens to be near it it can be inferred that it somehow misfired blasting a hole in the mountain no stupid lore book required some of the more interesting things in this game are the zonai ruins you don't really learn anything about them heck in japanese it's clearly translated as mystery but that mystery is why there are several youtube videos about the subject it's interesting that they added an entire collapsed mysterious civilization just to make the world feel more real every location has its own story to it you just need to think about what it is on top of this throughout the world you can find diaries the most interesting ones being zelda and king rome boss for rama's high rules whose last name i am sad to report is not actually hyrule sad day for us all these gave us a bit more insight into the characters in the world 100 years ago like how there was apparently a fortune teller who told them a prophecy about calamity ganon's return zelda's diary pairs up nicely with the memories adding a bit of extra context that would have been a bit more difficult to incorporate into those cutscenes but the main reason that i like this story so much is because at the start of the game link wants to defeat ganon because he's evil but as you learn more about the world you slowly get an actual proper reason for wanting to defeat him which makes the final confrontation that much sweeter however all this isn't to say that i don't have any issues with this game's narrative because now i get into the stuff that i don't like as much first of all the voice acting for a while it was easy to say that it was the actor's fault they just didn't get good ones which you know easy to say however this complaint is no longer valid due to the existence of hyrule warriors age of calamity the acting in this game is actually not that bad still not amazing but the actual performances are more than enough to make it a less cringy experience so why is it so mediocre and breath of the wild if it's not the actors then it can only come down to two main problems firstly the timing for some reason they didn't reanimate the cutscenes to fit around the actors so the actors instead had to work with dialogue specifically animated around japanese this is already going to make performing well difficult it also happens to be one of my biggest pet peeves with anything animated in another language localized for english you never do any proper lip syncing so everything just looks really often it annoys me that they did it here too on top of that the voice direction is complete garbage seriously did they even get a voice director if they did he clearly did not do a good job directors are important because they can help get a proper tone and performance out of the actors that's why rivali is the best in the game he's a cocky jerk and it's easy to perform since you don't need many pointers to make the character work there's even evidence in the game that this is the case i was thinking this reminds me of the time we first met you were just a reckless child always getting yourself hurt at every turn what emotion is mifa supposed to be feeling here is she sad is she happy to see link is she more somber as she heals his wounds it's robotic and monotone there's no emotion felt during the scene when honestly there should be mifa is in love with link why does it not feel that way in her voice so it sounds pretty good outside of the cutscenes when she's just a voice in the distance that you can only hear in your head there doesn't need to be a strong emotion here so she can sound relatively flat without it coming across as jarring and the actress is also not limited by the timing of lips movement this brings me to my main piece of evidence that i have for the directing being the biggest factor for mediocrity the japanese voice acting is godly this scene in the rain is so much more powerful because the actress really gets into the role it feels like there's a lot more to the scene than just he's definitely over dramatic but you think about how this point in the story everyone she knows and cares about has been left to die and she blames herself yeah i think that it really works it legitimately got me in the feels a bit unlike the english version where it still works but it's more dang that sad and less oniony if you understand what i'm talking about haha shrek riff and that's just the voice acting why do the most interesting story beats and not happen in the memories link nearly dies and we don't see the lead up to it i don't care that i've taken several minutes away from the gameplay it would be really cool to see him fight up until the end instead of having him already basically be defeated by the time the cutscene starts the only interesting thing that the story has to offer in the present day is link freeing the divine beasts there is literally nothing else to it did we really need a scene of zelda putting the master sword back into its pedestal why couldn't the scene have been linked pulling out the master sword for the first time 100 years ago why isn't there a single memory of link being on his own why does he have to be with someone it's clear that they were able to give him personality when talking to npcs why isn't it like this for the cut scenes these may seem like small issues when you have games like wind waker which is a really tight story of letting go of the past and making way for the new generation that's honestly kind of perfect for what kind of game that is or ocarina of time with its poignant themes of growing up or majora's mask and how the themes of death regret and depression manifest themselves into every aspect of the narrative or probably princess with this epic story with little fluff it's difficult to not have these things annoy me all of these games as plots have very little that i can criticize unlike this one where i do have issues with it the highs do put it at a solid number two spot in my overall zelda story ranking but it could have been the best if they just ironed it out an idea i've had since launch would be to have the memories actually be playable so that we the player can fight guardians until we're on the verge of defeat causing the cutscene or allowing us to ride with zelda as we get to the statue which transitions into a cutscene or having us lead zelda through the forest until she trips leading into the cutscene simple stuff like this would allow the story to more easily immerse the player in the world of 100 years ago since they are living through it along with link but alas that isn't the case and with that i have thoroughly exhausted my vocabulary when discussing the core of breath of the wild everything in this section lays the foundations for the game from the combat to the story with the visuals and music accompanying the main themes of the game being player choice and discovery with all that said and done let's get into what everyone actually remembers this game for [Music] breath of the wild's overworld is by far the most expansive and rich overworld in the entire series even after five years it's still kind of difficult focusing on one specific task without getting distracted by something off in the distance there's no shortage of things to do in the game but there are three primary things that you keep your eye out for firstly the towers since there are only 14 in the game it means that the game can reasonably expect you to clear all of them they all have a special challenge involved with each of them the reward for clearing all the towers in the game is a completed mat making it the only one of the three that feels worthwhile to 100 the great plateau tower is a tutorial tower being the only one in the game that you never need to climb it distills a map of the area for you which teaches you that if you want to unlock more areas on the map then you'll have to climb the rest of the towers let me tell you there is no better feeling than getting to the top of a tower placing the sheikah slate into the pedestal at the top the jingle that plays along with the sweeping camera shots showing you what you just unlocked is such a rewarding feeling especially on the harder ones the rest of the towers in the game offer a somewhat interesting trial that you must overcome in order to climb it not all of them do that of course take the dueling peaks tower this one is in the middle of a river so i suppose the challenge is getting to the tower but as long as you use cryonis it's really not that big of a deal getting over to it the elden tower is in the same camp being relatively easy to access and climb ateno tower is a pretty good example of an actual tower that requires strategy to climb the whole thing is covered in thorns so you need to charred out an optimal path that lets you climb up to the top the central tower is surrounded by guardians so you need to be careful when climbing not to get hit by the lasers or you could be a baby and kill them before you climb but you would never think of doing that would you the woodland tower has an enemy camp built around it so you need to navigate around that in order to get to the tower of course these ones have more challenges associated with the process of climbing them there are a few where the challenge comes from actually getting onto the tower take the hebrew tower for instance there are these blocks of ice that you need to melt in order to begin climbing but from there the climbing process is fairly straightforward the laner tower is at the top of a hill however in order to get to it you need to get through a bunch of enemies located all along the path up it the wasteland tower is surrounded by mud along with also having fewer platforms on your way up so you need to think of how you can not only get over to it but how you can climb up it as well the ridgeland tower is surrounded by water and electric enemies so you need to take care of them before you start climbing especially the wiz robes who can actually follow you on your way up fahren tower is relatively simple with you just having to create an air current to bring you up to a level where you can actually get onto the tower the grudo tower has this long winding path you can take that will eventually lead you to the top since the tower is so long that you can't really climb it the tabantha tower requires that you find a way to climb around the malice or find a way to clear it by shooting the eyeball causing a rock to fall allowing an easier ascent of course the best tower in the game is a call tower it's a challenging section since the whole place is surrounded by malice tough enemies and freaking guardian skywatcher you need to explore the area and look around in order to find an optimal path allowing you to reach the top you aren't required to do any of this to climb them though you could just find a higher place to jump from for the farron or guerrero tower since there are cliffs surrounding them and if you're a little baby then you can use ravali's gale to completely bypass every single obstacle they throw your way no matter what the game doesn't force you to complete them in a specific way once again player choice is what makes all the towers so enjoyable the towers also serve as a major goal that the player can keep in the back of their minds as they explore they make a pin in the distance and as they approach it who knows what they'll find which brings us to the korok seeds if you ask me i think that most people make dumb arguments when criticizing them the game doesn't really ever lead you to think that you should collect all 900 in the game in fact i would argue that it actively discourages it since your reward for doing it is a jpeg of a hester's gift it has no in-game application it's only there to acknowledge that you did it this is often a point of criticism of the seed since if there is no point in collecting 900 there was a point of collecting any the thing that is often overlooked is that quarks are not active collectibles but rather passive collectibles basically during your travels you'll see something that doesn't look right or you'll stumble upon one of these magnesis things and with some fiddling you'll discover a korok it's important that it isn't something you're supposed to be actively looking for since it means that no matter where you are you'll be able to find some it's unobtrusive and it makes exploration feel like less of a chore than otherwise would be if you were actively looking for them there's even a reward that you get for giving some tests to since you can expand your inventory slots making it feel worthwhile to go out of your way to do it i do have one more thing to say about the koroks but since it has to do with the dlc they'll save it until then there's another major goal that encourages exploration that being the shrines shrines are dotted all over the world and when you hear that there are 120 of them you'd think that they are relatively easy to find and at the start they are however it gets to a point that it becomes more difficult to find them which means that there's usually more to do than just walking over to one this makes it really engaging to find i'll discuss the design of the shrines in the shrine section of the video so we'll get into that bit later there's a bit of an imbalance of shrine locations however with the eldon and hebrew regions in particular getting the short end of the stick this means that these regions aren't really that fun or worthwhile to explore in comparison to the other ones it also sucks since the ones in hebrew are really fun like this one where you need to find a way to get into this underground cave or roll snowball down the correct path there just isn't much of a reason to go out of your way to do it since it's much easier and less time consuming to go do other ones to be honest if i didn't complete all the shrines for the video then i probably wouldn't have done a single shrine in either of these regions outside of the blue flame since minecart and the one at goron city i also feel like there was a missed opportunity here since you have corrupted divine beasts and guardians but you don't have corrupted towers or shrines even the one in hyrule castle is perfectly fine which is just kind of a disappointment you know these two issues well the second one is more of a nipping than anything anyway they aren't enough to make looking for the shrines any less fun there are a few hidden behind shrine quests though so we'll talk about those when we get there all right let's get into the real meat and potatoes of this section what there is to do in the world i've heard some people say that the great plateau is more linear than the rest of the game which really isn't true going to the point marked on your shika slate on the plateau is the same as it is during the rest of the game you can take your time and prepare yourself before you do anything this section of the game isn't necessarily more linear it's just more hand-holdy the entire plateau exists to teach you about the basic mechanics of the game it's not as short as kokiri forest but having a section that you can freely explore is a fair trade-off for length once you step out of the cave you're given three directions one teaching you about ragdoll physics one teaching you about combat and one leading you to the old man this old man serves as a sort of micro tutorial teaching you some of the basics of the game along with a bit of world building you can learn that cooking can augment certain ingredients though it's not really a cooking tutorial you can learn about torches being able to be used as either a tool or a weapon along this path you also learn about combat no matter where on the plateau you are you are forced to learn about the game's mechanics and this more handholding section of the game is here so that it can know you understand those basic mechanics when you're set loose upon hyrule you are forced to activate the tower here where you'll learn that this is the main way that you'll be obtaining map data there are multiple decayed guardians that spring to life surrounding the bomb shrine which forces you to learn to be careful around these guardian remains since you never know when they can start attacking you if you somehow manage to avoid these common encounters then you are a god that's another thing that i love about the great plateau you aren't forced to learn about all the game's mechanics and inner workings here you can completely ignore cooking you don't learn about riding horses until you get off the plateau you don't even have access to the paraglider etc it prevents an overload of information by organically bringing these scenarios up three of the four shrines here have some sort of challenge associated with them magnesis being the shrine that the game pushes you towards first doesn't really have any challenge associated with it the bomb shrine as i mentioned earlier has decayed guardians that you need to get around the stasis shrine has a couple of things that make it more difficult firstly needing to get to a specific section there are only really two ways to get to it either going through mount hylia which is really cold or you can chop a tree down to cross a bridge while you never really need to do this again in the game what does illustrate is the sense of logic that the game has i'll get into that way more in the next section though so sit tight until then the main thing that getting to this shrine teaches you about is stamina management as you climb up the cliff face the cryonic shrine is by far the most engaging challenge to figure out though you could be a lazy baby loser by tanking the hits and needing food to heal yourself as you make your way over to it you could use a torch since its heat raises your core temperature or you could cook peppers to keep yourself warm without any restrictions that the torch brings up you can also find the old man at the highest point of the plateau who gives you the warm dewplay outside of the shrines there really isn't that much to do you can find arrows get into a variety of combat encounters find his tone talus i think that the plateau does a great job at illustrating the use of your environment as a good way to dispose of enemies considering how weak you are but for the most part it's nothing more than a mechanic teacher to be honest after this tutorial you are given the paraglider and are able to leave the plateau most likely ending up in the dueling peaks region obviously one of the bigger landmarks of the area are the dueling peaks there's an npc who tells you that it used to be one mountain but a dragon split it in half so it could travel through that area according to legend they didn't need to give some sort of explanation for why it's like that but they did anyway which just goes to show how much love and detail went into crafting the world this section of the map follows some of the same elements of the great plateau just with a more hands-off approach the shrines along this path are all fairly easy and teach you about some other game mechanics that the plateau couldn't really touch on there are a couple of settlements here kakariko village and the dueling peak stable which are likely to be the player's first interactions with what the world is like disables even introduce you to the idea of some sword that the hero is supposed to wield assuming that you've never played a zelda game before and have no idea what the master sword is i love this incarnation of kakariko village it really feels like it's built into the mountainside which gives it a cozy sheltered vibe just outside of the village you can find a fairy fountain requiring your rupees to be set free from their prison if you haven't scraped up enough to free it then it gives you something to work towards these areas are also where you get your first real glimpse on what it's like for the people after the great calamity this brings up another point whenever i think about this game i always feel like the world is a lot emptier than it actually is there are a lot of npcs in this game which shocked me most of them are only ever really found in settlements like stables or villages but there are a lot more in the game than i remember on top of this you can find strangers under attack from monsters traveling merchants yiga clan members in disguise or just some regular travelers you can also find mini game people in more remote locations all of this adds up to a world that feels more alive than i gave a credit for in the past of course the name of the game is breath of the wild so obviously the game is going to have a focus on the wild throughout the world you can find a variety of animals birds goats bears horses dogs wolves hogs rhinos bulls deer squirrels frogs snails crabs and fish this variety really helps immerse you in the world and is very befitting of the name you can interact with a lot of these creatures being able to feed a lot of them cooking frogs or snails into elixirs or fish and crabs into meals hogs and rhinos can freak right off my first death in the game was from a hog so i have a deep-rooted hatred for them you can ride deers or bears in the mountains but cobbles don't actually ride horses but rather bales which is something that i never came across until this last playthrough all of this makes the creatures feel less like set dressing and more like actual living things the hittano section is when the world starts to truly expand after meeting with input in kakariko village you make your way to the titano region which is far larger than anything you've likely come across at this point patano village is the main settlement here which is a bit different to kakariko there's a dye shop where you can dye your clothes with some of the choo choo jelly that you get the ancient tech lab where you get the camera rune as well as upgrading your stasis room to freeze enemies as well and a bomb upgrade that does more damage and reloads quicker in order to unlock the ability to upgrade though you need to light a furnace outside with blue fire this is a fairly simple task you can always see where you need to take the flame next with the only real tricky part being right here at the beginning section with you having to cross this river it's still decently fun and having to decide whether or not to play the conservative route lighting every lantern along the path to ensure that you don't run out of fire at the cost of it taking longer or ignoring the lanterns and going down the path as fast as possible with the cost being that if the fire goes out you'll have to track all the way back to your last checkpoint to re-light the torch otherwise it's really not that interesting to talk about and it serves as more of a tutorial more than anything anyway also in the village is a statue that you can talk to in order to trade your hearts for stamina or vice versa it's helpful if you accidentally got a stamina or hard upgrade that you didn't want or if you want to have a bunch of stamina but need to pull the master sword out real quick etc the big thing to do in the village is the ability to buy your own house though as with a lot of things that i mentioned thus far in the video we'll get into that in a later section there's a sea that you can explore however there's really not a lot to find out there one of the big highlights of the area is mount la neru the biggest thing to discover on the mountains is the spring of wisdom here you discover a dragon covered in malice you're given a task to save it so you follow it around killing the mouse eyes all over its body in order to free it you can take a bit considering how much it moves around but eventually you'll free it and get one of its scales after placing it in the waters you reveal a shrine this acts as a tutorial for the other dragons with each one representing some other attribute the spring of power and the spring of courage these other dragons aren't corrupted like this one however but finding out where they are can be a bit tricky even if you don't see it though the music will most certainly let you know that they're close it has a certain haunting beauty quality to it it's easily one of my favorite tracks in the series the mountain is also one of the coldest places in the game requiring you to have multiple layers of cold resistance in this region is also for titano which you'll learn was the only thing preventing the guardians from getting to hatano village this is evident by the decayed guardians strewn all over the place once again showing that visual world building type of storytelling that i really enjoy the shrines in this section also stop teaching about game mechanics and start focusing on actual individual puzzles no longer are they on the side of the road you need to actually set out and start actively searching for them which has a different sort of appeal compared to seeing one out in the distance and making your way over to it the ones on the mountain are the primary shrines that this applies to after you start the locked mementos quest the game starts nudging you towards your first divine beast quest with varuda leading you to the lenera region zora's domain is by far the most visually cool settlement in the entire game everything is so grand with several staircases and walkways a pretty big step up from being cave dwellers is plymouth mountain that houses what would likely be the player's first encounter with lionel this encounter acts as a semi-stealth section but instead of instant failure upon being discovered you have to deal with the most powerful enemy in the game who hits like a truck and has a perfect aim preventing you from leaving he is scary and it makes the entire sequence nerve-wracking unless you keep failing deeming it to be more worthwhile to actually kill the lynel instead of doing the style section because you keep feeling like a loser aka me after you beat varuda the game stops nudging you and you are left to your own devices with no real hint of what you're supposed to do other than locate the other three beasts as such the rest of the section will no longer follow a specific structure like it has up to this point the lake tower region is one of the less interesting regions in the game it does house the spring of courage which requires you to get through a difficult enemy camp full of water and enemies firing shock arrows and using electric weapons against you the only major settlement here is the highland stable where you can get a hint for one of the photo locations if you're a little baby there's lake hylia which is most notable as the easiest location to spot for roche i kind of like how unimportant it is in this game considering that it was such a major spot in previous entries most notably with it being where the home of the zora's was located whereas in this game it's just the location with no real significance it really drives home how much it's trying to be something new and different from the rest of the games is an archery camp as a side quest that we'll get into in a couple of sections you can find a giant horse in the taobop grasslands which is a pretty sweet reward i mean who doesn't want a giant horse that has infinite stamina you can also find someone who's holding onto a shiga orb and their yeah that her name is even loon which isn't exactly subtle but it works you can even find melania the horse got here if you give him some endura carrots and he will revive any horse that may have died which is pretty cool the pharyn region has the only optional village in the entire game or at least the only optional village that existed before you set out on your adventure loreland village has no story relevance no side quests relevance none of that it is simply just a beachside village far away from everything else i love the aesthetic design here it reminds me a bit of outset island actually i kind of wish this wasn't the only village in the game that had nothing to do with the main quest but the fact that it does exist at all isn't too bad you find evan tide island in the bottom right hand corner of the map though yet again we'll get into that in a later section there is a forest that you can explore which is kind of cool i guess it's definitely one of the more underwhelming sections of the map and it makes sense that i don't spend too much time here on most playthroughs the woodlands main feature is the lost woods and this is one of my favorite lost puzzles in the entire series instead of having to follow a monkey a skull kid or pay attention to the volume of the music it's all based around following the torch embers that the air blows the game does kind of teach you this fact you need to run over from torch to torch but eventually you get to the last one and you need to use a regular torch to the rest of the way if you didn't notice that every time you go to a torch that the embers are pointing to the next one then this puzzle will become extremely difficult but it can be done and it is the most satisfying one in the game to overcome of course subsequent playthroughs are all pathetically easy once you know what to do but that really isn't a big problem since it doesn't really take away how creative this solution is from here you make it a korok force which is where the master sword is located quick side note this is by far the most satisfying game to get the master sword in since you can get here at any point in the game it means that if you're unable to pull it every time you get another heart container you rush back here to give it another go and when you finally get those last remaining cards and pull it out the music swells and it just feels so good you can also find the forgotten temple filled with guardians so you either kill them or attempt to get through it without getting fried it's pretty fun i also love the idea of this ancient temple with a giant highlight statue that gets no in-game explanation the only thing you really get to know is that it's well forgotten outside of this there really isn't that much to do in the woodlands the ridgeland region is by far one of the least interesting regions of the game you can find the descendant of zelda's horse here and that's about it shrines are relatively easy to find here so exploration is a little lackluster in comparison with the rest of the regions what else is there to say here it's kind of a low point on the map oh wait it's a tory mountain this location is basically a tribute to satoru iwata it's really peaceful with only style enemies residing here there's a few lone trees a rock that has a diamond underneath it which is pretty funny it's also the closest spot in the game to matching the cover art which i just personally find interesting other than that though it's a pretty lame region the tabantha region has some of the same issues as the ridgeland however there are some more interesting locations here rito village is my favorite town in the game it is so cozy the music is phenomenal and the general environment is just perfect i love how the entire village is built around a giant rock being extended from it it can be a little confusing to navigate but that's a small price to pay for salvation the fly range doesn't really have anything to do outside of the main quest but it does exist so that's pretty cool i guess there's warbler's nest which has the shrine quest to do there's a foot race mini game but once again there's really not much to say about the region the hebrew region follows this same pattern which just goes to show that the western portion of the map really doesn't get the same amount of care and attention that the rest of the map does the majority of the shrines in the section are hidden which on the one hand is pretty fun trying to locate them but on the other hand it does make exploration feel less fulfilling there's nothing interesting to see so it makes this region really boring the gerudo region is more the same and nothing to really say is just kind of boring basically discount hebrew with the same issues and everything the wasteland region actually does have some content shockingly enough though the desert section is relatively empty however there's something that makes up for that but we'll get into that in the next section there's a giant skeleton that you can find with the great fairy located here there's karaka bazaar which is kind of like a stable at least in terms of what it has to offer the player there are a few different side quests you can start here as well as being the only way to get into gerudo town i don't like how you have to go to gerudo town just to go back to the bazaar in order to get the garuda outfit it's oddly weird considering how little the game forces you into a specific scenario 99 of the time crudo town is just kind of another village miley's favorite in the game by far i'm not really the biggest fan of desert themes and this is just a generic desert village as far as i'm concerned however the most substantial piece of content that this section has to offer is the yiga clan hideout which i'll get to in the divine b section since it's involved with that quest the akala region is the only place where it properly feels like a different season with that season being autumn the big highlight here is of course terrytown but that's a sidequest so we'll get into that later you can find the akal ancient tech lab which is the second most interesting thing to find there you can buy a bunch of overpowered ancient weapons and armor though they're really expensive to balance it out not only that but it also costs ancient parts really the only use that they get much like the other tech lab in order to have the ability to buy these things you need to light the furnace outside this blue flame quest is so much more difficult than the previous one it's a lot more confusing than the previous quests in comparison to titanos 2. the way that they're spaced along the path that you can take when i was a lot more engaged here there's a level of mapping that you have to do if you really suck at video games such as me another thing that makes this section a lot of fun is that there are enemies that you need to worry about you could either kill them along your way to the lab or you could attempt to avoid them which yet again makes the entire sequence really enjoyable you find the spring of power here skull lake which is where you meet kilton who sells you a bunch of cool outfits and other monster related items in exchange vermont it's currency that you get from exchanging monster parts there's this cool spiral beach and all my gosh is the zone [Music] sir charlotte's called that one the alden region is pretty depressing since yet again what is there to do here exploration in this region isn't just unfulfilling yet straight up doesn't feel fun or at least hebra had enjoyable exploration it's just kind of a boring region outside of the main quest it really doesn't have anything noteworthy there's goron city which has pretty cool cage man vibe to it everything is primitive here the music accentuating that it really sells the gorons as these dim yet lovable creatures easily the most wholesome and all viral though it is one of the weaker settlements in the game i just wish it was more interesting to explore around it like with the other settlements but you can't win them all finally there's the central region the main stick with this section is that there are guardians everywhere it's the most dangerous section of the map in the early game whenever you're there there's this feeling of dread since the enemies here are far more powerful than you they have greater range and can basically just slaughter you where you stand which is what makes going there once you become an overpowered warrior so satisfying you can easily kill all the enemies who seemed intimidating before guardians are no longer a threat and no not just because you can glitch them through the floor like a coward once you can comfortably roam this section of the map you know they have truly conquered the game of course there's one slight disappointment that i have with the central region of the map of the shrines they are all tested strength shrines now two of them are right by stables which are actual puzzle shrines and there is one puzzle shrine a bit further out from hyrule castle than the rest but seriously three out of the nine shrines is not exactly a preferred ratio now i think that i've given the overworld a bad rap here but the thing is a lot of these issues that i have with certain sections are alleviated by the fact that everything is interconnected as a large world that you can zip around very easily who cares if some areas are less interesting than the others when on the whole you can go wherever whenever of course there are two other main things to do in the world firstly the mini games throughout the world you can find some classic zelda style mini games there were a lot more out in the actual world than i remember in fact there were so many games and locations that i had never even discovered until this most recent playthrough these are probably my favorite mini games in the entire series i love how the majority tie into the world itself and aren't confined to some specific space it really adds to the richness of the world of course there are a couple that don't which is obviously fine but the fact that even the mini games have elements of overworld design is really cool to me on top of the ridgeland tower you can do the birdman research mini game and apart from having a bopping tune it's just pretty fun attempting to get as far as possible using whatever means necessary is pretty fun it's also pretty challenging with you being basically required to consume standard restoring foods and also starting many many forest fires overall a solid mini-game that tests your endurance skills boom bam golf is a mini game that you can play just south of the tibanza tower as enabled imply it's golf just that instead of using a golf club to hit a small ball you're using a sledge hammer to launch a rock shaped like a golf ball towards the hole it's pretty fun mini-game having to figure out how hard to hit in to get in the hole in as few strokes as possible with multiple playthroughs being required to really master the game or you could be a cheating loser and bring a minecart over here and use it to bring the ball over to the hole and shoot it with an arrow so it counts as a hole in one i actually don't even know if it's possible to legitimately get a hole in one but whatever i do think that the course overall is a little too generous if you get the hole in 20 or less strokes then you'll get your money back and unless you're really stuck at it then you're unlikely to make a loss there's a mini game and a cola based off the blue flame quests your goal is to get from the main furnace up at the tech lab and bring it down to the stables by aya it's a pretty fun challenge especially if you figure out that you can light different lanterns nearby before engaging in the quest so then it becomes a game of finding the optimal routing and not much else to say you can evade the vegan lifestyle properly by going deer hunting in tano village there's not a lot to this one you just go around killing deer with the only extrinsic reward that you get out of it being rupees and some meat however it's pretty fun trying to get a high score the foot racing mini game is like koopa the quick budzeled edition in a good way of course it isn't just some lame race there's some rocks rolling down the hill at you electric choo-choos an explosive barrel that blows up a tree as you pass it and you need to worry about all of these things since you'll basically fail immediately if you get stopped by them it isn't challenging in the slightest but it is pretty fun assuming you're not a coward who ignores the path and just runs straight towards the flags in laurel and village you can do some gambling which is kind of like the gambling mini game in ocarina of time but you don't have the lens of truth jesus i'm not really the biggest fan of this one honestly it's all luck based if you choose wrong well then too bad with no strategy just becomes well gambling besides it's so easy to make rupees in the game anyway just by selling a bunch of the ore that you find that i really don't see the point in participating in this the archery courts is your standard target shooting mini game that's become a staple of the series it's pretty fun with a big reason for that being the improved control of the horses in this game since you're moving and not on rails for the duration of the mini game it makes for a really enjoyable time if you break all 25 the targets you can get some new gear for your horse which is a pretty good reward even if it only is a cosmetic change you can also perform the infinite grunge clunch you can also perform the infinite jump glitch using this mini game so for all these reasons it's my favorite mini game in the game keeping to the theme of horses for the next one at the highland stable you can do a quick obstacle course it's decently fun and has a decently good reward i suppose though the lack of anything to do beyond just jumping over fences hinders this one and doesn't really aid in its replayability you do get some harsh armor for completing it at a good time so there's that i suppose in the hebrew region around selmy spa you can do a really fun shield surfing minigame it's as simple as getting down to the end of the path as swiftly as possible and trying to accomplish this task is really fun and rewarding there's even an advanced course that's more fun to go down at the cost of being more difficult it even incorporates the use of the paraglider which was a pretty fun surprise to learn regardless of any extrinsic value that you could get out of this course the intrinsic value is through the roof also located here is a bowling mini game there's not much to it but it's pretty fun lining it up to get a strike and oh my gosh yeah it's a pretty good rookie farming spot if you're good enough at the game and it's honestly not too difficult to master so it's relatively easy to become a thousand here just by doing this for a couple of hours or listening to some youtube videos in the background or a podcast or something now for the mini game i only just discovered during this play through the paragliding course on evan tide island for some reason i never thought of going back here after the trial but if you do decide to come back then you'll be greeted with a wind waker-esque gliding mini-game there are a couple of paths that you can take and the main goal is to get through as many rings as possible it's a legitimate challenge and man is it fun there's a stamina management that you need to worry about as well as a variety of different ways to try and get through the rings you'll need to go around enemy cams by sleeping high knocks as well as this stump in the mud that always sticks out of my mind for some reason i like how the whole minigame is kind of like a tour of the whole island it also doesn't hurt that you get a bunch of rubies out of the whole ordeal the last two mini games are actually a part of shrine quests meaning they're the most likely to be played by most players the setup is basically the same there is an easily accessible ball that you're not allowed to touch because people will get mad at you and say that you need to earn it the easier of the two is by far the sand steel race the course is pretty fun and trying to get through it as efficiently as possible can be quite enjoyable though i really don't see the need to ever do it again after unlocking the shrine though you can if you want to finally there's the gut check challenge which is a pretty interesting minigame since it not only involves you having to climb but also collecting rupees as you climb so the challenge comes from not only needing to get to the top in time but also needing to get enough rupees to pass so you need to prioritize whether or not it's worth it to go out of your way to get a higher value rupee at the cost of time outside of that there's not much else to say it's just a fun minigame before we move on to the next section there's one more thing to talk about that being the memories the memories are the primary way that you learn about what happened 100 years ago i already mentioned what i do and don't like about the story in the previous section however i'm here to talk about how the memories serve the gameplay because man is it fun to be honest it might just be the highlight of the entire game for me there are a total of 12 photos with a 13th one being unlocked after you find them all i will say that some of the pictures don't really make sense like this one for example linc and zelda are running through the forest covered in mud zelda laments that everyone in the kingdom is either dead or as good as dead and how it's all her fault crying as link comforts hurt and then she gets up and takes a picture of the trees it's also just a super random picture to take that put aside trying to find these photos is a super fun challenge some are pretty easy like the one at caracara bazaar that's in plain sight or this one that can be found fairly easily by using the dueling peaks as a reference then you have some that are a bit more difficult to locate but can be found if you analyze the photo enough such as the one at eldon canyon urch plane the spring of power sanded in park ruins or the linear road east gate and this one is just straight up by a shrine so it's kind of hard to miss it but then you have a couple of truly devious ones that really require scrutinizing over specific map details this one located in west nokuda has a few landmarks that can be cross-referenced with details on the map fairly easily however the last one doesn't have that the only real information that you have is that it's in a forest and it's along a path you could probably deduce that it's somewhere in between hyrule castle and the nato gate based off of the previous memory but that only helps so much it's the one reason that really shows why i love memory hunting so much it encourages you to really explore to find them using what little visual clues there are to find these spots and whenever you see that glowing spot and press a to recall it's such a satisfying moment of course there's one major memory that i've yet to mention i remember i was horrified at the thought that i have to go to the depths of hyrule castle in order to get this memory it's such a scary location and walking in was definitely about what i expected having to slink up to one of the towers without being blown to smithereens hoping that you're heading to the correct tower is a similar yet more potent form of adrenaline that you would find in other stealth sections of the game also this can happen to you if you aren't careful what a cheap shot overall the world of hyrule is successful since it manages to have a large open space with plenty of interesting things to uncover a series of really fun mini games shrines to uncover towers to clear and koroks that make exploration even more engaging however there's more to the game than just the world and people really sell the game short when they judge it by that metric only so let's get into other reasons that the game is so great because there is more to my love for breath of the wild than just a fun overworld exploration experience [Music] breath of the wild's world carries far too much power when it comes to the enjoyment that the game has for some people while it is true that the most enjoyable aspect of the first playthrough comes from exploring the world i've replayed the game nine times since that first playthrough so clearly there's something else that keeps me coming back to this game exploration really can be the only thing the game is built around since that's not enough of a hook this game's hook and the reason that it was delayed several times is due to the physics engine this game is built around realistic interactions which serve to immerse the player and to get them to always be thinking of what they could do it allows the devs to introduce organic non-linear puzzle design not only in the shrines but in the overworld itself a big focus of the game's first proper trailer wasn't the world it was how you interacted with that world which is why i would consider it to be the most important aspects of the game there are just a lot of cool interactions that one can experience just by thinking logically you can burn or break wooden chests as if you were to break a wooden crate which drops the contents inside you can use melons to hold down switches or you can just use stasis to hold down switches meaning you don't have to find an object to hold it down in death mountain all normal arrows become fire arrows which also means that if you're trying to use bomb arrows here it'll blow up immediately you can boil eggs just by visiting a hot spring visiting cold regions freezes food and visiting hot regions cooks it feeding your horse and dura carrots will increase the amount of spurs that it can do which can be inferred due to its effect on you when cooked ice arrows instantly kill all fire enemies and fire arrows instantly kill all ice enemies shock arrows can affect a large group of enemies in the same body of water allowing for more strategy if you can think of something that would probably work in real life then there's a good chance that it'll work in the game and that attention to detail is so impressive even five years later there are even smaller visual details like getting sunburned in the desert or link's face whenever you don't have a weapon you can use of course there are also a bunch of other smaller things in this game on top of this logic if an octa-rock eats a rusty sword it will spit out a non-rusty one i have no idea how the heck people discovered this and there's nothing in the game that would indicate there's any benefit to throwing it at one but the fact that you even can't do it is just insane to me or maybe i'm just an idiot and this was a well-known thing that nobody told me about moblins will throw nearby bokoblins at you in a similar fashion to how the goblins will throw rocks at you and unarmed guardians of stone taluses will fight each other who was going around luring a guardian to a stone talus only to discover that this happened when the two met it is absolutely hysterical though at least to me i'm sure that there are plenty of other mechanics that the game has however i feel like i've gotten the point across one of the biggest departures from the rest of the series is the lack of traditional items i agree with the developers when it comes to the hook shot having it completely negate the climbing mechanic is a pretty good reason to accident but the rest of the traditional items are here in some fashion even if not as a proper item there are a few complaints that i've noticed arose because of this like i have legitimately say people say that they miss how bombs worked in previous games the thing is those games were built around a limited supply of bombs forcing you to think about whether or not this would be a good time to use them in this game it would be super demoralizing to come across a pile of rocks only to realize that you had no bombs having to either get some or completely ignore the cool treasure which would break the game's immersive gameplay loop that it has if you can't access all the secrets in hyrule at any time then what's the point of exploration boomerangs work better as weapons in this type of game since arrows are generally pretty good at fulfilling roles that boomerangs had in previous games breath of the wild doesn't rely on these older items instead making your arsenal consist of tools that allow you to explore the world uncover its secrets and have them all interactable with the world at large these runes all serve a specific purpose and all of them get a significant amount of use throughout the game cryonis is the least utilized when it comes to puzzle solving however it's really effective if you want to cross a river or a large body of water without swimming or if there isn't a nearby raft sure it takes longer but it can serve stamina and makes it so that you are never limited in how you get around water obstacles you are limited to three pillars which is where the puzzle element comes in since most of the time the puzzle is where to place the three pillars to solve it these puzzles are never usually too interesting with only one really stumping me though since it was added in the dlc we won't get to it for a while that's not to say that it's the least compelling of the runes however as that honor goes to the camera rune it's by far the most useless room in terms of use to the player when judging as if it had the same purpose as the other runes you can take selfies with it however the two main uses it has are firstly to help enhance the zika sensor so you can locate things other than shrines with it and the hyrule compendium this compendium is really fun to complete trying to get a picture of every creature in hyrule is a really fun task though you don't really get a reward out of it it's pretty much just there for the sake of your own personal enjoyment and since it's so easy to ignore there's really no harm to it you've got two bombs one round the other square they're bombs so i won't waste too much time but basically you can place one and it goes boom square ones are more optimal if you need to keep it from moving around too much whereas the spherical ones are optimal for sending them to some location or if the bomb's position isn't that important not much else to it they make big explosions and stuff it's with the last two runes i think it's become really interesting stasis has the ability to freeze objects and time allowing you to either bypass dangerous obstacles or launch something in some direction by hitting it a few times it's always interesting since you have a general idea of what will happen but you don't know exactly how it will react if you're not some kind of speed running god eventually you can upgrade it to freeze enemies as well which makes combat a bit more interesting though i personally just like to use it to send guardians and castle town through the ground because i'm a coward the fact that you can use stasis on pretty much everything opens up so many possibilities and is a mechanic that's just fun to fiddle around with and see what kind of shenanigans you can get up to but by far the most useful room in the game is magnesis this allows you to manipulate and move metal objects around and while the controls are a little awkward it isn't anything you can't get around it can be used to find all sorts of metal objects throughout the world usually tests that give you some kind of reward for finding it and since you can do a lot more with magnesius than you could with stasis it's also a lot more fun to mess around with especially using a small metal sword to push things regardless of size and waste you are an actual god when you use this simple glitch it's also the one rune that really opens up the puzzles and makes them feel like they're in a proper 3d sandbox space i really like the puzzles that have to do with electricity since they're usually about moving the current and you have a limited number of metal objects to work with it really is the primary puzzle rune and it gets used in a lot of interesting creative ways this segues into how the puzzles are designed instead of having rigid puzzles with one solution that you need to find the puzzles in breath of the wild are based around the physics engine as well as giving you what feels like near infinite ways to solve any one puzzle firebase puzzles can be pretty fun to try and solve or you could just use a fire weapon or fire arrows to solve it instantly that isn't nearly as satisfying from a puzzle perspective but it is a pretty rewarding feeling to kind of game the system like you found a secret hack that you exploited except it's completely intentional metal weapons can be used to help solve electricity puzzles giving you more objects to work with making the overall puzzle a bit easier to solve there's always a way to solve these kinds of puzzles outside of these short hacks and they're definitely a lot more satisfying to solve this way but i still don't feel like there's a soul intended solution another thing that this game kind of adapts from skyward sword is the blend of overworld and dungeon though instead of having the dungeons bleeding into the overworld the overworld bleeds into the dungeons we'll get into some of the negative consequences of this once we get to the divine beasts and shrines however now we'll stick to how this positively affects the overworld the koroks are the main source of the overworld puzzles that you can find throughout the overworld these magnesis puzzles require you to make an observation of the entire section and as you've hopefully established i'm a complete so i find these puzzles a bit difficult to solve since you need to look around the environment to see where you need to place the metal block there are some sweet navigational puzzles like how you get through a certain area with your current resources how you'll approach an enemy camp how long you'll get around the stupid rain more on that later overall the puzzles in breath of the wild are designed to fit around the theme of player choice and it succeeds with flying colors when it comes to the whole idea of interacting with the world one important thing is movement how do you traverse the landscape we'll start with the biggest mechanic climbing it is shocking just how ridiculous climbing is in this game you can go anywhere with only the rain to stop you we'll get to that in a bit don't you worry you're really only limited by your stamina but even then there's a way to bypass it by eating foods that restore your stamina or even give you extra when you climb your first mountain and get to the top you feel so powerful like there's nothing that the game can throw you that you can't overcome this contrasts with the early game where you're really limited in your options having tall clip faces allows the game to have a sense of progression that slots in organically with the rest of the game it's also one of the main ways that the game handles stamina management since there aren't stamina berries everywhere that make climbing a complete joke another way that the game opens the world up to you and one that pairs perfectly with climbing and stamina management is paragliding the paraglider is by far the most fun mode of transportation never getting boring it acts as a reward for when you get to the top of some mountain or tower since you can have a smooth descent free to go wherever you please since you don't have it from the beginning of the game it shows you just how limited you really are if you don't have access to it it takes a long time to get down from a high location meaning either extreme annoyance awaits you or sometimes will just be more beneficial to find an alternate path down it's especially interesting on repeat playthroughs it can feel a little annoying not having it at your disposal from the beginning but the great plateau is the only moment of the game where higher areas aren't that alluring so with every playthrough for that first hour or so you'll have to think about overworld movement more than usual so i know whenever you go too fast the game will freeze so that it can catch up with you when i was just gliding normally this happened it has nothing to do with anything i just thought it was interesting stamina is also a big element of the paraglider since the radius of where you can go is pretty small with every upgrade that you get making the circle that much bigger the height that you start at is also pretty important the higher you are the further you'll be able to reach but if you don't have enough stamina to make it you still won't make it very far regardless of how high you are which is why i personally feel like the paraglider is the one mode of transportation most limited by the lack of stamina wind direction is also something that can affect how you traverse through the world some shoot you up into the air while some push you along horizontally across the landscape it isn't utilized that much however usually being limited to puzzles related to shrines and it's one aspect that i hope gets fleshed out in the sequel what little use it does get is pretty cool though with the puzzle usually being about how you're supposed to move through the area if you want to get across a long stretch of land and don't feel like sprinting all the way there horses are your best option i absolutely love how you have to catch your own horse some of them will be too powerful for you and you'll either have to consume a bunch of stamina foods or give up and try again once you obtain more stamina every horse has some advantage or disadvantage like more stamina with the trade-off being that they're slow or having less stamina but being faster or they could just be a god and have lots of stamina and be fast or be the worst horse in the game with low stamina and being super slow horses are also pretty realistic and that sometimes they'll hate you and veer off the path in their own direction so you need to sue them in order to put them back on track that sounds like it would be super annoying but it's honestly not too bad it isn't impossible to control or anything and it's easy enough to fix that you're all you're left with is another bit of immersion it feels like a real creature and not just a line of code it makes sense that after catching it and registering it it wouldn't exactly be thrilled with having a new master one area where i feel like they falter a bit is in the fact that if you get distracted by something off in the distance which you most likely will considering that this is breath of the wild that you're playing the horses aren't really that useful unless you're going across a flat plane i have never had a good time trying to get my horse across rocky terrain with them usually getting stuck in some place forcing me to abandon them for a bit it's just easier to go across these locations on foot horses aren't the only things you can mount you can ride deers and bears as well they can't be registered as stables for some reason which is literal racism so it feels like riding them around is more of a novelty than anything else the controls also feel less robust than horses particularly with the deer who are really difficult to describe i guess the best way i can put it would be that you can feel a slight stop with every gallop that they make if that makes any sense bears feel heavy but they aren't nearly as weird feeling there's also the lord of the mountain which apart from being the most amazing name for any creature in video game history is a pretty sweet ride that you once again can't register due to racism he's fast and has good stamina and control is pretty much the exact same as a horse but he's also blue when he glows in the dark which coupled with the legends you hear about him makes finding him one of the coolest discoveries in the game i wish that the horses and other creatures got more utility in the game but it's not like they're completely obsolete so let's say that you're at the top of the hill and you want to get down like someone who is the peak of humanity and not a little baby like someone who's revolves gail to bypass the towers well that's where shield serpent comes in there's really not that much to talk about regarding it but what i can say is that it is easily the most satisfying thing in any video game that i've ever played it is so much fun trying to get down a slope as fast as humanly possible unfortunately shield surfing uses a lot of durability so i never really feel comfortable doing it unless i have a bunch of spare shields since they're pretty helpful in combat encounters it's the one area where i have a problem with the durability they should break way slower than they do if you ask me something similar to shield surfing but isn't quite that would be mounting a sand seal sand seals are a little difficult to control but they are by far the best mode of transportation in the desert to control seals properly you need to avert your focus away from link and direct it to the seal just because link swings from side to side which causes you to make a lot of unnecessary adjustments that make controlling the seal a lot more cumbersome than it needs to be focusing on the seal itself makes reverse a lot smoother since link will never get into a situation wherever earning attention away from him will get you in trouble i feel like one of the bigger missed opportunities with this game was with water exploration this is the only 3d game outside of wind waker to have no underwater exploration of any kind i can definitely understand why considering how they built the world however the fact that there isn't at least one area where you get to go underwater is a pretty big missed opportunity swimming is pretty slow even with the falls or armor i feel like they could have bumped up the base speed to be out of the zora armor and when you have the full armor set the speed is heavily increased like how substantial the climbing armor is there is another way of getting around the water outside of swimming and cryonis that being the raft and oh boys eat fun it takes a while to build up speed once you do there is no faster way to cross a body of water it's also really fun trying to maintain your speed with you getting a quick speed boost that decelerates pretty swiftly if you use a powered up attack on it and having it take longer to get speed if you use regular attacks it is a very minor inconvenience that you can only use a raft if you have a korok leaf but you can find them pretty easily if you commit enough deforestation hence the usage of the word minor everything in this section has been pretty hunky-dory so far but it's here that we get to breath of the wild's biggest sin the rain this is where i come across as extremely over exaggerated in my loathing however considering how much of a contrarian i am to the three biggest complaints people have lived at this game and i feel like i've earned it the rain is the biggest problem that i have with breath of the wild no it's not a nitpick it's a legitimate issue remember back when i said that the game was about both player choice and discovery the rain goes against both of those concepts though the latter is far less offensive than the former it is impossible to climb in the rain you can barely climb a surface twice the height of link if it's raining since you make about an inch of progress and lose a ton of stamina there are some areas in the game that rain eternally and these sections usually aren't that bad since it's specifically designed around the fact that you can't climb but what if you wanted to climb in an area that's designed to let you climb there well you'll just have to wait around no i'm not joking the developers legitimately didn't see how annoying it was it can take upwards of minutes before you're allowed to climb again another option would be to just camp out but a lot of the time it's not really an option it takes away the player's choice to climb now this wouldn't be a massive issue if there was some way to overcome the rain later in the game but there isn't so you're just allowed to do nothing for several minutes waiting for the game to let you have fun again by limiting where you go it also impacts discovery since how the world is vertical you are locked out of half of the world you could go somewhere else but why would you want to do that when you want to see what cool things just over the ridge as soon as possible is pretty much the only thing in the game that legitimately ruins any phone that i was having which is quite the achievement but not something that i should be proud of now i guess that you could bypass the reign by using rivali's gale but you shouldn't have to also welcome to the slick segway to me talking about the champion's abilities all of them are pretty overpowered like it's pretty ridiculous how much of a god you become just by being the divine beast since i've already mentioned a couple of times let's start with rivoli's gale you get three huge updrafts of wind that you can activate with the press of a button not only do you gain a significant amount of height that bypasses a lot of the climbing based challenges it also makes navigating the world a lot more trivial it's difficult to not use it in these situations since it's so easy to use which goes for the rest of the abilities as well miva's grace is like an overpowered fairy giving you a full heal along with extra recovery hearts it does take a while to charge up which makes it the most balanced of the four but it's not like that's saying much drury's protection gives you instant protection from any threat which is great when pairing lasers since it automatically does that for you with you not having to worry about bad timing or your ancient shield taking damage in regular combat though you are completely untouchable it almost feels too overpowered for regular encounters but then you have verbose fury which automatically stuns and damages all enemies within a certain radius it's also effective against bosses making it by far the most useful ability in combat all four of them combine make sure that the game becomes a total cakewalk it's part of the reason that the difficulty progression is so disappointing for me it can be fun to completely destroy an entire enemy cam with them being too weak and unprepared to stop your assault but on the other hand i feel like they went a little overboard in making the champion abilities feel helpful [Music] whenever you get to a new area with a climate based challenge you need to figure out how you're going to overcome that challenge once you do overcome it you're given a set of armor that bypasses the challenge for the rest of the game you never need to worry about an area being too hot or too fiery or too cold ever again after you get the appropriate set you just need to quickly switch into the outfit and you're good sometimes it's made up for like when you get the snow boots or the sand boots since they allow you to traverse the landscape more easily but it also lowers your resistance but if you have two pieces of armor that knock your resistance up a bit then you'll be perfectly fine it's nothing more than a nitpick but i do hope it gets smoothed over by making expiration a bit more cumbersome if you do have the full set in the sequel but we'll just have to wait and see the final thing to talk about in this section of the video is the amiibo support i'm heavily mixed on this since you can get some pretty cool things with the amiibo but i also hide way too many cool things behind it that really infuriates me scanning in different link amiibos allows you to get a breath of the wild version of their outfit that is a perfectly fine harmless thing it does nothing being purely for cosmetics it's also not that big of a deal since you can actually get a proper version of the out specifically for this game you can get weapons and such from them too which is fine since they break quickly and are mostly there for the sake of being a cool reference there are a few helmets based off the divine beasts varuda and valmetto giving you a swim speed up increase by themselves with fire and rudonia giving you flame resistance and von nebora's shock resistance when paired with the ancient set they act the same as the regular helm there are two amiibos that give you things that are so good that it angers me since the only way you will ever be able to experience them is if you give nintendo extra money for a piece of plastic or if you scan the nfc code from the internet on one of those special pieces of paper skinny in the super smash bros link amiibo you get a pona not just a horse that looks like a pona but the actual epona this is the only way that you will ever be able to find her officially in the game he's not in any secluded area that you could stumble upon or anything but the one that really grinds my gears is the wolf link amiibo that gives you a cool wolf companion people complain about not being able to pet dogs but imagine if you could tame a dog or wolf in the wild and then make them your fighting companion that would be so cool but instead of implementing that cool feature in the game they logged it behind an amiibo if you could actually have dogs in the game that have similar functions to wolf link and then i think this is pretty cool wolf link being in the game makes no sense so why not that's not even the worst of it though since he can help scout out shrines and treasure as well if they were able to incorporate this into the game via an amiibo then they could have included it in the game without it i don't own any amiibo and the fact that i never have and likely never will get to experience a cool mechanic depresses me thus continues the streak a really poor immune functionality in zelda games outside of the amiibo thing the ways in which you interact with hyrule makes exploring everything really fun and interesting with every single playthrough the little details that the developers include in makes the whole game so immersive despite the fact that the champion abilities make you a little too overpowered the rain takes away a lot of the fun of exploring the world for a few minutes and how poor the implementation of amiibo is i still love coming back to this world and interacting with it in different interesting ways with every single playthrough [Music] breath of the wild has a lot of side quests and the vast majority share one thing in common that being most quests have pretty poor extrinsic value to them if you're the kind of person who's motivated by cool rewards and stuff like that then it's easy to say that the quests are all terrible however if you're more intrinsically motivated like me i think that the game has some pretty cool side quests to do so let's get into them also i'm going to be going through them in no particular order because the organization would take far too long robbie's research was already discussed in the overworld section of the video so there's no point in repeating myself a parent's love is started in terrytown and requires you to make a monster cake to heal a sick child you need to obtain the appropriate ingredients first and your reward for doing so is 300 rupees which is a pretty good incentive if you ask me hobbies of the rich is a side quest where you kill a couple of guardians which is decently fun the reward is kind of annoying he offers you 100 rupees if you can kill them but when you come back to him you only get a red one i get he's supposed to be a rich jerk kind of guy but it doesn't mean it's suddenly not annoying a shady customer is pretty much here just to lead the player to kilton or at least that's how i see it you have to take a picture of him similar to how piktobox quests work in the wind waker with the red exclamation mark in the corner letting you know that the photo will work you do get a silver rupee out of the ordeal so it's not like finding kilton is the only reason to do the quest little sisters big request is one of the many quests in the game where you're tasked with giving a certain number something to someone in this case it's three types of bugs with 10 of each type that you can catch in the wild or buy from beetle of course if you do decide to buy from beetle then your net gain will be negative 200 since they cost 10 a piece and your award for giving are the bugs is 100 rupees the statues bargain is there just so that players don't rage quit after the game after the statue takes away one of their hearts it signals to them that maybe there's something more to the statue than meets the eye a gift from my beloved requires you to get 10 restless crickets for this guy so that he can impress a girl he likes your award is a standard 100 rupees not much else to it the weapon connoisseur is a quest that hurts my soul and is only worth doing for the sake of completion basically just find a certain weapon and bring it to him travelers sword moblin club duplex blow wind cleaver those are fine but he also asks you for a fire rod and frostbier which are both really cool really helpful elemental weapons unless you have two it's annoying when he asks you for them but the two most egregious ones are the ancient weapons an ancient battle axe plus which you can only get from a moderate testosterone shrine and an ancient short sword which can only be purchased at a call ancient tech lab for a thousand rupees your reward for that one is a diamond which will only cover half the cost why would you ever give this twerp your sick ancient sword that cost a ton of money and resources for any other reason than completion it's frankly disgusting and not even that fun [Music] the sheep wrestlers involves you having to go down to the hitano beach to kill a bunch of monsters in exchange for a bunch of milk it's a pretty fun if shallow quest that's worth doing for the combat challenge alone sunshine sensing acts as a tutorial for the upgraded chica sensor with you being tasked to find some sunshrooms your reward is some hearty truffles it's a pretty lame quest all things considered but as already said it's more of a tutorial than anything else slated for upgrades also barely counts as a quest since it's just there to let the player know that they can upgrade their slate all you need to do is gather the necessary parts i like that you can upgrade the slade it's just that making it a quest is a bit much in my opinion sunken treasure is as the name would suggest about sunken treasure you're told about a group of rocks that form a triangle with a treasure allegedly nearby so you take a raft if you hate inconvenience and arrive there here you can find a series of chests with a variety of minerals inside it's a small thing and it doesn't waste too much of your valuable time so i enjoy it what's for dinner just requires you to cook a hearty blue snail with goat butter needless to say it's pretty easy take back the seas and other quests that requires you to defeat a series of monsters for a reward and just like sheep brussels it's pretty fun if dull to talk about kakariko village has coco's kitchen cooking with coco cocoa cuisine and coco's specialty these are half of the quest in the village they all require you to supply her with some ingredients to get special meals out of it pretty epic not gonna go in death with these ones since they're also similar to be honest i think that would have been better if they were all part of one big quest instead of four separate smaller quests though i guess they thought 76 sounded better than 72 play time with katla is a decently fun quest with you having to play hide and seek with one of the village kids your reward is a rock salt firmly placing it in the intrinsically rewarding quest by firefly's light is locked behind other quests which is weird considering that all you have to do here is release a bunch of fireflies into someone's house after they ask you to that's the most notable aspect of the quest flown the coop is a nice homage to ocarina of time with you having to find a bunch of cuckoos for a man whose wife left him since these cuckoos are the only thing to cheer him up that's awfully depressing finding them is pretty fun especially since some are in more elaborate areas you really have to explore the village to find them all arrows of burning heat is yet another scam if you decide to use fire arrows you need to light the four lanterns surrounding the goddess statue and your reward is a measly 20 rupees and if you didn't light your arrows by the campfire nearby then you will have wasted your money and arrows which is just a great feeling the prize of maracas is another defeat all monsters quest with this one being different since you're more likely to do this one if you follow the game's directions and head to kakariko village you'll likely find this weird tree man named testu and of course you're going to talk to him since he looks wildly different from anyone else you have likely seen up to that point that's the only thing that's truly worth noting here though style horse pictured is a quest where you have to get a picture of a style horse surprisingly enough it's pretty easy to complete with the only real challenge being actually locating the horse curry for what ails you requires you to go to goron city to bring this chap some gore and spice if you've already been to goron city then it's really easy quest to complete with the only annoyance coming from the loading times in between travel find keel is a side quest that actually leads into a shrine quest so we'll get into that later on in this section face the frost alice tasks you with defeating a frost talis not much else to say about it the apple of my eye should not be considered a side quest since all you need to do is give someone a baked apple for 100 rupees yes that is the entire quest i didn't leave anything out the spark of romance has you giving this guy a singular piece of flint for 100 rupees that's not all though since if you give him 20 flint then he gives you 250 rupees and then 70 rupees for the next 10. death mountain secret starts with some underwater gibberish that you need to decipher which leads you to the bridge of eldon here you can find a drill shaft which is a fine reward i guess but it's not exactly compelling the jewel trade allows you to trade in 10 amber for a greater amount of rupees than you'd be able to sell them for normally after you complete the quest you will either give you rupees for diamonds or topaz so if you happen to have 10 of them and want some quick cash then you'll be able to talk to her but only if you have 10. that means that it's usually only worth going to her on very specific occasions the road to respect has you defeating an igneotalis so that this goron can win his master's favor that's alright fireproof lizard roundup has you rounding up fireproof lizards with the reward being flame breaker armor which is pretty good considering how easy catching them is balloon flight is interesting to say the least you have to attach two octa balloons to a barrel and send it skyward it teaches you about a game mechanic and you get a star fragment for your troubles making it a certified keeper i guess like i'm trying to make it at least slightly bearable for you so you can take or leave it the thunderhelm is an interesting quest since it allows you to take and use the helm this quest actually involves you having to complete all the other quests in grudo town though this makes it simultaneously a pretty solid meaty quest as well as a boring basic simple quest the first of these quests that i'll bring up is the search for bardo where you need to search for barta believe it or not it's pretty simple considering that she's near the region's great fairy fountain you also need to give her a hearty durian for some reason now i guess it gives some flavor to the quest medicinal malduga involves you having to kill a maldugo to bring its guts to turn them into some medicine the mystery polluter has you locating someone who's poisoned the water hole once you find this polluter she says that she will stop harming the environment if you give her some wild berries and once you do that you collect your reward that being a hydromelon luckily it's part of a longer quest chain otherwise this would have been unacceptable the secret club secret is a quest you just need to eavesdrop on some people to get a password to a secret club which is where you can buy special armor i'm not sure why there isn't more to the quest but whatever tools of the trade involves you giving someone ten flynn so they can open the worthless jewelry stop you do get a free set of jewelry out of it though after this you're able to be epic and get the thunderhelm however there are still more quests in this area the eighth heroine is a quest where this guy sends you on what he thinks is a wild goose chase to find the missing 8th heroine statue only for the statue to actually exist also his name is a bosai which is pretty close to bozo that's pretty epic it's also the only place in the game where you can get the sand and snow boots the forgotten sword also involves this menace to society with you being asked to find the eighth heroin sword which is super high up in the mountains the most interesting thing here is the lionel that's nearby missing an action is a quest where you need to find a bunch of people for someone it's pretty easy and fun not much else to it rush room rush sees your typical give x amount of y to someone for reward however this one differs from most since you need 55. it's not like it takes that long to collect that much but it still takes longer than getting say 10 amber or 5 fireflies to be fair though your award is a diamond and it's also repeatable meaning that if you somehow have 500 rushrooms you'd be financially set for the rest of the game good sized horse there's a quest where you sell this guy a horse that's it it doesn't really matter what the size of the horse is you just need to give him one an ice guy just involves you giving guy a cooling elixir the most interesting part of this quest is that the name of the quest giver this guy since the localization team was lazy i guess a freezing rod requires you to show an ice rod or blizzard rod to this here korok for some money the quark trials quest is completed by doing the shrine quests associated with it so we'll touch on those a bit later riddles of hyrule is a pretty fun quest with you having to locate a certain material and give it to walton moses are pretty easy i mean starts with an h and ends with an uff isn't exactly the most subtle clue in the world but it does help with the korok's playful goofy nature so i ain't complaining it does mean that you have to kill a lionel though so the hand being easy doesn't really help you out that much completing it also rewards you with a diamond which is pretty worthwhile reward if you ask me legendary rabbit trail requires you to get a picture of a blue pea which is a creature that gives you rupees if you assault it i've always had problems with properly framing it but if there's anything that i've established over these past five videos it said i am a complete so it's difficult to determine the exact reason i have problems with it special delivery is a pretty fun escort mission with you having to trail a letter and make sure it doesn't get destroyed by monsters but you also can't be too far away from it otherwise it will disappear it's one of the more fulfilling quests in the game since it requires more than just getting something for someone lionel safari has you going up to ploy miss mountain to get a picture of a lionel up there the only thing that's interesting about this quest is the falling footage also this clip contains flashing lights so either look away from the screen or skip forward about 10 seconds in the video i would hate to give someone a seizure this is completely unedited footage straight from the console and i have no idea how i even triggered it the giant overallest pond has you killing a high knocks by braless pond frog catching has you catching frogs if you can believe it and since it's a child it gives you the quest it means that the reward is quite underwhelming zoro stone monuments has you locating a bunch of ancient zora monuments it's really fun just looking around the environment for them with some of them being hidden pretty dang well once again the reward is a diamond marking it is one of the highlights in the game diving in beauty is a quest i guess it teaches the player about diving but making an entire quest where you just press two buttons is a bit too simple the reward isn't anything amazing or anything so it's not like you're just handed the most amazing thing you've ever seen in your life but it's another one that feels like a way to pad out the quest number so they could have 76 quests as a selling point luminous stone gathering has you giving 10 luminous stones for two diamonds which is a pretty good reward for another quest where you just give someone x for y a wife washed away has you searching for azor as wife who has washed away looking for her can be a pretty fun task more entertaining when you find out that she's happy and oblivious swimming merrily in lake hylia the hero's cache is a quest that always catches me off guard since it's given to you by cass i always associate cassio with his shrine quest but the fact that he has a riddle that has nothing to do with the shrine is pretty cool it's also probably the most cryptic riddle in the entire game with you having to use military time to solve it since 17 is five o'clock in the evening but you wouldn't know that if you didn't bring outside knowledge so it's a pretty mischievous little puzzle misco the great bandit has you follow some clues to find a cave filled with all sorts of goodies it's very unlikely that you'll stumble across it without a hint and even with a hint it's still a little tricky to pinpoint the cave's location the reward is pretty good and i like how it's like a mini treasure hunt a gift of nightshade has you helping a guy work up the nerve to talk to a girl he likes by giving him some nightshade it's really easy but the interaction that happens between the two makes the whole thing really enjoyable hunt for the giant horse has you locating the giant horse even though it's large finding it can still be hard as mentioned earlier in the video this is easily the best horse in the game with infinite stamina making land traversal feel less arduous making it probably the best reward for any quest in the game the horseback hoodlums has you killing a bunch of bokoblins riding horses reward is some indoor carrots which isn't exactly the most compelling thing in the world thunder magnet has you removing an axe from the stable to stop thunder strikes with your award being the helmet of the rubber armor set the only thing that makes it a side quest is the reward that you get a gift for the great fairy has you swindling a guy out of 500 rupees or you could decide to not be a criminal and legitimately over to the grave fairy and free from its prison your only reward from the quest is unlocking the fairy fountain so the only course of action really is just stealing from him look if you've already offered something then it makes it reasonable theft okay leviathan bones has you searching the map for three sets of leviathan bones hence the name one is located in the gerudo region one in the elden region and one in the hebrew region while it may be just another quest we take photos something and give to someone it makes the whole world feel a lot more mysterious and lived in what exactly were the leviathans well i hope you're ready to die with that question in your mind since you never actually learned about their past it leaves it all up to your imagination which is what makes it such a memorable quest the royal guards gear is a quest where you give someone a royal weapon in exchange for a bunch of rupees it's a pretty good way of farming rupees if you feel like lugging a bunch around with you and that's all i know this quest for royal recipe has you cooking some meals for a hiral castle chef descendant you technically don't need to go into hyrule castle to look for the cookbook housing the recipes uh but only if you're the most boring person on the planet after getting the recipe all you need to do is get out of the ingredients and make the dish for the guy solid quest riverbed reward is the fourth in the line of quotation mark quests end quotation mark all you need to do is talk to someone pull a chest out of the water and open it then talk to the person again i really don't know why this was a specific quest and not some random interaction you could have my hero whilst being a really bad quest requiring you to merely have the master sword it does serve a purpose in introducing the idea of some cool sword somewhere in the world to players who may have never played a zelda game before a rare find only requires you to sell some raw gourmet meat for some money that's all i have to say about it the royal white stallion is a quest that is really simple but it does lead you to the second best horse in the game zelda's horse descendant it's a fine quest overall a gift from the monks is only a quest so you won't forget about your sick reward or where it's located you can't tell me otherwise hylian homeowner is a cool quest that only involves you pouring a bunch of rupees into it i like it since it's not only a good investment to make with your rupees but also because you get to buy a house that's just cool but none of these even hold a candle to what is probably my favorite quest in the entire game and one of my favorite quests in the entire series from the ground up the reason that this quest is so great is because it is the only instance in the entire game that feels like you're rebuilding hyrule after the great calamity it's also because it's a town that doesn't exist in the game until you the player come along you don't necessarily build it but you do supply the materials and residents for it the slow build-up of the music from a humble fixer-upper to becoming a proper town theme is so satisfying i love how you need to find npcs that end in sun as per the bolson construction company compliance thingy not only does it make looking for them a lot easier it's also just really charming the ending is also really wholesome with a wedding happening at the town centre which is relatively close to the akala citadel which was the last major settlement to fall during the great calamity it's a sign that hyrule is truly starting to heal instead of just focusing on overall survival so why did i spend the last roughly 15 minutes talking about all 76 side quests in the game well is to illustrate the general strengths and weaknesses i could have spent a paragraph talking about the reward and a rough process of completion but i personally feel like it's far more effective to do it this way since you can really get a good feel for the actual repetition of it all the quests overall are pretty rewarding intrinsically but are absolutely horrid extrinsically now we're not done this section yet since it is now time to get into the shrine quests a lot of them are pretty fun though there are unfortunately a few stinkers let's start off with my favorite ones cass's riddles throughout the world you can find cass and almost all the quests he offers involve looking around the area that he's in when explaining how to solve them they all seem really simple to solve however with the way that the text is written it can be pretty tricky trying to solve them sign of a shadow has you firing an arrow towards the sun when the tower's shadow reaches a certain point it's completely different from unlocking the arrows in ocarina of time since it's more logical given the piercing heaven's light line under a red moon can also be unreasonably irritating since you need to wait for a blood moon in order to access the shrine so you kind of just have to wait it's not even a difficult riddle to solve since it's just rewritten way saying wear no clothes and stand on the pedestal it's easily the worst cast quest in the entire game the serpent's jaw just leads you to the spring of courage nothing interesting to note here the crowned beast is one of the most devious ones since if you don't know that the crown of bone is referring to antlers it can be difficult figuring out what to do the two rings has you looking around the area to find two holes that you can fire and arrow through which is a pretty fun challenge not only do you need to do that but you also need to fire the arrow in a way that it can pass through the holes a song of storms aside from the cool reference to the n64 games has you finding this mound and having lightning strike it master of the wind the final one of these quests to mention is probably my favorite you need to find and remove a certain set of boulders and unveil a wind current that can take you over the pedestal there are a lot of different things to bomb which makes it a pretty interesting chunk overall cass's shrine quests are really fun and interesting before we move on to the rest of the game we need to talk about a certain problem with the shrine quests let's take a look at the skull's eye for example you can find a shrine out in the open not only that but it is incredibly easy to get over to it your reward for getting over to it is a blessing shrine there is no reason that there should be a quest let alone a blessing shrine this isn't the only instance of a shrine quest being completely optional either a landscape of a stable has you locating your shrine based off its location in a stable painting but i found it just sitting out in the open completely unaware that it was part of a quest at least this one was an actual shrine on the one hand having the quest be optional feeds into the idea of player choice but on the other hand it's really annoying that there are specific quests that you can start that really don't need to be there if some shrines can be hidden behind quests then why not all of them sometimes it makes sense like with the secret of the snowy peaks where you have to line up the shadow of a snowball with the center of this pedestal there is no way that you're going to figure this out without some outside assistance so with ones like that i'm perfectly content with those ones being actual quests it's kind of unfortunate that it's not all of them though in the hebrew gerudo and akala regions you can find these huge mazes that are a lot of fun to try and get through they're a bunch of different enemies and such throughout making them some pretty fun challenges and since you're trying to get to a specific area of the maze and not to the exit it means you can't just use the map to cheese it of course you can still tease them pretty easily if you just memorize a location where you just drop down otherwise it's a pretty fun challenge into the vortex has you taking an orb to the center of this spiral peninsula there are a variety of ways to get it there whether you use a raft to carry it across or go through a series of enemies that block your path along the way it's also the first in a series of quests that you'll see being to take the orb to a pedestal with them all having some wacky scenario preventing you from just taking the orb straight to the nearby pedestal our brothers rose as you talked to bladen who was looking for his younger brother who went off mining in an abandoned mine upon arriving there you find him famished so you're tasked with getting a rock roast at the bottom of a nearby hill getting the roast back up the hill is a pretty fun task with a series of fire enemies popping up trying to ruin your progress once you get back the roast will be cooked revealing the shrine the highlight of this quest is definitely the interactions between the two gorons it's pretty great and wholesome the perfect drink has you going to grudo town to get a drink for someone the main challenge of this quest comes from getting the ice from the cellar to the edge of these ruins there are a bunch of enemies as well as the heat from the sun that you need to worry about it's kind of similar to the malmark quest from twilight princess except the distance is much smaller when you do wake her up she immediately books it to the town which is simultaneously humorous but also annoying because she could have gotten up at any point test of will is a masochist's dream come true as you stand on a hot plate with your goron bros there's no challenge to it you literally just stand there for a minute and the shrine reveals itself the enjoyable interactions make up for the lackluster gameplay though the silent swordsman has you following a series of statues that are pointing in the direction of the shrine it's pretty easy up until you get to the sandstorm where it can be a little tricky to spot the statues it also reminded me a lot of ocarina of time if you're having to cross the desert following a certain landmark the seven heroes as you locating a series of orbs and placing them in the correct pedestal you have to look all around the area to find these orbs and then you also need to deduce where to even place them in order to reveal the shrine it's pretty enjoyable the eye of the sandstorm is a quest that i only discovered during the scripting part of the video and no i'm not kidding apparently the shrine only appears during certain times of the day when the sandstorm dies down so that's kind of cool i guess the undefeated champ has you completing the sansia race i mentioned earlier in the video watch out for the flowers as you walking through a simple flower maze since this individual who has been dubbed by some as flower bligh ganon has a bit of a passion for them the three giant brothers has you killing three high knoxes each of a different difficulty level in order to open the way to the shrine a nice combat challenge but not much else secret of the cedars as you climb a mountain to find some cedars that lead you to a bombable wall hiding a shrine and not much to say about this one the only challenge comes from the tree since everything before and after is relatively simple the cursed statue as he's shooting an arrow into the eye of a glowing statue at night which is a clear nod to skyward sword also would be impossible without the obvious hint and i kind of wish that the game gave you a bit more of a vacant but it is a small thing a fragmented monument ties you locating a bunch of monument shards scattered across the beach it's pretty fun not much else to say the stolen heirloom is kind of a lame quest you think about it from a gameplay perspective if i gets upset that the orb she was protecting is stolen you see a suspicious individual and then you stalk him and then kill a clan guy however i love how it fleshes out the world with this guy being an ex-eaga clan member whose wife was killed as punishment for leaving the only real problem is that it makes me sad that the game didn't lean into its darker elements as much as it could have guardian slideshow has you taking a picture of several guardians in order to get this orb back from this strange individual the only thing worth noting here specifically is that i had a bit of difficulty finding the smaller guardian since i had no idea that it was referring to the ones found in shrines other than that a perfectly decent quest and not much more the bird in the mountains has you looking for a spot in the mountains that looks somewhat like a bird that houses a shrine i think that it's cool that they made a spa that looks like a bird from a certain location it makes me wish that they did more stuff like this in the game but whatever not much else to talk about this one recital at warpler's nest has you tracking down a bunch of rito children with one of them requiring you to make a meal for them after this you need to shoot an arrow through these rocks in the correct order based on the lyrics of the song not too terribly interesting but not necessarily bad either the ancient reader song has you gathering as the name would suggest two halves of an ancient reado song in order to figure out that you need to light fire on the shrine pedestal another example of not technically needing to start the quest to open the shrine but it's basically impossible if you don't start it ceremonial song has you taking a replica of mifa's trident and stabbing the shrine pedestal with it not much to really say cliffside etchings has you venturing into the cliffside to find a pedestal you need to shoot with a shock arrow the only thing that's really worth noting here is that the quest giver's name is gekko which i find pretty humorous shrouded shrine is a really fun quest where you need to navigate a pitch black forest it's a lot of fun since you can't really see and have to rely on your fire weapons or torches and since there's no real way to orient yourself you need to keep a mental map in order to try and get your bearings overall one of the best quests in the game likewise trial thunder is also a really fun challenge you need to get a bunch of colored orbs over to the center platform which is tricky since it's constantly a thunderstorm here you need to think of how you can position both the ball and yourself to get where you need to go it's made a lot easier if you have a volley scale but it doesn't completely circumvent the challenge if you do use it you also have the korok trials that the aforementioned koroks have set up for you lost pilgrimage is my least favorite since it can be difficult to spot where the quark you're supposed to be following is but it's still a pretty fun stealth section trial of second sight has you following a set of trees that are hungry basically just means to follow the trees that have something in their mouths it gets kind of interesting at the end with you needing to find a chest and transfer from the mouth of one tree to the mouth of another an enjoyable if a smidge mundane quest the test of wood is my favorite trial with you being forced to use a bunch of wooden tools that you can't break or unequip without having to restart the entire quest of course the game throws a bunch of fire enemies at you but it's a pretty fun task complete that's engaging and fun the whole time much like the side quests i saved the best shrine quest for last stranded on evantide strained out on evantide is such a cool quest with all your weapons and gear being stripped from you requiring you to get these orbs over to their pedestals what really makes this quest so cool is the fact that you need to do everything in one try so there's a real sense of risk and reward throughout the entire challenge overall the side activities in this game can be quite repetitive but gosh darn it i don't mind as long as there's something to do in hyrule i'll do it the good quests are great and the worst ones are easily ignorable making for an incredibly engaging play experience i do it so there's more quality than quantity here but it's not something that actively ruins the game [Music] breath of the wild shares a similar problem to skyward sword that i've previously mentioned that we finally get to go a bit more in depth with in skyward sword the dungeon design bled into the overworld and in breath of the wild the overall design bled into the dungeons this has negative consequences for the divine beasts as a whole though i feel like i'm more forgiving of them than anyone else's this is primarily because they are radically different from any other type of dungeon in the series if they were the primary dungeons in any other zelda game then i would probably despise them but in the context of the rest of the game i can't say that they're all that bad i mean there are these giant robots you can find across the land that you need to engage in battle with before boarding them only to discover that they're this game's take on dungeons within that context is where they thrive they can easily be broken down into a sort of three-act structure get to the village that the divine beasts are terrorizing and completing a quest to get the champion standing to help you then you engage in battle with the divine beast and finally you board and complete a dungeon so let's get into it due to vanmeadow being the only divine beast that you can see from the start of the game being this strange dark thing off in the distance i can at least understand it being the easiest of the divine beast quest to start and finish you literally just get there and you're golden the other three have to do with dealing with a certain climate whereas rito village's challenge has you trying to cross the gap not exactly the most interesting thing that they could have done after that you have to get to the flight range which is fairly close by then they do an incredibly easy target mini game and i get that the game needs to make sure that you can hit the targets for the battle that you're going to have with the divine beast that it is seriously pathetic how little effort it takes to clear this section maruta has perhaps the most interesting climate based challenge of any of the divine beasts with it constantly raining this makes it impossible to climb meaning that the developers can make a lot of interesting challenges that are more difficult to get around than they would be otherwise the first challenge involves you having to go down this trail with enemies of course having electric weapons that do extra damage in the rain so you need to find out how to take care of them either just winging it and throwing yourself at them if you have shock resistance food or you could try to snipe them from far away once you actually get to the domain you find out that you need to get shock arrows instead of just getting them you need to go up to the top of a nearby mountain where a lionel resides this leads into the stealth section that i mentioned earlier in the video after this you engage in battle with it varudania's challenge is with the extreme heat that sets you on fire you really can't take the hits and eat since you'll take damage so fast that it's just a waste at that point the most obvious way to overcome this extreme heat is with a fireproof elixir once you get there you need to head over to the mines where you need to find inobo a young goron this section is pretty fun with lo shooting fire errors at you along with some of that sweet navigational puzzle solving that i crave so much with these air gusts that you need to find as well as thinking logically about how you get from one island to the next von neuborus has you first aiming to find a good way to get around gerudo desert after that you'll find out that men are in atlanta and gerudo towns you'll need to go and get some clothes and make you look like a gerudo it's kind of ridiculous how easy it is to get in though since we eventually learned that cass also managed to check the guards into letting him in the same way and the chief and her bodyguard see right through your disguise immediately as well once you do manage to get there you'll have to recover the thunderhelm from the eagle clan hideout i hate it there are a couple of things that i like about it i love how the yuca clan members love bananas and you can distract them with that i also like how short it is that's about it though let's get into what i hate first of all i hate how you're not allowed to skip it it seems like it would be easy to get to koga early but no he doesn't spawn in unless you go through the hideout which goes completely against the point of the game being about player choice it's really easy to go in from above but you can't do that to initially beat him which is pretty stupid if you get caught by one of the giga clan members instead of having a more difficult time trying to get through it like with the lionel employment mountain you basically aims to fail because they can kill you in one hit regardless of how much health you have and i know that i literally just said that it being so short was a positive thing just a second ago but that's only because of how little enjoyment i get from this section the fact that it's so short makes it feel almost worthless in a way there's only like three rooms you can find a pile of banana stashed away which is pretty funny i guess but outside of that just kind of sucks the next act is the battle that you have with the divine beasts and these moments are some of the most thrilling short moments in the whole game valmetto's fight has you in the air making shots at the cannons assaulting you it's pretty fun and positioning yourself to hit the cannons isn't as pathetically easy as the target's minigame you played to get to this point it's kind of fun but also mindless varuda is a lot better in this regard while you have a lot less control in your movements it makes it so that way the game can focus on a more demanding challenge during the downtime of you waiting to get a shot up into the air the beast sends a bunch of ice your way there are a few ways to take care of them you could use stasis to stop it shoot them with arrows or use cryonis to shatter them it's really engaging all throughout then you get to one of these mini waterfalls that it's pouring out to shoot up into the air making a precise shot to disable the beast allowing you to board it varudania has by far the best boarding sequence in the game it's a cell section that has you having to find a way around a bunch of guardian sky watchers it's not enough to just get around them though you also have to make sure that yunovo can get to the next cannon since you can only attack the beast with him there are a variety of ways he can take care of them with the most fun being to use the environment and while it is a stealth mission getting spotted doesn't result in an instant failure instead you just have to avoid the rock shower being thrown your way it still punishes you for screwing up but not in a frustrating way which is especially important since your companion is yanobo and if you're not careful he can be spotted overall one of the biggest highlights of the game finally there's vonda boris's fight which is probably the best of the more fast paced one-on-one duels you have with the beasts there's a bit of a risk reward element with it with you needing to stay in this bubble allowing you to not be electrocuted with you needing to hit the beast's feet and not much to really say other than that finally let's get into the actual divine beasts each of them follow a certain pattern with you first needing to locate a map activate the five terminals and then ending with you returning to the start to engage in a fight with one of the four blights the dungeons range in quality and difficulty however for the most part i think that they are fresh enough to prevent them from feeling like disappointments for as much as i love the dungeons from skyward sword i can't deny how exhausting the formula was getting by that point no matter what i say regarding these dungeons they are at the very least unique in the pantheon of zelda dungeons the main thing that really sets these ones apart from previous entries is that they move now this isn't exactly the most groundbreaking thing ever i mean stone tower temple also involved the dungeon moving these ones are different though since you can move them at any time and in more ways than just upside down or right side up which means that they can not only be used for puzzles but also for traversing around the dungeon and their non-linearity means that they can be approached in a variety of different ways unfortunately it also makes them a lot shorter than quote-unquote real dungeons vametto is the weakest divine beast in the game despite the fact that the reader are the best species in the game it doesn't save it the entire thing is kind of pathetically easy it's a shame too since this is really the only dungeon to make full use of puzzles based off of the movement of the beast but those puzzles are all really simple all you need to do here is just use magnesius to hold the thing in place this is pretty much every puzzle in the dungeon you never have to think about any of them it's also the only dungeon in the game that doesn't really use the movement to move through the dungeon you can beat the whole thing without using the map screen once there are these blocks they could have used for something but no i will say that it is at very least a fun 15 minutes and it also has the best dungeon music in the game it's the one that gets stuck in my head the most i guess while we're on the topic of dungeon music real quick i think that these are some of the best tracks in the series i also love the small detail that they all have the sos signal beeping in the background but valmetto's beeping comes in a lot later since the pilot was rivali and he was a big narcissistic jerk it's great stuff anyway meadow is a mediocre dungeon moving on varuda is the beast with the best flow you start here at the bottom get up to this part with the cogs and then you climb up them to the top of the dungeon before you go back to the entrance to fight water by ganon other than that it's a bit of an improvement over vomitto the puzzles are all mostly timing and location based once again these puzzles are all pretty and what i will say about this one is that there's a lot more of that sweet sweet navigational puzzle solving but it's different from previous zelda dungeons and those ones you have to figure out where you can and can't go with the limitation that the current state of the dungeon has provided you with here though it takes on a different approach with you already knowing where you need to go all you need to do is figure out how to get to where you need to go while this is pretty nice here varuda shows you what happens when you don't go as far with this navigational puzzle solving as you can it barely scratches the surface here since it's just a matter of moving the trunk to a certain spot it makes it so that there's no real thought or effort that goes into solving anything with this version of that thing i like a lot the less options you have the better as we'll see with the next two beasts here there are just too many different locations to move the trunk to which means that it only takes a couple of tries if you somehow manage to get stuck but you probably won't get stuck since the terminals are all really easy the first one you just crank this handle to raise it up stop this wheel at the right time stop this at the right time as well get to the tip of the trunk dowsey's flames none of these are difficult and with the lackluster navigation it makes varuda overall feel just kind of okay varudania is when things start getting really good this dungeon really gets the navigational puzzle solving thing more than the previous two firstly there are only two ways that you can move the beast which already leads to a lot more interesting navigation through the dungeon not only that the two positions are very drastic so you need to think about what to do before you actually move the beast the puzzles here are also pretty decent this one with the ball is the one that they try to utilize with the movement the most and just like the puzzles in vametto it's really simple you just have to move the beast a couple of times they don't really try to do anything interesting with the ball and its path the other puzzles aren't too bad though i really like the opening of the dungeon with you having to navigate this central room in pitch blackness it's the only one of the four to try something different with its opening sequence which is one of the main reasons that this bit sticks out so much this one part always screws me up since it doesn't make much sense to light an arrow that's already on fire with a blue flame and my inability to notice anything make spotting this spot on the ceiling impossible for me so that's something i can use to pat out this video to reach its run time i don't know there's really not a lot to the puzzles to really talk about they rely a lot on looking around your surroundings for stuff the overall structure of the dungeon also doesn't really lead to a lot of interesting puzzle ideas since it's all in one central room with four branching out from it the only interesting stuff really comes with the outside of the dungeon though it's unfortunate there isn't much to do out here there's only one terminal and getting the ball to start rolling despite its issues i have a lot more fun with this beast in comparison to the other two von aboris is the best dungeon in the game obviously despite what i said earlier i do think that there is another way to make this type of navigational puzzle solving well instead of limiting your options you could also give the player so many options that they need to think critically and intentionally about how they traverse through the dungeon this is where vonda boris really shines there's so many different combinations that these three chambers can be in so you can't just move stuff around and hope for the best the structure is also the most confusing of any of the divine beasts not only do you have this central chamber but you have little pockets that lead to the exterior of the beast a room up top here and this large section at the top of the beast that you can access by the tail it feels truly massive meaning that you need to really think critically of everything you do this is the only divine beast that feels like it has a proper puzzle motif throughout the whole thing that being electricity one of the better puzzles involves having to create a current throughout the spine of the beast to raise the tail however it will rise before you can get onto it so you'll need to intentionally break the line in order to get to the top this ball section always perplexes me without fail since i can never find the easy ball seriously i always spend like 30 minutes draws wandering around trying to find the ball and then i give up and try to use the cool method of dropping all my metal weapons and arranging them but i'm always like too short so then i go back on the hunt and find the ball in two minutes this has happened with my last three playthroughs and no i am not kidding the exact same set of events has happened to me three times in a row anyway the main problem that i have with this dungeon is the general lack of connections the puzzles have in relation to one another one of the terminals just requires you to rotate the chambers correctly which is pretty alright since it gives some real thought to move everything correctly but what does it have to do with finding two balls to open a gate or what does having to use electricity to light up two bulbs by moving a handle i have to do with anything i like these puzzles individually especially with the crank and having to realize that one direction moves a left bulb and the other direction moves the right one but their lack of cohesion is kind of disappointing it also has some of the least interesting electricity puzzles in the game with the more interesting ones being saved for shrines the only interesting qualities come from factors outside the electricity element in fact this is kind of an issue with all the divine beasts the puzzles feel like leftovers which improves the shrines but it's kind of a detriment to the main dungeons it also doesn't help that the dungeons all have to be designed as the potential first that the player comes across this means that even if they wanted to make a complex dungeon they wouldn't be able to since they don't want to overwhelm the player overall i like the divine beasts but i wish that they didn't have all these issues since i can see the potential that they have now here's hoping that future entries take what worked here and really expand everything we're not done with this section yet though since we still have to talk about hyrule castle the castle is at the center of the map and like the moon in majora's mask it kind of taunts you throughout the game this makes the final confrontation with calamity ganon really climactic storming your way through hyrule castle at the end of the game is one of the best moments in the entire series there's so many different ways to navigate through the castle whether it's through the main road that sees you fighting several different lionels or climbing along the sides of the castle utilizing the many waterfalls there's no way to get up to the sanctum that isn't satisfying i also love how as you approach ganon the sky changes to be this blood red sunset kind of color it really heightens the climax by that little bit more however hyrule castle has a bit of an issue with that being that it secretly houses a pretty interesting take on dungeons it's got a really big focus on exploration with the smaller overall type puzzles filling it there is so much to find here that you could spend hours combing over everything before you're done there are tons of enemies to fight cool loot to grab and just a bunch of goodies in general if you fight a style knox hidden in one of the rooms in the dungeon you can get the hylian shield you could come across it by complete accident and i love that you can find the diaries of zelda and king rombas ram as hyrule which both add a little bit more context to the story and their characterizations and you can uncover these by complete chance which is cool since only players with the initiative to uncover every last detail of the story will really discover this and there are a lot of different areas to discover too like the previously mentioned dungeons the library the docks with a sweet minecart section the gar towers and so much more this is easily one of my favorite places to just explore in the game of course and there's a discussion of whether or not it counts as a dungeon and personally i'd consider it as one since the only other places have a map like this are the divine beasts it's pretty clear that at the very least the dev thoughts of this place like a dungeon by that logic this is the best dungeon in the game it's still very different from the other dungeons since those have rigid structures and are more intentionally designed in comparison to hyrule castle's more open free-flowing structure overall the dungeons and press of the wild layout a great blueprint for the future of dungeons in the series but they have a lot of little things that prevent them from being truly great there are a ton of great ideas in them that i hope don't get abandoned in future titles because while they all have less interesting puzzles similar aesthetics and are a bit too short they are all a lot of fun and bring a new interesting spin on navigational puzzle solving that is practically begging to be brought back in the future get ready to hear this music for the next number of minutes i ain't changing it at all for this section the shrines and breath of the wild are essentially mini dungeons 120 dotting the map with them being supplements to the divine beast it makes it so that this game doesn't lack in the dungeon department however since they're so self-contained and you constantly dip in and out of them it means that the overall puzzle design and whatnot from previous entries is kind of lacking here but i really enjoyed the shrines overall here there are a lot of great puzzles that are fun and satisfying to figure out but before we get into that we need to talk about the shrines i don't really like i've already talked about the problems i have with blessing shrines earlier so i won't waste too much time of that again but the shrines themselves are pretty boring and the only interesting thing that they offer comes from unlocking them which is usually pretty hit or miss the second set of shrines that i don't like that much are the test of strength shrines and it all comes down to how tedious and repetitive they are the first time you do one and especially if it's a major one it's a pretty fun combat challenge but then every time you go back it's the same old thing you attack them for a bit until they jump back hide behind a pillar so they can crash into it allowing you to get more hits in rinse and repeat until you whittle its health down leading to the second phase or it will fire a laser in a circle so you'll have to use your paraglider to glide over it shoot it with arrows until it's done run up to it and deal some damage rinse and repeat until the final phase where it charges up a laser attack so you have to start hitting it over and over before it fires there's nothing inherently wrong with this it's just that it's always the same thing every time they try very effortlessly to change things up like sometimes you'll have to use magnesis to lift the pillar up and sometimes you'll have to use cryonis to create a pillar for it to run into wow how inspired and that's not even taking into account how the shrine doesn't account for the player potentially breaking their weapons bows and whatnot though that is an issue with the shrines in general not specific to just the test of strength shrines there's no worse feeling than being forced to leave a shrine because you don't have the necessary materials required to beat it which is why i usually come into these shrines heavily over prepared it's a rough spot that i hope gets smoothed out with future titles now the honor of the worst shrines in the game goes to the worthless agonizingly frustrating apparatus shrines i despise these shrines far more than any other type in the game they are the one and only thing that ruins my theory of the game being primarily developed with handheld in mind because there is no way that the developers actually saw this and said it was okay or maybe they did considering it made it into the final release you have to angle and contort your wrists in ways that they were never designed to and it makes them so irritating and literally painful to play and what's worse even if you disable motion controls in the menu you still have to control these stupid things with motion controls they makes so little sense it's baffling why which of the hundreds of designers let that slip past there is no good reason why disabling motion controls shouldn't disable them for the apparatus shrines then you have the puzzles of the shrine which are mostly just a test of patience like getting the balls onto the switches or getting the ball through the maze the only one that was even the slightest bit interesting to me was the golfing one since you have to figure out how much you had to move the controller even then though it still sucks kodo saw apparatus is one of the only not stupid instances of these kinds of gyro puzzles it's more about moving everything to make a path for yourself it's still not great but it's better than nothing overall it's just kind of weird that two zeldas in a row had the same exact issue with bad motion controls the rest of the shrines are pretty fun though and all add up to the game having a fun dungeon experience the first set of shrines on the great plateau are all really basic and are mostly just there to introduce the idea of rune to the player however i'd argue that the plateau at large does a far better job of showing the applications of the runes than the shrines since there's a lot more interesting things you can do with them outside of these areas i'd say that stasis is probably the best showcase with you freezing a geared across a bridge teaching you about good timing then you freeze a ball teaching you about optimal freezing points and ending with you learning about the movement applications of the rune magnesius is also pretty good at teaching you the use of the rune but there's a lot more utility with magnesis than stasis so it's not quite as good as the stasis trial other shrines teach you game mechanics like the wind guides you which teaches you about currents the problem with these kinds of shrines though is that the process of solving them is really lame crossing a gap has no challenge associated with it there aren't multiple paths that you need to pay attention to it's effectively a glorified straight line drifting is really the peak of this type of teaching shrine with you learning about water currents here the difference is that there are a few different ways you can get through the water whether it's these planks or crossing it via cryonis it also highlights the problem with shrines like the wind guides you that being that there are no puzzles to speak of there technically isn't any here either however having to find a way to cross the water and blowing up this pillar is enough to trick you into experiencing a puzzle-like feeling so i give it a pass some of the shrines that are about that sweet puzzle solving leave a bit to be desired like passing the flame all you need to do is burn a couple of things and then you've completed the shrine so if you have any fire arrows it's over in less than two minutes if you don't have any then the shrine is pretty cool with you having to figure out how to burn stuff metal makes a path is also pretty pathetic since you just need to shove a metal ball through his own ones and it is really not challenging i didn't leave anything out by the way the shrine is really that lame however for the most part shrines are fantastic and fun with these being the only two examples of shrines i specifically called out in my notes that i didn't particularly like windmills is a really enjoyable shrine this one has you having to move fans in order to make all these windmills spin the puzzle is great since it involves you having to pay attention to what mills will be activated by what fans so in order to really solve it you need to think critically about how you move the fans you could just brute force it but that isn't nearly as satisfying or quick as some good old critical thinking however one of the best shrines in this region of the map is wind guide the main idea is moving yourself through the air with you having to move yourself through the shrine on floating platforms needing to take care and not popping the balloons you also need to move an explosive barrel and the whole thing overall is just really fun keeping to this theme of wind shrines path of hidden winds is another shrine i enjoy even if it is a little simple as the name would imply you need to find a hidden wind current it makes the solving process fun you just need to pay attention to how you move through the space to make it where you need to go especially when it comes to finding the hidden current which is a different more interesting take on the wind guides you some of the best shrines in the game are all orb shrines twin memories are some of these standouts since in order to beat them you need to visit both shrines since the placement of the orbs when you first enter is where they need to be placed in the other shrine it's a really creative puzzle and one of the strongest parts of the dungeon side of breath of the wild of course the highlight of this kind of shrine is with fateful stars this is by far the most confusing shrine in the entire game and it's not hard to see why basically the whole thing has to do with constellations in the shrine itself since they show you where to place the orbs that's not the actual solution though since it's actually the number of constellations you count on the wall that tells you what row and column you need to place an orb this makes it way more confusing and fun to solve since it first requires realizing what you need to do and then figuring out what to do with the information once you have it this might just be the best puzzle in the entire game it is really good it still traps me up on repeat playthroughs which doesn't usually happen with most puzzles in zelda games blue flame is one of the few shrines that feels like it has proper progression of its main idea basically the whole shrine is dedicated to the idea of transferring a blue flame throughout the shrine and there are a lot of cool ideas that they came up with that make progressing through the shrine really interesting you'll need to get the flame under two streams of water then you'll need to get the flame over a long distance then you'll need to figure out a way to light these two flames at the same time since water will spray out of these tasks when you light the torch then you need to light two torches within a certain time frame since there's water constantly streaming out that will put the flames out after this you need to move the flame underneath another stream of water this time using magnesis to move a block then you get to the final puzzle where you have to perform a spin attack to light a circle of torches it's an incredibly strong shrine that feels like it explores its puzzle idea to its fullest extent but that's a shrine that everyone likes to bring up so let's talk about one that isn't talked about as much that still has a similar progression even if not as good as blue flame the shrine that i've selected for this comparison is on the move a pretty solid one that's easy trying to maneuver around conveyor belts and getting the orb into its pedestal there are three different scenarios that you come across each one relating to the overall theme of the shrine the first puzzle has you freezing the orb with stasis and then shooting it with an arrow to knock it into the pedestal the next one has you doing the same thing but this time you have to deal with guardian scouts then you have the actual good room where you have to move through lasers carrying the ball you have to think about timing and getting these stone blocks into a good position so you can cross unscathed as well as freezing the lasers while the progression isn't quite as good as blue flame the shrine does feel like it explores the idea well the classic nintendo design philosophy is where the shrines really excel at introducing you to the concept in a safe environment not allowing you to progress until you sure that you understand the concept then having you performed the same task with the safety net being removed and then finally turning the concept on its head for the last one it only took me five videos before i brought up nintendo design philosophy are you proud of me yet i'm finally a real generic nintendo youtuber anyway there are a few shrines that don't really do that take another shrine from eldon region installed flight this one has you launching yourself up and then progressing through the shrine that way there really aren't any puzzles here you just launch yourself up use stasis to stop a block and then glide your way to the end i feel like there's more that you could do with this concept than what they actually ended up using it for swinging flames is a shrine that you can either solve by using fire type weapons and arrows to overcome every puzzle or you can actually try to solve the puzzles of lighting the leaves and wood on fire with the limited supply of flammable materials in the shrine even if you do use fire stuff though the puzzles don't actually revolve around burning stuff the majority are actually based around some of that navigational puzzle solving with a bunch of switches that you need to press in the right order with the right timing in order to succeed it's a shrine that feels really tightly designed everything is very constrained and due to my lack of ability to know notice basic things they made for a very fun shrine the name does give away an element of the puzzle solving though however it's not quite as bad as two bombs the main puzzles here both have to do with using two bombs it's a really cool puzzle too but the name of the shrine already tells you that you need to use two bombs i guess the finding out how you're supposed to use the two bonds is kind of interesting but it would have been way more interesting to have to first realize that you need to use two bombs and then figure out how you're supposed to use them it's still a really good shrine though the best shrines in the game are in the gerudo desert though unsurprising of course considering that the best divine beast is also located there the main reason for this is because the majority of gerudo shrines deal with electricity and the puzzle scenarios that arise from this idea are a lot more compelling than the rest of the shrines the whole picture is a pretty good example of this the shrine is all about taking what limited metal items there are in the shrine and using them to open up the gates if you don't have a ton of metal weapons then this shrine becomes really fun with you having to think about which metal object to use to bridge the gap you really have to look at the floor and what circuits lead to what thing it's a super fun shrine to figure out the current solution seems pretty lame at first but it's actually one of the best shrines in the game once again it follows nintendo design philosophy by first making you complete an electrical circuit then you need to try and move a metal ball chained to the wall to complete another circuit to raise this platform so you can get up to this other ball once you have the ball you then need to move it without activating any of the circuits and since you do the platform will flip there's some guardian scouts here that will prevent your progress so you'll need to take care of them you'll get to the last section where you place the ball down and the door doesn't open that's because you need to find a cog in the other room this room is a sliding block puzzle where you're trying to line up the blocks to complete a circuit it's pretty tricky and it is a bit too finicky but it's still a fun puzzle trying to figure out how you're supposed to move the blocks in such a way that everything lines up the actual solution is really simple but getting to that point requires you to pay attention and move everything correctly you'll then get the cog and complete the shrine electric path is one of my favorite shrines in the game you start by crossing this gap and then you need to take this electric cube that powers the platform and hold it in a position that will power the platform to get the cube over to the other side of it you then need to take the cube and use it to power another moving platform so you can write it up then you have to find a certain location to place the cube which can be kind of tricky since there's a lot of noise that can distract you from what you actually need to do after that you ride across this platform to the monk it's a fairly simple shrine and yet it still has that satisfying feel to completing it that makes it really enjoyable since you have to think about how to move the cubes to progress before i end this section i'd like to talk about two more shrines that stood out enough for me to mention them in my notes that i didn't really feel like i could fit in with the flow of the section a balanced approach is neat with you having to raise the scale in order to cross this gap i feel like this is a shrine where the way in which you solve it really determines how good it is there's a few different ways you can raise a scale and because of that there are some solutions way less satisfying than others red giveaway is just a slightly more complex of another shrine and it's a lot better than the other one as well as being one of my favorites in the game your goal is to get an orb over to this pedestal the puzzle aspect comes from the fact that you need to get around these wind currents pushing the orbs in places you don't want it to go so you need to find which ones you need to block and when but then there's a problem of making sure the orb gets into the pedestal after you get on the platform which rises once it gets in it's a very fun shrine overall the shrines in breath of the wild are pretty fun one-off puzzles it is a little unfortunate that this game doesn't really have a clear sense of puzzle progression like previous entries however after playing this immediately after those entries i can safely say that breath of the wild does not lack in the dungeon department i hope this concept is further fleshed out in future titles and isn't abandoned because if they just implemented better puzzle progression then these shrines would honestly be perfect i honestly believe that with a little fine-tuning this concept could finally reach its full potential [Music] the bosses in breath of the wild are one of the most refreshing elements of the game no longer are they reliant on having the key to defeat them lay and getting the dungeon item with lots of repetition boredom and ease and how you defeat them instead the bosses are designed around damaging them with the weak points merely doing extra damage not being the primary way you hurt them i find pretty much all of them fun yet another way in which i am a contrarian i wouldn't necessarily say they're my favorite but they're fun regardless first up the lionel i know that they're technically an enemy but they're difficult enough to fight for me to classify them as a boss there are a few different types though all of them share the same attacks and such the only real difference being their health one thing that makes lionel so difficult is that you can only really fight them in close quarters this because they have perfect aim and can instantly kill you with one of their arrows then you have a variety of different attacks jumping back so that they can rush you or breathe a bunch of fire at you they hit hard when up close so in order to beat them you need to be good at parrying and dodging you can also stun the lionel in order to mount it and do some decent damage that way overall they are fun endurance rounds and stand out as some of the best combat encounters in the game now onto what the game actually considers a boss the stone talus is likely to be the first boss that the player comes across with one being located on the great plateau and another being placed along the path to kakariko the most interesting part about these bosses is that you have to attack the or vein located on it its attacks are all relatively easy to avoid with the two main ones being an attempt to slam you into the ground and the other being to throw big rocks at you actually climbing it to deal damage can be pretty tricky and is where the majority of the fun trying to face this boss lies you have to wait for it to be in the optimal position before you even think about climbing it and even then you only have a few seconds to take advantage of the opportunity you could also try shooting the vein with an arrow however it does significantly less damage even if it is the safer option of the two there are also two variations of the boss the igneotalis and the frostallus as you might assume from the names the igneotalis is on fire and the frostallus is made of ice and the two have attacks that correlate to this as well the fight is largely the same but you do need to use the ice and fire arrows that not only make it take some damage but also allows you to climb it without getting hurt overall i like the boss even if it is a little simple the high knocks can be a pretty fun boss though it does feel a little like a generic zelda boss hitting it in the eye apart from doing the most damage also stuns the hinox for a bit once they've taken enough damage they'll actually cover their eye which means that you won't be able to get easy damage as easily and have to find other ways to damage it some of them have armor that you can damage with either fire arrows for wooden armor or shock arrows for metal armor the attacks of a high knocks take full advantage of the fact that this is a massive creature with the most notable being that they will take trees and use it as a club they are also the only boss in the game that has a stall version of them the stallnox is pretty much the same fight as a regular high knox with one key exception in order to actually finish them off you need to attack the eye once it pops out of the skull there's a limited opportunity to do this however and if you aren't quick enough you'll have to try and repeat the process until you do eventually succeed a decently fun boss now for what is easily the second worst boss in the game malduga the problem with this boss is that there's a strategy so simple yet overpowered that it makes the whole thing a complete joke and that strategy is standing on a rock the malduga can never even touch you if you're on a rock so really all you have to do is stand on a rock throw a ball into the sand so that the vibrations are picked up then when it comes up you detonate the bomb play on it and then quickly get back to your rock you could fight it on your sand seal trying not to get caught and attempting to bait it to eat your bomb but why would you even bother with that when it's so much simpler to just use the rock strat overall a weak boss on a low point of all of them even including dark bees ganon but we aren't quite there yet now i get on to the main quest bosses and to be honest with you i am yet again a massive contrarian i really enjoy the bosses in breath of the wild and the aesthetic has never really been as important to me regarding bosses and zelda games so i don't really see what the problems people have with them in this game are sure they all look the same but the overall fights are very different and have a different level of challenge associated with them but before we get into the blights we have another fight to talk about master koga is really great after the clan hideout you can introduce the leader of the group an oath named kogav the fight is really easy but that's on purpose he's meant to be a pushover so the fight as a whole is more of a joke fight which i am perfectly content with the first phase has you hitting him with an arrow so he drops a motor on his head then you go up and attack him and repeat until the next phase where he'll do the same thing except this time over the pit in the center of the room and having two boulders circling him so you need to hit him with an arrow at the correct time the last phase has you taking a giant spiked metal ball that he summons with magnesis and damaging him with it again there's not a lot to this fight but it's fun and the payoff at the end is pretty funny all right let's get into the actual dungeon bosses the blights when blight ganon is okay his main attacks are shooting lasers at you and sending tornadoes after you these attacks are pretty easy to dodge and attacking him is pretty easy especially if you have bomb arrows the first phase and second phase don't really have any differences in terms of attacks or at least there aren't any notable differences in attacks between the two phases it can be a fun fight but he's definitely one of the weaker bosses water by ganon is a little more interesting in the first phase he has four main attacks most for if you're further away and one for if you're closer if you're further away he uses his long spear to sweep across a room he'll throw a spirit and if you're closer he'll thrust his spear at you or he'll stab the ground causing a small damaging shock wave this phase is kind of fun though most of his telegraphs for these attacks result in the fight being just a little too easy at the start of the second phase he raises up some platforms which makes the fight a little more interesting his main attacks are thrusting his spear and summoning cry on his blocks and throwing them at you this face is a lot more interesting since you have to think about what the optimal place in the room is and then getting there as swiftly as possible it's also just pretty fun to attack waterblight overall a pretty fun boss firebite ganon is the worst boss fight in the game and it isn't even close the main problem is that his weakness is too exploitable you throw two bombs and it goes down instantly this doesn't even change during the second phase you still just throw two bombs at him and then run up and get your hits in he's honestly pathetic and there's no need to really talk about any of these attacks or the rest of the fight at large because what's the point he's so easy that it defeats the point of talking about him much like how vonda boris is the best divine beast in the game thunderbite ganon is the best blight fight in the game as well as being the unanimously agreed hardest boss in the base game keyword here base now i'm pretty sure that they specifically made flurry rushes easier to get in this particular instance it is not as difficult to consistently pull it off on thunder blight in comparison to other enemies slash bosses despite this the boss can still be pretty challenging and that's mostly due to his speed he's a fast boy so you have to try and keep your eye on him at all times so that dodging his attacks becomes easier whenever he isn't rushing you he throws these electric balls at you that you have to avoid the second phase is pretty much just more of the first at least it is after the start since the start of this phase has him sending a bunch of metal spikes down and strikes each of them with lightning so you need to bring one of them close to him so that he shocks himself and allows you to finally start attacking him i feel like a big reason why this fight seems so hard is because of how involved you have to be in to fight him as well as him having the best defense of any of the blights overall a really good boss before we get to talking about the final boss i wanted to briefly mention one thing that every blight shares which once again ties into the free-form nature of the game that being the fact that there isn't a specific weak point on any of the bosses sure the eye will do a little more damage and sun them for a brief period of time but there's no set way to defeat them you just do whatever you can to damage them and go for it in my opinion this makes them some of the most engaging bosses in the series since majora's mask and whilst they do all share the same aesthetic design i still haven't found a legitimate reason for why it makes them inferior they're still intimidating and the designs are cool for this specific game i think it works so there's no real point in complaining about it alright let's get into the final boss when first getting to the sanctum in hyrule castle there was a rush of anticipation for the climactic final encounter with calamity ganon throughout the game i wondered what the boss could possibly be like given that i couldn't think of many ideas for how they could do it with the spectral form you see surrounding the castle so imagine how shocking it was to walk in there and see this weird disgusting cocoon and then out pops this spider monster looking ganon that was one of the best moments i've ever had with any video game it really threw at me for a loop as for the fight itself it's definitely my favorite bosses in the base game again keyword base there are a variety of attacks that he does from sending rows of fire across the floor to a variety of attacks all taken from the blights it's a really fun test trying to dodge them all whilst also trying to damage him then you get to phase 2 where he becomes invincible with the only relay to damage him being to parry the lasers he shoots at you back at him he'll also crawl around the arena which makes the fight a bit more engaging it's such a mechanically satisfying boss that i can't really think of anything to really criticize it for mechanically speaking because the developers made one crucial mistake with this boss that nearly ruins it if you complete the main quest because why wouldn't you calamity gannon's health starts at half it feels like they took the majora's mask approach without realizing why that approach worked so well in majora you get an overpowered mask that makes quick work of the final boss if you decide to go out of your way to earn every mask in the game you are rewarded for your exploration and completion of quests by having an ease your final boss in breath of the wild however you get an easier boss for simply completing the main quest and not the full main quest either just the divine beast parts of the main quest it leads to the whole thing feeling very unsatisfying funnily enough if you just ignore the main quest then you get a way more fulfilling experience a boss rush with all four blights leading into the final boss to be honest it really should have been inverted with every b2 defeat that blight goes to hyrule castle but no i just have to settle for a way less interesting boss something that i never mentioned in previous videos is the classic struggle to have mechanical complexity while also being easily accessible for more casual players this struggle to have a challenging boss while also allowing people to finish the game is where this struggle rears its head and for the first time in any of these retrospectives i feel that it's detrimental enough to the overall experience to call out hopefully in future titles this issue isn't as relevant calamity gannon is still a fun boss i just wish that it would handle better and then we have dark beast ganon i will for at least the fourth time become a contrarian and say that i actually kind of like this boss it's still easily the worst final boss out of any of the 3d games but it's hard for me to call it a bad boss because fundamentally dark b's ganon isn't a boss it's a massive spectacle to end the game on riding around on a horse with this giant boar in the middle of hyrule field shooting light arrows at it there's a really strong ending to the game it's easy but that's okay so this more of a victory lap than anything anyway but of course other zelda games managed to have final bosses that were both a cool spectacle to end the game on as well as being fun bosses in their own right demise is the best example of this this cool looking dark void directing all of your attention to demise with epic music in the background makes for a cool final spectacle but it also manages to be a fun one-on-one sword duel making full use of the swordplay so heavily featured in the game comparatively dark beast ganon doesn't really do that horseback combat isn't a major focus so it doesn't really feel like a final test and his attack is pathetic this slow-moving laser that can never hit you unless you actively try to get hit but it does have a trick up its sleeve this moment here gliding up and firing an arrow directly into his eye is the best ending bit to any zelda game ever sure delivering the final blow and skyward sword and twilight princess were both satisfying this one is a lot cooler since the skies grow blood red as you go up with the music slowly building up to an epic conclusion makes this moment feel a lot more impactful than those other games plus it has the added benefit of being a moment built up to throughout the entire game skyward swords final blast comes as something you've been actively trying to avoid the entire game and again endorphin twilight princess only really comes into play at the very end of the game you know that eventually you'll storm into hyrule castle and take on calamity ganon which adds up to making this moment so great i really do wish that it was as mechanically interesting as the boss that preceded it but it's a serviceable enough finale that i don't mind it too much overall the bosses in breath of the wild offer entertainment but it's difficult to think of anything else that they offer the player especially with the final two now this would normally be the part where i transitioned to my concluding thoughts however breath of the wild was the first zelda game to have dlc and seeing as how this is an all-encompassing retrospective it felt wrong to not talk about it so let's dive into the surprisingly meaty dlc content this section of the dlc will be dedicated to everything in the dlc outside of the champions ballot shrines the trial of the sword and the final divine beast with that said let's get into what always added to the game firstly there are three things added to the expansion pass normally a nintendo switcher that does nothing a ruby that also does nothing and five bomb arrows that will inevitably get used up soon overall not a particularly strong start to the dlc however the overall content you get with them more than makes up for it there are two halves of the dlc the master trials and the champions ballad all this adds up to make a very satisfying expansion experience two things that i will say are that champions valid is by far the better portion of the dlc than the master trials mostly because of the added shrines and divine beast it's not like the master trials are bad or anything but when it initially launched i found it kind of underwhelming and disappointing like not bad but it was hard to justify the 20 price tag and once i show you what there is to do outside of the main quest and the champions ballad you'll kind of see why the first set of dlc is so meh the main piece of content that the master trial adds in my opinion is master mode basically a hard mode for the game enemies do more damage stronger enemies appear much earlier and they also regenerate health over time and there are a few other things they added to the game to keep you on your toes like a lionel on the great plateau and these floating platforms with enemies and chests scattered throughout the map it's more challenging though i can't help but feel like they could have gone further with it since the part of dlc and the only people who will get it will be those who really like the game they could have gone further with it maybe pull an ocarina of time master quest where you flip the map and have a completely different redesigned harder divine beasts maybe update a few of the shrines to be a bit more difficult too really taking advantage of the fact that people have already played and beaten the game now i'm not necessarily saying that only having access to it being to buy the dlc is a bad thing because again the dlc was made for people who already like the game anyway most people who try master mode are people who like the game it shows that it feels like they did as little as they could to make it more difficult i really like it it's the main way that i play the game i just wish that they went further with it also it does still share the same difficulty progression issue as the base game though even at its easiest it's still harder than the base game so there's that i suppose another addition is hiro's path it's a fairly simple addition that adds the ability to see everywhere you've gone on the map for the past 200 hours which is generally 150 hours more of my usual playtime so it's interesting to see everywhere i went after stepping out of the shrine resurrection there's not much else to it but it's a cool little addition nonetheless the champion's ballad has a bit more going on with the most interesting thing being the main quest basically cass is trying to complete a song his teacher started writing which i think is a really fun way to frame it we get to see a bit more characterization for the champions though not nearly as much as age of calamity the little bits that we do get are great though like how daruk is scared of dogs and how zelda gets to pet them for some reason but not the player however i think the most interesting part of the quest is cass these aren't really memories they're just a verse of cass's song just that instead of him singing about the actions we see the actions he's singing about if that makes any sense which is what makes the final moment when he finishes playing the song getting an actual memory is so surprising also i have no idea how he doesn't realize that this random highlighting he's been talking to is the same person that's in the picture he's literally front and center can't possibly miss him but whatever i like the story additions it makes the whole thing feel more substantial though in my opinion it's one of the weaker elements of the dlc with the shrines and dungeon being absolutely fantastic for the most part though we'll get into that in the next couple of sections also i forgot to script this part so excuse my ramblings after you beat the dungeon you get this cool photo that you can hang up in your house that's pretty cool and also the main theme plays so that's kind of interesting i i don't know just let me pad the video runtime out thank you very much the most substantial piece of content it has to offer that i'll talk about in this section is this one hit obliterator challenge on the great plateau after you complete all the divine beast quests you are instructed to return to the shrine of resurrection once arriving you take this sweet weapon the one hit obliterator this weapon allows you to instantly kill any enemy in one hit of course that would be too overpowered so you will also die in one hit and the weapon also takes some time to recharge after a few hits then you're tasked with reversing the plateau taking out enemy camps to unlock shrines it's a pretty fun challenge with you having to approach the enemy camps in a variety of different ways there are a lot of different ways to approach them with you having to plot out which enemies you want to take out from further away and which ones are worth killing with the obliterator each camp offers something different with the two most interesting ones being the one in the forest and the one in the mountains they're my favorite because these ones have a lot more to do with positioning yourself than the other two it's pretty easy to get into a good position with the other two since there are a bunch of different barriers to take cover behind whereas with these two without anything to take cover behind you need to think about what a good position to start in would be which makes them a lot more interesting to take on and overall one of the many highlights of the dlc it's a fun challenge the last thing to mention in this section would be the variety of side quests they added along with the armor since they're basically one in the same it is a little unfortunate that most have to do with finding new armor though it isn't that big of an issue since hey more side quests and some sweet armor the first one is strange mask rumors which is actually referring to the korak mask and not majora's mask this one has you going to the lost woods in order to locate the mask you basically just go through the torches like you normally would but instead of continuing to follow the embers in the wind like you would to get to korok forest you just follow the first set of embers until you reach the chest now if you recall what i said like an hour ago i still have one more thing to mention about the korok seeds that being how the mask affects collecting them it will shake whenever you're near a korok it's primarily useful if you're a couple short and want enough to upgrade your inventory this mask turns the koroks from passive collectibles into active collectibles it doesn't go against what i said earlier about hezu's gift since it doesn't really feel like he was implemented for the sole intent of allowing players to final 900 koroks but rather to find a few specific ones so they can increase their inventory aren't you glad you stuck around for that the ancient mask is the one that involves majora's mask and it's kind of weird to think about how this same mask from the video game called the legend of zelda majora's mask and not just a fun easter egg like in the link between worlds it was actually an artifact that some guy called misco stole from the royal family of hyrule the game even points it out to you since this book where you get the quest is obviously not in these ruins unless you purchase dlc so that's kind of interesting anyway the quest is just going to the colombo ruins and pulling out the chest with magnesis majora's mask is a pretty cool item making you blend in with any enemy there's not much else to it just a cool armor piece i guess the best part of the fairy clothes quest is the fact that the royal family of hyrule apparently considered the clothes of tingle a historically significant artifact the first piece is located at the exchange ruins brilliant because of tingle's role in the wind waker as a freaking leech the other one is at a place where sinners were imprisoned so prison a sweet reference to wind waker where he's in prison the final piece is located in the mauve village ruins though based on the hand it could be literally any village ruins the cool boost you get with this outfit is a nighttime speed boost because i guess that since tingle stole the pictobox and wind waker that means he's a thief and thieves usually work at night that's the only reason i can think of the twilight relic has you going to the sage temple ruins to find minna's helmet it's fairly simple and requires no effort when equipping it you get guardian resistance there's not much more to it other than a reference to twilight princess phantasma is the last quest that you find in misco's journal having you find an armor set that looks like the phantoms from the phantom hourglass and spirit tracks the helmet can be found in the colosseum ruins the armor can be found in the sacred ground ruins and the grease can be found in the hyrule garrison ruins looks kind of cool and gives you an attack up bonus royal guard rumors has you exploring the entirety of hyrule castle to get the royal guard outfit one piece is located on the guard chamber another piece located in an offshoot of the dining hall and the final piece is located on the second floor of the sanctum apart from looking kind of whatever it gives you a pretty good offensive boost by consuming less stamina when charging up your weapons it's also just a kind of fun treasure hunt throughout hyrule castle for the champions battle there's another journal that leads you to more quests to get more armor the first of these is the merchant hood which is found in the spring of courage equipping it increases your climbing speed but only sideways i don't know why there's that specific stipulation but it's kind of amusing so i'll let it pass garb of the winds as you go into coral lake to find a chest inside of this chest is the lobster shirt that link wore the start of the wind waker it also provides a bit of heat resistance which is a final throwback considering that that game started on a tropical island usurper king has you finding the xant helmet somehow i never even discovered this until this most recent playthrough of the game anyway you can find an intabus hollow a swamp just south of the dueling peaks equipping it makes you unfeasible which is a weird buff considering it's ant's helmet but overall it's kinda cool i guess dark armor has you looking for phantom ganon armor apart from looking really cool it also increases your stealth and damage output when using bone weapons i will say though that majora's mask does a better job at stealth and it's also way easier to find so make of that information what you will the armor is located in sergeant woods the helmet is located at the end of quarter lake not to be confused with coral lake to find the lobster shirt and the creams are found in the aberra forest just these to the lakeside stable and that is all the new armor that the dlc adds one somewhat annoying thing about these armor sets is that none of the dlc armor can be upgraded at the fairy fountains i suppose it makes sense but it doesn't mean it's not a little disappointing that this sweet looking armor doesn't really get much utility outside of looking cool there are two more things you need to talk about before we move on to the shrines however firstly teleportation rumors you get a travel medallion you can place anywhere in the world to teleport to at any given time it's pretty convenient to say the least particularly with the under a red moon quest it's found at the lumae labyrinth in this one room filled with guardians needless to say my first playthrough was pretty scary upon first opening this chest and the final thing to talk about in this section is the ancient horse armor you can find the bridle on satori mountain and it gives any horse two additional spurs which makes them just that little bit faster especially if you have a horse with five base spurs the saddle is the cool piece of armor though and it can be found in the melania spring the assad allows you to teleport the horse directly to you no matter where on the map they are so it makes traversing with them a lot more fun since you can get them unstuck a lot easier at least it's more fun until you complete the final trial where you get this sweet motorcycle the fact that this piece of concept art made it into the final product means that anything is possible this is easily the best reward for anything in the entire game it's easier and more fun to get anywhere you need to go than anything else on foot and it runs off of random items so if you're a hoarder you'll have nothing to worry about i don't really have much to say about it other than the fact that dude it's a sweet motorcycle overall the things added to the base dlc that aren't special challenges are bit or miss looking for the new armor can be fun but it's not enough of a hook to get me to spend 20 dollars however with a sweet motorcycle and a cool challenge on the great plateau i wouldn't say that it's a complete waste besides it doesn't really matter when the rest of the dlc is really good so let's get into that [Music] oh yeah music's back baby the dlc shrines and breath of the wild are some of the best in the entire game there are a couple i don't like but we'll get to them in a bit first let's start off with the shrines you complete on the great plateau the most interesting part about the shrines on the grey plateau is the fact that you still only have a quarter of a heart so you can't take any damage in the shrines as well this leads to the challenge coming from having to find a way to complete all the puzzles without taking any damage collected soul is the first of these shrines the main idea has to do with rolling balls and spiky balls as the collected part of the name would suggest what you need to do is collect a certain orb and place it into the pedestal this can be needlessly difficult considering how easy it is to get hit which will take away your health causing immense frustration otherwise a pretty fun shrine stop to start is perhaps my favorite shrine on the great plateau it starts in this one section where you need to cross this spiked floor that's constantly shifting up and down there are three metal objects that you can place in order to cross it it can be a little tricky since the shifting floor will cause them to move but if you place them right you won't really have to worry about it the next section has these gears that constantly move so you'll need to find a way to stop it before rotates you into these spike rows it's not that tricky you just have to be good with your timing you have this section with these spiked balls you need to glide around so you'll need to decide which one you move out of the way with magnesis and which one you use stasis on along with also requiring you to have good timing once you cross the gap you get to the end of the shrine where you have to cross this path the spike wall coming from behind you which forces you to run straight ahead with a bunch of pillars that jut out with spikes on the end forcing you to stop and pay attention before advancing after this you collect your spirit orb overall a pretty enjoyable shrine a major test of strength plus is one of the most cathartic shrines in the game since you have the one hit obliterator which instantly kills the guardian in front of you however it isn't that easy since there's an entire bottom floor after you kill the guardian you'll head down a path and encounter a guardian scout and since you have a quarter of a heart it means that it serves as a threat to you for the first time all game eventually you'll get the key and get to the final room with four guardian scouts you can't really brute force this room since the other guardians make killing a certain one more difficult in order to defeat all four it requires a strategy as to which order you'll kill them and how you'll kill them overall it is easily the best test of strength shrine in the entire game path of light is a pretty cool shrine in the last are the new shrines on the great plateau the most interesting part about it is that everything is pitch black with fire lasers and these orb things are the only things that can produce light which leads to a shrine that takes the opening section of varudania and makes it far more interesting it starts with this room with a bunch of lasers that you have to traverse around the last one being on a moving platform then you get to this section where you need to use torches in order to orient yourself around these moving spike walls then you have to traverse through a room that has these flame pillars that follow a certain pattern that you have to notice in order to get through it safely in the final room you have to kill three guardian scouts the only challenge coming from the darkness after this you get to the end and claim your spirit orb it's probably my least favorite shrine on the great plateau that's not to say it's bad just that it doesn't really have any interesting ideas outside of it being pitch black after you complete all the shrines on the great plateau you're send on a mission to complete three shrines dedicated to a certain divine beast with 12 in total it first starts with you finding this strange pedestal that gives you the location of the shrines on these maps on the surfaces of the pedestal you'll also meet up with cavs who just happens to be at the thing every time there are different types of challenges you have to do in order to open the shrine one associated with each shrine the way that you figure these challenges out are hints given to you by cass let's start with the quest associated with rivali in rito village you'll hear about a dragon in a canyon so you'll go to investigate and find this real guard from here you just have to wait for the dragon to show up in the canyon around 1am all you have to do from there is shoot its horn to reveal the shrine the next trial is one of the ring trials with you needing to shield surf down the side of hebrew mountain it's pretty fun mostly because of the shield surfing once you get to the end the shrine reveals itself the last of these trials is to shoot 4 targets at the flight range once again this task is pathetically easy i'd argue it's harder to get to the shrine after you hit the targets than it is to hit the targets i will give it some credit though since you do have to hit for whilst in bullet time mode so it's a little tricky with stamina management for mifa's quest you must first learn about the trials from prince sidone and mifa's diary after this you'll get your first clue and head over to orea's grotto from here you'll get the hint that you need to glide down to the shrine at sunrise it's not exactly subtle but it works for what it is the next trials just beat some guardians there's literally nothing else to it the last challenge also involves rings with you having to climb a waterfall and paraglide through them all it's not quite as fun as the volleybank trial but i guess it's fine otherwise for daruk's trial the first try you must overcome is to defeat an igneotalus titan basically just a bigger version of the regular igneotalis it's a pretty fun boss fight with these gusts of wind allowing you to glide up and use ice arrows to get onto him and to attack his orbain and not much else to it just a fun fight the next trial involves you having to scale death mountain to get through these rings it's pretty fun and is the only one where i felt like the timer would be a little tight the final trial has you having to survive lava's fiery fate nice and vague just the way i like it basically you need to find a way to get to the center ring here it involves you having to place a metal block underneath it and then finding a place where you can jump down and glide over to it this is my favorite trial for rudonia because it uses navigational puzzle solving with you knowing where you need to go you just have to figure out how to get there for boces trial your first trial is to kill a maldo-king and once again you can just stand around on these ruins and use the same strategy except this time it takes longer to kill using electric type weapons will make the fight a lot quicker though the second trial is another ring one this time using a sand steel to get through them all faster i thoroughly enjoyed this one it's about as fun as ravalli's ring quest the final trial involves you going back through the inca clan hideout this time to get an orb it's once again this stupid stealth section that shares the exact same problems as going through the yiga clan hideout normally the ending almost makes up for it with you throwing the orb down the pit and these two adventurers getting really upset at you since the orb was going to be used to gain access to a treasure not realizing that the treasure was a shrine it's not enough to make up for the whole trial but it is a charming ending one last thing before we actually get to the shrines and how they're designed i wanted to talk about my favorite part of these trials that being that they aren't just random gameplay segments but rather trials that the champions had to do it contextualizes them and fits them organically into the world now just something interesting that i thought of it's another case that shows that at every point in this game everything has a sense of logic and reasoning behind it there's no gameplay for the sake of gameplay there's a definitive reason behind everything the rest of the dlc shrines with one exception are excellent and some of the best in the game all of them are puzzle shrines which makes actually going out of your way to complete them feel rewarding aim for stillness is another shrine about air currents though this is probably one of the weaker ones in the game due to how simple it is to solve it does have a little bit of navigational puzzle solving but there's not enough for the shrine to feel like it has substance it's one of the weaker dlc shrines which will become even more apparent the further we get into this section though it isn't a bad shrine master the orb as you need to guide this large orb down this course you'll have to notice how the orb moves through the course and then use cryonis and stasis to allow it to get through the whole course without falling off of it once you've successfully done that you just launch it over to assassination and go through the gate for your next emblem it's not a difficult shrine but it is pretty fun the four winds is all about air currents and is by far the best shrine for more volley's quest the whole shrine is about traversing through this thing you need to use the air currents in order to get access to different parts to activate certain switches some are easy like this one where you just have to go inside the structure but some are trickier with you having to wait for the currency at a windmill opening a door and shooting the switch before it closes the whole thing is really satisfying to figure out and is one of my favorites the melting point has you melting a series of ice blocks but the puzzle element comes from the fact that you have to melt some of them only a little bit the main section of the shrine has you melting some ice blocks to stand on in order to melt blocks higher up however depending on what method you're using to melt the blocks it will melt both the ice you're standing on and the eyes you actually need to melt it's a fun little puzzle section overall in the end has you needing to take a block in order to climb up this ledge since cryonis won't give you enough height to get over the ledge a very solid shrine support and guidance is a very tricky shrine with you having to guide this orb down to its pedestal by using cryonis there's a lot of trial and error involved here with you having to think about how the cryonis pillars will affect how the orb moves through the path and what the optimal place to put them is you can also stop the orb in place in certain areas which would allow you to move certain pillars if need be if you know what you're doing then it's a very easy shrine but if you're more like me who doesn't notice or remember basic things and it's a very hard very satisfying shrine to complete secret stairway is about a secret stairway there's this waterfall with metal boxes on rails so your job is to moon them in a way so you can drop them onto a cryous block to hold them in a certain position it can be kind of tricky to get the timing down but it's not a massive issue or anything the main challenge comes from making the staircase the shrine is named after and it requires a bit too much trial and error for my taste but it's a decent shrine overall moving targets is the worst dlc shrine it starts out decent enough with you having to time when you detonate the bomb and the challenge gets expanded upon in the classic nintendo fashion but then you get to the end and it's an apparatus shrine because they just had to bring the worst type of shrine from the base game over to the dlc as well it's really difficult to not only move it into the correct position but it's also difficult to get a good grasp of the perspective so you could potentially set it too low or too high for the ball to hit the platform it's incredibly frustrating and ruins what would have otherwise been a solid shrine blind spots has you having to find different ways to avoid fire and other such stuff with as the name would suggest blind spots first you go through this section where you have to avoid the fire by positioning yourself correctly on the cube then you have a similar section but this time with spikes then you have this section with a bunch of guardian scouts you need to take care of to avoid getting knocked off the platform then you have to climb this waterfall to get to the monk it's a pretty fun shrine and is a great palette cleanser after the abysmal shrine that came from earlier block the blaze as you need to block a bunch of fire lines for the first one you just take this metal block to make a path through the fire but the shrine isn't that simple for its entire duration one of the puzzles as you need to place two blocks at a slant so you can have a safe passage underneath the flames then you have an apparatus section that's actually not that bad it doesn't need to have precise positioning so it's a lot easier to focus on just blocking the flames overall a decently fun shrine big or small sees you in a long corridor with you having to figure out how to activate this gate at the end of the corridor with this electric generator it's a pretty fun electricity puzzle and is yet another example of electricity puzzles being the best type in the entire game there are a lot of different lines you need to connect and there are only a few objects you can use to connect those lines so the puzzle element comes from needing to find out how you can most efficiently connect them there's one bad element of the shrine though since yet again there's another apparatus puzzle you move this laser around and your goal is to complete this power line by activating and deactivating these switches thankfully it's optional but that doesn't mean it wasn't a terrible idea i really do not understand their obsession with these motion control puzzles it's one of the worst aspects of skyward sword as well and i cannot for the life of me tell why on earth they thought bringing this garbage back would be a good idea dual purpose is another shrine that has you solving an electricity puzzle involving you having to open a gate it's a bit difficult for me to accurately describe but i'll do my best basically you're moving these cubes and trying to get them into correct positions you're not only trying to open the gate though you're also trying to get up so you can walk through the gate so you have to move one block to somewhere in range before you send the staircase you make and then move everything back in place in order to open the gate to make things a little more complicated some of the blocks are climable and others aren't so you have to take those into account as you move everything as well it's pretty fun shrine not much else to it the last shrine is easily my favorite inside the box it all involves you having to get these colored orbs into the correct pedestal the solution is why i love it so much there are these torches on the wall that denote a number as well as these colored things i don't feel like learning the name of so it's obvious that you need to place the orb in with the associated color and number but there's no obvious way to get that number up a flight of stairs is another freaking apparatus puzzle but it's the best one in the game by far basically all you're doing is shaking the box around and if you pay attention then you'll notice multiple orbs inside of the box depending how many are in the box is the column that you need to place the orb figuring this out made me feel real smart because the shrine is kind of designed in that way because the solution is so creative that noticing it immediately fires the dopamine directly into your brain it makes the shrine as a whole really stick out in my mind by far my favorite dlc shrine and one of my favorites in the game in general not too surprising considering that it came from the quest tied to fond du boris before we get to the final section i wanted to bring up the illusory realm fights the reason i'm doing this here is because they're so closely tied to the champion trials and the champion trials are too closely tied to the shrines that it didn't make sense for it to be in any other section there's also not that much to mention but it wouldn't be an all-encompassing retrospective if i ignore them the fights are largely the same though there are a few differences that make them more interesting than previously firstly you have the champion abilities or both as fury and dork's protection being the most useful against them secondly you're limited in what food you can eat your armor and your weapons and arrows they're all a fair bit more difficult due to these changes but there isn't that much actually change about the fights in general water by ganon's floor is a bit slower to move through like you're traveling through mud or something fire blight is still pathetically easy wind blight is basically the same fight and thunderblade ganon is actually a bit easier since if you perform the first half the same as usual then you can backload a ton of verbose's furies which just destroys him the most interesting thing about these fights is how they're justified in the game in a shocking move for nintendo they slightly characterize link by saying that these illusory round fights are actually a representation of the fear in his heart or something like that it's interesting to think that these creatures disturb this slab of wood to the core but considering how dirty the english localization team did to link i'll take it overall the shrine and overall quests associated with them are fairly interesting and do a great job at doing what dlc should actually do that being to expand the experience but there's one more thing to talk about before we get to the conclusion [Music] there are two main trials in the dlc for breath of the wild the trial of the sword and the fifth divine beast and i have no idea why it's called a divine beast it probably just because it's another dungeon it doesn't even get a proper name you only learn it from the igneotalis titan and malduking you fight it's pretty much just a glorified shrine rather than a huge creature but sure game i guess i'll let this one slide but let's talk about the trial of the sword first this is most comparable to the savage labyrinth from wind waker or cave of ordeals from twilight princess a huge combat gauntlet where you go from floor to floor defeating and killing enemies however there are two main differences that make it a lot more enjoyable than those two previous gauntlets firstly there are three different sets of rooms where you can save your progress which means that if you die on floor 48 you won't have to start over from the very beginning you do still have to do like 20 floors so that element of stress as you try to survive is still there but it's a lot more manageable and less overwhelming secondly much like ebon tide island when entering you lose all of your items armor and food this means that you have to forage within the floors to find your weapons and food you can't just rely on the overpowered goods that you've enjoyed throughout the game the first set is 12 floors the second 16 and the third 23 floors the aesthetic is also a lot cooler than those other ones instead of just some boring cold stone dungeon look it's a mix of the shrines in the wooded area it gives everything this ethereal or ghostly vibe it's visually distinct enough for it to have its own identity but not so vastly different as to not fit in with the game's general aesthetic now onto the floors themselves the first floor is pretty easy it does a good job at establishing everything that you'll need to get good at in order to succeed on later floors it shows that there's more to the trials than just beating the enemies you have to explore the environments to find weapons food and other things like wood and cork leaves that are useful in later trials the next floor you'll learn a bit more about how enemies will position themselves in the world along with different enemy types and how it will change your strategies it continues like this with it slowly ramping up in difficulty until you get to the first boss floor this being the first boss floor it's relatively easy it's just a stone talus fight with limited weapons and food after this you get a breather room with some weapons and a bunch of food then you're thrown right back into another set of more difficult encounters with the zolfos naturally there's a bunch of electric type enemies in a series of rooms with water this is where things actually start to get a little difficult since those alphas are the most despicable scumbags on demand here for some reason and as some sort of reference to the first game wizrobes in this instance are kind of stupidly difficult for someone who sucks at video games such as me after this escalating difficulty you come across another boss this time of hinox once again it's just the same fight but now you have less weapons after this you'll get to the middle trials which are more of the same but with a different theme for the environments being more focused on platforms rather than the basic force-esque theme from the beginning trials there's a lot of rooms where you need to make sure you remain on the move because of enemies with arrows it's a little overwhelming but nothing too mean then you get a few of these pitch black rooms a few rooms with increasingly difficult guardian scouts then you get to the final trials also known as actually impossible in master mode maybe you could get through them but i've never been able to and i don't want to spend 20 hours doing something i don't want to do the first room is filled with metal weapons but naturally there's a thunderstorm there's a storm going on for the first few floors and then when you get to the stallnocks the next few floors are all about rocks and lava then you get some icy terrain followed by areas that are a little more reminiscent of hyrule in general with ruins and such for most of these floors it's just a lot of difficult enemy encounters not much to really talk about the final level is definitely the hardest one with you having to take care of a guardian turret a wide main lynel as well as a horde of bokoblins riding horses if you strategically use some of the ancient arrows you got throughout this section you can pretty easily kill him with an ancient arrow after this you get your reward for completing this challenge which is a fully powered master sword instead of only doing 60 damage around malice and guardians it now does it all the time it does still become unavailable but otherwise you now have the best weapon in the game overall i like this trial it's fun and it requires you to think about how you approach combat but now into the best part of the dlc the divine trial otherwise known as divine beast tamar after you complete all 16 of the dlc shrines you'll be summoned back to the shrine of resurrection for one final trial and it is by far the best dungeon in the game because the game knows that you've already completed the other divine beast it means it can actually be kind of difficult and it just blows the rest of them out of the water much like the regular divine beast the dungeon moves this time having this gear turn clockwise or counterclockwise the terminals are all in different rooms that splinter out from the central corridor so the main puzzle is trying to figure out how to get this gear to affect these rooms some puzzles are easy like using magnesis to push this block into this hole but others are a bit trickier like you having to find out where to put this metal bar the puzzles in the actual runes once you actually do it are pretty good too they even have something to do with a certain divine beast in the game which is pretty cool the fire room has this ball puzzle where you need to time when to get it into this track using the movement of the dungeon to try and move it to the other side of the room there's this room where you have to put this metal bar here to make the rest of the room move so you can glide over to the terminal but the best room is the water room because of course it is you first need to push up this pin to make a platform move along with the rest of the dungeon then you glide over to the main part of the room with you having to make this frigid looking thing move so you can stop this pout from filling up the room with water then you have to get this ball over to the other side to turn the spigot so that water can come out of this spout here this allows you to activate the terminal and leave it sounds easy but the actual process of trying to solve this room is what makes it so much fun it's the room that stuck the most in my mind as i was riding this section but those are just the puzzles there's also the aesthetics of the dungeon which are phenomenal it looks the same as a regular shrine but it also has a lot of elements of design taken from the divine beasts which leads to an interesting combination of the two and the music is great as well he takes the bass shrine theme but it adds some strings piano percussion and a choir that slowly builds up throughout the dungeon which gives it a real sense of finality to the game oddly enough it does a better job at it than hyrule castle but maybe that's just me overall one of my favorite dungeons in the entire series it is really good now remember earlier in the video when i stated that thunderblade ganon was the hardest boss in the base game and how calamity ganon was my favorite in the base game that's because monk moscosia is the hardest boss and my favorite in the game in general but he was added in the dlc he is a really fun boss with a very epic piece of music there are several phases all of them adding up to a really engaging fight that's constantly keeping you on your toes with you always having to be ready for whatever attack he does next urbosa's fury is relatively ineffective on him best use if you need to stun him for a moment his first phase has him mostly just dashing at you but once you get to a quarter of his health down the fight becomes a lot more interesting as he creates a bunch of clones of himself i don't really like this phase as much as the other ones there's a lot of dodging you have to do as well as needing to attack every clone in order to find the real one that makes it a bit of a repetitive slog but the rest of the fight is so fun that it's more of a minor inconvenience than anything else once he gets down to half health he becomes a giant and starts sending a bunch of those spiked balls at you after they land you need to grab one and then bring it up to him so he'll shock himself much like thunderblade ganon then he'll start to tilt the arena while sending more spiked balls down at the end of the fight he'll summon more clones of himself at you or fire a laser at you overall the fight is very engaging and is a definite highlight of the game for me overall the trial of the sword and tamar provide very fun experiences that expands the dungeony content of the game as well as being some of the most challenging and rewarding experiences in the series these are what makes the dlc worthwhile now let's finally wrap this thing up [Music] breath of the wild is a game that i come back to time and time again it's also a game that i've had a lot to say about from the engaging exploration experience to the attention to detail in every aspect to the ways that they attempted to reinvent the dungeons every aspect of this game comes together to craft one of the greatest gaming experiences of the last decade it ditched a lot of what made the zelda series so special for a lot of people and this whole thing could balloon out into an entire discussion about what even makes a zelda game a zelda game but i'll save that for a later day besides that conversation takes away what made this game so special its boldness to depart from traditions to try new things is commendable its laser focused vision on exploration over anything else may make things like the story a little underwhelming even if i liked it and it may also negatively impact the dungeons but to be so committed to a certain idea has always been something that zelda has done so yes breath of the wild is a quote-unquote true zelda game not everything it does works but there's a reason so many praised it why it won game of the year why put 500 hours into it play through it at least 10 times and will continue to do so in the future it's a special game that only comes once in the blue moon a game that takes the gaming world by storm a game that is constantly cited as a source of inspiration for other series to massively shake up from the status quo and that it is successful if they do it right for all these reasons and more it's no wonder why breath of the wild is nintendo's masterpiece [Music] foreign

Channel: Game Boys

Views: 232,638

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Id: qLTDQ7cNZc4

Length: 207min 41sec (12461 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 17 2022