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The adage goes:

If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.

It surprises me when people don't stop to think about this with some very common items. Free sites are full of advertisements. Free apps are, too, or have in app purchases. So, what about credit cards?

Some cards have an annual fee, but if yours doesn't, does that mean you're

I’m making it my goal to complete 12 games in 2018. And I’m going to write about those games and my experiences playing them here.

I’ve realized that far too often, I’ve bought a game and tired of it before being interested in the next thing. I realized around a year ago that I beat 0 games on the Wii U. I played many. I got to the last level in Pikmin 3. I played, with a friend, most of Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze. And I liked many of these games, too. I just didn’t push myself to complete them before tiring of them or letting life get in the way.

I’m also making it a goal to play some games that slipped through the cracks in my gaming history. And so, here’s a confession I have to make…

Wind Waker was my first Zelda title

Yep. That’s it. I said it. I’ve never played Ocarina of Time. I’ve never played Majora’s Mask. And I’ve never played A Link To The Past, so I skipped out on A Link Between Worlds, but I’ve got that too.

• I bought the NES The Legend of Zelda on the Wii VC. I played it for a few minutes before realizing I had no idea what to do, and looked up a few guides. I played for an hour or so and then stopped.
• I bought ALTTP on the Wii VC, as well, but I don’t know if I ever opened the channel.
• I bought Ocarina of Time on 3DS when it was rereleased. I’ve actually started OoT a few times in my life, but never got very far for reasons I’ll go into later this year (perhaps once I play and beat it?)
• I’ve got Majora’s Mask 3DS as well. I’ve never started it, since I didn’t beat OoT.

Notes for review

• The music is, generally, phenomenal. Some can get repetitive]
• I had a [STEALY THINGIES ENEMY] take my shield from me, then cough it up onto unreachable terrain where it despawned. Shields are only 50 rupees, but I really didn’t want to have to go through all of that again. I also played the flute, then got knocked aside by a rock. The bird came by to swoop me up but I wasn’t where I was supposed to be so it just… left?

I’m a dirty cheater

The evolution of RPGs vs 2D Platformers

Look at Super Mario World vs. New Super Mario Bros. U Look at ALTTP vs. Skyward Sword

Engine Roughness

Design Roughness

Difficulty Through Obscurity

I found many things in the game were made difficult because of their undiscoverability, or unintuitiveness. I suppose this is a way to make a game difficult or pad its length, but I find it to be unfair at best and user hostile at worst. The 3rd bottle Link can acquire requires you to swim under the bridge to Hyrule Castle: as best I know, nothing in the game tells you that anything is under there.

My same frustration applies to using the claw shot to get into Skull Woods:

https://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda03/Walkthrough/08/002.png

I spent around 25 minutes traversing the map, looking for different ways to get to Skull Woods. I tried going to Death Mountain in the light world and using the portal there. I tried every walkable path there was. I tried swimming around a bit. At this point, I looked up what to do and when I went to this spot, I realized that the anchor points, the skulls are not visible from the eastern shore of the river where you must activate your claw shot from.

This extends to dungeons, as well. Most of the games statues cannot be moved, but in some of them, you can push one (like in this room and this room) to weigh down a switch. There are blocks throughout the world that are immobile, but every once in a while, the way to progress is through (pushing one of them)[https://www.zeldadungeon.net/Zelda03/Walkthrough/03/030.png]. You get to figure this out while three braziers stand in the room as red herrings and you dodge a laser from an unkillable foe. Fun!

Gargoyle’s Domain, I think was the worst example of this that I found. In Dark Palace, you saw a cracked floor on a walkway, and upon bombing it, you were granted a hole to a lower floor. On the 1st Floor of Gargoyle’s Domain, there are many cracks in the floor that use the exact same texture, but which do nothing when bombed. Eventually, you get to this room and surely enough, a bomb there will allow you to complete the dungeon. There’s only two problems:

1. All the previous cracks in the floor did not respond to bombs, and
2. I had no idea you could pick up / throw bombs.

Considering I didn’t know bombs were tossable, I looked for other options for 20-30 minutes and traversed the whole dungeon multiple times before deciding to look it up. Why is the floor cracked there? What purpose does that serve other than to trick / confuse the player? What does it add to the game, experience, ambiance, etc.?

Difficulty through expectations of perfection

I feel modern Zelda games feature combat to break up room- and sometimes floor-sized puzzles that needed solving; how do I progress through this room? how do I get this item from this room to the last? what does the switch I hit in this room do?

Too many of ALTTP’s “puzzles,” however, felt like you were expected to expertly execute some arbitrary task (dodging floor tiles, for instance) with limited hearts, or else get a one-way ticket to the beginning of the dungeon when you perished.

And then there are the Floormasters in Skull Woods. This would have been one of my favorite Dungeons in any Zelda game if the Floormasters either were not present, were less frequent, or returned you to the beginning of the room rather than resetting the entire dungeon. It was frustrating, coupled with the unpolished combat, how frequently I got caught and sent rooms away. Which brings us to…

Unpolished combat

Boss Fight Clunkiness

Why do bosses return you to the beginning of the entire dungeon, versus just outside the room?

Some incredible dungeons

Everything prior to Moldorm (we’ll get there) in the Tower of Hera was incredible.

I loved the water manipulation in the Swamp Palace.

How fucking awesome is it that there are multiple entrances and exits to Skull woods?! I walked in and found a few small rooms. One had the map in a chest and I got to see the entire

The common thread here is that the puzzles in these dungeons required you to really understand the place you were in, not unlike some of my other favorite Zelda Dungeons (Snowpeak Ruins, for instance).

Quick Hits

Mazes

The game also seemed to really appreciate dimly lit mazes strewn with enemies. It’s interesting to me that the Zelda series seems to have abandoned this convention. I think that’s a good call. They feel like filler to me.

Muldorm

Moldorm was a miserably boss fight for a dozen reasons. Here’s a video of the fight if you’re unfamiliar, but my gripes are:

1. If you get pushed off the edge of the platform, you fall down to 5F and have to walk back up to 6F where Muldorm is located.
2. If you get pushed through the hole in the middle of the platform, you fall down to 4F and have to walk back up through 5F (where all the enemies respawn) to 6F where Muldorm is located.
3. The staircase to 6F is in the north side of the room. The entrance to Muldorm’s platform is to its south, which is just needless walking (and you’ll be doing it a lot).
4. If you fall off / get pushed off the platform, Muldorm regains all lost health.

Sheesh. Not sure how this got through testing.

Heart Pieces

I appreciate that heart pieces are not in dungeons, because getting to them / back to them is not super convenient. Even if it only takes a few minutes to do, enemies respawn often and combat is incredibly weak. Many are very well hidden, which surprises me coming from recent Zelda titles

Lost in Translation?

The Magic Hammer, Magic Mirror and Magic Boomerang do not use magic. The Magic Powder, Magic Cape and lantern do. Go figure.

The SNES Classic

The SNES Classic is a nearly perfect little console. For $80, you get two controllers and, for Nintendo, a lot of freedom, I feel. The controllers look and feel great (though Europe’s multi-colored controller buttons puts ours to shame) and the console features save states, lots (and lots and lots and lots) of quality games and great options like a CRT filter and custom borders. I also love that the console is powered via Micro USB and attaches to a display through HDMI. Perhaps this is grading Nintendo on a curve, but the Nintendo of late has surprised me with its USB-C-powered Switch and Micro USB powered classic consoles.

If I had to pick nits, it’d be that Nintendo didn’t include a system reset / “back to menu” option on the controllers, and that the wires are so short! The short wires can be combatted with some $5/ea extension cables, but considering save states are only possible if you go back to the system menu, each time I wanted to make one, I’d have to stand and walk an (admittedly short, due to the cable length) distance to do so. I’d have paid an extra $10-20 for either wireless controllers or extension cables. If I were to play another SNES Classic game, I might spring the $25 for an 8Bitdo SF30 with those beautiful multicolored buttons.

It’s amazing this isn’t just a standard offering of Nintendo’s that they’ll sell like the Switch or 3DS. The price is great, demand is high, and I don’t honestly think it would cannibalize eventual Virtual Console sales at all. This thing needs a display and a power source that your Switch and 3DS have built in! If you want to play some games with classic controllers on the big screen, you shell out for a SNES Classic and play at home. If you want to

spoilers will be abundant below the trailer

I never finished the Trial of the Sword, from Zelda DLC1.

The Switch (and I) have had a hell of a year. There've been a ton of good games coming out and coupled with a wild personal schedule and, of late, tons of travel during the football season, I never got back to it. I did plan to, but Splatoon 2 was released just a few weeks later which served as a distraction. A busy summer, the start of football and Super Mario Odyssey meant that I had gotten away from Zelda almost entirely.

The Champions' Ballad surprising drop in the fall brought me back instantly.

The DLC is structured as follows:

• Return to the Shrine of Resurrection for the One-Hit Obliterator. Complete combat trials around the plateau and finish four shrines.
• Find four platforms across Hyrule (one per Champion), each of which have three associated trials which unlock shrines.
• Return to the Shrine of Resurrection and complete the final dungeon
• Boss Fight
• Master Cycle Zero

Let's discuss, shall we?

The Plateau

The One-Hit Obliterator is such a fantastically named weapon. I read of it on Twitter before I opened the game up and was pumped to see what challenge was introduced by a weapon that could kill enemies in one hit. And then I read the description of the weapon. You have 1/4 of a heart and cannot eat food to heal, or unequip the OHO. I should have known!

The combat trials were very stressful, but not difficult. I only died once, and it was on my first trial (the forest one) before I had my legs under me. The combat in the snow, with the Blizzrobe, was the most intense. When you've only got 1/4 of a heart, Lizalfos (and even Keese) are terrifying.

The shrines themselves were... well, odd. After the high-stakes entrance to the shrine, their simplicity and ease was jarring. I'll list them below in the order I did them:

• Yowaka Ita (Collected Soul): This is the first shrine I did and it wasn't too challenging, to either figure out what to do or to execute. That's probably for the best, as you were still learning the OHO and what your limitations were. I did die once, from a rogue spiky ball that left its containment zone. I rolled my eyes pretty hard at that.
• Rohta Chigah (Stop to Start): This was not the hardest shrine, but probably the most technical. The theme of this shrine was quite heavy handed (and sharp!--I'll show myself out) and the challenge it offered was fair.
• Ruvo Korbah (A Major Test of Strength+): This was my favorite of these shrines. I didn't even notice the '+' at the end during my initial playthrough. The way the game toyed with your expectations of a combat trial when the floor opened up, and my thoughts as I entered the trial (from "Oh crap, a test of strength" to "Wait, I can kill the scout in one hit!" to "Oh, but it still has lasers") made it the best of this set.
• Etsu Korima (Path of Light): This was the one in the snowy mountains and for having the toughest trial to get in, was by far the simplest. I didn't feel threatened or die at all inside.

Finishing them was rewarding and the gravity of the situation, where any wrong move would spell your doom, was really fun after 200 hours in the game where a sense of mastery starts to kick in. I really enjoyed this segment and appreciate that the reward you got was not an item, but rather more content.

The Champions' Trials

The formula for each one is:

• Find The Monument
• Complete three trials
• Complete three Shrines
• Defeat _blight Ganon in the Illusory Realm

I found the monuments done really well. I loved the aerial-photo-style of the maps, so that you could benefit from the color of the world (snow, lava, grass) to help you orient yourself. I thought the zoom level was a little too generous in some cases, and would have been a better challenge if it were zoomed in more. Particularly, it would have been cool if the maps were less helpful and in order to find the precise spots, you needed to talk to the people Kass tells you about.

The trials themselves were generally great. I'll give them simple star rankings below, ★ to ★★★★★, for how enjoyable I found the trials to find and complete. The shrines were... hit or miss. I think they were a higher quality, percentage-wise, than the 120 in the base game, but it's easier to make 12 shrines than 120, and it's easier when you can assume the user has already experienced a substantial portion of the game, too.

The Illusory Realm fights were... hit or miss. Noticing a trend? I didn't find any of the fights to be earth-shattering in the first place, and restricting your gear worked better in some shrines than others. The health-items given were basically useless, unless I missed something useful to do with the specific items given, and I found Waterblight, in particular, to be very challenging without abusing Urbosa's Fury.

Again, listed in the order I completed them:

Revali

I started with Revali for the simple fact that I was most interested to see what they did with his story, and I found his memory to be very well done. Target practice was a decent challenge and very fitting for Revali. I'd never shield surfed in the game, so I didn't mind that mild challenge, and found a forced run-in with a dragon pretty neat considering it's totally optional in the "main" game.

• Target Practice at the Flight Range: ★★★★
• Shield Surfing from Hebra Peak: ★★★
• Shoot Dinraal's Glowing Horn: ★★★

Mipha

I don't share the internet's affection for Sidon, so seeing him as a wee babe wasn't anything to me, but I appreciate this bit of fan-service from Nintendo, even if it's lost on me. I found her trials fairly mediocre, though encouragement to fight flying guardians is something the game doesn't do often, so I appreciated this, as well.

• Climb the Waterfalls: ★★
• Reach the Ring in the Sea: ★★
• Defeat Four Guardians: ★★★★

Urbosa

Urbosa's memory was phenomenal and got me borderline verklempt. Her trials were also, I thought, wonderful. The Molduking was a great fight against a foreboding foe. I don't care for sand-seals or the Yiga hideout, but I like having a shrine next to that massive, mysterious hole in the world.

• Slay the Molduking: ★★★★★
• Slalom Course with Sand Seals: ★★
• Return to the Yiga Hideout: ★★★

Daruk

Daruk's memory was heartwarming if not super interesting or enlightening. Two of his trials were great, but kite surfing through rings was pretty lame.

• Hang-gliding down Eldin Volcano: ★★
• Stand in the Lava: ★★★★
• Chill the Igneo Talus Titan: ★★★★

The Champions' Shrines

There were 12 shrines. I don't recall which ones went with which Champion, and won't review them individually, but some overall thoughts:

• I thought there were some great execution-based challenges in this set. I felt a lot of mechanics from the game were explored in a more advanced way.
• Nintendo doubled down on motion control puzzles in the shrines: I feel like every one of these puzzles would have been better served as a different test of the players skills or brain.
• Best Shrine? Maybe the one in Eldin Province where you ride blocks along tracks until they drop into the oblivion. I appreciated the game forcing you to think on your feet and execute on a time limit.
• Worst Shrine? Probably the electricity one where, while wearing the Thunder Helm, you can simply walk through it all. I know that wearing the Thunder Helm is optional, but I don't see why Nintendo felt this was a good end-game challenge.
• I think the overall quality of these shrines shows just how thoroughly Nintendo missed an opportunity in the base game. It seems like Nintendo's goal was to have the shrines test a very isolated set of knowledge at one time and assume you knew very little (the "any shrine could be the player's fifth shrine" mentality) versus challenging the player to conquer difficult shrines and helping the player improve in the process.

Upgraded Champion Abilities

I'm a bit disappointed that the upgraded champions abilities only decreased their cooldowns. Urbosa's Fury has always felt overtuned, whereas the charge system on Daruk's Protection, Revali's Gale and Urbosa's Fury were points of frustration: frequently it was smart to waste the last charge or risk going into battle with a weakened power. Here's how I would have upgraded the Champion Powers:

• Mipha's Grace: Press LS and RS simultaneously to use (regardless of Link's health).
• Daruk's Protection: see below
• Revali's Gale: Hold X, then tilt LS to create a wind tunnel at a 45º angle in any direction.
• Urbosa's Fury: see below

Additionally, All Champion Abilities recharge in ten minutes. All Champion Abilities except for Mipha's Grace have individual charges which replenish in two minutes. This means that you're more than likely to go into battle with 3 full charges without having to waste them, but if you use all 3 at the start of a fight, you won't get more for 10 minutes.

I suspect Nintendo didn't change the specific behaviors due to additional programming and worries about Balance, but I feel these are good compromises. Being able to use Revali's Gale 3x every 2 minutes feels overpowered. Being able to use Urbosa's Fury 3x every 4 minutes feels insanely overpowered.

I do think it would have been cool for each hero to have a branching upgrade. For instance, upon defeating Thunderblight Ganon, you could choose from:

• Urbosa's Wrath: Link does 1.5x damage with all weapons and bows for 30s after use. Does not stack
• Urbosa's Rage: Urbosa's Rage recharges in 5 minutes instead of 10 minutes (see above proposal).

Dungeon

So like... what is the dungeon? I think it's the Master Cycle Zero engine? But it's odd that Nintendo preached the Divine Beasts' epic size as a reason to be excited for them, and then failed to deliver on that for the DLC. It might have been cool if the dungeon was some sort of sea creature that you had to find, enter and master, with an entrance questline similar to the existing dungeons.

The puzzles within were mostly well done, but two things stick out to me about the dungeon. In my "review" of the game sans-DLC, I said:

The Dungeons felt eerily empty, with a few enemies there for... some reason? I guess to convey how truly evil they were? But I'm not sure those few enemies added much to the Divine Beasts. [...] I feel Nintendo should have modified the intensity / quantity of enemies depending on how many hearts you have or how many other Divine Beasts you've conquered. In this way, the dungeons could have been intimidating sparring grounds with Guardian Scouts, Lynels or even Decayed Guardians / Guardian Turrets.

I also said:

I also cheesed Vah Naboris by using Revali's Gale to ascend into its humps, which strikes me as ridiculous: why are Champion Abilities even usable inside Divine Beasts? They should be disabled inside / on the beast and re-enabled when you activate the main control unit for the boss fight.

Nintendo actually addressed both of these complaints! I suspect that they took away the Champions' Abilities because they added guardians, but regardless, I'm glad they did. It helps that Nintendo knew that you had already completed the other four dungeons, but still...

I also was pleasantly surprised that the number / difficulty of enemies in the main hall of the dungeon ramped up as you activated terminals, which made for little bits of surprise as you progressed.

Maz Koshia

I loved this. I loved every part of it.

I loved the anticipation of what would happen next, followed by the shattering of expectations when the fight started.

I loved the epic floating platform in the sky.

I loved the fact that there was no precedent for this in the game, so the monk's moves were completely unknown. And then I loved what they are. Nothing seemed too ridiculous: laser beams? splitting into ten copies? turning into a giant? Check. Check. Check.

Miscellaneous

• The Final Memory was a good wrap up to the DLC. I wish it were more clear that Impa's sister, Purah, is the one taking the photo, but I did enjoy seeing the Champions interacting.
• The gear in this DLC is pretty cool. Zant's helmet and Link's lobster shirt, in particular, are awesome fan-service for me personally.
• The Master Cycle Zero is neat, but I wish there were a track or straightaway to take advantage of it. The fueling mechanic is neat, and it's quite fun to ride.
• The One-Hit Obliterator is such a fun mechanic, and I feel like it's underused. it'd be so rewarding to be able to take on a gauntlet of Lynels or Guardians with this. If you can dodge and parry appropriately, you'll be fine. If not, you'll have a long day. I also like the idea of trying to complete shrines perfectly, and think this could have made for some more interesting execution-based Shrines.

Overall

The Champions' Ballad is bittersweet.

I loved all the content it gave, but my biggest takeaway is how hamstrung Nintendo was by the original game's go-anywhere, do-anything (or don't) in any order mentality. I know that's what made it the Game of the Year, but I can't help but think that upping the complexity and difficulty of the shrines would have resulted in an even better game.

This content was inventive, creative, fun, appropriately challenging and epic in scope. I feel that the designers—unencumbered by the need to make this content accessible to players who just picked up the game two hours ago—were able to really flex their muscles and deliver incredibly engaging content.

I don't know of a solution to this that would let the game feel as open ended as it does, so I won't propose anything. I do think the game could be more difficult and expect more of the player, which might alleviate some of this. I chalk it up to Nintendo learning how to make "open air" games.

I wrote some "New Year's Resolutions" of sorts back in January and have yet to revisit. Because, of course I haven't. I did have a tech recruiter reach out to me and tell me that my list looked great and good luck with it, which was interesting...

Let's take a look, shall we?

Blog more.

Yeah. No.

0/10 progress made.

Instagram more.

I've already posted as much in 2017 as I did in 2016, and I've got a few more months to go. I'm at 27 posts in each year as of this writing, which is about once every 13.5 days. I probably could afford to post once every 5-10 days and not piss anyone off, so maybe I should do this more.

7/10 progress made.

Double 2016's charitable donations.

This one was... pretty bold, considering how much I donated in 2016. When I wrote it, I had a much cloudier picture of my financial picture / retirement savings and have since reallocated funds I would likely have donated to things like that. So, I'm not making it rain, so to speak, with that cash, but I'm not giving it away either. As it looks, I'll donate about as much as I did last year, perhaps a bit more. I'm content with this, but would like to do better.

6/10 progress made.

Play more video games. Complete more video games.

A new Nintendo Switch will help with this, especially with Breath of the Wild. I don't think ARMS or Mario Kart 8 Deluxe are games one can "beat" without getting really into competitive online play or slaving away at repetitive single player modes, but I did beat the solo missions in Splatoon and have played that a ton online. Super Mario Odyssey comes out this Friday (!!) and I should bury 100 hours or so into that, too. I did well here.

8/10 progress made.

Give more thoughtful gifts.

This is a tricky one to assess. I've been prouder of some and less proud of others. I've been giving less gifts overall, but trying to do so when I had something good to give. My mom, in particular, continues to be difficult to shop for :/

I've also had some decent gift ideas fall through for random reasons like literally not being able to find the item described or knowing a friend in a bind would have preferred cash to a thoughtful birthday gift.

I'm going to try to knock Christmas out of the park.

?/10 progress made. 4? 5?

Contribute to at least one OSS project.

I've asked some constructive questions on a few github projects I use at work, but "donating my time to the community" is not how I'd describe this in any way. Coding has not been something I've made time for this year, which is disappointing.

2/10 progress made.

Donate time, not just money, to others.

I don't want to make excuses here, but I do have a standing offer out to help a friend's nonprofit make a website that I haven't been taken up on. Womp.

When I wrote this, I wasn't sure what it would mean. Going to soup kitchens or something? I think I assumed it would be more digital or OSS related. I will give myself a slight amount of credit for trying (and in some cases, even succeeding!) to be a good listener this year, which has involved (at points) large time commitments.

3/10 progress made.

Learn to juggle.

Ha. I still have the balls and scarves. They are shoved in a snack drawer (don't ask) which I barely ever go into.

0/10 progress made.

Be kinder.

Another one that's hard to assess. I like to think I think about what I am about to say more. I have taken to repeating a statement often made by a friend, who frequently asks "is that unkind?" but I won't give myself a ton of credit for that.

?/10 progress made, which is probably a cop-out.

Care less about every little thing.

This is proving to me quite difficult! I am no less observant than I've ever been, and no less particular, either. I think this one will require a lot more work and time, but I have been trying to do this a bit, and am more aware of it than I've ever been.

2/10 progress made.

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That's a 32.5 (and a few ?'s) out of 100. Not good.

What I can do is review this list a time or two between now and the end of the year and see if I made a concerted effort in any areas to do a better job. I'll have to post about this again in November and December.

Let's see if I remember to (#1: Blog more).

Nearly three months after its release, I beat Breath of the Wild. I could have much sooner, but I really didn't want it to end.

Thank you, Nintendo, for the best gaming experience of my life :') #BreathoftheWild #NintendoSwitch pic.twitter.com/inDMuXKLaD

— Alex Bradley (@abrad45) May 21, 2017

In this post, which is nearly entirely spoilers, I wanted to discuss some of the things I wish the game did differently. Ultimately, my decision about the way the game works was set fairly early: Zelda games are about the thrill of exploration and feeling like you—vicariously, through Link—are the champion Hyrule needs. The freedom and openness and overwhelming insignificance that I felt very early on in Breath of the Wild were something I've never felt in any game before, and that instantly vaulted it to the top of my favorites list. With that said, no game is perfect and there are a few things that would have made it even better.

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Motion Controls

A few shrines—specifically Myahm Agana Shrine, Toto Sah Shrine and Katosa Aug Shrine—are just brutal. I'm not sure how these made it through testing. Many of the shrines felt like they had a cohesive goal that required thinking in addition to execution, but the motion-control puzzles in these just felt awful. Myahm Agana I solved by flipping the rotating maze on its side. After struggling with the Katosa Aug shrine in handheld mode (I literally was rolling across my bed trying to give the club enough torque) I used the Pro Controller and, lo and behold, it was much simpler that way. I'm not upset that some shrines are weaker than others, but for the difficulty to vary with the user's chosen control scheme on a console marketed for its ability to play anywhere is unacceptable.

Bullshit Patriarchal Story

I suspect that you, just like me, do not play the Zelda games for the story. They differ about as much as stories in the Mario series differ: Bowser / Gannon captures or otherwise incapacitates Peach / Zelda and Mario / Link has to come and save the day.

It feels stale and silly in both cases, but we're not talking about Mario today! We're discussing the fact that Link has to save Zelda yet again. Here's Jeremy Winslow writing for Feminist Frequency:

It’s not that she actually isn’t strong enough, but that she was designed to not be strong enough. Even after every denizen in the world states that Zelda is strong and has held off Ganon for 100 years without Link, the underlying issue remains that she needs to be rescued. Once again, without Link’s presence, the fate of Hyrule would be darkness and defeat, and Zelda, it seems, can never stop it, regardless of how strong she becomes.

I actually found that the story in this game was more compelling than in many of the series' titles, but still really weak. Specifically, I thought that the last two memories I found were #16 (Despair - photo 12) and #17 (Zelda's Awakening - Impa's Photo) really brought the story together and made me feel for Zelda and the futility of her efforts to save her Kingdom. To have faced the pressures she was facing and then for her frustration and anger to build up and release after it was too late for it to matter must have been agonizing, and Nintendo gets that across very well, I thought.

I just feel the game would have worked just as well if Zelda was in hiding... if Zelda was in a Tetra/Sheik-esque disguise helping you on your journey. If Zelda was waiting for you where your memories were, trying to help you to regain your memories and giving you words of encouragement on your way (and how much darker would the story have been if the stables were full of people groaning about how they just saw the princess running around the forest instead of actually doing something to make things better for them, her people?)

But here's what really gets me. Jeremy Winslow, again:

With Breath of the Wild, it’s apparent that Nintendo wanted to breathe bold new life into the gameplay of the series, and in that regard, the game is a tremendous success. But the dramatic shift in gameplay is linked to a narrative structure that refuses to shift in the slightest, a complete failure of storytelling imagination in a game otherwise brimming over with creative energy.

And they really did change so, so much about the game, but the story is just stuck in place. Why? Why does it have to be this way? Does Nintendo think that you wouldn't have felt as powerless against a daunting task in the early game, or as heroic to have completed it in the end, if the goal were slightly different than saving the princess?

Nintendo seems slow to change these things. They were content changing Zelda from 2D to 3D in the late 90s and then making the game more and more linear through Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword before finally changing things up... And that's their wheelhouse! They're much slower than that when it comes to social issues, which is disappointing, and Nintendo still doesn't clearly get it (remember Linkle?)

Also, it sucks that Nintendo can make a powerful race of women warriors in the Gerudo, and then make link crossdress to get into town. 2017 to Tokyo: get with it.

Me, The Player

This is, of course, not a real complaint. Nintendo broke so many conventions in this game that it's hard to keep track of them. For friends of mine who aren't familiar but see me play for a few minutes or watch short videos I sent, it's astonishing how many conventions the game introduced to the series: multiple weapons/weapon classes, durability, jumping, gliding (Korok Leaf in Wind Waker notwithstanding), food (apples, meat, etc.) and cooking, climbing, stealth (save for isolated incidents like barrels in Wind Waker), temperature and surely some I've forgotten.

So, one night I was lamenting to a friend how hard it was to find wood for the Tarrytown quest because I was going to all these stables and could only find 1-3 at a time. She said "You can just make it yourself. Chop down a tree, then chop the log."

MIND. BLOWN... I mean, how was I supposed to know that you chopped down trees to get wood? /s

Obviously, in the real world, that's how it works. But many a Zelda game has engrained in me finding materials, not making them. And weapon durability in this game had engrained in me that chopping trees broke weapons faster than not chopping them... so I just never chopped trees down after the first one or two on the Great Plateau. BotW rewards experimentation and this is something me, the player, is still not totally used to.

Distinctness in an Open-Air World

Okay, this one will take a bit to explain, and I'm not sure I love this title for it, but... I'm curious to know how Nintendo arrived at the size of Ruined Hyrule.

I'm almost certain that Nintendo did not set out from the start to create a world map larger than Skyrim for instance. I do think that distinct features of the map like shrines, quests and other POIs (the Colosseum, for instance) were developed independently and then combined to create the map you see today, and I think that's a bit of a bummer.

Let's take a look at some snippets of the game, sorted by scope, from largest to smallest.

Side Quest: From The Ground Up

The Tarrytown quest is one of the game's best. Without getting into too much detail, this quest requires you to travel from the questgiver to an unmarked spot multiple zones away, collect 100 wood total, travel to Southern Goron Mines, Rito Village, Gerudo Town and Zora's Domain—and none of those locations are specified, but you can deduce them—then back to the questgiver. It takes place in 40% of the game's zones and rewards you for being observant and talking to NPCs throughout your adventure and remembering what they had to say.

Main Quest: Divine Beast Vah Rudania

Vah Rudania's Main Quest is an example, since the other Divine Beast quests work similarly, but these take place across one zone and give you the lay-of-the-land before you take on the Divine Beast. They thoroughly immerse you in a zones' lore and unique environment and introduce you to relevant minor characters.

Shrine Quest: A Fragmented Monument

Unlocking Kah Yah Shrine is a small fetch-quest on Palmorae Beach in the Southeastern corner of the map. The entirety of the quest happens on Palmorae Beach and the nearby Cape Cresia.

Note that many Shrine quests are about this size. The Three Giant Brothers requires you to kill three Hinoxes in their own semi-private arenas in close proximity to each other. The Stolen Heirloom takes place entirely in Kakiriko Village. Trial of Thunder, which requires you to place colored orbs at the base of their respective statues, takes place entirely on and around Thundra Plateau.

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Shrines are totally self contained puzzles, regardless of size; those are the smallest and obviously totally self contained, so... There are two things that bug me here:

Very few quests in the game take place across zones

There are, of course, exceptions to this rule, but they're more fetch-quest-like than anything else. For instance, snapping photos of three leviathan skeletons for the brothers at Serenne Stable requires some long-term planning and exploration. The Eighth Heroine, given just outside Gerudo Town, rewards you for exploring Gerudo Highlands (and again if you explore Gerudo Highlands... again). The Serpent's Jaw, given by Kass, requires traversal of a dangerous forest and then chasing down Farosh (who patrols Ruined Hyrule) before returning to the Serpent's Jaw.

Very few quests overlap

• A Fragmented Monument: Nothing is really going on on Palmorae Beach / Cape Cresia, other than a few enemies / some wildlife to keep things interesting.
• The Three Giant Brothers: The Hinox arenas are secluded from most everything else on the map other than some bokoblins and wildlife.
• The Stolen Heirloom: Kakiriko Village is bursting with quests and shops, but I wouldn't call this quest overlap since... it's a town.
• Trial of Thunder: Nothing else is happening on or around Thundra Plateau other than some enemies and wildlife.

So... notice a trend?

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It's this second item, that quests don't overlap, which really irks me. It feels like hand holding from a game that otherwise seems to go to great lengths not to hold your hand. I'd love to have my opinion of this changed, but it seems to be that Nintendo developed these quests and the land they exist on as units, and then placed them on the map where ever there was room. Obviously, you couldn't put Thyphlo Ruins just anywhere on the map, but it could exist as an island off the edge of the Mainland (like Eventide Island), which would result in a smaller Ruined Hyrule overall.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting Nintendo artificially inflated the map size, or that I'm not excited about all the land there is to explore. Rather, I think the map's size is residue from Nintendo's first crack at developing a map this size and some of Nintendo's legendary map design is missing from the resulting world. I think Nintendo's focus was more on creating interesting topography and the like, and that a future game with this engine and with the knowledge learned from BotW under their belt would have a much better designed world.

I think a strength of the game is having the ability to complete a number of things at a time, and to slowly accomplish some smaller goals while working towards more overarching ones: I'd love to collect some more Yellow Lizalfo tails to upgrade my rubber armor. I'll look for those while finding the Yiga clan. Oh, and that guy at Gerudo Canyon Stable wanted me to find Rushrooms for him, and I see some over there... and... Why not let quests lead you to other quests? Why are so many shrines and quests in distinct spots, rather than being jumbled up? I'm not sure, but I'd love to know.

Divine Beasts

I think the non-linearity of the game is one of it's biggest strengths, and the Shrines' ability to be completed in any order with just your runes) is wonderful, but... the Divine Beasts as this game's Dungeons proper really suffer because of it.

Overall, I loved the epic, often cinematic lead-ups to each Divine Beast. Getting to know the Zora, Goron, Rito and Gerudo peoples, their respective Champions through flashbacks, their zones through "prove-your-mettle" quests and partaking in epic final trials to unlock each dungeon were all terrific. It's unfortunate that the worst of these was a stealth mission with a slow and dopey partner in Yunobo, and the other three were nearly identical archery sessions, but I digress...

Something that did bother me was the linearity of these sections. Breath of the Wild shines because of how freely it lets you make decisions about how you spend your time, which is why nearly two hours of approaching Zora's Domain without a Shrine to save progress / teleport out felt so linear. See also the time spent running to the Yiga clan. See also the time spent climbing Eldin Volcano with Yunobo, where if you try to teleport out you lose all progress and get a "Leave this Area" screen. Oh, please! These sections of the game felt claustrophobic and less fun because of how they required you to either stay focused on one task for a few hours, or lose your progress and start over, which is a damned shame.

The Dungeons felt eerily empty, with a few enemies there for... some reason? I guess to convey how truly evil they were? But I'm not sure those few enemies added much to the Divine Beasts. It seems the difficulty was kept super-low regardless of how far through the game you were, but that strikes me as the wrong way to go about doing it. I feel Nintendo should have modified the intensity / quantity of enemies depending on how many hearts you have or how many other Divine Beasts you've conquered. In this way, the dungeons could have been intimidating sparring grounds with Guardian Scouts, Lynels or even Decayed Guardians / Guardian Turrets.

I also cheesed Vah Naboris by using Revali's Gale to ascend into its humps, which strikes me as ridiculous: why are Champion Abilities even usable inside Divine Beasts? They should be disabled inside / on the beast and re-enabled when you activate the main control unit for the boss fight. If you need Daruk's Protection, Mipha's Grace or Urbosa's Fury during the Divine Beasts, you're doing something wrong. If you need or benefit from using Revali's Gale, as I did, then I don't think the puzzles were designed very well in the first place.

And then... You can't revisit the dungeons. Is there any reason for this? Would it have been so bad if the Divine Beasts hung out where you found them until you began to fight Ganon, at which point all of the beasts would assume their positions and fire their lasers? That seems like it fits the story, wouldn't get in the way of the rest of the game, and wouldn't have this awkward, final, you can never come back here message the game presents you with.

Final Battle

I found the fight against Calamity Ganon easy—far easier than the Lynels that dot the landscape—and the fight against Dark Beast Ganon comically cheesy... but part of that is because Nintendo Rewarded me for playing the game "correctly". You see, to complete the Divine Beasts, you need to defeat Ganon's elemental phantom constructs which he summoned 100 years ago. These bosses, Waterblight, Fireblight, Windblight and Thunderblight Ganon, once defeated, pave the way for the Champions to aim their Divine Beasts at Hyrule Castle.

What you may not know if you completed all four Divine Beasts is that any ___blight Ganons you _didn't defeat in the Divine Beasts will be waiting for you in Hyrule Castle before you fight Calamity Ganon. So, for defeating the Divine Beasts Nintendo makes the end of the game easier because you can save all your hearts—and you've got four more hearts for completing the Divine Beasts— for Ganon himself, right?

Sure, but they also cut Ganon's health in half, right in front of your eyes. This is, I think, more a problem with messaging than anything else. Showing Ganon's health get zapped feels like the game is robbing you from a joyous, momentous battle that I only lost a few hearts during. Why not hit him with the laser beam and show, maybe, some of his non-vital limbs fall off? Why not make him take more damage (show him dripping malice or something) but not lose any health (so that his health was effectively reduced from, for instance, 1000/1000 to 500/500 instead of 500/1000).

Dark Beast Ganon was literally target practice on a mostly immobile object that shot a laser beam that never came close to hitting me. It felt like such an anticlimactic ending. Skyward Sword ended with a swordfight against Demise. Twilight Princess ended with riding a horse around as well (not that game's finest moment). Wind Waker—which featured, for my money, the finest ending of the recent Zeldas—ended with Puppet Ganon and then a swordfight interspersed with deflecting Zelda arrows. Why couldn't we have had something like that, at least? Horseback combat is such an optional part of Breath of the Wild (relative to the forced segments in Twilight Princess) and ending the game on that note was a real let-down.

One More Thing

What's your reward for defeating Ganon? It's one itty-bitty star on your save file: ★

The game dumps you back on the main menu and sends you back into battle with a few differences: Your Hyrule Compendium is updated with photos you may have taken during the final fight, your map shows a completion percentage in the lower left hand corner and... your save file simply has a star to indicate that you've beaten the game.

That feels like such a strange and minuscule reward for completing such an epic adventure. Now, I understand that Nintendo has to do something and that this is in line with what they've done in previous games, but I've never cared before because I never wanted to go back and explore a Zelda game after I've beaten it before. I also know it'd be super weird to run around in a world inhabited with Bokoblins and Lynels and possessed Guardians, but not Ganon. I don't want to go back into the world and there's no danger there, either...

But at the same time, it would feel really rewarding to have key NPCs across the world congratulate you on your quest. I'd love to hear what Revali or Mipha had to say to Link after they finished their mission, 100 years later. I'd love to talk to King Rhoam again. Robbie and Kilton would surely have hilarious things to say when you told them about what you'd seen in the castle. Would it be that crazy or story-breaking to have a Ganon-less castle, with the evil still existing in the rest of the world? Maybe the "reward" could be a little stranger and more mysterious, like all the malice being scrubbed from Ruined Hyrule as a first sign that it would soon be restored to its former glory. I just wish such an epic adventure did a little more to make the destination feel as magical as the journey.

Miscellaneous

Some of these gripes are as long (in terms of number of words) as those above, but I see them as far less crucial issues with the game.

Draw Distance

Draw distance has wasted time or left me unprepared for serious battles a few times. The first time I saw East Lomei Labyrinth (NE corner of the map, in Akkala) I had < 10 hearts (so no Master Sword) and had never killed a Guardian. So, imagine my surprise when, midway between the Akkala mainland and the Labyrinth, Flying Guardians appeared over the Labyrinth and a Guardian Stalker popped-in in the center. There are also a number of instances of tiny fishing outposts—you know the ones, with some wooden planks arranged in a circle, held up by some massive fish bones—which might have something interesting, but might not. When they have no enemies on them from the vantage points at which you can often see them, it makes deciding to investigate a bit tricky.

Hyrule Compendium

Completing the Hyrule Compendium (which is by no means mandatory, but still...) requires many photos that can only be taken once: Each of the Dungeon Bosses, The Master Sword (not once, but not possible once you obtain it), etc. I'm not sure what the solution to this is, because reentering dungeons (see above) still wouldn't help you fight the bosses again. Perhaps an option in the Sheikah Slate to visit a "memory" of previously slain bosses would have let you fight them again?

Pacing and Discoverability in a Vast World

I found the pacing of the game pretty good in general, but I felt that I went from being terrified of Guardians to confidently slaying them in no time. At the start, being targeted by a Guardian felt like a death warrant: if you couldn't line of sight the thing, you were toast, and forget about Stalkers entirely. It was only after I had the Master Sword that I felt comfortable taking them out on my own. I may have missed some NPC who advised you to do this or something, but I wish I knew about parrying guardian beams sooner in the game. It requires good enough timing that I still wouldn't seek them out, but would have given me half a chance a number times in game when I felt I had none. Defeating Guardians with a Pot Lid is possible from the start of the game if you have good timing and know that you can:

Switch Control Schemes

I played the Switch version of the game and felt that it would have been great to allow players to adjust the Motion Controls setting per controller type (a la Splatoon 2), so that the setting would allow different default behavior for the Tabletop, Handheld and TV Modes would be saved during play sessions. It's very difficult to use motion controls while the bus you're riding to work makes a right-hand turn and Link compensates by turning 90º to the left.

Also, while on the topic of controls, pressing the Left Stick to crouch is something I still do inadvertently after 100+ hours of play. I wonder if that behavior should have been switched with either Whistle (D-Pad Down) or Switch Rune (D-Pad Up) since whistling would likely not cause any detriment during battle and the other would pause action in game until you undid it. Crouching mid-combat feels really bad and usually doesn't end well for poor Link.