Why Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild could be a better game? Kinda strange title for an article about one of the most praised games these days, right? Well, the game is good, but it could be better – anything could be better, actually even my blog!
But let’s get down to business – I don’t want to waste your time with unnecessary overviews of how and why Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is a good game, I want to look at the ways it could be better.
1. You can’t remap buttons
What the heck!? Really? Yeah – kinda, at least you can switch the jump button, for example, from X to B – What a Freedom of choice!
I am sure the developers had some logic behind that descision, what I’m not sure of is if that logic was not in the form of a piece of crap. OK, enough of this, let’s move on!
2. Weapons Durability
Let me quote @the_rowan from www.gamefaqs.com
It’s based on the number of times you hit things, not just swinging at air, but this includes blocked strikes (so if an enemy blocks the spear’s charged flurry of strikes, RIP durability).
Shields break even if you perfect shield, and also can break when you try to ride them (which can literally kill you depending on where it happens–it does a lot of damage to have it break on a steep slope even if you barely fall anywhere).You have no indication of overall durability other than a warning when the weapon gets to very low durability (25%? 10%? Not sure what this threshold is.)
Throwing weapons does a LOT of durability damage, but does not instantly destroy well-made weapons. You can throw a good weapon at mounted enemies to knock them off and then pick up the same weapon, for example.
Breaking weapons by any means does double damage for that hit.
OK, that’s really cool, now remember the line about the logic behind design descisions and the piece of crap? – The Piece just became a pile!
How and why the heck someone, anyone, would come up with this type of frustrating design? Why, why, why? First of all you make weapons in a world of magic feel like pieces of chinese glass, then you decide not to show any indication of this quickly-be-gone durability, safe for the case when it’s already too late and finally, just because bye-logic-farewell, you decide for the grand finalle to apply double damage on the hit which destroys the weapon. And as far as I’m familiar there are no items you can carry around to repair your weapons.
Forgive my assumption but this whole mechanic seems too well thought out to be a mistake. It’s just like it’s done on purpose, without any real gameplay need for that, rather than player’s frustration. Even in our simple world it takes quite some effort to break a simple steel sword and one is to expect even higher performance from a world imbued with magic. But to destroy weapons with a simple Throw!? Come on! Seriously? That’s really sick, it’s a major showstopper. It’s a joke, right … Right?!
3. Framerate Issues
I can understand how people can be fascinated with a game to the extent to forget about its flaws. Still when it happens on a major scale in every big media, it’s getting fishy. Why? Because a professional review should be objective and it should point all the good & bad stuff about the reviewed product. Try for yourself the reviews I’m talking about … maybe a single line of text about the weapon durability or the framerate issues – just google “legend of zelda review” and see. That’s biased to an extreme extent.
4. Horse System
Unnecessary complicated when it could have been just an “easy ride“. And this comes in the biggest Zelda game ever. Save your horse in stable, find another stable, blah blah. You cannot just whistle and call your horse from anywhere and why? It’s not like the world is truthfull to logic at all? After all in a place where you can shatter a sword to peices by accidently dropping it on the ground, why not having a horse hearing a magic whistle from unlimited distances?
This is just another unreasonable design descision from Nintendo which doesn’t bring anything good to the overall player’s experience but rather ruins it.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong – this is an amazing game, it’s very, very, good but there are things about Zelda which just don’t make any sense at all and actually hold the potential of destroying players’ fun. I just wanted to let you know why Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild could be a better game.