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Nintendo Switch First-Party Review Revisits

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

by Joel A. DeWitte, Syrenne McNulty, Neal Ronaghan, and Melanie Zawodniak - January 20, 2025, 2:26 pm EST

We look back on Nintendo's marquee launch title (that was also the Wii U's marquee death title).

The Nintendo Switch started off with a bang with the Wii U title The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This was a game first announced many years before the Switch was known to be a thing, as it was initially intended to be a high-profile Wii U release. Instead, the realities of the world led to Breath of the Wild being a company-altering launch title for the Switch on March 3, 2017.

In our original review, Neal Ronaghan (who also provides 2025 thoughts below) loved the game, saying that "[it] truly recaptures the distinct essence of the original Zelda game on NES in a way that feels warm and familiar but also exciting and new" as well as calling it "one of the most impressive games [he has] played in years."

So let's go to the present day. What does Neal think now? And conversely, what do Syrenne, Melanie, and Joel think now as well?


9.5 out of 10

Neal Ronaghan: Back when Breath of the Wild came out, I had a pre-launch review and gave it a 9.5 out of 10 - shockingly on the lower end of scores. In the frighteningly-close-to-a-decade since its launch, I’d say I’ve come to love the game more and like it less, if that makes any sense. This game overall still feels like the Zelda team cracking the code and inventing a new frontier for both Zelda games and to an extent, video games in general. It’s the entry in the series that made Zelda go from a critical darling in the ‘90s to a sales juggernaut. And I’ll always come back to how this game more or less turned my wife into a hardcore gamer briefly as she damn near 100%-ed Breath of the Wild and revisited it countless times before Tears of the Kingdom came out.

Exploring the world of Hyrule in Breath of the Wild is a blast. It’s still a fun world to romp around to this day, but it falters in the moments that try to be like old 3D Zelda. The Divine Beasts remove the game-changing ability to climb on basically everything. The dungeons themselves aren’t all that inventive either (especially in comparison to the dungeons in the last 3D Zelda Skyward Sword). I do love the finale in Hyrule Castle, but most of that is because the music slaps and the sense of danger is ever present. That’s not really a great dungeon as much as it is a place with great vibes that pretends to be a dungeon. I love Breath of the Wild so much, but I’ve come around to understanding why it falls apart for a few people. At the end of the day though, the fact that my wife unlocked the DLC motorcycle is too cool for me to not give this the same high marks I did in 2017.


8.5 out of 10

Syrenne McNulty: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a fantastic collection of mechanics, a fantastic collection of environments, and a fantastic selection of concepts that lends itself very well to emergent gameplay and rule discoveries and being able to traverse the world in new and interesting ways. Where I think the game struggles outside of performance (because we all know how it struggles in dense foliage and a lot of the city areas) is when the developers try to pre-arrange specific scenarios. Shrines and the Divine Beasts are good examples of this, but there are a few throughout the world where I really think the game just kind of falls flat. Where I think the game is absolutely at its best where you're discovering new things, attempting new things, being surprised by what works, what doesn't work, and for that reason I actually think that the speedrun of this game is incredible. However, I think that with the exception of Eventide Island, it just disappoints a bit. It’s still good, but it never quite struck me as a masterpiece in the same way that it has for others.


8 out of 10

Melanie Zawodniak One of the first things I ever did on the Nintendo Switch was walk out of the Shrine of Resurrection, turn around, and start climbing up the shear wall behind me to reach the higher ground on top of the cave I had just emerged from. Wall-climbing in video games was not a new concept—Assassin’s Creed was just about a decade old at this point—but what made Zelda’s climbing special was that there wasn’t a clearly marked path of where I was allowed to climb. Climbing was simply something I could do on walls. Open-world games are typically notable for their sheer size alone, but Breath of the Wild actually backed up that size by making the act of exploring the world—the literal walking and climbing I was doing—more interesting than any of its mainstream peers had done before it. With geography that was carefully crafted to make sure there was something interesting to see no matter where in the world I was standing, the temptation to fill out my map and visit every inch of Hyrule was irresistible.

That said, there are many things about Breath of the Wild I do not like. Dungeons (and their smaller cousins, shrines) were never half as interesting to explore and solve as any given piece of the overworld, and combat feels like a substantial misfire. People will often defend the weapon durability by saying it encourages you to think on your feet and use different weapons, and I would encourage everyone to question whether it actually succeeds at that if I was able to keep a full inventory of my preferred one-handed swords for the entire game. Basic Bokoblins will kick your teeth in at the beginning of the game until the most basic upgrades to your armor and cooking game trivializes the fiercest Lynels you can find. In 2017 I was willing to forgive these flaws as the necessary cost of revolutionizing a genre, but my opinion of the game soured when its 2023 sequel repeated every single decision I thought had been a mistake, making them much harder to ignore. No game has ever made me love exploration like Breath of the Wild and I think that’s the most important thing to consider, but I can’t help but feel let down by pretty much everything else in the game.

But also like, y’all need to quit complaining about the rain. There’s literally a weather forecast on the UI at all times. Plan ahead and start a campfire.


9 out of 10

Joel DeWitte: A long time ago in an Electronics Boutique far, far away, 12-year-old me was awestruck by a playable demo of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It was the franchise’s first foray into 3D space, and what seems like a quaint game by today’s standards was an eye-opening moment for what I thought video games could be. That template would be used as the foundation for the series’ 3D entries for almost two decades, when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild would go on to redefine the series and once again made me feel lost in an adventure.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s story is already finished. The heroes lost, Calamity Ganon has enveloped the world in darkness and split the realm of Hyrule apart, and civilization has been scattered as a result. The events that led to Link’s fall and eventual revival a century into the future are echoed not only in Impa’s recounting of Hyrule’s history and the optional memories, but also a refrain through practically every piece of dialogue from the NPCs you meet. It’s a story concept that was wholly unique to me at the time, where the prophecies failed, and the hero is left to pick up the pieces of what was. The emptiness of the world with exception to the pockets of civilization is awesome - that first scene of Link looking out beyond the horizon and imagining the possibilities is a core memory now.

That moment from the majestic view to kicking rocks with bokoblins and swinging sticks is a whiplash I’m ok with. It’s the grounding that the grand adventure needs and baby-stepped me through the basics of what survival would mean in this iteration of Hyrule. Some of the bigger grievances such as inclement weather and breakable weapons never hindered my adoration for the game. It felt thematically in line with the world Nintendo envisioned and made moments more dynamic like when I tried to take a shortcut scaling the side of a mountain and tumbling all the way down, or swinging an electric wand and testing the limits of how far that weapon could take me. The Sheikah Slate abilities aren’t open-ended like the seemingly limitless ultra hand tool, but there’s a wellspring of creativity people have shown using these one-note tools that are more impressive to me than any Zonai device. Breath of the Wild’s genius is having to push through a seemingly limitless world with the harsh constraints it enforced on me, making it not only a beautiful experience but hands-down the best game on Switch. Minus one point for a Master Sword made of glass.


Next up is 1-2 Switch, which should go live tomorrow or thereabouts. Remember Nintendo's other physical launch game?

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