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[Celedh]

Zelda Breath of the Wild is probably one of the best games I've played recently, and the best non-Zelda ever. No, really. They took everything that should rightfully be 'Zelda' from the past 30 years and removed it all. If it's not broken, don't fix it? Nah, just change even what wasn't broken, and yet still make something *good*, that's amazing. First of all, progression. Zelda games work on going into a dungeon, getting a tool that allows you to defeat the boss, and open up the next dungeon, as part of a progression system. Zelda kinda did it first, but other games like Metroid and later Castlevania used similar progression too. Well, that's gone. They pretty much give you all of the items you need and then throw you at the wolves. And instead of trying to fit all of the puzzle ideas they have into thematic dungeons, they tossed every tiny idea into some 100+ shrines that hold 1-3 puzzles each in essence. No need to group them by theme, you just take them one at a time for what it's worth. That sounds weird, but it works. Other than that the game doesn't seem to hold you to a specific order of things to do, you can explore and do things at your pace. The only dungeon I cleared up to now was only slightly bigger than aforementioned shrine, and yet still surprised me with the relative complexity of it. First an exciting high-speed semi-boss fight to be able to enter it, a few puzzles, and finally another boss fight to clean things up. So how can it change so many things and still feel familiar enough to be a Zelda game is a mystery to me, but I want to eat more of it. Unfortunately, that'll wait next week since I'm heading to Pax East in Boston this weekend. Too bad I don't have it on the Switch, but I'll live with that.