Play-through: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild - Part 2

Chronicle of my play through of The Legend of Zelda BotW on Switch 2.

Play-through: is a new format where I will be writing in more of a diary format for bigger games that I am playing. The first game I am trialing this with is The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild on Switch 2.

Note: this won’t be spoiler free.

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If you want to read how I felt about the first 10 hours of gameplay, have a look below.

Play-through: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild - Part 1

Hours 10-17 - cooking and exploring

Loved this jungly area.

After the first 10 hours I continued with my general approach of running past as many enemies as possible, especially if they looked different colours (thank you, Elden Ring). I would look for shrines and especially towers to unlock sections of the map.

I was a bit defeated as I could not beat the first divine beast boss I came across and there was definitely some frustration building up. So I focused on running around and unlocking the map.

This resulted in me gathering a lot of different food items for cooking and I got to learn more about the stats that can be elevated with elixirs and dishes you can cook up. As much as the cooking is a bit annoying, I see it as essential for my play style now.

I remember watching my other half playing Tears of the Kingdom and always shouting “health! Eat!” but he was pretty good and didn’t always follow my advice to no detriment. I am however a much more aggressive, less thoughtful/strategic, player and will be relying on food items to keep me in a battle.

Biggest revelation here was, that certain items can temporarily elevate your health or stamina beyond your current limits. This made me feel more confident to try and continue the story rather than just find more shrines to level up slowly that way.

Initially I headed into the dessert area but some of the enemies seemed a bit harder, so I decided to ask my other half and he suggested to go see the bird like tribe.

Eventually I spotted a bird creature in the sky and started my journey, there.

Spotted the Divine beast

Hours 17-20ish - rant about the user interface plus accomplishments

Despite feeling a bit more accomplished I was still struggling with the user interface between the menus.

My absolute biggest thing, was the way that if you hold a two handed weapon, you can’t swap to the shield without putting the weapon away, while you can swap between bow and arrow and your main weapon. This meant I died several times being shot, and not understanding why the shield would not open. This is one of my biggest pet peeves now about the interface.

I also really dislike it when you find a weapon or shield and you are just told - “You have no space for this”. In that moment give me the option to drop something.

But no, the game forces you to exit that interaction, open the menu, choose something to drop, and the start the interaction again. SO BORING. I wish they made this easier.

Right for more fun information. This is where things started to click and I got a sense of achievement finally.

I entered the battle for the bird machine - Devine Beast Va Medah. Some of the puzzles were a bit baffling, but none of the enemies were too bad and then the boss battle happened.

I used an Elixir to up my damage and managed to beat the boss first time. The fight was actually fun using some elements in the environment and I enjoyed myself. Rather than worrying about dying instantly.

This made me curious and I headed back to the elephant beast. The boss would kill me instantly before, so I upped my hearts and gave it another go using bomb arrows.

It took me a couple of go’s but I beat this one as well. Suddenly I have achieved 2 out of 4 divine beasts and that felt amazing. I don’t want to run through the game now and rush to the next divine beasts, but now I want to explore the map sections I have run through and do more side quests, to build out my bigger experience of the game.

So the last couple of hours, which tipped me into and over 20 hours of gameplay, made things click. This is a long time to be honest. Most indie games I play are not even 20 hours long. But in terms of value for money you can’t argue that this game will give you so many hours of exploration, puzzles and battles. I am almost won over. I want to see more now, and I am less just frustrated by the game.

I am excited to see what the next 20 hours will bring.