I don’t have to explain The Legend Of Zelda and all its sequels and prequels and related games, do I? Did you play Breath Of The Wild, the wildly successful open world adventure game starring Link?

This was the only game I’ve played since it came out in May 2023. I didn’t play it most of July. I’ll describe the plot as best I can: Link wakes up on an island floating in the sky over the kingdom of Hyrule and to find and rescue the land’s default leader, Princess Zelda. It’s the same land map from Breath of The Wild, with some changes here and there. The citizens removed all the Guardian robots littering the land in Breath Of The Wild and now they have to put ups with oblong giant blocks falling from the sky constantly.

I remember the ads clearly showing that it was the same Hyrule and a few locations in its skies, with some game mechanics where Link can teleport through solid objects. WELL, there’s also “the Depths,” which is what it sounds like: a subterranean map that is an inverted copy of the Hyrule topside minus its people and towns, and with a substance that removes “hearts” from Link’s health bar beyond just giving Link damage. Kinda like the dark world in Metroid Prime 2 where the air gives you damage until you find a bubble to recover.

This was where I ended up guiding Link the most, because to even see things he has to locate subterranean shrines that light up the area, which help hint at the topside shrines that eventually expand Link’s health and stamina bars. There are a few more enemies since Breath Of The Wild, mostly larger versions of bobokins and a set of robots that mostly inhabit the sky islands. (I said “mostly,” I want to have an end to this review.)

I get waylaid by trying to upgrade Link’s various outfits that I find that keep him safe in areas of extreme heat or cold, or allow him to climb walls while it’s raining. There’s also cooking meals that go beyond restoring health or taking less damage from electric weapons or environments – such as cooking to provide more damage in thunderstorms, cold, or hot weather.

I stuck to the usual enhancing “meals” that I made in Breath Of The Wild, because how often was I going to stick around in those map’s specific environments if I could help it? There’s also the mechanic of grabbing things and building, which you’ve likely seen videos of insane contraptions that gamers have built, and I just didn’t have or want time for that. I’d build stuff like gliders or balloons to get somewhere, and the occasional roving mini tank with a few weapons. Instead of building a giant robot to fight other large creatures or small armies, I’d use the various “ingredients” such as the Muddle-bud to throw at them and have them fight each other.

The contraption building is pretty fun but being able to fuse items to your weapons, including other weapons, or shields ended up being the most useful activity that helped me get Link through various baddies. There’s a multitude of side quests, and some that seem needlessly long and repetitive to unlock important upgrade capabilities to various armors. And then there was farming these pieces needed for upgrades: I decided to beat the game (I knew there was not much left) after facing the same creatures and no drops for the dozens of parts I needed to upgrade two items of clothing that I did not need to beat the game.

I was told that the end boss was ridiculously difficult. I cooked several health restoration meals and heart-restoration meals (for the Depths) because I figured the boss baddie would probably have close-to-one-hit kills. That wasn’t the case, I used maybe one of each of those the whole end game gauntlet. Getting to that chamber was far harder and more tedious.

There was a lot of love for this game when it came out, with the Depths praised as a brilliant unexpected expansion and Hyrule being completely different, but recently I’m seeing pushback from some fans that it was just a boring longer version of Breath of The Wild. For myself, after getting to a point where I was practically re-exploring the entirety of Hyrule to find ONE thing for a miniquest, and not seeing real in-game rewards beyond a few things I could mine elsewhere in the map for the remaining side quests, I wasn’t sure what other big event(s) I was missing in-game that would assist me or give me the “best” ending if there’s more than one. I defeated the main bad guy, rescued the Princess, Hyrule restored? roll credits.

It’s fun to start and explore. I don’t know about replay – once you leave the first sky island with all the Link game mechanics, you’re on Hyrule and there’s still certain things you need to do before you can try to go to the Depths or storm the castle or whatever. I also don’t have the patience to build more elaborate things in-game. Some of its fun, but by the time the player gets to doing something like that, I assume they’ve gotten everything they need to get. Seeing how I can manage the inventory and access the most locations in the least amount of time is usually my goal (“can I buy my first house in Whiterun in Skyrim within an hour of play?” is my first goal in Skyrim). Everywhere I go, I’m going through the motions to complete tasks for people. It’s pretty tedious if it’s 1 of 12 things to chase a bird reporter around the map.

It’s a nice upgrade to Breath Of The Wild, it was pretty nice to have the same fight style from the previous game. I don’t know if I can handle another playthrough. “More of the same” here isn’t totally bad – Breath of the Wild was great, and maybe “more to do” in that same vein isn’t so bad, but after a while it was nice to just put an end to it.