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Coincidentally, I finished it last night. My own review:

I took my time with this game and finally finished it last night, complete with all shrines and memories. While a great game, its shortcomings are too significant to receive the utmost praise.

Its open world design is a bold step for the series. Hyrule is vast, varied, and filled with little secrets and treasures, but follows industry formula more than ardent fans would have you believe, complete with watchtowers to unlock the map and outposts to clear. The survival elements are substantial and incorporation with your gear impressive, but can also be more hassle than fun when you sometimes spend nearly as much time in the menus as playing live. Speaking of hassles, there's nothing mixed about the weapon 'fragility' system, as it's been coined; it's just a pain for weapons not to last even one big battle, pause midfight to swap gear, discard prized items because there is no proper locker in the game, have to hang up and never use unique weapons if you don't want to lose them, or have no way of even maintaining weapons before they break. Combat is serviceable; there's lots of ways to play around but the meat is simple and getting a handle on your dodges and parries is all you really need.

The puzzles, I think, suffer from quantity over quality. The shrines will keep you busy for hours but are breakable via the physics and the numerous strength trials are painfully repetitive. The koroks all over the world are fun to spot and unearth but end up recycling the same handful of tasks some hundred times each. Shrine quests are good fun but most side missions are extremely unremarkable. Completing all of any of these can eventually become a drag, and with all of these in the game the main 'dungeons' have suffered, being smaller and less memorable than past entries.

Presentation is good but has its rough spots. At one point the visuals can dazzle with beautiful plains, rich color, lovely shading, effects, physics, and art, the next it can grate with inconsistent textures, chugging performance (I've even had 0fps spikes), and bad image quality. Sound is nice, but I've heard better. Still, it's impressive what they've been able to pack into relatively low power hardware.

Finally, there's the storytelling, which has never been Nintendo's strong suit. Most of the story is entirely optional and must be hunted down. That could be a benefit for those who just want to play but create a very fragmented and piecemeal narrative for those interested. What little voice acting there is is mediocre. Characters run the gamut from forgettable to one dimensional to amusing, while a handful rise up to be delightful or even well written. One thing I must credit though is some of the unexpected chuckles that pop up in the dialogue menus, even from our laconic hero. Taken as a whole the story is passable.

I've been critical, but over all, Breath of the Wild is a great game. It's vast and detailed and lots of bang for your buck, I just don't think it's quite worthy of all the perfect scores critics and consumers alike have been tripping over themselves to give it - or of being called the best Zelda game.

P.S.: It's not as hard as some make it out to be, either.

9.25/10