#1: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
A fucking legend indeed. I won't talk about all of the details of how BotW handles exploration and all because that would be way to long and has been done plenty of times. I will talk about how it affected me personally.
On the 10th of March 2018, my 16th birthday, I got up early and unpacked my highly anticipated birthday present. A Switch and Breath of the Wild. After setting up the console I jumped straight into the game and from the very first moment I was captivated. It was during the spring holidays so the next two weeks I didn't have any school and I spend every hours I could to play the game. Every time I booted up the game I completely lost sense of time and played for hours. Sleep? Nah. I played the game until 6, 7 or even 8am, slept for 2 or 3 hours and then just continued playing. I was seriously addicted. To this day when I start playing it I just don't to stop.
It was the first HD game I played. In 2018. So obviously I was blown away by how the game looked. But it weren't the graphics that truely blew me away, it was the stunning artdirection and artstyle. Until this day I think that BotW is the most beautiful game I've ever played. Yesterday I played a bit of the game on my last save file from six months ago. I climbed a high mountain and just flew down and was stunned by the landscapes. It's marvelous.
Usually in almost every game where it's possible I go of the path and just start messing around, doing whatever. That was in many games always my favorite part and still is. Breath of the Wild is that part only. It's everything I've ever wanted. In many games I quickly feel like I've seen and done it all. In BotW I feel like I can never have seen it all. I've put in a massive 1200 or more hours into the game and still find new stuff I didn't know of before. Just yesterday I found a beautiful peninsula that is called maple point. It's on the south east corner of the map. I didn't expect to find anything special there, but instead I found a view of serene beauty. A small lake surounded by cliffs and three thin waterfalls coming out of holes in the cliffs. It's beautiful.
BotW never fails to surprise with more unique places and interesting details. There's so much to do, so much to see. The combat and the physics system make it even better. So much fun. The only letdown are the divine beasts as dungeons and the blights. They lack their own identity and are all the same. Only Thunderblight Ganon is great, since he is such a challenge. Windblight was the easiest by far, a joke really. Thankfully Hyrule Castle is an excellent dungeon rivalling the one from Twilight Princess and the divine beast from the DLC is pretty good and ends with Monk Maz Koshia, my favorite boss fight in the entire series.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterpiece featuring the best open world in any game and is imo the best game ever made. Playing this game for the first time was the most memorable experience I ever had. There is no other game I would love more to be able to experience for the first time again. It's magical. My favorite game ever.
