IGN: 10/10
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterclass in open-world design and a watershed game that reinvents a 30-year-old franchise. It presents a wonderful sandbox full of mystery, dangling dozens upon dozens of tantalizing things in front of you that just beg to be explored. I’ve had so many adventures in Breath of the Wild, and each one has a unique story behind what led me to them, making them stories on top of stories. And even after I’ve spent more than 50 hours searching the far reaches of Hyrule, I still manage to come across things I haven’t seen before. I’ll easily spend 50 to 100 more trying to track down its fascinating moments.
DigitalChumps: 10/10
This is it, folks. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is Nintendo’s Magnum Opus. It’s not only the best Zelda game ever created, it’s also one of the very best videogames in the history of the art. Games like this are so rare that it would be impossible to classify it as anything other than a masterpiece. Experience it at all costs.
EDGE: 10/10
The result, for all the longevity of its series and the familiarity of the open world genre, is a game that evokes feelings we haven't felt for 20 years. Not since Ocarina of Time have we set foot in a world that feels so mind-bogglingly vast and unerringly magical, that proves so relentlessly intriguing. Plenty of games promise to let us go anywhere and do anything. Few, if any, ever deliver so irresistibly. 19 years on Ocarina is still held up as the high water mark of gamings best loved and greatest series. Now it may have to settle for second place.
GameSpot: 10/10
No matter how gorgeous its environments are, how clever its enemies are, and how tricky its puzzles get, the fact that Breath of the Wild continues to surprise you with newfound rules and possibilities after dozens of hours is by far its most valuable quality. It's a game that allows you to feel gradually more and more empowered yet simultaneously manages to retain a sense of challenge and mystery-which, together, creates a steady, consistent feeling of gratification throughout the entire experience. Breath of the Wild is a defining moment for The Legend of Zelda series, and the most impressive game Nintendo has ever created.
Eurogamer: Essential
All that has been either swept aside or remade from first principles. It's hard to overstate the courage and conviction with which producer Eiji Aonuma, director Hidemaro Fujibayashi and their team have rewritten their own work, and the size of the risk Nintendo has taken with a beloved property. Breath of the Wild isn't just the most radical departure from the Zelda tradition in its 30-year history, it's the first Nintendo game that feels like it was made in a world where Half-Life 2, Halo, Grand Theft Auto 3 and Skyrim happened. It's inspired by those greats and others, but it doesn't ape them any more than it rests on its own laurels. And if we're talking inspirations, we have to recognise one game above all others, an uncompromising adventure from 1986 that dared to take gaming off the rails, that put a whole world beyond the TV screen and invited the player to explore it: the original Legend of Zelda.
GiantBomb: 5/5
Nintendo may have changed so many long-standing traditions of the Zelda franchise, but the spirit of discovery is as strong as it’s ever been no matter your age. I didn’t think I’d feel the Zelda magic this strongly ever again, but I couldn't be happier to be proven wrong.
GamesRadar: 5/5
The series has always had something of a fairytale quality to it - its grand landscapes and worlds suggestive of so much more. The sight of dawn over a shimmering lake. The rolling plains of Hyrule Field stretched out beneath you. It speaks to our imaginations, calling us on to adventure. What a familiar feeling to look across Hyrule Field at Death Mountain, wondering what it would be like to climb it. What a profound thrill to make that journey in its entirety. It has taken 18 years, but Nintendo has done it again: this is the adventure game to beat.
Polygon: 10/10
I guess, in the end, it’s not just that Breath of the Wild signals that Zelda has finally evolved and moved beyond the structure it’s leaned on for so long. It’s that the evolution in question has required Nintendo to finally treat its audience like intelligent people. That newfound respect has led to something big, and different, and exciting. But in an open world full of big changes, Breath of the Wild also almost always feels like a Zelda game — and establishes itself as the first current, vital-feeling Zelda in almost 20 years.
God is a Geek: 10/10
I do not say this lightly: Breath of the Wild is an absolute masterpiece, and may well be the best The Legend of Zelda game ever made. Having grown up playing those first games as a child on a system I remember fondly, it feels extra special to be playing a new Zelda on a new console and this is everything I wanted it to be and more. I won’t forget Breath of the Wild for a long time, because it’s a memorable, beautiful, stunner of a game.
Kotaku: Open-World Perfection
And as you talk about Breath of the Wild with your friends, there’s one word that will rarely if ever come up: “can’t.” Stories about the new Zelda will instead revolve around what you can do. How you climbed all the way to the top of the Temple of Time just for kicks, or how you parachuted down to the lowest point of Hyrule to see what kind of secrets you’d find there. How you found a brilliant method to brute-force your way through the freezing, snowy mountains, or how you set a forest on fire just to see if you could.
Or, how you tried something as ridiculous as flipping over a maze so you wouldn’t have to solve it, and the game somehow let you finish the puzzle anyway. Breath of the Wild is the best Zelda game to date, and it accomplishes that simply by saying yes.
US Gamer: 5/5
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an amazing game. As someone who loves open-world games, this is one of the best out there. As someone who enjoys the Zelda series, I honestly think I can say the same thing again. Nintendo has brought together a number of different ideas and mechanics, but integrated them into something that stands on its own. It's the kind of game where I don't want Nintendo to do something completely different for the next Zelda. I want more of this.
Destructoid: 10/10
This isn't your typical boiler plate open world cash grab, rife with to-do lists and busywork. Zelda: Breath of the Wild is an evolution of the formula for both eastern and western philosophies alike, and a new blueprint.
The Verge: No Score
This new direction, and shaking up of the age-old formula that has come to define the series, helps Breath of the Wild return to what made Zelda so beloved in the first place. More so than just about any game series, Zelda’s heart lies in exploration, that moment of seeing a towering mountain in the distance and realizing that eventually you’ll be able to reach the top. Breath of the Wild takes this idea, cuts out the fluff, and expands upon it. It pulls ideas from other games, like crafting or survival, yet makes them feel perfectly at home in its beloved universe. It’s exactly the Zelda game I’ve been waiting for.
Game Revolution: 5/5
The Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild is orders of magnitude larger than any Zelda game before it, presenting more things to do within its world than ever before. This is the sort of game that captures your interest for more than a month, temporarily making you forget about any other game you were previously interested in.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild isn’t just good, it’s the best launch title I’ve ever played. It will single-handedly validate the purchase of the Switch for many people, and given the device's $299 price tag that's a huge accomplishment.
Congratulations Nintendo, you just earned my first ever perfect score.
Trusted Reviews: 5/5
If there’s a better game out there than Breath of the Wild, I haven’t played it. Nintendo has created, for me, the greatest game of all time. It’s everything I want from a game and one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had.
With the incredible variety of gameplay on offer, it’s understandable why Nintendo cleared the Switch launch schedule for Zelda. There’s a good chance you’ll be absorbed in everything it has to offer all the way up until the release of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe.
For me, there isn’t a better experience to be found on the Switch or anywhere else.
Dual Shockers: 10/10
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is no mere Zelda game — it is a return to form for the decades-old series, showing that Nintendo still very much understands how to handle their property. Breath of the Wild rivals Super Mario 64 for the best launch game ever shipped with any console. With no exception, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a masterclass in game design and creativity, unprecedented from even Nintendo.
GameInformer: 10/10
Breath of the Wild is an achievement in the design of a living world. Hyrule is massive, with multiple environmental systems layered on top of a grand adventure. Despite the massive scope of the game, Breath of the Wild retains Nintendo’s knack for polish without any major technical hiccups to disrupt the experience. I was entranced by this version of Hyrule, and it surprised me at nearly every turn, from its wealth of discoveries to the way it shuns the established tropes of previous Zelda games. It represents a profound new direction for one of gaming’s best franchises and a new high point for open-world interactive experiences.
VentureBeat: 100/100
Nintendo has made a special video game in Breath of the Wild. As the name suggests, it is a breathing wilderness that Nintendo brought to life by abandoning the structured, predictable Zelda formula. At the same time, it feels like the ultimate culmination of the ideas we encountered in the first Zelda in 1987. And I think the result of all of its interlocking systems is a game that wants to slam you with moments of epiphanies. For me, my experience with Link’s Awakening was about getting that one major flash of insight and then using that to understand the rest of the game and then the rest of the Zelda series. For Breath of the Wild, Nintendo made a game that could replicate that moment over and over.
TIME: 5/5
Though in the end, most of what drives Breath of Wild to soar the highest this series ever has, comes down to quintessential Nintendo: daring to zig where others zag, crafting a sublime experience that's also a virtuoso commentary on the yin-yang of freedom and constraint. That an odyssey this beguiling and capacious happens to also be playable on planes, trains and, yes, the toilet, is almost beside the point.
WIRED: No score
I haven’t finished Breath of the Wild yet. It’s scale is unprecedented for a Zelda game, and it encourages you to move slowly. I want to honor that. And while I fear that the sheer breadth of the experience might ultimately push some players away, I’m relishing my time spent in this hushed, half-dead Hyrule. After thirty years of The Legend of Zelda, I’m delighted that the series has finally lost its way again.
VG247: No Score
Polished to a ludicrous degree, this is a different kind of game but still one that gives Ocarina of Time a run for its money. After Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, which I found formulaic and awful in turn, it’s quite a stunning change. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is, without a doubt, one of the best games of the last decade. Taming that legacy seemed an impossible task, but they’ve done it.
Gaming Trend: 10/10
I’ve mentioned Ocarina of Time a few times, and there’s a reason – it is the benchmark by which all other Zelda games are tested. Somehow, and beyond all of my expectations, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild exceeds that mark. I can confidently declare that Breath of the Wild is the best Zelda game ever made.
Telegraph: 5/5
And that is Breath of the Wild all over. I went back to transport that flame before finishing this review, you know. What I expected to be a brief milk run turned into a gauntlet against a troop of rangy Moblins, a battle with the elements and even included a neat variation on the classic Zelda fire-arrow puzzle. How apt. Brilliance found in every corner.
Pockelint: No Score
It’s an old cliché that each console generation starts with a game that sells the hardware on its own. It’s also pretty much a lie. Neither the PS4 nor Xbox One launched with must-have games – they followed down the line.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is such a game, however. It has been crafted with so much love, care and attention that you feel just as involved when playing. The sandbox you are given to play in is enormous and the game will eat time like a Sutton United goalkeeper eats pies.
We need Nintendo. You need Breath of the Wild.
Forbes: 10/10
I give the game a resounding Buy on my Buy/Hold/Sell scale. It's one of the best video games I've ever played, and is sure to keep you busy for many hours, days and weeks, exploring this vast, beautiful, unexpected world. I can't speak to the Wii U version, but I'm sure either version will delight and inspire. Don't miss this one, even if you're not a fan of older Zelda games. New fans and old fans alike will find so much to love in this game.
Cubed3: 10/10
This is the pinnacle of adventuring, Zelda style. It takes the core elements that fans know and love from Nintendo's long-standing series, and mixes it smoothly in with gorgeous open-world exploration, to craft something so breath-taking and absorbing that hours upon hours will pass by without notice, and barely any progress will have actually been made in the main story because there were so many other aspects to take in and play around with, as well as sub-missions that fit so naturally into the core quest. Nintendo has outdone itself with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - absolutely sublime work.
Press Start: 10/10
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild will go down as one of the best launch titles of all time. It perfectly compliments the Nintendo Switch and highlights why it has the potential to be such a great console. Many have doubted Nintendo’s ability to bring this series into the modern gaming age, but they’ve done that and taken it one step further in creating one of the best open-world action-adventure games ever made.
Stevivor: 10/10
Breath of the Wild is The Legend of Zelda game I didn’t know I always wanted until I starting playing. It’s a disservice to simply label it spectacular, and “must buy” as a Switch launch title is merely a formality. Nintendo promised a lot and left us hanging delay after delay, culminating in a cross-gen switch, but it’s delivered in every sense of the word.
The Guardian: 5/5
But the shrine is a fast travel point, offering you the ability to divert from the trek and easily resume it at a later date. And now you’ve got a hundred rupees, you can entice a Great Fairy out of her hiding place. So you head over there, and chat to her, discovering that she’ll enhance your armour. But you need a few more Hightail Lizards to do so – and so you put the trip to Zora’s Domain on hold again, just for a few more minutes …
You look up, and it’s five hours later, and you don’t care.
App Trigger: 10/10
The Nintendo Switch bursts out of the starting gate with a title like Breath of the Wild. It’s beautiful, emotional, full of surprises and nostalgia, and just flat-out enjoyable to play at every moment. While I have played open world titles before, Breath of the Wild gave me a new sense of control over how my adventure played out, offering me a steady flow of chosen objectives and paths to them without overwhelming me with unnecessary information or bogging me down in sidequests. Mechanically sound, aesthetically pleasing (often breathtaking), challenging but rewarding, Breath of the Wild is a joyous journey you won’t want to put down, just so you can see what’s on the other side of each new hill.
RPG Site: 10/10
This is the most special game Nintendo has made in years - especially for the core game playing audience. It's certainly the most important, interesting and exciting Zelda since OoT and LttP. It is a new all-time classic.
So here we are. How do you deal with a legacy like The Legend of Zelda? Turn it inside out. Borrow from others. Make something mad. And new. And old. And brilliant. I don't know how they did it either - but they did, and it works.
