Week 7: Final Post and Recap

 This will be the final post in my Breath of the Wild Master Mode series and I will be using it to recap my experience playing the game over the past couple months as well as give recommendations for people who may want to try Master Mode or just Breath of the Wild in general. 

The first experience I had playing Breath of the Wild Master Mode was shortly after my first blog post explaining what I would be doing. The first few hours of content were probably the most difficult I encountered during the entire time I spent playing. At the very beginning of the game you have no armor or health and the weapons you get are not strong enough to reasonably take on more than one enemy at once. This presents several challenges as the leveled up Master Mode enemies are able to kill you in one hit and often appear in groups. In addition to the challenge that the upgraded enemies pose, there are also more enemy spawn locations including several which elevate the enemies into the sky using balloons. These are particularly hard to deal with as at the beginning of the game you have very limited ranged attacking options. Overall, the very beginning was the most painful due to the significantly increased strength of the early enemies compared to the usual lack of tools to fight them. 

Once I started getting further into the game and had unlocked all of the runes that you are granted in the beginning of the game and got the paraglider the game became much easier as I had many more options in how I approached or avoided enemies. I was also able to cover distance much faster, allowing me to very quickly reach the Zora region and begin working towards Divine Beast Vah Ruta. At this point I basically began avoiding fighting enemies as much as I could so I could move forward as quickly as possible and get through the dungeons which aren't much harder than they are in normal mode. The Divine Beasts and their Boss Fights did not seem noticeably harder than their normal mode counterpart and, ironically, felt like a small break from the significantly more dangerous overworld. 

Unfortunately, I was not able to finish the entire game in Master Mode, but I wasn't having any specific challenges that were holding me back so I think with more time it definitely would have been achievable. The most challenging parts of the game are any overworld areas with regularly spawning enemies as, in Master Mode, these enemies are significantly stronger and there are more of them. One area I could imagine being particularly difficult although I never reached it is Hyrule Castle. There are lots of already strong enemies there and I can only imagine how difficult it would be to traverse the castle in Master Mode. 

Overall, the challenge of Master Mode did not really add much to the game for me except for making the earlier parts of the game more intense and most overworld enemies requiring a bit more creativity to beat. I already have enjoyed playing through Breath of the Wild several times and playing through it in Master Mode did not prevent my love for the base game, but it also didn't add anything that felt particularly special. If I had not been trying to beat the game as quickly as possible for the sake of making progress for blog posts, I may have found myself enjoying the more difficult combat and increased enemy spawn locations more. I would recommend trying out Master Mode if you already have beaten the game on normal mode more than once or have spent a significant amount of time with the later parts of the game. Playing Master Mode does require owning the Master Trials DLC which costs $20, but if you are looking for a significantly more challenging experience, it is definitely worth it as you also get access to other cool features like the Trial of the Sword. 

I would 100% recommend Breath of the Wild to anyone who hasn't played it before, it's remained one of my favorite single-player open world games for the 5 years its been out and it is very friendly to people with little to no experience playing video games. Breath of the Wild is significantly different from all previous games in the Zelda series in that it is not restrictive in the tasks you are asked to complete and there are infinite ways to approach beating the game. I really appreciated this and had a blast exploring every inch of the map the first time I played, but I understand that, without guidance, people used the the older, linear Zelda games might get overwhelmed with choice or try to play the game "the right way", causing them to miss cool features that aren't required to beat the game. That being said, I would only recommend Master Mode to people who are bored of the difficulty of the base game and want to try a significantly increased challenge.

That's all for my Breath of the Wild Master Mode blog! I hope you enjoyed and maybe have been encouraged to check out Breath of the Wild again or for the first time! Thanks for reading!