Breath of the Wild Hard Mode

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Breath of the Wild. Only mild story spoilers, but a bunch on mechanics.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is a phenomenal game, but it features a fair few new features for the series. One such feature is paid DLC, set to deliver extra content at a later date. Among the bullet point promises shot out of a pre-release press image is hard mode, set to release this August. A number of previous Zelda games have had this, down to the very first, but with varying levels of alteration. Most just raise a bunch of damage numbers, but others feature more drastic changes and sometimes even brand-new content.

We have no idea know what hard mode for BotW involves yet. It probably won’t be anything special. But given that the game occupies the majority of my free time and waking thoughts, I thought I’d engage in some baseless speculation/suggestion. Here are some things that could make Breath of the Wild more difficult in a way that’s engaging and worthwhile. But! There’s a catch: I’m going to try and get as much possible out of the least amount of effort. I’m sure there’s not an avalanche of resources going into hard mode. Obviously it would be preferable if they added new content, and redid all the enemies, and changed all the puzzles, and altered all the mechanics, and basically just built an entirely new game. But no one does that*, and it’s also more interesting to write under constraints rather than just say “Make Everything Better”.

*That I know of. If you’ve got a game in mind, I’d be interested to hear about it.

Let’s start with the obvious:

Pepsiman Review (Sponsored Content)

Greetings to all my readers, new and actual. I’m here today to announce an exciting new prospect for all of us* here at Genericide Entertainment! We’re expanding our horizons and shifting paradigms into an incredible new avenue of fresh possibilities and dynamic opportunities. In other words, we’ve gone corporate! That’s right, Genericide Entertainment is now ad-sponsored content! This is sure to be an exciting new era of community connection, exciting innovation, fan-author synergy and exciting new realms of quality products. I’m excited. But before I could embark on this exciting new journey, I needed to get a sponsor in the first place.

*Me

This was difficult, since these days long-form text articles are about as lively as your favorite Everquest server. Most of the focus is on YouTube channels, a fact I was happy to exploit until I remembered I don’t have one of those. Unfortunately both Crunchyroll and Audible required I have at least 5 subscribers before sponsoring me. Despite my best efforts, they were not swayed by a potential 5 subscribers. Loot Crate was though. Expect the unboxing video to come up whenever I can figure out how to work my phone’s camera.