The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild is the best well-rounded open-world action-adventure video game ever made. If you think about the deficiencies of all of the current great action-adventure games, BotW excels in all of them. I am going to use the next two paragraphs to explain what BotW does better over other action-adventure games. In the first paragraph, I will compare BotW to Ubisoft's action-adventure games (Assassin's Creed and Farcry). In the second paragraph, I will compare BotW to Skyrim and The Witcher 3.
In order to create an amazing open-world action-adventure game, you need to have enough variety in your gameplay not to make the player feel bored. In Breath of the Wild, much of that variety resides in the 120 shrines scattered throughout the world for you to explore. Each shrine has a unique trial for you, whether it is solving a puzzle, fighting a Guardian in combat, or simply just trying to find the shrine in the first place. In addition to the shrines, there are multitudes of side-quests for Link to complete, and there are mini-games where you can obtain Korok Seeds, among other things. Although a majority of the BotW side-quests are mind numbing 'fetch quests', the amount of those kind of side-quests do not compare to how many of those quests games like Assassin's Creed and Farcry have. I remembered purchasing Farcry 5 and then stop playing the game within the span of two weeks because the side-quests felt like such a chore. BotW is successful in keeping the player hooked with its exploration and its variety of gameplay.
Breath of the Wild is a big game, but it does not feel unnecessarily big. Games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3 (although they are great games in their own right), feel too big for me, and as such, they tend to lose my attention quickly. Many of the mechanics in BotW are simple to learn and are robust enough, but not too overwhelming. A great example is the 'crafting' system for BotW, where you just put some items in a cooking pot and let it create something. I find that many of the mechanics in both Skyrim and The Witcher 3 are unnecessarily complicated. Maybe it is the fact that both games are also RPGs, but for me, I could not get into either game. BotW never fails to surprise you with what it has.
As amazing of a game that BotW is, it does have some faults (which do not really matter at all, but I will list them). If you are looking for a robust story, then I am not sure if you have played any Zelda game at all. The Legend of Zelda is, at its essence, a generic "save the princess" story that is slightly deeper than Super Mario. Although the landscapes and draw distances in BotW are beautiful, the game will not win any awards in graphical achievements, especially with how poor the modelling of the trees and bushes are.
I also want to mention that the audio and the musical scores in Breath of the Wild are incredible. There was a great mix of original tracks and remixes of classic scores from previous Zelda games.
When I say that Breath of the Wild hits the "sweet spot" of action-adventure video games, I mean that it has the perfect blend of gameplay variety, simplicity, and a large open-world (but not too large). I do not think there is a game, nor will there be a game in the future that perfects the open-world action-adventure formula like BotW has. People buy the Nintendo Switch just to play this game, and I do not blame them. People will look to Super Mario Odyssey being the centerpiece game for the Switch, but I would not agree after playing BotW. Breath of the Wild is essential playing for any Switch owner, and is a good shout for one of the best games I have ever played.
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