Legend of Zelda BOTW is amazing. What else?

May 13, 2021 9:27 AM

I loved Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Absolutely loved it. What game should I try next? I have a Switch. Important qualities inside.

I love that the game is open world -- I'm all about the side quests and shrines. I could have done with fewer monsters, as I prefer to think of my Link as a simple mushroom-gatherer with a sideline in precious ores. I greatly enjoyed Animal Crossing during quarantine.

I'm willing to try a game where I battle humans instead of monsters, I guess. No sexual violence at all, please.

I've seen this previous AskMe. I don't like the retro visual style of Stardew Valley, Untitled Goose Game was fun but isn't something I'm going to spend hours immersed in, the Civilization games and Minecraft aren't my thing. Basically I want BOTW part 2.

posted by The corpse in the library to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (32 answers total)

Best answer: BOTW kept me sane during the first few months of the pandemic. Age of Calamity felt way off to me, like a soap opera character who gets hit on the head and shows up with a completely different personality.

A Short Hike is the only game I've found that comes close to that thrill of exploring and solving puzzles. Sweet story. No battles! Playable in one afternoon.

Tangential but the BOTW subreddit is very active and full of Zelda hilarity.
posted by roger ackroyd at 9:45 AM on May 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

If you're willing to switch platforms or play on PC, I've really been enjoying exploring the wilderness, taking in the views, and hunting all of the animals in Red Dead Redemption 2.
posted by Theiform at 9:51 AM on May 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

Okami: Zelda but you're a wolf. Closer to older Zelda games, but should feel familiar coming from BotW. Enemies are evil shadow monsters.

Subnautica: might scratch the exploration and gathering itch, especially if you disable the thirst/hunger mechanic. Low personally directed violence, all directed at fish, but there are space ship explosions and related deaths.

Skyrim: big ol' open world RPG. Combat heavy, as I understand it. Enemies are people and monsters.

Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles : It's very much a BotW clone with no monsters.

Summer in Mara: reviews say it's an older Zelda crossed with a farming game, so might also hit the itch. Looks like no combat, and capitalism is the enemy.
posted by Anonymous Function at 9:53 AM on May 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

Best answer: Seconding A Short Hike. What a great game - calming, funny, touching. I’ve also enjoyed Paper Mario: The Origami King as well as Mario Odyssey, which both feel somewhat open-world (the latter more so than the former).
posted by chaiyai at 9:56 AM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening - top view, old-school gameplay with new-school graphics.
Super Mario Odyssey - I think this'll scratch a similar itch.
posted by pyro979 at 9:57 AM on May 13, 2021 [4 favorites]

Outer Wilds is coming to Switch this summer and it is incredible. All exploring, no fighting. Tense at times, but not a puzzle platformer, exactly.
posted by clockwork at 9:58 AM on May 13, 2021 [11 favorites]

Super Mario Odyssey is 100% what you describe. It's a giant open world and once you unlock and handful of the worlds you can travel around out of sequence and explore as you like. It has a 97/100 score on Metacritic across 113 reviews.

You collect "Power Moons" as part of each little quest and can stay busy for months and months if that's your thing. To beat the game you need only 124 moons, but you unlock new stuff at 250 and 500, and can go all the way to 999.

Playing that game was true joy.
posted by AgentRocket at 9:58 AM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

I haven't played BotW yet but the stuff about it that appeals to me sounds like Spiritfarer. The world opens up gradually, but there are side quests, shrines, precious ores, and mushrooms! There's a narrative to it, but you can easily spend as much time as you want just sailing around, cooking, weaving cloth, and shearing your sheep. I think it's definitely a smaller world than BotW but it has the "small domestic tasks within a larger fantasy landscape" thing down pat; I also find the writing really great and often very funny.
posted by babelfish at 10:12 AM on May 13, 2021 [3 favorites]

Second Outer Wilds! What a fantastic game.

Again, if you’re willing to jump platforms and try adjacent experiences:
-Flower - lovely, beautiful, totally different experience
-Journey - I can’t recommend this enough. No, it isn’t open world, but it’s so thoughtfully designed to give you an experience and truly a Journey. Worth a shot!

I’d second Red Dead 2. You can keep to just exploring the world (though you will have to deal with animals and some characters, though you can always ignore the story and characters and just explore, which is very much worth it)
posted by glaucon at 10:18 AM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Ok jumping back in: I haven’t played it, but the company that made Sky: Children of the Light are some of the most thoughtful designers with kind games that have heart and adventure. I think you would really love their stuff
posted by glaucon at 10:19 AM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

I just finished Immortals: Fenyx Rising and it is exactly like Breath of the Wild, just with Greek Gods and tons of PG-13 snark. (You can mute that bit if you want.) I kept doing the shrines I MEAN "vaults" long after it was useful.

Also, Child of Light. Not like BOTW but the game is gorgeous and sweet.
posted by greenland at 10:57 AM on May 13, 2021 [5 favorites]

Basically I want BOTW part 2.

Luckily, there will in fact be a BOTW sequel...eventually. Not soon enough to scratch your itch, probably, but it is coming at some point. And you probably already know about it or have it, but just in case you don't, have you gotten the DLC for BOTW? That'll at least give you some more time with the game.

I'll nth the rec for Spiritfarer, but do want to note that it's not nearly as open world as BOTW. It's billed as a "cozy management game about death" and that's definitely what it is. There's a lovely world to explore, you just don't get the freedom you do in BOTW. Fair warning, it'll probably make you cry.
posted by yasaman at 11:29 AM on May 13, 2021

Seconding Skyrim, which I'm pretty sure was a heavy inspiration for Breath of the Wild.

I prefer to think of my Link as a simple mushroom-gatherer with a sideline in precious ores

You can play Skyrim any way you want, including this way. Yeah, you'll have to get in fights eventually but your herbalist skills can be used to brew potions and poisons that will actually help you survive the fights.
posted by commander_fancypants at 11:31 AM on May 13, 2021

I've put in more than a few hours in Skyrim on the Switch, although it's been a while since I've last played it. It is similar to BOTW in that it's a fairly open world so you can go anywhere/do anything. The whole skill tree thing is a lot more complicated though. Also it feels like the decisions you make in Skyrim have more weight than in BOTW - you can do pretty much anything in BOTW and it doesn't impact the rest of the game but I don't think it works that way in Skyrim.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:03 PM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

If you have a tablet, you can download Genshin Impact for free and try it out. The whole Tchozz family played and loved BotW, and now Mrs Tchozz and Tchozz the Younger are playing Genshin Impact. From when I watch them, it looks similar to BotW in terms of how the world looks and functions (lots of picking up various objects, cooking things, gliding around, climbing, swaying grass, etc.). I think you do have to battle creatures some. Instead of changing Linky-man's* equipment or outfits, you change characters and level them up. It is, unfortunately, a pay-as-you-go, loot crate-y game. Mrs Tchozz plays without paying for anything while Tchozz the Younger spends all of their allowance on it. YMMV

* - That's his name in Casa Tchozz.
posted by Tchozz at 12:10 PM on May 13, 2021

I love BOTW so much I play it over and over. In my opinion, skip Yonder. The controls are difficult and it's tedious, although the graphics are charming. Link's Awakening was also a bust for me. YMMV.

Edited to add: OH and definitely skip the recent Age of Calamity, which is all fighty and no explorey.
posted by nkknkk at 12:21 PM on May 13, 2021

A different platform again, but Shadow of the Colossus has a lot of overlapping feel with BotW.
posted by rhamphorhynchus at 12:32 PM on May 13, 2021

Ni No Kuni 2 is an RPG where you battle monsters, has cute animal sidekicks and an extensive town-building mechanic. My wife, who has similar gaming preferences to yours, ended up playing BOTW after thoroughly exhausting NNK2, and they both scratched the same itch.
posted by Gortuk at 12:38 PM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

Beaten by two minutes to recommending Ni No Kuni, though I was going to say Wrath of the White Witch (the first one revamped) rather than Revenant Kingdom (the second). It's more of a traditional RPG (open world but linear story, plus lots of structured-combat fights against random monsters) and is slow to get going, but was co-created with Studio Ghibli and the character work and sense of place are delightful.
posted by Hogshead at 12:45 PM on May 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

Alba: A Wildlife Adventure
Explore an island and take pictures of local wildlife.
posted by heart's ease at 12:48 PM on May 13, 2021 [2 favorites]

YouTuber videogamedunkey's reviews on Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey were what convinced me to buy a Switch. If the (pretty freeform) BotW video rings true in terms of what you enjoyed, see if the more structured Odyssey review gets you similarly jazzed to play it. I 100%-ed it and it was excellent.
posted by Rhaomi at 1:06 PM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

It’s on rails evidently but you might check out the new pokemon snap.
posted by Mizu at 4:02 PM on May 13, 2021

As Greenland mentioned above, Immortals: Fenyx Rising is what you are looking for. At times it feels a bit *too much* like a copy of Breath of the Wild, but I still played all the way through it.

Watch this side-by-side video put out by Gamespot to see just how similar they are.
posted by tacodave at 4:43 PM on May 13, 2021 [1 favorite]

I second A Short Hike and Spiritfarer -- and I look forward to trying some of the others recommended here!
posted by ourobouros at 8:50 PM on May 13, 2021

My "controversial" Switch take is that Super Mario Odyssey is actually a much better game than Breath of the Wild.

Dragon's Dogma is another good action-RPG for Switch, but there's a heavier emphasis on combat and the story kind of sucks.

Have they re-released Wind Waker for Switch yet? As far as Zelda games go, I enjoyed that one more than Breath of the Wild.

(yes, I think I'm still salty about them making Link right-handed)
posted by neckro23 at 8:22 AM on May 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Nthing Skyrim. It's not as good as BotW, but it's the closest game in "feel" to BotW I know of. Part of what thrilled me about BotW is that I wished Skyrim was child-friendly enough to share with my kids, and it never will be, but then BotW came out and it was like Skyrim For Kids.
posted by roystgnr at 6:25 PM on May 14, 2021 [1 favorite]

Funnily enough, my controversial Switch take is that Super Mario Odyssey is fun but really doesn't scratch the same itch as BOTW (which I LOVED). It's cute and clever, but the controls are slippery in a way that stresses me out a bit. I'm only 6 or so worlds in and do appreciate how much there is to explore - I'm definitely still playing - but so far it's not been a game that I would recommend specifically to satisfy a similar gaming experience as BOTW. Of the games already listed I'd probably agree with Skyrim the most, though it is more "pure" RPG I suppose.

I'm excited about lots of these other recommendations and am glad you asked the question! And while I don't have additional recommendations for you, I wanted to share that Deku Deals is a great site for keeping an eye out for sales on any of the games mentioned here - I ended up downloading Child of Light for about four bucks the other day thanks to DD. I only heard about the site recently and am not sure how widely known it is, so I thought I'd pass that along (it helps me sometimes when I'm stuck trying to decide between a couple of games and one turns out to be on sale!).
posted by DingoMutt at 9:39 AM on May 16, 2021 [2 favorites]

This thread prompted me to get Super Mario Odyssey and — while it does seem like an extensive and well-made game — for me it doesn't have anywhere near the play-through time BOTW did, at least the way I played it. In BOTW I focused on exploration and not on rapidly working through the plot and I played it quite happily for weeks if not a month earlier in the pandemic. In SMO, it only took me a weekend to finish the main plot and a lot of the game overall. A lot of the parts left seem more frustrating than fun, as I don't much like precision jumping or button pushing, so timing perfect triple jumps and combo wall-cap jumps to get the last moons is unappealing. In BOTW, by comparison, I never really wanted to master the ultra-precise mechanics of deflecting laser blasts and getting flurry rushes and no part of the game required me to. I can always power past difficult enemies by abusing the instant in-combat healing from meals.
posted by sindark at 1:13 AM on May 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Yeah, I hate anything that involves hitting just the right combination of buttons at the right time. And I’ll admit it’s unreasonable, but I don’t like looking at the Mario character. There’s something about him that bugs me.

I liked the books and the TV show of The Witcher — would The Witcher 3 be good? Unfortunately there isn’t a demo. The books had some gross stuff about women that I’d rather not have on my living room TV.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:09 PM on June 25, 2021

Response by poster: So far, A Short Hike has come the closest of the games I’ve looked at. The dialogue is just my kind of humor.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:35 PM on June 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Strongly avoid the Witcher, it is rife with sexual violence and other very distressing themes. I loved Witcher 3 and have played it for innumerable hours but it’s overarching plots and content really clash with all of the landscape exploration and flower picking and vodka drinking you mostly want to focus on.

I’m currently playing Immortals Fenyx Rising and yeah, it’s pretty much BotW in Greek mythology flavor. I have a lot of nitpicks with it purely in comparison to BotW but if I weren’t comparing them I’d say it’s a great game. The world is good to explore and climb all over, it’s full of little puzzles and things are accompanied by sassy takes on mythical characters and stories. You do pick mushrooms but you don’t cook them and there is only one type. There are allusions to sexual things but it’s kind of like PG-13 god of war humor with a generous portion of “toxic masculinity is bad and Zeus is a fuckboy”. No cooking, alas. But the combat is pretty fun, you have a cool bird companion that shoots fireballs, and your main character has an actual discernible personality and backstory, unlike a certain beautiful mute hylian we know and love.
posted by Mizu at 7:04 PM on June 25, 2021 [1 favorite]

Sable, the game in this FPP, looks like it might fit the bill, too. Gorgeous art and soundtrack, and what looks like a ton of exploration in a beautiful landscape. There's only a demo available right now, but apparently it has an hour of gameplay.
posted by ourobouros at 8:55 AM on June 26, 2021