Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has been out for four years now, but fans are still finding new ways to enjoy what is still one of the best open-world RPGs of the last decade.
Like any game that sticks around for long enough, a big part of that continued enjoyment is based in the modding community.
If you’re a PC gamer and a Breath of the Wild faithful, using mods to augment the Zelda experience may appeal to you — and with an emulator, a dump of your game file, and indifference to Nintendo’s attitude toward modders, you could get started with relative ease.
Ray tracing has made its way to just about every game, new or old, so it’s no surprise to find a ReShade mod here in Breath of the Wild. What is surprising, however, is how much it manages to augment BOTWs already iconic aesthetic. The mod works alone, but can be coupled with this RTGI Shader from Pascal Gilcher to give it some extra contrast so that those nighttime hillsides really pop.
As amazing as Breath of the Wild is, there are some mechanics that could use a little tweaking. If you’re in the business of nitpicking those mechanical idiosyncrasies, then this mod is for you. For example, Rebalance makes loot proportional to enemy strength, reconfigures armor and enemy power for a “flatter difficulty curve” during the course of the game, and gives weapons and bows more varied characteristics.
Breath of the Wild is all about taking in your environment, which makes mods like this one that shifts your vantage to an over-the-shoulder viewpoint especially intriguing. The mod brings Breath of the Wild’s camera angle closer to games like Fallout, and gives (quite literally) a fresh new perspective to the action.
Let’s be real, Breath of the Wild’s soundtrack is flawless, so to modify the game’s music in any way seemingly borders on unnecessary — that is unless you modify the game with this “faithful” music pack. Are these tunes “better”? Probably not. Are they pretty damn enjoyable? Just have a listen for yourself.
This mod might be as superficially satisfying as say, changing Link’s paraglider to a Cucco, but if you plan on downloading multiple mods, you’re going to want the BCML Cross-Platform Mod Loader to both organize and enable/disable mods at will.
Perhaps even more jarring than changing the music is removing the music entirely. Though drastic, this mod helps bring a whole new ambiance to Breath of the Wild, kind of like watching a movie scene with and without a soundtrack. More practically it also helps reduce the game file size and gives an ideal noise level for screen recording.