Reviewing Monsters: The Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda is a series I truly love and respect. I've played almost all of the 2D and 3D games other than the Oracle games and the multi-player ones, and have found something to love about most of them. Their most recent installment, and one that was critically acclaimed all over the world, was Breath of the Wild for the Switch, one of the best games ever and the game that put the Nintendo Switch on the map.

And... I loved the game, don't get me wrong. The original version of this article, published somewhere in late 2019, was a bit disparaging, and having recently picked it back up to finish up the DLC segments of the game, I had a newfound love and respect for the game. But Breath of the Wild, while being an amazing open-world fantasy RPG, had a bunch of wild departures from the previous formula of the franchise that I felt made it feel not quite as much as a Legend of Zelda game as I would like. Most of that has to do with the departure and switching out the dungeon barrage in exchange for a larger open-world, as well as toning down the number of magical items Link can use. It's still a fun game to play and one I enjoyed immensely in my playthrough, but my complex feelings about Breath of the Wild is a discussion for a different day.

One of the things that I do kind of have a fair amount of complaints for, though, is the distillation of the menagerie of bizarre Zelda enemies into what amounts to a handful. Again, the game designers had a different focus for sure when designing this game, but comparing the bestiary of Breath of the Wild with games like Twilight Princess or Majora's Mask really does make it look relatively bland. Still, rereading some of my older monster reviews, this is the one in the most need of touch-up, I feel, and that ended up with what's basically a huge rewrite.

ALLIED RACES:

So I didn't talk about any of the actual races in the original version of this review, and I think I kind of should! Breath of the Wild, as I bemoaned, is a large, large game that doesn't really have a large variety of enemy types, so it's as ideal as any for me to talk about the primary non-human (well, non-Hylian) races. 

Hylians, Sheikah & Gerudo: And we'll briefly zip through the 'humans' of the races. Technically, there are three of them in Breath of the Wild, with the Hylians being basically elf-like and the most 'generic' NPC's you'll meet, with a vaguely RPG-European culture (or at least, what's left of them). The Sheikah, originally just something in the background of previous Zelda games, is expanded to a full-on ninja/samurai village with their home base, Kakariko Town, being extremely Edo-era Japanese. The Sheikah is also responsible for essentially creating all of the magical technology we see throughout BOTW's Hyrule, although as we learn, by the 'present day' time, all the technology has been lost in time and the best they could scrounge up are like, maybe an ancient arrow or two. 

The Gerudo is technically one of the four allied races, and it's one that has been around since Ocarina of Time. They hang out in the South-Western part of Hyrule, in the Gerudo desert, and they have a quasi Indian-mixed-with-Middle-Eastern vibe going on with them. And while it's mostly glossed over in previous games, the Gerudo's culture is significantly expanded here. They're a one-gender race, and while only Gerudo females are allowed in their town (Link has to cross-dress to enter) they travel all over Hyrule in search for both experience and for a husband. And while I don't think that they did enough, I feel like the respective large towns for the Sheikah and Gerudo do give us a fair bit about their culture.

Zora: A lot of the primary sentient races in most Zelda games draw from Ocarina of Time, which iconically introduced the Gerudo, Zora and Gorons to us, and they've shown up in practically every single game to follow. In 3D games, they are often depicted as naked, graceful fish-people that live in a serene 'realm', and I do believe that Breath of the Wild's Zora's Realm is perhaps my favourite area in all of the game. The Zoras themselves also get a face-lift, too, and interestingly look a lot more fish-like. They always have fins jutting out of their arms in most of their incarnations, but BOTW's Zoras, interestingly, seem to have their heads fused with some sort of fish. There are a couple of unique Zoras that have different kinds of fish, too -- the regular Zora tend to have a vaguely shark-based head-fish, but some older Zoras have faces that are obviously manta rays (which is just perfect), the two major characters Mipha and Sidon have their heads based on a dolphin and a hammerhead shark respectively, and following a trend since OOT, the Zora King is a big fat whale-man. Dorephan is far, far more athletic and regal-looking than OOT's King Zora, though. Easily my favourite race, I feel, visually. 

Goron: The Goron are rock-people, and are always found in hanging around Death Mountain, eating rocks and stuff, and they've honestly never really changed a lot since their inception in Ocarina of Time, being just big, fat, boisterous, and basically fill in the role that would traditionally be filled by dwarves in a more traditional RPG setting. In previous games a huge part of them is that they can turn into spinning rocks by rolling up like an armadillo, something that is significantly played down in Breath of the Wild. I really don't have too much to say here, I like them, and their drum-based theme music in this game is pretty neat. 

Rito: I haven't really played Wind Waker a lot, but I've seen people play it and one of the new races introduced there is the Rito, which are supposed to be bird-people... but in practice, they look more like people in long-robes with bird-beaks glued onto their noses. Breath of the Wild, though, made them a far, far more distinctive bird-person race, and that is so much appreciated. They're basically anthropomorphic birds, but there are still parts of them that made them feel unique -- their arms end in feather-esque fingers, Lugia-style, which allows them to more believably manipulate things like bows and whatnot... but I don't think the Rito can actually fly, and basically glide around with their bird-arms. Like the Zora, while there's a bunch of generic Rito model vaguely based on like a bird of prey or something, a lot of the other unique NPCs have their own unique bird they're associated with. The champion Revali has a far more fearsome eagle look, the traveling bard Kass has a parrot head, and the old grandpa Rito is obviously a wise-man owl. 

Korok: Returning from Wind Waker are the Koroks, and they are adorable. Filling up the slot that was previously filled by the Kokiri children in Ocarina of Time, I vastly prefer the Koroks! They're the playful pranksters that are responsible for a lot of the wacky happenings in Hyrule, and I feel like they truly add a lot in making the game feel more magical and less mundane swordfighting. They also have very adorable 'yahaha' noises, and I really do love that they're like these little humanoid tree-people with faces crudely drawn on leaves pasted onto them. The two unique Koroks here, Chio and Hestu, have their own unique leaves that are supposed to resemble some sort of facial hair, and I absolutely love them, too. 

The Koroks are honestly mostly just charming, hanging out in the area that corresponds to the Lost Woods and the Great Deku Tree from many previous Zelda games, and they are also responsible for one of the biggest scavenger hunts in any game, since if there's any part of the massive overworld that's just a bit weird... chances are, if it's not a shrine, then it's a Korok. There are like, what, 400 of them or something to find? 

ENEMIES:

Bokoblin: Every Zelda game always has to have generic mooks that are basically not too smart or powerful, and they just try to beat you up before you beat them. And depending on the game, it varies which 'blin' variant gets to be the punching bag, but as we move into the post-Wii era, the Bokoblins have basically fit into the role of the pig-snouted orc-goblin-oni expies that are set up as the starter enemies of the game.

Breath of the Wild doesn't have a whole ton of monsters, though, mostly distributing the same handful of monsters across its many areas, with a couple of specific environmental monsters and minibosses tossed here and there, and one of the five 'universal' monsters found everywhere is the Bokoblin. Combining aspects of the 2D Moblins with the Bokoblins from Wind Waker and Skyward Sword, BOTW's Bokoblins are pretty functional as a generic dumb humanoid goblin-gremlin creature. Various different colours of these Bokoblins appear as Link gets stronger, with red, green and blue variants being the most common, and then I think the white and golden ones only appear in hard difficulties or specific DLC levels.

And design-wise? The Bokoblins aren't too much to talk about, but what makes them at least suitable for the many, many reuses that the game puts them on is the fact that they're equipped with equipment that sort of scale up with your character. Early on they just carry around dumb ol' wooden clubs or whatever, but as you grow stronger, their damage also scale up with the bows and swords they use and that's how they become more of a threat. I would honestly prefer the alternative variant that the other Zelda games take, by simply introducing newer, cooler-looking monsters, but in a way this feeds into the open-world, scavenge-your-items-as-you-survive feeling of Breath of the Wild.

Also, one thing that I neglected to mention in my original version of this monster commentary is how much the A.I. is improved in Breath of the Wild. And honestly, thank god they did that, otherwise each fight would be utterly monotonous. The Bokoblins (and the Lizalfos, and the Moblins, basically the 'smart' demihumans) have a fair amount of fun A.I. that would cause them to scramble to grab weapons that are discarded on the ground, they'll call for help, depending on their base the archers will be standing on lookouts, stronger variants will know to soccer-kick your bombs back to you, some smarter ones will even set their wooden weapons on fire... I am still salty about the lack of variety of the enemies in Breath of the Wild, but at least these buggers are fun to fight.


Lizalfos: The Lizalfos have shown up in a fair amount of 3D Zelda games ever since their debut in Ocarina of Time, but they've always been portrayed as being based on a generic dinosaurian look. Which is cool, of course! Powerful-looking lizard-men with fanged mouth and monstrous claws are always cool. But Breath of the Wild Lizalfoses are easily my favourite incarnation of the creature, with its chameleon face -- including those iconic eyes and the half-grinning lips. Even the curled-up tail is based on real-life chameleons!

Lizalfoses basically are the stronger equivalents of the Bokoblin, sharing a fair amount of the same A.I. and variation, but they've got a whole lot of funky animations, including their attack animation (the tongue lashes out to bop you in the face) and the fact that, like chameleons, they will change colour to hide into the environment. And let me tell you, when the overworld has as many details as Breath of the Wild's, this can be surprisingly effective, particularly in desert or mountainous areas.

There are also a surprising amount of thought put into the Lizalfos culture, where they aren't quite as keen to use the same sort of swords and clubs that Bokoblins use, instead preferring... dagger-boomerangs. No, really, they use daggers that double as boomerangs. And also, sometimes they use spears. In addition to the same colour variants that the Bokoblins come in, Lizalfoses also show up in fire-breathing, electric-breathing and ice-breathing variants.


Moblin: The Moblin have gone through a lot of iterations over the franchise's series, going from pig-men to bulldog-men, and going from the disposable grunts (which the Bokoblins eventually took over) into elite troops (particularly the Ocarina of Time variants), and Breath of the Wild took that latter approach and ramped it up to eleven. If the Bokoblins are the equivalents to orcs and goblins, the Moblins are giant, towering dumb brutes that are equivalent to ogres and trolls.

They don't show up quite as much, and I am never quite as threatened by the Moblins as a swarm of Bokoblins or Lizalfoses would be, but they do have a very distinctive appearance that highlights their dumb-ness. Again, similar to the Bokoblins, they exist in different-coloured variants, and the different models have different tribal tattoos and accessories. I've always fount that Moblins are a lot more boring compared to the other two common humanoid enemies, and the only real fun thing is that if you steal or destroy a Moblin's weapon, they'll grab nearby Bokoblins and use them as put-shots.


Stalkoblin, Stalizalfos & Stalmoblin: Taking over the role of other skeletal creatures in previous Zelda games like the Stalchild or Stalfos are the skeletal versions of the three common humanoid enemies, which... technically count as new variants, but they basically fight similarly to their living counterparts. Like traditional Zelda stal enemies, they only show up at night and rise up from the dirt in the ground to attack you.

They're kind of cool looking, I guess, particularly the Lizalfos and Moblin variants, and I do like that the three Stal monsters do have a unifying theme -- they're actually relatively fragile, especially if you use bombs on them, and a running gag with the skeleton enemies in this game is that they will keep trying to re-assemble themselves together, with the skull hopping on the ground to reach the rest of the body and reassemble themselves. You have to smash the head! Any Stal-creature in the vicinity will have the rest of their bones still run around in undeath as long as a corresponding 'head' is bouncing around, so you might have three giant Stalmoblins fight over a single skull.

Also, when you kill them, you can always salvage an entire still-wiggling arm to use as a makeshift bludgeon, which also has the unintended (?) side-effect of looking like the arm is groping Link's butt if you holster it. Again, it's kind of unfortunate that all of these guys feel kinda same-y. Older games made their different undead enemies be a bit different, and I kinda wished that there's something different with the way you take down a Stalmoblin, for example.


Cursed Bokoblin, Cursed Lizalfos and Cursed Moblin: Taking the place of Bubbles as floating-skull enemies, these guys could have been pretty cool as weaker versions of the Stal-creatures or whatever, but they basically only show up in the corrupted Divine Beasts -- giant magic-steampunk fantasy Zoids that have been corrupted by the dark influence of Ganondorf. It's neat that these guys end up giving the dungeons a couple unique enemies without too much work on the monster-modeling department, but at the same time... I dunno, they could've been done better? I guess it's kinda redundant with the actual Stal enemies already having a lot of detached-head thing going for them, but eh.


Chuchu: Well, we actually do have a Pokedex for enemies in Breath of the Wild. In a neat bit of a similar feature from the Metroid Prime games, you can record and save data on all the enemies, animals, ingredients and equipment in the game. So we'll be going in order of that. Chuchus first! Basically Zelda's catch-all for any sort of blobby, slimy enemies, my favourite version of the Chuchu has always been the bobble-head smiling slime from Minish Cap and Phantom Hourglass. The Chuchus don't show up quite as often as the humanoid trio, but they do show up enough for them to feel somewhat more common, especially as you enter more elemental-themed areas like Death Mountain, Gerudo Desert and Mt. Hylia. The Chuchus exist in three variants -- blue (regular), electric, fire and ice, and they deal damage depending on their element. Three size variants exist, but there's not a whole ton of intricacies in defeating them. They're slime boys, beat them up! They don't really show up enough in the game, I feel... so often the game's enemies just seem like they're recycling the same old trio of humanoid enemies.

One interesting thing is that if you kill a regular Chuchu with a weapon with an element, the resulting loot of Chuchu jelly will be transformed into whatever element you struck it with. That's an awesome little thing that I've always found to be neat, even if it doesn't ultimately amount to much.


Keese: The Keese have shown up in basically every single Zelda game around, and the idea of an angry bat that bites you is a pretty simple concept for an enemy. And this time around, the Keese is reimagined beyond just being a weird bat, which I didn't realize how much it needed! Breath of the Wild Keese is reduced to a Gohma-esque (man, shame the Gohma didn't make it into BOTW... no bug enemies do, huh?) creature whose primary body is an eyeball and some fangs, plus some bat wings. As with the Chuchu, they show up in regular and elemental variants. Unlike the Chuchu, sometimes swarms of like twenty Keese will show up in a tornado of bat wings and eyeballs, which I thought is pretty cool. They are otherwise pretty simple enemies, though.


Octorok: While a lot of the enemies have been relatively brand-new reimaginings of classic Zelda enemies, the Octoroks basically combine all of the various major incarnations of the Octorok over the past couple of decades into a single species. We've got several variants, but basically they have something in common -- they will hide underground or underwater, they will spit out rocks at you, and some of them can balloon up and take into the air. Which I thought was great. The Octoroks were inexplicably land-dwelling octopi in most of the 2D games, and reimagined into water-dwelling rock-launching squid-octopi in Ocarina of Time and several other 3D games.

Breath of the Wild combines it all by having the Octorok just show up everywhere, albeit relatively rare. It's just that the water Octorok hide underwater with a little chunk of reed poking out, the Forest Octorok do so with a shrub poking out, the Rock Octorok does so with a rock, and the Treasure Octorok is basically a Mimic, having a little treasure chest on top of its head. Hell, they even adapted Skyward Sword's sky-dwelling octopi by giving most of these guys the ability to float into the air, and actual pink Sky Octorok would be added with the DLC, holding treasure chest in the air.

This is honestly what I wished Breath of the Wild would do more, instead of relying mostly on the Bokoblins, Moblins and Lizalfoses. And sure, they're cool, just how well they reimagined the Octorok made me really wish we could've seen what the creative team could've done with, oh, the Peahat or the Leever or the Moldorm or the Tektite or Gohma or Deku Baba or Like Like or Biri or Helmasaur or Dodongos or the many other enemy variants they could've fit into the game, y'know?


Wizzrobe: Another classic Zelda enemies, the Wizzrobes also show up in six variants, a weaker and a stronger version for each of the three primary elements. And... I'm not entirely sure how I feel about them? On one hand, the classic 2D Zelda feel of the Wizzrobe as this chubby robed wizard with glowing eyes as the only visible feature is so iconic, and BOTW's Wizzrobe does homage that somewhat. On the other hand, though, the decision to make them lanky humanoids with creepy grinning black-orb faces where a human chest should be is... an interesting one. It's not a bad design, though, and it does add a significant amount of creepy factor to them. I just am not sure if I wouldn't have preferred a more classic look, or even one like Wizzro. It loses some of the charm that the original Wizzrobe had, is all. They sort of show up very rarely in the game, acting sort of like minibosses guarding shrines and towers.


Lynel: On the other hand, while I do lament the loss of some classic 3D Zelda enemies... who would've thought that they took the Lynel from the 2D games and made him... the most badass mother-fucker there ever was? Forget the actual bosses in the games, the Lynel is a boss disguised as a regular enemy. I don't think any of the Lynels actually ever got a boss title the way some of the overworld bosses like the Talus or the Hinox would. And the Lynel in the 2D games were dicks, being lion-centaurs that show up in the late-game of the original Legend of Zelda.

And hoo boy what a badass upgrade they had in Breath of the Wild. Bar none, they are easily the most badass-looking enemy in the game, being this jacked-up muscular centaur with facial features based on a lion. And the most basic lion clearly had his massive red hairdo and the jet-black skin based on the various iterations of Ganondorf over the years, which is always badass looking. And it's not that they had a great model, either, because the Lynels are actually pretty mighty both defensively and offensively, able to shrug off most of what you have to offer and being able to cleave giant chunks of your health if you're not prepared. They're, again, basically bosses in the overworld, and the fact that there's only a handful of them really proves this.

The AI for Lynels are also very great, with them moving and cycling through their large variety of attacks like breathing fire, using their weapons both melee and ranged, charging around to try and trample you, and honestly, the amount of ways to take out a Lynel is even pretty varied themselves. I think you can mount them, too, which is a completely stupid move, but you can do it. Pretty badass, and easily my favourite enemy in this game.


Guardian Stalker: We're going slightly out of order here, but basically this next segment will cover all the Guardians, and the ur-example are these guys, the Guardian Stalkers. Giant spider/octopus-tanks that patrol the ruins of central Hyrule, and as you learn through the story of the game, the Guardian Stalkers were once used by the royal family as a giant robot-tank army until Ganondorf pulled a Brainiac and hacked and/or destroyed all of them, and any surviving Guardian Stalkers are basically just scuttling across Hyrule and taking aim at anything that's nearby. The Guardian Stalkers are a new face in the Zelda franchise and very prominently used in all of Breath of the Wild promotional trailers and whatnot...

And, y'know what? They're pretty dang cool. Spider-tanks or octo-tanks or whatever are always very cool to see, and the aesthetic of the Guardians or Sheikah technology is a neat balance of the quasi-sci-fi that Breath of the Wild's backstory involves and some vague magic since the general vibe of the Guardians' main body does look like some sort of rune-esque golem. They are also remembered for being a gigantic pain to murder early on before you get the Master Sword. Again, they're sort of overused and are basically the default miniboss that the game throws at you every now and then when you wander around Hyrule... but I do like that there's a certain amount of different ways to take it out before it unleashes laser-beams of devastation to kill you. Shooting arrows into the eye, shield-reflecting the laser beams back into the eye, charging in and climbing up the body of the Guardian itself... or, when you get the Master Sword, just rush on and hack the legs off and send the Guardian actually panicking and trying its best to scuttle away from you. The feeling you get when you're actually fully decked-out in items to challenge one of these titans when you spent most of the game ducking and running away from it is great, though! Ultimately, a very awesome mini-boss or stronger enemy, but I just kinda wish that there were more variations, since after a while they sort of get repetitive. There are variants, though, which is why I'm not going to complain.


Decayed Guardian: One of the earliest actual 'mini-boss' you meet, Decayed Guardians are Guardians that have been destroyed but not actually killed, all moss-covered and unable to move. Their heads can still rotate and shoot lasers, though! It's pretty cool since actual dead Guardians also litter the land, so sometimes you're just minding your own business when the pink Tron energy lines of one of the background ruins light up and the Guardian theme music plays.

Guardian Skywatcher & Guardian Sentry: They're technically two different enemies, but they sort of behave similarly so I'm going to lump them here. They're helicopter versions of the Guardian Stalker, with the Skywatcher also equipped with the devastating laser beams and being pretty ubiquitous in the area around Hyrule Castle. I don't think they show up quite enough and really could've been implemented a bit better. Since they have multiple propellers, of course you shoot them to ground them and cause them to get within sword reach... or just use your mad archery skills to shoot them. I like them, I like that they've got three propellers.

The Guardian Sentry is the baby version and they're basically there as part of a stealth segment when you go up one of the Divine beasts. If they spot you, they trigger the Divine Beast's volcano-mortar attack. Not too much to say here, I kinda wished that the Sentry was, again, employed a bit better beyond just being a feature of a stealth mission.  

Guardian Turret: Like the Skywatcher, the Guardian Turret is only found in Hyrule Castle, and exclusively within the Castle Ground itself. It's basically as powerful as the regular Guardian Stalker (unlike the Decayed Guardian, which is significantly weaker), and are noted to actually essentially be defensive towers of Hyrule Castle. The design is cool, but ultimately it's not too different from the regular Guardian Stalker and Decayed Guardians for me to have too much to say. They're basically Beamoses, though, but Beamoses are never the most interesting Zelda enemies.


Guardian Scouts: We've got four variations of the Guardian Scouts and they look like a Pokemon evolution line, and they sort of serve as quasi-minibosses in some of the Shrines and all the Divine Beasts, which is sometimes an unexpected surprise since a significant amount of the shrines contain puzzles. The Guardian Scouts I through IV initially act as miniature Guardian Stalkers, scuttling along and shooting little laser beams, but as they get progressively stronger (and I love that the head gets increasingly ornamented) they gain crazy giant Tron-lightsaber weapons. I love how the weapons look, and the larger Guardian Stalkers do give you a nice run for your money with the face that they have multiple arms that can block your attacks very well. I just... kinda wish that these guys are implemented a bit better, in more numbers.


Yiga Footsoldiers & Yiga Blademasters: Breath of the Wild doesn't quite go into just making generic bandits into your enemy, but human enemies actually show up as antagonists in this one, namely the enigmatic Yiga Clan. The traditional allied Sheikah Clan is shown to be much bigger and more expansive in Breath of the Wild, but with that also comes a clan of defectors, these Yiga, who wear masks with upside-down Sheikah symbols. They're pretty neat, teleporting around in swirls of ninja paper tags, and they move quickly and try to murder you with exotic weapons like sickles and weird demon wheels. Some Yiga ninjas will even walk up to you as a generic traveler offering wares... before suddenly transforming and attacking. Fighting them is neat, they teleport all over the place.

The larger, brutish Yiga Blademasters carry giant wind-slice katanas and are initially found only in the Yiga base, one of the few dungeons that actually feel like a more traditional Zelda game. A little quirk that all the Yiga Clan members have is that they really love Mighty Bananas, and all the Yiga members without fail will drop them. I think if you drop a banana of your own, the Yiga ninjas will sometimes forget to fight you and dance towards the banana.


Pebblit: Their bigger cousins, the Talus, show up before them in the creature-dex, but they're considered mini-bosses by the game, what with the name showing up and stuff, so I'm relegating them below. The Pebblit don't really show up a whole ton, but basically appear in themed areas -- the Stone Pebblit show up in grasslands, Igneo Pebblits show up in Death Mountain, and Frost Pebblits show up in Hebra. It's kind of neat to see a bunch of funky rock babies, but fighting them honestly isn't all too different from fighting, say, one of the elemental Chuchu. And these guys show up so rarely in the game and are literally and figuratively overshadowed by their more impressive Talus cousins. And they don't even have like any significant lore, no real dungeon or whatever. They're just kind of there. Their names are adorable, though.


That is all the enemies before we go into the bosses, but we're going to go through a bunch of honourable mentions. First is the Malice. Less of an enemy and more of a hazard, Malice are goop-like sludges that damage Link and basically act as a stage hazard, with some 'mouth' parts spawning Cursed Bokoblins and the like. They tend to just be around so Link can find the core (a big eyeball) and shoot it. They're neat, but I really do wish they did more beyond just being enemy-spawning locations. Like, maybe we get a bunch of floating eyeball enemies or slime-goop-monsters or whatever? Come on, Nintendo.


Animals: One thing that all fantasy RPGs sort of need to have is that they need to have wolf and bear enemies. And so does Breath of the Wild, even if these animals serve mostly as prey. I do remember the wolves/coyotes showing up in packs of two and three and just sort of howling before running away -- most of the actual animals you'll see in this game are, like, herons or the little insects and fishes you harvest. The ones that could charitably be counted as enemies would be the wolves, bears, boars and the great-horned rhinoceros, but I genuinely don't remember actually feeling that any of these guys are ever threats, more prey that needed to be hunted down before they escape. All of this, combined with the large deluge of suddenly-realistic creatures in the game (usually it's just cuccoos and horses) is perhaps another sign of Breath of the Wild trying to ape its contemporaries. And it's not a bad thing necessarily! It adds to Breath of the Wild's unique feeling as a game. It just makes it feel a bit less uniquely Zelda, y'know? And it's not like the wolves and bears really do show up a whole ton. If they had actually felt like enemies and not scenery, maybe there's something here to praise, but otherwise I felt like they really could've fit like at the very bare minimum five or six extra enemy models. 

You can check the Hyrule Compendium for a full list of the creatures and animals in the game. In addition to the ones I mentioned, we've also got deer, mountain goats, various bovine, sheep, foxes, dogs and birds. I'm going to cover a bunch of the more exotic ones below.


Sand Seal: The fauna of Hyrule is always bizarre, but sometimes you don't have to go too far off and invent a Like Like to make things look weird. The Sand Seal is a walrus with a mohawk... which lives in the sand, diving in and out of the sand. They're non-hostile and are used by the Gerudo tribe (and you!) as transportation. You don't ride them, though. That's be too mundane. You surf on sand using your shield as a surfboat while the Sand Seal leaps in and out of the sand. It's pretty cool and a nice bit of additional lore for BOTW's Hyrule that gives the Gerudo tribe an extra bit of flavour.


Blupee: Look at these little buddies! Resembling a rabbit from afar, the Blupees are actually cute little bunny-owl-moth creatures, with a face that resembles an owl and instead of two bunny ears, they actually have feathery antennae. the Blupee are essentially ephemeral creatures that appear rarely at night, and you need to be quick to draw an arrow or a bomb and strike them to cause them to drop rupees. They're not killed, though! It's a neat little addition to the game, I love these little guys.

Lord of the Mountain: Oh, hey, it's Cobalion's better-looking brother. You can tame horses in this game, and there are many wild horses around, but two 'secret' uber-horses are available in the game that you can't really keep permanently, but they're cool. One of them is Satori, the Lord of the Mountain, appearing in a spring atop Satori Mountain and it's apparently the lord of the Blupees? It sure has the Blupee head on a horse's body, and looks pretty majestic despite being a hodgepodge of random features. I thought that this guy was just the mature version or the 'queen bee' version of the Blupee, but apparently the Lord of the Mountain is a reincarnated dead Sage that's protecting the land. There's a very nice 'faerie folk' vibe to all this, and it's kind of a shame that these guys are so out-of-the way.


Stalhorse: It's a cool skeleton horse if you want to be a White Walker while playing your Zelda. Despite being a spooky skeleton horse, they're completely harmless since they're, well, horses. They just neigh around and clop around, but you can only ride them in the night because they disappear into ash when the sun rises. Sometimes Stalkoblins ride them in the night. Pretty neat, but it would be a lot neater if it's less of a hard-to-find ester egg and had more of a presence in the game.


Spirit Dragons: There are three of these guys and they are more of a living force of nature than actual enemies at all... which fits more with how dragons tend to be depicted in Eastern mythology anyway. These guys are called Farosh, Naydra and Dinraal, borrowing the names of the three primary goddesses in Zelda lore. They're not to be confused with the sentient dragons in Skyward Sword, who are significantly chattier. The three dragons appear in specific places in specific times, just undulating peacefully through the air. And with their mere presence the weather around them transform to suit their respective element, and it's a genuinely awesome sight to see them just curl and swim through the air. Again, they're basically just general Chinese dragons with some extra legs, but I do like that they're basically just this cool little addition to the game, particularly considering how relatively mundane a lot of the enemies in the game are.

Naydra aside (who we'll cover below) the spirit dragons are there for you to farm materials, which is kind of a feat in and of itself. You need to chase down the flying dragons and try and get close enough to land a hit and dislodge one of their scales, but getting too close will cause you to get burned, zapped or frozen. They quite literally don't give a shit about you, and I've always felt like that's pretty neat.
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BOSSES

Hinox: What counts as a boss is basically anyone who has their name pop up on-screen when you encounter them (which is why the Lynel and the Guardian Stalkers aren't here), and since Breath of the Wild does away with most of the traditional 'a dungeon in every themed area' bit, most of the bosses are just dudes you randomly encounter in the wild. By far the least threatening and easiest to defeat is the Hinox, a long-running enemy in the 2D Zelda games. They went from being generic cyclops enemies that throw bombs into gigantic cyclopi, and they basically have all of the tropes you associate with a giant in fairy tale books. They're dumb, they can rip off entire trees and use them as clubs, and they are lazy bums who sleep. If they're sleeping, you can climb up their fat bellies and steal the weapons they wear as trophies in a necklace. They have piggy noses, so I guess they're like elite versions of the Bokoblins and Moblins.

They're basically a damage sponge, but are honestly not that tough to take down -- as any Zelda gamer will tell you, the eye's the weak spot and the Hinox will actually start to cover their eyes when you damage that weak point one too many times. Ultimately, though, for a franchise that's near and dear to my heart due to the many, many awesome boss fights (take literally any main-series 2D or 3D Zelda game prior to this), I've always thought that most of the bosses in Breath of the Wild are a letdown. The Hinoxes sort of fit as an 'elite' version of the generic Moblins and Bokoblins, sure, but they really aren't much of a threat beyond being a damage sponge.

Stalnox: As with the other generic flesh-and-blood enemies, a couple of skeletal variants of the Hinox, the Stalnox, show up in the game, although I think most of them show up in Hyrule Castle. They fight more or less similarly to a Hinox, and unlike the other Stal creatures, the Stalnox are not actually fragile and take as much punishment as its flesh-and-blood counterpart to bring down. Like a regular Hinox, the eye's the weak point. It's got a bunch of unique attack like ripping off its ribs and using them as boomerangs, and when you reduce the health under a certain point the eyeball will drop off and be easy pickings for you. 

Talus: The other 'common' overworld boss is are the Taluses, and we've got a couple of variants. The Stone Talus comes in three colours -- regular, luminous and rare; we've got Igneo Talus living in places with lava; and Frost Talus hanging out in icy mountains. One of the DLC gives us an extra-big Igneo Talus called the Igneo Talus Titan. And these are much cooler than the Hinoxes! You literally sometimes have no idea that the chunk of the scenery is a boss until you get a bit too close and then the music changes, the boss title flashes and a giant chunk of the mountain suddenly starts ripping limbs out from the ground, and starts attacking. The Taluses have a lot of cool animations, too, attacking you by launching their rock arms before 'refueling' by ripping chunks of the earth to make new limbs.

They're also completely invulnerable, save for a little chunk of ore deposit jutting out of its body. And you basically need to try and stun the Talus with bombs, then Shadow of the Colossus the giant rock monster by climbing up its body and wailing on the weak spot. It's a nice variation of the usual Zelda boss fight trope of trying to hit the weak spot from afar. The elemental variants are even more irritating, since you need to actually make sure the Talus bodies are climbable, so you need the opposite elemental arrow to disable them and turn their main bodies into regular climbable rock while you're attacking. Ultimately, while Breath of the Wild sadly doesn't feature a whole ton of unique boss fights, at least the Talus and the next couple of boss fights are pretty memorable.


Molduga & Molduking: My favourite boss fight, and easily the most badass-looking boss, is the Molduga. You don't so much realize that this thing exists until you make the mistake into wandering into one of the four spots in the Gerudo Desert where the Molduga swims around in, and the only warning you get is a bunch of sand rippling as this giant Dune-Worm monstrosity moves towards you and bursts up -- and it's gigantic compared to Link, easily the largest enemy in the game other than the dragons. And the sight of this giant sand-whale bursting out of the ground and ripping through your health is amazing, and the Molduga is basically everything I want out of a Zelda boss fight. A cool design, thematically suited to the area around it and one that feels badass when you take this giant fucker down.

The Molduga mostly spends its time burrowing and swimming under the sand, and like the Graboids, they zoom straight towards you when you walk or run in the sand, so I assume they have what D&D players would call "tremorsense". The design is also pretty great, too. From a distance it's some sort of huge sand fish or whale, but look closer and you realize that it's got itty-bitty little crocodile feet, and its face is... well, it certainly is unique with giant coral-like eyebrows, and a giant underbite that resembles a shovel of some sort. I guess that's how it moves through sand? It's got a pretty cool and distinctive appearance, and its name suggests that it's the game's equivalent to the traditionally desert-dwelling Moldorms, which tend to be portrayed as giant worms.

Defeating the Molduga isn't that difficult once you realize the trick, but if you don't it's actually something that's pretty difficult to do. You need to find a vantage point like a rock or something, or fly into the air with one of your abilities, and drop bombs to trick the Molduga into coming out and then when the big lug bursts out you use a bomb or a bomb arrow to stun him and wail on him. Still quite cool, though. One of the DLC adds a larger, white version called the Molduking, but he's essentially the same thing with a lot more HP.


Master Kohga: The final boss other than Ganon in the original game is the only real boss you need to slay in a little mini-dungeon, because everything else are never really necessary for you to slay or even encounter (I didn't actually find my first Molduga until hours after I beat the main game) Master Kohga is fought in the end of the Yiga Clan's fortress, being the organizer of the group and essentially the only actual villain in the game to have any sort of dialogue since Ganon's reduced to nothing but a growling mess.

And... he's just kind of a doofus in the same vein of Twilight Princess's Zant's true personality, which is fine in that game because Twilight Princess's got a bunch of other villains as well, but I've always felt it kind of underwhelming that we don't at least get a couple extra minions for Ganon. In combat, Kohga is essentially a souped-up version of the Yiga Footsoldiers, summoning clones and hovering weapons and giant metal spheres  that he Magneto-launches at you, and it's a fight where you're supposed to use your own magnesis ability to counter the weapons and toss them back at Kohga. He's pretty neat as a boss fight, at least.


Monk Maz Koshia: The final boss of "The Champions' Ballad" expansion pack is a unique boss, Maz Koshia. And I really do like the concept of this guy! See, in the base game, throughout your journey you've seen these ancient, mummified monks that sit cross-legged in the many shrines across Hyrule, waiting for the champion to come and claim their power after you complete their shrine mini-dungeon. There are around a hundred and twenty or so of these shrines, so at some point you just see these mummified Sheikah monks and you just go 'cool' and skip the cutscene where they give you the orbs and disintegrate.

And then you go through the Champion's Ballad DLC, where you fight through a bunch of new challenges, go through a 'don't take any damage or you die' run, and do a bunch of challenges that Link's four great allies had done before... and then traverse through one final dungeon. And at the end, you see this Sheikah monk, looking identical with any other Sheikah monk you've met in the game... but suddenly, during the cutscene, his finger twitches, he teleports you to a flying platform high above Hyrule, and then he fights you himself, and it's super-cool because Maz Koshia combines the abilities of literally all the other bosses of the game (Kohga and the various Blight Ganons) before showing off some crazy-awesome ninja arts of his own that involve summoning clones, tilting the sky platform, becoming a giant, summoning giant metal ball-spikes... pretty awesome, and he's just there to see if you're worthy of his greatest art... a motorcycle. That's awesome.


Malice Naydra: Not actually counted in any part of the Hyrule Compendium, Naydra is the ice spirit dragon... but you won't actually find her in the wild until you go through the requisite side-quest, because it's actually been corrupted by Malice! You have to travel to Naydra's lair in the Spring of Wisdom and fight her as this giant Malice-covered, crystal-encrusted evil dragon, and it's AWESOME that they, well, actually used the dragon model for a boss fight, even if it's a secret one. The fight isn't particularly involved, but it's basically a neat test of the whole sequence of flying and chasing the spirit dragons, and you have to chase Malice Naydra around mid-air and aim arrows and blow up the giant creepy eyeballs that pockmark the poor dragon's body. Pretty cool concept, and... and I really wished this fight was a lot more involved in the main story.


Waterblight Ganon: So there are four main 'dungeons' in the game, taking the form of gigantic mechanical constructs shaped like animals. It's not your traditional 'fire temple' and 'water temple' and whatnot. Basically, like the Guardian Stalkers, these Divine Beasts have been taken over by Ganon's corruption, and their interior are all covered in icky Malice and you basically have to enter the Divine Beasts one by one, avoid their exterior defenses, and navigate through the insides. The first one I went through is the Zora's water-dwelling Divine Beast, the giant elephant Vah Ruta... and standing at the end of the monster is one of the four Ganon clones, essentially Phantom Ganon from previous games but done in the twisted, corrupted style of the corruption, combining the creepy goopy texture of Ganon's Malice and the fantasy-robot style of the Sheikah technology.

Waterblight Ganon is a pretty neat design, as are the other three Blight Ganons, being this mass of technology and corruption melded together, and it's holding a big-ass glowing spear-thing. He vaguely looks like some sort of genie, what with its initial form looking like a floating giant torso. You can see some parts of Ganon's traditional features, in this case the giant flowing mane of red hair. These guys are honestly best seen in motion, because screenshots don't actually do these justice. The fight against the Blights are pretty standard Zelda boss fight fare, although obviously standard Zelda boss fight fare is still pretty damn awesome. You use shock arrows to zap him initially, avoiding his attacks, and make use of the Cryonis tool to create giant blocks of ice to block his attacks. In his second phase his body contorts and he sort of becomes this swinging pendulum and you have to navigate platforms while Waterblight Ganon creates his own ice block attacks. Pretty cool boss fight!


Fireblight Ganon, guarding the lizard divine beast Vah Rudania, is probably the most visually imposing of the four Blight Ganons. It's got the biggest, coolest mask surrounding its single Guardian eye which reminds me of those Twilight Messengers from Twilight Princess, and that gigantic mane of red hair really makes that head look super-imposing. Plus, its right arm is a gigantic butcher's knife of a lightsaber. Sure, it's main body layout is essentially similar to Waterblight, but each of the Blights clearly had thought put into them that makes them all look relatively unique despite essentially being the same thing. Being themed after fire and fought in a giant gecko hanging around a volcano, Fireblight Ganon creates giant fireballs and tosses them at you, and in his second phase is covered by a giant fire shield. I've always found him the least intricate of the four Blight Ganons as far as boss fights go, but still pretty freaking impressive. Again, best seen in motion.


Thunderblight Ganon is the only one of the four Blight Ganons that took me more than a couple of tries to defeat, and there's always one of these in each Zelda game, yeah? The boss that takes multiple tries to defeat? Bongo Bongo, Moldorm, Gyorg, Mothula... Thunderblight Ganon takes over the giant desert camel Vah Naboris, and when you first encounter him... he doesn't look as impressive as Waterblight and Fireblight, both of which look pretty imposing in frame. Thunderblight Ganon still looks cool, though, having that giant metal head-ornament thing, having the slender body of a wraith and carrying two oversized weapons. That giant hook is pretty cool!

Turns out that it's thematic, because being a lightning-themed enemy, Thunderblight Ganon is a speedy boy that zips around, how fast he deals damage, and if you're not paying attention he can just Flash-strike you way more times than you can handle. Thunderblight's second phase involves it dropping a fuckton of metal pillars Link must manipulate with Magnesis and throw at Thunderblight while avoiding its other attacks. My favourite animation is when how he hangs his hands down like a corpse and zips around like a goddamn demon while slashing at Link. Once more, great to see in motion.


Windblight Ganon: Vah Medoh is a gigantic battleship-sized bird that hovers atop Hyrule's skies, and you fight Windblight Ganon on top of Vah Medoh itself. And,  again, Vah Medoh looks somewhat similar, being a legless humanoid, and like Fireblight, it's got a dang cool-looking giant mask around its little eye. Instead of a giant knife-hand, though, Windblight has a big fuck-off cannon that's the main part of its attacks. Instead of a melee boss like the other Blight Ganons, Windblight moves around and flies around and shoots you from afar, and sometimes creates tornadoes. Check out him in motion here.

His fight is super-awesome, albeit one that makes more use of the environment than the boss itself being a badass. You have to fly up with the wind hazards created by Vah Medoh's VTOL engines to fly into the air and bash Windblight down onto the ground. In its second phase, it goes full Gundam and releases little drones (those lightbulb-like things splayed around his hair) that make the fight extra chaotic. Windblight's so awesome that he's the only one out of the four Blights to get official artwork!


So unlike most Zelda games, you don't ever encounter Ganon or Ganondorf as an actual person. That fight happened a hundred years ago, and in a reversal of the original Zelda/Ganon dynamic, Princess Zelda has used her magical powers to rip Ganon into an incorporeal spirit and bind his soul (represented as a massive miasma of shadows with a demonic pig-face) to Hyrule Castle. You still have to rescue Zelda and kill Ganon for good, though, and the final fight takes place against Calamity Ganon... whose physical form has degenerated so terribly and it's transformed into a giant spider with a skeletal version of Ganon's face, made up of random Guardian parts. It's pretty neat, and at least it's different even if I would at least prefer that Ganon is an actual character.

He's very awesome in motion and I don't think any screenshot captures it well, but there's this awesome concept art that tells us where all the parts go, and Calamity Ganon's many limbs end in like, cannons, swords, spears, and it's sort-of the combination of all four Blight Ganons without making it too obvious. Here's it in video form. Absolutely love how that Calamity Ganon first form is born, just splooging out from that cocoon like an aborted animal fetus. I don't think that there's anything particularly interesting in the Calamity Ganon fight, though, it's just survive all his attacks, and unload everything you have onto him. Depending on whether you did all the 'main quest' parts, this phase of the fight could either be much harder or much easier.


The fight ends up destroying his physical form, and Calamity Ganon teleports outside and becomes Dark Beast Ganon, which is a massive, kaiju-sized boar with a burning pink mane. Which is pretty damn impressive and all, and we fight him on horseback and the actual experience of the fight is epic. It's something similar to the 'true form' of Ganon that other 3D Zelda games have done, although... Ganon himself is already beastly enough and most of the other games that feature a 'Dark Beast Ganon' mode tends to also feature a humanoid and intelligent Ganondorf as a contrast. I dunno.

It's a cool fight for sure, you're on horseback fighting a giant Godzilla-sized boar that's also on fire, but I thought it was somewhat disappointing compared to just how utterly creepy the Calamity Ganon form is. Not a terrible boss fight or a monster design, but it's just kind of there, a pretty cool boss fight.
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Overall... yeah, the bestiary in Breath of the Wild is extremely short, and I really felt like they could've added a bunch of extra enemies. It's kind of a shame that a game that rightfully advertises itself as the biggest Zelda game ever doesn't actually have quite as much diversity in enemies. They did a fair amount of great job with the ones they had, and the AI for the humanoid monsters are great, but I really wished they had added maybe three or four extra variants.