Why Zelda's Champions' Ballad add-on doesn't really work
It seems a shame to end Nintendo's extraordinary 2017 on a bum note, but here we are. The Champion's Ballad, the second expansion pack for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, is a workmanlike add-on that gives you a little bit more of one of the best games in years, without giving you more more of what you really want.
Is that because Breath of the Wild's magic is alchemical, unquantifiable - a volatile cocktail of systems and geography, happenstance and craft, that can't be lengthened by the yard? Well, no, actually. It's true that much of the game's immense strength lies in the way it meshes robust simulation systems with an approach to design that is open-ended and playful, if typically precise. Although you're motivated by progress, you play with this game rather than through it, and that's a hard thing to expand upon.
But The Master Trials - the first and, we all assumed, lesser of the two packs included in the game's expansion pass - actually did this pretty well. Both the high-difficulty Master Mode and the Trial of the Sword, a sequence of tough challenge rooms, were all about pushing the player deeper into that systemic web. Their stern difficulty and meagre resources encouraged players to improvise even further, to make more creative use of an even broader selection of the game's formidable toolset. (For example, I never was that fussed about cooking beyond ensuring I had a good supply of 'hearty' meals for topping up health - I tended to rely on armour pieces for resistances and stat boosts. But there's no getting away with that in either of these modes.)
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