The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - The Champions' Ballad (Nintendo Switch) Review

Upon downloading The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - The Champions' Ballad, a handful of new side-quests and one new main quest are added to the quest log. The main quest has a pre-requisite that ensures only experienced players will be taking on the challenge, however, as overcoming the four Divine Beasts has to be completed first. For those that have overcome this part of the adventure, the quest returns Link to the Shrine of Resurrection where the story started. Here Link gains a new weapon, named the "One-Hit Obliterator." As its name implies, this melee monstrosity dispatches any foe with a single blow, but it also lowers Links hearts down to a quarter of a heart, meaning a single blow from any enemy will mean the end. Watch out for even Keese and Bees. This is like a fresh take on Eventide, so get ready to see plenty of "Game Over" screens.

While equipped with this weapon Link has to traverse the great plateau and take out four camps of enemies, either via stealth, range, or considerable combat skill. As each is completed, a shrine appears in its location and these are some fun extra additions to the current catalogue of shrine puzzles. It's amazing that even after already creating 120 puzzles, Nintendo manages to bring something new once again, and something that is honestly up there with the very best of the existing shrine puzzles. This is very indicative of what's to come.

Once the four areas and their shrines are complete, the "One-Hit Obliterator" explodes in a shower of sparks and four orbs shoot out like Dragon Balls across the map. These become four quest chains, one around each of the four Champions. These quests consist of revisiting some old areas and taking on more new Shrines that appear within them. They are punctuated with some nice additional FMVs to expand out a little more of the Champion's stories. There are some returning bosses with some slight alterations and all build to a fantastic new final boss battle.

Outside of the main quest, there are treasure hunts to track down some more items that long-time fans of the series will enjoy. The Lobster Shirt from Wind Waker, Zant's helmet from Twilight Princess and even a set of Phantom Ganon armour. There are also some new mount items that make traversing the world even better. There's an ancient saddle that gives the ability to teleport Link's horse straight to him and a special reward awaits those who can overcome the DLC.

This reward is already all over the promotional materials for this DLC and was front and centre in the trailer. The Master Cycle Zero is an ancient Sheika artefact that is actually an awesome speeding motorbike. It's an awesome experience shooting around the map on this thing and greatly helps in finishing off tracking down those last Koroks or just taking in the sights. There is an awful flaw with the Master Cycle Zero, however, in that it runs out of fuel and needs items dumped into the tank to fill it back up.