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What an incredible couple days it’s been for fans such as my wife and I that love the Zelda franchise I could not have asked for a better birthday week. Nintendo NY had an amazing event held for the playable Zelda demo for 500 lucky people to play here in NYC. 500 fans and press attending E3 were the few who got to experience the demo nearly 9 months before the release.

Over the weekend Nintendo New York in Rockefeller Plaza held a Zelda event for E3 to show off the Zelda breath of the Wild. Saturday we went down at 7am and waited on line to get bracelets to obtain our tickets to return to play the game on Wednesday June 15th as some of those lucky few.

Nintendo New York had the second floor demo units all playing the Zelda demo as well they had multiple banners set up as shown in the pictures below it was hard not to get excited for the event even just watching. You could tell there was care put in and the event was being held for the fans not just a test demo for improvements.

When we showed up for our appointment the afternoon of June 15th they also had exclusive zelda shirts and lithographs to celebrate the event.

As we played the demo you initially started with an open demo that you could just run around and experience the world which included just finding weapons fighting bokoblins and lighting campfires. Chris had made a great comment which pretty much summed it up that

“Zelda inspired Dark Souls and Dark Souls has now inspired Zelda.”

While exploring in the first part of the demo I found myself trying to parry and perfectly dodge Bokoblin attacks to try to activate Fury mode. Flurry mode was a new mechanic that sets the enemies and environment to half speed while link is still full motion to start a string of multiple hits before the enemy even hits the ground.

Another part of the first demo I really enjoyed is that you can sit at a bonfire in choose the time of day that you want to plans you can go to the morning midday evening or night. The player is dropped into the game with no direction besides an initial waypoint and it feels you have the freedom to go anywhere. That was one of the best parts of A Link Between Worlds.

I found that I actually died twice during the demo just getting overwhelmed by multiple enemies while trying to parry and dodge just to try out different weapons and combos.

The second demo that we got a chance to play explored the first part of the story of the game which was incredible. Link woke up from a hundred-year slumber in a pod filled with water very reminiscent of Wind Waker and you run into what seems to be just an old man who looked a lot like the king of Hyrule or the King of Red Lions.

You pick up a tablet in the temple you had awoken in, grab some basic clothing from 2 chests and set out to a gorgeous vista that was chill inducing.

When exiting the temple you are in the wild, you don’t start in a town you don’t wake up in a village with many NPCs everywhere asking for help or information it’s just you in middle of a field

When you do get an alert of a waypoint set by your tablet that you have to go to I took my time getting there and unfortunately it up a lot of the 20-minute demo just exploring

On my way to the waypoint I found the Temple of Time which had two statues and everything from prior games you could pray at one of the statues and continue forward, as I went to the way point I fought more bokoblins and abused the Parry system yet again (I really enjoy the parry/dodge mechanics can you tell?) once I reach the waypoint you insert your tablet into a column which activated and amazing cut scene which seemed to show some sort of shadow dragon Ganon consuming what I was to assume is Hyrule Castle. By this time I had reached the end of the demo.

I’m very very very happy I got the opportunity to be one of the few 500 people to play the demo here on the East Coast outside of E3 but unfortunately we all have to wait until March next year for the release of the game.I cannot thank Nintendo New York enough for putting on such a great event and giving us all the opportunity to play the demo. Just watching the stream on Tuesday I was very excited for the game now that we’ve actually played it I cannot wait to play more. We are currently playing Twilight Princess on WiiU just to feed the urge.

Also for being a part of the Zelda breath of the Wild event players were also given a Zelda coin Zelda t-shirt and a Zelda poster all for the event will include pictures of those items below

March 2017 cannot come fast enough for Zelda fans like myself, now to find a campfire to sit at to pass the time…