Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles spends its first fifteen minutes invoking memories of two of the best Zelda games. It opens on a boat, with your player-created character and a cartoony crew sailing through choppy seas, heading towards a distant island. It`s a scene reminiscent of The Wind Waker`s early moments, when Link and Tetra first set sail together. Soon enough the ship is wrecked, and you wash up on the shore of Gemea, the island nation the game is set across. After a brief tutorial the game offers a near-direct copy of Link`s emergence at the beginning of Breath of the Wild, as our character runs to a precipice and the camera pans back to reveal the wider world, the soundtrack underscoring the grandiosity of the moment.It`s a bold move, but while the experience that follows invites comparisons to Breath of the Wild`s invitation to explore, Yonder plays very differently from Nintendo`s masterpiece. This is an extremely relaxed game, one with no combat, few puzzles to solve, and no danger of death at any point (you can `drown` if you jump into deep water, but you`ll immediately spawn back on dry land with no repercussions). You`re placed on this island and given, for the most part, free reign: after the first few missions grant you all of the game`s essential tools you can either follow the main quest line or set out on your own path.The plot is extremely thin--a darkness (called the `murk`) has spread over the world, and it`s up to you to get rid of it by completing a bunch of fetch quests. The murk doesn`t manifest as a threat, per se, and is instead used to justify the emptiness of the game world, which is filled with wonderful vistas but very few people to enjoy them. The islands of Gemea are loaded with quests, but the majority of them involve little more than gathering resources. Yonder is a game of exploration--the game world is sizable, and there is barely a `quick travel` system, offering only a few unlockable warp points. The quests you pick ...
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