Well, despite the problem of breakable weapons, (That is NOT a good thing of the game! Stop defending it, Zelda Fanbase!)
Alright I haven't played
Breath of the Wild, but I feel I need to add my own two cents here. Let me bust out my favorite MMO of all time and one of my personal favorite open world type of games in the form of Nexon's
Mabinogi to use an example for this.
Mabinogi has a durability system much like
Breath of the Wild, but how quickly you consume durability points on a weapon depends on what type of skills you're using with the weapon or equipment in question. The problem that every person claiming
Breath of the Wild is at fault for having breakable weapons isn't that the weapons can break at all, but rather it's how exactly Link is USING these weapons in question that causes them to break so easily. Not only that, but often times when I expect a weapon or armor to be good for me in games like
Skyrim, that game's kill camera feature can often render even the strongest armor you wear to be dead useless against a joke of an enemy such as a bandit chief, primarily because no matter how strong your own armor is, kill camera finishing blows will ignore every point of armor value you have and thus creates a sense of false difficulty despite having the best stuff.
Breath of the Wild, from what I've seen in the gameplay through online videos and Let's Plays, has weapons breaking very quickly regardless of durability because the videos I've been looking at feature the Silver Lynel enemy, and basically what I've been seeing in these videos is Link activating a form of bullet time every time he dodges an attack from the Silver Lynel and rapidly striking the Silver Lynel with multiple slashes in the span of probably less than a few seconds in real time. Due to the near superhuman speed he's hacking and slashing away at this enemy, whatever weapon he has will break incredibly easily because here's the problem most people are thinking in that weapons should be designed to be sturdy enough to deal damage and not break; that's NOT how a realistic weapon works. Increased stress on a real life weapon can either cause it to harm the wielder or at worst break in half if the applied stress on it causes it to degrade in a way it normally would. Not only that, but back to
Mabinogi real quick, a very useful skill called Bash exists which can pretty much allow you to repeatedly attack and enemy and leave them completely vulnerable to spamming this skill against them til they drop dead. How does the game counterbalance this? Bash causes the durability of whatever weapon you're using to drop much faster than it would with any other skill.
Going back to another example I have,
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, weapons do not have any durability to them... and that's exactly the problem. To train blacksmithing, you need to either pay a fee to a trainer for the skill, or craft completely brand new weapons, armor, or accessories. Why does the lack of a durability system in
Skyrim ruin the game for me? You can't train the blacksmithing skill further by, say, repairing broken weapons you might have and then further refining them for increased damage output or even durability buffs. Not only that, but literally once you have all the perks, your entire set of gear will be nothing but Dragonscale Armor for Light Armor users, Daedric Armor for Heavy Armor users, and Dragonbone Weapons regardless of what kind of weapon you're ultimately using. Due to the lack of durability in
Skyrim, you effectively become stagnant in progression once you have all three of those categories of stuff to use for yourself, and the game becomes less fun that way because once you have access to this specific gear, you'll pretty much never need to smith anything again unless you're wanting more Dragonbow Arrows for ammo. Combined with enchantments from the same game, even the most unique of equipment from the quest lines can be rendered useless compared to stuff you can make all on your own.
Not only that, but even though durability can be a problem in both
Breath of the Wild and even worse in
Mabinogi, both of these games have an immediate workaround in the form of a legendary weapon which, while having the same durability stats as other weapons in the game, can never truly break for good. I'm of course referring to
Breath of the Wild's Master Sword and
Mabinogi's Brionac. In
Breath of the Wild, the Master Sword has a bonus to it in that not only will it deal double damage to demonic or evil entities, but it will never lose durability when in range of such entities as well, so using the
Master Sword on the final boss basically gives you an infinite durability weapon. The Brionac in
Mabinogi becomes useful with a previous set of skills you acquire before getting the Brionac itself; the Demigod skills associated with Neamhain, and with the one skill you get by default, Spear of Light, when wielding the Brionac becomes Spear of God, which increases the damage output of the skill to an absurd degree to which bosses in older dungeons in the game will almost guaranteed drop dead on impact of the skill, with the only exceptions being the bosses found in Peaca Dungeon, which is the hardest dungeon from the original region of the game. Even Cromm Cruaich, the final boss of Chapter 1 as a whole, will have a good 70%+ damage to his health upon impact with the skill merely once. The only true downside to the Brionac is primarily the fact to repair it, you need to spend Ability Points which you only normally get for certain quests, leveling up, or aging up once every Saturday at 12 PM PST up until Age 25+. The Brionac, much like the Master Sword in
Breath of the Wild, will never truly break because unlike most weapons in
Mabinogi, its maximum durability cannot be decreased.
What I'm trying to say here is that with games like
Skyrim in which weapons have infinite durability regardless of type, the weapons eventually become stagnant and boring to use over and over again, and the fact most of all of the weapons are nearly interchangeable with gear you can craft yourself for superior special effects, even the game's most unique weapons and equipment will become outclassed by some of the stuff you can easily make yourself. There's ultimately no risk to using certain weapon types, and not only that, but the armor you craft can often be dead useless because often even with the strongest armor in the game, you can often get one-hit killed by bandit chiefs that have primitive weaponry compared to a late-game Dragonborn's armor and weapons. In
Breath of the Wild and
Mabinogi, there's an actual form of risk to the weapons you use to the point it makes you actively seek out trying other weapons or alternate means of taking out threats. Not only that, but both games also have the advantage of having a weapon which cannot be compared to any of the other weapons in the game, those being the Master Sword and Brionac respectively.
Skyrim, despite being a highly acclaimed game, does not have the benefit of having a very distinct set of equipment and armor that cannot be compared to any other type of equipment you can simply make all on your own; pretty much any unique weapon you do somehow get is eventually outclassed by Dragonbone Weaponry you smith on your own.
