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Four months later, I'm only halfway through Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It's not because I've stopped playing - far from it. 120 hours later, I'm still exploring. I can't remember the last time I played a game and deliberately slowed my pace to ensure I see everything, to make every Sheikah tower-uncovered map piece last as long possible. Nintendo's new DLC The Master Trials caters for players who, like me, are still pottering about Hyrule, hunting Koroks or pinning down the next shrine - as well as to those who have finished, by offering up a couple of much tougher challenges. Master Trials' main focus is its Trial of the Sword dungeon, a 54-floor challenge which strips Link of his regular equipment and forces you to fight through rooms of enemies, scrounging weapons along the way. It's a format the Zelda series has employed plenty of times before, sometimes as part of the main game, but here the formula is at its absolute best. Much of this comes from Breath of the Wild's excellent underlying systems. Here, stealth, weapon durability, Rune usage and combat moves have never been more important. The same goes for the game's physics and chemistry engines, as you're often required to employ tricksy techniques to take down foes while underpowered.
Set within an illusory mind palace, Trial of the Sword also features some of the game's best puzzle map layouts. Where previous Zelda trial dungeons featured bland or repetitive designs, the geography of each level here is wrapped into the challenge. Do you swim over to that floating platform to go for the chest, but risk getting spotted and sniped by a Lizalfos on the way? Or do you hang back, hiding, picking off enemies from afar, but burn through your arrow stash? And how do you get up there?
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