The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild changed how Zelda games are played. Its massive world, endless freedom, and creative gameplay made the adventure feel unique. Players can climb mountains to see the view, test out wild physics tricks, or fight enemies in their own way. BOTW made exploration and combat exciting and made Hyrule feel more alive than ever before.

Still, replaying it years later isn’t the same. The excitement of discovery fades when you already know what’s out there. Shrines and Korok puzzles that once felt rewarding can start to feel repetitive. Plus, if you’ve already spent countless hours in Hyrule, starting over might feel like more of a task than an adventure. While BOTW is still a great game, going back doesn’t always capture the same magic. If you’re considering replaying, there are a few reasons why Breath of the Wild might not be as fun a second time around.

10 Redoing Your House Feels Unnecessary & Repetitive

Link's House Doesn't Offer Much Besides Weapon Storage & A Bed

Building a house in Breath of the Wild is fun the first time. Saving rupees, gathering materials, and watching it come together feels fun and rewarding. It’s a lovely personal space in Hyrule, a welcome respite from adventuring. Yet, replaying the game makes the process feel like a chore.

You have to start from scratch, find Bolson, go through the same dialogue and quests, and grind rupees to build the same house again. There is no real customization, so it always ends up looking the same. Unlike other side quests with unique rewards, the house does not offer much in return. You can store weapons and sleep, but that’s about it.

As someone who has already replayed Breath of the Wild, I didn’t bother with the house much beyond the initial setup. It just didn’t seem worth it or as exciting the first time around, especially with the lack of customization options.

9 Collecting Korok Seeds Again Is Exhausting, Not Fun

There Are 900 Korok Seeds To Collect, Or 1800 If You're Replaying

Collecting Korok Seeds in Breath of the Wild begins as a fun task, but it can quickly become exhausting. There are 900 Korok Seeds to collect, and while it sounds like a good idea at first, it gets repetitive fast. Finding a Korok and solving a small puzzle for one seed is fine, but doing it 900 times is a chore. And if you’re doing a replay, that’s 1,800 Korok seeds if you decide to get them all.

The issue is that the Korok challenges don’t change much. Most of the time, you’re just moving rocks, completing simple puzzles, and doing basic environmental cahllenges, and it quickly starts to feel boring. There’s little variety, but it doesn’t take long before you’re just going through the motions.

What makes it worse is that you can’t avoid it if you want to expand your inventory. To get more weapon slots, you need a lot of Korok Seeds. After collecting a few dozen, the excitement of finding them is gone. As a completionist, I collected all 900 Korok seeds during my first playthrough. During my second, I didn’t even bother collecting a quarter of that.

8 Exploration Loses Its Magic On A Second Playthrough

Hyrule Feels Empty, Especially During A Replay

When you revisit Breath of the Wild, the excitement of discovering new places is no longer there. Hyrule is huge, but after you've explored it once, it becomes predictable. You already know where the important landmarks are, where enemies are located, and even where to find Korok Seeds. The world feels less exciting when you know what’s coming next.

This can be partially mitigated by changing the order you visit the Divine Beasts in, but discreet areas are still unchanged.

Even if you play in Master Mode, the game doesn’t feel much different. The enemies are tougher, but it doesn’t add much challenge. The basic gameplay remains the same, so the extra difficulty feels more like a minor change than something fresh and new. The fun of discovery is gone, and you’re left with a harder version of what you’ve already played.

Hyrule also feels empty after the first playthrough. While the world looks beautiful, there are long stretches where there’s not much to do or see. Even Hyrule Castle, which was once intimidating, becomes manageable after you become familiar with the layout and the locations of the enemies.

7 No Major Story Changes Or Meaningful Choices

The Breath Of The Wild Story Remains The Same

One of the biggest letdowns of replaying Breath of the Wild is that the story doesn’t change. No matter how many times you start a new game, the plot stays the same. While the game lets you choose how to explore and tackle tasks, the story itself remains unchanged.

Unlike other open-world games where your choices can affect the plot or the world around you, BOTW doesn’t offer that kind of impact. You can’t make decisions that change the fate of characters or lead to different endings. The main story, Link trying to defeat Calamity Ganon and save Princess Zelda, plays out the same every time.

This can make replaying the game feel repetitive. The freedom to explore is fun, but it doesn’t change how the story unfolds. If you’re hoping for a new experience, you’ll quickly realize that the plot stays predictable. The lack of meaningful decisions in the story can make it feel like you’re just repeating the same journey rather than creating a new one.

6 Too Much Time Required For A Replay

BOTW Is A Long Game, With A Huge World

One of the biggest challenges when replaying Breath of the Wild is how much time it takes. The first time you play, exploring Hyrule is exciting and new. On a second playthrough, all the time spent gathering resources, unlocking shrines, and climbing towers starts to feel like a grind.

Even if you skip the main story, there’s still a lot to do. You’ll spend hours getting back to where you were. Finding Korok Seeds, collecting materials, and upgrading your armor can take a long time. Unlike other games, where you can jump right back into the action, Breath of the Wild requires a significant amount of time to reach the same point again.

5 Repetitive Gameplay Feels Less Exciting

Gameplay Feels The Same With The Same Enemies

Breath of the Wild has a lot of repetition, but nowhere more so than in combat. Fighting enemies like Bokoblins, Moblins, and Lizalfos can be fun at first, but after a while, it starts to feel like the same thing over and over.

While there are a lot of different enemies, many of them act similarly and have the same weaknesses. This lack of variety makes the battles feel predictable and less fun after the first playthrough. Even during the first playthrough, I was getting bored with the monsters.

Because the world is so open, you’re bound to run into these same enemies while exploring. While defeating them is satisfying, it doesn’t feel as rewarding the second time around. With fewer new enemies and combat scenarios, the gameplay gets old quickly.

4 Grinding For Resources & Upgrades Feels Tedious

Grinding Resources Takes A While & Becomes Too Repetitive

Gathering resources and upgrading gear takes up a lot of time. At first, it’s fun to collect materials for armor upgrades or cooking, but as you go on, it starts to feel like a never-ending task.

Upgrading armor needs specific materials, and they’re often hard to find. You end up running around Hyrule, hunting for rare items like star fragments or monster parts, which can get old pretty quickly. While the upgrades are meant to feel rewarding, the time it takes to gather the necessary items can make the process feel like a grind.

The breakable weapons make it even worse. It’s fun to use different weapons, but they break so quickly that you’re always searching for new ones. When your best weapons break, you’re left with weaker options, which means more time spent hunting for replacements. Instead of enjoying the combat, you’re stuck finding new weapons all the time and that was one of my least favorite parts in the game, even more so the second time around.

3 Ancient Shrines & Divine Beasts Are Too Easy

Shrines Are Predictable After The First Time Around

When you replay BOTW, the Ancient Shrines and Divine Beasts feel too easy. The Shrines, which were fun the first time, start to feel repetitive. Most of them are combat challenges or puzzles that don’t change, and once you’ve done them a few times, it feels like you’re just living in a loop.

The Divine Beasts, which are important to the story, also lose their challenge. Since you’ve already completed them, they don’t feel as rewarding the second time. The lack of difficulty makes them feel more like chores instead of exciting parts of the game.

As you get better at the game, you can easily breeze through these sections. Once you know how to solve the puzzles and defeat the enemies, there’s not much to keep you engaged. During my first playthrough, finding well-hidden Shrines was one of my favorite things to do. During my second playthrough, it just felt boring and repetitive since I already knew how to solve them – no challenge at all.

2 Side Quests Lack Depth & Meaningful Rewards

Rewards Can Be Found In Abundance Elsewhere

Side quests can become unfulfilling after a while. Many of them are simple tasks, such as collecting items or defeating enemies. While you get some rewards like items or rupees, they don’t always feel worth the time spent on them. Most side quests are repetitive, and you end up doing the same types of tasks over and over again, with little variety. After completing a few, it becomes obvious that these quests don’t offer anything new or exciting.

The characters in these quests don’t add much either. They usually just give you a task and don’t say much more. There’s no real connection or deeper story, which makes the side quests feel more like filler rather than something important. The rewards, like weapons or armor, aren’t always useful. Since weapons break easily, many of the rewards don’t last long. You start to wonder what the point of doing these side quests is and, if you’re like me, you skip most of them during a second playthrough.

1 TOTK Is Better, & New Games Exist

Tears Of The Kingdom Improves On BOTW

While BOTW was impressive when it was released, Tears of the Kingdom builds upon it in many ways. It introduces new abilities, a more detailed world, and an improved story. Link’s new abilities, like Ascend, Fuse, and Autobuild, make exploring more fun, interesting, and less of a hassle.

There are also many other great games now that offer similar experiences. Breath of the Wild was a standout at the time, but newer games have expanded on open-world play, giving us bigger worlds, better stories, and more variety in gameplay. TOTK is just one of these newer games that improve on what Breath of the Wild started.

With so many new games to play, Breath of the Wild can feel a bit outdated after you've already finished it. It’s still a great game, but after experiencing everything it offers, it doesn’t have much new to keep you interested. When there are better and more exciting games out now, replaying Breath of the Wild might not seem as appealing.