I am a Zelda fan. That being said, I wasn't around to see the
original three Zeldas released (Zelda, Zelda II, Link to the Past),
however, my fandom started with a Zelda game all of us know as
Ocarina of Time. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was the first
3D Zelda, and it's also one of the best Zelda games in my opinion.
The dungeons were great, the overworld was a bit too big, the
graphics hold up well, the narrative was well done, etc. I haven't
had the privilege of playing any Zelda game succeeding Ocarina of
Time except one, which was Twilight Princess.
Twilight Princess took everything Ocarina of Time brought to the
table and refined all of it. It was a more mature-looking Zelda
title. It was pretty much a modern Ocarina of Time. You know the
overworld? They made that bigger (They also put a lot more to do in
it). You know the graphics? Yeah those were a lot more realistic. You
know the dungeons? Bigger and better. And for the first time in the
Zelda series, motion controls were added to the experience. I mean,
sure all you ever really did in terms of motion control in that game
was shake the wii remote to slash enemies with your sword and shake
the nunchuk to use your shield, but they were still well implemented.
And not only could you name your character, you could name your horse
as well. Also, the game ran in widescreen (16:9) format on Wii as
opposed to the Gamecube version of the game (the Wii game is also a
mirrored version of the Gamecube game).
Last year, 2011, about 5 years after Twilight Princess was released,
was Zelda's 25th anniversary. And for that occasion, Eiji
Aonuma and his development team set out to make a Zelda game unlike
any other. And what better way to celebrate the Legend of Zelda’s
25th anniversary than by creating a prequel to Ocarina of
Time? That prequel Zelda game eventually came to be known as The
Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Once again, this game refines
conventions of the Zelda franchise, and also refines motion controls.
In Twilight Princess, as said above, you were just shaking the remote
and nunchuk to get results. In this game, swordplay has received a
bigger emphasis than in previous games. In fact, it's impossible to
play this game without a Wii MotionPlus accessory (or a Wii
RemotePlus)! I opted for a MotionPlus 'cause it was cheaper (I also
had to wait for two months before playing the game to get it, big
mistake. If you’re going to get this game, play it with a Wii
RemotePlus). The Wii MotionPlus allows for 1:1 accuracy when
swinging your sword. Put in its simplest terms, it means that
whatever direction you choose to swing the remote, Link (or whatever
you choose to name your in-game avatar) will swing in that same
direction in game. Some dungeon designs (the first one in particular)
and pretty much all enemies and bosses are designed around this
mechanic. And if this isn't the last Zelda game for the Wii as we
know it (as the WiiU is upon us) then this is, apparently the way
Zelda games for the Wii will control from now on, so get used to it.
The story of Skyward Sword delves into the origins of the Legend of
Zelda series, and does a surprisingly excellent job of pulling all of
the games in the series together chronologically. We have Link and we
have Zelda, who for the first time ever, aren't in their traditional
roles as Hero and Princess of Hyrule (remember that at the time of
this game, Hyrule doesn't exist), but instead are childhood friends.
Zelda takes a walk off the edge of Skyloft one day and falls below
the clouds. Actually, she gets sucked into a tornado and then falls
below the clouds. How very convenient. And just in case you’re
wondering, Skyloft is the town above the clouds where these two
protagonists grew up. Getting back to the plot, naturally, the knight
in shining armor has to rescue the princess, doesn't he? Well that's
exactly what Link does. As Link, the player scours three areas called
provinces on the surface world (or the surface, as it’s called
in-game) in search of his love interest, which is a lot more
interesting than it sounds. Why is this? Because Nintendo, the
developer of the game, continues to do things the way they’ve
always done them with the Zelda series: spectacular game design and a
well-written story.
The controls in this game are awesome. The motion controls work
well, for the most part. They were a bit awkward at first, but I was
able to get used to them fairly quickly. While I was playing through
the third dungeon, I accidentally broke the accessory and ever since
then it started behaving erratically. I suppose this is why Nintendo
created a remote with the accessory’s technology built in. The Wii
RemotePlus works much better. As said above, the motion you make with
the remote is the motion that will be made with the sword in-game.
This scheme is mostly used for battling enemies and bosses, hardly
ever for puzzles inside the game’s dungeons. The only dungeon that
ever really used the remote’s functionality was the first dungeon,
the Skyview Temple. There are several places in the temple where
there is an item crucial to progress in the dungeon behind bars. It’s
a type of security system, guarded by these machines that look like
eyes. These eyes follow the point of your sword, so you need to use
this to your advantage in order to gain access to the item that this
system guards. You can access various items that you have by pausing
the game using the + button, pressing the – button (to access
health potions, shield potions, shields, etc.), as well as the +
button to access weapons that you have acquired throughout the game.
From the second temple on, the focus shifts off of using your sword
to solve puzzles and onto using weapons you gain throughout the game.
Previous games in the series have you entering a dungeon, then at
some point in the dungeon finding a new weapon, and then using that
weapon to help you progress in the temple. By that, I mean that until
now, all the dungeons that Nintendo designed had puzzles inside that
required only the one found inside. The item had a hand in defeating
the boss character at the end as well. The only other item you would
ever use inside a dungeon in Ocarina of Time was the bow (acquired in
the Forest Temple), which would be used to shoot at switches in later
temples. This game sort of breaks that mold. The item you find in the
dungeon will still be the one most prominently used, however, there
are, for the first time, some puzzles that you can’t solve by using
that newly acquired weapon. They can only be solved by using a weapon
you found in a previous dungeon, or sometimes you need to use
multiple weapons in tandem, to solve that particular puzzle. Ever
since I’ve played Ocarina of Time I’ve been a Zelda fan, and I’ve
always praised Nintendo for their dungeon design in Zelda games. I do
so again now, I love what they have done with the designs in this
game.
The boss characters at the end of the seven dungeons in this game…
well, some of them are good, others employ tactics that have been
done to death, others you find yourself fighting three times
throughout the entire game. My favorite boss fight in the game…
well, there are actually three of them. I’m talking about all three
of fights with the main villain in the game, Lady Gag – David Bowi
– never mind. I guess it’s just because I enjoy using the sword
controls to find an opening in his defenses, which makes it that much
more satisfying when you land hits on your opponent. Another boss
fight I enjoy is a giant “thousand-year” scorpion creature that
you battle against at the end of the game’s third dungeon. In video
games, especially in some of the more recent ones, it’s in my
experience that a common weakpoint in bosses is always their eye(s).
So it is with this boss. However, this works, because, in my opinion,
it keeps you from feeling like you’ve done all this somewhere
before. The boss’s eyes are on its pincers. It will open these
pincers to grab you, thus revealing its eyes. You’ll have to strike
with your sword parallel to its pincers if you hope to land a hit on
it. Once you destroy its claws, it will reveal its final eye, which
you have to stab at in order to defeat it (thrust the remote
forward). There are two other boss fights in the game that involve
eyes as the boss’s weakpoint; both feel as though you’ve done the
same thing before (once again, in my opinion), however. I’m looking
at the boss of the second dungeon and a boss that has possessed a
flying sperm whale (yeah, I’m not kidding about that). The first
mentioned has you chucking bombs at it to gradually expose his eye,
the other has you hitting a giant ball of what looks like phlegm back
at a giant ocular (get it?) parasite to reveal his. In both
situations, once the eye is exposed, you slash the ever-living crap
out of it until it dies. There is one more boss that you find
yourself battling three times (actually, if you think about it, you
fight it FOUR times) in this game, with each time getting
progressively harder: the Imprisoned (a gargantuan beast with a mouth
and feet... to begin with anyway). This guy actually serves as a
major antagonist in the game as well. Each time you fight it, you
have to try and stop it from reaching the top of the pit it was
previously sealed in. In the first fight, that means chopping toes
off, in the second fight that means using a cannon to fling bombs at
it to jump on it from above and start slashing its weakspot, and in
the third fight it means outright killing it by any means necessary.
I absolutely hate this boss. It’s repetitive and annoying. Trust
me, should you choose to play this game; you will see what I mean.
Once you reach a certain point in the game, you get the option to
fight all previous bosses in the game again, allowing you to relive
your favorite (and not so favorite) battles in the game. You aren’t
allowed to bring any health restores into the challenge, just you,
your shield, and your sword (Zelda purists will want to play through
this at least to the eighth battle to obtain the Hylian shield, the
greatest shield you could ever acquire in any Zelda game). You can
also replay challenges you’ve cleared in a place known as the
Silent Realm. In this realm, you need to collect 15 glowing orbs
while avoiding getting hit by the guardians scattered all over the
area. If you fail to get an orb within 90 seconds, get detected by a
searchlight, or touch water, the guardians will awake and come for
you. You need to do these challenges to access the rest of the
dungeons (thus progress in the game) the first time; whereas the
second time you do them you have the chance to win stuff (money,
extremely rare items, etc.).
After you beat this game once, you unlock a “harder” version of
the game. However, Zelda fans, this is no Skyward Sword Master Quest
Edition. It is EXACTLY. THE. FLIPPING. SAME. As the normal mode. The
only difference in this mode is that there are no hearts to be found
whenever you cut bushes and stuff like that with your sword. And you
know what? Yes, I am laughing while I'm writing this. But you know
what else? The no hearts part of it can be solved by obtaining a
heart medal later in the game, so that hearts appear, just not in the
amount they do in the last mode. Therefore, the only reason you would
want to play this mode is if you want enemies and bosses to do twice
as much damage to your sorry arse, and if you want a triforce
standing next to your file name once you complete it. A triforce
symbol. Oh WOW that is so awesome. That TOTALLY makes me want to play
through what might as well be the same thing all over again. I feel
that this mode detracted from the game's overall quality. I really
would have loved to see a Master Quest edition of the game on the
same disc, just like Aonuma and his team did with the OTHER title
they made for Zelda's 25th, which was a rerelease of
Ocarina of Time for the Nintendo 3DS. They even mirrored it! Why
didn't they do it with this game? As much as I admire Eiji Aonuma,
it's as if he and his development team just threw their hands up and
said “screw it all, we don't care anymore. Let's give 'em some
half-baked excuse for a more challenging version of the original
game. They're gonna absolutely LOOOOVE that.”
The music in this game was done by several composers who have worked
on Zelda games in the past, for example, Hajime Wakai and Mahito
Yokota are the ones who stand out most to me, I don’t really know
why. Maybe it’s because they’ve done some of the music for
previous Nintendo games that are in my favorites collection (in
Yokota’s case, Super Mario Galaxy, in Wakai’s case, Legend of
Zelda: the Wind Waker). The music in Skyward Sword is done completely
with an orchestra, so I’m told. The orchestra is a great fit for
the Zelda series, some pieces in the game are really epic-sounding
thanks to the choir. I’d love to see this style return for future
Zelda titles.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, as the game that connects the
entire Legend of Zelda series, does well in every category... save
for that one. The hard mode. But that is the only weak link in a game
that makes great strides in the evolution of the Zelda series. The
controls are pulled off well and take little to no getting used to.
The story is as good as they get when it comes to Zelda games, and
the music really is top-notch. Instead of the hard mode, I would have
loved to see a Master Quest version of the game, though. I'd like
Nintendo to think about this for the Zelda titles they have planned
for the 3DS. Other than this, you cannot go wrong with this game. I
highly recommend you pick it up.
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