Zelda has been a widely acclaimed series over the generations (that's console generations). Pioneering not only 2D but 3D adventure games for over 20 years. And now Skyward Sword has launched and is set out to show us that the Wii isn't some out-dated piece of hardware and can stand toe-to-toe with any game from this console generation by showcasing beautiful art direction, and superb one-to-one controls with the Wii motion plus... And I'm the Queen of Spain.
While playing this game, I found myself making observations regarding the design. I started to notice that almost every aspect of the game had been taken from somewhere else and stuffed into the final product whether it fit or not. It's not unheard of that a game play mechanic will come from another Zelda game, or another Nintendo game like Mario; but I couldn't help but picture Skyward Sword being this Frankenstein's monster that was stitched together from pieces of other games, struggling to make it all look natural and likeable. The air blower thingy resembles the water cannon from Mario Sunshine, the water bubbles for underwater breathing are from the Galaxy series, gratitude crystals are pretty much star bits from Mario Galaxy, the upgrade system pulled from any modern RPG, bowling bombs from Wii Sports, sky-diving from Wii Sports Resort, whip mechanics from Metroid Prime 3, music controls from Wii music, music lessons from either Wind Waker or Ocarina of Time (take your pick), the main theme is actually just Zelda's lullaby played backwards and other little patches of ideas. It adds to a suspicion that someone didn't know what this game was supposed to be other than a Wii mote waggle fest and decided to ripped other games off and tie it all together with very little effort.
One new addition to the franchise, and borrowed from modern gaming, is the stamina meter... just because they felt like having one. It'll limit all the running, climbing and heavy-combat moments of the game all the while making Link seem like a very obese teenager rather than the Hero of the Goddess. He can't run for more than 10 seconds without having to catch his breath. The only thing it adds is a few tense moments when you have an enemy chasing you, but other than that, it's just a restriction on the amount of fun you can have.
There are new items in this game like the blower, even though it was taken from Mario Sunshine, a whip and the beetle that you can launch like a projectile and maneuver in mid-air. The beetle is a nice addition to the series since it does multiple things and handles nicely. You can pick up bombs, drop them on enemies air-raid style, scout ahead, run into things, it's just fun to mess with. The whip is for whipping, swinging and latching on to levers that are otherwise out of reach. The rest of the items are things we've seen before, but Zelda Skyward Sword did mess up on the execution of presentation. Usually one of the perks of beating a dungeon is getting a shiny, new toy to play with. While we're given introductory stuff in the beginning, like the hook-shot and the sling-shot, you know, stuff we're used to seeing, the new stuff is usually towards the end and is meant to surprise us. You know what item they saved for last? The bow and arrow. The item that's been in the game since the very beginning. Bow and flipping arrow. Surprise! It's not that it's a bad item, it's just expected. We know at some point we're getting one, so why wait until the very last moment to give it to us?
The actual upgrading of the items is nice; you collect bits of stuff from around the world, none of which are terribly hard to find, and bring them back to Skyloft (hub town) to upgrade. Upgrading the shield is worth it, kinda, but I didn't really notice much benefit from maxing out my bow and arrow. The other collecting is done with bugs, which I found surprisingly enjoyable. Going around catching bugs in your net makes me recall my youth. It's that emotion of remembrance which inspired Miyamoto to create the Zelda series in the first place. It's like the perfect moment in a Zelda that completely translates the creator's intentions to my own feelings and memories; making that sought-after connection between game and gamer. But don't worry, there were plenty of moments to completely ruin that feeling ten times over.
Now lets talk about the controls. Oh yes, the very thing we've been waiting for. Ever since we first took up the master sword and Hylian shield, we've all dreamed of swinging our controllers around to feel like the hero that's on the screen. Now let's talk about why they suck. First of all, Link doesn't always do what you tell him. I found that about 75% of the swinging motions will register correctly, leaving the other fourth to the game's imagination. Swinging in one direction sometimes had Link swinging in the opposite direction or just the wrong angle all together. Stabbing had Link either swinging wildly or performing a spin move some of the time; all of which leaves you open to attacks when facing challenging enemies.
There's also something wrong with the controls when Link get's knocked down and has to get back up with sword still in hand. At first, the controls don't even act like the sword is drawn, and an obligatory swing has to be given in order to knock them back in place. A charged attack can be performed by raising the sword, or Wii mote if you're in reality, and absorbing the light and powering your weapon. But often times the controls don't want to act like you're holding up the Wii mote so it ends up looking like you're trying to get reception for your sword in game, and makes you look like a moron.
By the way, that one-to-one sword control thing: it's only half true. While running with your sword out is controlled one-to-one, your attacks are limited to about 4 different angles: diagonal, diagonal the other way, horizontal and vertical. Stabbing is also there but I've already complained about that. Using the shield is almost unnecessary throughout the entire game and works about 80% of the time. The rest of the time you'll accidentally trigger a charge attack or Link will just stand there looking dumb.
Link also refuses to run and swing at the same time, which is odd since you could do that in Twilight Princess. You can be dashing up to an enemy and swipe your sword, but Link will first stop dead and then swing unless you're targeting it, meaning you'll miscalculate the distance and your swing, and get hit. Even when facing off against an enemy locked onto, Link does little more than shuffle around. Pressing A to jump around is all very nice, but nothing propels you forward that isn't an attack.
Z-targeting is starting to show it's age since there's no other means of controlling the camera other than resetting it. And the more mobile battles will often leave you with a poor point of view and get you blind-siding by something off screen. Really wish Nintendo would adopt that whole 2nd analog stick thing that's been around for over a decade now, and no, a d-pad does not count.
The combat itself doesn't do much to foster the strategies the game wants you to employ. Often enemies will only allow you to swing at them from one direction while blocking all other attacks. But it's actually faster to just keep slashing mindlessly until one of your hits connects and stuns the enemy so you can finish it off.
The musical sections are needlessly tacked on and carry their own issues. Instead of memorizing songs or having a complex instrument to play, the harp is just a simple motion. You hold A and move the Wii mote back and forth. The challenge is to complete the motions in time with a pulsing circle which is to say there's no challenge at all. The real difficulty is getting Link's motions to match up with yours. Sometimes no matter how broad a strum I would perform, Link wouldn't do anything. Also, the songs you 'learn' are forgettable and overly synthesized.
Aiming has been made an utter chore for perplexing reasons. The process completely relies on the Wii motion plus behaving itself which is like asking a bull to not trash a china store. Nintendo realized that this was a bad idea but instead of fixing it, they decided to give us the option of resetting the marker by pointing at the screen and hitting down on the d-pad. Nothing is more immersion-breaking than having to re-calibrate the controls in mid-battle, and I found myself doing it quite a bit. The game assumes that you play with the Wii mote constantly pointing at the center of the screen instead of having the Wii mote at your side as you lazily flick your wrist to attack. Even if you did play the way the game wanted you to, Link would run around with his sword pointed in front of him, which looks more comical than threatening. If only there were some sensor bar that came with the Wii so it could accurately track any movements being performed in front of the screen so everything stays relative. Something like that should really just be shipped with the Wii, perhaps with a little stand. But I guess one can only dream of such a mythical device.
And then there's your companion Fi; the most obnoxious, useless character in video game history thus far, whose every line is pure malice towards your intelligence. Her purpose is to point out events that happened only 10 seconds ago; like everyone who plays this game is suffering from the worst case of hyper attention deficit disorder known to man. I don't need to be reminded of the fact that such-and-such happen, I was there, I was the one who caused all that crap. I question what Nintendo must think of it's audience when creating a character like this whom can make even Navi seem tolerable. It's like they think we just get progressively dumber and have to have basic game mechanics explained to us like we've never heard of video gaming before. What about the first Zelda for the NES? There were no tutorials, it just dropped you in the middle of nowhere and wished you the best of luck. Why not go back to that? What's with this constant hand-holding to a series we're supposed to be celebrating the 25th anniversary of. What's worse is the plot makes an effort to get an emotional response from us towards Fi. I have only one emotion reserved for her and it's rage. Her characterization is also on bar with a loaf of bread. She exhibits no emotion and sounds like Glados if you ran her through an auto-tune filter sans the dark humor.
As if all the constant reminders of how the controls work weren't
enough, the game actually has four, that's FOUR, videos on how to set up
Wii motion plus and work the controller. I really wish I was making this up,
but I'm not. I sat there and I watched those videos just to see if they
could be justified in any way and no, they can't. There's no person dumb
enough on this planet who needs to watch these videos. First of all, the
person playing the game obviously knows how to operate the Wii mote considering
they turned on the system, put the game in and selected it from the dash
board. Did Nintendo think they just guessed their way through that
process? Also, the Wii is over 5 years old, what new information for the
system could there possibly be? Is there a magic button to convert all
Wii games to support standard controllers? If there is, someone please
let me know. I'd watch a video for that.
The graphics are a mixed bag but ultimately show their age. The world is colorful and nice to look at times, but everything gets blurry when looked at up close or is off in the distance. I understand that they wanted to go for a water-color effect, but I think they could've sharpened things up a little. See Okami. The characters animate well enough, but sometimes their expressions don't match what their limited vocals are doing. There are moments where Fi will be singing a gentle tune, but her on-screen character looks like she's belting out opera.
Bosses are a treat in this game, and no, that's not sarcasm (not this time at least). They do get progressively more challenging and more fun with each new encounter. It's a shame that the controls get in the way of most of the enjoyment. But while fighting new bosses is great, Nintendo also decided to make us fight them again and again. It starts to feel like Capcom had a hand in this Zelda when I'm facing the exact same boss again for a third time. One repeat encounter happened a mere 20 minutes after the last one. That's not even enough time to finish an episode of Futurama, how about we pace ourselves a little bit Nintendo?
And that brings me to a fatal error with this game. It's padded out, heavily. There's little content here of any substance. When you're not traveling through the small world, you're stuck doing quests that have little meaning other than stopping any progression in the game for a few hours.
One of the worst moments is when you have an escort mission with a robot who is carrying a jug of water through a bunch of baddies. First off, the robot can fly. So why does it have to be so low to the ground where all the danger is, why can't it just hover out of harm's way? Second, to get to the start of the escort mission, I used a drop zone. Guess where else there's a drop zone. At the destination of the freaking escort mission. Why couldn't I just drop down there? I had already been there, unlocked the save point and dropped there before. What was different about this time? Why did I need to do this? Also, the robot doesn't move out of the way from enemy fire. He just hovers there stubbornly, complaining to you that he's getting hit. God forbid he MOVES OUT OF THE FREAKING WAY.
Another moment is your second encounter with the water dragon. She tells you while searching to pieces of the song of the hero that you need to prove your worth with a trial. First off, I already proved my worth to her at the beginning of the game to get part of a sacred flame. Was I not worthy enough then? I already established myself as the Hero of the Goddess, the very same Hero from which legends were spoken of. Who was she to suddenly question everything I've done not only for her, but for the entire world. No, instead you have to swim around and collect magic notes. What arbitrary non-sense. And secondly, she pulls the mission straight out of her watery ass. She takes the part of the song and splits it up into 20 some odd pieces and scatters it around the level. She does realize I'm trying to save the freaking world and don't have time to put up with this crap.
Don't even get me started on the forced stealth section near the end game which requires you to sneak around and re-discover all your gear again. The development team was too interested in finding ways to waste the player's time than actually worrying about if any of this stuff actually made sense. If you were to cut out all the blatant padding that's done in this game, you'd be left with a product about one third it's original size and a game that would only be about 10 hours long.
There are some nice moments where the pacing of the game is slowed down so you can get some contrast to all the action, like the moments in the silent realms. I enjoyed these sections because even though they were exactly the same areas I've been before, they were treated differently. Their tone was completely changed into a more peaceful area, until you ran out of time and had to frantically find more spirit seeds to pacify the demons that inhabited the area. It was nice to get away from the swordplay to more strategic collecting.
Temples have been a staple of the series, and Twilight Princess had some of the best yet. It's a shame that this is the game that follows it because the dungeons here are mostly shallow. There are a few exceptions like the final one, but most really don't leave a lasting impression or challenge the player.
The soundtrack isn't overly awful, but it's not that great either. Most of the time I couldn't hear it over the sound of the gears in my head grinding together every time Link did something I didn't command him to do, or Fi needing to tell me that I just picked up an item after I just picked up the item. But one track that stands out is the orchestrated piece you hear while you're flying around. Not because it's a particularly well-arranged piece of music, but because flying around is overly dull.
Most of the time you don't even feel like you're traveling that fast while soaring around the skies, and even when you are, there's really no indication of it. The best comparison I can make is to Wind Waker, how you sailed across a vast ocean while the water flew past your as your boat parted surface of the sea. In that game you could feel the speed you were going because of all the contextual hints around you; in Skyward Sword there's just air. Have fun looking at that. The size of the sky over world itself is criminally small. There are very few points of interest to entice your sense of exploration while the rest is just empty.
The ground level is no better; there are 3 main areas and they're all uncovered after completing the first three temples, making the world seem very small and uninteresting. Other Zelda games had a nice, expansive world that begged to be discovered. In Skyward Sword, there's not a whole lot of exploration to be had. It actually baffles me that most of the quests have you back-tracking over the same land. If Nintendo really needed to do this, why not have present versions and past versions. There is a time mechanic built into the plot where you can travel back in time, but it's never really taken advantage of. If they're going to pad out the game, at least they could look like they're trying to be creative.
Oh, and there's no fishing mini-game to speak of. Something that
would've been perfect for the Wii mote was completely ignored. Why
couldn't they rip off that idea from Twilight Princess or Ocarina of
Time? Pretty sure you could've found space for it on the disc by
deleting those pointless instructional videos.
The plot has a girl named Zelda and a male lead named whatever you want but you're going to name him Link anyways so really it doesn't matter. And eventually, Zelda gets captured and you have to save her, except this time she really wasn't captured and doesn't need saving, so the basic premise of the plot is chasing after her because she's fulfilling her destiny or some crap like that. The game doesn't do a whole lot to motivate you to push forward. Zelda's not in any danger from anything, and there's no feeling of a dark god trying to engulf the world so you pretty much just run around and do what everyone tells you to do. Some moments require you to make a choice during a conversation, but freedom is an illusion. All conversation paths lead to the same place so I wonder why they even bother letting you choose; especially when all 3 choices basically can be interpreted the same way.
The bad guy you'll be most acquainted with, Ghirahim, barely has any screen time and you never really see him doing anything overly evil or anything to make you hate him. He ALMOST gets Zelda, he ALMOST stops Link, he ALMOST seems like a developed character, but he's not. I actually completely forgot he was in the game at one point until the plot forced him back into the action. I'm not even sure what he spent most of the game doing. The only other character worth mentioning is Groose because he's the only one that showed real development. He starts out as the typical bully but then redeems himself through his own actions. Maybe the game should've been about him.
The plot also creates excuses for you to venture from one point, complete a task and then journey back to that point multiple times, like we saw in the DS games. A design choice that should've died with Phantom Hourglass but was kept alive in later incarnations. Instead of having to travel through the same puzzles and unstoppable enemies like Phantom Hourglass, they just put it on the other side of the world which doesn't really make it any better.
If all these in-game issues weren't enough, Skyward Sword shipped with a notorious glitch that prevents you from completing the game. And unlike most game-ending glitches, this one is fairly easy to pull off. Just simply complete the desert level first when trying to assemble the song of the hero and talk to the goron twice during that time and you've successfully locked your game. There have been various other reports like completing another level then going to the desert stage, talking to the goron and then trying to go to another stage which will lock the game up as well. But that one may be explained if you consider the fact that the developers wanted you to complete each area one at a time or in a certain order, but that just makes it a terribly designed part of the game. So we're ultimately left with two possibilities for the Zelda team: are they ignorant or are they just stupid? Either way, they're going to have a fun time trying to patch this game since the Wii doesn't support any sort of modern WiFi connection and the adapters have long been decommissioned.
But is Skyward Sword a bad game? I say no. Not really. There are worse games out there, and I did see it through to the end. I might even go so far as saying I enjoyed bits and pieces before being interrupted by nonsense and all the not-fishing I did. But is it a good Zelda game? And that answer is no, it isn't. Why? Because of one solitary fact that holds it back. And if there's one thing to take away from this review it's this: the game never let's you embark on your own adventure.
During the entirety of the game, you're told what to do, when to do it, and rarely have a chance to deviate from the path set before you. The world is small, the objectives are made PAINFULLY obvious and there's very little critical thinking the player has to do on their own. The game holds your hand all the time with Fi chiming in unnecessarily and there are constant reminders of basic mechanics you grasped long ago. The game just never lets you go to do your own thing. There are no solitary moments where you can just take in the environment and have a quiet moment to reflect on what you've done and where you're going. Part of the journey of the hero is feeling like you're on a really epic quest built upon your own successes.
Why not let me figure out where to go on my own? In Link to the Past, all you had was a world map and some flashing icons that were either pendants or crystals and that's it. We all managed to beat that game without losing our minds or getting a degree of archeology from Harvard. No one had to force exposition in and hold our hand to the point of madness to make utterly sure that we were playing the game properly at all times. AND WHY NO FISHING MINI GAME. When you take away that sense of exploration, you take away what makes the adventure genre great. And that's what keeps Skyward Sword from being a good Zelda game.
Iwata himself actually stated that he went this very contained-sense-of-playing route because he didn't want players getting lost. Well news flash, that's kinda what makes an adventure, an adventure. If there's no danger of getting lost, then there's no sense of risk or curiosity of exploration. And getting lost isn't a bad thing, it means we're off the beaten path and figuring stuff on our own. It makes the world seem like a bigger place. If everything is just straight forward, it becomes too linear and boring.
Zelda Skyward Sword definitely showcases what can be done on the Wii: baffling controls, sub-par graphics and shallow content. It perfectly represents everything the Wii is to the gaming world right now. Just an outdated piece of junk that was fun at one point, but now is embarrassing to talk about. And now we can say the same thing about the Zelda franchise. This is the first Zelda I've played where the mechanics just felt old. Like nothing new was being tried with this game, just stamping out the same formula with ambitions to re-create the Ocarina of Time magic. It feels more like Iwata's project than Miyamoto's; everything is just too safe and tested already. It's like the fear of failure held this game back from being bold and adventurous. Like they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And I gained nothing from playing this game, other than high blood pressure.
