I’ve been pretty quiet the last few weeks since the end of the Bears NFL season and leading up to the Super Bowl. And lately, WoW has been pretty uninteresting, so I decided to dust off the old consoles and finish off a game that has been sitting at the end for nearly a month now. Tonight, I completed Skyward Sword for the Wii. I did a partial review back about two months ago, which you can find here. What did I think of the game? Well, I’m glad you asked!!
Game Play: Every time I play a Zelda game, I always have in the back of my head: “Can this game compete with Ocarina of Time?” Majora’s mask was fun and innovative, but it wasn’t OOT. Windwaker was a completely different game. Good, yet it is hard to compare them. I wasn’t a fan of Twilight Princess. It just missed the mark. So I am pleased to see that Skyward Sword felt more like OOT than any game before it. The flow of the game just seemed more fluid. The dungeons were good, and although a few of the dungeons were reused near the end, it didn’t bother me as it seemed like you were going in there for something completely different than before. The method of bug catching, where it doesn’t appeal that much to me, was a nice new way of upgrading your items. I skipped most of this once I got a couple of big upgrades out of the way. I didn’t even bother hunting down the bugs to make stronger potions. The items and weapons that you loved were all there, although some were completely new items with a twist. The puzzles weren’t difficult to figure out, but they really shouldn’t be. In fact, my favorite puzzle in the whole game was at the end with the movable dungeons. The element of “time bubbles” was a nice little addition too. They took the best parts out of what we knew and loved about Zelda and added some new innovative things. The challenge was there, but it wasn’t based solely on the game play, it had a lot to do with the controls, which I’ll talk about later.
Graphics/Sound: As I said in my partial review, the graphics here struggle when compared to other games on other systems, but it is what you would expect on the Wii. I am hopeful that Nintendo realizes that the looks and sounds of a game are important, even if they aren’t the most important, and their new console will be much sharper. But on my 46″ LCD, even with the proper component cables, it just didn’t look good. Very blocky, very grainy, and the resolution just wasn’t there. The sound was good, although not great. The same basic sounds that we’ve heard for the past ten years were there and gives you a level of nostalgia that makes you comfortable. It is what you would expect, nothing more and nothing less.
Controls: If only the centering wouldn’t keep moving, I’d say that the controls are good. But how incredibly annoying is it when you try to get a Skyward Strike and you hold the controller high over your head and it simply DOESN’T GO UP! This game is completely driven on the controls, which is why they use the Wii MotionPlus. The angle of your attacks, the motions that you use, are insanely important, especially at the end of the game. And sometimes they just do not work. It is just very frustrating. When the controls are accurate and working, then it makes for a very fun experience. When they are not working, it makes for a very frustrating experience. Sadly, I think it was about 50/50 on the controls doing what you wanted. With the Wii about to be replaced in the next year, I doubt they’ll do much to change the method of the Wii MotionPlus. I just wish it worked better for this game.
Story: The story was good. It’s the same as every Zelda game, with a couple of twists. The main characters since OOT are all in there. I understand the continued storyline in different time periods in the Zelda series, where it is seemingly a repeating story in the future or the past, reliving what has been done by previous and future “Heroes”. But to me, there are three main elements that you NEED to have a successful Zelda game: Link, Zelda, and Ganon. Spoiler here, but you’re missing one of those, and I’ll give you a hint: Link and Zelda play a big part in this game. Demise isn’t Ganon. I know that you can’t recreate Ganon in every game…or can you? Link is always there. Zelda is always there. Why not Ganon? You can tell that they used Demise as Ganon-Like, but he just isn’t Ganon. I was playing through, just waiting for his appearance, but as I got near the end and I knew I was nearly done, I was just disappointed that he didn’t show up. Other than that, I thought the story was good. All of the other major elements were present and it played well. And just a side note, I thought the way that they showed what happened to Zelda during the time that you didn’t see her in the credits was a GREAT way to show that. It actually had me sit through all of the credits without walking away. It was such a minor piece, but I thought it was completely well done.
(EDIT: I just read up on the recently released revised time flow chart. Unknown to me at the time, this game in the storyline is actually the earliest of all of the games. Ganon is basically the reborn incarnate of Demise. Now, knowing that, I feel like kind of a douche and it does make some sense. So effectively, Ganon IS in this game, in his earliest form.)
Overall: This is a good game. Much better than Twilight Princess, but still falls short of OOT or Link to the Past. It really is the controls that does it for me. This game focuses SO much on your sword and your movements, that it just has to work flawlessly and it falls well short of that. You take that out, and other than the graphics, this is a very solid game. It took me a few weeks to finish playing it because I had gotten busy with other things, but it surely wasn’t because I didn’t want to finish playing it. This ranks in the upper half of the best Zelda games out there, probably on par with Majora’s Mask for overall enjoyment.
Now, I just need to sit down and finally finish Final Fantasy XIII before XIII-2 gets released next week. Unlike Zelda, that is a game that I feel I should finish, but really don’t want to. It just isn’t near as fun.