So Amazon delivered 2 delights this morning in the form of Skyward Sword and 3D Land, the latter of which I haven't even touched yet because I've been so involved with Skyward Sword. I've played around 4/5 hours of it at this point and have formed a few opinions of the early game.
First of all, the start of the game is still relatively slow. Its nowhere near as painstaking as Twilight Princess' opening but doesn't have the instant jump straight in there Ocarina of Time feel. However, I understand that a big part of why it felt slower was to do with the background story, and introducing interesting characters around Skyloft. You'll be able to enter your first area within an hour or so, meaning that you have to get to grips with the sword play from a pretty early stage.
Overall I'm pleased with the motion control, and have started to better understand how everything works after these first few hours. As multiple people have said, you cannot waggle your way to victory in this game. You may get away with killing a few enemies by doing that at the start, but soon you realise that you have no hope if you stick to that method. A significant detail about the controls which I picked up on a couple of hours into the game, is that the sword swings are much more effective if you slow it down and make larger gestures. I had previously been flicking my wrist in the appointed direction, but using a full swing will give you much better results.
The first temple is relatively short, if you consider it a stand alone area. However, if you consider the woods preceding it and the various things you have to do there as part of the temple then it turns out to be a pretty meaty affair. The transition between overworld and dungeon is much more blurred than in previous games, though you still clearly know when you are going from one to the other. The puzzles were nothing too special, but as it is the first dungeon I'll cut it some slack, though I do expect later areas to be more demanding.
Another thing - it is easy to die in this game if you aren't paying attention/don't know what to do. Timing is absolutely key and if you screw it up even a tiny bit then you are brutally punished. At one point I was trying to take out a swinging spider by spin attacking to expose its belly then attempting to stab it in the jewel. But because my timing was off and I couldn't get a feel for it I ended up losing 5 hearts to this one enemy without even killing it, as the momentum created by my sword meant that the spider kept knocking back into me.
Ghirahim was also a tough first boss, perhaps the hardest first boss in any Zelda game. I died on him twice, and this was down to a couple of things. The main problem was his first form, in which he attempts to block your attacks using his fingers. The issue with this is that his "tell" for the direction that you are supposed to strike is very unclear. I found myself thinking that I had it but then realising that it was something completely different. You won't have issues dying on this phase as its relatively easy to break free of his grip. Its the second stage that gave me problems, mainly because I didn't know how to avoid his charge attack. I kept trying to run away, whereas you are actually meant to counteract him with your own sword. This lead to quite a bit of frustration, but I did manage to pull through in the end.
So far the game is very enjoyable and has been much more challenging than the opening of any other Zelda game that I have played. I'll keep checking back in with my thoughts as I get deeper into it
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