I have been a very vocal critic of Nintendo's late 2011 release of The Legend if Zelda: Skyward Sword but there are people who seem to somehow be able to enjoy the game. Now Skyward Sword is a fairly divisive game among the Zelda franchise so if you are considering purchasing this game I would suggest finding a more positive review of the game as a counterpoint of sorts because there is a chance you may enjoy the game. I did not but before I go into that I suppose I should go ahead and talk about what the game does well.
Firstly one of the things Skyward Sword does well with is it's general art direction. The character models are probably the most expressive the series has seen and the environments they show are very attractive. The game itself is very well presented and some of the music is very nice to listen to (the rest is generic, forgettable garbage but we're trying to be nice here.)
Oh timeshift stones, oh how I love you so...
Also the timeshift stones are absolutely brilliant and I really want to see a game focused on just that mechanic. It's a shame that they were instead forced onto this sad excuse for a Zelda game and It's also a shame that I seem to have run out of nice things to say about this game. I guess I'd better raise my flame shield and be ready to shake my nunchuck to make sure it doesn't break while I go into what the game doesn't do well.
I suppose it's wise to start with the motion controls which, honestly, often end up swingin' amiss. the general swordplay, no matter what I tried in terms of rearranging my sensor bar and all that jazz, still couldn't seem to detect my movements more then 95% of the time. Granted it's probably something that could be blamed on the weaknesses of the Wii's motion control but still, this is ridiculous.
Most of your items are done with motion control and most of it works fine most of the time. They made the bow worse somehow compared to Twilight Princess (along with alot of the other pointer stuff) but still, it mostly works the way you'd expect. Nothing spectacular or anything. The flying and, later on, the swimming, both control by tilting the remote and pressing the A button for movement. That's fine and all but the fact that the analog stick is completely unused and I seriously have to wonder why that wasn't included as an option.
Now speaking of which, the sky is a vast, expansive, place and it's easy to get confused so I took the liberty of crossing out any island that doesn't have anything worth bothering with so here we go:
Oh and I'm sure that big cloud in the corner there won't be important ever.
That's it. Seriously, everything else is either a worthless minigame island or a random floating rock and maybe there's something in there if you activate the appropriate Goddess Cube, or if you're into flailing your arms around trying to slice bamboo for a piece of heart (which by the way should be a reward for finding a hidden chest or something, not for falling through some rings.) but more then likely you won't have any reason to bother with them.)
Now the surface areas of the overworld are a mixed bag. The forest area is, in my opinion, slightly below average, the volcano one is bland and boring, and the desert is freaking awesome. As I said before the environments here are very attractive but ultimately you end up going along a certain path, completing a fetch quest to get an item (generally involving the Dowsing mechanic which to be honest isn't very fun,) and going off to the dungeon. There's a random Goron archaeologist wandering around, studying the bird statues that are used to, among other things, save.
Wait, why did we go back to only being able to save at a specific point, I mean the only other game in the series to pull this kind of stuff is Majora's Mask. Why are we going back to an archaic save at only this specific spot, type system.
Anyways the dungeons themselves are mostly your standard fare. Go in, solve puzzles, and fight boss. The only real standouts here are the one's in the desert which, just so happen to use timeshift stones. The boss fights are mostly fun although when there are 15 of them and 6 of them are the same two bosses just recycled three times apeice (and one of those two isn't even a good boss fight to begin with.) then we have problems. That golden statue boss, Koloktos, was great though, although perhaps part of that pleasure to me is that Link is doing to the boss what I want to do to the game itself.
Annoyingly enough though apparently the boss key is now a weird puzzle of it's own where the key is this certain shape and you use the Wii Remote to tilt the key into the little block opening on the boss key. It's an annoying little gimmick that should have been left on the planning stage.
No really? I thought we were in Disneyland.
After doing so well with Midna it seemed that the days of annoying Zelda companions that nobody likes (although I don't really mind Navi) but nope here comes Fi. Fi is basically, for those of you who have been so blessed as to not be given the privilege of playing this game, is basically Navi crossed with someone's naggy, overbearing mother. But here, to demonstrate how annoying she is, we're going to do a little play by play so please bear with me:
Scene, a giant pirate ship. Link's just chilling on the ship, when all of a sudden, a bunch of tentacles breaking through the floorboards of the ships and tearing stuff up in a cutscene that might as well have been preceded by someone giving the command "RELEASE THE KRAKEN."
A little while later Fi pops out and informs you that "while it's difficult to make out the situation" that "there is a strong likelihood that the ship is under attack".
I am not making this up, this is quite literally something that happens in the game and I even looked up a Youtube video to make sure I didn't miss anything. Yes Fi, I know that something happened here, I was there. Alright Fi, I can hear the beeping, I know we are low on hearts, now shut it. Oh and another thing: I know that I messed up the Silent Realm, you do not have to pop up and inform me that I 'failed' the challenge because anyone with two working brain cells could work that one out.
Oh and the 'best' part is, in what I assume to be Skyward Sword's pitiful excuse for humor, she informs you, when you first find a Kikwi, that there's a '95% chance that the creature you're looking at is not Zelda.' After this you are sent on an oh so important quest to find some more Kikwi's because apparently Link answers Amber alerts now but then if you go and wander a bit to far then she will pop up, tell you there are no Kikwi's in the area and then the game has Link turn around and walk back like a scolded child.
The game made an active effort to prevent me from making any sort of exploration. Not that there's any real reason to go looking around because you'll be back in the forest at least twice before the game ends. But here's the thing, there is virtually nothing in terms of secrets in this game. The closest thing you have to a 'secret' is Goddess Cube wedged in the ground somewhere. Finding one of these cubes "rewards" you with, once you activated it, having to go back into the sky and find the chest that is now unlocked to probably just end up getting some rupees that you probably have more then enough of. Remember those elaborate hidden caves Wind Waker (and Twilight Princess to a lesser extent) had? Well Skyward Sword doesn't have any of that.
Are we there yet?
Conclusion
The Legend of Zelda series, to me has always had exploration, and figuring stuff on your own or just discovering them, as two of the core fundamental parts of the series. These two things can be traced all the way back to the original game and even Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link (which is the one game in the series I enjoyed less) firmly met those standards but Skyward Sword fails to heed those same ideas. The game basically builds a momentum to herd you from dungeon to dungeon so Fi can tell you how to go through them all.
Skyward Sword simply doesn't feel like a Zelda game to me, but that doesn't matter because it certainly isn't a good one
Topic: Skyward Sword: my full thesis on the second worst Zelda game not on the cdi (Read 12316 times)
