7 hours in. Everything is coated in a layer of bad design. Flying is frustrating. Everyone talks too much and says NOTHING of interest. Every NPC is annoying and just doles out the most pointless, asinine tasks. How come I can't fly at night? Where is the F_ing minimap? How come I can't access the beacon and move it whenever I need to? WHERE IS THE F__ING MINIMAP? How come i have to jump off a specific point to be able to call my bird? GTA 3 was more limited by the ps2's tech and it had a huge open world (which SS doesn't have) with seamless integration of MULTIPLE vehicles and on foot portions let alone how much GTA SA did on the PS2 what... 7 years ago?
There are far too many poorly done, disjointed pieces to this and none of them are interesting and none of them are fun. Combat is waggle +. Outside of the music, everyone that made this should be banned from ever working in the videogame industry again. This is Nintendo's Chineese Democracy. Bloated and masterbatorial. Where is the fun? 7 hours in and I've yet to find it.
Flying takes some getting used to. I've played a lot of the flight mode in Wii Sports Resort so that helped in reminding me in Skyward Sword that you have to quite steady with the Wii Remote. A quick up-then-down motion is needed to flap the bird's wings so you can't be lazy about it. I've found that you don't really need to flapping all the time unless you need to gain altitude (which you need to flap for). So far, it doesn't seem significantly faster to flap the wings constantly. I'm early in the game and the flight mechanics are satisfactory.
The map beacon has the annoyance of requiring to retrieve it in order to set in a new position. Sort of like how in Smash Bros. Melee (iirc) you needed to pick up the character puck in order to select a new character. Sad thing is that Brawl let you press B to retrieve the puck.
Dialog and quests I have nothing to argue against with at this time.
Minimap? Not able to call the bird at will? Ha! You have to be more in-tune with your inner Japanese gamer and be able to memorize maps and only call the bird where the game lets you.
....
A mini-map at all times is what I expected and would've helped. Interface does look nice a clean in Pro or Light mode. It's odd that you have to jump and fall in specific places and specific manners in order to call the bird.
EDIT:
The lack of minimap is a symptom of a larger problem that encompasses this game--nothing, NOTHING is designed well. everything takes at least a few more button presses, a few more minutes than it should. The game has NO flow. Fi is part of that. Endless, un-skipable exposition is part of that. The disjointed world is part of that. Yes, pausing every few minutes isn't difficult, but it would be unnecessary if things that worked well were kept in the series.
Look at the town. How come I can't jump off wherever and call my bird... or why doesn't my bird just show up when I'm at Y coordinate under the island? Why can't I leave at night? Why am I wasting any time running back to my bedroom so I can select it to be daytime? Why is the game pausing every time I pick up a scrap of whatever for the upgrade system that seems totally pointless?
Everything feels anti-intuitive and massively user unfriendly.
Also, Zelda 1 had a minimap. This isn't a return to it's roots (since it's roots were basically Gauntlet with a dose of RPG) this is disappearing up one's own ass.
I would say the game is designed in the an odd and (old?) Japanese manner. Feel free to call such styles not well as I wouldn't blame you.
I wouldn't say the game has no flow. I think it is more apt to say that the game has a slow flow. Glacial, if your shoulder is feeling particularly icy. The slow flow exemplifies itself in how pressing A just speeds up dialog rather than displays it all at once. When I let the dialog go by itself, it can be a bit charming to see how the display speed is used to inject some personality to the text.
With some other video games being accused of appealing too much to those who can't hold their attention for long, it's interesting to see a game that goes far in the opposite direction in aspects of its presentation.
As for the hand-holding, Nintendo does lay it on in a thick and tiring manner.
On top of all the other obvious padding this game showcases on a by-hour basis, I just don't understand how this game took five years to make. I really don't, especially since the game world is so small you could probably fit it all inside a handful of Xenoblade's larger maps. If you stripped away all the re-used encounters and blatant padding with fetch quests and pointless errands, this game would be around 20 hours long. I'm around 40 now, which I wouldn't mind if that was 40 hours of new experiences, but it's not. And why is this game so small and the assets so few? It's a AAA Nintendo flagship game, with presumably all the time and money in the world dumped on it.
This is getting ridiculous, and it's a shame because when the game isn't playing "keep away" with the story it's really good. But every time I start to get invested in this game and having a great time, the designers pull the rug out from under me.
Well, I may have took 5 years but I doubt they kept even half of what they made in that time. Maybe Nintendo feels pressured with Zelda to provide a long experience no matter the cost. The worse thought is that they convinced themselves that it's okay to reuse areas and applying minor tweaks makes them interesting again. As for the time and money comment, I first and foremost trust Nintendo to be cheap on their end no matter the situation.
Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Read 623054 times)
