Well, I had completely forgotten about this thread until now...
Anyways, here's my review in PGC style.
Zelda games have followed a similar pattern right from the first game. You are a young boy who has a massive quest placed in front of him, and has to do some extraordinary things in a time of great darkness. I remember when watching Gameheadz on TLC, it showed some clips of the forest where Miyamoto-sama grew up, and described the forest as the birth place of the original Legend of Zelda. Shiggy would walk into the forest and imagine the great quest he was on to save the princess, and all the various creatures present in the Zelda games.
Ocarina of Time sort of marked a departure from this theme. It was an upgrade from A Link to the Past, with 3D versions of things you knew well, but it had a darker style, and the game featured an adult Link for the first time. It was a great game, and well worthy of recognition, but it had lost a great deal of the original vision.
With Wind Waker, Shiggy felt that he had to bring the series back to its roots before the enemies started leaving blood, Link started bleeding, and the game got a T rating or worse. That was NOT what he had imagined all those years ago, and he knew it. When he had done Zelda in the Ocarina of Time style on the GameCube, he was sort of unsettled by it.
The solution came with the introduction of Cel-Shading. With Cel Shading, the game could feature the same bright colors as all the Zelda games before Ocarina of Time, and become a game about that young kid going out and doing great things while re-inventing the series at the same time.
To say that it worked would be a great understatement.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker features a VERY rich world that contains an extremely large amount of detail and graphics that will knock you flat on your back. When I say detail, I am not talking just about the graphics, but in the underlying physics that govern the world. There are blades of grass that rock in the wind, a great ocean that will change between night and day with time, and will sometimes feature bad weather. There are birds and bugs all over the world, there are hundreds of NPCs, and there's nary a load screen in sight. I have heard complaints of the depth blurring effect in the game, but it's never bothered me personally. When things are in the distance, they seem blurry to me. That's just a fact of life.
Grand Theft Auto achieved critical claim for creating a living breathing world, but I think that The Wind Waker did the job better. When you start sailing, the background music will change with your actions, and when in combat, the music is styled to match the action. But it's the sailing that I feel is the life blood of this game. When you open up the sails and feel the wind at your back, you can almost feel the spray hitting your face. I spent HOURS in this game just sailing aimlessly, and it's not like there wasn't plenty of sailing to actually do stuff in the game. I would often sail right past the place I was going to, and then turn around and head back a while later just so I could sail for a little bit longer. The thing I am trying to say is that while the game looks like a cartoon, it FEELS very real. It's the most realistic game I have ever played.
The combat system of the game is an upgraded version of the combat system in Ocarina of Time. I guess Nintendo felt that it didn't need fixing, and it did work well, but I sometimes wish that the game had a more dynamic combat system than pressing B all the time. Also, life energy is generally taken from you in quarter hearts, making the game quite a bit easier than its predecessors, but it should also be mentioned that it's a fair bit harder to get heart pieces for the most part.
The game features connectivity in the form of a second person controlling Tingle, who has various functions, including the ability to drop bombs, heal the main character, and allow limited flight. However, Tingle won't be able to do actions that would bypass puzzles in dungeons. He will give advice on how to solve the puzzles however, if you are looking for that elusive solution. The feature is quite a good addition to the game though, as it provides some more depth and some extra things to do in a game that already features a LOT of goodies to collect.
Speaking of goodies, rupees are actually useful in this game! One thing that always irritated me about previous Zelda games is that after a while you would be collecting scads of money and throwing it away because you had already bought everything in the game, and didn't need any more money. For some reason, I was always low on money pretty much throughout Wind Waker, making those nice buried treasures really useful in the game rather than some meaningless treasure you are hauling up from the bottom of the ocean.
Another thing that has recieved significant upgrades from previous games is the story. While the graphics have been brightened from Ocarina of Time, the story has become a great deal more complex. There are events in this game that actually brought a tear to my eye. The story of this game is about equal in complexity and emotional value to the second half of Final Fantasy VI, if you have played the game. I don't really want to spoil a lot about the story, as it is a very important part of the game this time around, but you won't be dissapointed once you start digging into the game. It's got a lot in common with previous games, but the characters are not flat at all, and characters that you thought you knew well have been shown to have a whole larger side to them.
This whole game just reeked of perfection to me. It's been a while since I have played a game that evoked a strong emotional response from me, and it's been a much longer time since I played a game for a straight week while skipping classes and important things like eating and sleeping. The game CAN be finished in a fairly short period, but I never wanted it to end. I would always find something else to do that would make the game last that much longer. I was just having way too much fun for me to see the credits. I wanted to know what happened next, but I wanted to keep playing the game even more. Usually I am a no nonsense kind of gamer, so to see this reaction in me really surprised me.
You CANNOT go wrong with owning this game.
Pros:
All your favorite Zelda mythos back in a sleek new package.
Simply gorgeous graphics making an interactive cartoon.
Dynamic music effects.
Storyline competing with the best of them.
Cons:
2 dungeons got axed from the game to make a quicker release date.
Combat system essentially unchanged from Ocarina of Time.
A little on the easy side.
Playing the game can cause difficulty in real life due to excessive time spent playing it.
Graphics: 10.0The game is easily recognizable as the game that The Legend of Zelda on NES was intended to be. The graphics are simply breathtaking to see in motion. Being a programmer, I was simply gasping for air watching fields of grass blow in the wind, and thousands of pieces of ash drop into a pond that was rippling from water drops falling in it... I was watching the very artistic characters fill up the screen while each of them was looking every bit the work of art. This is easily the best looking game I have ever seen. Not just because of technical miracles, but because of the perfectly fine tuned style of the game.
Sound: 10.0The dynamic music effects I mentioned earlier are about the most innovative thing I have ever seen in a video game's soundtrack. The music in this game will draw you in and have you begging for more. I was listening for days when PGC radio was broadcasting the soundtrack, and I would often leave the game running while doing other things just so I could hear the music and sound effects once I actually bought the game. The sound effects are all extremely high quality, and make the game sound simply perfect.
Control: 10.0Upgraded minorly from The Ocarina of Time, you will feel right at home with the controls. Easy to learn, and easy to master. Gets a perfect score from me because it works so well.
Gameplay: 10.0The gameplay was so good I was deliberately prolonging the game that had the best story in any game I played since Xenogears. There is so much to do in this game it just isn't funny. The sense that you get while playing it is the freedom to do absolutely anything that you want, and that feeling will never leave you. Whether you are hunting down a new treasure map, playing with the seagulls, attacking barnyard animals, or just watching the landscape through a telescope, you will feel very much the time that was spent in perfecting this game.
Lastability: 10.0Like I said, this game has a LOT to do. There's a mini-game in the game that has you scouring the world looking for... "things". This is actually one of the best features for me. It's like card collecting but not. It's time consuming as hell, but it will keep you playing the game for a VERY long time. I have figured that I will need to play through the game 3 times in order to get all the "things" that I want. The game is just very fun to play, and it doesn't get boring on your second time through.
Final Score (Not an average): 10.0This is simply the best game I have ever played. Giving it anything less than a 10 would be something that I would never forgive myself for. This game simply has it all. Perfection has been a common theme in my review, and I find it only fits that I would give it a perfect score.
Topic: My personal review: Good but not brilliant (Read 12891 times)
