After having sat on my shelf and collected dust for 3 long years, a few weeks ago I finally got around to playing this game from start to finish. I was anticipating this game since it was the newest Zelda and one of the few I have never finished. In fact, prior to a few weeks ago, I had only played about 4 or 5 hours' worth of the game, which was way back during its release. I had issues with the control scheme and consequently, I put the game on hold. Now that I finally played through it, I realized I have a lot to say about the game. In my 25+ years as a gamer I have never had so many mixed feelings about any one game, which is why I decided to write this review. Please note, there will be SPOILERS in this review, so if you have not completed the game or do not wish to be spoiled on gameplay or story elements, skip down to the final paragraph of the review. Otherwise, continue reading.
Being that this review is my first on this blog, I don't really have a set format on how I want to structure them, but I'm going to start this way: by listing the good, the bad, and my overall final thoughts.
The Good
I generally like to start with the good things first so this is why we are starting with the good. Skyward Sword had a lot going for it. It was the first (and really, the only) game on the Wii with successful 1:1 motion controls. At first I couldn't get a hang of the controls since I strongly prefer traditional controls but once I overcame the steep learning curve of the motion controls, I fell in love. I felt the combat controls were awesome. In fact, they're one of the best things about the game. A lot of the gameplay is actually built around the motion controls, which leads for some clever puzzle solving. The Wii remote acts as a sword hilt and Link mimics how the Wii remote is held, and for the most part works fantastically. The nunchuk attachment acts as the shield, so to bring your shield out and deflect attacks, you shake the nunchuk attachment. Aiming the bow, flying beetle, and slingshot with the Wii remote definitely proved to me motion controls can actually be an asset and not a hindrance. What really sold me was the use of the whip. It's so simple, but you fling the Wii remote like a whip to use the whip item. It made me feel like Indiana Jones for a few moments and honestly added enjoyment to my using the item. Motion controls often come off as being gimmicky and I was generally disappointed with the Wii as a console because the vast majority of its games failed to capitalize on the unique feature of motion control. However, I am happy to say Skyward Sword's combat motion controls definitely did its part to sell me on the game. I rarely felt the controls were gimmicky, even if I disliked them at first. Not to mention Skyward Sword's limited edition came with a badass gold Wii Remote.
When it comes to 3D Zelda games there have been 2 distinct art styles - realistic and cartoony. Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and Twilight Princess all tried to take a more gritty and realistic approach, especially the latter. Wind Waker went full-on cartoony and while playing it, you could almost be convinced you're watching a cartoon. Both styles are great and it's hard for me to choose one over the other. Then Skyward Sword came out and did something interesting with its graphics - it wasn't super cartoony nor was it ultra realistic. It was sort of a blend of the two styles, and it worked perfectly. The colors were very vibrant and had an almost watercolor painting-like quality to them. At times the characters seemed almost Disney-esque, which is never a bad thing in my book. I appreciate that every Zelda has its own art style, but if I had to choose a favorite, it would most likely go to Skyward Sword. It's so familiar, yet distinct, and the character designs, areas, textures, and just the overall feel of the game is excellent. Also, out of all of the Links there have been, this one is probably my favorite. The design of Link is simply perfect. The overall character design is pretty strong as well. Groose is probably my favorite NPC in the game as he gets a decent amount of screen time and more character development than the rest of the other NPCs. Overall, the art style is, like the motion controls, one of its strongest points.
Another aspect of Skyward Sword I thought was excellent was the soundtrack. I've noticed that many people felt this game had a weak soundtrack, but I heartily disagree. Some of it would qualify as background noise rather than a full music track, but the overall soundtrack quality is great, especially Skyloft and the Knight's Academy. To me, these are two of the most memorable tracks in the series and definitely hooked me from the start. Some, but not all, of the dungeon themes are excellent also, most notably the Lanayru Mining Facility. Some of it is not so memorable but none of it is bad. Music in video games is very important to me, so I was happy to say the soundtrack held up the whole way through.
One last, and very important, aspect of Skyward Sword that I feel was done very well are the dungeon designs. The first dungeon, unfortunately, sets a bad example for dungeons. It's not a terrible dungeon, but it's very forgettable and not very fun either. Luckily, the rest of the dungeons ranged from very good to excellent. My favorites included Lanayru Mining Facility and Ancient Cistern. Both dungeons were some of the best designed dungeons in the series, in my opinion. Dungeon design is very important in a Zelda game and this game's dungeons do not disappoint (after the first one). Some of the puzzles are very clever, and I often found myself losing a good two hours after completing a dungeon. That's the mark of good gameplay right there - when you start playing and the next time you look at the clock, two hours have gone by and you hadn't even noticed because you were sucked into the game. So, again, overall dungeon design is excellent, and some of them I would say are even among the best in the series.
The Bad
It would be easy for me to write this game as an overall bad game, but it's not. That's why i started with the good stuff first, to show to me and to you that the game does have a few redeeming qualities. However, despite those good things, the game as a whole is very weak and feels lazily designed.
As I stated before, the combat motion controls were excellent, but unfortunately that does not hold true for flying and swimming controls. This is where I felt the motion controls were gimmicky. There was absolutely no reason that I shouldn't have been able to control my Loftwing, beetle, or Link while swimming with the analog stick as opposed to the horrific control of the motion sensor. This did not benefit the game at all. Luckily these instances make up a fairly small amount of gameplay, and I eventually learned to tolerate them, but that doesn't mean the controls for flying and swimming were good. Aside from having to pointlessly use motion control for flying and swimming, I felt like I had to constantly recalibrate my Wii remote during these periods. I rarely felt like the controls were out of sync during combat, but while flying, swimming, or tight rope walking, the controls were usually off and I had stop what I was doing, pause, and recalibrate. I wouldn't mind this every so often but I was doing this several times an hour. And I wasn't understanding why the controls got so out of sync because I wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary. Very annoying.
One very big selling point in all Zelda games is the big, open world. The original Legend of Zelda was (probably) one of the first true open world games in existence. If not the first, than certainly the first noteworthy one. This trend continued with literally every game in the series (not counting Four Swords Adventures, since it was more of a spin-off than a sequel) until Skyward Sword. There is no open world in Skyward Sword. When I found this out, my hopes were instantly shot down. One of the series' main selling points was completely gone. Instead, what we got was a main hub (Skyloft) with a bunch of open and empty sky to fly around in, and 3 individual areas to go to. That's it. And even worse - you're forced to revisit these same three areas over and over. That's right, a third of the way into the game, you've already seen 90% of it. How is that even possible? This is why I say the game design feels very lazy. You're forced to revisit the same areas and do the same tasks over and over and it got boring very quickly. Having dungeons in between areas definitely kept me from going insane but outside of the dungeons, the game design was very poor, in my opinion. I honestly could have dealt with the whole "no open world" aspect if they added more individual areas, and not restrict us to three. Three areas that aren't all that interesting or fun to go through. The constant need to retread old ground makes the game feel artificially lengthened and really hurts the overall game design as a result. Forget the fact that each area plays almost like a dungeon in itself, which is another aspect that hurts the deign, but when I'll be honest - I was actually enjoying the game up until I finished the 3rd dungeon and found out that I would just be revisiting the same areas multiple times for the rest of the game. By the time I was past the 5th dungeon I just wanted it to be over, which is something I have never said about any Zelda game.
Aside from the overall poor game design, there are other elements that made me want to rip my hair out. Yes, I'm talking about those goddamn Spirit Trials. Okay, I get the point of them, and I realize they're supposed to be challenging, but they're not at all fun, and when you get caught, you have to restart the entire thing over. To add insult to injury, you have to listen to a 30 second lecture from Fi about how much you suck. Makes you feel good right?
Speaking of Fi, I could have crapped out a better companion character. Not only does she have (almost) no point to both the story and gameplay, she is, by far, the most annoying character in any Zelda game, and I'm including Navi. She interrupts you constantly, makes you feel stupid by her wording of things, and worst of all, you can't even skip or fast forward any of her text! If there ever was a character in a game that I wanted to scream "Shut the fuck up!" to, it's her. She is my least favorite character in the series. Her only reason for ever existing is revealed in the ending, when she fuses with the Master Sword, which, to be quite honest, kind of weakens the overall appeal of one of the most iconic weapons in all of gaming. I never had a problem with companion characters, even Navi was tolerable, though a bit annoying at times, but Fi's existence hurt my experience of the game. There's simply no reason for the Wii remote to beep at me to call up Fi who tells me my health is low or my Wii remote batteries need to be changed. Yeah no shit! I can see my health is low. Stop interrupting my gameplay so I can die in peace!
One last point I have to talk about is the story. Story is not my biggest concern in Zelda games, as it's mostly about the gameplay, so I can be more forgiving with this aspect in Skyward Sword, but I do feel the story is one of the weaker elements in the game. I appreciate that they wanted to give the Zelda series a formal origin story, and because of this, I was excited to experience it, but it did not do the series justice. Sure, many Zelda games fall short on story and there usually isn't much to go on beyond the whole "you're the new hero of legend and you save the Triforce and kill the bad guy" type thing. Normally, though, I at least care about saving the world and defeating the enemy, but in this case I didn't. The world in Skyward Sword could perish for all I cared. They just didn't sell me on the world as a whole and because of this, there was little motivation for me to even finish it. In fact the only reason I even made it through Skyward Sword at all is just so I could put the game behind and never have to worry about playing through it again. Getting back to the story, I felt it was done pretty poorly. Throughout the majority of the game, I had no idea what my quest was. I was simply following orders blindly. At first my goal was to find Zelda who was in the world down below, then I had to power up my sword, and then find the 3 parts of a song, but I never felt like any of those quests would amount to anything. The biggest middle finger story-wise was that the one thing I needed (the Triforce) to complete the game was hidden right in Skyloft all along. This brought back memories of Myst on PC where the ending was right in front of me all along. Skyward Sword was basically a giant wild goose chase that ended exactly where it began and it was downright frustrating that they couldn't do more with it than what they did. I'm a sucker for a good origin story and they completely dropped the ball with this game. They pretty much verified things we already knew - Link is the reincarnation of the "hero", Zelda is the reincarnation of the "goddess" and Ganon (or whichever villain appears in their respective game) is the reincarnation of "the evil villain", in this case, Demise. Wait... who?Yeah I don't know either. As if Ghirahim wasn't a stupid enough villain to begin with, the final boss of the game is some Akuma (from Street Fighter) lookalike with fiery hair, who appears pretty much out of nowhere. Few things piss me off more in video games than the "surprise villain". You play through the entire game not knowing who you're truly facing in the end, and while I get that the concept could be exciting, it mostly leads to nothing more than disappointment. I hate when characters you've never even heard of are introduced towards the end and you find out that's your final villain. Surprise villains are fine in cases when you already know the character beforehand, but didn't expect them to be the villain. It's a bit like murder mysteries. A good murder mystery always at least hints or gives clue to who the killer is throughout the book. Oftentimes it's a character you were already introduced to. A bad murder mystery ends when the killer turns out to be someone who was never mentioned, introduced, nor even hinted at throughout the book. It cheapens the whole experience and makes you feel like you were led astray the entire time. Not to mention the final fight in Skyward Sword was fucking lame. After all that, it's just another sword fight? Wow, Nintendo. Just wow. If that's not a middle finger right in your face, I don't know what is.
Closing Thoughts
Throughout the majority of the game, I couldn't wait for it to be over. I've never been so incredibly disappointed by a game before. Perhaps it is because the series is known for its top notch quality in nearly every aspect - story, characters, gameplay, music, world design, etc, and unfortunately the overall quality of most of those things in Skyward Sword are simply below the high standard the series has set. Let it be known the game is not bad. In fact it's pretty decent. It has a lot of redeeming aspect, as I've outlined earlier, but I expected a lot better than what we got. I anticipated playing this game because my experience with the series has mostly been magical, and several of the games I would even qualify as masterpieces, but this game just doesn't live up to the name. Like I said, as a game, Skyward Sword isn't bad. But as a Zelda game, it is highly disappointing. Fortunately, this is the first and only game in the series I truly disliked on the whole. Hopefully it will be the last.
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