@pokepal148

I'm convinced you don't like video games at all. Seriously.

@TriforceBun Isn't it interesting how sometimes, Nintendo have ideas that could be built into a full game, but they're just one level in a game? It reminds me of the Matter Splatter Galaxy in Super Mario Galaxy, such a neat idea, but it's just one level floating amongst a bunch of other creative ideas.

Though I guess sometimes they do become games, as is the case with Captain Toad.

@TriforceBun I literally endured what I did of the second portion of that game just because I knew there was a second dungeon that focused on the timeshift mechanic. Seriously, that mechanic is awesome.

I don't feel that SS excelled in characters just because there aren't very many of them.
Hell, it's literally You, Zelda, Impa, Groose, creepy old lady, and Girahim And his friend Ganondorf with burning hair. That's everyone who matters to the plot of Skyward Sword.

@ludist210 I don't like shitty games, that's the difference

nate38 said:

Okay, so...who else loves that you can stab pumpkins and fling them at enemies from your sword? I spent like half an hour killing bats with pumpkin projectiles in Skyloft last night.

This is why Skyward Sword is my favorite 3D Zelda.

@TriforceBun

I might grant you Majora's Mask, purely for the sheer number of fleshed out supporting characters. But Skyward Sword probably did more with the characters it did have. For the first time, the motivation for rescuing Zelda went far beyond simply 'rescue the princess because...uh, evil'. There was some real personal motivation there.

As much as I love Ocarina, I have to admit that Skyward Sword blew it away here.

@pokepal148

I finally made it to a purely fun moment in the game. The boss fight against Koloktos (six armed robot) was a joy. Hopefully the game picks up from here on out and stays creative.

But I still hate tilting the remote to fly and now... SWIM. Particularly, it's actually uncomfortable trying to go down or make sharp turns.

@cusideabelincoln

Yeah, I love that boss.

Picking up that giant sword and slicing chunks off of him was SO cool.

@cusideabelincoln I believe you have the whole sandship section which is rather decent. basically anything with the timeshift stones is fun (although fortunately Fi is kind enough to remind me that I'm playing a shitty Zelda game by telling me how boss doors work for the 8th time without me asking or when Tentacles are clearly attacking the ship coming out to inform me that "there's an 80 precent chance that the ship is under attack"

@cusideabelincoln ah flying, just like sailing except it requires just enough interaction to keep the bird going where you want that you actually have to pay attention to all of the nothing that's going on.

My other "favorite" thing about Skyward Sword is when I decide to while looking for stupid penguins with bushy tails or something stupid like that, I see a little bit of water and think "you know I wonder what's on the other side" only for Fi to pop up and basically tell me the penguins aren't there and then force me to turn around and go back to looking for stupid penguins.

Also I take full responsibility for bringing this games rating score from a 9.26 to a 9.11. One by one people will realize the truth.

So I finally beat this game. I ended up unexpectedly taking a break, then easing myself in with one hour play sessions, and the last two days I just sat down and powered through the last 10 hours.

I have to say the second half of the game was way more fun and interesting than the first half.

Now all the gripes I had earlier were still annoying. I felt in a few places the game should have been more streamlined. It was very annoying you couldn't skip or super-fast-forward through dialog boxes you had already read a billion times before hand. Also annoying was finding a bug or treasure for the first time on each playthrough, where it would tell you what bug you found and then open up the inventory screen. I simply have to assume they overlooked these while coding the game. Never in previous Zelda games was it this tedious to sit through dialog boxes that you've already read.

With the expansion of upgrading items this was also the opportunity to change how we interact with the shop keepers (potion buying, etc). It was kind of a burden to buy potions or upgrade your shield. These tasks should have definitely been more speedy. And as for buying ammo, it would actually be nice to buy a custom amount. If they keep this kind of inventory swapping in the future I hope they streamline the system more.

And of of course outside of sword fighting the motion controls are a major letdown. IR aiming is superior than gyro aiming, and tilting to swim and fly is atrocious.

Now on to better things. I ended up liking how they interpreted the story. Although it really did feel like they just crammed everything at the end of the game, but it still worked. I'll thank Groose for keeping it more interesting. They did a good job with him. Everything about the finale was excellent. I liked the final dungeon Sky Keep. A nice change of pace while incorporating everything on our journey. But what sealed the deal were the boss battles. Actually, the last two battles against Ghiranim were great. And then the battle against Demise was just on that same level gameplay-wise, but holy shit was it gorgeous. It was definitely a spectacle - that lightning!

I'm still trying to digest how I feel about the overworld and dungeon design. This is definitely the most outside the box level design from the other console Zeldas. It feels less open though, so a part of me prefers the older open world design. But I must say even though everything is pretty segmented, they really did a good job being creative by reusing areas. The timeshift stones were definitely the most exhilarating. I liked how they changed the forest and the volcano for the search of the Hero song. It was neat seeing the woods flooded (although the swimming sucked because of the controls), and I really enjoyed sneaking around the volcano getting my gear back (I'm glad they didn't drag that out too long). I didn't really care for the silent realm trials, though.

While I appreciate how they handled the recycling of going back to the same three spots under the clouds, it just didn't work completely for me. The segmentation was just too much. The world beneath the clouds wold have actually felt like a world, I guess, if they somehow interconnected the desert, woods, and volcano areas. Then again their design decisions could very well be a limitation of hardware, because I also felt Twilight Princess was more segmented than previous Zelda games. I'm definintely excited to see what the WiiU Zelda will be like if they are truly making it open world. My vision would be for it to be like A Link to the Past in three dimensions moreso than OoT or MM, where their overworlds was basically just a hub. Although at least with OoT that stream/river made everything feel connected by flowing from Zora's domain to Lake Hylia.

I do like how they approached dungeons in this game, but not completely. As far as level design inside of the dungeons, I think Twilight Princess has it beat. But as for approaching and finding the dungeons I probably enjoyed that more than I thought I would. However I would definitely prefer if the cut out ~25% of the "busy work" between dungeons or major achievements. For example I really hated swimming around in the flooded forest getting musical notes. That just wasn't fun and felt like busy work. Actually, 80% of this crap can be attributed to dowsing. I didn't care for for any of the dowsing fetch quests at all. Now dowsing itself... yeah I guess it's a bit helpful since it keeps yourself from running around in circles (thanks to their segmented level design rather than a more open one), but if I had to find more than one object using dowsing then I was annoyed.

@cusideabelincoln

Agree with you so much on the "busy work" aspect of recent Zelda games, and this one especially.

"This is Link's biggest adventure yet!*"

*And you'll spend half of it doing things you aren't having fun doing.

Streamline this shit, cut out all the mandatory fluff content. All of my favorite Zelda games can be beaten in under 20 hours. A shorter length and less fluff content also makes them highly replayable. Skyward Sword may be a lengthy adventure, but I don't think I'll be able to get through it a second time... I've tried.

Still, it's a very nice action-adventure game, very much worth playing. It's just frustrating that its many flaws bring it down from how much better it could have been. Here's hoping Zelda U learns from them. A Link Between Worlds sure did.

@cusideabelincoln Master, there is a 100% chance you are forgetting something.

Yeah it really sucks that Skyward Sword's greatest achievements are marred with a lot of tiny nuisances that add up so much they detract from the great concepts.

I totally agree the game should have been shorter. When I knew I was getting close to the end of the game (the last dungeon) I did appreciate how they made the finale drag out extra long. That I didn't mind because the last boss fights were fun 90% of the story happened here.

I kind of want to replay it now, because it did take me a total of 8 months to actually beat it, but I do not look forward to collecting all that shit (with the annoying dialog boxes) for upgrades and potions. "You've caught a blessed butterfly! You now have 40 blessed butterflies! Da da dada!" And I hate that it took 20 hours of playtime to get the bow. I mean COME ON! The bow is a staple of Zelda games and it's the last item you get? Oh and it turns out to be the most useful! That is one thing I did miss - there were always a multitude of ways you could dispatch enemies. In SS, with the limited weapon count, there was basically one, maybe two, ways of dispatching foes.

And Fi... yeah I can see how she was annoying. If they just cut back 25% of the crap she said she would have been alright. But they overdid it. I guess that brings me to my next point (for the next Zelda)...

It's time to modernize the game. It's time for voice acting. It's time for quality sound effects. The music is great, but all the grunts in place of actual words were distracting. If Fi would have just been able to say those things in the background without interrupting gameplay she would have not been annoying. If this next game is going to be open world, then we better have new abilities to traverse this world. I'm thinking they need to borrow from Assassin's Creed/Batman games. And the Batman games have shown this freedom doesn't hurt puzzle solving. The more gadgets we get the more areas open up to us.

Lately, I have been playing through some Wii games to feel nostalgic for that console (it has some of nintendos greatest games of all time). I put skyward sword in again (its the only zelda game I only ever beat once) and messed around with a playthrough I stopped at when I got to the pirate ship dungeon. Though I still love the puzzle design in this game, as well as the graphical atmosphere, this game is so very dated because of the motion controls. Majora's Mask on n64 and heck, even Twilight Priness for Wii do not feel as dated as this game. It just feels like such a hassle to play through it and it makes me not want to ever again. I loved the game when I played through it, but I think that was mostly because I LOVE zelda and I just needed to experience the story and world.

I picked up the bow and arrow just now in this game and it amazes me how much the item slows the action down. Every item you use in this game is slowed down because of the motion mechanics. It really feels like a slow paced zelda game in which you are interacting with the controls more than the world.

@Scrawnton
Skyward Sword is really slow paced and the motion controls are part of that, but also the entire world feels like it slows you down and stops you from exploring at your pace. Which is a shame because it has some absolutely fantastic dungeons and bosses.

@Pokefreak911 When looking back on Skyward Sword, I feel like it is some of the most fun I ever had playing a zelda game, but like I said, that is mostly because of the story. When I think about it, this is probably the only zelda game I would never want to replay. I think it is a product of its time and now that time has passed. I loved my first experience with the game, but I really think this is the only zelda game that will be lost in time and not looked back upon in ten years as a game that still holds up.

Is the Wii really old enough to be thought of nostalgically? Crazy. I gotta disagree though, this game was great, is great, and will be thought of as great in the future, even if only as a prime example of what motion controls could have been if they were a continued focus. This is one of those games that makes me disappointed that Nintendo made the GamePad instead of a better Wiimote+Nunchuk setup.

I dunno if I'd say the game was "slow"--one of my favorite things about it, control-wise, was how they actually let Link run. And not just a brisk jog, but a full-on dash, complete with being able to scamper up walls and such. He's a lot more athletic here and it made exploring the world feel faster-paced.

@Scrawnton

I suspect that had they used the pointer instead of WM+ for some of this stuff, it might have been better (like thew bow.) Other sections didn't need it at all, like the vine swinging or whatever.

The combat was top notch though. Hate to see that disappear.

@Pokefreak911 didn't I make a comment on my review about how the game basically herds you from dungeon to dungeon so Fi can tell you how to get through them all?

@Shadowlink "suspect?" Go play twilight princess again, the bow is so much better there it's unbelievable

@Mop it up "Master, there is a 98% chance your claim is incorrect"

@pokepal148

Oh I know it was, I meant the overall implementation of M+, not just the bow.

I'm still chuffed at absoluetely nailing that long-range shot challenge in TP without the Eagle Eye first go. Take that pointer control haters.