Skyward Sword

I've now played enough of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword to feel that I can have a fair opinion of the game. As a long time Zelda fan, I have mixed feelings about the latest entry. Don't misunderstand me, the game is amazing. Nintendo improved greatly on a tried a true formal, but some of the changes aren't good changes, in my opinion.

Lets start with the positives. Nintendo has once again proven that the Wii can produce an absolutely gorgeous game without the horsepower of the PlayStation3 or the HD resolution of the Xbox 360. The oil painting style is a beautiful blend of the cell shaded Wind Waker and the more realistic, dark tone of Twilight Princess. The sometimes blurriness that comes with oil paintings also masks the blur of things far in the distance, meaning the Wii can conserve rendering power for things closer to you without it being obvious that the Wii is slacking on things far away.

The controls are something I can't even begin to describe. What Metroid Prime Trilogy did for first person on Wii, Skyward Sword has done again for sword based adventure games. Link tracks your right handed movements 1:1. It's pixel perfect. He attacks in the direction that you swing. Flying on your Crimson Loftwing is a breeze. It's just natural and it never feels like a gimmick. In fact, trying to waggle your way through the game will result in Link's death over and over again. Everything works exactly as it should. Occasionally the Wii Motion Plus gets out of sync and needs to be recalibrate, but the process is painless and can be done at anytime during gameplay. Also, the pointer does not use the Wii Sensor Bar, so you won't have the frustration of pointing to far in any direction and losing it.

So far, the story is great. There's a lot of fan service in the game without it being cheesy or feeling forced. The characters are very likeable and have that special Zelda personality. The things that are added to what we thought we knew about Zelda fit well and don't really break anything from previous titles. Skyward Sword takes place before any earlier entry, so that was a concern of mine. It's been put to bed.

The music is the best music so far from a Nintendo title. And that's saying a lot when you consider how solid the soundtrack from Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 are. This is the first Zelda title to have a fully orchestrated soundtrack. Familiar melodies appear with a fresh sound. In fact, if you haven't heard, the main theme contains Zelda's Lullaby in reverse, which is just awesome.

Now on to what I didn't like so much. Most of these are extremely minor complaints and don't break the game at all. First, the harp feels like a tacked on mini game. In Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker, playing your Ocarina or conducting different songs had real consequences. You could change the time of day, the direction of the wind, the weather, reveal hidden passageways, and a whole list of other things, and you could do these things whenever and wherever you desired to do so. So far, the harp in Skyward Sword does nothing unless you're explicitly told told to use it, and all it does then is open up parts of the world you couldn't access previously. And every harp song is performed the exact same way.

Fi, though somewhat charming at first (she reminds me a less violent GLaDoS) is this games Navi. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Fi proves to be even less helpful and more annoying than the fairy from Ocarina of Time. Fi only shows up to repeat everything you were just told. I'm serious. A character will give you a goal, and Fi will show up immediately after he is done making his request of you and repeat a summary of what you were just asked to do. You cannot skip this. Most of the time when Fi has something to say to you about your surroundings, it's something that almost anyone would be hard pressed to have not already discovered on their own. In the few instances that she tells you something you couldn't possibly have known before, it would have been much nicer to have been allowed to find it on your own. Example: when entering a room that you cannot see all of from the doorway, previous Zelda titles would leave you to yourself to explore the room and figure out what needs to be done to progress. Fi just flat out tells you what you need to do. It's true that you still require the skill to perform the task, but there's not much of a puzzle anymore. She mostly solved it for you.

When a character tells you they need something in Ocarina of Time, they give you a basic idea of where the item might be located and you have to go find it. Chances are you've already seen it, you just have to back track to where it was you saw it and use equipment you didn't have previously to reach it, or you'll see it in an area you have yet to explore and will have to figure out to reach it then. In Skyward Sword, Fi adds the item to a dowsing menu and literally leads you straight to it. Dowsing is like the arrow in Grand Theft Auto that always points toward the goal, not as specific as, say, a GPS turn by turn, but still a little more specific than I believe is necessary. Using dowsing is necessary because the character looking for the item in question gives you no clue as to where it might be. The only clue you get is the dowsing feature, which of course isn't a clue at all but rather a beacon taking you straight there. You might have to figure out to cross a river or scale a wall or open a door before you can get there, but it still takes all of the wonder of exploration away from the player.

The complaints listed above are, as I said, minor and don't really break the game. You can choose to use dowsing sparingly. The puzzle element isn't completely gone. But this next complaint is a big deal to me and kepps this entry from being as good as Ocarina of Time or A Link to the Past. In previous Zelda titles, all of Hyrule was open to you from the beginning of the game as long as you had the equipment and the skill to overcome the obstacles. You can see the next dungeon but you need to overcome the boulder blocking your path by finding a way around or over it or by acquiring a bomb and blowing it up. You can see village you need to get to, but you must first find a way past the canyon that separates you from it. In Skyward Sword, this is not the case. Each section of Hyrule is completely separate from one another. At the beginning of the adventure, there is Skyloft. There is nothing else. Once you reach point B in the story, a drop point opens up, allowing you access to Faron Woods. From Faron Woods you can go back to Skyloft. That's it. The fact that there is a volcano and a desert in Hyrule is unknown to you because the game does not allow you to have any knowledge of their existence. You can't get to Eldin Volcano from Faron Woods. You have to go back to Skyloft. It's as if each of the three areas of Hyrule were its own universe. You have no hope of gaining access to any of the three areas until the story has progressed far enough and the game grants you access. It takes away that feeling that you gained access to the area by solving the puzzle of how to get there.

Overall, Skyward Sword is fantastic. All of the pieces come together in one great package that long time fans will love and new comers will enjoy. If you have a Wii, this game is a must have. Its short comings don't outweigh the moments it gets right, even though I spent more time on the negatives than the positives, but that's because I'm a negative person and should not be a poor reflection on Nintendo's latest masterpiece. For those worried about the changes, I ask you to remember Super Mario Sunshine.