Zelda: Skyward Sword

[LadyTevar]

I'm surprised no one has started this thread yet.

Nit and I got it for Wii, a bundle pack from Best-Buy that came with the improved Controller and the Soundtrack disc. (Unfortunately, it did not come with the HintBook)

Let's start at the top: The animation is cell-shaded and gorgeous. A mix between Wind-waker and Twilight Princess, taking the best of both. The music is solid Zelda, epic and intimate as needed, light and cheerful otherwise. The voices are done just as in Twilight, which I found sometimes annoying, but it's a small gripe.

The backstory has just enough to explain without giving things away, such as how Skyloft stays up above the clouds, or how the citizens bond with Loftwings. Of course, being the Hero, your Loftwing is Special, and so is your connection to Zelda, your classmate. This gets jealousy from other classmates, and is the source of your first adventure.
BTW: Zelda is not trapped in a tower, but very involved in your life at this point. Which is more than you want her to be at times, as she's more a Big Sister.

Once you complete the first adventure in the clouds, then the real story begins as you go beneath the clouds. The puzzles are clever, the rewards fulfilling. The normal baddies are about: Moglins, Deku-plants, Keese, and Gels. Swordwork on the Wii is once again swings of the controller, but is far more sensitive and different swings are possible, such as a sharp jab, a diagonal strike, and uppercut. Each swing has a different animation and allows you to react to a Moglin's attempts to block.

Yes, Moglins block with their weapons, forcing you to be creative to get around their defense. Even the Deku move side-to-side to avoid your strikes. This only makes combat more exciting and fun... unless you're stuck in the middle of a gang of Moglins. Then it's a real battle.

Thanks to Bird Statues, you can return to Skyloft whenever you wish. As the game moves on you can open new places in Skyloft to receive new weapons, heart-pieces, and other goodies. Going back to the Surface, you're allowed to drop down at any Bird Statue you've activated in the past, which gives you great freedom of movement.

Once you get to the Forest Dungeon, then the puzzles ramp up to Difficult. It took a couple hours to find the correct path, as there are few hints to how to move on, so you're stuck with searching every nook and cranny. But once you find how it works, you feel So Good about yourself.

[Starglider]

Let's start at the top: The animation is cell-shaded and gorgeous.

On the contrary, it looks like it slammed hard into the crippling technical limitations of the Wii and wasn't helped any by mediocre art direction. Twilight Princess already looked a little clunky back in 2006, but that could be overlooked due to the strong and interesting art direction. Skyward Sword is cookie cutter Zelda in blurred low-poly Wii-vision. It isn't 'cel-shaded', it's 'we can't do half-way decent surface detail on this hardware so we're not even going to try'. From an artistic point of view it definitely should have been held for the Wii U, although I'm sure it makes commercial sense for Nintendo to wring some more money out of the Zelda fanbase now before selling them the same thing retouched as a Wii U title. Skyward Sword's graphics are on a par with Kameo : Elements of Power, an Xbox 360 launch title (released in late 2005).

The voices are done just as in Twilight, which I found sometimes annoying, but it's a small gripe.

I don't excuse Nintendo (or it fans) for fetishising of N64 era technical limitations and pretending that this is acceptable in 2011.

Of course, being the Hero, your Loftwing is Special, and so is your connection to Zelda, your classmate. This gets jealousy from other classmates, and is the source of your first adventure.

Don't get me started on missed gameplay opportunities with the Loftwings. I admit I've only had limited exposure to this game visiting friends, plus reading online reviews, but what I saw definitely did not encourage me to buy it. Twilight Princess felt like a decent attempt to evolve the franchise with about the highest production values you could expect for a Gamecube/Wii joint release; this felt like Mario Galaxy 2 AKA grind some more money out of the franchise. In fact going by the reviews Kameo has more gameplay depth as well; Nintendo seem to think that regurgitating the standard Zelda staples but with sword controls that actually work is all they need to do for a new release. I'd tolerate any one of bland rehash plot/characters, bland rehash gameplay and/or bland previous-gen graphics, but I'm certainly not buying a game with all three.

[Simon_Jester]

When you say the graphics are gorgeous, Lady Tevar, do you mean they're very detailed or photorealistic? Or do you mean that they just... look right?

The graphics for Ocarina of Time aren't realistic or detailed at all, not by post-2000 standards, but they look good, and you get a sense of immersion in the game setting. So they're good in that sense, even if they're far more cartoonish and sketched-in than the average game of the past decade.

[Stark]

OoT was always ugly (like most n64 games) but nobody minded because 3D was a big deal. Wind Waker was cel-shaded on purpose and looked good. TP actually stunned me with how bad the textures were (due to Wii hardware limitations). Like Starglider says, Nintendo is just taking advantage of traditionally low expectations or 'charming nostalgia' or whatever you want to call it.

[Darth Yoshi]

I am, admittedly, a shameless fanboy, but even if this weren't a Zelda game I wouldn't particularly care about the graphics, so as long as the graphics don't have anything blatant to make me stop and gawk at how bad it is, it's "good enough." I'm more concerned about the Wii Motion Plus, which thankfully hasn't given me any trouble.

[Starglider]

If this wasn't a Zelda game, but rather a generic fantasy title from a 3rd party publisher, people would be saying that it is dull, cheaply produced, hopelessly derrivative cash-in. In fact going by the Skyward Sword threads on a couple of gaming forums I visit, a lot of people are saying that, but then the fanboy hordes come out and say but it's more Zelda so it's automatically awesome, don't you understand that Zelda is always like this and it's always meant to be like this and it's great etc etc. I don't usually focus on graphics particularly, but this game is now well behind the craptop trailing edge of PC gaming (as represented by World of Warcraft), and as such it looks annoyingly bad to anyone with exposure to something more modern than a Wii.

The Wii U will be a dramatic leap forward to matching a decent gaming PC of late 2008, so it will at least be able to support a Zelda game with Crysis / FarCry 2 grade graphics, aka expansive outdoor environments that don't suck.

[One Two]

~snip~

Thank you Mr. Limited Exposure from stopping me from making the mistake of purchasing this game. Your opinions after watching the game and visiting web forums are far superior to us that have simply played the game for dozens of hours.

Gonna side with LadyTevar on this.

The graphics have their flaws and when you get close up to walls in tight places, it really doesn't look good. But the art style still works well for the most. When you're outside in the light moving around town, its actually a pleasure to look at though. Not gonna fault nintendo for doing the best they could with the wii. It works best with light locals. I have mixed feelings about the lack of voice acting. On one hand I just flashback to the cdi games and zelda cartoon whenever I think of those characters talking, but on the other hand it was a bit ridiculous each time the camera panned out every time Link actually needed to talk. Link should never have a voice, but for side characters, I think its about time.

But yeah, outside a few nitpicks, the game plays like a dream. The game isn't as antiwaggle as they claimed, as long as you get a decent head start on some enemies in the fight, you should be able to waggle away on some enemies. Granted, this is only for some enemies capable of blocking. Lizalfos will fuck you up if you try to waggle.The controls are great, but the thrusting was a bit off at times. The shield controls with the nun-chuck worked a little too well. A few times I scratched my noise with my left hand while holding the nunchuck and the shield activated.

Flying feels natural, but they don't really do much with it until later in game when you actually have some air combat, until then its just a mode of transport which is fine in itself.

The underworld is surprisingly puzzle heavy. The amount of puzzles you'll have to solve just to get into a dungeon is impressive and slightly annoying at times. The dungeon design is a bit different. From the first 3 dungeons, I can tell that they're aiming to have dungeons with only half a dozen rooms, but those are large rooms filled with many secrets. The first 2 dungeons were short, but I really felt that what they were going for worked with dungeon 3. The boss battles are pretty great so far, I'm actually looking forward to boss rush mode. Gotta love the score. Groose's tuba theme is growing on me even if I don't really like the guy. And its nice that Zelda was a bit of a badass in this one and wasn't simply 'kidnapped', though I did tire of her pushing me off the edge in the beginning.

Best Zelda ever? Hmmmm, not sure, I'm not even half way into it. One of the better games to come out this year? Probably.

Am I a fanboy, I supposed you could assume yes, but there aren't a lot of games that can get me to sit down and play for half a day straight.

[Andrew_Fireborn]

Similar echos here. It's a 3d Zelda, at it's core. But there's some interesting change ups, which amount to more than the motion controls. (Which I actually don't feel add much.)

Dungeons are indeed very short... if you only look at the indoor sections. Pretty much all of the on-foot sections may as well be part of the dungeon as well. After you've visited each section of terrain once, you visit the Silent Realm, which is similar to the Twilight sections in TP. Except they're more puzzle than "find all these things" sections, thanks to the enemies and the fact that you start over if they hit you.

Graphics do what they need to. Are they ever going to be Crysis impressive? No, and kindly go fuck yourself if you think they need to be.

Story is interesting enough, for an effectively all ages game. (ESRB: E10+) Though the aide character, Fi, has nearly usurped Navi in annoyance. In the third dungeon, she talks at you about the boss door. And any time she changes the dowsing targets, it blips incessantly until you pull of the first person view.

The shield, for raw defense, has been made fairly useless, as even upgraded, they can rarely take more than a half-dozen straight on hits. However, the nunchuck-shake that raises the shield, also gives it a second or so of deflection, stunning enemies and causing most projectiles to return to sender, at no cost to the shield's life. It does have a small cool down as a balancing factor.

The sword... works well enough, if you dislike motion controls, this one isn't going to change your mind. Yet, they also work well enough for the sword play. Though, Bokoblins read almost too well, if you just go at them, with the sword. They will, however, tend to shift their guard or attempt to attack if you give them space.

Most of the other controls automatically center themselves based on where the controller is being held when they're opened, which can be annoying if you jump the gun, but you can recenter easily with the down on the D-pad.

Biggest annoyance is that flying takes too damn long. Unless you hit one of the nitro-rocks near Skyloft... The controls for it are adequate to good, though.


Overall, it's a Zelda game, for better or worse. It's a solid entry, in an iterative series.