Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword Review

Half a decade and most of a generation of consoles passed before The Legend of Zelda saw its next console release. The goal was simple: to create a brand new game taking full advantage of the revamped Wii Motion Plus and create an entire game focused on intense swordplay, all the while giving the players a massive Zelda experience. The hype was through the roof. The critical reception was at a height few games had ever seen. Nintendo was giving the game a new art style mimicking impressionist paintings to back away from the droll darkness of Twilight Princess. The game, Skyward Sword, finally released at the end of 2011. And...well...

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Skyward Sword

There's never a chance for a massively-hyped game to meet its expectations; at a certain point, the audience begins to assert wishful, largely implausible, ideas into the upcoming title which are lofty at best and misguided at worst. Skyward Sword is a major victim of this phenomenon, but there's much more to say than that it just didn't meet fan expectations. All the elements were there: an orchestrated soundtrack; a style which denied Twilight Princess its dark and edgy legacy; enough time had passed for fans to fully appreciate Wind Waker and Nintendo knew this very well; technology had finally come to a point where swordplay could finally come into its own; and of course, the promise of a story which predated every game in the series. Ganon was nowhere to be found in pre-release information, and the story promised a gripping narrative about destiny and the relationship between Link and Zelda. The pieces were set and all Nintendo needed to do was deliver.

They didn't.

Skyward Sword contains an artistic depiction of the backstory recounting a violent conflict between an unnamed Goddess and the hordes of evil. As a twist to the established lore of the three goddesses leaving behind the Triforce after creating the world, the Goddess is given the Triforce to protect from the forces of darkness. Out of desperation, the Goddess breaks off the land and sends it into the sky before leading the battle to quell the horde.

As much as I genuinely enjoy this backstory and what it brings to the plot, there's already a flaw to be found: it's pushed back to the attract mode of the game and is never explicitly shown in the main game--by attract mode, I'm referring to its placement on the game's title screen if the player chooses to not start the game immediately. While The Wind Waker also had its backstory tied to the attract mode, it also played after the player began their game just to ensure the player didn't miss the important story.

Since this three minute scene was apparently too long to show in the game's formal intro, Skyward Sword cuts its inclusion in the main story and wastes a significant amount of time introducing the player to the world and characters of Skyloft, the land in the clouds which forms the central hub of the game. Players are given near-constant exposition dumps which are largely unnecessary; if a story was given negative marks for telling its audience rather than showing, Skyward Sword would have a negative score before the player even received their sword.

For example, Gaebora explains to Zelda the importance of their culture's connection with the birds of the sky, the Loftwings, and the unique nature of Link's red Loftwing which is the only one of its type. Of course, none of this is information the player explicitly needs; Skyward Sword merely treats the player like they're idiots and over-explains much of its world through expository dialogue. Link, in turn, seems like a dopey fool while everyone is explaining the world he's apparently lived in all his life. Furthermore, Link is treated like his own character rather than a vague player-insert: multiple scenes show Link articulating his thoughts and moving his lips, but the characters around him repeat what he's trying to say and it comes off like he's a deaf-mute that the other characters are trying to interpret. A dialogue tree appears in a few cutscenes and allows the player to give Link a certain attitude, but it's not used often enough to matter and has no lasting impact anyway.

There's also the undercurrent of nostalgia which seeps into every aspect of Skyloft and its citizen's designs. For instance, Gaebora is clearly a reference to both Kaepora Gaebora, the helpful owl of Ocarina of Time, and Rauru the Sage of Light. His nature as the guardian of the Goddess Sword and head of the Knight Academy add parallels to Rauru, but in doing so it creates an annoying mix of both important lore establishment and pointless nostalgia.

The same could be said of the final encounter between Link and Demise, which desperately needed more time to develop. I don't mean half a dozen fights with The Imprisoned, I mean a fully-fleshed out character arc between the two. Hell, any character arc with Demise would have been preferable to his appearance at the very end of the game--just look at Spirit Tracks, where Malladus is revived and given time to develop while the players run around for no reason. But the more disappointing element of Demise is that his callbacks to Ganondorf are completely unnecessary; the player can clearly see that he's a massive, big-nosed demon with flaming red hair, so any further references to Ganondorf are wildly unnecessarily exposition. As an aside, if you own the fantastic Hyrule Historia art book which released alongside Skyward Sword (later for the Western release) there's a description of Demise's red hair serving as a connection between him and Ganondorf. If the player was supposed to infer this from his design, then there's no reason for it to be stated explicitly within the game.

Even when the game finally takes a step back and allows the player to begin exploring the world, Fi makes her appearance just in time to begin nagging the player about every last detail. I feel like Fi is the Navi that older players remember Navi to be like: a constant annoyance who never stops interfering with gameplay flow. Fi's interruptions are far worse than anything Navi ever did during the entire duration of Ocarina of Time, barging in to remind players that their health is low, their controller batteries are low--probably the absolute most immersion-shattering dialogue I've ever seen in a video game, and she does this despite the fact that a massive red indicator appears on screen to show players their battery is running low--she even appears to remind players how to use items which the game literally just stopped the player to explain.

I didn't mention much of Midna when I reviewed Twilight Princess, but that's because I always thought Midna was purely serviceable. She's a great character and one of the more memorable companions in the series, but if I stopped to talk about every memorable character these reviews would be even more tl;dr than they already are. Fi is such a worse character in comparison that I cannot believe she could have been preceded by such a perfectly-executed companion like Midna. Midna, for her part, rarely interrupted the flow of the game and often only spoke up to make a brief comment about the story. Like Ezlo of The Minish Cap, many of her main interactions require the player actually press the dedicated companion button. I simply don't understand why Fi would butt in to every single conversation when previous companions had been handled so well. The developers tried to fix what wasn't broken and made the game worse as a result.

The sheer amount of exposition drags the plot to a screeching halt on numerous occasions, but it eases up at an inconsistent pace. At times the player will go for several hours with only Fi occasionally chiming in to annoy Link about information he already knows, but for a small stretch of time near the beginning there's almost nothing in the way of some brief exploration. After the player is forced to watch several minutes of cutscenes--which can't be skipped until the second playthrough, taking a step back from Twilight Princess and its immediately unskippable cutscenes--they are allowed to roam around Skyloft at length. Surprisingly, there is not a single tutorial for using the sword for the entire game despite it easily being the most complex gameplay mechanic.

Not that the sword is annoying to use, mind you--it's just complex. Other systems in the game are not so much, such as the hamfisted use of motion controls in nearly every aspect of the game. The simple act of picking up and throwing a rock or bomb should not require the player to move their entire arm when a button press would do just fine. The sword is understandable because the main focus of Skyward Sword is on sword combat, but to go so far down the deep end with everything else is enormously tedious.

I strongly dislike the removal of advanced sword techniques as seen in Twilight Princess; I wasn't happy about the unnecessarily complicated additions of many of the techniques when compared to The Wind Waker, but removing them entirely is wasted potential in a game that is based entirely on sword fighting. Even the ability to run and swing the sword is removed, and that was such a small and useful improvement that I thought the developers would be crazy to remove it. Of course, now cutting bushes goes back to the slow and laborious pace before Twilight Princess, and a particularly intense run through a crowd of enemies slows to a crawl and destroys the urgency of the scene. All it required was the ability to slash and run and I don't understand why it was removed.

That is to say nothing about Skyward Sword's horribly underutilized instrument, in this case being the harp used by Shiek in Ocarina of Time--more pointless nostalgia, and this time it's outright completely wasted. The harp requires the player strum the instrument in the air, but it is only ever used to play the songs to open the Silent Realms. Even the unintuitive flute of Spirit Tracks has more use than the Goddess Harp--and why go back to the weird Adam West Batman naming convention like Spirit Tracks? Goddess Harp, Goddess Cubes, Goddess Shield, Goddess Sword--stop it.

But the main combat mechanics of the game are mostly solid, with the sword more or less following the player's movement. I noticed the game being too sensitive at times, misinterpreting my arm reorienting its position for a swipe. This actually is a problem when it comes to fighting many of the enemies as they follow precise patterns, often punishing the player for striking the side that's being blocked. On the other hand, players can now use the shield as a parry to catch enemies off-guard; more than any other mechanic in the game this is the one detail which I utterly adore as it rewards players with good timing and careful observation.

The shield will stay raised after the player parries, fixing one of my complaints with Twilight Princess and its stupidly simplistic blocking mechanics. To counteract the new shield mechanics Skyward Sword introduces a durability gauge for the shield as well, which depletes if players block without parrying. The shield (and other items) can be upgraded with treasures similar to Spirit Tracks, the shield being customized to block specific damage and the items gaining new abilities. A shield with infinite stamina can eventually be discovered by the player, but it's a late-game addition that should have been introduced much earlier.

There's not much to say about treasures since they work mostly the same as Spirit Tracks, and they still annoy players with descriptions every time they're picked up. It's more like picking up different rupees in Twilight Princess, popping up whenever a player loads their file again, but the similar mechanic of picking up rupees has been removed as a result. It's a weird half-step and part of me wonders if the developers actually knew why people complained about this detail in the first place since it's right here in a different form.

Before the player can retrieve their sword, they're forced into a series of busywork which could have been excised from the game without anything being lost. It's mostly there to introduce Groose, the headmasters of the Academy, and the relationship between Link and Zelda but naturally, these characters typically have their personalities told to the player rather than shown. If the game had started after finding the red Loftwing and left the player to discover things on their own, it would have been all the better for it. All the first hour or so accomplishes is giving the player a tutorial on how to open a map despite the map icon blinking on the screen and doesn't even force players to learn how to use a sword, so aside from some needless character building there's nothing to really lose by cutting the game up to the point when the Wing Ceremony begins. Really, if you get a chance to play Skyward Sword in the near future just assume the game began at the Wing Ceremony and tell me if you thought anything would have been lost--given how long it takes, I think you'll end up agreeing.

I feel it's incredibly short-sighted to give this incarnation of Link a hat simply because it kicks The Minish Cap after already taking its place as the first entry in the series. The Minish Cap has become one of my favorite games in the series after playing it for this retrospective, so outright making an attempt to subvert that game feels like a cheap blow. Furthermore, having all the knights wear a loose hat while flying across the massive sky doesn't really sound look a good idea. Unless those things are stuck on tight, I can't imagine them staying on the head for too long. Aside from that, the new armor-like appearance of the signature green outfit clashes heavily with the goofy hat, so the design would miss nothing if it were removed. I like the redesign of Link's tunic and even love his cadet outfit, so to have such a small nitpick that's so bothersome is hard to avoid.

A much bigger nitpick is the horribly linear design of the second third of the game. I completely understand opening up the surface over time as it gives the story a sense of progression, but the second time around should have allowed players to approach the Silent Realms in any order. I'd be far less annoyed at this specific series of events was accompanied by a fun overworld full of distractions, but the sky is a far cry from The Wind Waker's enormous Great Sea with its multitude of islands full of things to do. It was pure laziness to make most of the islands contain just a simple Goddess Chest or a short challenge followed by a Piece of Heart, and I'm not alone in thinking Skyward Sword would stand up to the best of the Zelda games if its overworld was simply more engaging. There's also the obvious problem that the surface areas don't seem to connect naturally and part of me wonders if that's why they're separated by the sky, but some matter of cohesion should have been considered. If the entire map had been fleshed out, even the parts that couldn't be reached, it would have helped in developing the setting.

The sky is not the only negative close comparison Skyward Sword has to The Wind Waker, the other major comparison being the art style. I appreciate that Nintendo tried to return to a cartoonish look in order to give the game a more timeless look, but it never truly stands out when compared to the hard-edged shadows of The Wind Waker. The depth of field which kicks in to mimic the style of impressionist paintings is unique, but it blurs too close to objects and looks way blurrier than it should. On a high-definition TV, The Wind Waker still looks as good as it did when it released. The same can't be said of Twilight Princess, but Skyward Sword doesn't go far enough.

Forcing players to return to the three surface areas in a slightly different order is insulting and there was no reason for the developers to force a set order, especially since the plot is taking a step back to allow players to explore each surface area. I recall an interview years ago with Eiji Aonuma discussing the nature of the overworld and one of the major ideas he mentioned the team was going for was creating an overworld which seamlessly transitioned into the dungeon, and aside from the seamless part I feel Skyward Sword does this well. The dungeons are all well-designed, but like Phantom Hourglass and Twilight Princess the dungeons have a more-or-less designated path thanks to the one-key limit.

My advice would have been to create a hub tying the three areas together and cut the sky entirely, which would create a seamless action-oriented Zelda unlike anything the series had seen yet. I'm of the firm belief that Zelda should offer a great deal of exploration, but Skyward Sword has a decent amount of trails off the beaten path which could have allowed for an experience somewhat like Final Fantasy X--less of a giant world to explore, more of an intimate path on a smaller scale which took players on a tour of the setting. The half-step of an empty overworld in the form of the sky and a detailed pseudo-dungeon on the surface, much like the half-step of the art style, damages the game but this time the damage is far more severe.

I'm glad the final third of the game allows players to approach the three surface areas in any order, but in a baffling turn two of the three areas are full of new mini-games that are horribly out of place. For the volcano, players need to run through a long stealth section to climb up the mountain--this might be the first area the player visits after fully upgrading the Master Sword, so to have it leave their hands immediately afterward is a cheap turn. For the forest area, the player is forced to swim and collect a series of small collectibles with poor swimming controls tied to the motion controls. A gameplay design that's been criticized since its popularity in Superman 64 should never find its way into a Zelda game, and even if it only lasts for a few minutes it's still too much to ask the player to navigate through rings and still take itself seriously. I hate to say it, but the developers should have known better.

The story reaches a fever pitch after Zelda locks herself away to strengthen the seal on Demise and I appreciate that the three zones are short to match the frantic pace, and the constant attacks by the Imprisoned further increase the tension as the seal weakens. There was no reason to force the players to participate in all of these fights though since it only incrementally increases in difficulty with each encounter; instead of creating a sense of urgency it just causes a deal of annoyance.

I haven't mentioned Ghirahim yet because I was working on the idea that an exceptional character in a Zelda game doesn't require much discussion, but Ghirahim is possibly the most fantastic villain in the entire series. He's flamboyant and powerful, constantly appearing to taunt Link and hound him on his quest to find Zelda. He sings his own theme song and steals the spotlight in every scene he appears in. In short, he's awesome.

Like all good rival characters, the game contains several encounters with Ghirahim to give the player an idea of their own progression. One of the best examples of a good rival character is Vergil from Devil May Cry 3, and the formula for his boss fights are possibly the best way of implementing a character with this type of arc: in the first encounter, the player is barely able to fight for their life. In the second, the characters are interrupted and their duel is postponed. In the third, the hero finally overcomes and defeats their long-time rival.

Skyward Sword follows the same formula perfectly, but fails on the execution by introducing Demise at the last second. It's an amazing encounter and one of the best outright final boss fights in the series, but there's no connection between Demise and Link. I'm fine with the boss fight, but it should have been built up better--I'd have also liked to see the relationship between Ghirahim and Demise in full given that they serve the same role as Fi and Link, and having Demise get annoyed or tired of Ghirahim's attitude would have been an amusing reversal.

If I had been asked before this retrospective what my biggest gripes of the game were, I'd have said Fi and the sky, no rhyme intended. Having played through the entire series outside of the multiplayer spinoffs, the most egregious flaw of the game is how it attempts to upturn everything about The Minish Cap even when it's unnecessary. I already mentioned the hat, but look at it like this:

The player is given a normal sword before meeting their magical companion, who knows more about the world than the player and predates the events of the story. After recovering a magical sword which can cut down evil (and shoot out beams of light), the focus of the story shifts to upgrading the sword's power to defeat the villain. The final encounter brings the characters closer together, but it's bittersweet as the companion bids farewell to Link and all of his future incarnations, but despite this tearful parting gives the future incarnations of Link a small gift.

The problem with Skyward Sword, in this instance, is that I was glad to see Fi leave while I felt genuinely sympathetic toward Link and Ezlo's separation. The small detail of giving Link something as small as a hat gives the story a grounded, more emotional touch. Imagine that the first story in the entire Zelda series was over something as trivial as a magic hat and an aggravated little mouse person--it makes that game seem so humble and heartwarming that I can't feel anything but the deepest respect for it.

Compare this to Skyward Sword which offers a bombastic story offering no humility whatsoever and nothing as small and beautiful as the exchange of a hat; in fact, Skyward Sword diminishes the importance of Ezlo's parting gift with Link for no reason at all. More than the irritating dynamic that Fi pushes on Link, the fact that there was nothing emotional symbolizing their attachment makes the story feel less meaningful. It's for this reason alone that I can't help but feel even worse about the game than I did on launch, which is really saying something.

This is one of the first big-budget titles which I didn't have a honeymoon period before my opinion of the game soured; for titles like Bioshock Infinite and Mass Effect 3, I needed a second playthrough before the flaws started to unravel and my feelings took a negative turn. Skyward Sword left me cold and angry before my first run even ended, and to this day I've never finished my Hero Mode playthrough simply because I can't bear to sit through anymore of the game than I have to.

Verdict

Skyward Sword is a game that forgets its goal too often, with mechanics designed for a Zelda and its world designed for an action game. I wanted to fall in love with this title, its gameplay mechanics and its characters, but like Spirit Tracks it's designed to annoy every step of the way. Fi won't get out of the player's face long enough for them to even stop and take in the game, and the linear design seriously hampers its replay value. For example, there was no reason for the Sacred Flame portion of the game to be as linear as the tablet quest. The best I can say is that its swordplay, when it's not stuck on Simon Says, is generally rewarding and Hero Mode makes for a fun second playthrough since the player can skip the entire story. The side quests are fun as well, but they're stretched out too long across the narrative for them to be engaging. Skyward Sword is heavily in need of a touch-up in the vein of Wind Waker HD, but like Twilight Princess I highly doubt that the developers could fix the glaring issues embedded in the core of the game. An absolute shame, and a disgrace to the Zelda franchise.

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Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Spirit Tracks Review

Two years after the release of Phantom Hourglass, Nintendo released a second DS sequel to The Wind Waker. With a greater emphasis on the relationship between Link and Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks sought to correct many of the flaws of the previous game while simultaneously expanding the world of New Hyrule. Even though the game dragged on far longer than I ever expected it to, my thoughts on Spirit Tracks are a bit more complicated than those of its predecessor.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Spirit Tracks 

A century has passed since the ending of Phantom Hourglass, and the sailors from the Great Sea have established a home in the land of New Hyrule. The land is covered in a spider's web of a railroad known as the Spirit Tracks, with train engineers being a highly revered profession blessed by Princess Zelda herself despite the fact that the tracks are slowly fading away. Link is on the final day of his training and meets the princess to become a fully-fledged engineer; she warns him of the danger presented by her chancellor, a man named Cole, and begs Link to take her to the Tower of Spirits which connects the tracks. Along the way, Cole and his partner Byrne defeat Link and capture Zelda, splitting her soul from her body. Zelda's soul begs Link's assistance to restore the Spirit Tracks and get her body back.

Complications arise when the two reach the tower: the tower's attendant Anjean, a sage from the Lokomo race, warns them that the Spirit Tracks were in fact shackles holding the ancient demon Malladus. Cole plans to ascend the Tower of Spirits and use Zelda's body as a vessel to revive Malladus, and the only chance for Link and Zelda to stop Cole is to restore the Spirit Tracks and climb to the top of the tower.

The Spirit Tracks constitute both the game's main thematic element and the primary method of travel: the Spirit Train. Calling everything Spirit-whatever sounds weird in retrospect, as if the Adam West Batman were in charge of the naming conventions of New Hyrule. The train is only tangentially similar to the boat of Phantom Hourglass and even further removed from the boat of The Wind Waker. Players track their intended path over the rail line tracing to their destination, which seems laid back and easy but because this is a DS Zelda everything is unnecessarily obtuse.

The speed of the train, even at its highest setting, is absolutely too slow and unlike Phantom Hourglass, the method of travel is too restricted to get players where they need to be quickly. Instead, being stuck on a path commonly leads to players just watching themselves travel with all the excitement of paint drying. Of course, small distractions will occasionally pop up to keep the player invested in the tedium of traveling the Spirit Tracks but these are just that: distractions.

Forcing the player to randomly shoot at boars or other wild animals on the road are just about the height of depth that ever occurs on the Spirit Tracks. I'd argue that it's not much different from the little distractions of the World of the Ocean King from Phantom Hourglass, but giving the player the option to trace entirely free paths across the sea at least allowed for some level of mobility. In that regard, the tracks are a complete step back from Phantom Hourglass. Warp points existed in Phantom Hourglass to help the player travel to specific areas of the map, so even though it felt fairly large it was very easy to navigate since all it took was the easily-found Cyclone Slate and some decent aiming on the player's part.

As this was apparently too intuitive the developers chose to sprinkle warp gates all over the Spirit Tracks which connect to the different sections of the overworld, but the locations make no sense and there's no reliable way to tell where you need to go aside from entering a warp point and hoping for the best. At a certain point players will either need to write detailed instructions for the warp gates or just go back to the Tower of Spirits to enter one of the four realms. Since I was on a time crunch, I never had the time to do the former and chose to go back to the tower in order to make travel just a bit easier, but I don't understand why the warp gates wouldn't just allow players to choose where they wanted to travel to. I also have a minor gripe with the way the game deals with stopping at stations on the world map; I appreciate the detail of having to stop the train if the player wants to enter a station, but it can be annoying to orient the train if the player missed the stop.

Even worse, and probably my absolute biggest hang-up of the overworld, is the existence of the Dark Trains which roam the Spirit Tracks. These trains patrol a specific area of every line of tracks, but stopping and starting the train to avoid these is an annoyance at best. If a Dark Train touches the player it causes an immediate game over which restarts the player at the beginning of their starting point on the map. The idea of the Dark Trains could have been interesting in concept, but the execution is horribly flawed and gives the game an unbelievable amount of annoyance in even the smallest areas.

That's not even to mention the unintentional difficulty of just moving around, which has been carried over from Phantom Hourglass. There's really not much to say about the on-foot gameplay since it's virtually unchanged since the previous game, but there are both positive and negative changes in various aspects. Naturally, items like Heart Containers and item capacity upgrades cost an exorbitant amount of rupees, and by the end of the game I was missing both the larger bomb bag and quivers and still had six Heart Containers I simply couldn't find or afford. The maligned central dungeon reappears as the Tower of Spirits, though this time players are not required to scale floors that have already been completed. Because these games are designed to annoy their players, the dungeon instead consists of several new floors each visit and each one is more difficult than the last; by the end of the game, players are revisiting floors seconds apart for a single item or power-up and drawing complete maps of floors which are entirely blanketed in darkness.

While I hate the implementation of the multiple floors, the dungeon layout seriously appeals to the dormant dungeon crawler fan in me; charting out entire floors for a dungeon is an incredibly challenging and satisfying element to dungeon crawling and I was surprised to see it appear so frequently in Spirit Tracks. Charting maps also appeared as a very brief island puzzle in Phantom Hourglass, but its larger importance near the end of Spirit Tracks was an element I simply didn't realize I wanted in Zelda. I'd go a step farther and say I wish the entire game was like this, but I'll take what I can get. Like I said, the game was designed to annoy and it doesn't necessarily stick the landing: since the blank maps are only utilized when the floor is coated in darkness, it can be irritating to stumble around and frequently have to make adjustments to the map. I accept the annoyance of stumbling around in darkness because it's such a fascinating design element, but the developers should have gone all-in.

The actual main feature of the Tower of Spirits comes in the way that Princess Zelda is utilized as a character. Spirit Tracks includes possibly the most likable incarnation of Zelda--she's hyper, outgoing, and drives Link to continue his quest. She appears to want her body back at all costs but she's not pushy about it--one of the biggest fears I had going into the game, even knowing what it was about, was that Zelda was going to act like a brat and constantly nag the player like Tatl from Majora's Mask, but this Zelda understands the weight that is placed on both her and Link and takes responsibility for her role in Cole's plan.

As part of her outgoing personality, Zelda takes charge when players enter the Tower of Spirits and becomes an integral part of climbing the tower, possessing the spirits of the Phantom guards that roam each floor. Unlike Phantom Hourglass the floor doesn't have a time limit and challenges are planned accordingly; the floors are made more difficult as a result, not only in terms of sneaking around guards but also in the addition of puzzles which require both Zelda and Link to complete. Zelda is able to possess the bodies of Phantoms after Link collects the Tears of Light--yes, a returning item from Twilight Princess though utilized much more smoothly this time around--and with that ability is able to distract guards and carry Link across danger zones. Players need to find intelligent ways to use Zelda's Phantom body and the game's difficulty is such that it constantly scales up to match.

Link is also likable in his own way, this time being less of a warrior on a quest and more of an easygoing engineer who is swept into a series of events for which he is partially responsible. His voice is changed from Phantom Hourglass and The Wind Waker to match his role as a distant incarnation of that version of Link, and his new outfit is a unique change as well. I downright hate that the game forces Link into the green recruit uniform as it diminishes the unique nature of his new incarnation, and as soon as I was given the option to change into his new engineer outfit I made the change and never looked back. The recruit uniform should have been donned long enough for a callback to the Wind Waker Link and swapped back out for the engineer uniform as soon as players began to explore the world with the recruit uniform serving as a reward for collecting Niko's stamps, but I'm glad the option existed to allow the engineer uniform to come back.

The stamp collecting is one of the areas of collectibles I actually enjoyed, though I can't say the same for treasures and mini-games scattered around the map. Treasures return from Phantom Hourglass, though they're much more involved as Linebeck's descendant use them for currency to upgrade the train. Since treasures are random it's difficult to gauge when exactly it's time for an upgrade, and for my part I only upgraded two parts of the train over the course of the entire game. It made the final boss a bit more difficult than necessary, but nothing that couldn't be handled. What makes the treasures annoying is that, since it uses the same engine from Phantom Hourglass, players are taken out of the action and shown the treasure they picked up every time a new one appears.

Since these treasures are random drops now this can lead to several seconds of players picking up the exact same treasure, showing the camera, having a detailed description of these treasures, and putting them away in quick succession. The Zelda series had been getting bad about this obtrusive design aspect for a while, to a point where Twilight Princess would describe coin amounts of rupees every single time a player loaded their save file despite the fact that players could just look at the rupee counter and see what the total amount ended up being. Spirit Tracks doesn't go to this extreme when rupees are involved, but it's made worse by the fact that strings of treasures could lead to several seconds of randomly being taken out of the game. The only positive I can add is that at least the incremental fairy upgrades are nowhere to be seen.

Apart from returning to the tower, Spirit Tracks contains a formula of its own: find a Sanctuary, play a duet with the Lokomo in charge, and finally enter the dungeon. Most of the dungeons also require a challenge in order to enter the dungeon itself. These steps are repeated in each new realm and each time the difficulty increases, made worse by the sudden inclusion of passengers. I like the idea of having a passenger boarding the train and it's a nice diversion, but it should have been just that--a diversion. Passengers force the player to randomly speed up, slow down, blow their whistle and take corners slowly so as not to upset them, but the biggest flaw is that on two occasions the player has no choice but to take on a passenger.

Frustration takes root of every part of the DS Zelda games, but I'm shocked at how pervasive it is here. I like the idea of the Spirit Train, but it's implemented poorly--the moment Spirit Tracks started to break me was upon entering the Ocean Realm where rather than simply going the sanctuary and playing a duet like normal, they instead forced me to go to another town to find a song, then return to a different town to find the Lokomo, return him to the Ocean Sanctuary, then play the duet with the Lokomo. The Lokomo there then gave the challenge of riding past islands in a specific order, blowing the whistle, and finally entering the temple when it appeared. The game never explicitly states the player needs to blow the whistle at specific statues, so when I came to the very end of the challenge I thought the statue lighting up was indicating I did the order correctly. Instead I found out that I was supposed to be looking at the statues directly before blowing the whistle, so I had to light the statues in the incorrect order to reset them and then do them in the correct order. As I mentioned before, the train can only go so fast so it took an absolutely ludicrous amount of time to just access the temple.

The challenge before the fire temple is even more annoying since it requires the players to enter a town, go all the way back to the Snow Realm to pick up ice, then transfer that ice all the way back to the village to find the Lokomo. Had I not unintentionally finished a side quest earlier it would have taken me even longer to get the ice required to find the Fire Lokomo and therefore longer to finish the Fire Realm--even after jumping through these hoops players are forced to hunt flying monsters to gather keys necessary to enter the temple. I understand that the length of handheld games need to be stretched out to keep players invested, but game design has come a long way. The Minish Cap has almost no filler and despite being significantly shorter than Spirit Tracks, I'm more inclined to go and replay that game simply because it didn't seek to annoy me at every step of the way.

The rhythm mini-game, and accompanying flute instrument, is half-baked at best. The flute requires players to blow into the system's microphone, and I'm not sure how well it works on the DS but playing it on the Wii U--which by all means should have a stronger mic--the flute responded maybe three quarters of the time. If you know you screwed up playing one of the duets with the Lokomo, there's no option to reset and naturally, you're going to screw up even if you're the best flute player in the world simply because of the microphone's response. I don't doubt play-testers also had problems with this part of the game so my question is this: if there's a gameplay element that the developers know only work part of the time, how much would the game benefit from its removal? Playing the flute itself is a neat concept, but its implementations are sparse and the game wouldn't miss out if they had been assigned a button.

The game's story feels like it's wrapping up after the Fire Realm is completed, and there's even a nice fight between Byrne and the combined efforts of Link and Zelda that feels like a step before the final boss, but just to annoy the player even further a new temple is introduced at the last second. Just as the game picks up and the big threat is fully revealed, the player has to step back once again and complete an entirely new dungeon. The realm itself is smaller and constitutes only part of the Ocean Realm, but in a narrative sense I'm blown away by how terribly it damages the pacing of the story. The Sand Realm should have simply been a bonus dungeon the players could complete if they so desired, but forcing them to go through one final hoop is baffling, especially given how important and dire the situation becomes after the events at the top of the tower.

The Sand Temple is actually pretty fun and the layout is very clever, but I feel that's the case with most of the dungeons in Spirit Tracks as they dial down on overall dungeon numbers in favor of intelligent layout. While most of this is just brilliant level design I believe part of this is that it takes back the one-key-at-a-time approach that began in Twilight Princess, allowing players to carry multiple keys at once and therefore giving more options to explore. I still believe this should have been optional content and it damages the pacing of the narrative, but I have to give credit where it's due. This also causes the game to have a strange number of dungeons in comparison to previous Zelda games. Six I understand, even four is decent if they're carried out well; the ideal number for me would be nine for bigger games or four for smaller ones. Five dungeons is just odd, and I'm not sure why it bothers me so much.

As much as the little details irk me about Spirit Tracks, I need to say that the final area of the game more than makes up for the disruptive pace and accomplishes one of the finest conclusions in the entire Zelda series. I utterly adore the idea of returning to the very beginning of a long adventure to access the finale, and Spirit Tracks accomplishes this spectacularly by opening an island most players would never have thought twice about as the entrance to the Dark Realm. The Dark Realm itself is one of the most cathartic experiences in the franchise, allowing players to gather Tears of Light along the Dark Realm's Spirit Tracks and finally destroy the Dark Trains. Players who actually completed much of the game's side content are likely fed up of the trains, and even someone like myself who tried to make a beeline to the end of the game still felt a deep resentment toward them. Having a chance to finally destroy these things feels triumphant and allows the player to enter the final encounter with a sense of accomplishment.

The boss battle against Malladus is also one of the game's highlights, running through multiple types of encounters which utilize each gameplay type in succession: a train battle, a puzzle with Phantom Zelda, a top-down boss where the player must protect Zelda, a rhythm game, and finally a straight boss battle which uses a unique perspective controlling both playable characters. The rhythm game annoyed me when it first came up, but I'm not sure if it was more lenient or I simply became better because for the first time I cleared this mini-game without any trouble. The final phase of the boss is something I never knew I wanted and I'm glad I got a chance to play it without spoilers.

Zelda games have a surprising tendency to end on a high note; even the weaker games like Adventure of Link wrap up the game neatly and leave a strong final impression. There are a lot of complaints I have with Spirit Tracks, but the climax of the story is easily one of the best in the entire series. More than its own great ending, I felt like Spirit Tracks serves to fulfill the promise of King Daphnes at the conclusion of The Wind Waker: when Link and Tetra finally find their new home it'll be a land of their own. Link and Zelda of Spirit Tracks finally accomplish the king's wishes and claim New Hyrule as their own land, and if the player has been following the storyline then this ending gives a great sense of closure.

Verdict

Spirit Tracks is lacking a great deal of polish, and a few of the game's weaker elements seem like the developers doubling down on the elements some players disliked in Phantom Hourglass. Some elements feel half-baked, and in the case of the Spirit Tracks themselves I feel like the developers could have put more time into making this more fun for the player. The game mechanics feel like a direct step backwards from Phantom Hourglass in some respects, but in those cases I wonder if they were last-minute changes to account for player feedback from that game. The problem is that I wish the gameplay had been given additional polish because I actually like this version of Link, Zelda, and New Hyrule. The setting and characters work well and the narrative is truly engaging--if not poorly paced--but as far as gameplay is concerned Spirit Tracks is a weird amalgamation of experiments which rarely work well in tandem.

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Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Phantom Hourglass Review

A year after the release of Twilight Princess, Nintendo released a brand-new Zelda for their handheld DS system. At this point, the handheld games of the series focused on refining the top-down Link to the Past formula, and as you know the previous handheld title, The Minish Cap, quickly rose to the ranks of my all-time favorite Zelda games after playing it for the first time recently. I played the DS game, Phantom Hourglass, closer to its release and after replaying the game, I can say my opinions have soured more than they already were.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Phantom Hourglass 

Like some of the past handheld Zelda titles Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to a console entry, this time being a sequel to The Wind Waker. I don't always buy into direct sequels to highly-regarded entries in most media as it's usually just a retread of the original. Spiritual successors like Demon's Souls to Dark Souls (pardon the reference) are what I consider an ideal approach to a sequel, though I also like the idea of a loose sequel like Ocarina of Time to The Wind Waker simply because they're so detached from one another.

The Wind Waker ended on such an optimistic note and with so much potential that I'm glad it was addressed in such a small sequel. Handheld games, with their hardware limitations and smaller scope, are often very humble and I appreciate that the story of Phantom Hourglass doesn't try to reinvent the wheel; instead, I feel like it's completely reasonable to sort of "check in" with the Wind Waker cast as they search for their new settlement. Not only was the open-ended plot a reasonable selling point, but I'm also glad we get to see more of the extremely likable Link and Tetra from The Wind Waker even if Tetra is completely under-utilized in Phantom Hourglass.

The plot setup is a bit weak, though like I mentioned, humble: Link and Tetra's new pirate crew come across a massive Ghost Ship which captures Tetra and sends Link to an area of the Great Sea known as the World of the Ocean King. Link is awakened by his new fairy companion and is given his task of rescuing Tetra. The fairy Ciela introduces Link to her "grandfather" Oshus who gives Link a sword and leads him to the foppish pirate Linebeck, the captain of the ship primarily used in Phantom Hourglass.

I already have a problem with the way Tetra is tossed aside as soon as the game opens, and considering we see her for so little of the last half of The Wind Waker it feels like even more wasted potential. Ciela is one of the three fairy guardians found throughout the game and she serves as a nod to Navi from Ocarina of Time, but I don't see why Tetra couldn't just serve the same role as Ciela with the eventual three fairy guardians merging into a single being--named Ciela. Having three fairies circle around Link is already ridiculous enough as it is, but the spirits of Power and Wisdom are completely forgotten about after they're introduced. For instance, the first temple could have the player release Ciela, the second temple could restore her powers, and the third temple could have restored her memories. It takes care of the bloated and underused cast while retaining Tetra as a character, and I'm sure Linebeck being the ship captain could have been incorporated into this idea pretty easily. This one detail would not have saved the game, as the flawed gameplay that permeates every aspect of Phantom Hourglass overwhelms any minor story gripe I might have.

Unlike every other game in the series, Phantom Hourglass controls with the horribly unreliable stylus controls of the DS touch screen. Players point to parts of the map to make Link run in that direction and swipe the screen to control the sword. Yes, mere button presses have to require an unnecessary amount of effort just to play the game, and because controlling the stylus means moving one's hand across the screen, this typically results in the entire playable screen being obstructed--especially if you have hands bulging with muscle like mine.

Contain your excitement. Also the Wii U is a horrible choice for this game.

To go back to the fairies, one of the main reasons for carrying around these completely dry lumps is that each fairy can augment Link's abilities in their own unique ways: the Power fairy increases Link's sword damage, the Wisdom fairy boosts his defense, while Ciela gives him a beam attack. This is interesting in theory but the concept is blown completely in execution: in order to gain access to these abilities, players have to find deeply-hidden items strewn across the game. To simply gain access to one of these abilities requires ten gems--not ten for the first tier of upgrades, but ten for one of the three to even become accessible. To upgrade to their maximum capacity the player needs to find all twenty of each gem, which totals out to sixty collectible items hidden all over the world just to give Link the choice between two passive abilities and an extra attack.

I would compare this negatively to the simple elegance of the Blade Brothers of The Minish Cap, but in that case the game at least allowed players to heavily modify their existing moveset to create a top-down Zelda that surpassed A Link to the Past in terms of combat options. In Phantom Hourglass, these are minor upgrades which would have been tossed to the end of an optional dungeon in previous handheld games and are strung out across the duration of the story for no discernible reason, leaving Zelda's typically gradual increase in character ability as a distant thought.

In terms of game progression there's not much to speak of: the player collects three items across the world to open their final objective and the rest of the world map. In this case, the progression of the game consists of three dungeons to start, a middle dungeon to bridge the two halves and three dungeons to access the final boss. The world is fairly large for a handheld game and it's a nice compliment to The Wind Waker, but since the game is controlled by the stylus the boat's course is charted by the player rather than controlling it by hand. This can be fairly frustrating since players also have to use the touch screen to move the camera and shoot bombs at wayward monsters which can be cumbersome at times.

Like the NES Zelda titles, the player's health is augmented simply by Heart Containers rather than collecting Pieces of Heart. While I appreciate Phantom Hourglass for making an attempt to give players more variety in the collection aspect of the game, these collectibles--like the spirit gems--are so poorly-implemented that in the grand scheme of things they're more of a detriment than anything. Heart Containers are obtained through mini-games or are simply bought, but the prices for anything in this game are astronomical. Heart Containers cost two thousand rupees--more than players could even hold in past games--and spirit gems can cost five hundred apiece if the player can even find vendors who sell them.

For the first time in the Zelda franchise, a sequel has finally come along to promote farming for rupees in order to buy items that would have otherwise been cleverly hidden across the world. Many of the mini-games are poorly-implemented and require the use of both screens and the touch controls at the same time, so playing these on the Wii U is nearly impossible. Luckily, the total amount of hearts is reduced from twenty to sixteen and the game's balance more or less compensates for this.

Dungeons are more or less what you'd expect out of the handheld Zelda games, trading massive breath-taking chambers for complex and cleverly-designed mazes. The items are familiar Zelda fare, but unfortunately all are controlled by the touch screen. This works in some instances like the boomerang which allows players to trace the trajectory of their throw, but for items like the traditional bow and arrow it's unnecessarily difficult to aim since Link swivels around to follow the player's stylus. It's another example of the gimmicky control option hampering player feedback--there are more than enough buttons to control the game in the same way, so why not at least give players the option?

The problem with the dungeon design in Phantom Hourglass is that it takes cues from Twilight Princess which, while containing some of the largest dungeons in the series, traded complexity for spectacle. Like Twilight Princess, the dungeons in this game can only be explored in a very straight line due in large part to the fact that players can only carry one key at a time. I can't stress enough how important it is for players to be able to horde keys since it gives the player an option for exploring the dungeons in different orders. This could lead to unwinnable situations in games like Link's Awakening, but most Zelda games are generous with their use of keys and intelligent level design should render this point moot. Instead, the developers had one vision in mind for their dungeons and with this game, the series is beginning to appear like the linearity prominent in Twilight Princess might be here to stay.

The greatest sin committed by Phantom Hourglass, and the main reason I would urge anyone to seriously consider the time investment before playing the game, is the Temple of the Ocean God. In order to unnecessarily pad the hell out of the game, Phantom Hourglass contains a dungeon which must be cleared six times throughout the course of the adventure--from the starting floor every time with only a few minor shortcuts. Yes, The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass has a dungeon that cannot be skipped and must be cleared half a dozen times just to beat the game. Just consider if Ocarina of Time or A Link to the Past had a central dungeon the players had to go through from the beginning every time a dungeon was cleared. Hell, think about how much of a waste this would be if The Minish Cap, a game with far fewer dungeons, would be if it required players to constantly revisit a dungeon.

The real shame is that Phantom Hourglass had everything going for it. The first handheld Zelda by Nintendo since Link's Awakening, some of the absolute funniest dialogue and charming characters the series has ever seen and a return to a setting just begging to be explored, all Phantom Hourglass had to do was drop The Wind Waker into The Minish Cap's engine and rework some aspects to change the overworld to the Great Sea. With traditional controls and the removal of the stupid Temple of the Ocean King, The Phantom Hourglass could have been a solid entry for the series. The now-unavailable DSi version of Four Swords has a similar artstyle and looks gorgeous as a result--not to mention the fact that it controls like a dream--so why complicate things for obtuse and unnecessary gimmicks?

Verdict

Nintendo completely dropped the ball on Phantom Hourglass by implementing godawful controls and bizarre, needless mechanics which ruin the promise left by The Minish Cap. Phantom Hourglass has endearing characters and genuinely funny moments, but this return to the Great Sea is tainted by questionable design choices. It's a chore to play through and feels like a step back in every way from its predecessors. If Twilight Princess was the Zelda franchise tripping over its own feet, Phantom Hourglass is the series slipping on a banana peel and throwing its armfuls of pies all over the guests. I hate this game and everything I hate about it could have been changed if someone with common sense had come in to kick over some tables, but instead all we're left with is a steaming pile that I would only recommend to diehard Wind Waker fans, and even then it's a very hard sell. Just don't bother. Play The Minish Cap again if you need to, but please stay away from this boat wreck.

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Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess Review

After receiving significant backlash for a perceived shift in tone, Nintendo focused their efforts on a brand-new Zelda game to send off their humble Gamecube with a bang. Unfortunately, this would place it within the launch window of their brand new Wii console and so decided to delay their highly-anticipated sequel, Twilight Princess, as a Wii launch title. Much has been said about Twilight Princess, but since I was an edgy teenager at the time I thought it was just what the Zelda series needed. I was wrong. I'm sorry.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Twilight Princess

The writing on the wall should have been so clear in retrospect, but even the title of this new Zelda screamed unnecessary edginess. "Twilight Princess?" Just the word Twilight evokes thoughts of darkness and melodrama, so it should come as no surprise that Nintendo tried to create a game oozing with edgy darkness and edgy melodrama only to drop the ball hard. This Link was more similar to the adult Link from Ocarina of Time, weathered and ready for a harrowing adventure because that's what you wanted, I guess.

Unlike many previous games in the series, there's no legendary tale to serve as the backdrop in Twilight Princess, instead dropping the player into a melancholy conversation between Link and his mentor, Rusl. Between the two disparate tones of darkness and melancholy, the latter is executed much better and the opening scene sets the mood perfectly. The game begins to falter almost immediately after, and doesn't pick itself up for a fairly long stretch.

In past games the plot setup is delivered quickly, though a better description would probably be 'efficiently.' A story doesn't need long and drawn-out exposition to introduce its conflict, and games like Ocarina of Time and The Minish Cap exemplify this aspect. That's not even considering the NES Zelda games which simply throw the player into the game without worrying about story at all. I'm all for a good story in a video game, but if a video game takes more than half an hour to introduce its conflict I consider that poor story-telling.

If Twilight Princess took a while to establish its story like The Wind Waker I'd be much less annoyed. In that game players are given their outfit, the sword, and go through their first dungeon by the time the player is out of the tutorial for Twilight Princess. The tutorials aren't even fun or very engaging; rather, the player is forced to herd goats and play with kids to teach them how to use items. It's horribly unintuitive and at times it can be outright patronizing. Tutorials in Twilight Princess are invasive and seep into every corner of the game, further increasing its linearity.

The overall size of the game world is much larger than Ocarina of Time, but it's still much smaller than the Great Sea. Despite the larger size, linearity is a major problem and is probably the worst in the series by this point. Majora's Mask is also very linear--requiring players tackle each area of Termina in order--but at least that game allows players to actually explore the entire field map whenever they want. Twilight Princess regularly cordons off chunks of the world map to make sure you're heading toward the dungeon it wants you to finish. Road blocks stop the player from entering certain parts of Hyrule, some requiring Epona to jump while others need to be taken away by characters who don't appear until the story concludes. A bridge will be removed from the map at one point preventing the player from going back for an extended period of time, and at its most egregious there's actually a locked gate that a character opens as the story continues.

You'll note I keep referring to the story as the main element blocking players from parts of the game, and that's because Twilight Princess is easily the most story-focused game of the series by this point. Unfortunately, it's more long-winded than anything else and typically falls back into tropes more often than not. Worse than that, the story often feels like a bigger, more bombastic, less time-efficient Ocarina of Time. Let's take a look at how the games open to show what I mean.

In Ocarina of Time, Link is awakened by his new companion Navi in order to save the Deku Tree from its infestation. The player has to navigate the small Kokiri Village in order to find a sword and gather rupees to buy a shield. After clearing the Deku Tree the players are given the Fairy Ocarina and are able to access all of Hyrule Field, though Lake Hylia, the Gerudo Valley, the Zora Village and Death Mountain are barred from entry until the items required to enter those areas are found.

The story in Twilight Princess begins without a word of backstory to contextualize the narrative, but Link and Rusl discuss the twilight and Link's upcoming visit to Hyrule Castle to present the royal family with his new sword. Before night falls, Link is asked to herd sheep. In the morning, the villagers' children appear and beg Link to play with them, so the player needs to go out and buy a slingshot. In order to buy a slingshot, a series of events need to be completed: climb a hill, knock Rusl's wife's baby carriage out of a monkey's hand using a hawk, take a fishing pole from her to catch a fish for a cat to cheer up its owner, then buy the slingshot, and finally return to the children. Rusl shows up to Link's house and gives him the wooden sword, and after using the slingshot to kill a spider blocking the way to his house the player is forced to clear a tutorial explaining how to use both the slingshot and the sword--despite the fact that the player would have just used the slingshot to knock down the spider.

I'm pretty sure I know exactly why this long string of tutorials was implemented, the reason being that Twilight Princess was postponed to be a launch title for the Nintendo Wii. Unlike the Gamecube version which used a controller setup almost identical to The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess struggles with implementing the at-the-time brand-new Wii Motion controller, and as such many of the standard Zelda functions had to be reworked to play correctly on the controller. The directional buttons can each be assigned items making it the most readily-available set of items in a Zelda game, but these items have to then be assigned to another button to actually be used.

There's no camera control unlike The Wind Waker and the Gamecube release of Twilight Princess, and since there aren't enough buttons on the controller the shield has simply been relegated to a parry on the left nunchuck, although this move has to be unlocked by the player. The sword is also changed to the extremely gimmicky Motion Controller as a waggle instead of a simple button press. That's not to say the sword follows the player's movement; rather, the waggle replaces a simple press of the B button. Players still need to manipulate the control stick in order to swing in different directions, which makes the finer control of sword combat feel horribly confusing as both hands start to work against each other.

I want to stress that the Wii port of Twilight Princess was likely created as an afterthought to get more people to buy the experimental new version of a Zelda game. Most people would list at least one Zelda as part of their top ten games of all time, and anecdotally I know more than a handful of people who buy new Nintendo consoles just to play the new Zelda. There's something of a running joke among the older game-playing crowd mocking Zelda as a stereotypical "casual gamer" game series, as most people who bark about Zelda being the best games ever made have either not played much of the series or simply don't play video games. It's a crass stereotype, but stereotypes exist for a reason. That's not to say Zelda is a bad series of video games--if you've been reading this blog you can probably guess it's one of my favorite series in video game history--but its reach among even the non-game playing public is widespread.

Naturally, more people bought Twilight Princess on the Wii and that version received a Nintendo Selects reissue; the Gamecube version, which released a month later, is commonly identified as a fairly rare game. I didn't play the Wii version until years later and found the port to be lacking, due not in small part to the flipped nature of the game world. This likely didn't disorient players who played the Wii version first, but after playing it so many times on Gamecube it was just weird to play the same game with a vertically flipped world. In case you weren't aware, the entire game was reversed in order to accommodate the fact that players would be swinging the Motion Controller with their right hand and wanted Link to match the player's movement

I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Link being a left-handed character if only because it's so unorthodox, so for that reason alone I can't imagine any version of the character being legitimate without the left-handed nature. Furthermore, the HD re-release keeps the Gamecube presentation and only allows players to play the game flipped on the new Hero Mode, which is intended as a harder difficulty option. With that in mind, it's pretty evident the Gamecube version was the game Nintendo intended to play.

I wanted to bring all this up because I'm almost positive players who were using Twilight Princess as their introduction to the Wii's controller almost definitely needed to become accustomed to the controls, but since the Gamecube version is the exact same game these tutorials just comes across as trite. The fact that players have to kill a spider and then show the game they know how to use the slingshot is beyond patronizing and I can't believe there's no option to skip it. One of the kids even gives Link a prompt to skip the sword tutorial, but if the player selects no the game berates them for being rude to children until they say yes.

Oh, but we're not done talking about the game's intro yet. After assuring the kids the player knows how to play the game, a monkey appears and everyone chases it. The player fights bokoblins and is given the game's lantern by an NPC in order to continue through a cave. I don't understand why the bokoblins simply couldn't have been easier than normal and the player couldn't just learn how to control the sword by fighting them. After finally reaching the end of the road, the player rescues one of the children and the monkey before returning home. Another day passes and Link has to herd goats again. Ilia, the daughter of Ordon Village's mayor and the primary romantic interest, chastises Link for not taking care of Epona. After following her to her favorite spot all the way outside the village, Link and Ilia are attacked by mounted bokoblins and their moblin leader--or something else, I don't know, apparently moblins weren't good enough for Twilight Princess and this is just some new guy.

Link is taken into the Twilight Realm and turned into a wolf, then dragged to Hyrule Castle. Midna, an imp in the Twilight, helps Link find Princess Zelda who sends him back to Ordon Village. The player then has to recover a sword and shield from Ordon Village while sneaking around the hostile villagers, who are all panicking because their children were abducted by the bokoblins. Link then has to collect bugs who absorbed the Tears of Light from Faron, one of Hyrule's Guardian Spirits, in order to return to his human form. After this, the player explores the first dungeon and is finally able to explore Hyrule Field. Mostly. After the first open and horrifically empty area of Hyrule Field, players are once again forced to enter the Twilight as a wolf and collect more Tears of Light.

This is basically the entire setup for the first half of the game: enter a new province, gain a Vessel of Light from the Guardian Spirit, kill some bugs which require exploring more or less the entirety of the province, then return and gain Link's human form to explore it a second time. Think about A Link to the Past forcing players to enter the Dark World every time they want to explore a new area of the world map, or Ocarina of Time forcing the adult character to return to the Temple of Time to scope out every new temple as a child. You could argue it already does this with the Spiritual Stones, but this serves the purpose of introducing the world as well as giving the player a new perspective when they return as an adult. In the case of Twilight Princess, it just feels like busywork.

Go back and look at how much more content is required for the player to tackle in a linear order before they're able to access a limited version of Hyrule Field when compared to Ocarina of Time. Worse, much of this could be entirely cut out; the first goat herding minigame could be cut out entirely, the player could have simply started out with the sword, Rusl's wife could have just asked Link to find her baby carriage, Rusl could have just given Link the slingshot, and the entire three-day opening could have been condensed into a single night before night fell. It would still have taken longer to get into Hyrule Field than Ocarina of Time, but every single one of these instances of forced story could have been removed entirely without damaging the integrity of the story. No really, look at all the suggestions I have that could have been cut out: were any of those necessary to understand the world, characters, or narrative any better? My response would be a resounding no.

It takes even longer to get into the world than even The Wind Waker, and when it does it's so limited and barren that it feels like a second thought. The railroading is all in service of the dark narrative, but there's hardly anything darker than Majora's Mask to the point where it seems like it's trying too hard. I know the term tryhard is going out of vogue when discussing stories, but seriously, just look at this.

You creeped out yet? This is what you guys wanted isn't it?

I've never seen a game fall headfirst so horribly as Twilight Princess, and part of that is it failing so spectacularly to capture the darker tone the developers were going for. Twilight Princess was made in part due to the backlash of The Wind Waker's colorful and cheery tone, but in trying to create a dark story similar to Majora's Mask they fail entirely. Horror is subjective, but most of the time when a creator tries to be scary they often end up accomplishing the opposite. The Twilight Realm story is one of the most embarrassing scenes I've ever watched in a video game and that's mostly because it tries so hard to be creepy without any rhyme or reason. The dark and unsettling tone of Majora's Mask attempted a few of these horror moments, but part of that was the reuse of character assets and a clever implementation of the apocalyptic doomsday scenario. Without even trying, I felt Ganon's reveal in The Wind Waker regarding the true nature of the flooded Hyrule was far darker and more unsettling than anything in Twilight Princess, and that game went out of its way to be relaxed and comfortable.

As I mentioned in the beginning, the mood that I always think of positively in relation to Twilight Princess is that of melancholy, but it attempts this so rarely that I can't think of many times it actually works. The opening with Rusl talking to Link about the sadness of twilight is one of the best examples, but after that is an equally memorable scene where Link simply watches Ilia play with Epona. The scene is brief and even a bit lonely, and if it focused on that rather than attempting a dark and serious story I'd be far less harsh. Even worse, the dark tone clashes completely with many of the NPC designs.

Pictured: Looneytunes McDipshit

Many of the NPCs act exaggeratedly and have cartoonish features, to the point where I genuinely started to wonder if these were scrapped Wind Waker designs. All of these characters mesh poorly with the world, but worse than that they mesh poorly with each other. The character pictured above scoots around on his hands and knees when he's scared and bites his nails in a ridiculous Scooby Doo pantomime, but he's paired up with a stone-faced native from Kakariko Village. The scenario is of the characters horrified by the Twilight surrounding them and then you have this stupid asshole on the verge of shouting "Zoinks!" and running with those stupid Sonic legs.

If the tone had simply been of a lonely hero attempting to fight an alien force, I'd have been completely fine with that. Having ridiculous moments meshes in fine when the game is attempting to be forlorn, but when eyeless spooky ghost characters are killing each other it's just out of place entirely.

Silly, fun Zelda. You told us you hated this though.

What seriously disappoints me is that we would have gotten a different game if people hadn't gotten so distraught over The Wind Waker before actually playing it. Game development takes a long time and I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo started to develop Twilight Princess almost immediately after learning that the initial reaction to The Wind Waker was primarily negative, but given this was the new flagship Zelda Nintendo would never concentrate solely on a dark, edgy game. Instead, what we get is a story that tries too hard without ever committing to anything. As an aside, because Twilight Princess attempts to convey a more realistic setting, the game looked markedly worse than The Wind Waker the moment it released; the cartoon style of The Wind Waker masked some of the Gamecube's faults, but now they're all shown in full force with Twilight Princess as the geometry and some models are far uglier simply because of limitations of the console. Congratulations, idiots: your insistence on a realistic style revealed exactly why Nintendo went with stylized graphics in the first place.

Twilight Princess uses the same engine as The Wind Waker, but it takes a few cues from The Minish Cap in that many of Link's sword techniques must be discovered and learned by a skeletal tutor. What's really annoying about this is that many of the techniques are just elaborate versions of Link's parry moveset from The Wind Waker, though rather than a simple press of the A button players need to input commands. Here's a brief example: one of the parries from The Wind Waker involved Link rolling to the side of an enemy and striking them from behind. In Twilight Princess, this same move needs to be learned and in order to execute it, the player has to double-tap the A button and end with a sword attack.

All the involved sword mechanics in the world mean nothing if the game is made easier to accommodate the controls. Since there's no way to actively raise the shield, Link simply has it raised at all times. Since the advanced sword techniques are optional, the game is balanced in a way that players can still win combat without them; with this in mind, Twilight Princess has a combat system which automatically blocks most enemy attacks, a sidestep which avoids all attacks the shield can't block, and a hidden pool of techniques that utterly decimate most enemies. For a game that strives so hard to be the dark, edgy flipside to The Wind Waker, it's baffling that it could be so much easier.

Since I've already compared the gameplay to its prior entry, I want to point out why the passive shield is a step down from even Ocarina of Time. In Ocarina, players needed to raise their shield in order to avoid attacks, but since enemies would attack at random and raise shields of their own there was a real sense of tension in combat. Looking at Stalfos in particular, players needed to watch their enemy's movement and take advantage of weaknesses when possible. Twilight Princess's approach is closer to A Link to the Past in that the shield is raised by default, but even the top-down games in the series after that game featured a shield that needed to be raised with a button press. Twilight Princess in turn takes steps backward from innovations in both the overhead and 3D Zelda games to the point where everything is trivialized for the player. If you thought The Wind Waker was too simplistic, then I would hate to learn what hoops you'd jump through to justify Twilight Princess's dumbing down of mechanics that already worked fine.

Even though it looks more complex, the fact of the matter is that combat is simply more convoluted. That's what I'd have to say is the biggest flaw of Twilight Princess: the developers knew what they wanted to avoid, but didn't know how to replace the controversial aspects of the series with something all fans would enjoy. The combat is simplified even with new mechanics and the story, despite having so much expository dialogue, does very little more than Ocarina of Time despite wasting so much of the player's time.

Different factions are introduced throughout the game, though their importance is highly inflated. The Gorons are Zora return from Ocarina of Time, though they're both largely unchanged aside from more busy design elements. There's a league of adventurers who later become the resistance to the Twilight invasion, but they're only shown to be actively resisting anybody once or twice throughout the story. If you're not going to utilize an established organization, maybe that organization doesn't deserve to exist.

Zant is an extremely interesting villain and I love his portrayal, but because this game was made by cowards he's quickly overshadowed and replaced once again by Ganon. Ganon appears closer to the end of the game and accomplishes very little, but at least two of his four boss phases are complete nostalgia grabs for previous games. The fact that the final battle is a repeat of the final boss of The Wind Waker further makes me think of this game as a half-hearted apology for The Wind Waker, but that just makes me hate the game more. Yeah, Twilight Princess has more dungeons and the game is less colorful and it's more grim just how everyone wanted, but the polish is simply not there.

Speaking of dungeons, I need to make one final complaint about the linear design of Twilight Princess. In previous games, each dungeon would give Link an item which would help the player explore the world and open access to more of the world. Many of the items in Twilight Princess are almost completely forgotten about after the dungeon they're required in; the dungeons are also completely linear this time around, only allowing Link to carry one key at a time so the player doesn't get lost. It's not like these dungeons are intricate mazes, so to force players down one path is a hideous design choice and it's made all the worse by the formulaic approach to new items.

I mentioned this in an earlier review, but as each Zelda comes along the developers seem to lose more of what makes the series so unique. By the time of Twilight Princess, players are literally going through the motions and completing each dungeon in a set pattern that gets old quickly--as an aside, this game doesn't even attempt to give players an option to explore dungeons out of order. Even The Wind Waker, with its six main dungeons, gives players an option to approach two of the later dungeons in either order.

Each item should legitimize itself as both a tool for combat as well as exploration--the main tenets of a Zelda game. Twilight Princess marks an era of the Zelda games losing the plot and the approach to dungeons encapsulates this by shoving an item carelessly into the player's hands and forgetting about it as soon as the dungeon is over. Many of these items are fairly unique and I would have loved to play around with them more, but there simply aren't enough uses for them after

Truth will out, as the saying goes, and most of the naysayers of The Wind Waker shut their mouths the moment they either tried the game or matured a little. I don't fault them for that if they made the judgment as a child because I did the same when I first saw The Wind Waker, but after playing the game I quickly appreciated what it was setting out to do and felt ashamed that I ever doubted it. With Twilight Princess, all I can see is a pathetic attempt to capture the nostalgia for a game that didn't need it.

Verdict

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is an ugly, patronizing game that fails to convey both the tone it's attempting to capture and the melancholic mood it fails to utilize. It's bloated to all hell with an ugly, empty and enormous overworld full of generic caves. There are way too many Pieces of Heart, too many dungeon items lose their utility as soon as Link leaves the dungeon, the sheer volume of nostalgia grabbing is embarrassing, and for the first time in the series (unless you're like me and feel this way about the Oracles) it finally feels like the Zelda formula is unraveling. Like the Oracle games, this is the perfect example of a game that exists if you need a new Zelda game to play, but it's far from a memorable experience and feels cobbled together more often than not.

If you absolutely have to play Twilight Princess, go for the Wii U HD Remaster. Unlike The Wind Waker HD, this version adds no irritating element like extra bloom but it does fix most of the annoyances that actually could be fixed. There are fewer Tears of Light to collect, players don't bang their sword on walls, and the hard mode allows masochistic players to play the game in the Wii's vertically flipped mode. It completely eclipses the Gamecube original, but in my estimation it's little more than polishing a turd.


Zelda 3D remaster mini-reviews:
http://subjective-objective.blogspot.com/2016/03/mini-review-zelda-remasters.html

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GAMES DESTROYER: Guerrilla Games accidentally publishes unfinished Ubisoft title

Developer Guerrilla Games accidentally published a game they found partially-finished in a dumpster behind Ubisoft's main office, sources confirmed over the weekend. The title, called Horizon: Zero Dawn, was an open-world role-playing game with light crafting elements would take players across a huge map full of towers to climb and bullet-sponge enemies to mindlessly shoot as is expected of modern Ubisoft titles. Horizon: Zero Dawn had not yet gone into post-production and was still missing character animations, geometry detail, and a significant level of game balance.

"Our team has been hard at work at the story," said an employee at Guerrilla Games. "Video games are art now, and as such we need to create a compelling, emotional story that resonates with its players." When asked about the striking similarity between the gameplay mechanics between Horizon: Zero Dawn and recent Ubisoft release Far Cry Primal, the representative reaffirmed that the story would leave players in tears, and they were currently hard at work at implementing a parent-child relationship "sure to emotion the pants right off of you."

GAMES DESTROYER reached out to Ubisoft for comment, but so far the fully-automated game studio has yet to respond. Horizon: Zero Dawn is expected to release at the highest Metacritic score of the year, rivaling that of former Sony darling The Last of Us.

Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap Review

After the release of the Game Boy Advance, Capcom's subsidiary Flagship was finally able to release a fully-featured handheld port of A Link to the Past, now with additional secrets, sound effects from Ocarina of Time, and a brand-new multiplayer mode called Four Swords. With the Link to the Past port finally accomplished, Flagship began developing their third original handheld Zelda: The Minish Cap. Like the Oracle games, I had never played The Minish Cap prior to this retrospective, and honestly I wasn't very interested in playing what looked like a smaller Link to the Past. With that flippant opinion at the forefront, I did my best to approach The Minish Cap with an open mind and tried very hard to keep my thoughts as objective as possible during its surprisingly brief duration.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap 

The first thing to note is that The Minish Cap discards the Link to the Past art style in favor of a design very similar to The Wind Waker, a style which you now know I absolutely adore. Unsurprisingly, the sprites are colorful and the world is vibrant as a result. The music greatly resembles A Link to the Past, even using an almost identical rendition of the Overworld Theme. Within the first few moments of gameplay something seriously clicked for me. Right away, I was utterly smitten by everything about The Minish Cap from a stylistic standpoint. I just want to throw that out there before I get into the meat and potatoes of this Zelda stew.

The narrative of The Minish Cap carries a similar flow to The Wind Waker, but aside from story beats it feels like its own beast. Like The Wind Waker, the story begins with a legend long before the story opens and tells an entirely original tale. In this story, monsters invade Hyrule and are fended off by a young hero who is aided by the microscopic Picori race. The Picori are celebrated as mythical, and every year a tournament is held in their honor where the winner is allowed to touch the sacred blade of legend.

In a first for the series, Link and Zelda grow up as childhood friends. Zelda is still princess, but because Link is the grandson of the castle blacksmith the two share a close friendship. The story opens on the day of the tournament and the one hundredth anniversary of the Picori descending to Hyrule. Legends state that a gate to the Picori realm will open, and because of that the festival is the most bombastic in Hyrulean history. After the player visits the festival with Zelda, the victor of the Picori tournament is shown the Picori Blade. The victor, Vaati, reveals his intent to open the chest and recover the legendary Light Force--known in later eras as the Triforce. Zelda is turned to stone and monsters are released from the chest the Picori Blade was stored, so Link is tasked with finding the Picori to restore the blade.

Already the story is far simpler than many of the previous Zelda games, and because the world is somewhat smaller than A Link to the Past it never begins to feel overwhelming. There's also the presence of Vaati, a much more interesting villain than Ganon in many ways and who has been severely underutilized by Nintendo. Vaati is deeply intertwined with the overall narrative of the game in surprising ways, and he's fleshed out over the course of the game in a natural progression of events. I deeply appreciate that the game goes out of its way to set itself apart from past games of the series, and because of this individuality it's easy to simply say it's worth your time and you should play it immediately. That wouldn't make a very informative review, so I'll continue.

The assistant this time comes in the form of Ezlo, a cursed Picori who takes the form of a bird. Ezlo latches on to Link's head and becomes his iconic hat, but aside from that he's very similar to The King of Red Lions in that he seems to know more about the world than Link, though he's reserved about giving away information. Ezlo begins to take on a mentor role to Link throughout the game, and the bond that grows between them feels natural and heartfelt. When Navi left during the end of Ocarina of Time, I really felt nothing. Without giving too much of the ending away, I started to feel genuinely emotional knowing later incarnations of Link would never again interact with the Picori--or Minish, as they're known to themselves. Furthermore, in keeping with the connection with the King of Red Lions the player can interact with Ezlo at any time--and finally, this interaction is mapped to a designated button. I can't begin to describe how giddy I was to know that The Minish Cap was answering every single complaint I had with previous games in the series and did so with such little fanfare.

Like The Wind Waker, the main objectives of The Minish Cap focus on a small number of large dungeons spread across the world as opposed to a multitude of dungeons sprinkled around Hyrule. In the interim between playing the Oracle series and The Minish Cap, I began to wonder if those games would have benefited from a smaller dungeon count. By the end of my Linked Game, I was utterly exhausted by the sheer number of similar-looking dungeons and would have definitely preferred a smaller count. The Minish Cap still retains some of the esoteric nature of handheld Zelda games by forcing players into an involved string of events before gaining an item necessary to move the plot forward, but it never forces the player into these long events.

One of the reasons I'm fine with this in The Minish Cap is that when compared to the Game Boy Color Zelda titles, The Minish Cap is an absolute blast to play. I never liked movement in the previous handheld Zelda titles simply because the restricted NES Zelda-like controls felt very limiting. The Minish Cap is unrestricted from the set X and Y-axis movement of the previous games and feels far more like A Link to the Past, though many gameplay mechanics have been touched upon in important ways.

Combat is overhauled to a point that it completely overshadows A Link to the Past and even allows players to learn new techniques from Dojo masters scattered around Hyrule. Unlike The Wind Waker, elements like the Dojo are never forced upon the player, and since the plot never funnels players and allows them to step away and explore it feels like a true sequel to A Link to the Past in many ways. Orca from The Wind Waker felt like wasted potential since he served as a forced tutorial and only taught Link an upgrade Spin Attack, but the Blade Brothers more than make up for this with a suite of techniques Link can learn. In fact, many of these techniques return from Adventure of Link, and it was shocking to see the plunging attack finally return in such a unique and useful way.

To offset the small number of dungeons, players can randomly find trade items called Kinstones. This new item serves as an overhaul for the goddamn worthless trading sequences of past games and allow for a highly customized approach to finding secrets. To summarize it quickly, the Kinstone system allows players to trade their half of a Kinstone to an NPC who is always holding a specific half. This will unlock a secret on the map which, thankfully, is marked until the player decides to swing around and pick it up. Since Kinstone drops are mostly random, this allows for some side quests to open up in different orders each game. My only complaint is that one of these Kinstone quests is missable, and the item it rewards is extremely useful for the final boss. As an aside, I actually found the final boss in The Minish Cap to be fairly challenging, requiring quick thinking and utilizing many of the game's mechanics in intelligent and fun ways.

There's also no shortage of Pieces of Heart this time around, and unlike The Wind Waker players don't have to go too far out of the way to augment their health bar. In fact, I'd say Pieces of Heart are given out like candy; even though the player will only have an 8-heart health pool at the end without doing side quests, I never once felt like I was underpowered because I simply pieced together so many Heart Containers that it felt closer to a standard Zelda game.

Like The Wind Waker much of the plot revolves around bolstering the Picori Blade, but it's taken to such a ridiculous level that by the halfway point I was in a state of pure bliss. Players will gain a total of five swords by the end of the game, each incrementally gaining new power which also bolsters one of the new gimmicks of The Minish Cap. Before I get into that I want to seriously reiterate how hard I fell in love with the focus on powering up the sword, and by the time it upgraded fully to the Four Sword I had the urge to go back through the entire world just to play with it. It's not quite the Master Sword, but the differences are neither good nor bad--they're just different.

Each Zelda game has a unique gimmick, though I'd argue for the NES games this was more of a necessity than a gameplay twist. A Link to the Past introduced the two-stage setup and second world, Link's Awakening introduced jumping and multiple songs, Ocarina of Time created an entire system out of music and implemented two distinct eras while innovating a new type of 3D gameplay, Majora's Mask had the repeating time feature and masks for different gameplay styles, Wind Waker introduced complex wind physics and the Great Sea, and the Oracle games pissed about with their stupid season- and age-changing mechanics.

When I started The Minish Cap, I thought the only gimmick was that it had a new villain. After a few minutes of play, Ezlo is introduces a size-changing mechanic to the game which allows Link to enter small structures. Many of the bosses are simply regular monsters who are colossal in comparison to Minish Link, and navigating around simple buildings as a microscopic being is implemented so well that I'm baffled it hadn't been thought of before now.

The second new gimmick, and the one I was surprised by the most, is the Four Sword mechanic which is strengthened each time the sword is upgraded. The Minish Cap is a prequel to the Link to the Past mode Four Swords and the Gamecube Four Swords Adventures, both of which being multiplayer-focused Zelda games which center around a team of Links facing down against none other than Vaati, who in those games is a mindless beast.

The creation of the Four Sword in The Minish Cap means that the four-player nature of Four Swords is introduced in its nascent form here, where Link can split into multiple bodies using the sword's charge ability. By the end of the game, players can split into four bodies; this is implemented so smoothly over time that it might honestly be one of the best introductions to a new mechanic in the entire series. Players aren't able to create clones until after the second dungeon, nearly halfway through the game. As the game continues, more clones can be created at once to push huge blocks or fight bosses but it's used sparingly and each puzzle associated with the clones is typically built up toward, rather than thrown haphazardly at the player.

A feature of the Game Boy Zelda games I had yet to mention was that players could opt to customize their buttons to any item they wanted; in Link's Awakening for example, players would have to equip both the Pegasus Boots and Roc's Feather to leap across some of the bigger gaps, but this was an extremely cumbersome mechanic and I grew to hate it more the longer it went on. The Minish Cap does away with most of the problem by allowing the right shoulder button to be used for examining or moving objects, completely doing away with many of the annoyances like the Power Bracelet being an equippable item.

At this point the Zelda series had begun to implement a formula for dungeons by having players clear much of the dungeon, pick up an important item to advance through the later parts of the dungeon, and use that for the boss. The constant item switching was mostly fine in Link's Awakening since the formula hadn't been so set in stone by that point, but implementing this new system into the Oracle games made many of the dungeons a complete slog to sit through. Because The Minish Cap does so much with so little, these annoyances are almost entirely gone.

That's not to say what I fell in love with the most from The Minish Cap is that it fixed complaints I had with previous games. It's a solid entry into the series, albeit on the shorter side--I finished it in about two days. Rather, everything in the game bursts attention and care, from its multitude of named NPCs to the gorgeous art style and music. It does rectify many of the mistakes of the previous handheld Zelda titles, but it also adds new features and streamlines the game flow when compared to the cumbersome and restricted Game Boy titles. If this is what Flagship could do with all of Nintendo's resources at their disposal, then it's sad to know they haven't been given the chance to try a bigger title.

Verdict

I could sing The Minish Cap's praises all day, but I feel like I wouldn't have been so enraptured with the game if I actually knew what I had in store. This game was a complete surprise and I'm kind of shocked that it doesn't receive that much love from Nintendo, especially considering its major characters are so fleshed out. I would guess it's because it technically wasn't made by Nintendo, but to have its characters ignored in games like Hyrule Warriors so blatantly seems like a massive oversight. I'm stealing the words of another critic here, but The Minish Cap oozes with creativity despite being so humble in scope. The story is almost entirely detached from any other Zelda title and the most heartwarming moment of the plot is such a little detail that I didn't expect it to resonate with me so much. The Minish Cap is a game deserving of your time, even if it's been neglected by Nintendo. Don't look up a walkthrough, don't look at anymore spoilers than I've likely given out, and play it at a relaxed pace. This is the most pure, condensed Zelda title I've played yet, and even if it is on the short side, it shouldn't be missed out on.