I have a theory about escapist storytelling; trains make everything better. The evidence is present in everything from Paper Mario – The Thousand-Year Door to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. There’s just a romance about old locomotives chuffing their way through breath-taking landscape that elevates the sense of adventure and transports the reader/viewer/player just as effectively as the passengers. Nintendo evidently feels the same as evidenced by The Legend of Zelda – Spirit Tracks, a DS follow-up to Phantom Hourglass built around the romance of trains. Continue reading →
I usually try to avoid spoilers but it is impossible for me to review Link’s Awakening without talking about the ending. It was my first Zelda game and one of my first Nintendo games and was instrumental in my becoming a lifelong Nintendo fan. To this day I consider it one of my five favourite games of all time and, with the possible exception of Ocarina of Time 3D, it is the best game I have ever reviewed for this blog and so much of what makes it a classic is in the ending. Continue reading →
And so we come to the most significant post I have created for this blog, my review for a brand new main core entry in The Legend of Zelda series.
This is going to be an extremely long post in which I will talk about every thought I’ve had about the game going into considerably more detail than I normally would. The post may contain some mild spoilers but I have taken care to signpost them so if you want a spoiler-free review be prepared to skip certain paragraphs, you shouldn’t miss any important points that don’t involve spoilers. Also since I will be making very frequent close comparisons between this game and the four previous 3D console entries in the series, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, there may well also be spoilers for those games. Since they’re all oldies I hope this won’t matter.
So why all the fuss on my part? You should already know if you’ve read my review of Ocarina of Time 3Dbut the original incarnation of that game on the Nintendo 64 is my (probably permanent) all-time favourite game. After I first played it everything changed for me as a gamer, it became the benchmark by which everything else would be judged, the first game that made me feel transported, like I was the hero, the most immersive interactive experience I’ve ever known, delivered with an unparalleled level of quality in every department. The sense of magic that game created through its story, mood, soundtrack and world, the innumerable awesome moments and concepts and the overall feeling of wonder confirmed that I would anticipate each new console-based 3D game in the series more than anything else gaming will ever offer in the hope of experiencing something comparable. Reliving Ocarina of Time by replaying it again and again and combing its wondrous world for every secret is great but nothing compares to that first mind-blowing playthrough, something you only ever get once with a game. For thirteen years I’ve been waiting for a game that can rival the greatest ever made.
It was only two years after Ocarina’s release before the first pretender arrived and, incredibly, it almost lived up to the colossal expectations. Majora’s Mask was nothing like its predecessor beyond the obvious. With a different setting and vastly altered concept pioneering daring new concepts that defied series conventions and featuring some of the most varied and exhilarating gameplay not to mention the best dungeons in the franchise the game was completely and utterly enthralling in every way. The sad story, tinged with a twisted darkness and the constant threat of annihilation combined with the exceptionally deeply detailed world that provided the series’ best range of rewarding side quests and most fascinating NPCs gave the title a powerful identity and an emotional resonance that outstripped even Ocarina delivering even better graphics and a soundtrack that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the previous game.
That Nintendo didn’t bank on their other hit’s success by producing something similar is testament to just how good the game’s innovations (headed by the repeating three day cycle and transformation mask concepts) and its delivery of everything that goes into making games turned out to be. In fact it was so good that of the two games Majora’s Mask holds up the best and feels the freshest, indeed I often think that it may in fact be the better game. I reason that it isn’t simply because it just didn’t give me what Ocarina gave me – that immaculate sense of wonder that so enamoured me to the series. In truth it never tried to do that. It tried, and completely succeeded to give me an endlessly compelling experience steeped in ingenious design and melancholically bittersweet storytelling. The fact is that despite the miracles Majora’s Mask achieved nothing it does can compare to the joy of discovering Hyrule Field for the first time in Ocarina. The fact that much of the gameplay, the graphics and some of the soundtrack had already debuted in its predecessor and that it can never be the first ever 3D Zelda game also counts as critical points why it isn’t quite as good. This makes it sound like my search for a game to equal or top Ocarina is fruitless but I’ll come to that point later.
With the passing of the Nintendo 64 and the arrival of the Gamecube the prospect for a third 3D Zelda became all the more exciting in light of the improved graphical power the new console offered. The early signs were good judging by the Spaceworld 2000 tech demo that featured an FMV of Link fighting Ganondorf in more realistic visuals than ever but when the new title was actually unveiled for the first time fans of the series, myself included, and the wider gaming world were shocked at the graphical style Nintendo had chosen. It looked like a bizarrely comical 3D cartoon saturated by bright primary colours and featuring a cartoonishly stylised Link that was about as far removed from the more realistic versions seen in the N64 titles as you could imagine. There was widespread fan outrage and I confess I too was unhappy with the new look though in my defence the first footage didn’t look anything as polished as the final game. As gamers grew used to the graphical style and details began to emerge the furore died down and anticipation began to build. In another big departure for the series it was revealed that the new Hyrule was flooded by a great sea and instead of riding Epona, Link would be sailing between islands on his quest. As more gameplay footage appeared it became clear that the new cel-shaded visuals were being given expert treatment and were giving life to a vibrant and joyous universe resplendent with all sorts of imaginative and awe-inspiring touches. The final game denied everybody’s worst fears though a few naysayers remained stubborn.
My initial reaction to the new game, titled The Wind Waker was extremely positive, almost as strong as the previous two games. This was chiefly due to a newfound sense of freedom, adventure and discovery that was missing from Majora’s Mask, and a powerful feeling of wonder and magic ingrained deeply in the story which provided plenty of goosebump-raising moments for series fans. After playing in more depth it became quickly clear that the new game was not up to the standards set by its two N64 predecessors. It’s a little too short and easy, the sailing sections, while initially a breath of fresh air over time become somewhat dull and slow, the necessity of manually changing wind direction grew tiresome, a penultimate act fetch quest was uninspired and rushed and the dungeons didn’t hold a candle to those of Majora’s Mask plus the game didn’t feature anything like the same degree of depth. I score Wind Waker a 9.7 compared to 10.0 for Ocarina of Time and 9.9 for Majora’s Mask. 9.7 is still a phenomenally high score, one that so few games have ever achieved and despite all its flaws the plus points of the game are too strong to ignore. That said the massive bar of expectations set by the earlier titles indicates that in the context of the series Wind Waker was an underachiever.
It was only one year before the next game in the series was unveiled with a popular return to the realistic visuals of the N64 titles. The game which gained the subtitle Twilight Princess remained in development for an excruciatingly long period, suffering huge delays and just as it was starting to near a possible time for release it was announced the game would be held back for another year so that it could be ported for Nintendo’s new Wii console with exclusive motion controls to be released on the same day as the Gamecube version. The horribly drawn-out wait for the game built up anticipation to enormous levels. The darker style and promise of a massive adventure inspired me to predict that this might finally be the game to challenge Ocarina of Time’s supremacy. I have never looked forward to a game more but the final product couldn’t quite live up to those expectations which is not to say I was disappointed, it’s a fantastic game but even while I was playing it and thinking this I couldn’t help but dwell on the numerous faults.
After the wonder of Wind Waker the game seemed to lack a sense of magic that had always seemed essential to the series. The new motion controls were exciting at first but eventually revealed themselves for what they were – a tacked-on afterthought that didn’t hinder the experience at all but sat slightly awkwardly in a game not designed around them. The game featured spectacular debuts for genius new items found in dungeons (namely the Spinner in Arbiter’s Grounds and the Double Clawshots in City in the Sky) and then didn’t reuse them elsewhere. Though considerably longer than Wind Waker it was only marginally more challenging and the last boss was underwhelming. But I think the biggest flaw was that Twilight Princess just didn’t have a USP. Every game in the series has a unique or original gameplay conceit or major defining feature to give it a distinct flavour and mark it out as unique in the series – Ocarina of Time was the first in 3D, Majora’s Mask had its three day cycle and transformation masks and Wind Waker had its stylised graphics and ocean based setting. Twilight Princess had nothing truly original to distinguish itself. You could argue the wolf transformation but, as mentioned, Majora’s Mask got there first with three different character transformations, all of which were better integrated in the gameplay and design. Then there’s the Twilight Realm idea but that’s just the light/dark world mechanic the series has been doing regularly since A Link to the Past. The only truly unique feature is the Wii version’s motion controls but as I said they were added later rather than used as a template for the game’s whole design and cannot be regarded as its defining feature particularly since the Gamecube version didn’t get them.
It took me a couple of repeat playthroughs to fully appreciate what Twilight Princess gets right. It is a massive, epic game full of memorable moments and stunning locations. Though it doesn’t have the same magic of Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker it does possess a melancholy mood of its own that drives an atmospheric story. The soundtrack might not be as consistently brilliant as the three previous games but still features plenty of memorable mood-setting melodies and the dungeons are superb, a clear improvement on Wind Waker. It just feels like a more complete experience than its immediate predecessor and for all its flaws offers a rich, varied and long-lasting experience that shouldn’t be underestimated. Like Wind Waker I consider it worthy of 9.7 but it’s a higher ranking 9.7. The fact remains, however, that for the second time a new game failed to live up to the legacy of Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask. It was at this point that I began to believe I would never find another game to match Ocarina. It’s head start as the first 3D game in the series is too strong to ever be matched. That said Majora’s Mask proved that if you can’t match Ocarina you can still come damn close to it so since Twilight Princess I now hope for nothing more than a game that might one day be the equal of the second N64 title.
And this is where Skyward Sword comes in and if the build-up to Twilight Princess was agonisingly slow the wait for this game was almost intolerable. It was three and a half years between Wind Waker and Twilight Princess compared to nearly five years between Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword. The difference is that we only had one year to wait for Twilight Princess to be unveiled following Wind Waker’s release whereas three and a half years, the entire duration between Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, passed before Skyward Sword was even revealed. For two years in a row in 2008 and 2009 I watched Nintendo’s E3 press conference live expecting a new Zelda announcement and was twice disappointed with only a single piece of admittedly nice concept art appearing during the 2009 show. Finally in 2010 their annual live show opened with the announcement I’d been waiting for and Skyward Sword was finally shown to the world. The debut trailer recapped the four previous games before introducing a new visual style that I hadn’t been expecting. It slightly resembled the cel-shaded visuals of Wind Waker but with the character model for Link of Twilight Princess. The trailer then went off to show off some of his new and returning toys with a glimpse of how the motion controls, now acting as a base for the gameplay design, would work. Shigeru Miyamoto then took to the stage for a live demonstration of the Wii Motion Plus aided controls only to hit on some technical problems. Doubters were pretty quick to indicate problems with the controls but I wasn’t worried by this since the game was not being designed for play on a big stage in front of lots of media types packing interfering tech and because Nintendo has always done right by its baby and had time to fix any existing issues. Nobody who played the game on the show floor reported any repeat problems there. Very little was revealed about the story but it was made known that the game would take place very early in the mythology of the series and that Link would hail from an island floating in the sky called Skyloft. The game would be taking place both there and in the land of Hyrule below.
And so the wait began. My first thoughts were not 100% positive. I hadn’t expected the visual style to return to the bright primary colours of Wind Waker and although the style itself is actually quite different, drawing its inspiration from impressionist painting, I still would have preferred a more realistic design. I gradually warmed to the style but still had my reservations about the technical quality of the graphics which didn’t seem to match that of the Super Mario Galaxy games. The gameplay however looked very exciting and I liked the way the Wii Motion Plus sword combat was being integrated. The signs were very promising and I very much liked the look of the forest themed environment seen in the demo. I began the wait eager to learn more but it would be a long time before anything of any real note appeared. We gradually received more trailers that gave us very little beyond what we’d already seen besides a rousing new theme tune but I was getting itchy for something to get really excited about. That very thing arrived in a quite unexpected way.
Several weeks after the first trailer featuring this new theme tune it was discovered that if you play it backwards the melody becomes series favourite Zelda’s Lullaby. This completely blew my mind. It wasn’t like Nintendo to include secret messages in its promotional media like this and it seemed to hint at more surprises to come. I marvelled at the length of time that it had taken for this Easter Egg to be found and my anticipation for the game had increased. When E3 2011 rolled around Nintendo kicked off their press conference in spectacular style by having a live orchestra play a dramatic and stirring medley of classic tunes form the Zelda series while a video of footage from past games played on the big screen above the stage. It concluded with the orchestra breaking into that awesome new theme tune and brand new footage of Skyward Sword that showed off Link’s floating home town of Skyloft and Zelda herself for the first time.
Most of the footage was taken from an all new trailer that emerged during the expo that proved the most revealing yet, the various elements of which only served to get me more excited. As the weeks and months passed more trailers appeared showing off more of the game along with plenty of uninterrupted gameplay footage. I could go into detail about my reaction to various nuggets revealed in these but I think it’s high time I started to talking about the finished product and so there now follows my review for The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword.
The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword is the first game chronologically in the series, set before the founding of Hyrule as a unified nation. The game opens in similar fashion to Wind Waker with a visually stylised story segment that tells of a dark army launching a brutal assault upon the peaceful inhabitants of the world in an effort to gain control of the Triforce. They are defeated by a goddess who protects the surviving humans by sending them to live on an outcrop of rock which she raises into the sky above the clouds.
The game itself begins centuries later in the time of the first incarnation of Link who lives among the descendants of the human survivors of the war on the floating island town of Skyloft, the same haven created by the goddess. In this game Link is a student at Skyloft’s Knight Academy along with his childhood friend and tentative love interest Zelda, the daughter of Headmaster Gaepora. For the first time in the series Zelda is not royalty, just a regular girl among the Skyloft residents. The Knights of Skyloft that Link is training to join are a chivalric order dedicated to protecting the people of the town and rescuing any who happen to fall over the edge of the island by riding their Loftwings, giant birds with whom the people of Skyloft possess a special bond. As students of the Knight Academy Link and Zelda have their own Loftwings, Link’s sporting striking crimson plumage, a cause of envy among some of his fellow students.
Nintendo were keen to indicate that part of the plot of the game will feel like a high school drama and the first couple of hours do play out like that. We begin in traditional fashion with Link asleep in bed, this time having a nightmare about a terrifying monster. Link wakes on the day of the important Wing Ceremony, a tradition designed to find an academy student worthy of knighthood that tests their ability as Loftwing riders. Link is one of four students competing for the honour, his opponents are Groose and his two lackeys, a trio of school bullies who pick on Link for having the coolest Loftwing and for his closeness to Zelda with whom Groose is clearly infatuated. The event in question acts as a tutorial for controlling your Loftwing, something you’ll be doing a lot during the game. Under the guidance of the player Link triumphs and returns to Skyloft where he and Zelda celebrate his success by essentially going on a date taking a flight on their Loftwings together. The romantic mood is interrupted when a mystery whirlwind strikes and sends Zelda plummeting to earth with Link unable to save her. He returns to Skyloft and vows to find her. That night he is woken to discover a mysterious and magical figure beckoning him to follow. She leads him to Skyloft’s Statue of the Goddess and through a hidden entrance in the base of the structure. The being is Fi, a messenger of the goddess who has been sent to aid Link in his quest. She presents him with the sacred Goddess Sword and the two set out in search of Zelda.
The journey takes you to three large and distinctly themed regions of the world below the clouds that can only be accessed by piloting your Loftwing to a suitable gap in the cloudbank (clearly signposted by a huge column of colourful light) and skydiving into the unknown. The paths to new regions open up as you gradually complete the Stone Tablet which depicts a map of the world and the zones themselves open up with new areas to explore with each revisit. The journey inevitably directs you towards the main events of every game in the long-running series, the dungeons, which must be conquered one by one as the story unfolds.
It’s a while before the game presents any antagonist beyond some nightmare sequences but the villain eventually shows up in the form of the Demon Lord Ghirahim, a flamboyant and unsettlingly androgynous figure responsible for the tornado that plucked Zelda from the skies whose designs require the young lady for no good purpose. When our villain does finally put in an appearance it is a towering introduction, he is a character to give the series new life and the writing, which, incidentally, is the best in the series, really comes into its own whenever he speaks. Your first encounter with this amoral, sadistic, sleazy, creepy freakshow will leave you in no doubt of the violence of his nature and his outward depravity. There are moments when his intimidation of Link borders on sexual harassment. You’ll have no trouble wanting to put him down and that is something Zelda games have never really had. Ganon is a great antagonist, no doubt, but he is simple evil described by some archetypal elements, the evil laugh, the dark colour palette of his visual design. It’s also been some time since he did anything surprising. The best villain in the series is Majora’s Mask, a feelingless, all-consuming paragon of pure evil that visits calamity on everyone from pirates to small girls and betrothed couples who ultimately desires catastrophic annihilation of all life rather than anything as merciful as world conquest. Lord Ghirahim does not eclipse that but he comes a respectable second and does it with personality but he is not the end of the villainy in this game.
As for other characters I can’t say this is my absolute favourite Link although, as a victim of bullying he is easy to sympathise with. He’s a character defined by his lack of definition so finding differences between him and past (or future) versions is difficult. Link’s deep voice in Twilight Princess gave him a toughness that I liked a lot and the underdog of Ocarina of Time is perhaps definitive while the vibrancy of the young Wind Waker incumbent spoke for himself (literally, he remains the only Link to actually speak). There’s nothing wrong with this original Link other than the fact he wears trousers instead of tights but perhaps the best part of him is Zelda.
The non-princess Zelda is arguably the best version we’ve had to date, passionate, spirited and full of personality, a reinvigoration of the character made complete by her brilliantly revamped design which harks back to concept art for A Link to the Past. She’s an adorable-looking gal but not the type to swoon at the first sign of trouble. She delivers far more than the damsel-in-distress bit, something she’s been doing ever since she helped you take down Ganondorf in Wind Waker. Her relationship with Link, a close friendship with heavily-implied romantic feelings all over it, provides our hero with the motivation that has driven his heroics since the eighties and does so more convincingly than ever. You’ll really want to save her and that’s great.
Then there is Fi, the character occupying the role previously fulfilled by Navi, Tatl, the King of Red Lions and Midna in the four previous games, and by Ezlo, Ciela and Zelda herself on handhelds. She’s a very interesting character, the spirit of the Goddess Sword, close in appearance to the Queen of the Fairies in Wind Waker but she is more like a robot than a fairy, a creature of cold, hard logic who doesn’t fully understand such trivial things as human emotions nor hesitates to lay down the odds of Link’s survival in any situation. She’s a helpful companion you can summon for advice or information about your surroundings by pressing down on the D-Pad. When targeting an enemy you can also call on her to tell you about said foe, an excellent feature not seen since Majora’s Mask that makes a very welcome return. Fi is a fun and well-conceived companion character and by the end of the game you’ll care about her but she’s not the equal of Midna, who remains the best developed such character but the game is clearly better for her presence.
But what would one of these games be without its wider cast of NPCs? Here the colourful cast of well-conceived and likeable extra characters can mostly be found in Skyloft where they will sell you much needed items, send you on side-quests and give the world some diversity and life. They’re a great bunch, the best since Majora’s Mask, the gold standard for the series in this area, and they exude a good amount of depth individually and in their relationships and societies. Standouts include Peatrice, the item check girl, bored with her job and lonely, who mistakes Link’s frequent visits for affection and clearly has on more and more makeup every time you deal with her. She’s a heart-breaking and amusing creation. Then there’s figures like Headmaster Gaepora who bears a clear resemblance to almost-namesake Kaepora Gaebora, the mentor-like owl character who recurs in the series. Best among them is Groose, the comical bully who, far from being the straightforward jerk he first seems, is actually given a satisfying arc and claims a not-insignificant place in the story.
While the story unfolds in some unexpected ways the overall feel and pacing of the plot is very familiar, shunning frequent story twists and gear changes for more leisurely progression. Three dungeons might go by between significant developments. This is perhaps a polite way of calling the story slow but although Zelda games have always been very driven by story, it has always primarily served to give context to the world you are invited to explore and the many tasks you are requested fulfil within it. This is the way it has always been in Zelda games and while more frequent shifts in focus and a deeper, more complex narrative might have been nice the formula the series continually reiterates retains a classic merit when many games these days and for years past have allowed lengthy story sequences to swallow up actual gameplay segments.
Much of what makes the Zelda experience shine is in its atmosphere and this is one area where Skyward Sword doesn’t quite excel like its predecessors. There are a number of reasons for this that are connected to other aspects of the game besides the story but I will say that this is one area that might not matter to Skyward Sword that much. It doesn’t have the mystery and irresistible sense of fantasy of Ocarina of Time or the melancholy gloom of Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess nor even the spirit of adventure and history of Wind Waker. What it does achieve is a sense of a world in its infancy, yet to be properly settled, at once raw and innocent, and the effect vaguely recalls Link’s Awakening which is a good thing but ultimately the immersion generated by atmosphere is not that strong. There are some isolated exceptions defined by specific locations and the music that achieve a moodier effect but they don’t add up to what previous games achieved.
What we do get is the best and most modern presentation of any story in the series, embracing a cinematic scope in cut scenes without resorting to FMV that the series has always leaned towards, now achieving a highpoint. It does that despite the continuing lack of proper voice acting, the game featuring instead the usual array of grunts and cries that give you an idea of voice. It’s no problematic omission, voice acting wouldn’t quite fit the Zelda series somehow and there’s an innate likeability in the old-school way Nintendo handles the necessary text boxes and whatnot. Perhaps someday we’ll see (or rather hear) full voice acting in a Zelda game, knowing Nintendo I can imagine they could find a way to make it fit but there’s no urgent rush. Most aspects of the visual presentation are handled impeccably with only some badly judged and bewildering lip-syncing letting things down (particularly a few occasions in which a statue of the goddess sings, which, to be perfectly frank, are excruciatingly awful) but the delivery of the game and the story it tells ably aids immersion and develops the already rich mythology of the games to a new level.
That is the critical point here. The story has its fair share of exciting moments but none of the surprises or moments of gravity in Ocarina of Time or Wind Waker and nothing like the depth of Majora’s Mask but it does offer something massively significant, an origin story for the series as a whole and as such gives context to many vital elements therein. This is the first Link, the first Zelda, and the game is set in Hyrule before there even was a Hyrule. One example, Link’s iconic green tunic that the series has previously contextualised as a mark of identity for the forever reincarnating hero is revealed to have originated as the uniform for the Knights of Skyloft, green happening to be the chosen colour for the year of Link’s graduation. Other even more important things are given similar background stories, a treat the game repeats right until the final curtain and this is what will give fans the most pleasure from the story.
And what of the world itself? The giant playground you explore may be one of the most important parts of the game. In this case Nintendo have striven to create something fresh and they’ve done that but they’ve borrowed heavily from the world structures of two previous games to do it. Skyloft plays the same role in this game world that Clock Town did in Termina, acting as a central hub base you continually return to after every significant mission to take stock, refill your depleted arms, engage in side-quests and launch your next campaign into the wild world. In Majora’s Mask, Clock Town was surrounded by four themed regions (swamp, mountain, ocean, canyon) where everything else important happened and there’s a clear similarity to that here only this time those regions number three (forest, mountain, desert).
The rest of the world is the sky and this is where the resemblance to Wind Waker comes in. That game’s Great Sea was an excitingly unrestricted and mostly empty frontier and so is the sky, the difference being that you traverse it by wing rather than sail. The puzzling thing is that while you’re free to explore at your leisure there’s very little of interest to discover. When footage first emerged of the sky I tweeted about my excitement at how much this area of the game was starting to resemble Skies of Arcadia and while it does that on a visual level the handful of tiny islands and the rather paltry offering of things to discover on them pale by comparison to that game’s vast and varied map. The sad truth is that once you get over the novelty of flying your red bird around the space there’s almost nothing to do in it. Wind Waker was criticised, not wrongly, for the emptiness of its Great Sea but, despite being smaller, Skyward Sword’s sky is worse. The only difference is that you can alter your altitude, which is necessary to access higher flying islands but other than that amounts to nothing. As the game progresses returning to the sky becomes a repetitive chore but the game makes up for it slightly by including warp gates, hollow rocks that give you a massive and lengthy speed boost if you fly through them, mercifully reducing flight time.
The world below the clouds is more important and the decision to present it as three distinct and unconnected zones is an odd one. Each area is made up of several environments not all of which will be accessible the first time you visit (a bit of the old item-based exploration restriction, Metroid style makes this possible). They’ve been designed to soften the blow of the always necessary back-tracking. Instead of large, organic areas, the environments are split into innumerable pockets with many interlinking paths. On your first visit you’ll be forced to take the long way round as you explore deeper, opening up shortcuts as you go to make retracing your steps quicker. It’s intelligent and thoughtful design but there’s a problem with it. The overworld is never less than engaging and is filled with absorbing challenges to get stuck into but the overlapping, layered design leaves no room for a sense of place. The reason Ocarina of Time’s Hyrule has gone down in history as one of the great game worlds is because it feels believable, like a real place. This Hyrule-before-the-fact, though not without its merits, does not. It feels instead like a video game world designed entirely to make the most of the gameplay and not to immerse the player. This is one way the game fails to capture a truly memorable atmosphere. On top of this it doesn’t feel like the world is quite so full of secrets as in previous games which do a better job of subtly hiding parts of itself away. One other side-effect of this structure is that it means the game doesn’t feel all that epic.
Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess all felt epic (in the traditional sense, not as a brainless synonym for ‘awesome’) because they built their quests around a continuous journey that scarcely saw you returning home. You were sent out into the world to explore and the games never let your feet touch ground. This is the structure of an epic story. Majora’s Mask, which shares the head-out-into-the-world-then-return-to-base structure of Skyward Sword does not feel epic because its adventure is somewhat more episodic rather than one continuous journey. It didn’t matter because it replaced the epic scope with outstanding depth but Skyward Sword doesn’t have the same aspirations as Majora’s Mask in its structure or atmosphere. It’s not a problem with the new game as such, just one area where it lacks.
Several recurring locales feature, such as Faron Woods, while others appear under unfamiliar names that the early placement in the timeline explains. Lake Hylia is Lake Floria here, while Death Mountain is known as Eldin Volcano, the inference perhaps being that the more familiar monikers for these places weren’t coined until after the unification of Hyrule as a country. The separation of the three regions and the use of the sky as the frontier for traversal has apparently made necessary the omission of Hyrule Field and legitimate new concepts or not, Hyrule without Hyrule Field isn’t as good. Another notable thing the world lacks is proper towns and settlements besides Skyloft. In a way this helps create a sense of Hyrule as an unsettled wilderness before its unification so in that context it makes sense but it means you have to constantly return to Skyloft to do your shopping which can be a pain. Also the various fantastical races don’t get the same sense of community. Series favourites Gorons make a return in a style reminiscent of their involvement in Wind Waker. Few and far between, you might meet a lone travelling Goron on your adventure who will help out or have something interesting to talk about but they have no proper base. There are some new creatures to get to know too. Instead of Zoras the aquatic race is the haughty Parella tribe which are a cross between jellyfish and octopuses. Eldin Volcano is home to the Mogma, a community of gangly-armed mole-like treasure-hunters and elsewhere you’ll encounter groups of amusing ancient robots but the standout addition to the Hyrule bestiary is the Kikwi tribe, cute, furry, nervous forest-dwellers you’ll quickly care about. None of these races are given a communal home as well-developed as Goron City, Zora’s Domain or the Deku Palace. Again, it’s not really an issue as such, it’s just not what I want from an immersive game world.
However, credit where credit’s due, what the design of the overworld sets out to achieve it achieves. The environments are filled with nooks and crannies, locations of interest and obstacles are handled in ways that make you think in all the right ways. More than this, though, is the wealth of variety in what you are tasked with doing as you run around. Now we’re getting to one of Skyward Sword’s key strengths. Nintendo stated before launch that the game would blur the lines between dungeon and overworld, offering deeper and more varied objectives to fulfil in the field. I’m not sure I quite buy this supposed new development of the overworld as the reinvention of the Zelda formula it’s being billed as. Having interesting, time-consuming and varied tasks to do outside of dungeons is wonderful and gives a tremendous boost to the play time and overall value of the game but is it an entirely new philosophy for the series? May I direct your attention, once again, to exhibit A, Majora’s Mask, a game that made up for having half as many dungeons as Ocarina of Time by stuffing its overworld with depth and laying long roads leading to those dungeons. If you want an indicator of this consider all you need to do to get to Ocarina of Time’s Fire Temple after leaving Forest Temple (get a Goron Tunic from your namesake Goron, the work of but a moment) then consider the elaborate saga of events leading up to Majora’s Mask’s Stone Tower Temple, a journey that takes in two minor dungeons, not to mention the acquisition of the Song of Storms, the Garo’s Mask and the Gibdo Mask. I’m not knocking Skyward Sword’s emphasis on its overworld, it’s one of the best things about the game, I’m just pointing out that it’s not entirely new for the series. The depth it affords the journey is certainly welcome.
A superb example is the recurring Silent Realm challenges, this game’s take on the light/dark world mechanic, a concept that borrows openly from previous games in the series but achieves brilliance. At a number of points as you progress you will have to enter the Silent Realm, a shadowy and sinister alternate dimension in which you must gather tears of the goddesses to prove your worth. These challenges appear identical to similar segments in Twilight Princess, even using the same design for a temporary item used to store said tears. The difference here (other than the fact that you don’t play through these sections in wolf form and that the tears are in plain sight rather than concealed by dark insects) is that you have to complete the task whilst being hunted by Guardians. The concept of these formidable aggressors was first introduced in the shape of the Phantoms in Phantom Hourglass, invincible enemies that gave the infamous Temple of the Ocean King a strong stealth flavour. As in that game you cannot defeat these enemies, not least because to enter the Silent Realm you must plant your sword in the ground, so losing it. Likewise a single strike from a Guardian will defeat you forcing you to start all over again. Upon leaving the safe zone at the entrance the Guardians will start hunting you until you gain your first tear at which point the realm will fall peaceful for ninety seconds, the Guardians will reset to their original positions, statuesque and you will be free to continue your search. With each tear acquired the timer returns to ninety seconds but will drop to zero if you stray into certain strategically positioned bodies of strange red water or wander into the searchlight of an active sentry. Being hunted by Guardians is probably the most terrifying experience the series has ever provided, an effect achieved by the oppressive visual presentation of the Silent Realm and particularly the thumping, soul-crushing musical cue. There is nothing more tense than desperately searching for the last elusive tear with a heavily armed Phantom stalking behind you out of shot. It’s awesome stuff.
It doesn’t end there. Revisiting an old area you will often find it transformed, overrun by tougher enemies or ready to give you a surprise new scenario to delay you from achieving your next main objective. One standout sequence sees you robbed of all your equipment and it’s no quick sprint to reclaim it all either. The variety on offer here is absolutely fantastic but it hides a potentially major flaw. So much of what you do boils down to fetch quests (such as gathering those tears of light in the Silent Realm), which can be a problem for many. The game finds itself in the unique situation where it gives you variety but is repetitive about it. In its defence it does its upmost to build interesting scenarios around the fetch quests but it would have been nice to have some more straight-up mini-games all the same. The best scenario, for which the game cannot be faulted, is introduced in Lanayru Desert. Not wanting to spoil anything I won’t say anything about this concept except that it is used repeatedly throughout the game both in the overworld and in dungeons, finding plenty of variety in itself. This is a gameplay device that sits high as one of the cleverest and well-used puzzle-foundations in the series. If all that sounds a bit cryptic believe me, you’ll know what I’m talking about when you come to it.
When the Wii, and more specifically, the Wii Remote, was first unveiled the first thing many people imagined the motion controller standing in for was a sword. Sword plus Nintendo equals Zelda. The potential was lost on no-one and the prospect of a new Zelda game that saw you controlling Link’s sword swings by performing the action with your own body was very tantalising and the promise of more strategic and immersive swordplay this new innovation appeared to make possible was hard to resist. It looked with Twilight Princess like we’d be getting that on day one but, as I mentioned earlier, the tacked-on motion controls in the Wii version of that game achieved nothing that couldn’t have been done with a button press. The fact is that something as complex as motion-controlled swordplay requires the game to be designed around the concept which Twilight Princess wasn’t. In the meantime Nintendo has addressed the problem of the slight delay the gesture-based interface suffers in registering on screen with its Wii Motion Plus add-on and all new Wii Remote Plus controller which takes centre-stage here as necessary to play. This is the big innovation in the gameplay, the great USP that Twilight Princess lacked and the major draw for Skyward Sword. With no option for traditional button-based controls the execution and integration of this new feature could make or break the game.
They make it. The new swordplay is quite fantastic, a perfectly realised pillar that supports the entire gameplay. A flick of the remote draws the sword and from there it tracks the position of the remote with visible fidelity. You can adjust the position and angle of the sword without actually swinging it, a quirk the game uses for some clever puzzles. In combat a wave of the remote makes Link swing his sword in the same direction at exactly the same angle, likewise if you thrust forwards Link performs a stab. The strength of your swing doesn’t really make a difference. In fact when the game registers a swing it triggers a predetermined animation described by the angle of your input. However the execution of it means it takes a trained eye to actually notice this which means that the swordplay really feels like it’s all you and it’s absolutely exhilarating, this game makes you feel empowered by your weapon like the series has never done before.
The brilliant execution of the mechanics of the swordplay are only half of it though and the game deals with the other half, the integration, in similarly superb fashion. This is where the enemy design and behavioural AI comes in. Many of the baddies in this game come at you bearing their own weapons which they use to defend as well as attack. Bokoblins, for example, square off against you blocking high, low, or from either side, switching all the time and you must attack by swinging from an angle that will not see your blow shielded. More dangerous enemies block with more weapons, thereby limiting the angle of a successful swing more. This makes the combat considerably more strategic and demands far more concentration where before fights could often be momentary distractions. Other enemies require you to attack in even more inventive ways, turning encounters into action-based puzzles. The game also introduces a new technique called the Skyward Strike. By raising the remote and conversely the sword skywards you will charge it up. Swing the remote to unleash the Skyward Strike, a projectile attack that should hit any enemy within range you are Z-Targeting. It’s essentially the return of the beam attacks that have featured in the 2-D games since the series’ inception appearing for the second time in a 3-D outing (the first was, surprise surprise, Majora’s Mask in which you could unleash a sword-beam as Fierce Deity Link) and is made good use of throughout Skyward Sword.
As brilliant as the swordplay is it still isn’t quite what I had in mind when I first imagined motion-based sword fighting on the Wii. I pictured a game in which every tiny movement of your hand would reflect on screen in a way that would allow you to wield total control over your weapon with enemies capable of parries and thrusts equal to your own and offering a challenge that would require the agility and guile of a real swordsman. Having now played Skyward Sword, which does not provide this I conclude that what I have described would be almost impossible to program and could lead to all sorts of problems, particularly with the difficulty level. As it is what we have more than makes up for the shortcomings of Twilight Princess and the gameplay is infinitely engaging. I admit that a part of me yearns for for the old-school simplicity of buttons but I can’t stand in the way of progress and Eiji Auonuma has indicated that future games in the series will continue to use the new method of control. Good.
As iconic as Link’s sword is it’s difficult to imagine him without a shield too and the shield controls have been shaken up though it is still mapped to the nunchuck. To raise your shield you must shake the nunchuck and thrust it forwards to perform a shield bash which can stun foes. To be honest having to shake the nunchuck to assume a defensive position is not that natural where previously in Twilight Princess all you had to do was target your enemy. The timing for shield bashes is quite strict which actually makes the technique quite a thrill to pull off. In addition to this the various shields you defend yourself with throughout the game will have a limited durability. Every time you defend a blow a meter will decrease and your shield will break if it empties. It is possible to get your shield fixed at the Bazaar and there are various ways to replenish a depleted Durability Meter. It’s worth noting that Shield Bashes won’t see the gauge reduced. This is a nice development and one more way in which the game becomes more strategic. Having said that I found myself using Link’s shield less than in previous games but that’s just me, other people might find differently. If there is an issue with the defensive gameplay it’s not anything that spoils the overall experience.
It’s not just the swordplay that has been enhanced by Wii Motion Plus, Link’s entire arsenal also makes use of the peripheral. I’m now going to give the lowdown on all of them, one by one. If you consider learning about Link’s new toys to be a spoiler skip this paragraph as well as the four that follow. The fact is every one of these weapons has been shown in pre-release gameplay footage so I don’t how much of what I’m going to say is spoiler anyway. First up the old classics. Bombs play the same role they always have, as weapons and a means to blast your way through obstacles. The way you use them has changed a little. When you take one out you can place it down by pressing A or throw it by first raising the Wii Remote up at which point a trajectory indicator will appear. By affecting a throwing motion Link will throw the bomb to where the guide shows. Alternatively you can lower the Wii Remote and bowl the explosive, guided by another visual cue, a method that allows you to precisely propel bombs into small gaps. These are thoughtful enhancements but they offer no great advantage over the old method.
Another Zelda staple the bow also features with enhancements. The equivalent in Twilight Princess made rather good use of the Wii Remote’s pointer but this new game eschews the feature completely (I’ll get to that in a minute). Instead you aim the bow with gestures and can fire in two different ways. Either you can press A, holding to zoom the camera in slightly and increase the power of your shot, or you can employ a method similar to Wii Sports Resort’s archery game by bringing the nunchuck into play and miming the act of drawing back a bowstring. This approach increases the speed of the zoom and the build-up of strength in your shot, which is advantageous in a heated situation. It’s nice to have the choice and the accuracy the motion controls give you is unprecedented.
Unusually Skyward Sword does not feature any boomerang, an item that has been a mainstay of the series since the beginning and has only been absent once before (in Zelda II). All the same a handful of classic inventory items make a return, such as the Slingshot, which acts as a weak projectile weapon that does until you can get your hands on the bow. It’s aimed the same way as the bow and fired with A but does nothing more than usual (at least to begin with, details to follow). The Whip, which debuted in Spirit Tracks makes an appearance and is swung with a flick of the Wii Remote, the direction of your swing describing the trajectory of the weapon. You can use it to stun enemies or to latch on to overhead posts and whatnot to swing over gaps Indiana Jones style, and also to manipulate objects you encounter for a spot of puzzle solving. It’s fun to use and, like the sword, the motion controls are very empowering.
Then there’s the Bug Net, an item not seen since A Link to the Past and it serves a similar purpose here. Like in Twilight Princess the world is full of various bugs but you need a tool to catch them this time. Wii Motion Plus is necessary to control the net which requires precision for the tricky task of snagging the evasive insects and brings some challenge and skill to an otherwise mundane task. One of the best items to feature in Twilight Princess was the Double Clawshots, returning here as the Clawshots. Like before they can be used to latch onto appropriate attachment points and pull you towards them in the age-old tradition of the Hookshot. By using both you can cling to one such point while aiming at another (using the same method as the Bow and Slingshot) allowing you to traverse huge chasms and negotiate your way around complex rooms without ever letting your feet touch ground. As before it’s great fun and although the Clawshots are required throughout the game following your acquisition of them it never quite feels like they’re made as showboating use of as they were in City in the Sky in Twilight Princess. All the same, a very welcome inclusion.
Skyward Sword also features an item that resembles the Gust Jar from Minish Cap, here called the Gust Bellows. This weapon expels a continuous gust of wind that you can use to bamboozle enemies, clear rooms of dust and sand and solve puzzles. It’s a decent inclusion that is made imaginative use of, particularly inside dungeons but it doesn’t set the world alight. The only main weapon that can be called completely new is the Beetle, a flying bug-like contraption you control directly in similar fashion to the seagulls that you could command after tempting them with a Hyoi Pear in Wind Waker. You tilt the Wii Remote to steer the Beetle, using its pincers to cut through ropes and other objects in need of severing, or you can strike switches, pick up Rupees and explore narrow tunnels and high places Link cannot otherwise access but it will not fly indefinitely, operating on a timer. It’s an excellent invention for the series, not useful offensively but is at the centre of some great puzzles. More than this it is extremely useful as a tool for exploration allowing you to scout ahead or spy on areas you can’t yet access.
That does it for the main weapons to grace your arsenal. The fact that they’ve all been designed for motion controls does limit the quantity rather like the touch screen interface restricted the number of weapons Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks could include. It’s not a major problem, far from it but I do miss the days of A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time when Link’s inventory was bigger. There are a number of other tools that don’t make use of the motion controls such as the Digging Mitts, which resemble Minish Cap’s Mole Mitts and are used to dig in distinctive patches of earth. Then there’s the Sailcloth which is needed to act like a parachute after throwing yourself from the back of your Loftwing. As usual you will be able to hoard a collection of bottles in which you can keep a wide variety of potions and other beneficial things such as life-saving fairies. There are more things than this but I’ll leave you to discover them for yourself.
The last really important item is your instrument, the Goddess’s Harp, which bears a resemblance to the harp that Sheik played in Ocarina of Time. The Goddess’s Harp’s integration into the gameplay is less like that of the instruments in Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker in which you learned different songs and played them manually as circumstances demanded and closer to the howling concept from Twilight Princess. Like in that game playing your harp is only necessary to progress in a handful of situations although you can take it out (it’s permanently mapped to the up direction on the D-Pad) and start strumming but there are few reasons to ever do this. Playing the Harp requires you to hold the A button and wave the Remote from side to side in a vague strumming motion, the speed of your swing affecting the tempo of the music. There’s no refinement to it and no licence for creativity. A circle of light grows and shrinks around you to guide the tempo but it’s still tricky to get the hang of and the whole concept ultimately falls flat but it doesn’t break anything.
One way in which Skyward Sword does shake things up for the series is in its interface. As I mentioned earlier the game does away with pointer controls. There’s still an on-screen pointer used for the menus but you move it by angling the Wii Remote in the desired direction instead of pointing at the screen. Since most Wii games, as well as the Wii Menu use the pointer controls this new setup takes some getting used to but it eventually clicks and becomes intuitive requiring less precision and not such a steady hand. These controls apply to the aiming of weapons such as the Bow and the Slingshot and work very well in that sense too. It’s a smart idea, well placed.
Nintendo have also streamlined the menu interface for item selection. Gone are the days of having to pause the game to swap out your weapons. Instead you can press and hold B to bring up a wheel menu on which the eight main weapons described above will be located, angle the pointer over the desired choice and release B to equip the weapon, all in real time without pausing the game. Again this takes getting used to but eventually muscle memory will guide you to the right menu spot for your desired choice. With the weapon equipped you can use it with A and tap B to put it away where it will remain in reserve. A tap of B will bring it out again, you will have to hold B to open the menu and make a different selection. Happily this innovation has fixed one of the last remaining criticisms of the Zelda gameplay (having to pause the game to swap weapons) but it’s worth noting that those used to Twilight Princess’s method of item selection might find the button inputs confusing for a while at first as it differs from that game but it’s not a big problem. There’s a separate menu wheel for your Adventure Bag in which you store items such as bottles and a number of automatic power-ups and can be accessed with the minus button. Taking potions in real time is another welcome improvement. Finally a third menu wheel is mapped to the C button on the nunchuck and is connected to your new dowsing ability.
Dowsing is an all new ability designed to aid you with searching for the various treasure hunting you’ll be doing in the game and as such makes the fetch quests that bit more manageable. A tap of C puts you into the usual first person mode for looking around but by holding it to bring up the menu wheel and selecting something to dowse for you will go into dowsing mode, also in the first person. In this mode Link will hold out his sword in front of himself with you guiding the sword with the Wii Remote. Visual and audio cues will tell you when you are pointing the sword in the right direction. You can move around in this view while you track down your target. Dowsing has proven controversial among purists who claim that it’s cheating, removing the challenge of treasure hunting which is a fair comment but I don’t think it ruins anything. Since the game is so reliant on fetch quests dowsing goes a long way to keeping that from becoming tiresome. The objects you can dowse for vary from Zelda herself when searching for her as part of the main quest to common treasures and items including things like recovery hearts, making the ability useful in a variety of situations.
One new thing that definitely enriches the experience is the stamina meter, something I was sceptical about at first. By holding A during normal play Link will start to sprint and a green circular meter will start to empty. If it runs out completely Link will stop running, exhausted and you will be unable to do anything for a few seconds while he gets his breath back. This is an evolution of the Pegasus Boots and Bunny Hood from previous games that injects an extra layer of strategy into proceedings, particularly in the Silent Realm and combat situations. The inclusion of the stamina meter makes this Link the most athletic to date and whilst sprinting he will automatically run up walls a little way and grab for higher ledges than ever before. The meter also comes into play when climbing forcing you to think ahead in those situations. There are pickups available that replenish your meter located throughout the world particularly in locations where the stamina meter is likely to come into play. A similar air meter pops up whilst swimming underwater. Both add a welcome extra layer of strategy to the game without ever detracting from anything.
Flight is an important and necessary part of the game, replacing horse-riding as the premier mode of transportation across the world with mixed results. To take to the wing you must sprint and leap off the edge of Skyloft to begin skydiving and tap a button to call your Loftwing who will swoop in to catch you. To control the bird you angle the Wii Remote to steer left and right or dive. To gain altitude you must swing the Remote downwards to flap, which is intuitive enough. You can also perform a charge attack by pressing A. Flying is a lot of fun at first but it’s very difficult to gain any sort of precision from the extremely sensitive controls which can eventually become wearing. To return to terra firma is just another button press away and you will need to employ your Sailcloth to prevent a painful landing. To return to the sky from the land below the clouds you must find a Bird Statue which can conjure a powerful upward gust of wind that catches in your Sailcloth and propels you upwards to where you Loftwing will be waiting for you. Although fresh the flight sequences don’t amount to an improvement over riding Epona. It’s also harder to form an emotional connection with your Loftwing partly because birds just aren’t as loveable as horses and partly because no name for it is ever mentioned which makes a difference. It’s also worth noting at this point that Bird Statues serve a dual purpose as save points and are reminiscent of Majora’s Mask’s Owl Statues in this way. Not being able to save whenever you want might have been a problem but the Bird Statues are numerous enough that this isn’t the case.
There are some other little things worth noting. The day/night cycle doesn’t really apply any more. You can manually change day to night or vice versa by finding any bed and taking a snooze, choosing to sleep either until morning or nightfall, doing so will also heal you. You can only find a bed in Skyloft and on one other floating island and you can’t go flying at night which means you will never see any of the world below the clouds after dark. I don’t know why Nintendo have done this, the natural day/night cycle was one of the innovations of Ocarina of Time that was praised and removing it limits the game’s immersion.
Whenever you return to one of the three main earthbound areas you can choose any Bird Statue you’ve discovered to make landing at (as long as it’s not inside a dungeon), which is great but all the good steps the game takes to eliminate tiresome backtracking makes it all the stranger that there’s no way to instantly warp between locations like in most previous games. There’s also no magic meter again which many won’t find a major issue but I was disappointed by its omission from Twilight Princess as I think having certain abilities restricted by possessing limited magic power needed to use them always added another layer of strategy to the game and I’m sorry it doesn’t reappear.
Part of the vibrancy and richness of the Zelda universe comes from its optional extra content, aka side quests. These additional missions which range from quick little errands to some pretty in-depth sub-stories are what bring diversity to the structure of play and create a sense of discovery in the game world. The Zelda game with the best side quest content is, you’ve guessed it, Majora’s Mask, which needed to nail this aspect of its design to account for the small number of dungeons it offered. The game’s side quests made great use of its three-day cycle concept and the schedules of its NPCs which you could keep track of through the Bomber’s Notebook which acted as a log to organise all your jobs. The structure of the game allowed for a greater scope in the side quests because fewer dungeons meant fewer Heart Containers as reward for finishing them which meant many more Heart Pieces, common rewards for completing side quests in the series, needed to be hidden away in Termina. Then there were the many masks in the game which were involved both as rewards and as tools for completing the numerous tasks. Some such missions were quite elaborate in design and length and gave several gifts as you went, such as the exciting sequence of events that took place in Romani Ranch or the hugely fulfilling quest to reunite the estranged lovers Anju and Kafei, my favourite side quest in any game. One way in which Skyward Sword could elevate itself above other games in the series would be by applying a similar philosophy of involving and complex optional missions.
Although Skyward Sword never comes close to Majora’s Mask in this regard it does have a decent amount of extras to explore along the main quest. One recurring idea is the Goddess Cubes which are literally grey cubes located throughout the world below the clouds. You must hit these Goddess Cubes with a Skyward Strike to send them shooting up into the air. Later when you return to the sky you will be able to see treasure chests marked on your map for each cube you have activated. These chests can only be opened after you have found its corresponding Goddess Cube and invariably contain the usual goodies. It’s not the most in-depth idea but it works. Better is the search for Gratitude Crystals which work in a similar way Ocarina of Time’s addictive Gold Skulltula hunt. There is a character in the game who seeks these Gratitude Crystals which can be obtained either by finding them hidden in the world or by helping NPCs. You can gain useful presents for passing frequent milestones in your Gratitude Crystal count. It’s a good concept I look forward to exploring in more detail the next time I play the game.
Among the traditional rewards given for completing side quests are expansions for Link’s resources such as his wallet, quiver and bomb bag. These have always made for satisfying and empowering moments in previous games but Skyward Sword does things a bit differently. Basically all of the expansions you might need can be bought either from Skyloft’s well-equipped Bazaar or from Beedle’s Airshop, also in Skyloft. This shift is a double-edged sword, on the one hand it gives you something worthwhile to spend your rupees on which the series has been crying out for for years but on the other it takes away the necessity to attach an interesting side quest to such acquisitions. It’s not as fun to upgrade the capacity of your quiver by simply buying another pocket for it than it is to succeed in a test of archery. It’s a shame because this is an example of where the game robs from itself to give itself a gift.
This brings me to the wider upgrade system, a completely new feature to the series and a significant one. If you go to see Gondo in Skyloft’s Bazaar he will offer to upgrade most of your weapons in exchange for some rupees and the materials necessary to do the job (get to that in a sec). These upgrades include things like extra durability for your shield, a larger size for your Bug Net or the Scattershot, a better Slingshot that fires several projectiles at once over a wider area. Getting these upgrades are quite compulsive pursuits and they provide another welcome outlet for spending money but none of them are necessary to complete the game. While this means you’re not forced to divert your attention from the main quest it also means that many of the upgrades are more worthwhile than others. To be able to upgrade your things you must gather treasure from around the world to use as materials. These treasures act rather like the items you kept in your Spoils Bag in Wind Waker and can be found all over the place, inside treasure chests, dropped by monsters and in other contextual situations. Some treasures are commonly found in the same way, Jelly Blobs for example are typically dropped by Chu Chus. It’s a good and engaging system but it would have been nice for all this gear to be useful for something more than weapons upgrades. In a welcome touch you can sell any unwanted treasure to a specific NPC.
Then there’s your bug collection. Catching bugs in Twilight Princess was one of the main continuous side quests but were only useful to sell to Princess Agitha for huge amounts of useless rupees. While you can still sell any bugs you don’t need to another particular NPC this time round their principal use is as ingredients to improve your potions. There’s a good variety of potions to buy from the usual life-restoring red potions to new mixes that improve your stamina or the durability of your shield. By imbuing any of these potions with the correct bugs (and spending a little money) you can improve their effects are add new ones. This is a really worthwhile addition to the game particularly since the basic red potion only heals you a limited amount and must be upgraded to be of real use later in the game. Like treasures, bugs tend to be found in specific parts of the world and some are easier to catch than others. You’ll definitely feel compelled to catch any insects you see on your travels for later use.
Almost every review I’ve read (or watched in the case of video reviews) has used the word ‘painterly’ to describe the graphics of Skyward Sword. Seriously going through the different verdicts on the game it became such a cliché to see the word every time that I can’t use it myself without acknowledging it but the fact is it’s a spot-on observation. On the surface the game appears to employ a very similar graphical style to that of Wind Waker with its bold primary colours and heavy saturation but it goes deeper than that. Nintendo have taken inspiration from impressionist painters such as Renoir to give the game’s vistas that stylised ‘painterly’ look and it’s a lovely effect. The foreground is awash with vibrant colours while the backgrounds appear in soft focus giving the world an artistic sense of depth. The technique also serves the purpose of masking the technical limitations of the Wii but does it in a subtle way that is satisfying and original.
It’s a beautiful looking game to be sure but still doesn’t reach the technical achievement of the Super Mario Galaxy games. There are moments of blurry textures and jagged edges that can look on the ugly side and some of the polygons aren’t as smooth as they perhaps should be. Having said that there are some breath-taking moments, often that use some fantastically striking lighting effects that really make the colourful style shine and sell the sense of fantasy. This doesn’t apply throughout the game though and some locales are certainly prettier than others. Highlights include Faron Woods which is awash with enhanced natural shades and healthy greens to give a sense of the flourishing forest, or there’s the smoky, red hues that give Eldin Volcano its oppressive aura. Other places look like what they are and little more and can’t convey the same sense of place and immersion. Lanayru desert is full of sandy and earthy tones, clearly a desert but nothing very special.
I’ve already mentioned the world design fails to provide a strong atmosphere and sense of place and I think to a certain extent the graphics do the same. As much as I like the style the series has always felt more atmospheric when striving for a more realistic look. Wind Waker too had atmospheric moments, often defined by its music, but it didn’t have the same powerful mood the graphics of Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess all achieved. It made up for this with a strong sense of adventure and discovery that is missing from Skyward Sword. I definitely like the new style and how it’s employed but I still hope the next game returns to the more life-like approach.
The character design is very strong on the whole, NPCs all look unique and their personalities are conveyed strongly by their design. Some of the enemies don’t look so great particularly the rather dull Bokoblins but most of the art direction is as strong and consistent as the series has always been. One way in which it feels like a relic of a bygone age is in some of the character animations. Like Twilight Princess Nintendo have used motion capture for many of the cut scenes and this succeeds in bringing natural motion to such occasions but some of the in-game animation are well behind the times. Many of Link’s movements are jerky and jagged, even his basic running and sprinting animations look a bit silly. The Wii might not have the technical grunt to keep up with the best examples of character animation in games for the HD consoles but I don’t think that’s a legitimate excuse here.
One thing I always look forward to in a new Zelda game is its music, and the new game has been cause for particular anticipation since much of it is orchestrated for the first time. I’ve listened to every piece of music in the soundtrack both in-game and separately and the conclusion that I’ve drawn is that despite being to a very high general standard this is not equal to the consistent quality of musical arrangements in the best previous entries, Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker but more in line with Twilight Princess. The orchestral pieces are uniformly the best tunes in the game but their deployment in the game is a little bemusing as they’re mostly reserved for important moments in the story as opposed to in-game background melodies which means that most of the best tunes turn up once and are never heard again.
The MIDI arrangements used during gameplay are never less than good quality but they’ve been composed to suggest mood and serve as background ambiance rather than the catchy melodies the series is famous for. The result is that many of the most commonly-heard tunes in the game are fairly forgetable. Take the average piece if in-game music from Skyward Sword and compare it to any such you care to recall from Ocarina of Time and the difference between them should be pretty clear. The earlier game produced iconic music at every turn while this new title seems content with adequacy in this area. There are exceptions such as the breezy, mellow ditty heard in Skyloft and the peppy Bazaar theme which alters depending on which shop you’re near. The main travelling anthem that accompanies your flight, one of the few examples of an orchestrated in-game melody, is fairly rousing but not a patch on the stirring equivalent tunes for Hyrule Field and the Great Sea in Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess.
As music is such a hugely important element in the creation of atmosphere the relatively gentle and unambitious use of it in the game is a major factor in the relative lack of atmosphere in Skyward Sword. It might have been different if the developers had chosen to distribute the orchestral tracks a little more evenly because they provide not only the best musical moments in the game but also the most atmospheric. From the dramatic piece that accompanies the opening story segment onwards these arrangements are consistently stirring, evocative and moody. The best examples include the wonderfully sweet and earnest romance themes, and there are a few variations on that superb theme tune that was used in all the trailers that prove just as effective in the finished product but for my money the pick of the soundtrack is the haunting tune that plays while you are following Fi to the Statue of the Goddess early on, an echoey flute melody loaded with mysterious atmosphere.
As for the rest of the sound design we get pretty much what we’d expect, limited voice cues for characters and sound effects that get the job done, some recycled from Twilight Princess. The dramatic notes that accompanied every successful sword strike from Wind Waker return in half measure, which is nice and fits with the graphical style. Other than that I don’t imagine anyone will want to heap unprecedented plaudits on the sound effects but nor will they draw significant criticism.
One thing I’ve yet to make detailed mention of is the dungeons of Skyward Sword. Dungeons are the life blood of Zelda games, the main events that showcase the best of the game’s puzzles. But more than that Zelda dungeons are like another world within a world, the most immersive and absorbing parts of some incredibly immersive and absorbing games, great bases of invention and excitement. I had hoped at this point in the review to be expressing my regret at having already posted my Top Ten Zelda Dungeons, that Skyward Sword might have produced one or two dungeons worthy of the list. Sadly that isn’t quite the case. The dungeons of Skyward Sword vary greatly in quality and the best are very good but none of them are up to the series’ highest standards. I’ll go into some more detail in a minute but first I have to address the number of dungeons. Obviously quality is more important than quantity but having both, as Twilight Princess did, is better again. Majora’s Mask lacked quantity with only four but made up for this with the extremely high quality of its few dungeons. If you consider being told the number of dungeons in a new Zelda game to be a spoiler skip to the next paragraph because I’m going to give it away in the next sentence. There are a total of six main dungeons in Skyward Sword, the exact number I had predicted there would be, two for each region. Six isn’t a bad number but by the time I had conquered the sixth I wasn’t completely satisfied and wanted more.
Skyward Sword’s dungeons start on a low point with Skyview Temple which has to be the weakest in the 3D home console series, featuring very little to make it stand out and nothing resembling a central conceit around which to base the puzzles like many of the best Zelda dungeons do. More than this there’s just nothing to it, it’s over quickly and despite featuring a fairly moody background theme, decent use of the item it introduces and a couple of good scraps it doesn’t live up to the series tradition of making you feel like you’re in a different world. It does have one saving grace, a spectacular boss encounter, but I’ll cover bosses a little later. The small size of this dungeon is a symptom of Nintendo’s focus on a wider variety of content to get through in the overworld. This is a mistake as it comes at the expense of what should be the best parts of the game. A Zelda dungeon should not be a flash in the pan, it should take time to get through and leave you feeling like you’ve accomplished something by beating its gauntlet of puzzles and enemies. That doesn’t happen in Skyview Temple but the dungeons do improve after that.
Two such clearly stand out the most by making superb use of that gameplay concept that debuts in Lanayru Desert that I praised earlier but even these are overshadowed by the best offerings in Twilight Princess and especially Majora’s Mask. The best Zelda dungeons make you feel like you’re in a lion’s den, a hostile fortress far from any place of safety in the depths of some wilderness. Some, such as Ocarina of Time’s Shadow Temple send you descending deep into the dark earth, building up a real feeling of isolation and dread while others convey a sense of place and context within the world such as Twilight Princess’s Snowpeak Ruins. Only one of Skyward Sword’s dungeons do any of these but I won’t go into details except to say that its design goes for a deeper context beyond just being a dungeon but it’s actually a concept that’s been done before and probably done better. The rest are mostly just pure, concentrated dungeons featuring imaginative and clever puzzles many of which make excellent use of the new Wii Motion Plus controlled weapons, they just never go above and beyond to truly enthral you. The best moments include balancing on a great stone ball and rolling through pools of lava in a fire-themed dungeon, descending into the basement of a water-themed dungeon to find it full of zombie Bokoblins and a breath-taking sequence in which you must escape a disintegrating dungeon while the boss destroys it from the outside. As great as the dungeons are none of them are as unforgettable as the likes of Stone TowerTemple, City in the Sky or Forest Temple.
However there’s one dungeon that brings the house down. I haven’t counted it in my considerations of the main body of dungeons for a good reason. Most games in the series offer up what I like to call a ‘Final Dungeon’, a concluding fortress that builds up to the final boss, for example Ganon’s Castle in Ocarina of Time or Hyrule Castle itself in Twilight Princess. The equivalent in Skyward Sword doesn’t actually house the final boss (nor does that of A Link to the Past) but it can’t be deemed a regular dungeon because it does not follow the clear formula of one. I deliberately didn’t consider these ‘Final Dungeons’ whilst compiling my Top Ten Zelda Dungeons post because I wanted it to be a level playing field and those dungeons might have advantages or disadvantages compared to the regular ones. If I hadn’t done that and if I had waited for Skyward Sword to make the list, this game’s Final Dungeon, Sky Keep, would have easily made it, maybe even as high as the number two spot. At its heart is a design concept that is nothing less than a stroke of genius, one that really makes you think hard without ever leaving you completely baffled. I won’t give away any details (because that really would be a major spoiler) except to say that it’s an idea that has scope to make your journey through the dungeon different every time, which is awesome. Sky Keep may well be the best part of Skyward Sword and if the same philosophy of imagination had been applied to every regular dungeon the game might have ended up with a higher score.
One other area in which the game excels is its bosses which surprise all the way through both in terms of their design and their placement in the game. The first goes a long way to making up for the underwhelming Skyview Temple by pitting you against Lord Ghirahim in a thrilling encounter. The battle does nothing fancy, you’re not even required to use the item found in the dungeon, it’s just a straight-up test of skill and swordsmanship and it’s a showstopper that sets the scene for the rest of the game. It’s a bit difficult to talk about the bosses and avoid spoilers so I won’t go into detail about the others but I will mention one surprising encounter with a boss called The Imprisoned (boss names are announced on screen again and are mostly dramatic and cool). This battle really stands out for the sheer drama of it. For the first time in the series I actually found myself slightly scared, not in a survival-horror way but the presentation of this boss was so nightmarish that I got a powerful sense of the fear Link would surely feel when attempting to take it down. It achieves this without even being a particularly challenging fight.
But it’s one of the few that isn’t. It’s been some time since we had a Zelda game that was hard, Majora’s Mask was the last that took more for a Zelda veteran working on autopilot to complete thanks to its mind-bending dungeons. On handhelds Oracle of Seasons’ unforgiving combat provided something meaty too but since then most games in the series haven’t been anything a seasoned player can’t breeze through (although newbies and kids might still have found them tough). That trend ends with Skyward Sword. We’re not talking difficulty levels to rival Zelda II, the only game in the series I’ve never completed (because it’s so damn hard) but for the first time in years I actually died, several times at that. Most enemy attacks do a full heart of damage while health pickups and particularly life-saving recovery fairies are few and far between, plus you can only get health potions from one location and they only heal eight hearts unless you upgrade them. So despite the fact that you start the game with six hearts instead of the usual three you’ll find yourself in danger more frequently than before. But it’s the bosses that will really give you trouble and I was defeated by several of them, sometimes more than once right up to the final fight. This is great because games are always more worthwhile if you have to work hard for your victory. Puzzles are less likely to impede your progress but there are still a few head-scratching moments, namely Sky Keep. If you still find this isn’t enough to satisfy then never fear because the game has something else up its sleeve that I’ll get to later. On the other hand if you find yourself stuck there is a Sheikah Stone in Skyloft similar to those from Ocarina of Time 3D which can give you hints.
The difficulty does have a bearing on the playtime if you get stuck for a significant amount of time but even if you blitz through Skyward Sword it’s a long haul. None of the puzzles left me stumped for very long although a few of the bosses delayed progress a little, I sought to complete some of the side quests but didn’t pursue them in tremendous depth and the game still took me close to fifty hours to complete, nearly ten hours more than my first playthrough of Twilight Princess, the hitherto longest game in the series. Obviously aiming for perfection by besting all the side quests would have increased that playtime even further but strangely the game somehow doesn’t feel as long as it is and I think this goes back to the issue of its structure. It takes a long time to complete but it’s not epic in its design so Twilight Princess actually seemed longer. All the same the value for money you get from the time you’ll spend with it until completion is extremely satisfying. I’m going to have to issue another spoiler warning now so jump to the next paragraph (where you’ll get another spoiler warning) if you don’t want to know what the game offers to those who complete it. After beating the game once you will unlock a Second Quest in the age-old tradition started by The Legend of Zelda. This Second Quest is a much harder affair in which enemy attacks do more damage and there are no health pickups at all. I haven’t actually tried it but I know from playing the normal game that this would be a colossal challenge, probably the toughest thing a Zelda game has asked of players since Zelda II. This Second Quest will please hardcore fans and greatly increase the game’s longevity for many. Skyward Sword is more than good enough to warrant numerous repeat plays but the Second Quest gives you that much more incentive.
I’m now going to talk a bit about the ending. I won’t go into too much detail but by talking about it at all however vaguely there are bound to be spoilers on some level so if you don’t want to know the result look away now, by which I mean skip the paragraph that follows this one (this paragraph doesn’t contain any spoilers for Skyward Sword but it does for all four previous games). It goes without saying that the ending is important since this is what we’ve been building to for many many hours and as such it needs to be satisfying. The series has a very good track record in this department. Ocarina of Time built up great tension as you ascend Ganon’s Keep, with Ganondorf’s organ music growing louder and clearer the higher you climb. After defeating the Great King of Evil the game then staged a thrilling escape from the collapsing tower before Ganon’s fantastic reveal and the amazingly climactic final battle. Majora’s Mask was characteristically surprising by sending you to the moon where you found a peaceful green field broken by a single tree and a number of children wearing the masks of the four defeated guardians who gave you optional challenges that could help you gain the Fierce Deity Mask, the game’s ultimate weapon. The final trio of bosses themselves were extraordinarily freaky and live long in the memory. Wind Waker’s final encounter with Ganondorf was staged in spectacular fashion with the Great Sea raining down on Hyrule to flood it out completely. The fight itself was frantic and exciting and featured a first in that Zelda fought alongside you. And let’s not forget that legendary finishing blow as Link buried the Mater Sword deep in the antagonist’s cranium or the emotional farewell to Hyrule’s King that follow the battle. By comparison Twilight Princess was a bit of a let-down, plodding through Hyrule Castle wasn’t the strongest build-up and although the fight with the possessed Zelda and the horseback pursuit that followed later were both good the struggle against Dark Beast Ganon was nothing special and the final showdown with Ganondorf was too easy, but at least elements of the final scenes were well done, especially Midna’s reveal having been turned back into a Twili.
Skyward Sword is a clear return to form. The build-up is handled well, especially one incredible action sequence that precedes the final encounters. Like many previous games there isn’t just one lone final boss but a succession. The final boss itself is an excellent test of speed, skill, strategy and reactions in a dramatic setting and it’s easily the hardest the series has had in years (it took me three attempts) but more memorable than the battle is the character himself. This antagonist is by far the most terrifying such in the series and the game takes a seriously dark turn upon his appearance. No incarnation of Ganon or Ganondorf has ever been anywhere near as threatening as this guy, in fact his sinister presentation almost feels out of place for the series in this way. Ganondorf regularly brings an ample level of brawn and menace to his role but this antagonist is a towering bastion of deep evil and hate that makes Link look insignificant and his contribution helps make the last few hours of the game very memorable indeed. All in all it’s a very satisfying conclusion.
I realise that throughout this review I’ve been quite negative but you shouldn’t take that as an indication of the game’s quality. The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword is an outstanding videogame with a huge amount of content and innovation to recommend it. The reason this review has read at times less like a review than a fan rant is because I am so much more attuned to every little detail in a Zelda game than anything else so I’m inclined to dwell on faults more than with other games. Also because the standards set by Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask were so high that it feels to me like anything that doesn’t match their quality is not fulfilling the series’ potential.
There are many things I would have done differently with Skyward Sword but some of the things that I consider faults other people might not. For example this new game has been created with a similar mentality to Super Mario Galaxy, as a pure videogame in which gameplay takes precedence over pretty much everything else. You may prefer it this way but when it comes to Zelda I think the sense of immersion and adventure and the world you play in is just as important if not more so. Another crucial point I should make, not for the first time, is that a single playthrough of a game is not always enough to judge it fairly. As it was with Twilight Princess it is quite possible that I may like Skyward Sword more after two of three completions. However the bottom line is that Skyward Sword does have its drawbacks and as such it does not stand with the best of the series. Instead it’s closer to Wind Waker and Twilight Princess. That being the case it strikes me that if the best features of each of those titles existed together in a different game we’d be onto something far superior. Imagine the freedom, the sense of adventure and mystery, the glorious soundtrack and the moments of gravity in the story of Wind Waker combined with the moody graphics, the melancholy atmosphere, the extraordinary weapons, dungeons and overworld of Twilight Princess added to the brilliant motion controlled gameplay, the overworld challenges, writing, character development and orchestrated music of Skyward Sword. That game would be worthy of a 9.8, maybe even a 9.9, but alone, none of them are.
If you’ve scrolled down to the score you’ll know that I’ve still given Skyward Sword the phenomenally high score of 9.7 so it should be considered a clear mark of the massive quality of the series that a game worthy of such a score can be considered slightly disappointing. Since Majora’s Mask I’ve only played two games that I feel are worthy of 9.8, both of which appeared on the Gamecube in 2003 (in my opinion the greatest year ever for Nintendo software releases), Skies of Arcadia – Legends and Metroid Prime (check out my Metroid Prime Review) both of which, as far as I’m concerned, far exceeded reasonable expectations for any videogame, which Skyward Sword didn’t. The only trouble I’m having is figuring out exactly how good it is compared to games with the same score of 9.7. It’s better than Wind Waker but I’m not certain it’s superior to Twilight Princess. It fixed a lot of things that game got wrong especially the motion controls and the integration of the inventory but it lacks in areas where that game thrived, such as the quality of the dungeons, atmosphere and immersion. I’ll be posting my annual Top 100 Games list soon so check that to see my decision. I can say that I think that both Super Mario Galaxy games are better so I can’t call it the best game on the Wii and despite what some people have said it is definitely not the best Zelda game.
But it is unquestionably a wonderful, unique and hugely entertaining game. The gameplay is utterly fantastic, the story a treat and everything else that makes up the game that it is is to a very high standard. The Zelda formula is invincible as long as each new game introduces new concepts and Skyward Sword has done that which makes it wrong to mark it down for a few quibbles. If you’ve yet to make up your mind to buy the game deliberate no longer, buy it and cherish it especially if you’re a Zelda fan (but I suspect most Zelda fans have already done that). If you’re new to the series this is a good place to start that shouldn’t be too daunting. Either way you’d have to have an aversion to variety, puzzles or action not to thoroughly enjoy the experience. If you have doubts about the motion controls you can lay them to rest, those technical issues that marred the 2010 E3 demonstration are nowhere near the final product and if you’re not sure this is the type of game for you I heartily recommend you take the plunge. In my youth I was more interested in futuristic science-fiction than this style of historical fantasy. Zelda changed that. Forever.
So what’s next for The Legend of Zelda? It’s anyone’s guess as to which machine the seventeenth (I’m counting Four Swords now) game in the series will appear on. The big question with the 3DS is whether or not we’ll get an enhanced port of Majora’s Mask to compliment Ocarina of Time 3D. I very much hope that we will (you can support the fan campaign endorsing the creation of that game, Operation Moonfall by clicking the link) but Nintendo have said they’re working on something new. We won’t be getting anything in the style of Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks, as great as those games are the touch-screen only interface is a little restrictive and I’ve had my fill of it so that’s good news. I think it’s extremely unlikely that we’ll get the old-school 2D top-down presentation the series was built on which makes me sad because those games do give you something the 3D titles don’t. I had hoped we might get some new such games developed as download titles but that hasn’t happened (the closest we’ve come is Four Swords – Anniversary Edition). Much more likely is a brand new 3D adventure in the style of Ocarina of Time which is an exciting enough possibility anyway.
Far more tantalising though, is the prospect of the first Wii U Zelda game. That the Wii was not made as an HD console is rather frustrating because a series as cinematic and visual as Zelda will surely benefit greatly from the high level of graphical detail and performance an HD console could provide. We’ve had a glimpse with The Legend of Zelda HD Experience tech demo shown off at E3 last year which was fine, looking like an HD Twilight Princess but I’d prefer the game to do something a bit more original with its art direction. I don’t want a repeat of the bright colours of Wind Waker or Skyward Sword, not because I’m not a fan but because I think the series it at its best when aiming for a more realistic look as long as Nintendo don’t go for photorealism because that just wouldn’t work (I don’t think they will).
Eiji Auonuma has promised more shake-ups for the formula in the next title which is fine as long as it’s the right kind of different. Changing the formula up isn’t really that necessary, it just needs more layers and more ideas to give the experience more breadth. I don’t want to see good traditions make way entirely and unnecessarily to accommodate new concepts, something Skyward Sword was guilty of at times. One area I do think deserves attention is the story and its presentation. I want something more in-depth with frequent twists and developments. I wouldn’t object to the use of FMV to tell the story in places and if Nintendo can make voice acting work so be it but in an age in which storytelling in games is becoming more and more sophisticated, Zelda games, as charming and magical as their stories are, are kind of getting left behind. I’d also like a stronger focus on character and Link’s relationships. Skyward Sword is the most romantic game yet but Link still didn’t get so much as a kiss for his trouble come the end credits. I’d welcome a full-fledged love story as long as it’s measured and not the kind of angsty nonsense we get from some Japanese games. More than anything I want the story to surprise me like Majora’s Mask’s did.
It’s worth mentioning that the game’s placement in the timeline would be particularly interesting given the recent publication of Hyrule Historia, a Japanese book filled with concept art from the whole series that contained a version of the timeline that Nintendo has confirmed is canon (check out GlitterBerri’s fan translation of the book). While it had been previously theorised that the Zelda timeline splits after the two endings of Ocarina of Time (spoiler alert: Link defeats Ganon as an adult thereby creating one future then travels back seven years and prevents Ganondorf’s rise to power as a child so creating a second), this official chronology confirms a third timeline in which Link is actually killed in that game. That the protagonist’s death and failure to save the world should form the basis of a whole series of games (there are some heavyweights in that branch too, A Link to the Past, Link’s Awakening, The Legend of Zelda) is an unprecedented and fascinating concept and it will be of great interest to see which timeline any new games fall into.
I want the world for the new game to be much bigger, perhaps the kind of size and scope of something like Skyrim, and for it to feel more like an organic world filled with flora and fauna, believable landscapes and more settlements to maximise the sense of immersion, and more than anything I want it to be beautiful like the Hyrule of Ocarina of Time. As for the gameplay I’ll leave that up to Nintendo. It’s already been hinted that the motion-controls for swordplay will be staying which is great, especially if Nintendo can find a way to make the experience even better. The new Wii U controller has loads of potential and I expect to see some ingenious new ideas and clever reimagining of old ones. One possibility might be to bring back the Lens of Truth and use it by holding the controller up in front of the TV screen to reveal hidden things on the smaller screen. I’m sure they’ll come up with plenty of ideas for the interface, storing your inventory on the touch screen as shown in the demo is an obvious one but we need it to be used to interact with your surroundings in interesting ways too. And again I want to be surprised. Some new central to concept to rival the three-day cycle and transformation masks of Majora’s Mask would be fantastic.
One suggestion that has been circulating on the internet is the notion of a female Link. It’s an interesting concept, one that’s been explored with fanart (not all of it savoury I might add) but it would just be weird and there’s a much better alternative. How about making Zelda a playable character in her own series for once? It would be a great way to bring the series some more freshness and allow amazing scope to develop her as a character, not to mention her relationship with Link. Perhaps her alter ego Sheik could come into play too. I’d love to see this done but there’s no need to side-line Link completely and the two could both be playable at different points in the same adventure or be given entirely separate stories in the same release. It would be very interesting to see their roles reversed and have the princess rescuing the hero for a change.
Whatever direction Nintendo decides to take its next main entry in the series you can bet it will be of the highest quality as always but whether they’ll be able to pull off something to match the greatest the illustrious series has produced is not guaranteed. Nor is the timescale for its release. There’s no telling when another game will be released or even announced but I think we can be safe in assuming it won’t be a Wii U launch game. I don’t really mind waiting a long time for a new title, I’d rather Nintendo take their time and get it just right than rush something out. Mind you I’m not sure I can stand another five-year wait but a new Zelda title will be a system seller for the Wii U so I doubt Nintendo will dawdle that much. Until the next adventure Skyward Sword should give us more than enough value to last out the time and with the series’ back catalogue more accessible than ever there’s no shortage of classic titles available to provide that Zelda fix.
Verdict
Presentation – 9
This is Zelda, there’s a standard the series never falls below. Despite featuring the most significant changes to the formula since Majora’s Mask it’s a familiarly balanced package not to mention an enjoyable story well told.
Design – 9
Featuring as brilliant art direction as ever, only some slightly less than inspired level design in the overworld and dungeons let the side down but it’s still a wonderfully designed fantasy world.
Gameplay – 10
The traditionally rich, varied and highly polished series gameplay conventions are offset by the best, deepest and most involving motion controls of any game ever made. This game singlehandedly vindicates motion controlled videogame design.
Graphics – 9
It might not be a match for the Super Mario Galaxy titles but the beautifully stylised and vibrant visuals still make this one of the prettiest games available for the Wii. Deep into the HD age the graphics of this game more than hold their own.
Sound – 9
With orchestrated tunes gracing the soundtrack for the first time the game is a delight to listen to. Only the distribution of the best tunes and some so-so unmelodious MIDI arrangements hold it back.
Difficulty – 8
The toughest challenge the series has given gamers for years but a seasoned player should still be able to conquer it without breaking a sweat. But after completion…
Longevity – 10
Probably the lengthiest game to date in a series known for its robust adventures and packing mountains of replay value and side quests.
Overall
The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword is not quite the euphoric triumph in videogame history it might have been but it is an extraordinary achievement in interactive entertainment nonetheless. With unprecedented gameplay made possible by Wii Motion Plus, innumerable brilliant new concepts and a beautifully presented story loaded with treats for fans the game makes a fitting swansong for the Wii and takes its rightful place as yet another absolute classic in one of the most consistent and prestigious series in the industry.
Thanks to a chronic shortage of funds the number of new games I’ve bought this year has been dismally small. Among the titles released this year that I plan to get I’ve still yet to lay my hands on Kirby’s Epic Yarn, Okamiden and Star Fox 64 3D and I still haven’t got round to getting Sin and Punishment – Successor of the Skies, which came out last year. As we approach the Christmas period and the release schedule is starting to get a bit busy I’m finally bringing in some cash and just starting to catch up with purchases. The first piece of news regards Xenoblade Chronicles, the critically acclaimed Wii JRPG, which I got for my birthday. A combination of my drawn-out and difficult house move and working long hours has prevented me from playing it that much and I must say that my first impressions of what I have played haven’t been that good. Then again I had a similar experience with Fire Emblem – Radiant Dawn, which I ended up absolutely loving. That game has had to be shelved in light of a rather important new release.
Nearly five years after the release of its predecessor, Twilight Princess, the next core game in The Legend of Zelda series, Skyward Sword is finally out and I wasn’t planning on waiting to get it. There is nothing I look forward to more than a new main Zelda title and when I come to review the game, which I’m happily playing through, it will be the most significant post I’ll have made for this blog, a status it will retain until the first Wii U Zelda game comes out.
First, though, there’s the not insignificant matter of another Zelda release. The Legend of Zelda – Four Swords was originally released as an extra alongside the GBA port of A Link to the Past. The multiplayer only game required two to four players, each with a GBA and a game cart to work and I only ever had the chance of playing it once with one other person and we didn’t complete it. Since then it’s always felt like the Zelda game that got away, a misfit that I couldn’t rate properly not being able to play it in the depth I would like. As part of the series’ 25th anniversary celebrations, however, Nintendo have given the game a new lease of life and made it available to download for free with DSiWare as The Legend of Zelda – Four Swords Anniversary Edition with a new one-player mode and some extra content. It’s hard to think of a better warm up act for the main event.
The story of Four Swords is pretty simple. Link and Zelda pay a visit to the Temple of the Four Sword where Vaati the Wind Mage has been kept imprisoned for generations (since the events of Minish Cap, the villain’s origin story and, it is commonly agreed, the first game chronologically in the series). Before you know it Vaati has broken free and grabbed Zelda meaning it’s up to Link to take the Four Sword and create three copies of himself who set off together to rescue the princess.
Since it was originally conceived a multiplayer only title the game is deliberately on the short side with three main themed regions of Hyrule to tackle, each with three stages presented in linear fashion. You can try each set of levels in any order you choose and upon completing them you will be rewarded with keys to Vaati’s Palace, the final set of levels. It’s a compact little arrangement that suits the concept well. The levels are designed with multiplayer in mind, players must work together to overcome enemies and obstacles utilising the various items and equipment they come across. The basic 2D Zelda gameplay is intact with its top-down perspective and swordplay but the handling of secondary weapons is different. By default each player starts with a shield which they can swap out for any item they come across on any of the strategically placed pedestals. The usual bombs, boomerang and bow are all present alongside some new creations such as the Roc’s Cape which allows you to jump a great distance and the Gnat’s Hat which shrinks you down to miniscule size, allowing you to fit through small gaps, both concepts reused in greater depth in Minish Cap.
In addition to the basic objective of progress the game features a competitive twist. Each level is abundant in rupees of many values, many to be found in the frequent treasure chests and the game tracks how much each Link accumulates. It can make for some frantic contests as each player tries to beat his opponents to the best haul of rupees. It’s even possible to pick up and throw other Links, a feature used for both co-operative and competitive purposes.
Four Swords was given a much more fleshed-out follow-up for the Gamecube called Four Swords Adventures which featured a much lengthier quest, better designed levels, Gamecube – GBA link cable support and a fully functioning one-player mode and the one-player game for this reissue takes a cue from that game. When playing alone you can control two Links, one following the other and press a button to separate and take control of one at a time and this allows you to get round the various moments in the game that require two players. It works well enough but it’s ultimately not as fun without someone to take the journey with.
So is it any good? Of course it is, it’s a Zelda game, the gameplay is solid, the combat clean and fun and the overall presentation strong. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not as good as any of the full releases in the series, including Four Swords Adventures. The levels work well enough but given the series’ rich tradition of delivering fiendish and clever dungeons the overall design is very forgetable particularly compared to the much more engaging level design in Four Swords Adventures. The bosses are more interesting and make good use of the multiple character concept. The graphics are colourfully reminiscent of A Link to the Past without ever electrifying and the soundtrack is functional but not a classic.
The best thing about Four Swords Adventures Anniversary Edition is the new content. After completing the game you open up a new area called the Realm of memories which presents you with a triumvirate of new levels based on old games in the series. Revisiting old locations such as Hyrule Castle from A Link to the Past and Tal Tal Heights from Link’s Awakening is a real treat especially given the retro graphics and sound. The levels feature redesigned puzzles and concepts that make things feel fresh even for veterans.
While it might not be the deep, rewarding and lasting experience of most Zelda titles, Four Swords Anniversary Edition is still an enjoyable little package at a price no-one can argue with. With Ocarina of Time 3D, the 3DS Virtual Console port of Link’s Awakening DX and Skyward Sword it’s been a busy year for the series and this freebie is a worthwhile part of it that helps celebrate a quarter of a century of great games.
Verdict
Feeling more like a basic spin-off than a true entry in the illustrious series, Four Swords Anniversary Edition is nonetheless a fun little title made all the better for the new levels and one-player mode and with no price tag you’ve no excuse not to get it.
The onset of the 3D era in the mid-nineties was arguably the most exciting period in the progression of the video game industry. Gamers used to exploring worlds in two dimensions found themselves in unknown territory as they entered the third. The earliest 3D games look crude and are typically unwieldy to control today but at the time there had never been anything quite like moving a blocky, polygonal character around an open space. The boundaries had changed and video games as a medium seemed to have opened up and matured with limitless possibilities. All the same this was unexplored territory for developers and many early 3D titles suffered from a slew of control issues. The industry needed a standard-bearer to show the way by building a template for gameplay and design when creating games for 3D environments. That game arrived in the form of Super Mario 64.
With its analogue interface, intelligent camera controls and imaginative level design Super Mario 64 became the new benchmark against which all 3D games were measured, inspiring innumerable copycats. It was fitting that such an important game should have starred the portly plumber since it was Mario who revitalised the sliding industry with Super Mario Bros. on the NES. This transition from 2D to 3D that Mario made so effortlessly proved much trickier for some classic franchises however. Big names like Sonic and Castlevania encountered big problems when trying to make the jump leaving space for new players to occupy their market share. Most of Nintendo’s major franchises including Mario Kart and F-Zero made successful transitions but there was one property above all that was attracting the most attention with its first foray into the third dimension.
Since its unveiling in 1995 the next chapter in the Legend of Zelda saga was the focus of much anticipation among gamers everywhere, particularly series fans anxious to return to Hyrule after a very long wait since A Link to the Past and the Game Boy’s Link’s Awakening. That wait would have to continue – originally planned as a Nintendo 64 launch title the game saw numerous delays which only served to build the hype. Finally, missing its intended release date by more than two years the game entitled The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time was finally released and it surpassed all of the lofty expectations that were riding on it.
Ocarina of Time wowed gamers worldwide with its epic quest that excelled in every aspect of video game design. The story was sweeping and fantastical, filled with unforgettable characters and genuine twists. The graphics were the most detailed and realistic of any console game to date. The immersive sound design completely sold players the sense of being in a believable ambient world. The soundtrack remains one of the most beloved of all time at turns soaring, atmospheric, quirky and mysterious. The difficulty level was perfectly judged combining threatening enemies and huge bosses with fiendish and innovative puzzles in the brilliantly designed dungeons. Most importantly the gameplay was unparalleled, taking all of the conventions of classic Zelda and making them work in three dimensions, pioneering concepts that would become industry standards such as automatic jumping, horseback riding and the game’s crowning glory, Z-targeting. The game became the darling of critics and gamers alike and remains to this day the most critically acclaimed title ever made.
For me the reason Ocarina of Time stands out above everything else the industry has created is the fact that it was the first game that made me feel like I was going on a real adventure. The various elements combined to create the most immersive, beguiling experience I have ever had with a game. There is nothing like crossing the beautiful Hyrule Field with its infectious theme lifting your heart or stepping into its labyrinthine dungeons to lose yourself. Other games have drawn me in, inspiring me to spend hours on end in their fictitious worlds but Ocarina of Time did it first and did it best. It is my absolute favourite game and probably always will be.
Someday I’ll review Ocarina of Time properly but for now there’s the question of this remake. The title has seen numerous re-releases over the years including the remixed Master Quest which featured tougher enemies and reworked dungeons that offered a greater challenge than ever but by far the most significant reissue so far is this handheld edition. To call it a remake is not strictly correct as we’re essentially getting the same game again with better graphics, streamlined presentation and interface and stereoscopic 3D so a better way to describe it would be an enhanced port. All the same The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time 3D is the most worthwhile and entertaining port you could possibly hope for.
Since half of this game’s target audience is those unlucky gamers who missed the original N64 release in 1998 it seems prudent to offer a refresher. The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time is an action based fantasy adventure set in the mysterious and beautiful open world of Hyrule and casts you as Link, a member of the child-like Kokiri living in Kokiri Forest, the only one of his kind not to have his own guardian fairy and beset by nightmares of a man in black. The guardian spirit of the forest, the Great Deku Tree sends Navi the fairy to summon Link and requests that he fight to break the curse placed on him by an evil man of the desert before sending him away from the forest in search of the princess living in Hyrule Castle who will help him fight against the antagonist.
So you set off on a sweeping adventure that combines exploration, combat and puzzle solving. Much of the world is open to you from the start allowing very free flowing progression as you take time out from the main quest to find secrets and complete side quests. As the story progresses and you traverse the numerous dungeons you build up an arsenal of weapons and items including series staples such as the bow, boomerang and hookshot as well as new creations like bombchus, deku nuts and magic beans. You also gain two ocarinas over the course of the story including the titular Ocarina of Time with which you can manually play various mysterious melodies that have magical effects from causing rainstorms to changing day and night. Enemies are everywhere and can be fought with one of several swords and shields you gather on your journey or by using your inventory weapons. Just as troublesome are the puzzles which are frequent and imaginative especially in the dungeons and make imaginative use of your many items throughout.
The game world and everything you do in it has aged well, no doubt about it. Everything has its place, every side quest makes sense yet the game challenges you to go out of your way in pursuit of them, the level design remains highly engaging, the dungeons powerfully atmospheric mazes that make you feel like you’re in an antagonistic fortress, a lion’s den at all times. The characters are still loveable, quirky and well-placed, at once driving the narrative and encouraging you to take time to get to know them. Hyrule is still a huge, flawlessly designed world, convincingly full of life, a joy to explore always seeming to contain more to discover. The plot is still full of mystery and little touching moments full of heart, hinting at a deeper mythology than the game ever explicitly reveals. It’s a fantasy world that will hold you in raptures without ever feeling too detached, it’s a friendly, inviting place even when it’s full of monsters.
Of course these are all of the things that remain unchanged and timeless about the original title so let’s look at what’s new. The graphics have received a sharp upgrade, objects are detailed and smooth, textures full of colour and depth, the lighting subtler than before and many environments have received a revitalising facelift. Character models have benefited a great deal from the technical facelift and now resemble the game’s original character art more than ever, NPCs such as Saria, Kaepora Gaebora the owl and Princess Zelda herself look like how the original development team would have wanted to make them look had they had more advanced tech. The interiors of buildings and shops in particular are much improved, convincingly filled with foreground objects and papers attached to walls lending the places deeper variety and life. Everything everywhere looks better than ever before and somehow GREZZO, the dev trusted with the project have managed to maintain the unique sense of immersion despite translating the world to a handheld screen. It’s a gorgeous game.
Check out my Top Ten Zelda Dungeons post for an image of this moment in the original and you'll see the difference in graphical quality.
It’s this aesthetic enhancement that has always been the most tantalising prospect of the 3DS edition of the game. The greatest joy to be had whilst playing for a long time fan is rediscovering old areas of the world and seeing how they’ve been improved. It’s a simple, satisfying pleasure to see the sun hanging low over Kakariko Village, the improved detail and clarity of the market or the sheer immensity of the Desert Colossus all polished up and presented in such gorgeous pastels. GREZZO have done an admirable job of updating the visuals without losing the soul of the game’s style. This is definitely Ocarina of Time and it has, perhaps obviously, never looked better.
Then there’s the interface which is clearly different and mostly improved. The bottom touch screen is used brilliantly displaying most of the important information such as life and magic meters, freeing the upper screen of clutter and also features a permanent map. You can easily access the various subscreens by touching the appropriate tabs on the touch screen. Assigning items to buttons can be done either with the cursor and D-Pad or Circle Pad or by touch and is a smoother experience than before. The button configuration has been improved but still feels very familiar. Z-targeting is now L-targeting and the R trigger still brings up the shield, B and A swing your sword and perform context sensitive actions respectively just as before. X and Y are used for items that can be assigned to them and there are a further two hotspot buttons on the touch screen for two more items. The Ocarina has its own permanent hotspot and can played using three of the face buttons and both shoulder buttons or on the touch screen. The iron and hover boots are now assignable items allowing for quick use at the touch of a button, a design choice made with Water Temple in mind and yes, it does make exploring that dungeons watery depths a lot less hassle not to have to pause the game every time you want to put on or take off the iron boots.
Every action controls just as well as ever and remains intuitive throughout and it feels like you’re playing the same perfectly balanced game. A new addition is the use of the gyro sensor for first person aiming which involves you moving the system around to point at your target and is actually very accurate but makes maintaining the 3D sweet spot tricky. Which leads me neatly to the stereoscopic 3D and I can happily say that I was right in assuming that Super Street Fighter IV – 3D Edition was not the best game to judge the feature against. Playing with the 3D slider at max adds huge depth to the world and adds an extra layer of immersion despite the slight frame rate drop. Seeing the fireflies of Kokiri Forest floating around in open space is great and the effect makes Hyrule Field seem more real and huge than ever. It’s really worth playing through the game with the 3D permanently on. Gameplay-wise it adds very little but it does make the best use of the pop-out effect I’ve seen on the system so far namely when Link gains a new item and holds it up – it really looks like the item is floating just outside the screen.
The game also introduces a hint system that seems to be in vogue in Nintendo games these days. If you get stuck you can access innumerable hint movies from the Sheikah Stones in Kokiri Forest and the Temple of Time. These movies point you in the right direction without explicitly showing you how to solve a puzzle and can be a useful reminder if you’ve got stuck into a side quest and forgotten what it is you’re supposed to be doing. Knowing the game as well as I do I didn’t need to make use of them more than to just see what the little movies are like and many gamers will choose to ignore them in favour of striving for the satisfaction of solving a problem without help but it’s the kind of feature younger, less experienced or less able players will no doubt appreciate.
Everything about the game has recent a new coat of paint to make it fresh again but the sound has probably received the least attention. I had hoped for a full orchestral remix of the entire soundtrack but the same arrangements as before remain although they’ve been cleaned up and sound better than ever. It’s a slightly disappointing oversight but it’s a mark of the brilliance of the soundtrack that it still sounds superb and is a joy to listen to. As far as additional features go, there’s no Streetpass or online support but there is a new boss rush mode that lets you tackle the game’s end of dungeon behemoths in succession and work towards improved times but more important is the inclusion of the remixed Master Quest with its altered dungeons and greater challenge although some may be disappointed to find that it’s not available until you’ve completed the game once. Still, this is an absolutely packed game full of content. If you know Hyrule like I do you can get through the main quest in under twenty hours but newbies will take a lot longer and whatever your completion time is it will increase significantly if you try to hunt down all of the heart pieces and Gold Skulltulas and that’s before we even consider Master Quest. Plus it’s just such a wonderful game that many will want to experience the whole thing again and again.
Playing Ocarina of Time the first time around all those years ago is the best experience I’ve ever had with a game. No matter how good a re-release is it can never recreate the joy of that first time but Ocarina of Time 3D is nonetheless an absolutely mesmerising experience for a gamer who has seen everything Hyrule has to offer. It is probably newcomers who will get the most out of the game though but since the flesh of the game is thirteen years old it still cannot have the same impact as it did in 1998. But this is Ocarina of Time after all and the quality speaks for itself. There is nothing better to play on the 3DS and probably never will be. As it was with the GBA and DS the best thing to play on Nintendo’s latest console is a game designed for home console but that’s no reason why you should ignore it. If you are in any doubt just remember that this game is still considered by so many the best ever made and in an industry that advances as quickly as this that’s not a fact you should take lightly. The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time 3D is a phenomenal title that really invigorates the N64 original and reminds us all why we play video games and shines a light for escapist entertainment, fantasy storytelling and interactivity like so few can.
Verdict
Returning to Hyrule in 3D with improved graphics was always going to be a massive treat but GREZZO have made it utterly fantastic with every design decision they have made. If you have any love of the series, action games or video games generally and especially if you’ve never played the game before, take the journey and allow yourself to be transported. Simply magical.
In preparation for my review of The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time 3D I’ve compiled a topical top ten. Exploring the diverse and beautiful lands woven for you in the Zelda series is a joy with no equal but the real heart and soul of the games can be found in the dungeons. The innumerable dungeons spanning the Zelda series are famous for their design and atmosphere. Entering one is like stepping into another world, one overrun by dangerous monsters, and full of fiendish puzzles and Indiana Jones style adventure and mystery. Usually designed around some kind of elemental theme the dungeons often exhibit a unique conceit such as rescuing caged monkeys or adjusting the water level in a flooded fortress. The following ten stand out as the most memorable examples in the series to date in terms of clever design, addictive puzzles and immersive atmosphere. A good Zelda dungeon should transport you and amaze you. This was a tough list to compile and some great dungeons such as Ice Palace, Fire Temple, Tower of the Gods, and Arbiter’s Grounds didn’t make the cut. Here are the ten best.
10 – Turtle Rock (A Link to the Past)
The final standard dungeon of the behemoth that is A Link to the Past, still the game with the most dungeons in the series, is a suitably challenging affair that really tests your ability to keep track of your surroundings. In several rooms you must create moving platforms on rails using the Cane of Somaria and allow them to transport you to new areas. With some such courses fraught with hazards the dungeon can get pretty challenging and it’s a sizeable one with a lot of dangerous enemies. Oh, and you’d better have some green potion to replenish your magic meter because you’ll run out of magic in the blink of an eye.
9 – Eagle’s Tower (Link’s Awakening)
Link’s Awakening featured some terrific dungeons such as the head-scratching Face Shrine and the scarily-scored Key Cavern but the standout is Eagle Tower, the only dungeon in the game with multiple levels. It’s a great test of spatial awareness in which you have to work out where you are in relation to what’s on the floors above and below as you transport a heavy wrecking ball used to demolish pillars and bring half the tower down. It’s made doubly taxing when you factor in the heavy use of blocks that are raised or lowered from the floor by hitting switches which are designed obstruct your path in many places. It’s also noteworthy for featuring Kirby of all things as an invincible enemy you just have to sneak past before he can inhale you.
8 – Snowpeak Ruins (Twilight Princess)
Situated in a frozen mountainous region at the end of a giant snowboard run in Twilight Princess stands this crumbling mansion, one of the remotest and most inaccessible dungeons in the series. It stands out by subverting the form slightly and having NPCs to meet inside the battered old building in the form of a pair of friendly yetis who make their home there. The female, Yeta is sick but wants to help you find the Mirror of Twilight shard you’re looking for and gives you directions that only lead you to new ingredients to add to the soup her husband is cooking. The frozen theme of the place means you can expect plenty of slippery surfaces and icy enemies that can freeze you solid as you carry heavy cannonballs around to launch at obstacles but the most memorable thing about the place is that you’re essentially just exploring somebody’s house complete with kitchen, dining room and bedroom.
7 – Snowhead Temple (Majora’s Mask)
This brilliant dungeon, which combines fire and ice for its elemental theme, is designed around a huge central room in which a vast pillar rises up to the ceiling simultaneously blocking and opening routes in higher floors of the dungeon. It’s possible to adjust the height of the pillar by punching out fragile segments as Goron Link with whom you must make some pretty huge jumps by rolling at high speed into ramps in other places in the dungeon. Snowhead Temple gets extra points for climaxing with the most enjoyable boss in the entire series, Masked Mechanical Monster Goht whom you must pursue as Goron Link, rolling at maximum speed as you dodge various traps the boss tries to hinder you with.
6 – Great Bay Temple (Majora’s Mask)
Ocarina of Time‘s Water Temple is infamous as a confusing, tiresome labyrinth that hampers progress by necessitating frequent use of the Iron Boots and backtracking to adjust the water level despite featuring some rather clever level design and one of the best mid-level bosses ever. It’s so derided by some quarters that Grezzo made significant design choices for the interface of their 3DS remake to make the dungeon easier to manage. Lakebed Temple in Twilight Princess involved a similar theme of manipulating water by having you reroute water courses to drive water wheels and open new areas but the best aquatic themed dungeon in the series is Great bay Temple from Majora’s Mask which you can only access by riding on the back of a giant turtle. The brilliant premise of the dungeon surrounds a central room where a huge device resembling a clockwork key, power by a massive waterwheel creates an underwater whirlpool, the flow of which determines which of the many underwater passages in the room you can access. You have to explore the dungeon activating and changing more such wheels and opening passages with water pipes to find your way. Although it’s another brain-bending challenge the process is made enjoyable and, dare I say, fluid by transforming into the nimble-underwater Zora Link. This immersive and demanding dungeon is made all the more memorable for containing some unique minor bosses and a dangerous end-of-level boss.
5 – Shadow Temple (Ocarina of Time)
This is by far the scariest dungeon in the entire series thanks to its dark lighting and colour schemes, twisted music, invisible death traps and long, crushing descent. It’s quite possible to get into this dungeon without finding the Lens of Truth in the Bottom of the Well mini-dungeon but you’ll immediately be stumped by a dead end that gives you creepy messages – you need the mysterious lens to see that the wall isn’t really there. The brooding, spine-chilling soundtrack taunts you as you gradually delve deeper into what feels like a descent into the underworld complete with ferry crossing, surpassing huge, open rooms that give you a colossal sense of scale and dodging wallmaster enemies as they drop on you from above after their terrifying shadows appear with a horrible rushing noise. Scariest bit? Walking into a large, apparently empty room and marching forwards into an invisible pair of massive statues of Death revolving with their humongous scythes that shred you to pieces. The design of the dungeon isn’t the most ingenious; it’s pretty linear, but the atmosphere of dread and cool boss encounter go a long way to making this one of the most memorable dungeons in the series’ greatest game.
4 – City in the Sky (Twilight Princess)
City in the Sky is a remarkable dungeon long before you get to the main reason it’s so high on this list. Firstly, it’s a city in the sky, which, frankly, is cool enough. Home to the slightly odd Oocca people the dungeon sees you using the bird-like creatures to float around as you explore this mysterious old fortress to a somewhat unhinged soundtrack. Things get really good when you get your hands on the dungeon’s item although you might be a bit confused at first since you already found it in Lakebed Temple. City in the Sky gives you a second clawshot, Twilight Princess‘s updated version of the hookshot which allows you to shoot for another point to grab on to with one clawshot whilst already hanging from one with the other. In this way you can do a pretty effective impression of Spider-man even lowering yourself by extending the chain when hanging from a ceiling to line yourself up for the next shot. It makes for some imaginative and highly enjoyable level design and makes City in the Sky stand out as the best dungeon in the game.
3 – Spirit Temple (Ocarina of Time)
As the last standard dungeon of Ocarina of Time, Spirit Temple, the game’s most remote dungeon, found inside a colossus located at the far side of a vast desert, needed to do something truly special to not disappoint players already in raptures over the magnificent game, and it did exactly that. The twist here is that when you enter the first room your progress is impaired by a block too heavy to move in one direction and a hole too small to fit through in the other. In a game in which you’ve already failed to save the world you are forced to admit defeat and leave the dungeon. Only then will Sheik appear and teach you the melody that will allow you to warp back to the area as young Link and fit through that claustrophobic hole. Spirit Temple demands you explore it as both young and adult Link, both of which getting unique rooms to traverse against a brilliantly atmospheric background tune. The temple also features the most challenging enemies in the game and one of its most epic boss battles, not to mention a number of superb puzzles the best of which make awesome use of the Mirror Shield to deflect beams of light.
2 – Forest Temple (Ocarina of Time)
Located deep in the Lost Woods’ Sacred Forest Meadow where you learned Saria’s Song as a child, Forest Temple is the first dungeon you explore as adult Link in Ocarina of Time and it soon announces itself as the most atmospheric and mysterious not just in the game but probably the whole series. As you explore the slightly hazy temple in search of the four Poe Sisters and the flames they’ve stolen from the central room you are bewitched by a strange, echoing melody that enthrals you at every turn. The place oozes mystery and surprises with ceilings that collapse as you cross a chessboard floor, open-air gardens that mirror one another, enemies and a boss that emerge from paintings, and, best of all, twisted corridors leading to rooms with doors and treasure chests stuck to the walls waiting to be untwisted allowing you to enter said rooms from another angle. It’s a brilliantly inventive design that transports you more capably than any other in the game into the fantastical playground.
1 – Stone Tower Temple (Majora’s Mask)
Located at the top of a fortress tower designed to repel armies and only accessible by playing the Elegy of Emptiness to create multiple copies of yourself to move giant floating blocks, Stone Tower Temple is unforgettable before you’ve even set foot inside it. Once you do cross the threshold your fist question is ‘why is the tile that transports you to the boss room on the ceiling?’ It’s a running theme as you soon notice treasure chests glued upside down above you and doors that don’t reach the floor. The open-air temple fells like an epic, imposing place as you traverse it, filled with puzzles that test you in every way, forcing you to use all of your transformation masks and make varied use of your items throughout but after you discover the Light Arrow by beating the very cool Garo Master mid-level boss you are cued to take a step outside the dungeon and use the new weapon to blast a red emblem and turn the whole place upside down. It’s an unadulterated joy to explore the temple a second time inverted in this way. Mysteriously the dungeon isn’t flipped over like a pancake but translated like a mirror image meaning the map for both versions is the same asymetrical shape. Nintendo have made the most of the concept; rooms in the normal temple feature pools of lava, the same rooms in the inverted dungeon drip the red hot liquid from the ceiling. Some rooms are completely unrecognisable, one such that’s waterlogged the first time round seems to have dumped its water out of the open roof in the inverted version. You can even repeat the trick by using light arrows to turn Death Armos enemies upside down, rendering them helpless. After a long, complicated search for all of the stray fairies and an awesome battle with Gomess, a minor boss that can only be described as a manic grim-reaper who wears a cloak of bats, you eventually find your way to the boss chamber. The entrance is in the same room where you fought the Garo Master. A circular opening in the ceiling that gave way to the heavens becomes nothing but a hole to jump into in the inverted dungeon leading to a huge desert where you fight the biggest boss in the entire series, in fact you fight two of them. These double bosses, Giant Masked Insect Twinmold which can only be fought if you turn into a giant with the Giant’s Mask, found in the temple after beating a lethal Eyegore monster. Stone Tower Temple has everything, an epic journey to reach it, a cool background tune, tough enemies, challenging puzzles, deep exploration and a fantastic central theme. It takes its place as the best, most inventive and downright most enjoyable dungeon in the Zelda series.
E3 is mere days away, Nintendo is about to reveal its next home console, The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword is sure to feature heavily in its Wii showcase, The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time 3D is less than two weeks away from release and there are rumours of some special reveal for Zelda’s 25th anniversary. This is the most exciting time of the year for gamers and this year is Zelda’s year. I’m pumped to say the least and with all this Zelda focus it was high time I got round to ticking another task off my video game to do list, finally completing the original, brilliant, pioneering, influential The Legend of Zelda.
Having never owned an NES my first opportunity to play this game came in the Gamecube era with the promotional release of The Legend of Zelda – Collector’s Edition, which featured the two NES and two N64 titles in the series as well as a demo of Wind Waker. The disc was not available to buy except with a new Gamecube bundle but you could qualify for a free copy by purchasing one of a designated list of Nintendo published titles in the month of January 2004 and sending your receipt to the Nintendo Service Centre. So keen to play both the original and its sequel, Zelda II – The Adventure of Link that I saved up my pocket money and bought a copy of 1080 Snowboarding, a game I rather wanted anyway, on the 31st of that January. Like many NES games The Legend of Zelda is rock hard and I never managed to complete it until now. So, 25 years after its release, it’s time for me to review the opening chapter in my favourite video game series.
Just a note before we begin – I have now decided to rate games in seven different areas of creation instead of six. Joining presnetatio, gameplay, graphics, sound, difficulty and longevity is design. For this category I will look at every aspect of design from visuals to levels and characters to structure, an area too important to ignore any longer and one The Legend of Zelda excels in.
This, the first game in one of the most popular and consistently brilliant video game series of all time, was released in 1986 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The masterpiece of Mario and Donkey Kong creator and all-round icon Shigeru Miyamoto is still considered one of the most important games ever made. It was the first game to feature a top-down open world design that encouraged free exploration over a linear succession of side-scrolling levels, the first to focus on permanent equipment upgrades, the first to feature an alternative second quest and the first to allow players to save their progress, an essential feature given its considerable length and difficulty.
You are Link, a charcter so named by his creator because he saw him as the link between the player and the game, the real world and the virtual world, the agent of escape and a hero any player can project themselves onto. The setting is the fantastical land of Hyrule which has become overrun by monsters. The evil pig-like tyrant Ganon seeks the Triforce to assert his domination over the world and took Princess Zelda prisoner, gaining the Triforce of Power in the process. Before he could take control of the Triforce of Wisdom however Zelda broke it into eight pieces which she hid in eight dungeons across the land. To face Ganon and rescue Zelda you must traverse the world and its dungeons and reassemble the Triforce of Wisdom so you can gain access to the final alir where the villain awaits.
Octoroks recur in almost every game in the series.
The overworld of Hyrule was a revelation in 1986. It’s a massive, brightly coloured world to explore packed with secrets and perils divided into dozens of screens which can be navigated by moving to the edge of the screen and scrolling to the next. Starting out with nothing but a shield you are dropped into this dangerous world and invited to find you rown way with very few hints. There’s a sense of adventure that few other games of the time could match, an atmosphere created in part by the triumphant overworld theme, the series’ recurring signature tune and an absolutely iconic piece of music.
The enemies are many and varied from stone spitting Octoroks to deadly centar-like Lynels. Enemeis can be defeated in a number of ways, most obviously by swinging your sword, which is permanently mapped to the A button once you’ve obtained it. When at full health you can even shoot sword beams across the screen for long-range takedowns. As you progress and discover caves where you can buy equipment from NPCs and dungeons where new gear lies waiting for you, your arsenal increases, widening your options. These weapons are used with the B button. You have to pause the game to swap out your choices.
Dungeons are moody and sinister.
One of the most useful weapons is the boomerang which you can aim at enemies to kill or more commonly paralyse them, an indespensible strategy. Then there’s the self-explanatory bow, another series staple which fans of the series who have never played the original might be surprised to learn isn’t that useful since firing arrows actually depletes your rupees, the currency of Hyrule, instead of a dedicated supply of arrows. Those rupees, little blue gems, are occasionally left by downed enemies but are too scarce to waste given how much you’ll need them to buy life restoring potions and other items. The other famously recurring weapon beginning with B is the bomb which can be used to defeat enemies but has a more important purpose in blowing holes in walls to open secret caves or progress through dungeons. You can only carry eight but the capacity can be increased if you have enough cash. Other weapons include the candle which will illuminate dark rooms as well as burn monsters. Many of these items can be upgraded for better versions, the magical boomerang for example can reach the far edge of the screen which the basic model can’t. You can also increase your life capacity, an essential pursuit given the game’s punishing difficulty. New hearts can be obtained in a handful of locations in the overworld or for defeating a dungeon boss.
The overworld is one thing but those dungeons are something else. You enter through a door and it’s like stepping into another world, gloomy and enclosed compared to the bright, open overworld. It’s deeply atmospheric, even slightly scary and again its the music that makes it so, a dark, brodding dirge that really builds the tension. Each room is packed with enemies and light puzzles involving pushing blocks and finding keys to locked doors. This is where the game really gets hard and the enemies you encounter exclusively in dungeons are the reason whether you’re facing off against shield-eating Like-likes or heavily armoured Darknuts. Then there are the bosses which are big and scary, often requiring multiple sword strikes to fell. Although the dungeons are arranged in a numerical order the open-ended nature of the game’s design allows you to tackle them in nearly any order. Some dungeons are located in parts of the map that can’t be accessed until you’ve acquired a particular item from another dungeon so you aren’t completely free to pick you’re route but this is still an unprecedented level of freedom. Whatever order you choose to take on the dungeons the sense of achievement at conquering one is simply wonderful.
The game isn't shy about bombarding you with enemies.
The graphics are excellent on the whole given how early in the life cycle of the NES the game was released. They don’t stand tremendously well next to later releases such as Super Mario Bros. 3 but still conveyed a varied and engaging world. The use of colour is important and gives life to the terrain. Forest areas feature mazes of green trees, the graveyard is saturated by greys and whites, the mountains are rocky and brown. The dungeons too are colour coded. The enemy design really stands out, the mosters are imaginative and easily distinguishable, again colour playing an important role with blue variants uniformly togher than weaker red counterparts. Occassionally the game suffers slowdown when many enemies and projectiles are on screen but it’s only every now and then.
The Legend of Zelda is a huge and challenging title, packed with replay value and the dizzying propect of a second quest featuring redesigned and much tougher dungeons after you’ve defeated Ganon once. In 1986 it was an incredible package one of the best games ever made and its legacy speaks for itself inspiring a long-running and critically acclaimed series and innumerable imitators. But the original remains a brilliantly playable solo experience to this day. The graphics may be well out of date and the ability to move in only four directions instead of eight fells a bit restrictive these days but that doesn’t mean it’s aged badly. It’s an awesome retro experience and it’s available on the Wii’s Virtual Console so there’s no excuse not to try it especially if you’re a Zelda fan. Be warned though in an era where objectives are signposted and challenge is often dialled down for wider accessibility you may have difficulty getting into it and making succesful progress. That said the internet had plenty of maps and guides to refer to and the sense of satidfaction at beating a game of this quality isn’t diminished. Only the poor translation of some of the game’s text remains a blight. That’s the sound of the bottom of the barrel being scraped for criticisms.
Presentation – 8
A simple story that evokes classic fantasy and intelligent integration of features. Translation is a bit off though.
Design – 10
Original and superb in every respect.
Gameplay – 10
Intuitive and full of variety featuring tight, intelligent controls and an engaging interface. Truly inspirational.
Graphics – 8
Great on their time but showing their age somewhat. Colour is well used.
Sound – 10
Sound effects do the job well enough but it’s the music that takes a starring role. A soundtrack of only a handful of tunes but one that is rightly regarded as an all-time classic.
Difficulty – 10
A combination of dangerous enemies and the lack of clear directions make this a seriously tough nut to crack. Only the most determined players will complete this without guidance.
Longevity – 10
One of the most massive games ever made at the time and that’s before we consider the second quest.
Verdict
It’s no accident that we’re expecting this game’s 14th sequel in this it’s 25th anniversary year. Nintendo trailblazed an enduring formula full of potential for expansion in their early masterpiece. It retains its masterful quality a quarter of a century on. An unyieldingly brilliant interactive experience.
To measure the quality of a video game series you shouldn’t examine the quality of its best titles but its worst. This, the first of two games in The Legend of Zelda series to be released on Nintendo’s stratospherically succesful DS, is one of the weaker games in the series but it’s far from a bad game.
The Legend of Zelda – Phantom Hourglass is a direct sequel to the Gamecube’s The Wind Waker and picks up shortly after that game’s final scene. Link is sailing with Tetra and her crew in search of the new Hyrule when they encounter the Ghost Ship. Tetra boldly boards the ship in search of treasure and adventure and promptly runs into trouble. Link attempts to mount a rescue but ends up in the drink later waking on a beach where he meets Ciela, a fairy with a memory problem. The pair team up and set off in search of a way to track down the ghost ship and save Tetra. Before long they enlist the services of seafaring rogue Linebeck who lends them his ship. The trio must sail a new area of ocean in search of the clues that will lead them to the Ghost Ship. It’s not the most riveting story in the Zelda canon but it sets up the necessary backdrop for the swashbuckling.
The story isn’t what makes Phantom Hourglass stand out. This is the first handheld game in the series to feature 3D graphics while retaining the familiar top down perspective of the 2D entries. More significant than this however is the interface which abandons button inputs for complete touch screen control. It was a bold move for a series, one of the greatest strenghts of which was its reliably constant excellent controls. You really have to tip you hat to Nintendo for pulling it off. Absolutely everything from menu selections to movement to combat is handled on the touch screen. Moving Link is a matter of touching the screen in the direction you want to move in which allows full 360 degree movement rather than the eight directions of the 2D games. Swinging your sword requires you to tap the screen or perform a quick stroke, tapping enemies initiates a targeted attack. It’s all very intuitive and works fluidly, the only drawback is that your hand can get in the way of the screen a bit sometimes but that’s normal for the DS. Talking to NPCs and reading signs is also accomplished with a simple tap, as is selceting items to use. The weapons themselves have all been chosen and designed to make use of the touch screen’s strangths. Bombs are thrown and arrows aimed with a regular tap but the boomerang really benefits. The game invites you to draw a line, which can be as complicated as you want, and trace the route the boomerang will take. It allows you to perform quite complicated actions and is used brilliantly in puzzles. I won’t spoil what other items are included and how they’re used but suffice to say each one is cleverly implemented. The only failure in the touch screen controls is the rolling attack which is activated by drawing a little circle at the edge of the screen. It’s fiddly and getting it to work is hit and miss but at least it’s not an important manouvre.
Fans of The Wind Waker will be infamiliar territory with this title. Not only does the game borrow the same colourful cel-shaded art style but the overworld design is pretty similar. Link must explore a number of islands on a wode expanse of ocean which is crossed in Linebeck’s ship. Again the touch screen is your only tool for exploration as you have to chart the course the ship takes by drawing on your map. The ship then sails automatically leaving you free to look around and fire your canon, if you have one, at any enemies. The sailing in The Wind Waker drew criticism for being time-consuming and boring and the same could be said here. The game tries to introduce a little variety by having more to do than just cross from island to island with traveller’s ships to explore and various hazards and antagonists to avoid as well as a well balanced if somewhat repetitve and long-winded mini-game for salvaging treasure but there’s no denying that sailing isn’t as fun as controlling Link on land or perhaps more specifically in the game’s excellent dungeons.
The dungeons feature the same high quality of brain-bending puzzles the series is famous for, here designed to make the best use of the touch contolled items but the masterstroke lies in what you can do with the map. A fully detailed map of whatever area you are currently exploring is dispalyed on the top screen and is available immediately. You can pull the map down to the touch screen at any time to draw on it or make notes. The game frequently encourages you to do this in a number of imaginitive ways. For example you might have to activate a number of switches in the right order which is made easier by numbering them on the map or you might find a map showing the only safe route through an area up ahead which you can copy on your own map. You can also record the locations of important things like treasure chests in this way. It’s superlative use of the DS hardware and the good news is it’s not limited to dungeons, you can doodle on any of your sea or island maps to your heart’s content. Of course no Zelda game would be complete without a few memorable bosses and Phantom Hourglass doesn’t disappoint offering a series of challenging encounters that make excellent use of both screens. One fight features a giant crab-like monster that can turn invisible. The boss’ point of view is displayed on the top screen allowing you to work out where it is to attack. This is just one of many clever applications of the upper screen.
Phantom Hourglass also features a hub dungeon, a first for the series. You must visit the Temple of the Ocean King, located on Mercay Island, the first you explore, many times during the course of the game. This dungeon differs in many ways from the regular ones. For a start it contains a dark energy that saps Link’s health over time an effect he is protected against by the Phantom Hourglass. Its protective power runs out when the Sand of Hours finishes draining essentially giving you a time limit. There are certain safe areas where your remaining time will not deplete and where you’ll also be protected from the Phantoms, imposing armoured sentinels immune to all attacks who will rob you of a lot of time if you suffer a blow from them. This encourages you to explore stealthily. The temple’s design is perhaps not as strong as the stand alone dungeons but more importantly each time you revisit it you are forced to retread the same areas you have already beaten before you can delve deeper into it. The Zelda series is no stranger to back-tracking but having to repeat whole time-consuming areas of dungeon is a pain. True, you can make use of newly acquired items to make the transition quicker and leave yourself notes as to what to do each time if you want but it’s still a somewhat lazy way of extending the game’s length.
So what about the 3D graphics? There’s no denying the technical achievement here, the colours are clear and pretty and the character models detailed. Everything looks great while you’re playing, it’s in cut scenes when the camera zooms in that the textures look blurry and objects polygonal. The environments can look a bit bland at times and the dungeons don’t feature anywhere near as much detail or feel as authentically real as those in the GBA’s Minish Cap. The music features a number of familiar classics and new arrangements but isn’t as strong on the whole as most other games in the series.
At around fifteen to twenty hours its a good length but doesn’t offer the most robust challenge for veterans although newbies should find things tougher. As for side quests there isn’t a huge amount to keep you playing. Nintendo have done away with the usual routine of gathering four pieces of heart to extend yout life meter in favour of a handful of complete hearts available as reward for completing challenges. Otherwise you can locate Power, Wisdom and Courage Gems which can be used to gain new abilities. These and a few other diversions lend the game some extra depth but there’s very little real incentive to pursue them.
For me though the biggest complaint regarding The Legend of Zelda – Phantom Hourglass is that it seems to have spelled the end of traditional 2D Zelda adventures. Prior to this title the 2D series flourished on handhelds and this is the weakest handheld game in the series to date. A second similar game Spirit Tracks was released in 2009 which was better but still not as good as any of the 2D games. Although Nintendo’s innovative approach to gameplay with Phantom Hourglass is a success I still wouldn’t consider it an improvement. The 2D games have more to offer and for all the DS game’s success its interface can be restrictive which is reflected in the rather scant extent of weapons available to you.
For a ll its faults The Legend of Zelda – Phantom Hourglass is still a fine game with many original ideas and deeply engaging gameplay and there is certainly no reason at all fans of the series should ignore it. It really is a testament to the quality of this magnificent franchise that a game this good can be considered one of the lesser titles in the series.
Presentation – 8
The usual Zelda quality shines through but there are a few rough edges.
Gameplay – 9
The classic formula is transferred in impressive style to the DS touch screen. A real triumph.
Graphics – 9
Some of the best 3D graphics on the system.
Sound – 8
Another strong audio package but not a high for the series nonetheless.
Difficulty – 7
A fair challenge but the series has seen much tougher entries.
Longevity – 7
About the length you’d expect but the tiresome Temple of the Ocean King limits replay value.
Verdict
Another success that makes some of the best and most varied use of the DS’ unique features and as such takes its place as one of the best titles available for the system.
Ten years, that’s how long it’s taken me to see this game’s proper ending. I described in my Oracle of Seasons review how the two titles link together to unlock extra content including an alternate finale and how I missed them both on their initial 2001 release. I’m very happy to finally tick off another item from my video game to do list. So now it’s time for the verdict on Oracle of Ages, the better of the two games.
Like Seasons the story of Oracle of Ages sees Link being sent by the Triforce to a land in need, this time Labrynna. No sooner has he arrived than Nayru, the Oracle of Ages is snagged by the evil sorceress Veran. Pretty soon mischief goes on in Labrynna’s history, affecting the present as calamty befalls many of the people. It’s up to Link and Nayru’s overenthusiastic guardian Ralph to save the day, which means travelling across the mysterious land in search of the eight Essences of Time for which they require the assistance of Labrynna’s female Maku Tree.
Lynna City is right in the middle of the map.
Oracle of Ages does nothing to slter the Zelda formula, combining open-ended exploration with combat and puzzle solving in cleverly conceived dungeons. Ages takes a leaf out of Ocarina of Time’s book for its standout feature by representing the recurring light/dark world mechanic as matter of chronology, although here the two time periods are divided by four hundred years instead of seven. By playing the Harp of Ages you can travel from present to past and vice versa, an act that opens the way to some great puzzles. Landscapes change between the two ages adding strategy to where you choose to make the jump and your actions in the past have a marked effect on the present. One town you visit has been desecreated by a past calamity but travel back and avert said calamity and the place becomes peaceful and colourful in the present. It’s a trick that’s used again and again to staisfying effect.
Labrynna itself and the stories to be found there are more mysterious than Holodrum. The past is dominated by Queen Ambi whose sad story sees her building a tower in the centre of the map. While she’s not a bad guy there’s an unmistakble sense of menace surrounding her that the game slowly teases you with as you progress. Most locations offer some fairly memoraqble challenges from having to reclaim your pinched equipment at Crescent Island to exploring the watery depths of the ocean near Zora’s Domain and the maze of caves and passages at Rolling Ridge.
You can alter the course of this water.
While Oracle of Seasons placed the focus on action and combat, Ages bombards you with puzzles and they are what really stand out about the game. In addition to the clever organisation of the overworld the dungeons are simply fiendish featuring one that sees you raising and lowering the water level rather like Ocarina of Time’s Water Temple. The eight dungeon in particulr is a real test of spatial awareness and complex thought. They’re a great set of dungeons, clearly better than Seasons’ somewhat forgetable offerings. Even the bosses feel like puzzles challenging you to work out how to beat them using the many items you gather through the quest.
Indeed the items unique to a Zelda game offer one way in which to judge them. Oracle of Ages does reasonably well in this regard. The game’s best new piece of equipment is the switch hoon a hookshot-like device that allows Link to swap places with objects and even enemies, again making for some clever puzzles. Other standouts include the mermaid suit which greatly increases your swimming ability and the seed shooter, a range weapon that lets you shhot at an angle and lets you bounce your seed projectiles off walls.
The past era is gloomier than the present.
I have to make a confession and admit that neither of my Oracle reviews have been that good. This is simply because having missed them upon their original release I’ve never felt a very deep connection with the two games. I’m of the opinion that games can only be accurately judged at the time of release and although I rate both games highly I think my appreciation of them took a hit by not playing either for so long. What else can I say? These are two magnificent games full of things to discover. That’s all you really need to know and the strange block I seem to have about writing about them shouldn’t matter.
Presentation – 9
It’s a Zelda game and there’s a standard the entire series never falls below. The limitations of the hardware transcend the game’s ability to immerse you and the ideas are packed in.
Gameplay – 10
Like I said it’s a Zelda game and there’s a standard. This formula is timeless, deep, balanced, satisfying and rewarding. Ages’ puzzles lend it an edge over Seasons. Anyone who likes brainteasers will be in heaven.
Graphics – 8
It’s a mark of the quality of Link’s Awakening that the same design can still be full of charm years later. The use of colour really paints a vivid difference between the two ages.
Sound – 9
The same sounds as Link’s Awakening but haunting tunes like Nayru’s song make it really shine.
Difficulty – 8
The puzzles demand a a high level of concentration but the combat is much less punishing than Oracle of Seasons.
Longevity – 9
Just as long as it’s partner with an equal amount of secrets to explore. Zelda always gives you value for money.
Verdict
The superior of the two games is a cerebral and mysterious affair with a deeper story, better characters vastly more engaging dungeons and a million different reasons to love it.
It was only a matter of time before I reviewed a game in the wonderful, magical, beautiful Legend of Zelda series, my undisputed favourite thing. I first fell in love with the series when I was about eight years old and my mum bought me a copy of The Legend of Zelda – Link’s Awakening for my Game Boy. I had played the game at a friend’s house before and was immediately intrigued by the top down perspective, the various items and weapons and the open-ended world at a time when I was used to playing linear side-scrollers. Being a young kid and a novice to the series and its logic it took me a very long time to finish Link’s Wakening, about four years I think but I never lost interest even when I was stuck. Nintendo accomplished miracles with the title crafting a beautiful world with deep, rewarding gameplay, an unforgetable soundtrack and real dream-like atmosphere, which, for anyone who knows the story is totally appropriate, all this on the very limited hardware of the Game Boy. The game remains one of my all time favourites (if you’ve seen my Top 100 Games 2011 post you’ll see it comes 5th) and holds up superbly well against the rest of the series. My second Zelda game was Ocarina of Time itself which cemented the franchise as the highest in my esteem. There’s nothing quite like playing a Zelda game. You get all the immediate fun of exploration and combat and using items in the perfectly balanced gameplay, the mystery and atmosphere of the stories, brilliant freedom to explore the detailed worlds and every aspect of video game design including graphics, script, music and challenge is never less than stellar. The series is a model of consistency with fourteen quality titles released to date only one of which failed to make my 2011 Top 100. Now that I’ve finished playing the three new games I got for Christmas it’s back to replaying classic oldies and there’s nowhere better to start than Zelda.
With both Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time 3D incoming the prospect of two Zelda releases in one year is about as exciting as things get but back in 2001 we had two released in one day. The Legend of Zelda – Oracle of Seasons and The Legend of Zelda – Oracle of Ages were both released for the Game Boy Colour and exist side by side as sister titles that interact with each other in a lot of innovative and clever ways. Unlike the Pokemon twin sets which are basically the same game with very minor distinctions the two titles are completely different adventures in different worlds with seperate stories, a fact too often forgotten as they’ve been listed together as one game in various articles I’ve read. The games can communicate with each other using link cables allowing players to trade items and whatnot but more significantly upon completing either game you are given a code you can use when starting a new game for the other title that unlocks extra content including the best ending.
It seems to be arunning theme for this blog because in a similar way to my failing to keep up with the Redwall books or try the Fire Emblem series when it first arrived in the UK I actually missed both of these titles when they were first released, something that, being a confirmed Zeldaphile, I’m rather ashamed of. It was a good four or five years before I got round to tracking down copies of the game and I found Seasons much earlier than Ages. When I did finally get Ages I used the code given to me upon completing it to play the secondary version of Seasons. Now, when you complete one of these additional playthroughs you don’t get another code for the first game, instead you’re forced to play the game in the regular way, which is precisely what I’ve had to do here. I’ve seen Seasons’ best ending but not Ages’ so I’m playing the two games side by side to complete the cycle at last some ten years after the titles’ release.
Minecarts just like in Donkey Kong Country appear in some dungeons.
The Legend of Zelda – Oracle of Seasons sees the evergreen young hero Link, ever the quiet one, sent by the Triforce to the land of Holodrum where he meets Din, the fiery dancing beauty who also happens to be the Oracle of Seasons. Before you can say ‘damsel in distress’ Din is kidnapped by general Onox a crime that has a huge effect on Holodrum sending the seasons into disarray and causing the Temple of Seasons to sink below the earth. With the help of Impa, Princess Zelda’s attendant and the Maku Tree, a relative of Ocarina of Time’s Deku Tree no doubt, Link sets off in search of the eight Essences of Nature that will allow him to rescue Din and return Holodrum to normal.
As per the Zelda formula you need to explore the world of Holodrum insearch of the eight dungeons one by one wherein you are challenged to explore a carefully constructed maze engaging enemies and puzzles building up an arsenal of weapons, taking down bosses and completing side-quests. Using this formula both Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages present their stories with the same tools first seen in Link’s Awakening. The graphics are identical to the earlier game with Link’s character model and a number of NPCs returning unchanged. The same goes for much of the landscape though there are some new designs. The sound too is largely recycled but all of these elements were strong enough the first time round that they hold up very well. Many tunes from Link’s Awakening recur but there are plenty of new tunes that do their job very well from the chirpy and cheerful Horon Village theme to the haunting echoey Tarm Ruins tune. The controls too are unchanged with the various items assignable to either button. All in all it wasn’t broke and Capcom, who made both games for Nintendo, didn’t fix it.
Can you guess which season this is?
So the joy of exploration and puzzle-solving are present and correct but the game needs to stand on its own and do more than rinse and repeat the formula. Seasons shakes things up with a couple of neat variations on the dual world mechanic first pioneered to spectacular effect in A Link to the Past. As you travel around Holodrum the current season, spring, summer, autumn or winter fluctuates between areas as you move between them. Some regions have a preset standard season that will always arise whenever you arrive there while other places have a random season. Aside from the pretty colours and some of the features of the landscape looking different a number of important things change between seasons in such a way as to block or open up a path for you to follow. For example in summer you might find vines growing up a cliff that you can climb that won’t be there in any other season. All this is is another way of restricting where you can go until you have the right tools, which is nothing new to Zelda but it’s great to see imaginative new ways of achieving this. Of course this means that you need to be able to have an effect on what season it is which is where the Rod of Seasons comes in. When standing on a tree stump you can swing the Rod of Seasons to change the current season. Cleverly the game restricts what season you can switch to to begin with. When you first get the item you’ll only be able to make it winter but one by one you unlock each season. It’s a pretty great frame for the game and really draws you in to its unique character but Seasons’ tricks don’t end there. The dual world mechanic is reimagined again in the sense that there is literally a second world to explore in the form of Subrosia, an underground realm a fair bit smaller than Holodrum but still sizeable enough. You access Subrosia via a number of portals found throughout the world. There are no seasons to worry about here but there’s plenty to see and do and it’s fairly well integrated into the game.
The dungeons are strong on the whole and offer a high level of challenge and some decent puzzles but lack some of the soul of those found in Link’s Awakening. The dungeons don’t seem to have a clear thematic distinction in the same way but they’re always atmospheric and highly immersive. Aside from the usual side quests including a trading sequence the like of which we again first saw in Link’s Awakening Oracle of Seasons has some new ideas such as rings which can be found throughout. The rings you wear have various effects such as improving the effectiveness of some of your items and can be traded with an Ages cart via a link cable. There are new items of course one of the most prevalent of which is you seed bag. You can carry five varieties of seeds which can be used for different effects such as making you run fast or warp you to a different part of the map and you later get a slingshot that lets you fire them at enemeies. The best new item however is the Magnetic Gloves which work like a hyperevolved hookshot. You can use the gloves to manipulate metal objects either by drawing them towards you or pushing them away by holding the button. Each time you let go of the button the polarity of the gloves changes allowing you to achieve the opposite effect on the objects which have a standard polarity that never changes. Better still you can move Link by positioning him towards unmoveable metal objects and using the gloves to move him across a room either towards or away from the object allowing you to croos large gaps. The item is used brilliantly well and makes for the best puzzles in the game.
These vines can only be climbed in summer.
One way in which the two games differ is in their focus on the gameplay. While Ages is more geared towards challenging puzzles Seasons is more about the combat throwing all kinds of aggressive emenies at you. It can get pretty intense at times and even a veteran of the series like me was killed many times in this playthrough. The bosses in particular are very tough, especially the final battle with General Onox. It’s never unfair though and represents exactly the sort of challenge a dedicated gamer craves.
The formula of The Legend of Zelda is so strong that it never really goes wrong but each new iteration needs something to make it shine. Capcom did a fine job with Oracle of Seasons but this isn’t the kind of game to challenge the best of the series. It’s a tremendously well-rounded experience, perfectly paced with plenty of variety and a strong identity and is one of the best Game Boy Colour games and among my favourite original handheld titles. That a game of this high quality is among the less brilliant games in the series should give you a fairly emphatic idea of how great this series is.
Presntation – 9
The superb formula is treated very well here with plenty of new ideas and everything feels as it should. That said it borrows a heck of a lot from the much older Link’s Awakening.
Gameplay – 10
Miyamoto got it emphatically right with The Legend of Zelda and the various improvements to the outstanding gameplay in sunsequent iterations most notably A Link to the Past built the foundations for Oracle of Seasons which takes up the mantle perfectly with some neat ideas of its own. Timeless.
Graphics – 8
Featuring immensely likeable character sprites and pretty collour schemes for the changing seasons it’s a strong graphical package but not a huge upgrade from Link’s Awakening.
Sound – 9
Again following the lead of Link’s Awakening the tunes and effects are superb throughout with plenty standing out and the right moods evoked at every moment.
Difficulty – 9
The heavy combat focus makes this one of the most challenging games in the series post NES. It’s ideal for challenge jumkies and makes completion a rewarding feat.
Longevity – 9
A pretty big overworld and eight dungeons make it a long game that taken time to complete and the added bonus of the extra content unlocked by codes and side quests only make it better.
Verdict
Oracle of Seasons is just another classic Zelda game and one that fits into the canon very nicely indeed and while it stands brilliantly on its own the best thing about it is that it’s just half of the story. Any Zelda fan who might have missed this and doesn’t mind the outdated graphics sould definitely pick it up.
I love a good top ten, they’re geeky but fun. My first top ten concerns the ten games I’m most looking forward to in the coming year and will be a regular feature year by year. The following ten games hold huge appeal with me one way or another. I’ve had to cut out quite a few to keep it down to ten including Kid Icarus Uprising, Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle and Pilotwings Resort but that just means the list itself is made up of nothing but gold.
10. Kirby’s Epic Yarn (Wii)
Though this title has been out in other territories for a while we’re having to wait until Spring for it in Europe. Kirby has always been a bit of an odd-one-out for Nintendo. His cute looks belie deep gameplay and often a great deal of challenge in his games but he’s never really starred in anything that has set the gaming world alight. That said there’s been quite a buzz about this latest offering which was unveiled at last year’s E3. The big draw here is the visuals which follow Paper Mario’s lead and describe a world made entirely out of fabric with all the characters including Kirby existing as nothing more than string outlines. This 2D side-scroller, while apparently very easy looks very charming and inventive and just makes the top ten.
9. Super Street Fighter IV – 3D Edition (3DS)
The exciting prospect on the hardware front for 2011 is, of course, the 3DS, which launches on March the 25th. I’ve got mine preordered along with a copy of this port of the latest title in the world’s foremost fighting series. This 3D release will feature all the characters and modes present in its console forbears and the unique visual style has been brilliantly recreated for the smaller screen and the steroescopic 3D. With a host of new content including support for the console’s street pass feature it’s apparent that this is no cheap cash-in and Capcom have really given the project attention. It’s quite likely that this will be the first new game I play this year so you can expect my review probably in April.
8. Metal Gear Solid Snake Eater 3D (3DS)
The first of no fewer than four remakes to make the list Konami’s big name entry for the 3DS in 2011 is this retread of the third in their massively succesful Metal Gear series, one I’ve wanted to be able to play for years but been unable to due to not having the right hardware. With the rpomise of plenty of new content to flesh out the original experience including gameplay ideas implemented in Metal Gear Solid 4 this promises to be one of the highlights of the 3DS’s inaugural year. If not for the fact that the game is still a bit of an unknown quantity for me it might have been higher on the list.
7. Mario Kart 3DS (3DS)
The announcement of this game was no surprise to anyone. Nintendo’s evergreen kart racing series has made an appearence on every one of their consoles since the SNES (and the GBA where handhelds are concerned) and this latest version is likely to become one of the best-selling games for the compaany this year. Obviously improvements in graphical power and the inclusion of 3D will be the attraction for this latest offering but I’m hopeful that Nintendo will put more effort into it than that and give the game decent one-player depth, perhaps something to emulate the adventure mode of my favourite kart racer the N64’s Diddy Kong Racing. Whatever happens though it’s bound to be immense fun and feature some of the best multiplayer around.
6. Paper Mario 3DS (3DS)
There’s nothing Nintendo’s mascot can’t turn his hand to. The plumber’s many RPGs have been popular since they began with the Square-developed Super Mario RPG on the SNES. Since then he’s moved onto two further RPG series, Paper Mario on home consoles and Mario and Luigi on handhelds. That balance is being upset now as Paper Mario crosses over to the 3DS with an all-new title that promises to return to the robust role-playing roots of the series after the platform-oriantated Wii installment Super Paper Mario. The 3D visuals will no doubt prove particularly effective here with the paper-thin characters and with some new gameplay ideas being implemented this looks set to be another addictive and amusing entry in a stellar series.
5. Fire Emblem (DS)
The 3DS may be dominating this list somewhat but there’s life in its predecessor yet. This latest entry in the uber-addictive Fire Emblem series has been out in Japan for months and there is some doubt as to whether or not it will be localised for Europe but if it is I’ll be jumping right on it. The follow-up to the Fire Emblem – Shadow Dragon, the subject of my first ever game review, this game is another remake of another early title and features similar graphics and presentation as well as an all-new feature that allows you to create your own character for your army. I’m very hopeful this will make it over here some time this year, it will probably have to be this year because the arrival of the 3DS is likely to spend the end of the DS. Here’s hoping the game makes it.
4. Starfox 64 3D (3DS)
Although it’s a little disappointing that we’re not getting an all new Starfox game, a remake of this classic is the best consolation prize you could ask for. Starfox 64, known as Lylat Wars in the UK was one of the best games for the N64 featuring action-packed, well-balanced gameplay and the most quotable script in viseo game history. Obviously we’re getting a graphical enhancement here but it’s accompanied by a completely re-recorded voice soundtrack which we can only hope lives up to the huge entertainment value of the wonderfully cheesy original. What new content there is has yet to be detailed but even if Nintendo just repackage the same old title it will be worth a play.
3. Okamiden (DS)
This could well be the DS’s swansong. Okamiden is the sequal to the critically-acclaimed, woefully overlooked PS2 and Wii classic Okami, an action adventure title featuring gorgeously stylised cel-shaded visuals and Zelda-esque gameplay and structure. Of all the Zelda clones down the years it was by far the best and this follow-up will push the DS hardware to its limits to recreate the vibrant world first seen in the original. With the DS touchscreen perfectly suited to the Celestial Brush and the best 3D graphics I’ve seen on the system I’m hopeful that this may prove to be the DS’s best game when it’s released.
2. The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of Time 3D (3DS)
When I first learned of the existence of this game I started hyperventilating. The Legend of Zelda – Ocarina of time remains my absolute favourite game, thirteen years after it was released for the N64. Never before had a game managed to make me really feel like I was going on a real adventure and never since has any title brought me as much joy. I’ve given up hope of ever playing another game that could better it so I’m delirious that the game is finding its way onto the 3DS. Again we’re getting updated visuals but in addition to that the game will feature a more streamlined menu interface. Hopefully there will be substancial new content to get stuck into as well such as the two dungeons planned for the original that were scrapped. Hope springs eternal but as with Starfox I’ll be more than happy with nothing more than a staright port.
1. The Legend of Zelda – Skyward Sword (Wii)
The Ocarina remake may be a massively big deal but there’s nothing that excites me more than the prospect of an all new Zelda home console title. Yes Skyward Sword’s unveiling at last year’s E3 was marred by technical problems but as far as I’m concerned only idiots cite that as reason why the final game will disappoint. It’s not like it was designed to be played on a big stage in front of scores of media people packing interfering hardware and Nintendo has always done right by the franchise. That’s not to say there aren’t concerns, as much as I love the Renoir-inspired impressionistic art style the graphical quality needs a tune-up and some of the enemy design could be better but the fact is we’ve seen next to nothing of the game. Nintendo will get the Motion Plus swordplay right, I know they will and with Eiji Aounuma promising that this game will see the biggest shake-up of the structure there’s a lot to look forward to here. This is without any doubt the most likely contender to land the title of 2011 Game of the Year.