The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (2016)

I have fond memories of lining up outside of Best Buy in the November cold to pick up my brand-new Wii and copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. While I loved The Wind Waker, even I was fully sold on the return to the grittier, darker tone of the Nintendo 64 Zelda games. I loved Twilight Princess on the Wii, and I played through it several times when it came out. In fact, this was the first Zelda game I completed a three-heart run for. I ended up skipping this HD remaster back when it originally came out, as by early 2016, my Wii U was already collecting dust and I was totally uninterested in picking up any games for it other than the then-untitled Breath of the Wild.

Being so many years removed from my last playthrough, playing Twilight Princess again helped me appreciate what the game did well, why the series started to go into a rut, and the things I miss in the post-Breath of the Wild games. Much like Ocarina of Time before it, (You'll see me refer to that game a lot in this review) Twilight Princess is a further generational expansion of the template that was first laid out in A Link to the Past, without much of the experimental game mechanics or visuals presented in Majora's Mask or The Wind Waker. It was what the fans at the time were clamoring for. While it may not be an innovative title in retrospect, it's also evidence that sometimes servicing the fans can be a great recipe for a fantastic game.

Twilight Princess still holds what is perhaps my favorite storyline in all of Zelda. Link is ripped out from his cozy ranch life in Ordon Village by the invasion of a mysterious magical twilight that has befallen all of Hyrule. He is transformed into a wolf by this twilight, where he meets an imp named Midna who promises to help as long as he helps her collect the ominous Fused Shadows from various temples in the land.

Midna is a fantastic character, with her banter and charisma being one of the things that carry this game forward so well. Her journey from a mysterious, self-centered character who grows to care for the land of Hyrule after witnessing the selflessness of Link and Zelda is one of my favorite character arcs in all of Zelda. Twilight Princess does other things as well with its narrative that I wish the series would revisit, whether it be showing Zelda's role as an actual ruler of Hyrule, or having Link from deep relationships (Especially implied romantic ones) outside of the titular princess. All of these things are what make some of the more underwhelming bits of its story stand out, especially Ganondorf's abrupt emergence as the ultimate big bad in his most one-dimensional appearance post-Ocarina of Time. Nonetheless, the ending still resonates even now, with the final scene where Midna destroys the Mirror of Twilight being one of my favorite finales of any video game.

The game borrows a lot of its visual tone from Ocarina of Time, though it never gets as apocalyptic. It most certainly never gets to be as bleak as Majora's Mask, instead opting for grand, epic cinematic moments to keep things engaging. The music is fantastic, even if it does feel like the ambitions of composers Toru Minegishi and Asuka Ohta were hitting the upper limits of what MIDI was able to accomplish.

In terms of gameplay, Twilight Princess again stays quite close to Ocarina of Time. You explore the land of Hyrule, which is now comprised of several large Hyrule Field-sized sections, and complete a series of dungeons where you find a helpful item and beat a fearsome boss. The dungeons, particularly the run from Arbiter's Grounds to City in the Sky, are some of the strongest in the entire series. They are all pretty linear, but have a fantastic ambiance and feature some of the most unique items in the series, such as the Spinner and Ball & Chain. The bosses are mostly great as well (With only a few notable exceptions, such as Armogohma), featuring some amazingly cinematic moments and adrenaline-pumping music.

Twilight Princess's central gimmick is in Link's new ability to turn into a wolf. As a wolf, Link gains the ability to sense hidden entities and to dig items out of the ground. While there are a few good uses of Link's wolf form, it does result in some of the game's weakest sections. Twilight Princess's opening hours are already very long, but what really makes them dull is the prevalence of sequences where you are stuck in your wolf form chasing after Tears of Light. This HD remaster thankfully shortens these sequences by cutting the amount of tears you have to collect, but it doesn't really make them fun, either.

This game tries very hard to make combat more interesting with the introduction of special moves that you can learn throughout your adventure. But ultimately, this effort is wasted due to the insanely weak enemies that pervade the game. There is variety, to be sure, but I don't remember a single enemy that posed a real challenge outside of the Darknuts that appear near the end of the game. By then, it is too little too late.

Twilight Princess also royally messes up something that no Zelda game does particularly well: its in-game economy. Other than upgrading the Malo Shop and acquiring the Magic Armor, there is almost no worthwhile sink for your rupees, which is a problem as rupees are one of the primary rewards for finding hidden chests in dungeons. The game showers you with the currency, and by the end of the game, finding rupees becomes useless as your wallet is perpetually full. The Magic Armor uses rupees to give you temporary invulnerability, but as I mentioned earlier, the combat in this game is already a joke. The HD version tries to remedy this by making it so Link doesn't return rupees to their chest if his wallet is full, but this doesn't fix the underlying problem. It really removes some of the excitement of finding secret areas and chests, since you know the reward might be completely useless.

Now, some quick thoughts on what this HD remaster brings to the table. Unlike Wind Waker, which I felt had an already timeless art style due to its use of big solid blocks of color, Twilight Princess was in dire need of a touch-up. While I would have liked some new models to complement the new, sharper textures, what is here is still quite nice to look at. There aren't any quality of life changes here that are as transformative as the Quick Sail, though being able to quickly switch between Link's human and wolf forms through a tap of the touch screen is nice in Gamepad mode. I emulated the game using Cemu on my Steam Deck, so I mostly played on Pro Controller mode, which I thought worked quite well. I have never played Twilight Princess in its non-mirrored form, so I opted to play the game in its standard mode--Hero mode is also available, which may address some of my difficulty complaints, but I'll have to try that some other time.

Twilight Princess is great despite my complaints. It's fantastic at the core things that a Zelda game should be good at: exploration and adventure. Surprisingly, I think it holds up better than Wind Waker does when it comes to gameplay, thanks to its strong dungeons and storyline. Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom really do not scratch the same itch when it comes to those elements, despite the development team's best efforts. Nintendo also must have realized these strengths, because they are what they continued to lean into with Skyward Sword... At the expense of other key things. But I'll get to that after a short diversion through a few touch-screen focused titles!

I am having a really hard time writing my review for this game because it took me so long to finish and so my experiences are super diluted. I have been playing it on and off for over four years and finally got through the ending recently. I had played it back in the early 2010's on the Gamecube and had a great time, so I had always wanted to revisit it, especially in HD.

I think the atmosphere and world-design is pretty strong and holds up well, and is about how I remembered it. The plot is also quite interesting and I loved the lore of the Twilight Realm. I have always felt like Zant is an awesome villain and the developers did a good job of creating a dark and mysterious atmosphere around him, using music and sound effects very well. Graphically, I liked the HD update though I didn't notice a huge difference from what I remembered on the Gamecube, though that's probably thanks to the HD itself (so that the graphics aren't worse than I remembered). The music is incredible, and the wolf gimmick is cool. The endgame is pretty exciting with a great final boss, though I felt like it was a bit easy (much easier than I remembered it being). Overall, there is a lot to like about this release.

Some cons to this game are partially due to my conditioning from Breath of the Wild and the more modern Zelda approach. A lot of the plot of Twilight Princess revolved around what felt like fetch-quests, going unnecessarily between various places. By the end of the game it felt like a bit of filler material. I also really dislike the stamp collectibles. Every time I would work to find and access a treasure chest I had to prepare myself for the potential disappointment of finding a useless stamp. I guess that's better than just rupees, but then again, not really.

So in the end I'm glad I played it again, and maybe with a tighter timeline and a bit more immersion I could have enjoyed it more. Playing any game over a 4+ year timespan probably isn't the best for game reviews.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess offers a much more complex and cinematic version of the formula adopted by the franchise after A Link to the Past. With a story marked by melancholy, and with more elaborate dungeons than its predecessor, the game impresses with its epic scope, although, for that, it gives up the element of mystery of the previous games, which surrounded the exploration of their fantastical universe.

Twilight Princess introduces its protagonist, Link, as a village kid, living in the bucolic Ordon, concerned only with the tasks of catering for the local cattle and his horse, Epona. When he is assigned the task of carrying a shield for a ceremony in Hyrule, however, the young man is attacked by monsters, who hit Epona and kidnap his friends. After waking up, Link finds himself trapped in a dungeon and, with astonishment, realizes that he is in another world and has even been transformed into a wolf. His only chance to escape is with the aid of a mysterious being called Midna.

The story of the game is loaded with a melancholy tone, established early on by Link’s mentor’s first sentence (“Tell me … Do you ever feel a strange sadness when dusk falls?“) And from there on, it is reinforced by the constant lamentations of the characters and by the setting, deserted and devoid of life: if the Kakariko village in Ocarina of Time, even in its future version, had its share of people, here it emerges as a ghost town, inhabited only by two adults and a tiny group of children, who are at first locked in a house for fear of leaving. The other world visited by Link, in turn, has a sullen atmosphere, suggested by its particular color palette, which is very desaturated.

Link’s narrative arc in Twilight Princess involves the typical hero’s journey, with the character being forced out of his quiet life by an event of disruption of order, and gradually becoming aware of his abilities to transform the world, while saving his friends and defeating the villain.

That way, it’s no wonder that the most fascinating character in Twilight Princess is not him, but Midna. Her sinister appearance, which mixes childish and sexual traits in a monstrous outline, is in direct contrast to her narrative function of serving as Link’s companion – reflecting the player’s doubt about whether she is friend or enemy of the hero. After all, if Midna guides Link initially, she does it for her own interests, making it clear to the character. It is impossible, for example, not to notice her lack of sadness that Hyrule is being taken by the world of shadows, since she considers her universe more beautiful and inviting than that of the protagonist.

The other side characters, however, are developed lightly, when that. Kakariko’s village leader, for example, has a suggested romance with the owner of a bar at the beginning of the story, but that element is then forgotten by the script. A childhood friend of Link also spends too much time away to make any impression, while only one of the four major “adventurers” that Link finds in a bar has any personality.

Twilight Princess, at least, returns to show a special care with language, which was not present in the previous title. One of the inhabitants of Ordon village, for example, speaks with an appropriate heavy accent (“Oh, an ‘if y’all get tired of ridin’ just go ahead an ‘jump the gate to head back to the village“), and even an older Goron, instead of talking with the usual “brother”, refers to Link as “brudda“.

Twilight Princess is a game structured to alternate the exploration of dungeons full of puzzles and mysteries with exciting set pieces: between each temple there is always a remarkable event that gives continuity to the story during a sequence of action. Between the Temple of the Forest and the Goron Mines, for example, some of Link’s colleagues are kidnapped and the rescue culminates in a horseback duel on a bridge. Sequences like that, accompanied by epic cut scenes – like the silhouette of monsters slowly rising at sunset in slow motion – are new to the franchise and give a cinematic tone to the story.

The game succeeds in its variety, punctuating the adventure with many unique moments. Unlike Ocarina of Time, which re-used various environments and not always in a different way, in Twilight Princess the player always visits new areas and each of them offers a particular and eccentric activity: be it a ski competition with the Abominable Snowman, or a sumo fight with a Goron, or a dizzying flight in the claws of a winged creature, dodging arrows on a river, the player is always finding some new exciting set piece. Even in the dungeons’ design, the developers try to vary, if not the layout, the context of the setting, even making one of them a mansion in which Link must talk to its inhabitants and get tips from them.

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I've written before about how my mild dislike of Ocarina of Time scared me off of Zelda games until far into adulthood. Even after I started binge-playing the franchise, I avoided Twilight Princess for three main reasons: I disliked the way it felt to play with the Wii remote, it departed from the visual style of Wind Waker (which I liked then and now), and reviews I'd read drew frequent comparisons to Ocarina. It was only after watching Breath of the Wild footage and finding out that Twilight Princess and Wind Waker shared an engine (and most of the same development team) that I felt compelled to give its Wii U remaster a shot.

All I can say is, wow. This is a fantastic Zelda game, and easily a contender for best 3D entry in the series.

The story and characters are fantastic and often unpredictable (something I liked about Wind Waker as well). The dungeons are particularly excellent this go-around... often I find myself tiring of dungeons the further into a game I get, but in this case I felt the dungeons became more and more fun the further I progressed. The game does an excellent job of setting you up with the skills you need and pushing you in the right direction without hand-holding or robbing the player of the thrill of discovery.

I don't have complaints so much as preferences. I still prefer the visual style of Wind Waker... although much of Twilight Princess is still gorgeous, I found myself noticing seams in its less-stylized models, textures and environments far more often. And while I enjoyed the entirety of the game, the Hyrule setting felt less open than Wind Waker's Great Sea... I declined to complete the Poe quest, whereas I pillaged almost every collectible from every island I could find in its predecessor. But the visuals and world suit this entry's story and gameplay nicely, so it's hard to get too critical.

If you've ever enjoyed a 3D Zelda game, you own a Wii U and you can't wait for Breath of the Wild, play this game!