The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)

I don’t have hard feelings toward this Zelda. It is rather solid when judging this game as a standalone title. But when we compare it to other Zelda titles it does come off as rather bland and sometimes even forgettable.

For me, every Zelda title has a certain theme and a certain color palette. Skyward sword is going for the sky theme as you are a member of a community living among the clouds. It is a setting that has a ton of presence in other games and media. Air themed worlds and nations usually distinctly different from fire, water and other worlds with their technologies like airships, air bending magic, interesting clothes…

But this Zelda doesn’t do much to create an immersive sky tribe environment to me. In fact people and buildings look exactly the same as if they would live on a small island in the middle of the sea. Therefore the whole sky theme feels rather uninspired. Because of that, I wasn’t very motivated to explore and really immerse myself into the sky world. Especially because there isn’t much to explore to begin with. There are just a bunch of floating rocks in the sky. The Legend of Zelda Wind Waker from 2002 did a way better job creating small yet unique and interesting islands to explore, so I don’t think that’s a hardware limitation.

Besides overall theme, the next important ingredient of a Zelda game are of course dungeons. Forest and volcano dungeons were rather forgettable, but the desert one was truly a delight. They introduced just these 3 dungeons/worlds to which you return to, when you obtain a certain skill, in order to unlock the next area. A mechanic similar to metroidvania.

I like what they were trying to do here, but in some instances they did a horrible job with that mechanic. In some levels they basically forced you to redo the whole dungeon again without introducing anything substantial. And repetition seems like quite a theme in this Zelda as you have to beat a certain boss 3 times without much variety.

I played this Zelda on Wii and therefore I used motion controls. They were quite fun actually with exception of precise swordplay. The instance where I almost rage quit was the first boss. First boss! It required some kind of precise sword twitching that I couldn’t figure out. And I still don’t know how I did it.

However I feel like the motion controls are a very good reason to actually play this Zelda as it is the most unique feature of this title. I feel like a lot of the actions, like rolling a bomb or whipping a whip, are actually fun mechanics of this game just because you are performing them with wii controller. This Zelda is much more about the way of performing actions, rather than figuring out how to solve something. So I feel like a lot of that charm can be missed out when playing without the motion controls.

I will recommend this title for anyone who likes motion controls. In this regard it is a solid experience. If you are new to Zelda games, go play Ocarina of time 3D instead. For the existing fans of the series it might be an interesting take on Zelda. As it was for me. There is still a ton of small details that are enjoyable and unique.

The Legend Of Zelda: Skyward Sword is a weird one. The game is great. But compared to the other 3D Zelda It is probably the least enjoyable for me. The dungeons and bosses are great. It is the first Zelda game to be orchestrated. The music delivers. The characters are nice. Especially Ghirahim. But it has a horrible overworld. Skyloft is barren and empty. The ground is very boring. It's extremely repetitive and suffers from backtracking, padding, and wonky motion controls.

If you like Zelda play this. But don't expect it to be the best one

3/5

When released this was seen as one of the great Zeldas, not one of the all time greats to topple Ocarina of Time or Link to The Past, but still in the top tier. But now, with breath of the wild scoring such high reviews and with taking such a different approach taken in this game, how does it hold up today?

Really well. It has vibrant side quests, great dungeons and items, fantastic graphics and a huge and vivid overworld. It takes the charm of Wind Waker and fuses it the the meat and bones of Twilight Princess to create a game with best aspects of both. In Wind Waker the overworld sections all play like mini bits of a dungeon. Yes there is little exploration of freedom to explore as you wish, but the puzzles are incredible.

In many ways the change f approach of breath of the wild, shifting back to open world gameplay, is a testament to the success of Skyward Sword. It would be hard to ever top this game by competing in the puzzles compartment, so Breath of The Wild took its character and much of its art style and then made a very different type of Zelda game which is a perfect compliment to it.