The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)

Back in 2011, this was one of the last games I played before taking a substantial hiatus from engaging with the medium (5 years). I can't help but thing that this game contributed to my motivation to take that break. The 3D zelda fatigue was strong, and this game continued all of the trends that were wearing on us in prior entries.

You probably won't be surprised to hear, however that the remaster 10 years later was a completely different story. After 10 years of no classic 3D zelda content, and BOTWs aweful attempt at dungeons & mini-dungeons, coming back to the expertly crafted, and wonderfully thematic world of skyward sword was refreshing to say the least.

Not to downplay the flaws of this game, which are many and I will address here. First, and remidied somewhat in the remaster, are overmapped motion contols. I'm a motion control apologist. For the sword combat, I think it was actually a really cool and fun way to play. However, the decision to also use this when flying and swimming, as well as in a handful of other ways was attrocius. The remake somewhat fixed this by allowing the user to chose between motion controls and standard ones. This is not a great solutiuon however, because most reasonable fans of this game agree that a hybrid system would be optimal. For example, playing the Koloktos boss fight without motion controls simply feels wrong, but is that worth suffering through the swimming and flying controls? Unfortunalty players will have to make that decision.

Additionally, the slow pacing of the start of the game, and certain later sections, such as tad-tones are a substantial drag. Let's not even talk about the infamous re-used boss fights.

Otherwise, the story is one of the most charming the franchise has seen, plus the dungeons are wonderful and varried. The combat can be really fun and engaging, especially seen by, in my opinion the best "ganondorf" fight in the series against demise at the end.

There was a time, prior to open-world zelda that I might have said Skyward sword is a bad game and doesn't belong among its peers in this franchise. That time is long gone. Any f an of zelda, or video games in general owes it to themselves to play this game, and the remake make it a little easier to do so.

This is the latest Zelda game that I've played for the first time, now having played them all except for BotW and TotK. It's not my favorite but it was worth playing. The soundtrack alone makes it worth checking out. The music is so good I've been saving it on playlists for years before ever playing the game.

I played with motion controls, which I have mixed feelings about. In a way it's immersive but also at times clumsy and more complicated than buttons. Like rolling requires dashing and then shaking which takes more effort than just pushing A, and sometimes I swing the sword the wrong way by accident. I learned to do a spin attack or forward sword flip when I want to make sure the cut goes a certain way.

The game being more linear isn't a big deal to me but at least the sky should have been more open. At the beginning of the game there are treasure chests scattered around on floating islands, but they're all locked until you strike their cubes below the clouds. This discourages free exploration in the sky because every time you go up from below there will be a purple chest on the map unlocked essentially saying, "You can go to this spot now." There didn't seem to be very many explorable islands either. Just rocks with chests on them mostly, and a few minigame islands. It's a very different experience from Wind Waker's exploration.

The Loftwing I liked. Link's bond with his Loftwing at the beginning of the game was a heartwarming moment. It would be cool to see Loftwings make a return in some TotK DLC or something. I would buy a Switch today if that happened.

Even without much to do when flying, it was still kind of fun. I wish I could have parked the Loftwing on the ground and petted it like a Nintendog. Where does it stay when I'm not flying somewhere? It just flies somewhere near me forever waiting to be called? Who knows.

Anyway, I don't have many other major complaints about the game. It was an overall good experience.

A few final random thoughts:

The dragons should not have had human faces. Dragons should have dragon faces. That bothered me just a little.

The Goron at the Rickety Coaster will scold Link for sitting in his chair, but I was low on hearts so I watched Link stair the Goron down as his hearts slowly refilled. The second funniest moment in the game (Nothing beats Groose discovering land).

The time stones are a cool time travel concept. If possible, it would have been neat to carry one anywhere in the game like an item. What would happen if Link struck it next to the seal of The Imprisoned? Would it stop it from opening so I don't have to fight that giant flea 3 times?

I played this originally on the Wii back in 2011 but forgot most of it. This time I played most of it with my two young kids, and it was a blast to figure out the puzzles together! We all loved the music and puzzles, art style and just goofy characters. I was loving every moment until the final 1/3ish of the game, when you have to backtrack yet again to put the Song of the Hero together...it just put the backtracking too high in my opinion. I was reminded of many of the ideas included in BOTW that were started in this game, like the stamina meter and durability of items (I guess these could have been included earlier, just don't remember them).

The upgrade system seemed tacked on and pointless. Other than having a better shield, does it really matter if my bow was a little stronger? I don't think so. It just seemed like they added another system on because they could, and to be honest what it evolved to in BOTW was one of my least favorite aspects of that game.

I appreciated the more traditional dungeon style of this game in comparison to the trials of BOTW. I never actually finished that game, but this put some wind in my sails and I will probably work through that game with my kids also. Of course eventually I need to get to TotK!

I remember playing the original Wii release soon after it launched. Despite my bias towards the franchise I had very mixed feelings about this game. When the HD version was announced my initial feelings were "nope, ain't buying this one", but after learning that the game was going to receive more than just a graphic overhaul I decided, although with some caution, to buy it and see the changes for myself.

These changes, while not many, did improve the overall flow of the game. I didn't really have issues with motion controls playing the Wii version, but because I'm not a fan of the teeny tiny joycons I decided to use the pro controller, which is like 90% button controls and 10% motion controls. I ended up using it all the way to the end and the only struggle I had, and only at the beginning, was with remembering to use the right stick for sword techniques. Being able to control the camera was also a big plus, all we had before was moving the camera behind Link with Z-targeting. Saving was also changed, letting us have multiple save slots per file along with an auto-save feature. We now also have the option of skippable cutscenes and dialogues, reducing down time if we want to.

Now for the big ones: Fi and item notifications. I may remember little about my time playing the Wii version but I do remember two things that clearly bothered me, so let's start with the item notifications. The Wii version would pause the game every time you collected a new item to inform you what it is: this is a green rupee, this is a bug, etc. The problem arose when the game did that every time you resumed playing after closing the game. Being reminded of every single item every single gaming session got real annoying real fast. Thankfully those days of torment are over. Now the HD version tells you what a new item is once, and that's it. Up next we have Fi and how Fi took hand-holding to ridiculous levels. She would basically tell you what to do every time and it was an obligatory dialogue. I quickly got the feeling that the game was treating me like a three-year old and the feeling lasted all the way to the end. In this new version, Fi's presence is greatly reduced. It's not like the game cut her off either: you can still talk to Fi and ask for hints, but this time it's optional. That alone makes Fi a much more likeable character.

I really only wanted to talk about the changes between both versions. While it's true that quality of life improvements make the HD version the go-to version if you want to play this game, it still doesn't change my feelings about the overall structure of the game itself. Things like the extremely linear adventure, lack of fast travel, the boring sky, and revisiting the same three area three times, combined with other things like the more engaging combat, fantastic soundtrack, and the ability to upgrade gear and potions...it still feels like for every good point about the game I can think of a bad point immediately.

Skyward Sword is NOT a bad game by any means, but it's not in my top favorite Zelda games either. I respect and applaud the experimenting, especially after playing Breath of the Wild and seeing how some mechanics carried over. This is the kind of game I'd play once and then will probably never play again, and that's why I have a hard time recommending it to others. Thankfully Skyward Sword isn't too long, I did everything in the game and it took me roughly 30 hours. I guess my recommendation would be this: don't feel bad if you skip this one, but if you are that curious about it, then go for it...it's only 30 hours long and that's if you go the 100% route.

Just remember to master shield bashing, that move is OP.

Original release: 5/10

HD version: 6.5/10

This one was 10 and a half years in the making. I started my first attempt to play through back on November 29th, 2012 if my Wii's calendar is to be believed. I eventually stopped a few hours in, but the HD switch release brought me back for a second try. That still took nearly two years as you can see but I binged the back third of the game this past week and finally hit the finish line.

I feel pretty divided on this one. It's a decent game overall, but in a franchise like LoZ the bar is pretty high. Skyward Sword unfortunately fell short in most ways for me other than story and visuals.

I found the world to be initially pretty cool until I discovered just how sparse it really was. Skyloft is dense enough but the sky beyond only has like a few meaningful islands to visit which pales in comparison to the worlds in past zelda games. The fact that you end up visiting the same three areas THREE TIMES really left me underwhelmed. In particular the entire Song of the Hero sequence near the end felt entirely unnecessary. I groaned out loud when I saw that I had to revisit the same areas all over again-- even if they were slightly different. I think the issue here is nearly all of the game's dungeons focus around the same three thematics (Forest, Volcano, Desert) whereas past (and future) zelda games had much more area variety.

Also, traversing the sky via Loftwing just felt like a chore most of the time. As I said, there's very little to do out there so it really just felt like a long loading screen between more significant areas that I wasn't allowed to relax during. At least with the ship in Wind Waker (another game I need to get back to) it felt like you were moving faster and there was also less vertical micromanagement to take care of during the journey.

Motion controls are what they are, and I felt I should get the authentic experience by playing through with them turned on. Overall they're pretty cool and add a good bit to the swordplay but I think most of the time they made even basic battles take so much longer than they should have. Also, not much compares to the frustration of swinging your arm one way only for Link to swing the other directly into an enemy's block.

The story is the highlight here for me. I loved seeing the origin of the Link/Zelda/Ganon relationship as well as many of the series's other iconic elements. Groose actually felt like a well developed character, more than you tend to get in this series typically, which added a lot to the plot. Despite my frustrations with the Song of the Hero bit, the entire ending sequence was pretty awesome and felt sufficiently grand in scope.

I think this means the only 3D zelda I have left to finish is Wind Waker. At least till Tears of the Kingdom releases. I've also been considering revisiting Twilight Princess which is one of my favs, but I'm torn as to whether I should get the HD Wii U version or wait to see if they port it to the switch.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (SS) has the unpleasant position of being a Zelda game on the same platform as that other Zelda game on the Switch… Link’s Awakening. I’m kidding of course, it’s Breath of the Wild (BotW). For players who already own or have any interest in owning a Switch, there is no contest which Zelda game is better. BotW is one of the most innovative open world games of the generation. SS in comparison is an HD remake of a ten year old game maligned for its reliance on motion controls and hand holding tutorials.

Fortunately SS is not simply a remake with better graphics. The game includes numerous quality of life improvements like a button-only controller option, less forced tutorials and improved loading times. Players disappointed by the lack of dungeons in BotW will have their fill in SS. The game represents a more traditional Zelda experience and boasts the most creative and elaborate dungeons in the series.

SS should have been an easy homerun for Nintendo, but the game is marred by busywork and annoying backtracking. Environments and enemies are heavily recycled. Everything after the first act of the game becomes a series of collecting various macguffins. And the same bosses are fought multiple times. When I reached the credits, I was disappointed in the amount of padding and filler I endured throughout the journey. The numerous hours spent playing mini-games, pursuing side quests and upgrading gear felt worthless. SS is a game best mainlined for most players.

The plot in Zelda games are not usually a highlight, but SS makes for a promising introduction. SS takes place in the beginning of the Zelda timeline. There is no Hyrule, no royal family and no Master Sword. Link and Zelda are childhood friends and part of a civilization that lives on an island called Skyloft situated above the clouds. Link and the other adolescents in Skyloft train to become knights by riding Skywings as a rite of passage to adulthood. Link wins a contest amongst his peers and is awarded a special gift from Zelda. The two fly together in celebration until suddenly Zelda is hoisted from the skies by a tornado. No one is able to rescue her as the clouds are too thick for the Skywings to penetrate except for Link who uses the reward he won in the contest. Link with the assistance from a magical being that lives in a sword named Fi, dives down past the clouds to rescue Zelda.

The original game on the Wii was infamous for utilizing motion controls. Link’s sword is mapped directly to the Wii-mote. On paper this sounds like a great idea because it forces players to think strategically instead of literally hacking and slashing away at foes. In reality, the game leveraged motion control mechanics to an absurd degree with almost every action requiring motion controls even if it made little sense such as piloting the Skywing and swimming underwater. The HD edition significantly changes this by including a button-only controller option. To be completely transparent, the game can be played with motion controls like the original using the joy-cons but I chose to play the entire game in button-only mode.

The button-only mode makes SS play very similarly to other Zelda games except the sword is mapped to the right analog stick. The controls are somewhat intuitive but require some practice. It took me a while to reliably execute the spin-attack and fatal blow because they require moving the analog stick back and forth in a specific rhythm horizontally and vertically respectfully. The camera controls will irk some players as the only way to manually control the camera is to hold down the L button and then move the right analog stick. Even after twenty-five hours of playing SS, I would accidentally draw my sword when I wanted to control the camera. It is possible to play the game the “old-school way” by pressing on the ZL button to center the camera behind Link. Strangely the Y button which is used to recalibrate the joycon positions is completely unused in button-only mode. Nintendo could have added an option to map the Y button to draw/sheath the sword but they never thought of this.

The general gameplay in SS is relatively similar to other Zelda games. Link explores a level, reaches a dungeon, discovers an item and uses the item to help with puzzle solving. A strange outlier is that even compared to past games in the series, there’s a scarcity of environments and enemy designs. Throughout the journey, Link will revisit the same places numerous times fighting the same enemies with different palette swaps. Another outlier is the introduction of Spirit Realm challenges. They are obstacle courses where Link is stripped of all of his items and has to collect 15 Spirit Orbs while avoiding getting caught. Neither of these outliers are particularly enjoyable and SS becomes astonishingly stale even before the halfway point.

Skyward Sword is a solid yet flawed experience that runs at a silky smooth 60 FPS in both docked and portable mode. I enjoyed the intricate dungeons, a greater emphasis on the plot and quality of life improvements, but the amount of backtracking completely spoiled my experience. If the game was named anything other than the Legend of Zelda, I would have been able to overlook its shortcomings. But because of the pedigree of the franchise, Skyward Sword is simply nowhere near as good as other Zelda games and best left ignored unless you can buy it at a steep discount.

First time playing it. While it has some great dungeons, I missed the large, interconnected world that Twilight Princess had. Did not really enjoy the flying after the first couple of times. The world building was pretty good, I particularly liked Skyloft (which was a great hun as well) and its inhabitants, which included some great characters, including some well designed minor NPCs. Was not a big fan of most new introductions with regards to the inhabitants below rhe clouds. Found the treasure seeking moles felt particularly out of place, and the forest and water dwelling species did not do much for me either. It's good they tried to introduce some new species. (people?) , but I was glad to at least run into the occasional Goron.

While the combat was deeper than any Zelda before it, I must say I'm glad that motion controls are mostly a thing of the past. It never bothered me much in TP, but here it felt really frustrating at times. While it worked great on most regular enemies, I felt it could be very annoying during some boss encounters, particularly the final boss. Safe to say I was glad that the HD version added an option for button controls, which I mainly stuck to eventually.

Some other minor issues I had were the stretches of boring gameplay when travelling between two worlds to grab something and come back and some rather boring game mechanics, such as the parts where you have to dig and crawl underneath the ground, and waiting for the slow lava platforms to move along the stream. Also, the song mechanics felt really shoved in and felt really lackluster compared to previous titles.

Still, I'm glad I finally got to play it and while it certainly was a but of a slog at times, it had some great dungeons and puzzles, some (but not all) memorable bosses, great characters and an interesting story.

Welp.. I had a full review typed out but Grouvee deleted the text once I set the dates I played the game, so I'm not spending all that time writing again. I'll keep it short.

Played the original & hated the motion controls - never finished the game: 3/5 stars. Played this one and did not use motion controls and loved most of it. Great story, beautiful scenery and music. There were a few parts that I wasn't so fond of (the trials/repeated areas), but overall this was a solid game for me. Got emotional at the end and I don't get emotional over games. Recommend playing Ocarina of Time and Windwaker before this one but definitely not required. You'll just get more out of it. Skyward Sword is supposed to be the prequel that started it all.

Note to self: write reviews on another platform like Google Docs and then copy/paste into here.

There was a theory back when Skyward Sword first came out that the game is more of a tech demo than anything else. Now that I've finally played it with the Switch release, I can say that I believe this 100%.

Every. Single. Plot point. requires a fetch quest to proceed. There are only four major areas in the game that you have to frequently fly to (which is a slight annoyance) and retrieve something. The bulk of this game is fetch quests followed by dungeons. To make matters worse, the latter part of the game involves partially redoing some dungeons (albeit in a much different manner). Combined with how few areas this game truly has, it's safe to say that Nintendo got as much use out of the game's assets as it could.

These fetch quests also make the early part of the game a slog. It's slow paced and nothing too fun happens. Just usual "find new area, fetch quest, enter dungeon, fight boss, repeat." Things don't pick up until after the third dungeon where the game gets interesting, but again is slowed down heavily by more fetch quests. This game should have been around the length of Ocarina of Time on your first play through, not 30 hours. To illustrate the point better, there is a point in the game where you must talk to Faron (the Water Dragon) to get something to proceed further in the game. She wants you to prove yourself to her before she does anything. So how do you do that? A fetch quest! Then you get what you need and you go to the dungeon. Not bad, right? Well a few hours later, you need to get something else from her (music, or a part of a song). So she just gives it to you, right? Wrong. You have to prove yourself to her again. And how do you do that? ANOTHER F***ING FETCH QUEST.

Then come the motion controls. Yes, on the Switch version you can use a controller whether it be the Switch Pro Controller or the joy-cons attached to the Switch in handheld mode or built-in as part of the Switch Lite. However, it is best when played with the joy-cons in your hands instead of attached to the console. Why? The right thumbstick is annoying to use and there was a point where I switched from the joy-cons to the pro controller and couldn't figure out how to do something (I think it was use my shield). This got me killed, unfortunately. But what's worse is that this is nothing but a gimmick. It doesn't enhance the game in any fashion, it just makes simple tasks like killing a Deku Baba annoying.

I heavily prefer the motion controls of Twilight Princess. It was cool to use the motion controls there but they weren't tied to swinging your sword a certain way. This gimmick is annoying but the pro controller just isn't convenient to use in my opinion, so I dealt with the joy-cons the entire time.

The story itself is really good and we finally see the beginning of how Link and Zelda keep fighting Ganon over and over throughout the games. A reason is given and it's a fine one to me. This game also excels with its musical score which is absolutely beautiful. It is simply lovely and masterfully composed, and it's the first time a Zelda game has had the music orchestrated which makes it all the better. It is the one consistent aspect of this title that is always top notch.

At the end of the day, this game is a massive disappointment. It's more of Fetch Quest: The Game with a Zelda theme to it than anything else. A tech demo for motion controls. If the game hadn't used the fetch quests for every plot point, it would be significantly shorter. Maybe 10 to 12 hours on a first playthrough, maybe a little more or a little less. But this combined with the motion control gimmick and the flying which reminds me of the sailing in The Wind Waker (but 1/10th as annoying), there just isn't much to like about this title except the music.

I beat the game around 2 A.M. today and I've already sold it on eBay as of 9:45 A.M.. Unlike most other Zelda titles, this is one I won't be coming back to.

The first 2/3rds of this game felt like one of those cheap Zelda rip-offs that the gaming world has no lack of. The game just lacked that typical Zelda atmosphere. The puzzle were ridiculously simple and the fact that you had to return to worlds you'd visited before to complete quests felt like the makers were trying to save money and time by not creating new worlds to explore. The last 1/3rd of the game had a more Zelda feel to it, though. Creativity came to the fore and the game started to be enjoyable.

But what ruined the game for me were the controls. Motion controls just don't do it for me. You can turn them off but it's still clunky and cumbersome. The game is old, though, so perhaps I shouldn't be too harsh on it in this respect.

PROS

• Inviting setting
• Charming script and tone
• Some very solid dungeon/puzzle designs
• Top-notch art-style and presentation
• Combat can be pretty satisfying at times

CONS

• Slow pacing and too much hand-holding make the early hours a slog
• Clunky controls and obnoxious camera
• Excessively padded with backtracking and boring fetch quests
• Flying around Skyloft is cool in theory, but uneventful in practice
• Gadgets lack both conceptual creativity and utility
• Spirit trials are annoying and should've been cut entirely
• Maybe this is a me problem, but I found the overuse of the iconic puzzle-solved/secret-revealed melody hella irritating, bordering on condescending even. I swear every flipping door you open sets that thing off.

I have never actually finished this game. I couldn't. I got to the final shadow realm and couldn't take it anymore.

But let me start with some pros:

• It looks beautiful (except the sky is a really weird beige color)
• The characters are great
• Girahim
• The music

And now the cons:

• The. God. Damn. Controls. I don't know what they did to royally screw up the controls from Twilight Princess but swinging a sword with your wii-mote is not fun anymore.
• The stamina. It is a frustrating tool that I think is supposed to increase difficulty. I'm glad they learned from that mistake for BotW
• The shadow realms. I may be biased for this because timed events really stress me out. It's hard enough already that its timed but then they have to throw in those heat seeking robots?? No thank you.
• Fi. That's all you need to know.

I wish there was more flying, I wish exploring was more fun, there's a lot of things I wish this game had. It's fun to a point and then it's a chore. Video games shouldn't be a chore.