Sorry for the two-week hiatus, but it’s finally time for me to review the Forsaken Fortress. This dungeon is easily The Wind Waker’s most iconic. Dragon Roost Cavern was shown a lot in trailers, but the Forsaken Fortress featured in numerous pieces of the game’s artwork, is home to most of the game’s most significant enemies, and is visited twice due to its great story importance.

The Forsaken Fortress is an odd case. While there are a few other dungeons in the series that must be visited multiple times as part of the story — which probably follow the Forsaken Fortress’ example — this one is the first and it also deviates a particularly large amount from traditional dungeon structure and, more importantly, the defined structure within its own game. Unlike in other dungeons in The Wind Waker, you won’t spend time solving puzzles and fighting enemies as you navigate through many rooms, locating a Dungeon Map, Compass, new weapon, and Big Key on your way to a boss. You do locate most of these items — barring the Big Key — but in odder ways. Little focus is placed on the Map or Compass because the dungeon’s layout is simple and not meant to challenge your navigation skills, the Skull Hammer is awarded to you almost immediately after returning on the second visit, and the way to the end is blocked only by searchlights and barricades designed for the Skull Hammer. So the dungeon is unusual. How, then, does this odd dungeon perform in terms of quality?

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The Tower of the Gods is one of the few dungeons in The Wind Waker that I’m just a little bit at a loss for words on. I like it… but it’s a bit challenging to justify why (that will make more sense later in the review). So it might take me some time to explain. Bear with me! This dungeon has a concept that few dungeons — mainly just the Great Palace from Adventure of Link — had prior to The Wind Waker: It isn’t an evil place; it wasn’t corrupted or overrun. It is in fact a sacred one, built and still controlled by the forces of good, and made to test Link.

So right off the bat, this dungeon sets itself apart quite a bit from other dungeons, and that’s pretty cool. It has an awesome introduction scene where it rises out of the ocean, and being that it’s the climax of The Wind Waker’s first half, it’s very fitting that it has this presentation. The dungeon’s music fits its sacred status as well as its story importance; the song is beautiful and sacred, yet also dire and grim. The song leaves no room for confusion: This place is pretty important. The theme’s intro portion alone is awesome, and it sets the tone for the entire dungeon; the Tower of the Gods is sacred and holy, but it will test Link’s mettle with unbelievably harsh challenges before he can save his sister and the world. It’s also one of the few dungeon themes in the game that I feel is awesome to listen to on its own. It’s not overwhelmingly atmospheric and manages to have some awesome complexity while still being somewhat atmospheric. It’s very memorable.

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Although the Forsaken Fortress is first visited before Dragon Roost Cavern, I’m starting this series off with this dungeon and reviewing all the Forsaken Fortress portions at the same time during its revisit. Dragon Roost Cavern is the first full-on dungeon of The Wind Waker, with its predecessor being essentially only half of a dungeon, and one that deviates from the format of the rest of the dungeons in the game at that. As a result, while it falls prey to some of the problems present in later dungeons — primarily, it’s extremely easy — it’s in a position where most of those “problems” aren’t actually problems at all; they are strengths. It’s because of this that I believe Dragon Roost Cavern is an easy pick for the game’s best dungeon.

Initially the dungeon seems pretty nondescript, consisting of little more than a series of volcanic caverns and tunnels. With a quiet and atmospheric remix of the Dodongo’s Cavern music from Ocarina of Time for its dungeon theme, it really does seem like a retread of the volcanic cavern concept. This would seem to be a major pitfall — after all, I criticized the fairly similar Goron Mines for its lack of thematic diversity — but in my eyes, Dragon Roost Cavern actually performs fairly well.

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Only 24 hours since the first announcement of what fans are calling A Link to the Past II and already we are starving for more information. Well YouTube reviewer GameXplain and Adam Sessler for Rev3Games have recently posted their hands on videos of the gameplay providing us with just a little more information. They play the same temple seen in the Nintendo Direct but they do elaborate upon the little elements of the gameplay and provide some explanations for some of the more interesting aspects that were previously unknown.

Jump inside to check them out for yourself.

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I’m going to give a heads-up on this one: Unlike all of my other dungeon reviews, the subject of this one is the only dungeon in the entire Zelda series I think I truly hate. I wrote once before that I’ve never had fun with it at any point, so while I will try my hardest to look for good things in the City in the Sky, this review is going to be virtually entirely negative. This dungeon represents nothing for me but broken dreams, and as such, this will be more rant than review. You’ve been warned!

There’s so little to say about the City in the Sky when it comes to its visuals, audio, and overall themes. It’s a city — er, well, place of some kind — in the sky. There is very little done with the architecture to make it interesting, though. Other locations in Twilight Princess very uniquely make themselves out to be believable locations in the world; the Goron Mines look and feel like mines, and Snowpeak Ruins looks and feels like a frozen-over mansion. The City in the Sky is a city populated by the Oocca, but the only recognizable dwelling is at the beginning, and otherwise the dungeon looks like a nondescript industrial facility. There isn’t really any theme coherence here. That might be fine if the dungeon was cool anyway, but really, the City in the Sky is primarily filled with a massive misuse of the concept. At no point does this dungeon really capture the romance or mystery of being in a settlement that high in the sky. As a result, it fails in capturing the epic qualities that the final main dungeon of the game should have, and even if it didn’t have that lofty goal to rise up to, it’s still thematically boring and just dull to look at.

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If you’ve been reading Zelda Dungeon for the past few days, you’ll know that Alex at GenGAME has been playing through Darksiders II, which Mases has labeled as “the best Zelda game since Majora’s Mask.” And now that Alex has finished his play through, he seems to agree with that sentiment.

All of the details are in his review, so hit the jump to read!

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I’m finally kicking off this series with, of course, the first dungeon of Twilight Princess: The Forest Temple. Like the Woodfall Temple from Majora’s Mask, this dungeon is very basic in theme and has some challenging puzzle design instead of being a tutorial session. It’s not overly difficult, of course, but it definitely doesn’t waste time teaching you the game. And, unlike most first dungeons of the series, it manages to establish its own identity and style, forming its own unique experience within the whole of Twilight Princess.

This dungeon, like a lot throughout the recent Zelda games, has an iconic appearance from a distance. It’s basically the hollow of a giant tree. Bringing to mind the Great Deku Tree to some (though there isn’t any concrete connection between the two), the dungeon’s interior definitely brings to mind that of Inside the Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time: Inside it is woody, with walls made of wood, floors made of wood, and just generally a lot of wood. Walls covered in vines and other growths, plant enemies, and additional, artificial structures built within are other similarities. Arguably the structures make more sense in the Forest Temple, because this place is no longer a living tree.

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This week’s Windmill Hut features a song many of us hold near and dear, the “Wind Waker Title Theme.” This band cover is by YouTuber Tilusankari, combining different types of guitar, drums, and keyboard to create a brilliant masterpiece. Jump on in to pay homage to this amazing artist and song.

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Marking the start of a new series at our sister site, GenGAME, Twilight Princess is posthumously  tested against its pre-release hype and how it stands within the library of Zelda games. The series, “Wii in Review” will tackle some popular Wii games now that the console’s six year life is coming to a close.

The ultimate question in this review, however, is whether Twilight Princess was the legendary game that it should have been, or did its shortcomings prevent it from accomplishing that goal? Hit the jump to find out what GenGAME has to say!

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Skyward Sword, the latest and allegedly greatest game of the long-running Zelda series. It’s been 25 years since the original Legend of Zelda came out and started one of gaming’s most crucial and popular series, and Nintendo intended to cap that anniversary with one of the most ambitious projects in Nintendo’s history. But how good is it really?

This review might be a little overdue, now that I think about it. See, when I sat down to write this week’s article, I went over my list of article ideas, and when I saw “Skyward Sword Review” I thought “Aww, but that would be so boring!” Really though, it’s about time I wrote one. I’ve already talked quite a bit about Skyward Sword on the forums, in videos, and in my series of comparative articles about Skyward Sword and the Zelda series before it. Even though I’ve discussed the game a lot already, I’ve yet to compile all of my thoughts together until now, with this full review of the game. If you’ve read my thoughts about the game before, don’t worry; this will be a bit different.

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the latest addition to the legendary franchise and is widely considered to be one of its best games yet. Ever since its debut trailer at E3 2010, it’s been one of the most highly anticipated games in history. Fans were eager for a revolution in the series, and once the trailer was seen, many of us knew we had gotten what we asked for. During the wait, the hype for the game only grew and grew, and the hype surpassed that of the game’s predecessor, Twilight Princess. It took 5 years for Skyward Sword to release – the longest development period for any Zelda game – so it was only natural that it was so highly anticipated. But did Skyward Sword live up to its sky-high expectations? Read on to find out.

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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has been officially released for almost three weeks now. Since then, the game has become a best-seller for retailers worldwide and has received phenomenal reviews all around. This is the Zelda game fans have been waiting for since Nintendo first revealed that their new home console, the Wii, would use motion-based controls. Many loved the thought of Link swinging the iconic Master Sword as they swung the Wiimote, and this notion became the basis for what people thought Zelda Wii should be. Needless to say, plenty of fans were disappointed when they discovered that Twilight Princess lacked the 1:1 motion controls that would later provided by Wii Motion Plus. True, Twilight Princess was directly ported from the GameCube and fitted with Wii-style controls, but what this game inadvertently managed to do was cloud players’ perspective of what Nintendo could actually do with their new technology.

Thankfully, Skyward Sword is the embodiment of Nintendo’s original promise. Contrary to what many fans feared after the glitchy demo displayed at E3 2010, Skyward Sword’s mechanics run smoothly and efficiently. Of course, gameplay isn’t the only thing that makes or breaks a game. Fortunately, many reputable video game critics, such as GameInformer and IGN, have given The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword a perfect 10 out of 10. In fact, this is how IGN starts off their review:

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Sure, Skyward Sword has been out for over two weeks now, but reviews are still flowing in almost daily. While we haven’t been posting most post-release reviews, I decided to draft a news post for this one as it comes courtesy of ScrewAttack.com, one of the most post popular video game websites online. They ended up giving the game a 9.5 score and had lots of good things to say. They really enjoyed the graphical style, the storyline, and the new overall setup of the three main areas. Overall they think that Skyward Sword isn’t too different from the rest of the Zelda series, but it is different enough. Jump inside to see the video embed.

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We’ve seen dozens of reviews over the last few weeks, some coming from notable game magazines, others coming from big name websites, and some coming from peopled named Tom McShea. How about the Legend of Zelda community itself? We personally didn’t give out a review of the game because as hardcore Zelda fans, many of the staffers had such differing opinions over specific parts of the game that putting out a review under the Zelda Dungeon name seemed silly. I think the multiple impressions posts and videos, along with the bloggish atmosphere of most of our posts has done a better job than specifically labeling something a review. The scoring system would also be quite different as the audience that would read a Zelda Dungeon review is not the same audience that reads Game Informer, IGN, or USA Today.

Chances are if you are reading this post up until this point, you’ve already played Skyward Sword, are waiting to get your copy for Christmas, or almost certainly will play the game once you get a chance. That being said, our close friends at LegendZelda.net have posted their own Skyward Sword Review. Make the jump to see a small portion of their review.

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The folks over at The Bit Block have been seemingly releasing non-stop Skyward Sword content and that continues today with their 20+ minute long video review. There is no doubt that these guys are huge fans of the game with all the content they’ve put out, so if you want to see a view of the game from a fans perspective, than this video is for you. To check out the video for yourself, go ahead and make the jump.

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