Spoiler My Opinion of Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

[Kcman200]

I've heard good, and I've heard bad about this latest Zelda title. I'll try to break this down into the Good and the Bad that I have found in it myself.

Good:
Sword Movement:
I enjoy the fact that your swinging of the remote actually serves a better purpose than what could just be accomplished by mashing the B button on a controller. It add more diversity in common enemies, boss fights and puzzles based on the way and direction from which you strike enemies and objects.

Item Longevity and Upgrading:
When I reach Lanayru Desert and I can still use the Beetle I got in Faron Woods, or having to decide when rolling or throwing a bomb is the most effective shows that some thought was put into the use of each item effectively. This is one of the hardest tasks in my opinion to uphold in games that introduce new items throughout the story, and though I haven't yet found the perfect game that does this to perfection, Skyward Sword at least gets a pass. The biggest offender of this in the series would have to be Twilight Princess, more specifically the spinner/ball-and-chain. Another thing that is fantastic about Skyward Sword is that the items have additional abilities through upgrading using collectables found throughout Skyloft and the world below. I like this direction of upgrading items and I think NIntendo likes the idea too based on a collectable-based upgrading done in A Link Between Worlds.

Puzzles!:
If there's one thing that all good Zelda games possess is quality puzzles as well as in this game rather unexpected puzzles. What I'm talking about was the Boss Key puzzles, though simple, I loved the concept of a complicated lock holding a formidable power. The time orb puzzles were my favorites specifically because they brought together something I loved and something I hated in Zelda games: Water that IS NOT the Water Temple and the desolate wasteland with music that will never be better than Gerudo Valley.

Stamina Bar:
Lets face it, a run button was needed, and I like how you need to manage your stamina in certain places in order to accomplish a puzzle. This one is a bit controversial in the sense that you just can't roll everywhere anymore, so I decided to put this one last on the pros list.

The Bad

Dungeon Length:
Okay, so the dungeon designs were great, I loved the visuals and puzzles, but was it just me or were they......like....really short? Sure some were a little more explorative later in the game but for the most part they were never really hit the perfect length I like in a dungeon. An example of perfect length in my opinion would be Snowpeak Valley or Goron Mines in Twilight Princess. Great puzzles, quality enemies, and though Snowpeak's item isnt really all that helpful outside the dungeon it worked so well within it I still left it rather satisfied and ready to attack the next area after maybe a short break. Skyward Sword's dungeons always seemed to be missing that component and came up a little short in dungeon length, however I cannot say that the quality of their short designs were bad.

SOME Bosses:
I say some because the Ancient Cistern Boss and the Ghirahim/Demise fights were great, loved them very much. On the other hand when I have to fight The Imprisoned three times with just a slight variation of a boss fight I already did not find all that exciting.....well.......it stinks. Fighting Ghirahim three times also was a bit much, maybe the one in the beginning and end, but the second one was just showing that the boss ideas were running a bit low. The Stalmaster became a standard enemy and the parasyte on the whale was just kind of thrown at you and though cool at the moment, also did not really fulfill me as much as the bosses in Twilight Princess did. Even Morpheal gave me a better hype than most of these bosses, and to me that's saying a lot.

Skyloft, Flying, and a Missing Quality in the World Below:
I get that Skyloft is just a bunch of pieces from the world below placed in the sky, but it didn't have a large amount of exploration involved in it. Flying served no real purpose except getting goddess cube collectables and traveling to the world below, and the fact that its so expansive beyond that just made flying so exhausting and boring. Wind Waker had a lot of sailing, but they did it right by having a TON of islands, pirate invasions, whirlpool octopus boss fights with your cannon. That was traveling done right, Skyloft's flying was probably my most hated quality about Skyward Sword in general. Now my little quality about the world below is that there were not real villages or "safe zones" to explore. It just seems like there is little to do in the world below aside from look at its stunning visuals and complete the story. Maybe that's just me.

Sidequest Quality:
I just thought that there could be more diversity in this. The ones they had were good, but the rewards were all bland and predictable. I would be okay with that if the quests themselves were fun, like I actually enjoyed the Magic Armor quest in Wind Waker and the Golden Bug quest in Twilight Princess.

Wow this was long, if you made it all the way though my second article here, congratulations and thanks. Let me know if there is anything I missed, I just tried to cover the big points in my experience through the game. Thanks for reading!

Edit: Thanks Soul for bringing up me not talking about Fi. I think I just forgot to mention her because when I was thinking of all the basic points of Skyward Sword she just kind of blurred in because....well.....all she said were basic and obvious things. She had a small inconsequential backstory and was very robotic and unrelatable. She had great abilities in tracking certain objects/collectables, but overall just a hastily conceived partner. The King of the Red Lions in Wind Waker was better just because he helped you find out where to go, oh and he was THE KING OF HYRULE.

 

[Soul]

I agree with most of your points, though a conspicuous lack of any mention of Fi is weird to me. Beside the lackluster graphics (great art design but looks awful on my HD TV, worse than Twilight Princess which is five years older), that's the biggest negative for me.

 

[Kcman200]

I agree with most of your points, though a conspicuous lack of any mention of Fi is weird to me. Beside the lackluster graphics (great art design but looks awful on my HD TV, worse than Twilight Princess which is five years older), that's the biggest negative for me.

Fi slipped my mind, I think when I was contemplating all the obvious things about the game she kind of blurred in because that is the only kind of things she said.

 

[CrimsonCavalier]

I'm a well-known hater of Skyward Sword on this website. I hate that game. I don't just think it's the worst Zelda game ever made, I think it's one of the worse games I've ever played, period, in my many years of gaming.

There was just so much bad that the few good was simply unable to tip the balance. And the main culprit was the motion controls. I mean, there was the lacklustre story, the forced implementation of the timeline, Fi, all of the Imprisoned battles, the menu interface (you just picked up an item that you've picked up 56 times before already? that's ok! we're going to tell you about it anyways), the enemy design (worst bokoblin design ever), but the motion control ruined the game.

And let me be specific here. The controls were bad. Just because some people "got used to" the bad controls, doesn't make them good controls. Everything was forced. The "strategy" with certain enemies and bosses would have been great if when you swiped your sword left-to-right, it worked every time, but it didn't. The game's difficulty did not come from difficulty, it came from unresponsive controls.

I've never played a game where I was frustrated because the buttons I was pressing did not perform the action on the screen. I've never pressed ( to shoot and my character ducked instead. Or jumped. Or rolled. I've never pressed up and had my character walk left. However, that happened with SS all the time. Especially in the fights with Ghirahim.

I feel the game had so much potential, but it ended up being rubbish.

I think there were some good things, like the music, and the item creation/upgrades. But other than that, meh.

 

[Mipha]

I'm a well-known hater of Skyward Sword on this website. I hate that game. I don't just think it's the worst Zelda game ever made, I think it's one of the worse games I've ever played, period, in my many years of gaming.

There was just so much bad that the few good was simply unable to tip the balance. And the main culprit was the motion controls. I mean, there was the lacklustre story, the forced implementation of the timeline, Fi, all of the Imprisoned battles, the menu interface (you just picked up an item that you've picked up 56 times before already? that's ok! we're going to tell you about it anyways), the enemy design (worst bokoblin design ever), but the motion control ruined the game.

And let me be specific here. The controls were bad. Just because some people "got used to" the bad controls, doesn't make them good controls. Everything was forced. The "strategy" with certain enemies and bosses would have been great if when you swiped your sword left-to-right, it worked every time, but it didn't. The game's difficulty did not come from difficulty, it came from unresponsive controls.

I've never played a game where I was frustrated because the buttons I was pressing did not perform the action on the screen. I've never pressed ( to shoot and my character ducked instead. Or jumped. Or rolled. I've never pressed up and had my character walk left. However, that happened with SS all the time. Especially in the fights with Ghirahim.

I feel the game had so much potential, but it ended up being rubbish.

I think there were some good things, like the music, and the item creation/upgrades. But other than that, meh.

What's so bad about the motion controls? I mean, it was glitchy sometimes but it wasn't that bad.

 

[CrimsonCavalier]

What's so bad about the motion controls? I mean, it was glitchy sometimes but it wasn't that bad.

It's hard to explain in writing, but essentially the problem I had was first, when you swing left to right, for example, sometimes the movement wouldn't register. Sometimes it would register your wind-up as a swing, so you would end up swinging as you move your controller to swing. It made for extremely awkward battles. Second, controlling the loftwing and scarab with the controller and tilting it was extremely counterintuitive and not fun at all. Oh, and swimming. And here's where it got even worse. If you're underwater, you swim like you fly. With the controller flat and move by tilting, but the moment you break the surface of the water, you have to switch to regular control stick movement??? Who thought of that??

No, motion controls aren't bad. I actually prefer them in some games. But when they were forced into the game, and when they weren't very good or responsive, they are bad. And like I said, getting used to them isn't the same thing as them not being bad. You can adjust your play style and make them work for you, but it isn't the same thing as having controls that work from the start.

 

[Zelda3AndKnuckles]

I agree on alot of things, the Motion Controls and Stamina Bar are ripped on a lot but I think they were one of the best parts of the game. Also, items in the game went of the old philosophy of quality over quanity. The Beetle, Bombs, Gust Bellows, Whip, and Clawshots all see frequent use throughout the game. For me through the dungeons were okay. They weren't great, but they weren't really bad either. I think the game's biggest flaw is the padding and by that I mean the fetch-quest type stuff.

 

[DarkestLink]

I never got "used to" the motion controls, I just got them to work...the problem is, I feel like I'm doing the robot when I play. The motions just don't feel natural.