The Difficulty of Skyward Sword

[jack546]

i apreciate the difficulty of the original zelda games and i think that the newer games are way too easy from the game cube games on the games have dungeons and combat that makes the game ridiculously easy. I personaly want skyward sword to be long and have a standard dificulty(like ocarina of time) or to be difficult but have five or six dungeons please post what you want the difficulty to be.

 

[JuicieJ]

Looks to me like it's going to have difficulty more along the lines of Zelda II.

 

[Dio]

I want the game to have a difficulty similar to or greater than OOT. From what I have heard Dungeons take about 3 hours to even get to and I imagine they shall take 1-2 hours to complete. With this being a 50-100 hour game and going by that, we could get 10 dungeons done in 50 hours. I imagine we shall get other game play in the sky too so I would guess around 8-9 dungeons will be in this game.

 

[Deniro]

i think saying it's gonna be as hard as Zelda II is a little extreme, I also don't think it will be as hard as Zelda I, but maybe something along the lines of Alttp, someone who tried it (one of these magazines, dunno which, )actually said that it's the hardest Zelda game yet, but I doubt it.

 

[Anthony_Vaughn_]

While I do believe that this game's combat system will be much more difficult, I also feel that a lot of that depends a lot more on getting used to the new controls and the enemies' fighting / defense system.

 

[metalzeldahead]

I hope it's typical zelda-MM dificulty where the only problrm is figuring out what to do and where stuff is or like oot master quest

 

[TheMinish]

The Stalfos take off a harshly unforgiving 3 hearts from your meter, that's pretty good indication that the difficulty will be high. And challenge is good

 

[MW7]

Looks to me like it's going to have difficulty more along the lines of Zelda II.

I kind of agree. Because of the way wii motionplus controls work, combat will be very reminiscent of how you have to strike in specific places in Zelda 2. So likely this will be the hardest Zelda game combat-wise since Zelda 2. Puzzles are a different matter, and hopefully Skyward Sword will have challenging puzzles as well.

 

[Ganondork]

Well, don't worry, this game is definitely going to be much more difficult than some of the later Zelda games.

Let's begin with enemies. You have to swing your sword a certain way to kill many enemies, this adds a tougher element to the game. It may require multiple slices just to figure out where to attack to do any damage. I also heard around Zelda Dungeon in November that all enemies do at least one heart of damage. The ability to do that can easily kill Link, so some people may get anxious and just swing the Wii remote around wildly. This could open Link up to many attacks, and he end up dying quicker than a person using precise sword slashes. And some bosses such as Ghirahim seem to be very powerful. Ghirahim is able to grab Link's sword for goodness sake! And then some enemies are puzzles too. You have to figure out where to hit them and with what. Between everyday enemies and bosses, Link is going to have trouble with just them, at least until you have the controls mastered.

And then there are dungeons. We've seen a few puzzles, and I think some seem a bit daunting. But we also need to think about the whole returning to dungeons. We may not know which dungeon to revisit, Fi may decide not to give you a hint of any sort. It may even be a bit difficult simply to figure out which is a dungeon and which is the overworld; Miyamoto has said they seem to blend more and more together in this game.

You also need to think about the meters. The stamina and shield meter definitely limit Link. Unlike in Twilight Princess, he can't just raise his shield and then be safe forever. The shield is going to break after a certain amount of hits - and the more powerful ones can more than likely break the weaker shields in a single hit! The stamina meter is very important, it's what allows you to sprint, climb, and possibly many other type of physical activities. I can imagine sprinting up a wall will require a lot of stamina. This Assassin's Creed-type move would require a lot of physical conditioning and ability. All you can really do is hope that we will get a stamina meter upgrade as we continue.

There are many other difficult elements to the game, but these are a few. Skyward Sword is definitely not going to disappoint people looking for a challenge.

 

[A Link In Time]

The game will be difficult. But that's not necessarily a bad thing...

 

[SpookyJooky]

I think the difficulty will partially come from getting used to the motion controls. After you're used to the controls, then I'm thinking the game will be difficult along the lines of OoT. If it's true that enemies do at least one heart of damage, then maybe it'll be more difficult than OoT, but some early enemies can be killed without needing to block as seen in one of the demos in the now named Skyview Temple. I'm hoping this is only possible for the early enemies, 'cause I think the guy just dashed up to him and just started slashing him. Probably so since the Stalfos can guard pretty well. The enemies also have more variety to them, like the simple Deku Baba trying to eat a bomb when you place one near it? I dunno if that's exactly true since Link was close by and they lash in his direction when close anyway, but it might just be more fun in general to fight enemies if they all can be defeated with almost any item. This could make the game easy though if arrows can kill enemies. That would mean you could just penetrate their defenses and hit 'em in the middle! I hope not though, and that the enemies will just get harder and harder and have more variety (Zelda II enemies included would be perfect).

As for the dungeons.. hard to say. I wonder if it'll be difficult when you revisit dungeons to find a new item, or even a new passageway. Maybe they will be more challenging in terms of thinking about the room more spatially, like looking to the ceiling in Skyview Temple to see that you need the beetle item to hit switches. More outside-of-the-box thinking with things we haven't seen in the series (at least I haven't), with things like using your arrows/seeds to hit a rolled-up vine so that it will unfurl for swinging.

 

[Billy Ninja]

The game will be harder in the beginning, when you have only a wooden shield and you are not used to the controls and combat concept. But it might get progressively easier as you play and acquire a decent shield, more hearts, better potions, earn itens like the bow, and get used to the controls and learn smart strategies.

I think that the shield is going to be a key point in the difficulty, and as soon as you get the Hylian Shield the game will be a lot easier. As far as I heard, fighting w/o a shield is 3x harder, and the first wooden shield breaks after less than a dozen hits.

Another thing I got a feeling is that facing a opponent 1 by 1 he will be all cautious and smart, but as soon as they gather a handfull of them they get all confident and dumb and fight with the guards down, making it easy to dismiss all of them with one spin attack. And that's why I believe that the game won't be able to even out the power ups with more and more powerful monsters. But one thing that I'm expecting is various enemies mobs with different setups and strategies to beat, that will be awesome.

Plus, I hope this game is at a good level Smart Strategy-proof, would be so annoying to find out that sending Sword Beams at enemies or using certain itens repeatedly is 10x faster and safer to send the enemies away.


That's what I'm talking about when I say that 1 on 1 might be harder than fighting multiple enemies.

 

[Fullmetal]

I think Skyward Sword will be balanced for old and new players. I suspect the difficulty level will be similair to Wind Waker.