How does Zelda Skyward Sword have such high metacritic score?

Hero_Select said:
The game weirdly gets shit on a lot but it's a fantastic game.

It has a great story
Some of the best dungeons in the entire series
Kick-ass boss fights
Really fun motion controls

Where it disappoints is the sky not having many places to explore and fucking dowsing. Stupid dowsing.
Click to expand...

I think it's all true. I liked it a lot as well. It's one of my favorite Zelda's for sure. I hope it get's a remaster one day, because it would benefit the game a lot. Graphically it really maxed out the capabilities of the Wii, with quite a few framerate drops here and there.
 
That mandatory stealth game between stages were tiring and I got sick of it. Each stage felt confined and boxed in. Opposite direction of what Zelda 64 tried to go.
 
The motion controls were excessive (Flying, bombs,dowsing) and that one flooded forest section really sucked, but other than that I enjoyed the game quite a bit.
 
Last edited:
Ghirahim was great. Creepy bugger who actually delivered (I'm looking at you Zant)
Had some truly excellent boss fights (Koloktos!)
Made excellent use of the motion for fighting (Ghirahim fights in particular) which sadly hasn't since been repeated in any other games. You didn't just waggle, you actiually had to swipe, slash and stab with purpose.
Had some really good puzzle and level design (Lanayru Mine!)
Groose (Man, we need more Groose)

...but the Imprisoned was awful and should have resulted in at least a 1 point deduction. If I charted the fun of the game on a graph there'd be canyons whenever those fights came up.

Overall, I had fun with it when I wasn't slashing some oversized spikey goomba's wobbly toes.
 
RTTP bump.

I feel like Han in episode 7. "it's true, all of it is true..." I hated this game when it released. Played 90% and couldn't finish it.

Playing it now on the Wii U gamepad of all things and it's amazing. The complaints are all valid and I share them but man, the good aspects of this game are really good. Glad I gave it a 2nd chance.
 
Last edited:
I really liked the motion controls, maybe other people was not used to that control scheme before playing Skyward Sword.

My main complaint is that the overworld map is not interconnected.
 
My current theory is that Zelda fatigue, SD fatigue and waggle fatigue were a triple threat that hit hard all at the same time, making me see the game in a harsher light. Maybe the same game 4 years earlier would have been well regarded.
 
Last edited:
Can easily be remastered with proper controls btw. Can do something like For Honor where right stick adjusts attack direction. Would most likely play significantly better too.

I'm sure plenty of clueless idiots will shill for gyro controls...as if they're actually any good... they're not and won't ever be.
 
Never finished it, motion controls started to annoy me while they usually don't.

Twilight Princess is infinitely better. Actually, right at this moment I'm watching my daughter play it. The dungeons and bosses are among the best in the series.
 
I really liked Skyward Sword. In fact, I would rank it as the third best 3D Zelda game behind Wind Waker and Breath of the Wild.
 
Zelda games hold the greatest scores imaginable and you can't blame motion controls they were an opportunity you couldn't pass up on with the Nintendo Wii plus with interesting level design, NPCs the game is a service to classic Zelda lore and an HD remake is long over due.
 
I think it's far better than Twilight Princess. The controls were pretty innovative and worked fine after getting used to it. Art, music and story are some of the best in the series. The only major flaw for me was the overworld not being fleshed out.
 
Call me a suprficial cunt but I never played this because of the shite artstyle. (And the motion controls to some exent)

Fuck Link face looks like a botched Michael Jackson in this one.

the legend of zelda link GIF
 
Last edited:
I'm a huge Zelda fan and I admit Skyward Sword is the worst of the bunch. It's still a good game, but designing the outdoor environments to be like a dungeon was a terrible decision. The areas all felt so inorganic and lifeless. Breath of the Wild then went in the exact opposite direction and threw out the dungeons entirely, which was even worse.
 
A Elbereth Gilthoniel said:
I'm a huge Zelda fan and I admit Skyward Sword is the worst of the bunch. It's still a good game, but designing the outdoor environments to be like a dungeon was a terrible decision. The areas all felt so inorganic and lifeless. Breath of the Wild then went in the exact opposite direction and threw out the dungeons entirely, which was even worse.
Click to expand...
BotW has the worst dungeons but it has the best overworld ever filled with tiny dungeons so its ok.

Skyward has cool puzzles, fun combat and one town but everything else kind of sucks, its more of a low 8s game imo
 
Onironauta said:
I think it's far better than Twilight Princess. The controls were pretty innovative and worked fine after getting used to it. Art, music and story are some of the best in the series. The only major flaw for me was the overworld not being fleshed out.
Click to expand...
TP and SS are my least liked 3d Zeldas but SS beats TP because of the fun combat system (for a Zelda game) cool puzzles and there is only one town but thats still FAR better than TP had.😵
 
It is an OK game packed with a lot of small annoying things in it. I really tried to get into it but I couldn't go much after the forest dungeon.
 
Birdo said:
It broke the Zelda formula without losing what made a Zelda game a Zelda game.

Unlike Breath of The Ubisoft.
Click to expand...
Exactly. I'm a huge Zelda fan and I enjoyed Skyward. I'm not saying BoTW is not good, but I started it and left it on hold, because that is not what I expect from a Zelda game.
 
I loved it personally. Terribly slow start and I'm not a huge fan of motion controls, but they were ok. It had a ton of great dungeons and dungeons are THE reason I like Zelda games so that made it one of my favorites (and the lack of dungeons really lessened BOTW for me). It also has IMO the strongest story among Zelda games which is a huge plus for me.
 
Last edited:
IDK, but I see gamers on forums shit on DS Zelda games too and IRL people praise it (I liked them both a lot), so maybe people on forums are not indicative of actual game popularity (?)
 
Mister Wolf said:
The sword swinging mechanic is ahead of its time. We are only now seeing stuff like that normalized with VR touch controllers from occulus and valve.
Click to expand...

I personally hate motion controls in non-VR games, but I also hate when VR games don't have them.

VR gaming is quite a bit different than traditional gaming. There is room for both. The best VR games are the ones made from the ground up for, and only for, VR.
 
Definitely divisive, you can even see that within metacritic itself.

Game had really good highs and really bad lows.

Motion controls... honestly I never had issue with them and most of the time I was pleasantly surprised with their potential to create cool puzzle mechanics and battle scenarios. Ghirahim was super tough but once the controls clicked you felt like such a boss!!! Nonetheless they did not click for everyone. If you can't make the game accessible to everyone I say you've failed.

Visually you have great style crippled by outdated hardware. Is it entirely the game's fault? Who knows

The introductory tutorial section and handholding that persisted throughout the rest of the game are absolutely inexcusable.

Pretty decent dungeons with so and so boss fights. There are absolutely brilliant ideas in the game like most of the Lanayru province.

But then you have the really high highs - the story and music for me. Furthermore, while there are a lot of QoL improvements that could be made, and considering all that could've gone horribly wrong, the game runs quite well. And yes, the motion controls actually ran quite well for me. Point is the game has that standard Nintendo polish which should still be applauded in a modern context. The score is probably a bit overinflated thanks to the Zelda brand but that is not something exclusive to Zelda.
 
I really liked the game, I even appreciated the motion controls and their use in the game. I had a great time until the third fight against the black pineapple. The camera kept getting stuck and I couldn't see what Link was doing. Years later I watched that fight on Youtube and realize I was fighting him the wrong way on the ground instead of jumping down from above.

If they were to to an HD remaster I'd be on-board to give it another chance as long as they don't try to change how it plays. I'm not even sure how you'd handle the precision sword mechanics without motion controls. Maybe a system similar to Astral Chain's cut ability where time slows down so you can rotate a line. I'd rather just swing a joycon tbh.
 
The game has some really high highs and some really low lows. There are a number of aspects that are the high point of the series, but it's saddled with some really poor design choices. To improve SS would be the truest form of "addition by subtraction". Motion controls are overused; the sword-fighting was really good, but all other implementations were unnecessary and/or overly intrusive. It has an insulting level of handholding and tutorials that you can't avoid. And it's the worst offender in the series when it comes to the "between dungeons" content. Skyward Sword has the most filler content, which felt necessary only to pad the game's length.

Scale back motion controls (or remove them altogether), remove a lot of the annoying handholding and trim the fat, and this would be one of the best Zelda games. So I get why people really liked it, the great qualities are there. But a number of reviews really overlooked a lot of the pacing issues. There was one review I remember reading (that gave it a 10/10) that praised the pacing, and let's just say I don't agree with that whatsoever. It would benefit so much from being a lean, 20-25 hour adventure, but you know how it is...games gots to deliver those long hour counts. :messenger_unamused:

I'd give it something like an 8.5/10. The good far outweighs the bad, but the bad aspects are why Skyward Sword is merely a good video game, and not the all-time classic that it could have been. I played this game through twice at launch (once in Hero Mode) and nearly 10 years later I've never had the desire to revisit it. I'd love to replay just the dungeons as I have a lot of fond memories of them, but having to play the entire game again? Forget about it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

  • Poll
Mario Kart World Metacritic score
Hype  2 3
119
2K
Thebonehead replied
  • Locked
  • Poll
Mario Kart World: Metacritic Score Prediction (Veteran Gamer Edition)
Poll 
9
279
Orpheus replied
  • Locked
Edge scores Clair Obscur : E33 a 10/10, raising its Metacritic score to 93
News 
2
587
Orpheus replied
Your favorite games with <70 Metacritic score
2
97
6K
Shifty1897 replied
  • Poll
Donkey Kong Bananza Metacritic Prediction Thread
2 3 4
155
1K
LakeOf9 replied
Top Bottom