WrenchNinja
Member
So I've been going through the more recent 3D Zeldas lately. I replayed Twilight Princess a few weeks ago, and last week I decided to replay Skyward Sword. I haven't played through Skyward Sword since my Hero Mode playthrough back in December 2011, so pretty much back when it came out. I haven't been that affectionate with the game as the years have gone by, but I decided to give it another chance.
So the big deal about Skyward Sword, if you weren't aware, is that it's the poster boy for motion controls and what the Wii is capable of doing. People have dreamnt of having a 1:1 sword game, and Skyward Sword mostly does that, but not without any issues. Things like horizontal, vertical, diagonal, well, you name it, swipes, that mostly works. Stuff like stabbing and the finishing blow, a little more finicky. Almost every enemy is designed around taking advantage of more methodical strikes, but seeing how this isn't my first rodeo, there are a bunch you can cheese with parrying with the shield and then waggling right up into their face because who has time to wait around for precise blows?
Other motion control stuff is mostly ass. Swimming, flying, tightrope walking, minecarting, freefalling, they all arbitrarily use the motion controls as their main input while the stick is entirely ignored. I know some people like this shit, but no, not me. I came for sword shit, ya dig? It's a good thing the swimming is only there at a minimum with the route to Ancient Cistern, and when Faron gets flooded. Flying is what you do in the Sky, and flicking your wrist every couple of seconds for your bird not to start slowing down and falling is tedious bullshit. Tightrope walking is just an annoying obstacle but there isn't much of it, minecarting is only around in Lanayru for one section but there is a heart piece tied to it which is an absolute pain in the ass to get (No, I don't care if you got it on your first try), and freefalling, there's also another heart piece and a couple chests and gratitude crystal quests tied to it but you can mostly get by.
Skyward Sword also introduces a couple of other things new to the series, like the stamina gauge, which is a meter that gates how long you can run and climb for, or how many spin attacks you can pull off before getting tired. Also introduces crafting items which can be used to augment your equipment like the shield and slingshot to more powerful versions. This isn't entirely necessary as you can still get by just find with the standard equipment. Speaking of shields, they have a damage meter and can be destroyed. While past games had enemies that could eat or burn your shields, this game takes it a little further. Just blocking an attack affects durabality, and the more you block, the less durable your shield will get until it breaks. But if you are even slightly competent, you can parry the whole game and avoid your shield taking damage. Though the wood shield still gets burned.
Skyward Sword treats the land below, or well the three area overworlds like a dungeon in past games rather than hub. Everything feels really manufactured with shortcuts built in everywhere, but it's all mostly well designed. The hub in this game is the sky, and it sucks. Traveling around is hella slow, and the only thing worth checking out are tiny little islands that might have chests with medals or rupees, but you can't open these chests until you activate a goddess cube in the land below. Anyway, I'll go through each dungeon
Faron - Big forested area, pretty, easy to get around everywhere, lot of shortcuts through logs that you push off the sides of hills so you can run back up. It's pretty simply designed and decent starting point.
Eldin - Typical of a mountain level, this area has you moving upwards. Lots of lava everywhere, the two hilly parts really make use of your stamina management.
Lanayru - IS FREAKING AWESOME. Was awesome 6 years ago, still awesome. Lanayru introduce a new item in the series called timeshift stones. Lanayru is desert, but if you strike these timeshift stones, an area surrounding the stone will go back in time when area was lush and full of green. And the coolest thing about this effect is sometimes the timeshift stones are on moving objects, so the area around the place will go back and forth between past and present. It's a really cool effect that makes the area standout. Most of the puzzles are focused on this, and also your stamina management because there's a lot of quicksand
Skyview Temple - As far as tutorial dungeons go, this is pretty basic. You only really have three main rooms, the second of which is a giant circle with a central room with the dungeon item present. It's also where you fight your first Stalfos as a miniboss. If you haven't figured out how to angle your blows, this boss or the dungeon boss in Ghirahim will teach you. The dungeon item is the Beetle, which is basically the boomerang in this game, except you control it like a drone. You can upgrade it to get a speed boost and make it more durable.
Earth Temple - Another fairly simple dungeon. The biggest thing here is the first second main area where you have to stand around on a ball in lava balancing. Dungeon item is the bomb bag, but the interesting thing about the bomb mechanics of this game is you can now roll bombs. That particular thing doesn't come up with the boss though as it's another one of those throw the bomb into the bosses mouth kind of dealies.
Lanayru Mining Facility - Basically more of Lanayru. Lots of time shifting puzzles. Also reintroduces Beamos and Armos. Beamos can be beaten easily by slashing their pillars and stabbing them in the eye. Armos are a little tricky, you have to use the dungeon item, the gust bellows, which pushes out a constant spray of air. Shooting an Armos where its fan is opens its mouth for you to stab it in. The boss of the dungeon is some scorpion thing. I don't know. You fight it twice in the game which is pretty lame both times.
Ancient Cistern - This is an awesome dungeon. There's a giant buddhist statue in the middle that you need to raise up and down in order to maneuver around the place. The whole dungeon is based on the Spider's thread story which is great when you go down to the underworld fighting zombie bokoblins. The dungeon item is the whip which has some neat uses like using it as a grapple and swinging like Indiana Jones. It also stuns enemies and steals monster horns from some of them that call in reinforcements. The dungeon boss is probably the best in the game. You fight this six armed robot with 6 swords, you have to rip out its arms with the whip, then use the swords it drops to chop off its other limbs. It's awesome.
The Sandship - If you liked Lanayru, this is more of it with some more time travel stuff. The main time shift stone is located on top of the mast, and the cool thing about it is when you're below deck, there are some locations where you can visibly see it and activate it from you are which drastically changes the interior of the ship. You're on a pirate ship by the way, you have a duel with a robot pirate captain which is neat but fairly easy with the good ol' parry and waggle. The dungeon item is the bow, which can be upgraded twice to do more damage. The boss is some giant Monster's Inc ass squid thing. You shoot it in the eye and the waggle at it. I don't know, it sucks.
Fire Sanctuary - This dungeon is fairly boring since it revolves around the most boring ass item in the game, the digging mitts. You gotta play this stupid ass minigame where you're crawling underground, with some paths blocked while others aren't, and your objective is to get to holes to get to other parts of the dungeon. This dungeon is so lame that you have to refight Ghirahim.
Sky Keep - This is the mega man ass dungeon. Just a remix every other dungeon, except featured in a tile puzzle. The tile puzzle moves rooms around, and you have to connect tiles that have doors that can connect together if you want any chance to progress. It's pretty unremarkable, especailly since it's the final dungeon, but oh well.
The main town is Skyloft. This is where you'll do your potion shopping, shield shopping, upgrading, inventory management. It's a pleasant place, there's lots of NPCs with distinctive looks and personalitys, and most have side quests for you to do that are this games Skulltula/Poes Souls turn this guy into a normal person again. The problem with Skyloft though is it's almost completely disconnected from what's happening in the story.
Now the story, where do I even begin. So you start off as a student in an academy where Zelda is the Headmaster's daughter. This is an academy for knights, cause these knights, they do a lot of shit allegedly, but they sure don't show this in the game. You gotta do some flying test with your bird, which is basically the flying tutorial, then Zelda gets kidnapped and shit by a tornado. The beginning establishes that this Zelda has a crush on you, nobody in Skyloft gives a fuck that Zelda is missing, and the school bully who likes Zelda and hates you? He's the best guy around. Groose is his name, and this is his legend. Groose has the most development in the game, going from bully, to redeeming himself and becoming a hero in his own right. He also has the best music, and it even plays when you meet the final boss for the first time which makes the whole thing even more silly. Zelda kind of sucks, she gets kidnapped, takes two baths, and goes to sleep. You would think they'd pull another Ocarina of Time, or Wind Waker or Twilight Princess and have her aid in the final battle, but that doesn't happen, damsel to the end.
Eventually, you get the Goddess Sword, which introduces us to Fi, the most garbage sidekick in possibly any video game ever. Are your batteries in the red? Don't worry, Fi will let you know. Are your hearts low? Don't worry, Fi will let you know. Did you go near a boss door? Don't worry, Fi will let you know. Is there a really neat puzzle that you could probably figure out yourself? Fi will let you know. Did someone ask you to do something? Fi will let you know, right after that person told you the thing. And so on, and so on. Now you know, I could probably forgive all of this, if Fi had any personality, but all she does in the game is spout random percentages and point out the obvious.
Anyway, once you go down to the land and start looking for Zelda, you go on three fetch quests, first to look for Zelda three times, second to turn the Goddess Sword into the Master Sword, and third to find the Song of the Hero which is surprise surprise The Legend of Zelda theme. The first third of the game is pretty solid, but once the second third starts, everything between the dungeon just goes down hill. Remember tears of light from Twilight Princess? Let's have you revisit the same three areas you already did, and look for 16 tears of light, because this game needed more filler. Do you want to go to Ancient Cistern? Too bad, you gotta go back to Skyview temple and get a bottle of water. Do you want to go to the fire sanctuary? Woops, gotta do an escort mission in Eldin while you shoot arrows from the bottom of the mountain to the top. Want to get Faron's Song? Too bad, collect some music ass tadpole because everyone loves water levels. Want Eldin's song? Got to do a stealth sequence where you lose all your items and have to climb the same mountain again getting them all back. Lanayru fortunately just does more time travel stuff and sprinkling in some Wind Waker ass boating in, which makes it three for three in being the best area in the game.
There's not much else going on in this game besides the three fetch quests, which is honestly a bit disappointing given Nintendo made a big deal pre-release about how this game is the first game in the timeline and it's important for why stuff keeps repeating in the series and the Master Sword's origin. Except we don't actually learn that much about the Master Sword. It used to be one sword, and then it became another, whoop-de-doo? And as for why the series keeps repeating, some Akuma-ass motherfucker is really pissed off I guess and cursed the original Link and Zelda in a throwaway line. That's it.
The end of the game has you meeting NotGanondorf who tells you a whole lot of nothing and you fight NotGanondorf in a sword fight. Oh and his sword is Ghirahim, the guy you fought three times before for some reason, this is never explained, it just happens. And once all that's done, you say goodbye to Fi in the most forced emotional goodbye. Oh and Impa dies. The end doesn't make any sense at all given the paradoxes, but at this point you sort of have to stop giving a fuck cause it's time travel, and Nintendo.
this part is just insulting
Going back to Skyward Sword still hasn't changed my mind about it. It's actually reminded me of things, like how there's no warping to past areas in this game, you just have to fly to each location, and then you can drop down to a save point. But no warping between save points, no siree. Or hey, if you turn the game off, and start it back up again, any time you pick up an item you get the item description again. Or if you fail a minigame, the NPC will ask you if you want to hear the rules and want to pick a different challenge instead of I don't know, maybe having a Retry button? Anyway, I still think it's a mostly well made game, but it has so many quality of life issues, on top of all the bad pacing, it just feels like it needed more time in the oven. Still worth checking out as far as being the Wii's swan song and seeing all the Wiimote was capabable of doing.
