Okay I guess I'll write up my impressions now. Overall I think it was a pretty great game, but that's to be expected of a major Zelda console release. There are a few problems here and there, but the experience was mostly positive. The motion controls were very good, and since Wii Sports Resort was my favorite Wii game before this, I felt right at home with most of the controls. Zelda games are like a sort of new toy for me to play with each time, and Skyward Sword definitely fit the bill of a fun "toy" to play with.
Pros:
- Probably the best town community in a Zelda game so far. Skyloft felt very well designed and alive. The interactions with the NPCs and the personalities the NPCs themselves had were definitely much more interesting than previous Zelda towns and sidequest characters.
- Pretty good marriage of the exploration/fun/cartoon aspects of Wind Waker with the more challenging dungeons and bosses which Twilight Princess offered. There's a nice sense of open exploration (even though it's a bit limited in scope and content) when you're out in fields or in the sky, but the dungeons themselves feel totally linear and focused. Just the way I like it.
- Love the Disney cartoon vibe in the art design and graphics. Very charming. Cutest Zelda yet. Not much more to say here. Could have done with less blur filters, but I really dig the look of the game.
- Motion controls were great. Lots of fun, and it made some relatively normal combat sequences more engaging than they otherwise would be. I love how they incorporated various elements of Wii Sports Resort into the control scheme of the various items and actions. I also appreciate how they didn't go overboard, and certain parts of the game only had enough waggle to make it fun, but not annoying.
Cons:
- Navigation feels overly padded by lack of quick travel options. Requiring players to return to the sky and fly over empty shit to drop down at another exit just to get between locations is pretty dumb.
- Heavy recycling. Dungeons and bosses are the main reason I play Zelda, and I'm disappointed that they decided to make less dungeons and instead fill the gap with recycling previous areas in "creative" ways. I'm also kinda disappointed in the boss recycling.
- To continue the previous point, it's clear that the team is heavily influenced by the recent DS Zeldas to a certain extend, especially with regards to the overall pacing and the ways it reuses content. This is not a trend which I'm particularly happy with, because ultimately it waters down the actual quality of the content being recycled. A good boss fight starts to get old after the second time, and a not so good boss fight starts to get really annoying by the third time, etc.
- Dowsing isn't really fun. The concept of dowsing sounds fine on paper, where you allow the player to seek out something by following the general direction of a prompt. For some parts of the game, I think it actually turned out out well. But after the first few times of using it, it really starts to outstay its welcome. It turns a lot of the later sidequests into nothing more than a generic fetch quest, where you use dowsing to immediately know where you're supposed to go, and then just follow the signal. I would prefer it if they designed the quests in more interesting ways like with the letter and the bettle. Let the player put things together and figure it out, instead of it just being a fetch quest.
Overall:
- Good game, very entertainment, and the narrative hooks are pretty good. I loved the final dungeon. Could have done with more content and less recycling though. I still prefer Twilight Princess. TP remains my #1 3D Zelda, and Link's Awakening will forever be the best Zelda ever made.