I'm still collecting thoughts on the game as a whole.(played through two dungeons so far)

But, I can say with confidence, it is much more action oriented than before. Combat relies heavily on wii motion controls. Not sure what to think of it yet: Whether it's finicky, hard to master, or both. At the very least enemies require a bit more strategy to kill.

Oh, and there's more story to it.

Spoiler

I will say it was an oddly moving thing to pull the sword out and point it at the sky.

 

Not nearly as good as The Wand of Gamelon.

 

So, since I finished playing last night, I decided to write a little review for this game. The review will feature plot spoilers for PRETTY MUCH the entire game, so I'll put it in spoiler tags. Other than that, while I enjoy the game a lot, and will try to emphasize that, this review is going to contain a LOT of bitching because quite frankly, this game is flawed as fuck. With that in mind, let's get this show on the road. Sorry about the length, I had a lot to say.

Spoiler

So, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is a game that, unsurprisingly, is almost entirely focused on Link's sword. The first thing the game does is introduce the basic game mechanics and set you off on your way to rescue Link's bird (since Link's bully, Groose, kidnapped it so Link would lose a race) which, despite being special, doesn't actually wind up being that important for the context of the story. I guess it's just special so it can explain how Link is good at flying the thing despite never practicing? The bird being special is never really touched on again after the opening sequence.

You collect your sword, go through the tutorial dungeon (which is just a small cave. No side rooms) and collect your bird. Zelda teaches you how to fly, you take a flying exam with your classmates and begin a ceremony with Zelda. She teaches you how to control Link in freefall and gives you a sailcloth so you don't crash into the ground and take damage. After this, shit happens, Zelda disappears, Link wakes up in the middle of the night to follow a spirit and grab the titular blade, the spirit introduces herself as Fi, the sword's spirit, and the game properly starts.

Basically, the plot of the game from here on out is "Fuck, Zelda's missing. You have to go through dungeons to find her." Link and Zelda do run into each other a few times along the way, but she's generally hurried along to the next area in her quest. Along the way, you meet Ghirahim, a Demon Lord who wants to capture Zelda to resurrect his master. You fight him three times over the course of the game, and the first two fights are up there with some things I'll touch on later as the most frustrating things in the game.

See, the reason for this is that as a Wii Motion Plus game, the combat is based on you swinging your blade in certain directions based on the direction the Wiimote itself is. Ghirahim is VERY FUCKING FAST at repositioning his hands, which will catch your sword and force you to shake the Wiimote and Nunchuk to get it loose from his grasp (otherwise he'll take the sword from you and hurt you.) This will happen all the fucking time unless you're very good at the combat system, again, because Ghirahim repositions his hands so fast. Thankfully, he eases up a LOT when he pulls out the sword for phase two of the fight.

You meet him the first time at the end of the first dungeon- which is, undoubtedly, the low part of the game. You don't have most of the fun items, and your first dungeon items are the Slingshot- which you don't use much- and the Beetle which, at this stage of the game, can only hit switches. It doesn't have the hook add-on yet that makes it a unique and interesting item to use. Cap that off with the first boss fight against Ghirahim, and you have an incredibly shitty part of the game.

Thankfully, after you get past Ghirahim, the game picks up and gets a LOT more fun. The lead-in to the second dungeon is a pretty interesting set of puzzles, you get some bombs, and it's pretty cool. You do have to do a fetch quest for the key to open the temple, but other than that, it's fun. The dungeon is overall pretty clever, the boss is fun, and things start to pick up. The third dungeon features an area covered in quicksand, but you get the hook for your beetle pretty much right away, and it's full of interesting time switching mechanics (turning the quicksand into grassland) that makes it really unique and fun. In that dungeon, you get another interesting new item (I forget the name offhand) that lets you blow wind. It's really neat and allows for some cool dungeon mechanics.

After the third dungeon, Link finally meets up with Zelda again for the briefest of moments, but thanks to Ghirahim appearing, Zelda has to leave through a Time Gate and her keeper, Impa, destroys the gate behind her. Now, you have to find another Time Gate. Thankfully, there's one just inside the Sealed Temple in the first area. On the downside, in order to open that gate you need to power up your sword (which is how Link gets the Master Sword in this game.) So after a boss fight to (temporarily) reseal The Imprisoned, which is the great demon the Goddess sealed ages back and the entire reason the events of the game take place, Link sets off to find three Great Flames.

To do so, you need to prove Link has grown in Courage, Wisdom, and ultimately Power through a trial (for each), receive a gift for completing it, and go through a dungeon to locate the flame and power up the Skyward Sword. These trials are, without a doubt, the absolute WORST PART OF THE FUCKING GAME. I know I said the first dungeon is the low point, and that's still the case, but the trials are just giant, horrible fuckups in what is otherwise the best part of the game. See, the trials, despite representing Courage, Wisdom, and Power, are stealth segments. Basically, you have no equipment, and have to collect fifteen spirit petals or some shit and avoid the guardians (if you get hit, you have to start over from the beginning. The petals you collected will be on your map, but that's it). Once you leave the starting ring, the guardians will immediately wake up and run towards you, and you have to collect a spirit petal to make them return to their dormant state. Once you do that, you have a time limit to get another petal before the guardians awaken again (unless you're spotted by one of the ghostlike things with spotlights or walk into this colorful rainbow water, which will awaken the guardians IMMEDIATELY).

Once you get past that travesty of a segment, you receive your gift and get to go on a hunt for the dungeon and the great flame. These are all pretty much amazing. The dungeons are great, the gifts are generally useful, and the upgrades to your sword upon hitting the flames are generally pretty cool. The only downsides are, again, having to go through those horrible stealth segments, and the fact that the second Ghirahim fight happens in this part of the game. Before one of the Great Flame dungeons you have to do an Escort Mission for...some reason. I don't know, I just know it sucked hard. Between two of the dungeons- I forget which offhand- you have to fight The Imprisoned again. This time, old Groose supports Link with his bomb catapault, and it's just really fun. After you power up your sword, you get to talk to Zelda- who powers the sword up one final time, giving you the True Master Sword, which is just amazing- then Zelda puts herself to sleep because she has to keep The Imprisoned sealed. She does a really shitty job at this, because after you talk to her, you have to free a sky spirit from a parasite, FIGHT THE IMPRISONED FOR A THIRD TIME, then set off to get the full version of the Song of the Hero from the three Goddess Dragons (and finally, the sky spirit itself).

In order to get the three parts of the Song of the Hero from the dragons, however, you have to do something special for each one. For the Fire Dragon, you basically just need to reach him. In this segment there's a more traditional Zelda stealth segment, and it's pretty cool. For the Thunder Dragon, you have to revive him by first using a timeshift stone to set the area he's in to a time in which he was alive, then get a fruit from the Tree of Life to cure his illness. This segment basically involves following the minecart holding the stone, killing monsters it revives, and solving movement puzzles around it to open doors or to traverse pits. It's pretty fun.

The third part of the Song of the Hero (which you can collect in any order; I chose to do this one first) is from the Water Dragon. This is up there with the Trial segments for the worst part of the game. Basically, the asshole dragon spits out a bunch of "Tadtones" which you need to collect to complete her part of the song. This involves swimming aimlessly through the flooded forest and collecting groups of tadtones rapidly lest you not get the tadtone group in time and have to start collecting it over again from the beginning. Eventually, the game decides to take pity on you and let you dowse for the tadtones. This helps a little bit, but since you can't dowse while swimming, is only useful insofar as it points you in some tadtones' general direction.

After you collect the three parts of the Song of the Hero from the dragons, you return to the sky spirit and get the completed song. After that, there's one more stealth challenge, you're off to the final dungeon, then you return to the Sealed Temple to fight Ghirahim for the last time and fight his Master. This Ghirahim fight, while challenging, is actually pretty fun! I won't put it into too much detail, but there are three stages to the fight. Between the final Ghirahim fight and the final boss, you have time to heal, save, and collect anything (fairies/potions, any life medals you might have to increase your life total, finish upgrading your equipment, whatever).

The final boss is pretty challenging, but also really fun. Basically, it's what the combat in this game should be. It's a one-on-one fight with the Demon King, who'll block your attacks, but not as relentlessly as Ghirahim did before him. You'll actually manage to get hits in, and if you instant block him (you might need to instant block twice since he occasionally swings twice) you can eventually knock him down and get in a good combo on the dude. Stage two, you both get to use lightning on your swords, and this can be a bit of a pain since you have to go into skyward stance and wait for the lightning to hit your sword, and the boss hits pretty fucking hard in this stage of the fight. After you beat him again, the game ends, all is well, yadda yadda yadda.

Like I said at the start of the review, overall I really like this game. It's really fun, the dungeons are clever (even if there are occasional moments when it's not immediately obvious what you have to do), and the story is nice. It's a beautiful game with fun characters and a LOT of fanservice, which just makes it a joy to play. However, like I said before, there are also a lot of flaws. Thanks to those stealth segment trials, the escort mission, and the swimming trial for the Water Dragon, I will probably never play the game again. They're too ridiculously fucking terrible and not even remotely fun. It's a shame, because pretty much everything else about the game is really fun.

 

I have a few points I want to make in response.

There's a trick to fighting that I didn't learn until mid-game which basically made the rest of the swordfights a cakewalk. When you're Z-Targeted, your sword swings are no longer 1:1. If you Z-target, swing to the right, if you swing your arm even further to the right, you will reset and swing to the right from the left again.

This works against any enemy that blocks or predicts your movement.

I actually enjoyed every part of this game. The stealth sections are a large change of face, but fun and incredibly rewarding once you pull them off. The guardians are not actually infallible - you can outrun and out-maneuver them.

 

You can evade the guardians, yeah, I never said you couldn't. Instead, I said that if you DO get caught, you have to start over.

 

My first reaction when playing the first section was...character development!? In a Zelda game? O_O

Win.

On another note, this just may be me being overly averse to change but flying a fucking bird around the sky is no where near as cool as my memories of riding Epona across Hyrule Field (and way more awkward too).


Edit:

Holy fuck, that is one of the most terrifying things I've ever read. O_O"

And here I entered this thread thinking I felt like I wanted to replay Majora's Mask.

Fuck that.

 

Spoiler

The stealth sections aren't that bad. My only issue with them is they don't really coordinate with the trait you're supposed to be proving (although this happens later, which is nice). I could understand it proving courage maybe, but power and wisdom? That's a bit of a stretch.

The tad-tones thing was cute, but a bit long. I'll admit that.

I will say those parts are much much much smaller than all the damn wolfing you have to do in TP to get to the real stuff. I plan on playing through Skyward Sword's Hero mode, but I will never touch TP again because I really don't have the patience for the wolf bits.

Hero Mode is a mode you can activate after beating the game. You take twice as much damage, hearts don't drop without the medal that makes them drop, and NPC's dialogue will change to mention the fact or bypass tutorials.

Personally I find the bird part relaxing. It's very floaty.

@Majora's Mask: Hm...I want to play that.

Overall I would suggest the game. What I think will be peoples biggest issue is the combat, specifically because the wii-mote can be finicky and imprecise. But if you can get past that I would suggest it.

 

Yeah, once you get used to the combat, it's not so bad. The bird isn't too bad either since it's mostly just a mode of transport between areas. Make sure you don't point the wiimote in an odd direction and you're generally fine. It's nice.

It's just the trial segments and the tadtones are just- in my opinion- unforgivably awful. Ghirahim got a little frustrating, too, but apparently he's really easy if you go slowly? Seems counterproductive.

I'd definitely recommend the game, I just can't see myself ever playing it again.

 

The trial segments were some of my favorite parts of the game. The second not so much, but the fourth was freaking amazing, and a freaking amazing payoff to the beginning of the game.

 

Ghirahim yes...patience is the only test with him. The amount of time he gives you to counterattack is actually fairly huge. You just have to refrain from swinging at him the moment he teleports behind you. (you know, the natural response)

He'll stop moving his hand after a short time in the first phase.

Really, battling him is very counterproductive to everything that comes naturally. You can probably make it epic for yourself if you refuse to be patient but...you won't.

 

It won't exactly be a huge issue for me, anyways. I don't intend to fight him again any time soon. The final boss, on the other hand...I may.

 

Something to help swordfight. The controls are not 1:1 when you're z targeted. If your sword is pointed to the bottom right, and you swing it *even further* to the bottom right, you'll do another full diagonal slash.

That's how you fake out most enemies in the game.

Edit: Whoops. I already said this. Well, the point being, Ghirahim can be beaten in about 30 seconds this way.

 

There's aspects of SS I'm enjoying a lot right now (just got the game over the break), but I've got to admit, there's more I'm not. I'm kind of resigned to Link's swift decline down the slippery pretty-boy slope, but why the hell did they get rid of the completely badass ganon from TP and replace him with a pervert in skin-tight spandex?! I just laughed when he came on screen. I mean, man, that scene where he licks Link? A thousand fangirls across the world just wet themselves with joy.

Wii controls, irritating side-kick and general shortcomings aside, the game's pretty enjoyable, but I'm not liking it half as much as TP. I miss that real gritty darkness that made Ocarina so good, and so far there's not a moment in SS that's made me feel apprehensive. Here's to hoping it'll pick up soon.

 

Spoiler

To make the final boss more epic.