This game's pretty fun, but it's got a few major flaws that hold it back. First off, the HD version makes some very good quality of life changes that smoothen out the experience. I like how it looks, but I still prefer the shading of the original in many areas. Now for the game. The dungeons are mostly pretty fun, but can be occasionally tedious. Exploring the ocean is cool, with a lot of fun stuff to find. It sometimes gets tedious. But the peak of tedium is the triforce quest, which takes forever and is extremely dull. Don't get me wrong, I like the game quite a bit. It's issues stack up way too much for me to put it above something like Twilight Princess.

If this game didn't have such a godlike artstyle and soundtrack this would be 2.0 stars. I do not like the sea exploration at all, it's so huge yet empty...even with the fast sail it still fucking feels like a waste of time. The dungeons were fine but absolutely not enough to save this game...Toon Link's moveset had so much potential yet I feel like you're never really encouraged to do anything beyond spam the A button or whatever stupid ass gimmick the boss has if that doesn't work. I felt as if I would've loved the games story more since you have to save toon link's sister, a game that could have a story about family? That sounds fucking great to me but no...I felt nothing saving after saving aryll because after playing the game for a while I just stopped caring a out her. I had a feeling something important would happen with link's grandma too but no, I genuinely don't remember her doing anything important after the prologue.


I wish I liked this game because the artstyle and music is incredible but I just feel like I didn't have fun with 80% of the game...

Definitely the weakest Zelda I've played yet. I love this game's charm and personality, the characters and music are fantastic, and the combat is really fun and fluid. Unfortunately that is all brought down by the series's weakest dungeons, emptiest overworld, and most tedious sidequests. Everything about this game just feels so rushed, it's ripe for a proper open world concept with bigger islands that have full dungeons on them, but instead we get only two sages and a majority of the islands are specks. Would've loved for the world to properly open up after the Tower of the Gods, going through dungeons and getting triforce shards, but instead the two late-game dungeons have to be done in order for some reason, even through the game presents it as an open choice. It's just so frustrating bc this could've been great. Also it didn't use the pirates nearly as much as it should have.

Wind waker hd is a gorgeous looking game with an charismatic set of characters and fun exploration, the atmosphere of the sea with your pirate friends is charming and has some of the best dungeons design in the series.

The downs are by far the last part, exploring the sea is fun, for the first time, not the second, or the third the games requires you to, the last proper dungeon it's confused and very narrow compared to other ones, and the last is really just reusing assets that by themselves weren't the best part of it's dungeons, it fells rushed like some other main Nintendo games from the era.

A gorgeous looking game to play and abandon after the dungeon with the lights, that way you can leave the worst part by the side.

Now that BotW 2 a.k.a Tears of the Kingdom has an actual release date, I have decided to continue playing every Zelda game that aren't the two DS titles. Much like Majora's Mask and A Link Between Worlds, Wind Waker was a game i had played before and like A Link Between Worlds, too much time had passed to where i needed to refresh my opinion of the game. I had played the original GameCube version but there's no reason to go back to that one since HD exists.

Wind Waker is a good game but with an asterisk because there's certain things that i like and simultaneously kinda don't. Sailing the Great Sea does really feel like you're in an adventure. At the same time, this Great Sea is pretty empty and there's barely anything to do on the islands that you do come across (also thank God for the Swift Sail). The Triforce hunt, made smoother in this version, is conceptually good. But it's also just padding and it feels like you're doing it simply because the game told you too. The counter system is great. But enemies are honestly a push over, you are never in any real danger, not that difficulty has been a big thing in Zelda.

Where Wind Waker excels at is in the artstyle and just how full of personality the game is. Even the original still holds up. Story-wise, it presents some interesting ideas. This game has the best incarnation of Ganondorf, a very fun version of Zelda even if it's kinda sus that the dark-skinned pirate girl was actually just a disguise for the white-skinned princess and just generally an interesting take on the Zelda story formula. It's no Majora's Mask but i wouldn't disagree with calling it one of the better Zelda narratives.

The dungeon design is fairly standard, i don't really have too much to say about it. I do really like the Earth Temple though, it's honestly on the same level as the Stone Tower Temple with how it uses the mechanics it presents. This game also has Molgera, which cemented itself as one of my favorite bosses in the series. Music's good because it's Zelda, of course it is.

Yeah this game's about as good as i remember it being....with an asterisk.

After a month long hiatus, I finished wind waker for the Zelda replay, had some stuff going on and other games of course but here I am, to review again.

I will not go into too much detail here cause I already made a very long review a while ago, so I’ll just link that review below here cause it’s still accurate to my thoughts now

https://www.backloggd.com/u/ZeldaFan/review/278162/

However, there are a few things that I want to go over that I really didn’t say in my original review


One negative I’d like to bring up is how a lot of the time in this game, there’s a ton of moments where they forget the age old rule or “show don’t tell”, instead here they “tell don’t show”, the example that irritated me the most is when you fully restore the master sword, you go outside the temple and see the fish talking to the king of red lions about how the forsaken fortress is completely empty, this moment has like next to no impact and also very lazily transitions into “link, get the triforce shards”.
A way to fix this moment I think would’ve been to just have link go to the forsaken fortress after getting the master sword restored, then you see that it’s empty, maybe have a mini boss with another phantom Ganon or something, and have either ganondorf use some spirit magic shit to tell you like “haha, I’ve gone to hyrule” or have king of red lions connect the dots and tell link what’s going on…………ok this is very specific and nitpicky but I’ve played this game like 20 different times and I just notice this kind of stuff.

The moblins are one of my favorite enemy designs in the whole series, they’re extremely expressive and are great in general……..man I do not have much to say

I’ve basically said the few things I wanted to say, everything I love about this game I expressed in my earlier review so like, not much to add here except for these two things.
I mean, I literally know this game so well that I remembered where every single heart piece was, not even kidding.

Overall, it’s still my favorite Zelda game rn, though I’d say it’s definitely tied with Majora’s Mask now as well, both are my favorites.


And next up is Minish cap, never played this one so I’m excited to check it out

I know a 1/5 seems harsh, but the new visuals where the bloom is so excessive it looks like you're staring at the screen through a smudged window and the conflicting lighting engines that turn models into clay when you approach a light source on top of the chugging frame-rate make this an unacceptable port to me in the moment-to-moment gameplay. It just looks and runs worse than the original too often.

Which is a shame because the addition of the Swift Sail, gyro-aim, d-pad item-mapping, shortened conduction time, and all the other QoL improvements are for sure nice.

I'll be sticking to the GCN version. It can be modded to have most of this QoL stuff anyway.

Like I said in my review of the first Zelda game, I've tried a few Zelda games in the past, but whenever I came back to them, I was completely lost. The Wind Waker HD was one of those games, and it was also the game that came with my Wii U back when I got it in 2015, along with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. Once I got the hang of the game after recently picking up where I left off, it was pretty hard for me to put down, because The Wind Waker HD is an amazing game with a lot to offer.

I'm very new to the Zelda series, but out of the few Zelda games that I've tried out and even the ones I'm currently playing, none of them have really captured the sense of adventure that The Wind Waker HD managed to do so effortlessly. Sailing around the map and finding items and dungeons is a lot of fun, and the game's main dungeons are especially great. I also thought that this version of The Wind Waker looked absolutely gorgeous. While the Gamecube version is a good looking game that has aged well thanks to its cel shaded artstyle, The Wind Waker HD looks far better, in my opinion.

There are still a ton of Zelda games that I haven't played or haven't completed, but I'm not sure if I'll enjoy them nearly as much as I enjoyed The Wind Waker HD.

Wind Waker HD is the weakest 3d Zelda I've played so far. This mostly stems from pacing being all over the place, clearly missing content and padding to fill a 20+ hour runtime. The third missing dungeon to get the final pearl and the recycled bosses for gannon's tower as well as the triforce shards quest hurt the game's pacing. You feel that the game is zipping you from one dungeon to the next towards a climax that's halted by a long fetch quest. You can't explore much between the dungeons because a lot of the islands on the great sea are gated behind dungeon items. Therfore exploring feels like a waste time. I preface my review with all of this to say that despite all of these flaws, I still loved and enjoyed Wind Waker. The presentation is the most charming Zelda has ever gotten. The art style is beautiful, timeless and pleasing to the eye. Toon link is the most expressive and therefore he's the easiest to like from the get go. The music stands shoulder to shoulder with the previous two games. Gameplay-wise the game controls better than the first two and the items are a blast to use. The dungeons, while simple, were very enjoyable and I kinda appreciated having a Zelda where I didn't need to look at a guide to beat a dungeon. Exploring the islands gets much more fun once you obtain the items necessary. Wind Waker is compulsively playable because of its presentation and charming atmosphere.

If there was ever a Zelda game that encouraged me to slow down, explore, and appreciate the world around me, it would be Breath of the Wild. But Wind Waker would take second. Out of all the traditional Zeldas, this is the one that I most enjoyed wasting my time in, if that makes sense. Charting the open seas, filling out the map, and basically ignoring the main quest was easily the most fun part of the game. For me, it was the journey of the Wind Waker that I most enjoyed.

And thank goodness for that, because damn did I hate the destination. Wind Waker has got to have the weakest story in the series. Every other 3D Zelda game has some narrative element that really hooks me. Some more than others, obviously, but there's always at least something: Ocarina of time has a rich thematic story about coming of age, shintoism, and the tragedy of Link having his childhood stolen from him, with the most intimidating iteration of Ganon easily; Twilight Princess has impeccable atmosphere, the best cast of characters in the series, the most compelling introduction by far, and my favorite version of Link; Breath of the Wild has a great setting, a great exploration of how the different places and races of Hyrule interact with one another, and while it has a weak plot, it tells its story through the world and its inhabitants better than any other game; Majora's Mask, for as mad as that game made me, has a tragic core and some of the most beautiful moments in the series. Wind Waker has... a companion who isn't annoying? Yea, that's something.

I'll be honest, nothing about Wind Waker's narrative grabs me. I like the motivation for saving your sister, and I like how expressive Link is. I think both of those things were done better in Twilight Princess though. Sure, Link in Wind Waker emotes more than any other Link bar none, but I know the Link in Twilight Princess much better and have a much better understanding of his dynamics with the people in Ordon Village and see how he reacts when things happen to them. Honestly the character in Wind Waker I feel for most is Link's grandma. Outside of that, I don't find any of the characters to be very memorable (except for the guy who runs the battleship minigame, I relate to him).

The plot similarly is just kinda there. I went through the motions so much when going from place to place, and after Aryll is rescued from the forsaken fortress it feels like there's a huge lack of urgency to continue the main adventure. Sure, Ganon's still a threat, but once Aryll is safe, Link has accomplished everything he's set out to do. Outside of being the reincarnation of the hero, what reason does Link have to go and stop Ganon? To stop him from conquering Hyrule? What is there left to conquer? The world is flooded and everyone lives their lives on their islands almost independently of everyone else. Ganon in OoT, Skull Kid in MM, and Zant in TP all demonstrate the consequences of their rule over their respective lands in a way that Ganon in Wind Waker doesn't. Breath of the Wild doesn't do a great job in this department either necessarily, but Ganon already won there making the stakes much different (plus I'm not going to argue that BotW is a narrative masterpiece). Seriously, am I missing something here? If I'm forgetting something please let me know.

Wanna talk about what else is really weak? How about those dungeons? This is the lamest set of dungeons in the franchise, easily. They're lacking in visual variety, they feel like they all play themselves, and every boss is super disappointing. Shoutout to this game for having maybe the most obnoxious final boss in Zelda history. Seriously, puppet Ganon can kiss my ass. The rest are all really easy, and some suffer from what I'm dubbing "Zelda Syndrome." Have you ever played through a Zelda game and gotten stuck on a puzzle, only to eventually find out that the answer was something you already tried but you didn't quite hit the sweet spot so it didn't work and you assumed that it was something else entirely and then you get really frustrated? Maybe that's just me, but I've experienced this in every Zelda game to some degree except for maybe BotW. Gohma took me an embarrassingly long time to beat because I tried to grapple Valoo's tail but I guess I wasn't close enough because the reticle just didn't appear at first. Oh well.

Speaking of Gohma, another thing that irritates me about this game is how similar it feels to Ocarina of Time. Call me a hypocrite because of how much I love Twilight Princess, but I never hear anyone talk about how similar this game is to its predecessor. It's a direct sequel to the point where the story outright references OoT multiple times, and outside of the fact that you're sailing the ocean in WW, the structure of the journey seems exactly the same. It felt like I was playing a sequel in the same way that a new generation of Pokémon feels like playing a sequel.

Ok, so time to be nice. Did I like anything? Yea, like I said before, the journey itself was fun. I loved sailing to each quadrant of the map and discovering each new island. I couldn't imagine completing this game, but charting the entire sea and finding all the fairies and fighting multiple big octos was cathartic. I hated changing the wind every ten seconds, and at the beginning of the game I was put off by the railroaded nature of the quest for the pearls and all the downtime and the emptiness of the ocean and the terrible pacing and how repetitive all the content in the great sea is, but I came around to it and just enjoyed vibing with the game. I like how the triforce quest is super open ended and you can tackle anything in any way you want, and I like how the fish give you clues about how to proceed with your adventure, that makes it feel like I'm discovering things on my own.

I think the music is alright. It has some bangers like Dragon Roost Island, the first part of the Forest Haven, Aryll's theme, the title theme, and Outset Island, which is probably the happiest song in video games ever, I love it. The rest I could pass on though; never been a huge fan of the Great Sea theme, but I think it fits really well when playing the game though.

The visuals are outstanding too, obviously. I could be really cynical and nitpick some elements that I didn't enjoy about them, but I've been mean enough so I won't do that here.

Aaaaaaaaand yea, I think that's it. I've wanted to play this game for a decade and I'm very surprised by how much I didn't enjoy it. The next Zelda I play will definitely be Tears of the Kingdom, I think I've had my fill of Zelda until that time. Sorry if this is your favorite game and I did almost nothing but talk shit about it; I'm learning more and more that Zelda is a franchise that I have complex feelings about. But lemme know what you think of my takes if you bothered reading this much.