A true classic. This was the first Zelda game I ever played, and I had some trouble at first, but after a year of being stuck at Forsaken Fortress, I got past it and started really enjoying myself. Now I replayed it with a friend in the HD version, and I must say that it is basically a straight upgrade in just about every way. Positives are everywhere. There is a sail that lets you change the direction of the wind AND go faster with your boat, which removes having to change the wind manually all the time and makes you travel the sea faster. The triforce hunt has been largely redesigned to still capture the feeling of exploring the sea that the original had, but also removing some of the charts required, making it a whole lot less tedious. There is actually just one thing that I would mention as both a positive and a negative: by jump attacking and then immediately inputting a spin attack, your damage doubles for the spin attack. This turns out to be incredibly overpowered, killing most enemies a lot easier than it would have been otherwise. Otherwise the game is much the same, and here are some opinions on the game in general. I love the music in The Wind Waker! Not only is it highly nostalgic to me, but some more experimental tunes have sneaked their way in there, like the song playing in Hyrule Castle before getting the Master Sword, which sounds incredibly broken, distorted and has a very relaxed relationship to silence which I absolutely love. My absolute favourite of these experimental tunes has to be the Illusory Room in Ganon's Castle near the end. Everything about it is odd: odd rhythms, odd instrumentations, etc. I especially love how one part of the mix is delayed by an eighth note, making it sound different the more time passes. And because it is a modern Zelda game, every dungeon and boss music is incredible, with the highlights being Wind Temple, Forbidden Woods, Tower of the Gods and Forsaken Fortress for the dungeons, and Helmaroc King, Gohdan, all Ganon related boss tunes and Molgera. I also love how open the world is in this game. You are stuck for a bit in the beginning, but after the first two dungeons, you are free to go basically wherever you like. And there is just so much to explore, and it feels so natural to explore it because you are on the sea! I think that too is awesome, the fact that you are on the sea. And the final section rivals the final sections of my more appreciated Zelda games like Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time. I think the bosses toward the end are the best in the game, and that's exactly how it should be. This game would have been an 8 if it was the original version, but thanks to all the improvements I cannot justify giving this anything less than a 9!