There is an overall sense of unfulfillment when playing Skyward Sword. I game I never played and heard incredibly mixed feels about when it launched. I was in a phase of avoiding franchises I grew up on to expand my horizon of other games and with mixed opinion, I decided to avoid it up until now and well I do see a great Zelda game in here.

Dungeons are a lot of fun to figure out and to explore, and the boss fights are easily some of the best boss fights in the whole series, no exaggeration. And speaking of some of the best in the whole series, the entire concept of Lanayru Desert is incredible. A land where you strike time stones to make a small area of land go back in time where you interact with the now lost robot tribe. It's so imaginative and it puts a big smile on my face.

But that leads into everything else which is a major major mixed bag of halfhearted ideas.

Skyward Sword unlike other Zelda games is centered around one area, Skyloft. In this game, Link and Zelda's hometown in the sky. So all the shops, and interesting characters and side quests are all condensed in this one little area, and it gets rather boring. But not as boring as Skyloft's big open area, where Link flies atop his trusty bird steed to fly around a big empty area with not a lot of interesting set pieces.

Sometimes within the small pieces of land in the sky are chest that you can't open until you strike a cube on the surface world, which usually just has money or (oh great) crafting material inside which I'm not gonna lie, crafting is one of my least favorite tropes in video games, but thankfully crafting isn't necessary but it makes treasure chests a lot less impactful.

And finally we have Skyward Sword's biggest flaw. There's only three major lands to visit in the game:
Faron Woods, standard little grassy area
Eldin Volcano, standard volcano setting
and Lanayru Desert, which once again, is a lot more interesting than the rest of the game with it's time travel aspect. None of the other places in the game give that level of creativity, and what sucks is that's it. Compared to the last 3D Zelda game, Twilight Princess, there were so many unique setpieces and places to visit, it just makes this game feel like a real step down.

Combined that with the horrid pacing of the game. The opening is such a long sequence that takes forever to get into the major meat of the game, and even when you do your first mission basically is to play hide and seek with these kiwi-tanooki so that holds you back.

Then it's just constantly returning to these lands for only minor expansions of the land. Maybe a lake here, going within the volcano here. Once again, Lanayru Desert wins again by giving you a pirate character as you sail on the sand that was once the major ocean.

So at the end of the day I had my fun with Skyward Sword but it just got old after a while. There is a lot of fun to be had so I still sort of recommend it, but just know there is a lot of fluff you're gonna have to swim through just to get to the good parts.

I've been thinking for a long time what grade this Zelda deserves and realized that it can't jump above 3, and 2.5 is too low for it.

Even despite the minor QoL in the remaster after a whole 10 years this game still feels weird. Let's start with the worst part, which is the controls. The idea of playing as Link by controlling his abilities with your own hands felt amazing and desirable, but the implementation was lame, so much so that in 2011 you even had to use Wiimote+ for better responsiveness. But even the motion in the joycons of the Switch couldn't cope and I had to recalibrate the sensor every damn time.

This results in a deplorable feature, the registration of movements is difficult, because of this it is sometimes unpleasant to hit enemies, and after all it is a significant part of gameplay. The AI of the enemies also leaves much to be desired, although in the beginning you are convinced that the procedure of stupid jamming will not help you, but after getting Neiru's flame the game becomes too easy, everyone dies very quickly except for the fat bokoblin with a shield. It's depressing.

The game has pretty stupid backtracking, because of which you have to fly slowly on a bird to the old locations every time, but why, if you could just make a teleporter?

The quests in the game are worked out pretty well, or at least steadily provoke to explore the locations and interact with the joycons. However, it is worth noting the ultimate pointlessness of this activity, because you are given not rupees, not pieces of hearts, and idiotic crystals of happiness , which you exchange for rupees and increase inventory. Why were there various rewards for skulltula in Ocarina of Time, and this was almost 15 years before Skyward? It's not clear. However, the fact remains that the rewards for good quests are retarded.

The hub, which contains everything from shields and arrows to potions and the warehouse - are not needed almost the whole game, after 10 hours / after buying the last of the three shields you can basically forget about its existence except for a couple of quests and if you only need potions, although the game is so casual that you can live without them, especially there are fairies. Only Biddle on the chopper will make any sense the entire game, gifting you with inventory slots and badges that further ocassualize the gameplay.

Now what to praise for:
- As always, the soundtrack is gorgeous
- Despite the chamber-like nature of the locations - they're fun to explore, especially the first two locations
- One of the best storylines in the series in my humble opinion, standing next to Twilight Princess and Botva
- Visual style - interesting, you can put it in the pluses as well
- Sometimes the motion still gives you a bit of fun
- Some of the best dungeons in the series, this is where they put everything they have into it

I would recommend playing this Zelda only when you've played ALL the significant Zeldas from Link to the Past to Botw.