This review contains spoilers
I am not a Zelda man.
My history with the series is as follows: when Four Swords Adventure was free on the eShop for Zelda's 25th Anniversary in 2011, I played through that as my first Zelda, and liked it well enough.
In 2014, when I got Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, Nintendo was giving out bonus additional games. I chose Wind Waker HD, and played that almost to completion (gave up at the Triforce hunt).
In 2017, I got Breath of the Wild for Wii U (because what else was there for Wii U owners at that point?) and adored it. Spent 120+ hours on it and it's part of the reason why I bombed my year 12 exams that year lol.
So yeah, I liked Zelda well enough? Didn't have too much experience with it, didn't love what I played of the classic 3D formula (WW) but loved the one that isn't like any of the others (BotW).
When Skyward Sword HD was announced, something came over me and I preordered it, then didn't touch it for 6 months. That was the preamble, now onto my thoughts.
I loved this game. It is far from perfect. The linearity was annoying at times, the padding was annoying at times. Things like flying became tedious. But this game felt like a real adventure. The story, the music, the characters, the locations, the items, everything came together to properly feel like a Ghibli movie.
The dungeons were absolutely excellent. And there were so many more of them than I expected. Cleverly, trickily designed, filled with interesting puzzles and wringing every use case out of the fantastic set of items in the game.
I loved the combat too. I'm an absolute sucker for motion controls and this had them in spades. Swinging the sword around never got old for me, even in the final fight.
The music. Wallay buff.
I do have criticisms. At a few points late in the game it felt like the game was inventing reasons for me to not be able to get to the end and instead traverse the same 3 locations a third time (but in their defence, each location changed meaningfully and added new areas). I also didn't care for the side quests (but that's probably just a me thing, not a side quest guy, especially when I'm trying to make my way through a backlog). And I didn't meaningfully engage with the potions system until literally right before the final fight. Never infused a potion once until then. And the graphics, whilst 60fps, are muddy and Wii-like - going further with the painterly aesthetic on an HD console would have been so so good.
But none of that actually matters. I finished the game about 15 minutes ago and I feel like I ate a really filling, delicious meal. The designer in me was tickled by the dungeons, items and environmental puzzles throughout, all so well done.
Funny thing is, with this game as context, every decision made in (and every criticism of) Breath of the Wild makes perfect sense now. This game was too linear and handholdy, that game is pure exploration with little guidance. This game stops and starts with cutscenes, that game has them all purely optional. But then, this game has an incredible variety of dungeons, that game has identical feeling shrines. This game has all sorts of items and gadgets, that game has breakable weapons (and the Slate to be fair).
Idk. To sum it up, with Breath of the Wild as my reference point, Skyward Sword HD is everything I didn't know I wanted out of a Zelda game.
My history with the series is as follows: when Four Swords Adventure was free on the eShop for Zelda's 25th Anniversary in 2011, I played through that as my first Zelda, and liked it well enough.
In 2014, when I got Mario Kart 8 on Wii U, Nintendo was giving out bonus additional games. I chose Wind Waker HD, and played that almost to completion (gave up at the Triforce hunt).
In 2017, I got Breath of the Wild for Wii U (because what else was there for Wii U owners at that point?) and adored it. Spent 120+ hours on it and it's part of the reason why I bombed my year 12 exams that year lol.
So yeah, I liked Zelda well enough? Didn't have too much experience with it, didn't love what I played of the classic 3D formula (WW) but loved the one that isn't like any of the others (BotW).
When Skyward Sword HD was announced, something came over me and I preordered it, then didn't touch it for 6 months. That was the preamble, now onto my thoughts.
I loved this game. It is far from perfect. The linearity was annoying at times, the padding was annoying at times. Things like flying became tedious. But this game felt like a real adventure. The story, the music, the characters, the locations, the items, everything came together to properly feel like a Ghibli movie.
The dungeons were absolutely excellent. And there were so many more of them than I expected. Cleverly, trickily designed, filled with interesting puzzles and wringing every use case out of the fantastic set of items in the game.
I loved the combat too. I'm an absolute sucker for motion controls and this had them in spades. Swinging the sword around never got old for me, even in the final fight.
The music. Wallay buff.
I do have criticisms. At a few points late in the game it felt like the game was inventing reasons for me to not be able to get to the end and instead traverse the same 3 locations a third time (but in their defence, each location changed meaningfully and added new areas). I also didn't care for the side quests (but that's probably just a me thing, not a side quest guy, especially when I'm trying to make my way through a backlog). And I didn't meaningfully engage with the potions system until literally right before the final fight. Never infused a potion once until then. And the graphics, whilst 60fps, are muddy and Wii-like - going further with the painterly aesthetic on an HD console would have been so so good.
But none of that actually matters. I finished the game about 15 minutes ago and I feel like I ate a really filling, delicious meal. The designer in me was tickled by the dungeons, items and environmental puzzles throughout, all so well done.
Funny thing is, with this game as context, every decision made in (and every criticism of) Breath of the Wild makes perfect sense now. This game was too linear and handholdy, that game is pure exploration with little guidance. This game stops and starts with cutscenes, that game has them all purely optional. But then, this game has an incredible variety of dungeons, that game has identical feeling shrines. This game has all sorts of items and gadgets, that game has breakable weapons (and the Slate to be fair).
Idk. To sum it up, with Breath of the Wild as my reference point, Skyward Sword HD is everything I didn't know I wanted out of a Zelda game.