Twilight Princess is such a strange game that I want to love a lot more than I do, but just can’t due to its glaring flaws. The game keeps throwing a bunch of conceptually interesting ideas at you, but a lot of them end up feeling half-baked. Doesn’t help that the reaction to Wind Waker clearly caused them to make a massive overcorrection here to such a degree that the game ends up feeling like it was made by obligation rather than actual desire.
I remember hating the pacing of this game the first time around, and this playthrough made me realize that it really isn’t that terrible. It’s still pretty bad, but I get what they were going for with the long intro establishing Link’s casual life and relationships. The game unfortunately kind of just forgets about this later on, to the point where I saw Ilia in the credits and was like “oh yeah, she was in this game.” It’s odd that there are snippets of the story where it feels like Link and Ilia’s relationship is supposed to be important, but her role ends up ultimately being a plot device. For how much the first third of this game focuses on story, it’s awfully messy. I actually laughed out loud at the part in Hyrule Castle where the resistance guys show up and help dispatch a group of enemies that’s smaller than most groups of enemies you’ve already fought at this point in the game.
The tear collecting stuff in between the first 3 dungeons is still a slog. The worst part of the game by far is everything you have to do in the Lanayru region to enter the Lakebed Temple. This is the part that I think really tainted my view of the game years ago and prevented me from finishing it when the HD version on the Wii U came out. There’s just so much boring crap you have to sit through before you can enter a dungeon, you know the parts of the game that at least feel like they’re trying to do something interesting. The pacing does improve significantly after you gain the ability to change back and forth between human and wolf Link, but you still have parts like getting back Ilia’s memories that slow the pace to a crawl.
Twilight Princess’s overworld is initially impressive until you realize how little of it is worth exploring. Twilight Princess seems obsessed with the idea that bigger is better, when in reality all it does it make a lot of the game more tedious. Even dungeons end up overstaying their welcome sometimes.
Speaking of dungeons, this is one of the parts of the game that even haters of Twilight Princess seem to agree are at least decent. I do think the dungeons in this are overall good, but aren’t as great as they’re made out to be. They’re either pretty fun despite being a bit long in the tooth, or a slog to get through. Arbiter’s Grounds and Temple of Time I do really like a lot. They’re definitely the standout dungeons for me. Both have interesting mechanics, puzzles, and have enemies that actually feel like a threat. The only real stinkers are Lakebed and City in the Sky, with Snowpeak almost making my stink list but I think the originality of it makes up for me having a frustrating time with it. I’ll at least applaud the developers for making the dungeons feel like actual places that would have been used in the past. The atmosphere and scale is definitely on point in this game. Also I believe this is the only Zelda game where dungeons have heart pieces in them, and I never really got why they never did this again. I always thought that aspect of this game was neat.
Boss fights are generally cool, however they seem to vary quite a bit in quality. I’ll excuse some of the earlier bosses, particularly Fyrus and Morpheel, for their difficulty seeing as they’re still pretty fun fights. Stallord is still the coolest fight in the game that makes me wish the spinner had more implementation. The other dungeon bosses are honestly kind of meh. Blizzeta is obnoxious due to the ice physics, while Gohma and Argorok are absolute jokes. I guess I’ll give some points to Argorok for at least having a fight with good atmosphere. Admittedly, the Zant fight, while still easy, is one of my favorites for being a multiphase battle that remixes previous boss/mini boss fights. The Ganondorf fight is a weird one, because while I don’t dislike it, I do believe people embellish the quality of it. The Puppet Zelda phase is a less interesting Phantom Ganon tennis volley, the Beast Ganon phase is boring and takes longer than it needs to, the horseback phase takes like 30 seconds if that, and the final phase is essentially Wind Waker’s Ganondorf fight again only worse. I get that Zelda games aren’t necessarily supposed to be hard, but it’s bizarre to me that King Bulblin does significantly more damage than Ganondorf does. Ultimately, this really does spell out my main problem with Twilight Princess as a whole. It’s very good at spectacle and presentation, but when it comes to the actual gameplay and any sort of mechanics it can be a bit underwhelming.
Oh yeah, there’s also the sword techniques which are neat I guess, but I only ever ended up using helm splitter (which I guess includes shield attack, but whatever) and the back slice frequently. The other ones are either too situational or simply outclassed by a different basic move. Why would I ever use the charged jump attack when I could just spin attack quicker? Why would I ever use mortal draw when it only works on basic bitch enemies that die to a jump slash anyway? It’s not like I think that the combat is bad or anything, but whenever I see people talk about how this game’s combat is so much better than any other Zelda due to these skills I really can’t help but roll my eyes. I will say though, hitting enemies with your sword in this game is super satisfying thanks to the sound effects. Plus being able to do the fancy sword sheathing animation after certain fights is a cool little detail. Again, mostly a presentation thing, but still cool.
I feel like I’m shitting on this game a bit, but I think it’s mainly because while it’s good, I feel like it could and should have been way better than it ended up being. A lot of cool ideas, great presentation, impressive scale for the platform it’s on, great atmosphere, and some memorable dungeons and boss fights. Also Midna. Can’t forget Midna. Basically, yes there’s a lot to appreciate in Twilight Princess. Ultimately though, I can’t help but place it below all the other 3D Zelda games.
I remember hating the pacing of this game the first time around, and this playthrough made me realize that it really isn’t that terrible. It’s still pretty bad, but I get what they were going for with the long intro establishing Link’s casual life and relationships. The game unfortunately kind of just forgets about this later on, to the point where I saw Ilia in the credits and was like “oh yeah, she was in this game.” It’s odd that there are snippets of the story where it feels like Link and Ilia’s relationship is supposed to be important, but her role ends up ultimately being a plot device. For how much the first third of this game focuses on story, it’s awfully messy. I actually laughed out loud at the part in Hyrule Castle where the resistance guys show up and help dispatch a group of enemies that’s smaller than most groups of enemies you’ve already fought at this point in the game.
The tear collecting stuff in between the first 3 dungeons is still a slog. The worst part of the game by far is everything you have to do in the Lanayru region to enter the Lakebed Temple. This is the part that I think really tainted my view of the game years ago and prevented me from finishing it when the HD version on the Wii U came out. There’s just so much boring crap you have to sit through before you can enter a dungeon, you know the parts of the game that at least feel like they’re trying to do something interesting. The pacing does improve significantly after you gain the ability to change back and forth between human and wolf Link, but you still have parts like getting back Ilia’s memories that slow the pace to a crawl.
Twilight Princess’s overworld is initially impressive until you realize how little of it is worth exploring. Twilight Princess seems obsessed with the idea that bigger is better, when in reality all it does it make a lot of the game more tedious. Even dungeons end up overstaying their welcome sometimes.
Speaking of dungeons, this is one of the parts of the game that even haters of Twilight Princess seem to agree are at least decent. I do think the dungeons in this are overall good, but aren’t as great as they’re made out to be. They’re either pretty fun despite being a bit long in the tooth, or a slog to get through. Arbiter’s Grounds and Temple of Time I do really like a lot. They’re definitely the standout dungeons for me. Both have interesting mechanics, puzzles, and have enemies that actually feel like a threat. The only real stinkers are Lakebed and City in the Sky, with Snowpeak almost making my stink list but I think the originality of it makes up for me having a frustrating time with it. I’ll at least applaud the developers for making the dungeons feel like actual places that would have been used in the past. The atmosphere and scale is definitely on point in this game. Also I believe this is the only Zelda game where dungeons have heart pieces in them, and I never really got why they never did this again. I always thought that aspect of this game was neat.
Boss fights are generally cool, however they seem to vary quite a bit in quality. I’ll excuse some of the earlier bosses, particularly Fyrus and Morpheel, for their difficulty seeing as they’re still pretty fun fights. Stallord is still the coolest fight in the game that makes me wish the spinner had more implementation. The other dungeon bosses are honestly kind of meh. Blizzeta is obnoxious due to the ice physics, while Gohma and Argorok are absolute jokes. I guess I’ll give some points to Argorok for at least having a fight with good atmosphere. Admittedly, the Zant fight, while still easy, is one of my favorites for being a multiphase battle that remixes previous boss/mini boss fights. The Ganondorf fight is a weird one, because while I don’t dislike it, I do believe people embellish the quality of it. The Puppet Zelda phase is a less interesting Phantom Ganon tennis volley, the Beast Ganon phase is boring and takes longer than it needs to, the horseback phase takes like 30 seconds if that, and the final phase is essentially Wind Waker’s Ganondorf fight again only worse. I get that Zelda games aren’t necessarily supposed to be hard, but it’s bizarre to me that King Bulblin does significantly more damage than Ganondorf does. Ultimately, this really does spell out my main problem with Twilight Princess as a whole. It’s very good at spectacle and presentation, but when it comes to the actual gameplay and any sort of mechanics it can be a bit underwhelming.
Oh yeah, there’s also the sword techniques which are neat I guess, but I only ever ended up using helm splitter (which I guess includes shield attack, but whatever) and the back slice frequently. The other ones are either too situational or simply outclassed by a different basic move. Why would I ever use the charged jump attack when I could just spin attack quicker? Why would I ever use mortal draw when it only works on basic bitch enemies that die to a jump slash anyway? It’s not like I think that the combat is bad or anything, but whenever I see people talk about how this game’s combat is so much better than any other Zelda due to these skills I really can’t help but roll my eyes. I will say though, hitting enemies with your sword in this game is super satisfying thanks to the sound effects. Plus being able to do the fancy sword sheathing animation after certain fights is a cool little detail. Again, mostly a presentation thing, but still cool.
I feel like I’m shitting on this game a bit, but I think it’s mainly because while it’s good, I feel like it could and should have been way better than it ended up being. A lot of cool ideas, great presentation, impressive scale for the platform it’s on, great atmosphere, and some memorable dungeons and boss fights. Also Midna. Can’t forget Midna. Basically, yes there’s a lot to appreciate in Twilight Princess. Ultimately though, I can’t help but place it below all the other 3D Zelda games.