I often see the most recent 3D Zelda games, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, be called “good games, but not good Zelda games” due to their radical departure from the series’ established formula. And yet, playing through TP has made me realize that I just can't agree with this take. If anything, I feel the opposite. TP taught me that the traditional Zelda formula just isn't for me. I vastly prefer the modern style, but I'll discuss it more later. Let's talk about TP specifically first.
TP’s opening is slow. You do favors for people around Link’s hometown, grow "attached" to some NPCs, and learn the basic controls. All you need to know is that eventually, Link is taken from this cozy opening to the twilight realm and turns into a wolf. In the twilight realm, Wolf Link meets Midna, who acts as this game’s guide. Midna’s defining personality trait is…being obnoxious. She taunts Link, makes sure he’s aware that she’s only using him for her own benefits, but she somehow ends up being likable.
Midna is easily the best and most interesting character in the game, and I’ll commend the game for that. With that said, it’s not really that impressive that she’s the best. The rest of the characters suck. Every other character in this game is shallow. It feels like the game tries to forcefully make the player connect to its cast. I won’t get into the overall story much, but it also failed to impress me. It was serviceable, but didn’t make me truly feel anything really.
“Shallow” is a good word to describe TP. Take a look at Wolf Link, for example. As a wolf, you can sense some invisible objects, dig underground in shiny spots, and that’s about it. You can talk to animals as a wolf which is cool I guess, but humans run from you. Wolf Link is not interesting beyond novelty. You eventually get the freedom to turn into Wolf Link whenever you want, but there is very little reason to do so. Wolf Link is a worse version of a transformation mask from Majora’s Mask. It’s kinda cool, but it ends there. Shallow.
Aesthetically, I think the developers took the criticisms from Wind Waker to heart and went all the way in the opposite direction. TP is gritty and creepy with its art style, but it's never actually scary. Opting for a more realistic look just made the graphics age worse.
The game’s overworld is quite large, but doesn’t feel good to explore. It felt like 90% of the treasure chests found in the game were rupees, but your wallet is limited and my wallet was basically full 100% of the time because uses for rupees are few and far between. Exploration felt awful when I constantly found “rewards” I had no use for, so, eventually, I just gave up.
The meat of the game’s content is the dungeons. There are 9 major dungeons in the game, and they all feel distinct from each other. Overall, they’re designed pretty well. I thought their designs were clever and made good use of their respective gimmicks.
The bosses suck, though. The second to last dungeon boss is the only boss in the game I’d consider good. They’re all incredibly easy and have an extremely obvious exploitable weakness, and many of them take way too long between opportunities to hurt them.
While the bosses aren’t great, the dungeons themselves are. However, something I noticed in TP that I didn’t feel as much in other Zelda games is a feeling of frustration. The best example I can think of is in the dungeon Snowpeak Ruins. In Snowpeak, there are many frozen enemies that freeze you if they hit you. Your options to deal with these enemies are very limited, and the punishment for messing up is so irritating. Not only do you take damage, but you have to wait a couple seconds to unthaw. Eventually, you get the ball and chain. With it, you can shatter frozen enemies instantly at a range. It’s satisfying to trivialize these frustrating enemies, but is that feeling worth the amount of frustration before you get the ball and chain? I honestly don’t think so.
TP frustrated me more than any other 3D Zelda game. Snowpeak is the best example, but I felt it constantly throughout the game. TP makes your life hard on purpose so it can sell you the solution later, and once you get the solution you have no problems anymore.
Ultimately, I'm perfectly okay with never returning to the classic style of dungeons because of this feeling, and I say that even though I LIKED TP's dungeons overall. This part of the review is more subjective and about my tastes on Zelda as a whole, so if you like the classic Zelda formula, you'll probably disagree with me.
Dungeons can feel overwhelming to me at times. They’re large, the right direction to go isn’t always obvious despite there usually only being 1 correct path, and they take a lot of time. They’re not what I truly like about Zelda games. What I do like is the amount of exploration and player creativity that BoTW and ToTK provide. Or the more limited, but more quality exploration of Majora's Mask while also having a far better cast of characters and atmosphere.
In the end, I found Twilight Princess to be a shallow game in many ways besides dungeon design, but I still had a decent time with it. It can be fun on a surface level, but going any deeper reveals its many flaws. I’d probably give it a 7.5/10. It's a good game if you like the classic 3D Zelda formula, but it just isn’t what I’m looking for.
TP’s opening is slow. You do favors for people around Link’s hometown, grow "attached" to some NPCs, and learn the basic controls. All you need to know is that eventually, Link is taken from this cozy opening to the twilight realm and turns into a wolf. In the twilight realm, Wolf Link meets Midna, who acts as this game’s guide. Midna’s defining personality trait is…being obnoxious. She taunts Link, makes sure he’s aware that she’s only using him for her own benefits, but she somehow ends up being likable.
Midna is easily the best and most interesting character in the game, and I’ll commend the game for that. With that said, it’s not really that impressive that she’s the best. The rest of the characters suck. Every other character in this game is shallow. It feels like the game tries to forcefully make the player connect to its cast. I won’t get into the overall story much, but it also failed to impress me. It was serviceable, but didn’t make me truly feel anything really.
“Shallow” is a good word to describe TP. Take a look at Wolf Link, for example. As a wolf, you can sense some invisible objects, dig underground in shiny spots, and that’s about it. You can talk to animals as a wolf which is cool I guess, but humans run from you. Wolf Link is not interesting beyond novelty. You eventually get the freedom to turn into Wolf Link whenever you want, but there is very little reason to do so. Wolf Link is a worse version of a transformation mask from Majora’s Mask. It’s kinda cool, but it ends there. Shallow.
Aesthetically, I think the developers took the criticisms from Wind Waker to heart and went all the way in the opposite direction. TP is gritty and creepy with its art style, but it's never actually scary. Opting for a more realistic look just made the graphics age worse.
The game’s overworld is quite large, but doesn’t feel good to explore. It felt like 90% of the treasure chests found in the game were rupees, but your wallet is limited and my wallet was basically full 100% of the time because uses for rupees are few and far between. Exploration felt awful when I constantly found “rewards” I had no use for, so, eventually, I just gave up.
The meat of the game’s content is the dungeons. There are 9 major dungeons in the game, and they all feel distinct from each other. Overall, they’re designed pretty well. I thought their designs were clever and made good use of their respective gimmicks.
The bosses suck, though. The second to last dungeon boss is the only boss in the game I’d consider good. They’re all incredibly easy and have an extremely obvious exploitable weakness, and many of them take way too long between opportunities to hurt them.
While the bosses aren’t great, the dungeons themselves are. However, something I noticed in TP that I didn’t feel as much in other Zelda games is a feeling of frustration. The best example I can think of is in the dungeon Snowpeak Ruins. In Snowpeak, there are many frozen enemies that freeze you if they hit you. Your options to deal with these enemies are very limited, and the punishment for messing up is so irritating. Not only do you take damage, but you have to wait a couple seconds to unthaw. Eventually, you get the ball and chain. With it, you can shatter frozen enemies instantly at a range. It’s satisfying to trivialize these frustrating enemies, but is that feeling worth the amount of frustration before you get the ball and chain? I honestly don’t think so.
TP frustrated me more than any other 3D Zelda game. Snowpeak is the best example, but I felt it constantly throughout the game. TP makes your life hard on purpose so it can sell you the solution later, and once you get the solution you have no problems anymore.
Ultimately, I'm perfectly okay with never returning to the classic style of dungeons because of this feeling, and I say that even though I LIKED TP's dungeons overall. This part of the review is more subjective and about my tastes on Zelda as a whole, so if you like the classic Zelda formula, you'll probably disagree with me.
Dungeons can feel overwhelming to me at times. They’re large, the right direction to go isn’t always obvious despite there usually only being 1 correct path, and they take a lot of time. They’re not what I truly like about Zelda games. What I do like is the amount of exploration and player creativity that BoTW and ToTK provide. Or the more limited, but more quality exploration of Majora's Mask while also having a far better cast of characters and atmosphere.
In the end, I found Twilight Princess to be a shallow game in many ways besides dungeon design, but I still had a decent time with it. It can be fun on a surface level, but going any deeper reveals its many flaws. I’d probably give it a 7.5/10. It's a good game if you like the classic 3D Zelda formula, but it just isn’t what I’m looking for.