Ever since Breath of the Wild invigorated the flame underneath me to give the Zelda series another chance, I've finally gotten around to this game. I never thought I was into Zelda growing up. The only game I played to completion was The Wind Waker, and while I really enjoyed that game, other games like OoT never seemed to mesh well with me. Maybe it was the dungeon design not gelling well with me, maybe it was the medieval fantasy setting that never really appealed to me. Either way, none of the Zelda games I had tried up until this point (ALttP, ALBW, OoT) ever really seemed to grab me.
I remembered playing this game at a friend's house many years ago on his Wii, and I've always had this memory of the game feeling and looking dark. It always intrigued me, but for whatever reason, I just never acted on playing it. For many years, I've always had it in the back of my mind that I would really want to try that game at some point. So after trying Link's Awakening and OoT, I decided to finally give it a chance.
The result is that, I think this might be my second favorite Zelda game.
The beginning of the game really hooked me in. Starting off in a small, quaint village, with lovely townsfolk felt very homely. You reach the point where you spend just enough time with them to begin to understand them and feel for them. And very, very suddenly, you are pulled into the depths of hell — both figuratively and literally. Having the village attacked by these strange looking beasts really hit home, and suddenly being whisked away, beaten, chained up, locked into prison and turned into a wolf with a evil imp lady forcing me to be her slave is just a very dark turn that I enjoyed a lot.
... Not in the masochistic way, I mean for the narrative.
It's a very jarring feeling to see a character like this end up in a horrible situation, especially for a Nintendo game. And I think because of that, it ended up making me feel for Link in a way that I haven't felt before. Granted, I was always aware in the back of my mind that everything would eventually work out for the best for Link, but it was still effective as a narrative hook.
Midna as a character surprised me. I now completely understand the love for her that I've seen on the internet. She's a sassy little gremlin, and ends up changing as the game goes on. She has a very sweet arc of realizing she was wrong for abusing you like she did for her own selfish interests, and begins to show facets of her true self. She's much more of a character than Zelda was in this game, strangely enough. Though, they did still manage to make me tear up with Zelda's words and actions. Every character, despite them being very minor, I ended up liking in some capacity. Not all of them were memorable, but the game definitely had a charm to it.
Having played BOTW first, it was remarkable to me just how much that game was closely related to this one. A lot of the iconography resembled BOTW, to the point where they felt distinctly within the same vein, whether that be intentional or not. I had read and heard two things while I was looking up more things about Zelda. The first was that, the original concept for the series had to do with a cybernetic realm mixed with the medieval fantasy, which was why Link was named Link, after a hyperlink. The other was that, the Legend of Zelda is kind of meant to be a retelling of a story, but with pieces missing and not clear, as if it were a real legend. Those two ideas were in my head the entire time while playing this game, and I'm not sure if it was intentional, but a lot of this game feels like it's in part, a holographic simulation. A lot of the Divine Spirits all project themselves, presenting themselves as concepts we understand, all of whom have a similar ancient technological glow like what's found with BOTW's shrines glowing. They're always in the background and become activated when these beings communicate, as if they're projections from the technology that we don't see the light from due to the legend misconstruing the truth of these beings. There's ancient tech that the Twili have that ends up changing perimeters of the simulation, like with Zant and his final battle. A lot of little things like that ended up making me think that the game is a misconstrued medieval world with "gods" controlling the fate of the world, whether it be the makers of the simulation, or the manifestation of alien beings contacting and controlling humans. It was fun thinking about all of this, and especially seeing how this game has elements that look like they're directly linked to Tears of The Kingdom. (The game even has tears as a collectible, and I wonder if the new game will elaborate on what they are really.)
I read interviews discussing how the framework to this game was meant to be another attempt at what OoT was trying to accomplish, I think in terms of dungeon design and world design, they accomplished that. A lot of the dungeons in this game were very good and things you could solve on your own through your own intuition. A big problem I had with OoT's dungeons is that they built a lot of puzzles on looking around a room to find a switch. Alongside that, they'd have you enter multiple situations where you could find one key, use it on an optional door you didn't know was optional, and be forced to comb the dungeon to look for another key to progress forward. These dungeons tend to build upon mechanics and ideas in a way that meshed well with my brain. Most of the bosses are fun to take out as well, except maybe the Zora temple's boss. That one more has to do with being in water more than the mechanics, however. The Goron and Mansion temples were my favorites, having a really fun design/layout.
A lot of the gameplay is fairly iterative of OoT, with the exception of the Wolf Link sections. While the concept feels a bit under utilized after a certain point, (especially when the Twilight world and the world of light end up being fased out with Midna being able to join you in the world of light), but I still enjoyed switching to the form and attacking enemies with it. Wolf Link runs faster, has a very snappy feeling quick attack, and it's just very fun to control him. It's just, by the end, they have a bit of a hard time justifying the mechanic, along with some of the dungeon items, but I don't really mind that. When they are in use, they're fun to use.
The music to the game has been really nice. There's some great renditions of previous songs, but some new ones as well. Zelda music has always been great, and this game's music is no exception. Midna's sick theme is genuinely beautiful, it's a very sweet song for a very sweet moment. It's undercut a little by having to force a stealth section and a enemy encounters, but the emotions hit my heart strings when the song started to kick in. The more I think about it, the more I think Midna might be one of my favorite Zelda characters.
I think my only few gripes with the game are, it's fairly iterative of OoT, albeit intentional, the horse controls aren't very good on the Wii U version, and that it underutilizes it's main gimmick. Other than that though, I'm kind of in love with this game. There's some genuinely superb stuff in here. It's making me want to go back to the Wind Waker to see it it truly has usurped the second favorite spot.
I remembered playing this game at a friend's house many years ago on his Wii, and I've always had this memory of the game feeling and looking dark. It always intrigued me, but for whatever reason, I just never acted on playing it. For many years, I've always had it in the back of my mind that I would really want to try that game at some point. So after trying Link's Awakening and OoT, I decided to finally give it a chance.
The result is that, I think this might be my second favorite Zelda game.
The beginning of the game really hooked me in. Starting off in a small, quaint village, with lovely townsfolk felt very homely. You reach the point where you spend just enough time with them to begin to understand them and feel for them. And very, very suddenly, you are pulled into the depths of hell — both figuratively and literally. Having the village attacked by these strange looking beasts really hit home, and suddenly being whisked away, beaten, chained up, locked into prison and turned into a wolf with a evil imp lady forcing me to be her slave is just a very dark turn that I enjoyed a lot.
... Not in the masochistic way, I mean for the narrative.
It's a very jarring feeling to see a character like this end up in a horrible situation, especially for a Nintendo game. And I think because of that, it ended up making me feel for Link in a way that I haven't felt before. Granted, I was always aware in the back of my mind that everything would eventually work out for the best for Link, but it was still effective as a narrative hook.
Midna as a character surprised me. I now completely understand the love for her that I've seen on the internet. She's a sassy little gremlin, and ends up changing as the game goes on. She has a very sweet arc of realizing she was wrong for abusing you like she did for her own selfish interests, and begins to show facets of her true self. She's much more of a character than Zelda was in this game, strangely enough. Though, they did still manage to make me tear up with Zelda's words and actions. Every character, despite them being very minor, I ended up liking in some capacity. Not all of them were memorable, but the game definitely had a charm to it.
Having played BOTW first, it was remarkable to me just how much that game was closely related to this one. A lot of the iconography resembled BOTW, to the point where they felt distinctly within the same vein, whether that be intentional or not. I had read and heard two things while I was looking up more things about Zelda. The first was that, the original concept for the series had to do with a cybernetic realm mixed with the medieval fantasy, which was why Link was named Link, after a hyperlink. The other was that, the Legend of Zelda is kind of meant to be a retelling of a story, but with pieces missing and not clear, as if it were a real legend. Those two ideas were in my head the entire time while playing this game, and I'm not sure if it was intentional, but a lot of this game feels like it's in part, a holographic simulation. A lot of the Divine Spirits all project themselves, presenting themselves as concepts we understand, all of whom have a similar ancient technological glow like what's found with BOTW's shrines glowing. They're always in the background and become activated when these beings communicate, as if they're projections from the technology that we don't see the light from due to the legend misconstruing the truth of these beings. There's ancient tech that the Twili have that ends up changing perimeters of the simulation, like with Zant and his final battle. A lot of little things like that ended up making me think that the game is a misconstrued medieval world with "gods" controlling the fate of the world, whether it be the makers of the simulation, or the manifestation of alien beings contacting and controlling humans. It was fun thinking about all of this, and especially seeing how this game has elements that look like they're directly linked to Tears of The Kingdom. (The game even has tears as a collectible, and I wonder if the new game will elaborate on what they are really.)
I read interviews discussing how the framework to this game was meant to be another attempt at what OoT was trying to accomplish, I think in terms of dungeon design and world design, they accomplished that. A lot of the dungeons in this game were very good and things you could solve on your own through your own intuition. A big problem I had with OoT's dungeons is that they built a lot of puzzles on looking around a room to find a switch. Alongside that, they'd have you enter multiple situations where you could find one key, use it on an optional door you didn't know was optional, and be forced to comb the dungeon to look for another key to progress forward. These dungeons tend to build upon mechanics and ideas in a way that meshed well with my brain. Most of the bosses are fun to take out as well, except maybe the Zora temple's boss. That one more has to do with being in water more than the mechanics, however. The Goron and Mansion temples were my favorites, having a really fun design/layout.
A lot of the gameplay is fairly iterative of OoT, with the exception of the Wolf Link sections. While the concept feels a bit under utilized after a certain point, (especially when the Twilight world and the world of light end up being fased out with Midna being able to join you in the world of light), but I still enjoyed switching to the form and attacking enemies with it. Wolf Link runs faster, has a very snappy feeling quick attack, and it's just very fun to control him. It's just, by the end, they have a bit of a hard time justifying the mechanic, along with some of the dungeon items, but I don't really mind that. When they are in use, they're fun to use.
The music to the game has been really nice. There's some great renditions of previous songs, but some new ones as well. Zelda music has always been great, and this game's music is no exception. Midna's sick theme is genuinely beautiful, it's a very sweet song for a very sweet moment. It's undercut a little by having to force a stealth section and a enemy encounters, but the emotions hit my heart strings when the song started to kick in. The more I think about it, the more I think Midna might be one of my favorite Zelda characters.
I think my only few gripes with the game are, it's fairly iterative of OoT, albeit intentional, the horse controls aren't very good on the Wii U version, and that it underutilizes it's main gimmick. Other than that though, I'm kind of in love with this game. There's some genuinely superb stuff in here. It's making me want to go back to the Wind Waker to see it it truly has usurped the second favorite spot.