A great and colorful zelda game, a lot of ww later game consists of sailing to miniature islands boasting reused assets, small puzzles or gauntlets, whereas the final dungeon and story feels a bit rushed after a certain point, everything leading up to that point is a briskly paced fun narrative journey through greater islands and larger dungeons that really stands out.
The attention to visual detail is majestic with both Link, goblins or other enemies reacting with fully animated emotions to their surroundings and hazards.
Other environmental details like flower and trees swaying in the same direction as the wind. Or specks of dust blowing away from the ground as the wind changes, all adds for a very organic artstyle. Windwaker is still one of the prettiest if not THE prettiest cel shading around. And the HD version lifts up the presentation even further, with some exceptions.
The bloom effect hits some sour spots at times and the shading really doesn't benefit as much in the darker areas, but when the sun shines and you're out in the light there's a whole other spectrum of the visual quality.
While the game runs at a generally stable 30 fps there's some occassional framedrops whenever too much is going on at once. But thankfully the HD version has so much more added in that remedies most of the issues of the original gamecube version.
Alongside a higher resolution, better draw distance and new instruments added for the OST that really makes a handful of tracks stand out even more, the HD version also adds a lot of small fixes with a new faster sail, gyro aiming + 1st person roaming, aiming cursor for cannon aiming, real time inventory+map with the gamepad etc, a bunch of small fixes that just makes the gamecube version hard to get back to.
While you can tell they had to resort to recycling assets for the sidequesting, Windwaker is still a great journey with sound mechanics, a great OST and glorious visuals. It's very understandable how many would considers this their favourite LoZ.
The attention to visual detail is majestic with both Link, goblins or other enemies reacting with fully animated emotions to their surroundings and hazards.
Other environmental details like flower and trees swaying in the same direction as the wind. Or specks of dust blowing away from the ground as the wind changes, all adds for a very organic artstyle. Windwaker is still one of the prettiest if not THE prettiest cel shading around. And the HD version lifts up the presentation even further, with some exceptions.
The bloom effect hits some sour spots at times and the shading really doesn't benefit as much in the darker areas, but when the sun shines and you're out in the light there's a whole other spectrum of the visual quality.
While the game runs at a generally stable 30 fps there's some occassional framedrops whenever too much is going on at once. But thankfully the HD version has so much more added in that remedies most of the issues of the original gamecube version.
Alongside a higher resolution, better draw distance and new instruments added for the OST that really makes a handful of tracks stand out even more, the HD version also adds a lot of small fixes with a new faster sail, gyro aiming + 1st person roaming, aiming cursor for cannon aiming, real time inventory+map with the gamepad etc, a bunch of small fixes that just makes the gamecube version hard to get back to.
While you can tell they had to resort to recycling assets for the sidequesting, Windwaker is still a great journey with sound mechanics, a great OST and glorious visuals. It's very understandable how many would considers this their favourite LoZ.