Wind Waker’s refreshing aesthetic and setting promise a Zelda that fully adapts the series into a high seas odyssey. Regrettably, the game doesn’t commit to charting that path but instead merely covers all the old tropes in a fresh coat of paint.

Wind Waker soars when you’re actually partaking in a seafaring adventure - sailing towards some curious silhouette on the horizon, uncovering treasure maps, solving riddles, and tackling puzzles and combat gauntlets that dot many of the game’s islands.

However, much of your time is spent retreading all the familiar Zelda staples - solving chores, playing games of NPC telephone, fetching doodads and whatchamacallits to progress past arbitrary blockers, and wandering through elementally themed dungeons with the usual stable of items. All these tropes have proven themselves by providing the foundation for multiple candidates for “best game of all time”, but here they fail to play to the game’s strengths or unique identity.

Despite this, Wind Waker is still a very good game as well as a sumptuous feast for the eyes and ears. It’s also patient zero for the series’ then blind devotion to the Link to the Past formula in place of innovation, as if the formula alone defines a Zelda game.