Zelda: Skyward Sword

Zelda : Skyward Sword Review

In this review their will be minor spoilers because this entire game is a gem so if I want to share any of my experiences I will have to spoil some of the game for you, you have been warned that being said I will try my best to give you forewarning. Skyward Sword is meant to be set before the other games but I prefer too look at it as if they are all parallel universes of each other that way the continuity works better and is less confusing your home town is skyloft which is the biggest floating island in this world and you are childhood friends with Zelda who is the headmasters daughter which leads to a different relationship between Zelda and Link. Today is the day of the goddess so you the young skyknights you race for the gods to win the goddess blessing you win and get first item cloth sail which slows you decent so you do not break your ankles then you and Zelda go for a ride together which is your other reward then shit hit the plan you get given a sword and go save the world.

Graphics

Zelda Skyward Sword is the best looking game on the wii not because it is HD or the best textures but the artistic direction is perfect it is a lot more cartoonish then twilight princess but not as much as Zelda Windwaker which made it compensate for the lack of performance and look better than some HD games. Everything is smooth edges and hand drawn which makes the game seem more kid friendly but the difficulty of the game is beyond what a child can do instead I think this game is more made for someone to watch my dad was watching me play and he was enjoying and "helping me play" which with most games I hate people watching me play but this time I felt it was more natural. I believe this was because the storyline is there but the temples and the puzzles were the main goals of the game and he did not need to know the storyline so that everything made sense like other games that constantly spew storyline down your throat. One thing I did not like was when you upgrade some of your items the upgraded item artistically speaking look dreadful but a lot of the time it does make it look better which reminds me why does the technology of Zelda world never advance above bow and arrow when they have robots biggest reason why I started thinking this is (SPOILER)because you get an item then you go back in time temporally and you save robot who says the romote controlled bug robot you have is outdated and he improves it seriously guys(SPOILER END).

GAMEPLAY

This is a Zelda game so you slash your sword at right time dependent on the monster your fighting to kill them with special items to get past it has changed a lot from other Zelda game by making getting to the temple as hard/ full of puzzles as the inside this also makes the inside of the temple a whole lot less confusing compared to earlier Zelda game looking at you water temples (:P by the by had no trouble in water temple in OoT). Also like previous Zelda titles their is a multitude of sidequest to get more heart pieces and new thing called gratitude stars which you get by helping people (spoiler warning) my most favourite side quest would have to be the ghost girl trapped in the toilet very similar to the one in majora's mask and it want paper the only paper you can get though is from a love letter written by one of your classmates who explicitly tells you not to give it to the creepy toilet lady. Of course you go ahead and give it to the hand in the toilet then use the toilet the moment after you do for added comedy but the next day when you tell him he runs away crying then that night the creepy hand is in his room patting his head some how this is worthy of gratitude ohh Japan you so crazy(spoiler End). Gratitude stars can best be compared with the skulltula tokens from previous games except they are more from around town then out in random places now for what you may care more about the controls.

Controls

With the one to one ratio of using wii mote like a sword is so much better than the previous Zelda game where swinging randomly was like spamming the A button to attack this made it so you could still swing rapidly fast but with certain enemies you needed to think about how you attack before you attack otherwise you will get hurt. This has it's own share of problems as I found stabbing action to be really hard to do and when ever it needed to be done to hurt the enemy I could never get it to work the first time this is most probably because I play this game pretty much laying down on the couch other than this the wii motion plus is fantastic. Even more so with the fact you do not even have to face the tv and you can still aim perfectly with the ability to centre the wii mote cursor wherever your pointing this made the controls almost not frustration at times nunchuck is still necessary and has really bad altimeter inside so it would not react when you want it to sometime and other times react when you do not want it to. These small irregularities with the wii mote did not deter my enjoyment of this game if you have a wii get this game if it had a mini sword fighting mini game that you could verse your friend with it would be the perfect game but we can still use the fencing game from wii motion plus sports.

Problems Forewarning

There is one game ending bug in Skyward Sword it did not happen to me because I did not walk off the main quest for the side quests until I mostly beaten the game and had all the items so I could do them all in a row. The bug happens when you talk to a goron who give you a key to progress further and aparantly it the save point get corrupt and game stop if you do this.

The original sequence of events is laid out like this:

1. At the beginning of the quest, go to Lanayru Desert to retrieve the song of the Thunder Dragon.
2. In the Lanayru Mine, speak with Golo the Goron.
3. Complete the Thunder Dragon’s event, and receive his song.
4. Before heading to the forest or volcano regions, speak with Golo in the mine again.
5. At this point, the forest and volcano events will no longer occur, making it impossible to continue.

source from Zeldauniverse.net

If this does happen to you there is a fix done by Nintendo you just have to go on the Internet with your wii to get your save file fixed and a patch to fix this is being released so hopefully this should not effect you.

Endgame

Zelda: Skyward Sword is the best game out one wii if you have a wii gathering dust get this game and re-realise why Nintendo was and is a giant of gaming you will not regret it. New humble bundle is out with some really good games it is worth getting just for Shank and Jamestown but the other games on there are great too  just a little to niche target market till next time peace peps.

Written by Christopher Holliman