Topic: Zelda: Skyward Sword

[Cobra951]

There is no thread on this game?  That shocked me.  Anyway, there is one now.

I'm playing Zelda: Skyward Sword.  I've resisted up to now because the game needs a new hardware gadget, the Wii Motion Plus.  Together, they run $70-$90 retail (depending on whether you get just the adapter, or a whole new remote with the functionality built in).  But I found a deal on Amazon where I was able to get both together for around $56, and I jumped on it.  It seemed perfect to keep the Zelda ball rolling, and finally get to play the one real game in the series that I've missed.

It's a mixed bag.  First, the negatives.  Wii motion controls.  Yeah, OK, you can do some cool things with the sword now.  Not quite 1-1 motion, but it's close.  Swing at different angles, even thrust forward for stab--cool.  But that still saddles you with the very poorly laid out Wiimote/nunchuk functions.  I want a gamepad so bad for this thing, and screw the swordplay.  It was fine the way it was in WW and (GC) TP.  Even more annoyingly, they're using the Motion Plus for everything, including screen pointing.  This just blows.  It's much less sensitive than the excellent standard functionality the Wii has always had, and it's relative.  So you need a greater range of motion to cover the screen, and it doesn't seem as solid.  And if you're pointing in the wrong direction when you press a pointer-related button, it tries to be nice to you and recenter, which means you're now way off.  All you have to do to correct it is aim at the center and press a button, but this shouldn't even be necessary.  It should only recenter if I so choose.

Also, incomprehensibly, the new gadget wants to recalibrate itself every time it comes back from a sleeping state.  So if I take a bathroom break, when I get back I have to press a button, lay the thing flat on the table for a few seconds, point at the screen center and click.  Every damn time.  Stupid beyond belief.

So the first few hours were spent getting used to the odd controls.  They work fairly well once that happens, and I was able to get into the game, which seems very worthwhile.  If you've played the other 3D Zeldas, you know what to expect.  Little has changed as far as the philosophy and overall design.  Some past obtuseness has returned, unfortunately--the use of statues to save, rather than saving at any time (which WW and TP allow).  But so far, this hasn't been a problem.  There are plenty of them around.  The world is huge, and the flying mechanic brings a smile to my face.  That's despite the disappointing loading break whenever you transition from pedestrian to avian, or back again.  It seems the world data changes completely from one form to another.

That brings to mind the general tech limitations.  They really show!  It's sad that Wind Waker looks better to me than a much newer game designed for this system, rather than a past one.  I think the biggest reason is that they're both the same resolution, but SS spreads out those pixels to fill the 16:9 screen, while WW keeps them closer together in a 4:3 window.  SS tries to combine the cheerful colors of WW with the more realistic style of TP, and largely succeeds.  But the old tech just hurts.  Blur and artifacts abound.  Pity.

Despite all the baggage, it's still an exciting and compelling world.  Skyloft has a lot to see and do, and that's just the starting hub.  You can move easily between the sky world and the land below, giving it all a very open feeling.  Combat is satisfying and more challenging than usual (not just because of the unfamiliar controls, I think).  The most advanced enemies I've met so far will block at different angles, and you need to swing the sword accordingly to get around their defenses.  I have yet to enter my very first temple/dungeon, though.  That comes next.  I quit last night right outside of it.  More to come.

More comes!  I've played through the first 2 temples now.  While I'm still fighting the controls more than most enemies, things are starting to click.  I'm getting familiar enough now with what I need to do with arms and wrists to make good things happen.  The usual creativity with puzzles and gadgets is here again.  The best so far is the beetle, a mechanical flying bug you control by rotating and tilting the remote.  It's great for recon and grabbing out-of-reach items.  It works to harass the baddies too.

The storyline and characters are spiffy as well.  Your helper (like Navi or Midna) is now a spirit that stays in your sword until you call her out.  You can then interact with her, typically ask questions on different subjects.  She doesn't seem to provide hints as good as Midna's.  I actually had to look up how to fight the first temple's boss.  He kept grabbing my sword, taking it away from me and hurting me plenty.  Nothing I could figure out on my own would change this frustration from repeating ad nauseam.  It turns out

(click to show/hide)

I had to play games by slowly changing the position of the sword with the remote to distract his seeking hand, then whack him from the opposite direction

.  No way would I have ever figured that out without some specific hints.  Still, it bugged me to no end that I had to look it up.  The second temple's boss was a lot more tractable, and a lot more fun.

I'm now in a desert with cool time-shifting properties.  Hitting some crystalline stones brings the area in their vicinity back into the past, with a shift from arid to lush landscape, fossils become live creatures, broken railways now work, and so on.  Puzzles here involve properly manipulating these properties.  I had to quit before making it into the dungeon.  The outside areas so far are huge and disconcerting.

Another fun bit are these metallic big cubes scattered around.  If you hit them with a light projectile* from the sword, they shoot up to the sky, and become floating islands you can visit on your bird.  Items and challenges start to dot the world above the clouds.  Cool stuff.

* By "light projectile" I mean a spinny vortex thing you charge up by pointing the sword straight up, then you fling it forward.  The sword mechanics are impressive.  They just take a lot of getting used to.  They are a new control paradigm entirely, and the hardware/software/wetware involved is just not as mature as our trusty gamepads/experience.  Maybe the next gen of such an interface will get us there.

[idolminds]

Man, been keeping my eye out for a good deal on this one.

[K-man]

Man, been keeping my eye out for a good deal on this one.

It's been 20 bucks multiple times at various locations.  Probably not going to get a ton better than that.

[K-man]

Also, I hope to get around to this game one day soon.  I don't really have terribly high hopes for it, but perhaps I will be pleasantly surprised.  Nintendo said this was supposed to be the biggest Zelda yet.  That's not always a good thing.

[Cobra951]

It's definitely a mixed bag.  You're spoon-fed like a moron most of the time, then suddenly you're thrown into a ridiculously tough situation with nary a hint of what to do.  Some awful problems with past Zeldas have returned, and I find it so hard to understand why.  After fixing the unskippable slow text scrolling from Wind Waker in Twilight Princess, now it's back again.  Oh, wait, it speeds up a little if I hold down 'A'.  Big fucking deal!  It should all pop up at once when I press the button, dammit.  Then the ridiculous, action-breaking pause every time you pick up an item for the first time.  Oh. not so bad, only the first time, right?  Except it resets every play session, so you're subjected to the same bullshit again every day across dozens of unique items.  (What's new doesn't get saved in the data file, apparently, and the fact that you're holding over 50 of each is not good enough for the code to figure it out, apparently.)

Despite all that, it's a huge and very worthwhile game, I suppose even essential for diehard Zelda fans.  Yet it could have been so much better.  It doesn't have the same open feeling as the past 2 games, and that's not the fault of the navigation.  It has more of a compartmentalized feeling than that of a big, cohesive world.  The statues used for saving also allow for fast travel, sort of.  They can pull you out of dungeons (yay!) or shoot you to the sky (when they have a clear path to the sky) and from there, you can dive to any location, then choose which (clear-to-the-sky) statue to land by.  Great system.

So I'm all conflicted about it still.  The controls work most of the time, but never feel quite as accurate as simple button presses.  And while I can see the advantage of having all the different sword movements, most of the time the motion control is unnecessary.  Typical Nintendo: inserting a big key now requires rotating a 3D object in the air until it matches the shape of the hole.  Oooh!  Looky how clever our controller is!  Fuck you, I'm playing for my enjoyment, not to justify your gyroscopes and accelerometers.

I'm quite far along now, if having 16/20 hearts is any indication (though 2 of those come from 2 life medals, an item you can find and equip, which takes up limited pouch space).  I'm thankfully through the 3 time-limited trials.  Never been a fan of those, and I'll refrain from saying anything else about them, other than they were not as bad as I initially feared.  I suppose next time I post, I'll be done entirely.  There's certainly a lot of game here.  The screen reports over 80 hours, though I think that includes all the time the game was paused while I was doing other things, which is considerable.

[gpw11]

Playing this now.  Pretty impressed so far. How'd you like it by the end, Cobra?

[PyroMenace]

Hey I finished this one last year, never did post about it. I felt this was the Zelda that ultimately gave me fatigue over the formula whereas most people felt that earlier with Twilight Princess. I actually really enjoyed Twilight Princess but with Skyward Sword, much like Cobra mentioned, is a mixed bag. I think what bother me the most ultimately were the dungeon designs, they were really simplified and dumbed down in this to where they felt shorter and less challenging, these were the best parts of any Zelda game and in here I was completely underwhelmed. However there is one boss fight that gets repeated a couple times throughout the game which I found to be rather frustrating, you'll know it when you get to it. The story stuff is good enough and well presented and its beautiful at times, but overall not that noteworthy. So for me, I felt this is the Zelda I wouldn't mind telling people to skip, people if you're enjoying it keep at it, let me know how it goes for you.

[Cobra951]

Playing this now.  Pretty impressed so far. How'd you like it by the end, Cobra?

My earlier posts sum up my feelings--mixed.  It's a must for the completeness any diehard Zelda fan would demand, but I so much wish it was more like Gamecube Twilight Princess, which I consider the pinnacle of the 3D Zelda games.  Don't let me discourage you, though.  It's quite a trip.  There's much joy to be found in the experience, motion-control issues notwithstanding.

[gpw11]

This makes me want to play under Dolphin.


I went and dropped $20 on component cables for the Wii.  Mixed bag on the ultra high end plasma I'm playing on (which doesn't have the best up-scaling abilities I guess).  The game doesn't have nearly as much of that N64 washed out muddy look and colours pop now.  The trade off is that it's crisp enough that it's aliased as hell and looks a bit weird. 

Well, can't have everything, I guess.  Torn over which look I can deal with more.

As for the game, I'm enjoying it - at the desert area now.  Keep in mind that apart from a brief stint with Twilight Princess for a few hours a couple of years ago (and fooling around with Wind Waker a bit in Dolphin for an hour) I haven't touched a console Zelda game since Ocarina of Time came out.   I did play both DS games though, finishing Spirit Tracks.   So, I'm certainly enjoying it and probably less prone to the fatigue you guys mentioned, although I'm sure I'll get pissed off at the controls eventually and just quit (wait for it).

[gpw11]

Aaaaand done!! Well, not complete, just done with it.   I was having a ton of fun even though I was fighting the motion controls here and there, but was still really enjoying it. The second Silent Realm did me in though.  The first wasn't bad but it was annoying and I didn't enjoy it.  I was hoping the other two trials would be something else, and was instantely let down when I found out I had to run through the desert in order to collect the tears again.  Died twice, basically summed up that "life's too short" and turned it off.   I don't think I'll be back - there are too many good games out there that I've been meaning to get through, it would just be a waste of time forcing myself through mechanics I really don't enjoy.

[Cobra951]

Yeah, I hated those too, but they're not too bad after a couple of failed tries to familiarize yourself with the layout.  You can also run away from the guardians a lot longer than I thought possible when I first started.  Basically, never say die, and you should get through them all within a few tries.  It doesn't make it any more fun, though.  They do suck intensely, like the repeating dungeon in the first DS Zelda.

[gpw11]

That makes me feel better.  I may give it a go again sometime.  Not right now though.....I actually hate the segments enough for it to ruin the game for me.