The promise of a new control scheme that decreased the obnoxious handholding that plagued Skyward Sword’s original Wii incarnation made me give it another chance. Having played the original Wii release when it came out a decade ago, I was personally ambivalent towards it and have long considered it one of the series’ lesser entries. The islands that exist are mostly just hunks of rock to collect chests from with a few exceptions.When Nintendo unveiled The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD earlier this year, I was curious about whether or not this remaster would improve on the original enough to win me over. Unfortunately the “open-world” of Skyloft, the large sky ocean littered with sky islands where Link can explore on his trusty Loftwing still feels pretty empty and dull when compared to previous entries worlds like the vast ocean of Windwaker. Though this game does introduce Groose, the pompadour sporting bully who might just be one of the best side characters in the Zelda franchise. With the Goddess sword at your side, you learn all about the ancient goddess and a long slumbering evil it’s fun set dressing, but for the most part, it is still a run-of-the-mill Link vanquishes evil story. You follow the presumably first Link, a resident of an airborne city called Skyloft, as he travels to the surface searching for Zelda, his missing childhood friend.
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Link vanquishes Gannon and saves Zelda’s story as this game was presented as the first in the series timeline. The narrative takes a larger role than usual. Still, items like the whip and beetle add a fun and unique layer to puzzle design, and dungeons like the sand ship stand out amongst some of my favorite Zelda dungeons ever. It was easy not to notice with how frustrating I found the motion controls back in the day.
The dungeons are possibly some of the best the series has to offer. In boss encounters with characters like Ghiriahim, end up feeling like the most engaging bits of combat requiring you to watch not only the enemies’ body language but your own to strike before they can guard. Most fights rely on slow, precise movements to get around where enemies are blocking by striking from a certain direction. Overall, combat design leans pretty hard on the motion control gimmicks. It’s far from perfect, and switching it to a toggle option rather than a hold could go a long way in improving it, but I won’t hold my breath with Nintendo. You have to hold down the left shoulder button to use the right stick to move the camera. The one significant trade-off is the loss of direct camera control. I played the bulk of the game in this manner, and while it does feel like a struggle to make everything work, It’s the best experience you can have with Skyward Sword. You can still play with motion controls using two Joy-con controllers one acting as Link’s sword and the other his shield, but you can also play in handheld mode or with a standard controller by using the right thumbstick to track the movements of Link’s blade. While the original Wii release had serviceable if slightly frustrating motion controls, the Switch release improves on this immensely. The game came bundled with the Wii Motion Plus, which made the console’s motion tracking more accurate.
This time around, Nintendo realized the odds that I forgot what a Red Rupee was worth since last week were pretty low.Īs I mentioned earlier, one of the main gimmicks of Skyward Sword in its original release was the use of motion controls. That’s all well and good, but in Skyward Sword’s original release, these boxes would pop up every time you started a new play session. If you’ve played any Zelda title, you know that the first time Link collects something, he holds it proudly towards the sky, and a text box pops up telling you all about what it is. She still has helpful messages if you find yourself stuck, but she mostly stays inside your blade apart from exposition dumps.Īnother change that results in less annoying dialogue boxes is the absence of repeated item descriptions. The difference between Skyward Sword HD and the original is that Fi isn’t constantly interrupting you. She serves as the stand-in for Navi, the fairy that guided Link in Ocarina of Time and is typically regarded as pretty fucking annoying. Fi, the spirit inhabiting Link’s sword, is a big part of this game. Nintendo had the good sense to tell Fi to shut the fuck up. Let’s start simple some of the best parts of Skyward Sword HD are the lack of problems that existed in the original. The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (Switch)
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