Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Page 5

Man, you really did avoid all info about the game before playing it, huh? I'm envious.

Early (and spoiler-free unless you're quite as blacked out as jhoff) impressions:

Well, I'm three hours in so far...and have yet to even reach the first dungeon, though I've seen plenty of fighting already. And I'm pretty sure I got my first sword within an hour! This is an improvement. I probably could've gotten it a bit sooner even; I just chose to explore the town instead. And that's why this immediately feels better than Twilight Princess to me: It's a vibrant, creative world I actually enjoy being in. Yeah, there's of course handholding tutorial crap in the beginning, but at least it's actually focused and story-driven and involves fighting through a mini-dungeon to get there, instead of 2 hours of the most random, mundane tasks you could imagine.

Right off the bat though, I have to address a maddening UI quirk I can barely believe: I hope I'm missing the option somewhere, but you can't tweak the text speed, or even speed it up as it's scrolling by! This is insane. I failed a early, short challenge repeatedly...and each time I had to wait for three blocks of text explaining the challenge to go by, every single time. That's almost as bad as an unskippable cutscene. Seriously Nintendo, is this the first game you've ever made?

Thankfully, at least, about an hour in you get the option to turn off that godawful giant transparent-Wiimote HUD overlay.

On the bright side, the swordfighting so far seems every bit as good as reported. It's extremely satisfying, accurate and responsive. I was a bit worried the controls of your primary mode of transport would be floaty and annoying, but they're actually pretty good. Certainly better than say, the flying bird levels in Mario Galaxy 2. What I'm most impressed by is that the game doesn't seem to use the sensor bar at all--every interaction seems to be calculated just by Motion+, including aiming. And so far it works extremely well. It's a huge improvement over Twilight Princess to be able to to just play, and not worry about pointing right at the sensor bar and finding the cursor every time you pulled out your bow or something.

Some storyline discussion:

Yeah agreed. My biggest issue with the game is that the calibration for aiming stuff gets off pretty often. Luckily, down on the d-pad fixes that, but I have to do it relatively often. I think Nintendo is pretty much up against the limits of the technology with this one.

Man. That is a hell of a boss in the second dungeon. Who'da thought, uh, Wii Sports motions could feel so badass. That sequence and when flying around are the two times so far when the orchestral soundtrack takes the game to another level.

Really sucked into this game. I've played nearly 12 hours over the past couple days and I want to keep going. I have not done that since like, Final Fantasy VI. (I usually never play more than 2-3 hours of a game a day, max.) I still question some of the UI choices (TEXT SPEED) and sort of wonder why we can't map items to (currently totally unused) L/R on the D-pad, and no matter how good motion controls are there's always going to be moments of wonkiness (either I really suck or skydiving is really hard; I have blown myself up failing to lob/roll bombs repeatedly, though I'm getting better). I haven't experienced jhoff's problem of needing constant calibration for aiming, however. It still does take getting used to, though, since in most cases the aiming cursor moves very slowly compared to Twilight Princess.

So there are definitely some surprising and disappointing rough edges, but the core game, and world, are involving and intoxicating. Combat is fun, intense, and rewarding. No more leisurely jump-slashing the **** out of a moblin while a couple of his pals patiently wait their turn to fight you in the background; here a half-dozen of them will mob you at once, each of them blocking a different way. Flying is a damn joy; it basically feels like a refined form of Wind Waker's sailing, minus all the fat and plus a Z-axis. The world map may be small, but it's pretty packed with things to do, and I feel is a worthy interpretation of the "stuff to do on each screen" philosophy of the 2D games. The main town, especially: Every single person has a name, distinct personality, and in many cases an occupation, and it looks like basically all of them will offer up a sidequest at some point (reminiscent of Majora's Mask and Wind Waker's towns). I am a little worried that I appear to have seen every piece of land the overworld has to offer already, and am now just waiting for stuff to happen there, but here's the thing: So far every treasure I've found while exploring has been useful and/or desirable. It's either been heart pieces, inventory expansion, item upgrades, or rupees, which so far I've been running through like water to buy further health/inventory/item upgrades. Thus there's more than ample incentive to go rushing off after every new chest you get a hint about; thus exploration is fun and rewarding.

The game is also reasonably hard. I died twice in the first damn dungeon, once to the boss and once to a god-damn Skullatulla. They made a big deal about starting you with six hearts this game instead of the traditional three, but the real difference is that most enemies in this game take off a full heart with each attack, unlike previous games where effing Ganon would cinematically gore you and you'd lose one-eighth of a heart from it. Zelda games do tend to get easier as you go along though, gaining hearts and equipment, but the early game definitely feels more brutal. I've even gotten frustratingly stuck at a few points, so let me give you a free piece of advice: Really look at your damn map. Oh, also, they never tell you, but rolling before jumping gets you a teeny bit farther.

Well I wouldn't say it's as bad with constantly needing to calibrate the aiming as that Gamespot reviewer says, but if you try to turn around quickly and therefore move the remote a lot to the side, then when you point it back at the screen it can be way off.

There's also one minigame thing a while in that was driving me crazy because of the inconsistency of the controls during it.

Not sure if it matters yet, but I'm using an original remote with a MotionPlus dongle. I don't know if it's any different with the remote with it built in. That I should find out tomorrow morning.

I died two or three times as well so far myself.

I'm about 25 hours in and just hit the first really annoying part. It makes you backtrack to a place you're already been through just for a fetch quest, and bring it back so that you can access another area. Kind of annoying, but not nearly as bad as the treasure hunting in WindWaker.

I was also disappointed to see that the

game mechanic that was annoying in Twilight Princess returns for a little in this.

With my gold remote with MotionPlus built in, the controls don't feel any different. I pretty much expected that, but just wanted to mention it.

I actually hadn't realized though that it wasn't using the pointer feature and it's all motion/gyroscope controlled even for aiming, and so it took me this long to figure out that wherever you have the remote pointed at when you take the item out is where the centering starts, so it does help to straighten it out before you pull out an item that requires it.

Third boss was a little underwhelming after the second one, both in difficulty and creativity. Felt a little too "Here's a boss, you'll never guess what item it's weak to" in the traditional Zelda fashion. Really easy, too. The "gimmick" of the whole third area is awesome, though. It ain't just any other desert, folks.

I think I just hit the backtracking part Jhoff talked about. Involving retrieving a certain lost part you can't carry yourself? Luckily I spotted it earlier and knew it'd come up again (since I noticed the part was missing before) and got back to it in two minutes. I'm afraid I'm about to eat my words since the real backtracking has yet to begin, but it's not so bad since there's several points you can warp to within each area.

And I hate you for getting the gold remote. I actually went checking around this morning for the bundle, couldn't find it anywhere. A crazy man ranted at me in Target about he read on a message board that it was a special limited to GameStop, which of course isn't true, but may as well have been.

I agree entirely on this part. So far, despite maybe being the whole "enter an area, solve some puzzles using your items, and then beat a boss to get something else" formula, the puzzles (especially the area referred to above) have felt really fresh and new.

FYI- to make the text scroll faster hold down "A" when they are talking. I do this constantly.

Great game, much better than twilight princess. I'm only at faron woods, and this is already sucked me in.

Yeah, thanks. I have been holding A, but honestly the text still scrolls so slowly that I wasn't sure if I was just willfully convincing myself that it was doing something. It's like if a DVD player had 1.2x FF speed. What happened to pressing B to make all the text appear at once? At least when I died and had to go back to the boss, they let me skip the cutscene.

I broke down and bought the gold Wiimote bundle this morning (after having to spend a couple minutes convincing the saleslady that Yes, the bundle comes with the game, not just the controller and CD for $70, and No, I will not be buying the game for a separate $50). Guess my vanilla copy of the game's going on eBay or something. To tell the truth, it's sort of nice to feel insane about Zelda again.

Yeah, I think the regular text speed should be the speed of when you're holding A, and the sped up speed should be faster than that.... in addition to a button to show it all at once.

The slow, unskippable text really is the worst thing about this game. It sounds like nitpicking, but it really affects every non-combat portion of the game significantly. May be enough to knock the game down to a B for me, honestly, which is a shame because otherwise I think this might be the best Zelda in ages. Another situation where I wish Wii games were patchable.

Came across a review of the game on Onion AV Club. I took issue with a lot of it (the reverence for Ocarina and calling the motion controls "unnecessary") but it hits on a lot of the little stuff that I love about the game. I've excerpted it here:
It sounds corny, but the biggest difference to me so far is that the game has a lot of heart and life to it. I've said before that Twilight Princess felt like a checklist; Skyward Sword feels like a game, world and story they really wanted to create.

Ok, so I pre-ordered the deluxe bundle with the gold Motion Wiimote and the symphonic CD from Amazon. For some reason, they're saying that my expected arrival date is November 23rd.

Is anyone else getting their game substantially later than Nov 20th?

I've read elsewhere of lots of other people getting it a few days late from Amazon. I think the Wiimote bundles are in a bit of short supply.

Does anyone know if the collectors edition will be available again in the stores or online? Just wondering if Nintendo will be shipping more to retailers...

I have to imagine more shipments must be coming in by Black Friday. Not sure if this is helpful, but they'll be $60 at Walmart that day...

I too found the slow text to be quite annoying.

I have a HUGE speaker system (much bigger than my little room needs) and cranking this game up feels alot better than TP. That game has alot of crazy harsh sounds and the music doesn't sound as good as it does in this game. Plus, Midna's voice rings out and scares the crap out of me sometimes. In this one, there is a small ring rather than a giggle.

Another cool thing about this game, is I have 7.1 heights and when flying, the wind whipping past you, the heights add another dimension to the experience that is pretty neat.

Okay, one thing I miss from Twilight Princess: the twirly dramatic way you could sheathe your sword after a fight. Beating one of the giant red dudes (and then turning your back to them, of course) really calls for it.

I actually really like how (so far at least) there's no sign of some of the older races from other games. I mean, they followed the formula so exactly with Gorons, and the Zora, and all of that that it's nice to see that mostly they're not involved with an exception or two.

It just adds to what gives it a fresher feel than others.

Seriously! Even if they slipped that move in rarely it'd still be gratifying.

Oh but what I can't stand now (but it's in every recent Zelda game), is every time I start a new session when I catch a bug or get a material it has to describe it, and just like the speech, it won't let you skip it. I HATE that. Wastes so much time.

Yeah, agreed. At least if you're playing a longer session then the second time it doesn't describe it, but still.

It was annoying back in Link's Awakening, and it's still annoying now.

Yeah, unfortunately for me with a 1 year old it's hard to play for very long before I'm needed and have to turn it off.

Oh yeah, that bugs me too. This sort of pesky stuff drives me up the wall. It seems like such a simple thing to fix! How in presumably hundreds of hours of playtesting did no one point out, "Oh hey, this is pretty annoying; let's take five minutes to fix this." Sometimes I'm tempted to just leave the game running purely to avoid it.

Also, I hit my first major fetch quest last night (returning to a marginally remixed previous dungeon to grab a macguffin). You know, I didn't mind it, it was actually sort of fun, and the idea that a dungeon doesn't freeze in time just because you left helps make the world seem more dynamic. And the game still feels well-paced despite it. But really the padding just seems kinda desperate and insecure. Like if they don't pad the game up to some ridiculous number of hours then people won't like it. Reportedly it's taking people 30-40 hours to beat the game with minimal sidequesting. That being the case, why is any padding necessary? Would a 20-30-hour game be such a crime? Then again, given the number of message board posts I've seen along the lines of "Pfft, game is only 12 hours, what a rip-off for $60," maybe we just get the games we deserve.

The funny part is, I bet if they instead made the padding into optional sidequests for rupees or a heart piece or whatever people would love them. The mini-boss fight at the end was pretty exhilarating, if nothing else.

Okay, this game just got a whole lot longer.

My play time is at 31 hours now, doing (I'm doing available sidequests too), but I can honestly without hesitation say that a good 3 or 4 hours of it has been the game telling me what material or treasure I picked up. It's really annoying having it tell me about Monster Horns and Amber every single time I pick them up for the first time in a session...

Yeah, I'm excessively grateful when I happen to pick up a treasure underwater or something so the text doesn't trigger. And uh, playing three hours at a stretch helps, too.

I'm mildly disappointed in Link's items this time around. Due to the focus on sword combat most items are pretty useless in combat (most can't even Z-target) and in general none of the new items are as cool or out of left field as Twilight Princess' spinner or ball & chain. The beetle (sorry, I assume everyone's seen that by now) is the exception, as it's pretty fun/useful, adds a new recon element to the series, and is tailor-made for the generally more wide-open design of this game's dungeons. I do have one more empty weapon slot left, but it's very obvious what's going to fill it. Hell, it's also very obvious that I'll be getting one more "passive" item upgrade, and equally obvious what that's going to be. Hope this game has some surprises left somewhere.