My Thoughts on: Skyward Sword

Have I ever told you I love the Legend of Zelda games.  I mean everything about them make me happy.  Even the ones I am not the biggest fans of I still love because they are Legend of Zelda games.  So before I get into the newest title Skyward Sword I want to discuss my history with the Legend of Zelda series.  It all started a long time ago in a tiny town in Illinois.  One day I went over to my friends house lets call him  Socrates Poole (if you get the reference you are an awesome person.)  Socrates ran to the door screaming

"Help me help me the Redeads are going to kill me!! Oh you must help me my amazingly awesome and manly friend!!"

So I said to him:

"Fear not Poole I will save you from your nightmare and kill these Redeads."
With that he handed me his copy of The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time and that is how the legend began.  Ever since that day I have been a fan of the series and played and loved all the new ones after Ocarina of Time including Majora's Mask which quickly tied Ocarina of Time as my favorite game of all time.  Then came the Wind Waker which sadly was not as strong the other two but was a beautiful game with great music.  Minish Cap came next which I am currently replaying on my 3DS.  Then came Twilight Princess which I will talk about later. We get Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks which are low on my list.  Besides the new game I have also tried my hand at some of the early games some unsuccessfully like the first Legend of Zelda.  and some works in progress like a Link to the Past and Oricale of Seasons.  Then the greatness of Links Awakening.

My love of the Legend of Zelda games have transcended through the years and every game has been important to me even the ones I don't care for that much.  I would never call them bad games or never tell someone not to play them.  In fact right now I have a mega play list of Legend of Zelda sound tracks which include a Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and soon the Minish Cap.  Heck when I went to pick up Skyward Sword at Gamestop on a cold Sunday morning I was listening to the playlist and right as I was getting into town the credits music from Ocarina of Time started playing ending right when I pulled into the Gamestop parking lot.  This just felt like something important like the end has come for this long wait to get my hands on this new game.

So with out any more Delay lets get into The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. I will tell you what I liked about this game what I didn't like (Which is a short list) and I will compare the game to Twilight Princess which was the last Legend of Zelda game released on the Wii (and also a game I have strong feelings about.) Then finally I will give my final thoughts on the game and announce its placement on my list of favorite Legend of Zelda games.

So here is the setting of Skyward Sword a long time ago a great evil ravaged the lands.  And it took the intervention of the great Goddess named Hylia.  So Hylia decided she was going to send a chunk of land into the sky to protect the people.  Hylia then fought off the evil that was doing the evil things.  The city in the Sky then became known as Skyloft and that is where our main character Link (Who I named Wombat) and Zelda were born and raised.  This is where our story starts.

Its a beautiful morning in Skyloft and our hero Link is sleeping away when a giant bird busts its head through his window with a letter from Zelda.  This obviously woke Link up and he met Zelda at the Goddesses Shrine.  She is telling you that you better win this flying competition and I am just going to skip over some stuff that leads up to the race but needless to say you win.  Your prize is some personal time with Zelda (Because she is portraying the Goddess) on the statue of the Goddess Hylia.......NO NO YOU STUPID PERVES NOTHING DIRTY HAPPENED!!!!  However I will say that Nintendo actually gives Link and Zelda some sort of real relationship.  Actually mixing in some romantic feeling to it.  You also get a sail cloth that Zelda Made herself.  This basically serves as a parachute for you many times skydiving.  Which is good because she then pushes you off the statue (What a bit......nice lady.)  Another part of your prize is flying around with Zelda while having a victory lap a strange wind storm knocks her down below the clouds and this is where the real adventure starts.  Now I know what you are thinking oh she gets captured and this is just like every other legend of zelda game ever.....well if you do think that then you are a massive moron since in both (Slight Spoilers) Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker Zelda does not get captured until the end.  In this game Zelda is actually made into a real character and not just another Princess Peach (Sorry Poole also a bit of trolling here since Peach isn't always bubble headed moron just most of the time.) Zelda is actually very important character in this story and actually escapes from the evil peoples more then once.  So that night while you are sleeping you are visited by a floating blue human female like creature. She leads Link inside the statue of the Goddess where she then introduces herself as Fi who is a servant of the Goddess Hylia.  She lets you know you win the mega raffle and are the chosen hero of the Goddess with a great destiny a head of him.  She then instructs you to take up the sword that is in a pedestal in front of you.  This is the Skyward Sword (Ohh a name drop YAY!!.)  So you have your sword and Fi who is like a living computer who will fill the roll of partner in this game.  Now you are ready to head to the surface and start your search for Princess Zelda.

Now I am going to end the story part of the review right there.  Yes there is much more to the story then that and actually proves to be a very emotional story at that.  It is very well done and actually touched me a big manly man on an emotional level.  It actually shows that both Link and Zelda must make great sacrifices in order to complete the destiny set ahead of them.

So with story out of the way lets talk about character....well mainly side characters since we already talked about Link and Zelda. So we will talk about Fi, Impa, and Groose who are three of the most important side characters I will also talk about Ghirahim who is the main enemy for most of the game.

So lets start by talking a little more about Fi.  Like I said earlier she is basically a living computer.  She doesn't have much of a personality or many emotions but I think this works for her.  While her main personality is cold and emotionless it really makes points in the game seem more beautiful or enchanting.  After you beat the first three temples she will translate a message from the Goddess and while she does this she dances and in my opinion that is a very beautiful experience.  Then later on in the game she will sing as you play your instrument.  This is another beautiful experience.  It makes Fi as a character more enchanting and makes her seem like she is more then just a computer.  Another thing about Fi is besides just giving Link statistics and analysis of his current situation or just weaknesses of his current enemy she will also give fun fact. An example of this is she will mention the fact that the Bokoboblins who are the main grunt enemies of the game like to wear fancy underwear.

So now it is time to talk about Impa who you might remember her as the Sage of Shadow in Ocarina of Time.  She is another servant of the Goddess of Hylia.  She helps watch over Zelda while she is on the surface.  She is a strong woman who can hold her own.  With magic powerful enough to stop Ghirahim long enough to help Zelda escape.  She takes her job very seriously even chewing Link out for being late.  At the end of the game you will find out something rather cool about her but I am not spoiling that.

So that brings us to Groose who is the character who changes the most throughout the game.  He starts out as links rival and a bully who steals Link's Loftwing to prevent link from entering the race.  Groose was hoping with his only real competition out of the way he could win and get his time with Zelda who he seems to have a huge crush on.  His crush on Zelda is actually pretty creepy.  Groose comes off as a bit of a perv as he thinks about him and Zelda alone on top of the statue.  Then once Zelda goes missing he enters a deep depression muttering to himself and wants to be the one who finds her instead of Link.  He acts on this desire when Link is flying out to the Woods and Groose falls from the sky grabbing Link as they fall to the surface (Which Groose has never seen and the way he looks and acts here makes me think of Donkey Kong.)  Groose thinks he should be the hero and should save Zelda until he "Granny" (Who helps link with some things and is the overseer of the sealed grounds) tells Groose that only Link can save Zelda but he will have his own role to play.  Groose doesn't pay much attention to that and thinks he is useless.  However as time goes by he changes and decides to do what he can.  He ends up making a cannon and a track that you can use to fight  the Imprisoned (Who is the monster sealed away at the sealed grounds.)  So now after that he learns he isn't useless.  He shows up once again at the end of the game but I won't talk about that.  Throughout the game Groose goes from being a creepy perv to a hero in his own rite.

So that leads us to Lord Ghirahim who i think proved to be a very interesting villain.  He is a powerful demon lord with great power.  You will face him three times in the game and each time you see more and more of his true power.  He has an ego that is bigger then a house and the power and skill to back it up.  All and all he is a well done bad guy.  He is also very mysterious and down right creepy from the way he looks and the powers he has and his weird lizard like tongue everything about him just makes me want to know more about him.  I really like Ghirahim even though Ganondorf will always be my favorite Ghirahim is just well done.  However if you want to know more about the Demon Lord you will just have to play the game yourself.

So now I am going to discuss how this game looks and all I can say is Beautiful.  I think the combination of Wind Waker's  cel-shaded style graphics with Twilight Princess's more realistic graphics make this a very beautiful game to look at.  The graphics are just make this world look great not much else to say.  I mean it just makes the world come to life....but it seems I am repeating myself so I am going to stop talking about how great the graphics look and on to the music.

So on the the music. I have to say the music was good but not great.  I mean don't get me wrong I like the music in the game but none of it is really memorable. However I think it is rather atmospheric.  Like Wind Waker's sailing music the flying music in this game just makes me feel like I am really on a great adventure.  I also find the music of the Bazaar is also very well done it changes with each booth you visit.  Other then that nothing great or memorable.  I won't say the music is bad though because it isn't and after a couple more playing maybe that will change.  And it will likely be added to my Legend of Zelda Mega Play List.

So now I think it is time for me to compare Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess.  Now as the people who have read my other stuff or just know me I did not care for Twilight Princess as much as I do the other games.  While it was not a bad game it just wasn't my favorite for a number of reasons.  I had a number of problems with Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword had fixed or made better, but I am going to break it down in a comparison between the two.  I am going to talk about the following things Midna vs Fi, Twilight Princess's Items vs Skyward Sword's Items, and just other things that i didn't like about Twilight Princess that was not a problem in Skyward Sword.

So lets talk about Midna.  She was a well done character with a great personality and back story.  She was dark and twisted and I absolutely loved her.  She was one of the best parts of Twilight Princess and in the match she is easily the better companion.  While I loved Fi and thought her singing and dancing was beautiful she didn't have anywhere near as much personality that Midna did.  So yeah one of the few things Twilight Princess did better then Skyward Sword.

The next thing is Items and I don't even have to say who wins here but I will Skyward Sword has the better Items hands down.  Now to defend my statement the items in Twilight Princess were either disappointing or useless outside of the temple.Yeah Twilight Princess gave us the double claw shot which is my favorite Item but it also gave use the Spinner which was a big disappointing.  It also brought us the Dominion Rod which was a boring item that is mostly useless out of temple.  Other then the Claw Shot and sometimes the Ball and Chain (And arrows if you are boring) there are not many good items that are useful out of temple.  While Skyward Sword gave us a number of interesting items including the Beedle which quickly became one of my favorite item in a Legend of Zelda game.  It also gave us items that are interesting to say the least.  While all of them are not amazing but they are fun to use and useful out of the temples that you got them from.

Now I here are a couple things I did not like about Twilight Princess that was not a problem in skyward sword.  Skyward Sword improved things like the graphics.  While Twilight Princess's graphics were not all bad but when Hyrule was covered in twilight is kind of ugly.  The other real problem I had with Twilight Princess was the Skypeople which now kind of makes me think.  Since Twilight Princess takes place long after Skyward Sword in the time line are the chicken human sky people the people of Skyloft? Is the city in the sky the remains of Skyloft...it just raises so many questions.  But I feel I have talked bad about Twilight Princess enough.

So on to something that Twilight Princess did better which is the music.  While I like the sound track to Skyward Sword it is no where near as good as Twilight Princess's.  TP's music made everything seem much bigger much more epic.  While it isn't as good as Ocarina of Time or a Wind Waker it does leave a good impact and really makes the whole adventure seem so much bigger.

Now I do want to say this though while I may have talked down Twilight Princess I do love the game.  I think any Legend of Zelda fan should not only play it (If they haven't already.....heck replay it if you have) but enjoy it.  While TP isn't perfect the things it does right it really does it right.  But I think it finally time to get back to Skyward Sword.

So it is time to give my over view of the game and my score for the game.  I really want to give this game a 10 out of 10 it does deserve it but there are just a couple things that I think hold it back a bit.  I already mentioned the music and while it is good does not really stand up to other Legend of Zelda games.  I also have to comment on the controls while Wii Motion Plus is fun to use (Really really fun to use) it isn't as reliable as pushing a button is.  This is only really a problem with the shield.  It just didn't like doing what I told it to which would often get me injured. Really thats my only real problems with Skyward Sword very minor very nit-picky but just enough to keep the game from being perfect.  So I am going to give it a 9.9 as a score.  It is so close to being perfect but just a few things hold it down.  If you own a Wii you should own Skyward Sword even if you have never played a single Legend of Zelda game you should play Skyward Sword.  It is a must own there is no denying that fact.

 Now before I end this review I am going to tell you where it places on my list.  Now note only games that I have beaten make this list so here it is....
1) Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask
2) Wind Waker and Skyward Sword
3) Links Awakening and The Minish Cap
4) Twilight Princess
5) Spirit Tracks and Four Swords Adventure
6) Phantom Hourglass

So thats really all I can say so at seven pages I think it is time to end this review.  Thank you Merry Christmas  Happy Hanukkah and remember that I love you.