I preordered Skyward Sword from Amazon many months ago, and it arrived at my office on Friday... I was at home, but luckily Alex Kenny dropped it back to it's rightful owner at about 4:15 on Friday! Thanks Alex!

And yes, I paid extra and got the utterly pointless but wonderfully tacky gold Wii remote with it! Awesome stuff.

So, thanks to that I got some work done this weekend... but not much.

I spent a lot more of my time fighting monsters and helping the inhabitants of Skyloft.

I'm quite enjoying Zelda, and Holly enjoyed watching me play it (genuinely) so much that she's decided to play it too now.

Anyway, I'm going to point out some negative things first. Well maybe not negative, but surprising at least.

The graphics and pretty old fashioned, nothing impressive at all, looks like all the other games before and not very fancy. However... does it matter? No, completely not at all. I really don't care that they are old, because Zelda's not about the graphics.

I was surprised to see them not all that updated... but I got over it pretty quickly.

Another naff point, they still don't use voices, you just get some wierd grunts and squeaks from the characters, with some fish-gasping-for-air like mouth movement, and some very slow to read subtitles. This is actually a bit annoying, I guess it saves on hiring many different actors to voice all the parts... but it would be nice to hear some real voices for a change.

One more bad point (because there really aren't that many) is the BLOODY DOOR ANIMATIONS!! WHY DO I HAVE TO LOSE CONTROL OF LINK WHEN I GO THROUGH A BLOODY DOOR!

It's been that way since the N64! It does frustrate me a little bit, because it slows the game down (like the long slow written cut scenes that don't make use of real voices!)

I really do think this one point should have been updated.

But enough of that nonsense, on to the good points.

Skyward Sword is bloody brilliant! The world is as expansive as it should be, your companion for the trip is original and new, with a modern twist to her personality, and travelling around the world on your Loftwing is fun (although a little bit tricky to handle at times).

The combat system has been updated, it seems to get better and better with each version. I played Twilight Princess on the Game Cube so I didn't get the Wiimote/Nunchuck experience on that game, but it works really well in Skyward Sword.

Switching the nunchuck and wiimote back and forth like a shield and sword is easy and intuative to use and it does make you feel like you've got more control over link.

The addition of the stamina gauge adds a new challenge to the game, it makes you think more about what you're doing and forces you to plan ahead a bit more, instead of just rushing in with your sword swinging. It makes Link seem a little more vulnerable so it's down to you to get him through a bit more.

I like the upgrade system, allowing you to make your shield stronger and potions more effective, but only if you've made the extra time and effort to collect the necessary resources. Like all Zelda games the more effort you put in the better your game playing experience will be - because the more powerful you make Link!

Maybe though, you can make Link too powerful? I have found the boss battles a little bit easy so far, it does feel like they've made the game more accessible than previous ones, but then again I'm quite early on in the game so it might get harder later on.

I've still got a lot to of the game to play and I've hardly done any of the side quests so far (which are as usual a nice break from the main quest and very entertaining and fulfulling as well)

I'll write another post when I've finished it, but I imagine I'll just be saying "Yes it really is very good"

This entry was posted on November 21, 2011 at 3:06 PM and has received 109 views. There are currently 7 comments. Print this entry.