THE HD MEANS HOT DAMN.

Warning: I am going to try to avoid spoilers but may lose myself in writing and absolutely spoil something by accident. My apologies in advance.

I originally bounced off of Skyward Sword on Wii. Maybe it was the motion controls. Maybe it was the constant dialog in the opening section. All I know is I hated it. I can happily say now that I don’t hate Skyward Sword anymore. In fact, I actually really like it. It also may have made me realize I don’t like Breath of the Wild as much as I thought I did.

That isn’t a crazy thing to say either because upon returning to Skyward Sword for the first time in years I realized how many elements in Skyward Sword were expanded upon for Breath of the Wild. Stamina, shields breaking, a large open world (sort of), and more deliberate combat are key gameplay elements found in both titles and Skyward Sword was the last mainline Zelda game to be released before Breath of the Wild. Outside of the combat however, Skyward Sword doesn’t really make good on any of these additions and that is what stands out the most replaying this game.

PLATFORMS: SWITCH
PRICE: $59.99
PRICE I’D PAY: $59.99

Stamina is more of an annoyance than a feature. Running is required but to run Link sheaths his sword and to pull the sword out there is a slight delay which makes a certain battle with a big toed monster absolutely aggravating. Link can only run for so long too and when stamina is gone Link is too tired to do anything. Other times where stamina was required (running up inclines, across quicksand, or climbing on walls) was never really challenging because the plants that fill stamina are littered in the areas where they are required. The challenge came from enemies attacking while I was vulnerable in each of those instances. It’s not game breaking but it feels half-baked and I think works much better in Breath of the Wild.

Shields breaking was threatened but I never had a shield break so while I know people hate the breaking of weapons but I think there is a happy medium for Nintendo to hit. Weapons made of metal should definitely be sturdier than BotW makes them out to be but my wood shield never even came close to breaking in Skyward Sword and they gave me the opportunity to buy a metal shield before the risk of my wooden shield burning ever came into play. Speaking of which, the element system is clearly in its infant stages in Skyward Sword, with metal shields being vulnerable to electricity and wooden shields being vulnerable to becoming charcoal when exposed to fire but only through select enemy attacks and clear environmental risks like plumes of fire while its successor had weather and environment put serious risk of harm to the player depending on the equipment being used.

The open world of Skyward Sword is limited. I don’t think I have to say that I did not go back into Skyward Sword expecting Breath of the Wild levels of openness, but I didn’t expect the world to be so limiting either. I think Skyward Sword was trying to invoke the feeling of the Great Sea from Wind Waker but there’s a multitude of problems with that. The first problem was that the Great Sea had plenty of optional content. Despite the large swathes of open sea there were still occasional enemies and every square of the map had at least one island. Some islands required key items to solve puzzles, but others did not, so they invited exploration. The Sky in Skyward Sword fails to comprehend why the Great Sea was successful and only takes away the worst parts with the Sky requiring constant interaction otherwise tornadoes may blow Link off his loftwing while locking out most treasures behind unnecessary Goddess Cube Chests rendering exploration mostly pointless. For those possibly unfamiliar, Goddess Cubes are large blocks that need to be hit with a specific technique which then unlock a corresponding chest in the Sky. However, just because a cube was activated doesn’t mean the player will have the appropriate tools to access the chest meaning that the Goddess Cubes are an arbitrary step in the process. That means that the takeaway from the Wind Waker was that the sailing, not the exploration, was fun… which it wasn’t, and Nintendo knows this because they drastically changed sailing in Wind Waker HD.

This is only made worse by the second problem which is that there is zero way to warp/fast travel in Skyward Sword. In most Zelda games there comes a point where revisiting areas is made easier using some form of fast travel. That never happens in Skyward Sword. Link has to fly EVERYWHERE. I bet my 40-hour playtime could have been reduced by about 5 hours had I not tried exploring and not had to fly everywhere to do it. Want to visit the forest? Fly to the forest hole. Volcano? Fly to the volcano hole? Desert? Desert hole. Want to enter the big stormy area? Well, it has its own hole too. I would maybe be more forgiving if I could just enter Skyloft from the Sky but there is a clear partition from the Sky to Skyloft because it loads the full version of the map with people, and I realize this is a decade old game from the Wii no less but the Wind Waker loaded whole islands filled with people while sailing to it. There’s so much filler. I know there were complaints about locking the fast travel to the Sky behind an Amiibo but that is hardly an issue when the Sky itself is the biggest problem and there’s a bird statue always nearby.

Also, every area requires a lot of retreading of previously visited areas. None are as bad as the Sky, but I point this out because Phantom Hourglass on the DS got crucified for having players revisit the same dungeon over and over and that happens in Skyward Sword and the three main areas of the forest, volcano, and desert, as does the worst part of the Great Sea with Skyward Sword’s Sky and that tear collecting minigame that Twilight Princess that everyone hated. Also fighting that terrible Imprisoned fight again less than an hour after previously fighting it may be one of the most aggravating experiences ever. However, none of these elements are game ruining but they are frustrating because outside of this I have come to love Skyward Sword.

I think this is where I start hitting myself for not finishing this game sooner. The combat in Skyward Sword HD uses the right analog stick in place of the Wii’s motion controls. I switched to the Joy Con motion control to try it out, but I hated it. Flicking the analog stick felt great once I got a hang of it and the fights where I faced sword wielding enemies felt the best. It’s one of maybe three Zelda titles where combat felt far more deliberate with Breath of the Wild and Zelda II: The Adventure of Link being the other two. The final battles in this game may be the most satisfying battles in any Zelda game and the very forgiving but satisfying parry system is part of the reason. Watching an enemy stagger from clicking in the left analog stick to bash them with the shield feels better than any big fight in Ocarina of Time. The other reason is that the directional sword swinging mechanic does feel more involved than hitting a button, but I think it would not have felt as great if I was using motion controls because if I swing my controller and Link swings his sword in turn and hits something that staggers him, his sword bounces off while I continue my swing. It’s an issue in VR currently as well and far from Nintendo’s fault, just a small reason why I feel this game works better using the analog stick for combat. My only gripe with the new controls is that rather than hold the L button to control the camera I would have preferred it to have unsheathed my sword because I am not consistently in combat and therefore don’t consistently need my sword.

I won’t say the HD visuals had as much of an overhaul as the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD releases but they are nice, but I think part of the reason is that so much effort went into fixing parts of this game that ruined the experience for people like myself on its original release. I have heard the opening section in Skyloft can be completed 300% faster now, and even if that is not the case it sure felt like there was less talking/hand holding in the intro. I know Fi is less talkative now which is nice (as I write this I am going through Ocarina of Time on 3DS and Navi’s indicator is always on and I forgot how annoying it is). This editing as well as control changes were more important than anything else so I’m glad it was prioritized. Gyro aiming is also here and doesn’t require motion controls to be activated which is also fantastic.

In my intro I said I liked Breath of the Wild a little less now and it was upon completing Skyward Sword that I realized that my favorite part of Zelda games is the world. Not just physicality of the world, which I will say Skyward Sword does well in both the overworld and the dungeons, but in its characters and how it feels lived in. Breath of the Wild never quite felt lived in despite having plenty of NPCs in the same way a lot of other Zelda do. Everyone in Skyward Sword felt like they had their own story going on simultaneously to what Link was doing and that is probably why I love Majora’s Mask more than any other Zelda game: it’s primary gameplay is built upon the thing I like the most in Zelda games. For example: the Cucco Lady in Ocarina of Time has her own story going on with her father being the Master Craftsman who will tell you about his lazy son who you can meet at night who later wanders into the Lost Woods where you bring him his pet Cucco Cojiro. None of this information has anything to do with the plot (although some of it does have to do with the trading side quest), it’s just interesting characters for the player to engage with and I eat it up. So, when there’s a love triangle between three NPCs and I get involved I sure did. I also cleaned the house of a lady at night and got a crystal ball for the big-eyed fortune teller. All of this is compelling world building that I felt Breath of the Wild lacked.

I remember gameplay from Breath of the Wild, not the story. Skyward Sword excels at story. I initially wrote it off because Nintendo really did pose this game as being the most important thing to ever happen in Zelda history because it was the 25th anniversary and Nintendo wanted to market the game well in a world where most people had stopped playing their Wii. They put it at the very beginning of their official timeline that was found in Hyrule Historia and I and a bunch of other nerds also likely used this information to justify a bit of hate for this game. I am calling out past me for being a complete moron because while not the most original plot, it worked, and it worked well. If at the end of the story I wish I got to see more of some of these characters it did its job well. There is a fumble towards the end where the game tries for an emotional moment that doesn’t quite hit with Link and Fi because something far more emotional happens before that, but I was even sad to see the conclusion of Link and Groose’s rivalry. If there’s any part of this game that I can praise, it’s the story of Groose that is so well written that I couldn’t wait to see him again. The way they had Gorons be these archaeologists that wander around exploring old ruins also implies that even Skyward Sword isn’t necessarily the beginning to anything in the Zelda series. I’m honestly disappointed that as of right now certain aspects of Skyward Sword’s story have not been followed up on but with only one new mainline game in the last 10 years there’s still plenty of time to see some of this lore revisited.

I know I started this review off dealing with the negatives of which there are many and if any reader stopped there, I think they likely weren’t going to play it anyways. However, the reason I did that is because those are flaws in a great game; they stand out because they drag down a wonderful gaming experience. I wrote this game off for almost a decade. I hated this game. Now I love it. It made me want to return to older Zelda games and honestly returning to some of them does not feel as satisfying after Skyward Sword, but I think that speaks to how well Skyward Sword improved on the formula. For anyone who wrote this game off for any reason, please give this game another shot. It contains a wonderful story, one of the most satisfying final battles, some of the best humor in any Zelda game, plenty of completely optional side content, and some really unique gameplay that only Skyward Sword has offered. I have never been happier to say I was wrong about a game.

Review copy of game provided by publisher. The reviewer purchased his own copy as well.