*************WARNING SPOILERS MAY LIE AHEAD

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, is a shell of a Zelda game. As I trudged on through 40+ hours, I was looking for a semblance of what made Zelda games great, and did not find it until the wee moments before the credits rolled. For the too long , didn't read version, just check the last 2 sentences.

What Exactly is Wrong with Skyward Sword?

Skyward Sword was frankly, a boring game. You keep going on in the hopes that the town will get better or the levels will appear more dark or the enemies will improve, but that is not the case. Sure, the controls are good, but as a result, enemies have turned into puzzles themselves, making even combat tedious. The combat moves that you eventually learn (a la Twilight Princess, and to a lesser extent Wind Waker) are gone here. This omission leaves sword swiping and ONE finishing move as the sole forms of attack outside of the MJ spin move. Even worse, there are maybe 1-2 enemy types that are even worth performing it on, making its use limited. And Lord help you if the diving stab just misses completely…

The story…uninteresting. No matter how much time passes, future 3D Zeldas will always be compared to Ocarina. In this case, it does not hold a flaming Deku stick to that game. In OOT, the world was in true danger, and evil was in flux. At night you are approached by undead skeletons and zombies in the future town that were creepy as hell, even to this day in my opinion. The jagged edges make them even more scary now…In Skyward Sword, the undead purple goblins look like Cartoon Network rejects at best and inspire no fear whatsoever except for during 1 rope-climbing moment. It is like the turned the Goblin into Zelda’s EEVEE. In Pokemon, you take a standard Eevee, and can turn it into a Vaporeon, Jolteon, Flareon, James Cameron, etc. In SS, One goblin is a Zombie, then a Timeshift Grunt, or a friggin, indigenous Aborigine cloth-wearing caveman.

When you fall off Skyloft into the unknown world below…you fall into the greatest vacation spot since the Garden of Eden! Poland Spring water, birds chirping, and all the ropes you can swing from (or hang from…*not funny Tak Fuji voice*) basically there is no threat. I was starting off my journey by catching butterflies and stuff. Not the cool spectral ones from Twilight Princess either, but bugs…like a cockroach.

You are trying to find Zelda, but she does not want to be found. It’s not like she was kidnapped. In fact, she found her own Link with better powers. You chase her down for a talk, but you cannot change her mind anyway. So, what the hell is Link actually doing looking for her? The game could have stopped 10 hours in with these words:

Link: “Yo headmaster, Zelda good, she just chillin with this old Sheik lady. They are looking for an amber house where Zelda can chill at when she’s done with classes and stuff”

After several boss fights, Zelda is probably not in true danger until the last 2 hours. But of course by then Link is officially strong enough with an upgraded sword (more on that nonsense later) and some Lon Lon………..I mean pumpkin soup.

In OOT Ganon tore the world apart. In SS, Ghirahim tore up the Skyloft shopping mall. My man is basically by the end revealed to be the same type of life form as Fi, but she couldn’t detect that? She could sure detect when my Wiimote batteries were low, and that’s beyond the fourth wall! You fight him several times in a similar manner. It is not like Ganon in paintings, and then one on one, and then as a Dino-Pig freak. This is Ghirahim in a pink blouse, then Ghirahim in a chrome thong, then Ghirahim with arrows that travel weakly.

In terms of a villain he is corny. In Final Fantasy 7, when you start out, you are in awe of the villain Sephiroth’s sheer strength. When you attack opponents, you take off maybe 22 Hit Points/ HP. As a character you probably had like only 100 HP yourself at the time. Sephiroth would attack the same enemy and cause like 9999 HP to evaporate and then you’d probably change your underwear.

In short, Ghirahim is bitch-made.

The world is plain. There are no hidden Mario posters, secret holes with random cows in them, shoot, nighttime is near useless in terms of function because you cannot explore much during that time. In the game you progress, but do not really know to what extent. But honest to God, there were times where I was playing and hoping that the end of the game was nearby, because there was no upswing. The environments were bright all the damn time. It was like the anti-Gears of War. That game makes me sick of grey and brown…Zelda makes me sick of the color wheel. The characters are uninspired too, plain and simple. Zelda as a series has been able to make it by without voice acting before, but with how poorly the characters carry on in this game, it is desperately needed.

I figure based on last Zeldas, at least the dungeons would give you some hard shit to deal with. Not in puzzle difficulty, but in aesthetic- like bullet holes in the walls and cinderblock rooms, stuff like that. Nope. The dungeons are shorter than the rainbows full of puzzles that you have to sludge through to get to them.*SIGH*

If the main game blows, at least the minigames would provide decent distractions, but no, they are one and dones. The music in forgettable too; SS didn’t even have an intro cinematic like OOT or TP. Music is part of the reason why OOT was so epic in scope despite graphical limitations and audio weakness. SS had nothing…maybe 1 or 2 good themes and that’s it. What the hell.

And the repetition of levels is corny. In Phantom Hourglass, I could understand, it is a handheld game. Shoot, even that game was pushing the limit with the backtracking. Upgrade the Master Sword!...but first go find my cat back at Skyloft. But SS is ridiculous (Perfect Strangers Balki voice.) Even the boss fights were repeated. Every time you boot up the game, the description of items you collect get repeated too! Dammit man…

And all the 10s awarded to this game really break my heart, because that puts it in the same overrated league as Grand Theft Auto 4; another series I loved but then immediately hated after an overrated entry released. It is like a 6/10 on a scale from 1-10. Ocarina is still king.

i just put this same game in my Wii and started playing, im only four hours in so im not gonna give my impression but the Poland Spring water part was hilarious

Haven't played it and probably never will, nothing about it screams classic Zelda appeal to me :(

Well that is sad because it's a really great game.

It's not meant to be classic Zelda.

Dude it's Zelda what is not to like! It's got the MotionPlus thing and its awesome.

I think it's a great game, don't put it down just because it doesn't have mario posters or random cows. What kind of argument is that. It doesn't affect the gameplay at all.

My my.

Combat: i'll agree that enemies often blocked blows in a way that was irrational, but the combat posed more of a challenge than any Zelda game i have played. If the enemies had actually been aggressive, then it would have been perfect, but as it was you still had to pay them more mind than in even Ocarina of Time

Enemy variety: I agree that there needed to be more enemies on the whole. I didn't take too much issue with the design of the enemies, but there wasn't enough variety in there.

The world below is more dangerous, and better-designed than in most Zelda games. Skyward Sword's world design problems rest purely on the overworld.

The dungeon design I would say is likely the best in any 3D Zelda. The final dungeon was absolutely brilliant, the Ancient Cistern, the only one that bored me was the Mine.

In short, add greater enemy variety and really integrate the worlds (i.e. total overworld overhaul), and you would have a perfect Zelda formula.

It's overrated just like every overrated game out there, and why you should never listen to reviews, another overrated game recently is mass effect 3 oh god that game made me hate bioware with a passion , I feel like I am never going to buy another game from them ever.

Well, I stopped playing the game after just 3 hours into it, so right there that makes it the worst Zelda game I ever played.

Even Spirit Tracks kept me more engaged than Skyward Sword did.

Something makes it less interesting than the other zeldas, and it's that the game feels ultra paced. You can break down every world into segments and it's like that for every area. The motion controls are great, but I found certain enemies just felt boring and overly choreographed. Little of it felt epic or tense, like defeating a darknut in TP.

I think it held enormous potential, but the delivery just wasn't there.

I still loved it though, and it shined in certain parts. But little of it felt expansive, and that's a problem. Expansive is part of the Zelda fiber, I didn't feel it in SS, and seldom felt lost.

The first day I bought it I played it for six hours strait, but I haven't gone back to it since. Although, this has more to do with me not having time than the game being bad, I bought Pikmin 2 and have still never played it yet. lol From what I played so far the game seems very good. I would rather NOT have motion controls, but I'm sure they will grow on me. The sky reminds me a lot of the great sea which is great. The art style is a mix of TP and WW which is also great.