Zeruda no densetsu: Sukaiwôdo sôdo

With the Legend of Zelda series steadily heading towards its 20th installment, it remains the question whether each new game can live up to certified masterpieces such as A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. It would seem almost mathematical certainty that raising the bar will become an impossibility at some point. On the other hand, every new generation of console has offered new and exciting opportunities in graphics and game-play that may keep things fresh enough to set a new level of excellence. And if the story supports game-play adequately, a new classic can be within reach.

In Skyward Sword, we venture into the era before Ocarina of Time. The very stylish and pleasantly bombastic prologue comes in the form of stills, just like in A Link to the Past and Wind Waker. We learn of a terrible power struggle in ancient Hyrule, which prompted the Goddess Hylia to separate a piece of land from the earth and send it with its inhabitants into the sky. Thousands of years later, when evil is stirring again, one of these Hylians is sent on a mission to thwart evil and retake the earth. And start an entire legacy in the process.

I am having a few difficulties in giving Skyward Sword its due reward, and not sound sour as well. There is no denying that the game uses the abilities of the Wii remote control system to its strengths. Twilight Princess already experimented with it, to very satisfying results. Skyward Sword further improves the system. In general, Link's weaponry reacts adequately to the player's movements, and the enemies can only be defeated with well-timed and well-placed attacks. It gives a huge feeling of satisfaction to strike down an enemy that anticipates your moves and defends with a mind of its own; the small exceptions being those moments were the Wii Motion Plus has a hard time keeping up, causing you to miss and receive an undeserved beating. The system may not be perfect, but the effort definitely shows off. Especially the boss fights are very well done: challenging and extremely rewarding. The rest of the inventory also uses the interface quite well; firing an arrow never felt so intuitive. This is truly a boy's dream come true.

Now, I always get annoyed by people who criticize sequels for just trying to be original and not slavishly following popular trends, and abandoning popular elements in favor of something new. I will defend The Wind Waker whenever I can, so to all those people who keep complaining that a vast ocean is boring and no worthy substitute for Hyrule Field: please play Ocarina of Time again, run around the field until your feet bleed, and stop complaining! In fact, they made Twilight Princess to make sure that you would! So it pains me to say that Skyward Sword did make me feel some amount of loss: the intricate fighting system. SS features plenty of sword action, but no wicked combos or special moves like in Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. I'd never thought I would miss something from previous incarnations so deeply, especially when there is so much good going around. Shame on me.

Okay, I'll make up with some things that I really like. This being a prequel, we are wondering how the events of SS will finally lead into Ocarina of Time. Why did Hylians live in the sky? How did they end up back on the ground? What is the Triforce? Where does Ganon fit in? Although this is still more of a game in its own right than a strict prequel, there are many tiny references that Ocarina and Twilight Princess afficionados will surely appreciate. As with all Zelda games, the makers show their excellent skills in storytelling once again, and finding out the story as you go is an immensely satisfying experience; one to keep you guaranteed to play until the very end.

The Two World system, a staple of the series since the Light and Dark World from Link to the Past, and the present and future from Ocarina of Time, returns, albeit a bit different. The sky is the traditional overworld, and the savage world below the clouds its counterpart. In the sky, you travel by bird, which makes for some nice moments and an awesome boss battle. I appreciate the creativity that went into this, but admittedly, the Sky World is mainly used for sidequests and the occasional travel, whereas the bulk of the action takes place below. This world has many recognizable features, like a primordial Hyrule. Again, the makers give us some great scenery and original dungeons to traverse, making this the more interesting part of the game by far. A little more importance could have been added to the Sky World, which would have made the two worlds better balanced, as was the case in Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time.

Then again, the side quests and the new inventory system (limited space and upgradeable items/weapons) are good additions, which simply beg to be used or completed. Not that everything works equally well: shields that break, oh please... are they made of plywood? Also, the traditional 'helpful companion' comes in the form of a 'sword spirit' called Fi, whose constant attention-seeking and annoying talent to state the obvious (like your hearts running low) would even give Navi from Ocarina a run for her money. But the time-travel crystals, mechanical beetles and a whip are awesome extras.

So forgive me for some reservations that I have, because I really think this is a great game. It's not exactly game history re-written such as with Ocarina of Time or Link to the Past, but a more than worthy beginning of the saga.

Ever since Nintendo released the Nintendo GameCube, their sixth generation video game console, Nintendo has developed an obsession with making games easier and targeting younger players. Nintendo has become pretty much the Sesame Street in the video game industry. The Legend of Zelda: Wink Waker (2002) is probably the best example of that. The Legend of Zelda franchise went from challenging and mature to easy and cartoonish. Apparently, Nintendo realized they went too far, since the next Legend of Zelda (home console) video game, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006), is in many ways the opposite of the Wink Waker. With Skyward Sword Nintendo is clearly trying to figure out just how close to Wink Waker from Twilight Princess they can go. The graphics illustrate that perfectly. They aren't as cartoonish as the graphics of Wink Waker, but they aren't as realistic as the graphics of Twilight Princess. They are somewhere in between. That's pretty much how everything else is with Skyward Sword.

The graphics actually look very good, but not for a Legend of Zelda video game. Imagine a video game like Resident Evil with cartoonish graphics. It just doesn't work, no matter how good the graphics look. The Legend of Zelda may not be directly a horror video game franchise, but it's not far from it. In every Legend of Zelda video game you are fighting monsters, for example. So it's most inappropriate for a Legend of Zelda video game to look cartoonish.

Wink Waker was ridiculously easy. Twilight Princess was harder, but still quite easy. Skyward Sword is (unsurprisingly) somewhere in the middle. To make things even worse, Link, the protagonist of the franchise who is usually accompanied by a female being (such as a fairy) in his adventures, is accompanied this time by Fi, who is most ways serves as Link's laptop. Without a doubt, Fi is the worst companion Link has ever had. She has little to no purpose at all in the video game, except to annoy you. For example, when you are about to run out of hearts, the video game starts to annoy you with a pinging sound. Link starts to blind red as well but that's not enough. The Fi starts asking for your attention. Why? To tell you that you are running out of hearts! Imagine how annoying that is. For example, when you are fighting a boss and getting your ass kicked, when the Fi button starts to blink at first you will think that Fi has something useful to tell you about the boss, nope! It's like when you enter a room and you look around and see something that is probably the key to solve a puzzle, Fi shows up to tell you "look over there!" It's very annoying, especially since Fi never shows up when you actually need some help.

Both the music and the story are mediocre. At some points it gets interesting, but it's nowhere near as good as the story of Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. Before you start a new adventure, you get to see a video of what the story is all about. There was a war. A goddess gathered the surviving humans and placed them on a rock (Skyloft) above the clouds. Sounds promising and interesting but that's pretty much where it stops. Skyloft is too small and as if that wasn't bad enough, the traditional exploration that the franchise is known for is now limited to Skyloft. You basically get a few big dungeons that are divided into mini-dungeons. Surprisingly, the dungeons are quite innovative and not mere remakes of previous dungeons in the franchise.

The video game is quite repetitive. You go through one thing, then you have to go through the same thing - it's a recurring theme in this video game. To top it all off, the ending was horrible. The more you have to do the same things over and over, the more you start to long for something new but then the end comes and that's it.

The controls in this video game are done quite well, except anything that has to do with aiming. You have to frequently manually adjust the aim control, unlike in Twilight Princess, which is an enormous annoyance. Sword handling, in contrast, is the best so far in the series. You can use your Wii remote as your sword and it works well. In addition, the AI of enemies is also the best in the series. So fighting in this video game is more realistic than ever before. There is more innovation when it comes to other weapons in this video game than in Twilight Princess. In this video game you can now collect bugs and all sorts of near useless items. Once you save the game and return to play it, every single time you find a new item for your bug and other item collection you get animation of Link holding the item, the video game telling you what the item is about, then you get to see your collection, the item being placed in your collection and then finally, you can proceed (I'm not kidding)! Why is that needed? The video game treats its players like complete imbeciles who need everything to be spelled out. At times it feels like the video game will at one point tell you how to walk. The video game goes in fact so far that you literally get a place (the Sheikah Stone in Skyloft) where you can go to to see how you should solve something! You literally get an animation of how to do it! All the efforts to reinvent the Legend of Zelda have only made sure that Skyward Sword isn't yet another remake of Ocarina of Time (like Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) but it didn't prevented this video game from being one of the weaker installments in the franchise.

I just got this game for Christmas, and I've only played up to the first dungeon. My first impressions are that the beginning starts out rather slow, but the pace quickens once you get near a dungeon. The art style is beautiful, with only a few bad textures and models. There is a background filter to make all background objects look like an actual painting. The music is a first for a Zelda game-it is finally played by an actual orchestra. Many of the themes are highly atmospheric or just plain epic, especially later tracks (I spoiled myself before I got this game). From what I've seen, the cutscenes are some of the best in the series. and are very cinematic, with all animations motion-captured with live actors. Facial animations are also amazing, and the end results are highly lifelike cutscenes. I highly recommend this game. Please note that you must have a Wii Remote Plus or the Wii MotionPlus add-on in order to play this game. This game only runs in widescreen 16:9.

As a Zelda fan this game is crap. Motion controls are crap. The gameplay is bad The dungeons are repetitive.

(www.plasticpals.com) Nintendo returns to the Legend of Zelda series once again with Skyward Sword, but they've managed to create a fairly unique world for the game, with childhood friends Link and Zelda living in the floating island town called Skyloft. The game begins as Link is about to compete in an annual competition to see who will become the town's next knight.

Being that this is the first Zelda title built from the ground up for the Wii (Twilight Princess was initially developed for the Gamecube), Nintendo really tried to get the most out of the Wii's motion controls. They ended up going with the enhanced functionality of the Wii Motion Plus, which is better able to track the orientation of the remote.

There are a slew of new and returning items to use, and most of them take advantage of the Wii remote's functionality. The designers even managed to find a new way to use bombs (you can now roll them on the ground like a bowling ball), which is great to see after all these years. It's one of the few Wii games where the motion controls feel tightly integrated with the game play.

New Ideas: Critics have begun to question if the Zelda series needs to evolve, and in response there are a couple of new concepts introduced which are a step in the right direction. The biggest addition is the stamina system, which allows Link to sprint for a few seconds. You can now sprint towards a wall and Link will jump up and grab onto a ledge if one exists. He can also overcome small obstacles by hopping over them. Stamina can also be used to quickly maneuver while climbing. It's a great addition that really helps take some of the monotony out of normal actions.

Another new concept is the upgrade system, which allows you to trade in loot to enhance equipment. Loot comes in many forms, from the insects you collect with a bug-catching net to rare trinkets found throughout the world. It's a decent system, but it does mean there are fewer mini-games to be played (where Link would normally acquire item upgrades). I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it, but if the system could be refined or applied only to certain types of equipment in future games it could really benefit the series. You can also infuse potions with insects to create more powerful effects, which is another good idea, and any excess loot can be traded for rupees if you're short on cash. However, the constant sub-screen prompts when you pick up an item – once per item per game session – is very annoying.

By far one of the best new ideas in Skyward Sword are the time crystals, which dynamically alter the world around them when activated. These crystals are only found in one of the game's major areas but makes for some of the most inventive puzzles and game play situations. It would be a shame if this sort of thing didn't make another appearance in future titles. Less exciting are the underground passages which Link can dig into. Here the game switches to an overhead view of Link crawling through a maze of tunnels.

Not so great is the new storage system, which is only useful because Link has a limited number of item pouches. Even when you've got the full eight item pouches you won't have room to store everything you'd like to carry at once (larger quiver, bomb bag, slingshot ammo, bottles, etc.). It means you'll have to compromise on what extras you carry, which I suppose adds to the game's difficulty slightly, but if that is its only purpose than it is slightly annoying. Related to this are the wallets, which come in various sizes and can only store a certain number of rupees – it's one of those elements which has hung around since the N64 days designed to limit you from buying items up too quickly.

Presentation: As with The Windwaker, Skyward Sword is set apart with a unique visual effect, though this time it is a bit more subtle. A depth of field effect dissolves the background into paint splotches, which succeeds in giving the graphics an impressionistic feel. Although it is just a filter effect, it can create some picturesque vistas. This is also the first Zelda title with an orchestral score, which is a major step for the franchise. However the lack of voice overs, which leaves the characters silently miming their dialogue during the many story sequences, detracts from the presentation. It may be time to include optional voice-overs.

One of the problems I have with Skyward Sword's art direction are the monster and creature designs. While the bosses are generally quite cool looking, the majority of the monsters (and friendly creatures) introduced in the game are a bit wonky. It feels half way between the style of The Windwaker and that of Twilight Princess, and falls short of both. And the game lacks the dynamic time and weather effects of earlier games, which is disappointing. At least they let you choose from a number of HUD options, preventing the regular HUD from cluttering the screen.

Conclusion: The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is another excellent chapter in this long-running and much beloved series, and introduces some new ideas and game play concepts to keep things from becoming stale. It offers around 35 to 40 hours of questing and has an optional "Hero" mode for those seeking a greater difficulty. The new Wii-motion Plus controls add to the experience and the painterly visuals and symphonic score round out the package. It's not a perfect game, but the issues are relatively minor ones, so it's an easy recommendation.