I finally played Skyward Sword again . . .

This is a follow up to a previous post about having played Skyward Sword only once, even though I’ve played through every other Zelda game at least 3 times, and even some of the spin-offs multiple times.

My wife has slowly been making her way through the Zelda series, and has now completed everything except Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild. Since I consider BotW to be a far superior game, I want her to play that one last. So we’re playing Skyward Sword together, and I’m using it as motivation to finally play it a second time, and after almost 8 years, I have a new and slightly different perspective on the game.


The Positive:

The tutorial went faster than I remember it going, but probably mostly because I didn’t wander into certain rooms/situations (like sword training or trying to find trinkets in the dorm rooms, or waste time talking to people) until absolutely necessary and I knew I could skip a lot of exploration because I already knew that it yields no items/treasures/side quests/etc. until much later in the game. 

The story is actually pretty decent, even if they dropped the ball on a few items of lore/continuity with other games. Link constantly running after his friend and getting involved with something bigger than himself and then finding out that he's the chosen hero is a common Zelda plot, but this added some good dramatic tension. Groose, in particular, has some good character development. 

The dungeon designs/atmospheres were also among some of the better in the series, and bosses like Koloktos, Ghirahim, and Demise were very satisfying fights. While I like the idea of Ghirahim being the anti-Fi and Demise's sword being the antithesis to the Master Sword, I feel like their impact as such is lessened because we never see Demise's sword again in "future" games. And because this new lore was ignored in the next game released (ALBW), the upside-down Triforce on the sword now makes it look like it belonged to Lorule. But this idea of twin opposing weapons was used in both Ninja Gaiden II  (the Dragon Sword and the Dark Sword of Chaos) and Harry Potter (Harry and Voldemort's wands) and I like the idea - I just wish it got developed further.

Some of my previous criticisms in my prior post weren’t quite as bad as I remember them. For example, there were a couple more musical cues from past games than I thought, and Fi doesn’t solve the puzzles for you quite as much as I remembered, even if she is like an overbearing Jewish mother telling you where to go and what to do before you even have time to make a decision. The final Skyloft dungeon with its interchangeable rooms was very innovative, and was kinda like a Zelda version of a review before a test.


The Negative:


A lot of what Fi says/does is sort of intended for players who are either brand new to the Zelda series, or just new to games in general. The whole game seems to be using the "training wheels protocol," and assumes nobody has ever played a game (ever) which is good for beginners but horrible for experienced players. For example, when a sign tells you that you should definitely not do something (like throw stones into a circle of rocks), gamers know to try it out. Or when dialogue hints that you should follow someone to a secret entrance, Zelda players know to follow that person. But when Fi pops out to explain that you should definitely try to throw the stone in, follow the person, or that there's an 90% chance that the dungeon boss is behind the big door, I just want to reach into the TV and yell, “No shit, Sherlock!” and it shouldn’t take 4 pages of unskippable dialogue to tell you as much.

I know there are video game tropes that are sometimes lost on new players and that the Zelda series has its own tropes (like how switches, torches, and block-pushing work). So there should be an option to mark that “I’ve played a video game before” and a “I’ve played Zelda before” that disables these unnecessary hints. In other words, there should be three levels of hand-holding and many hints/suggestions would be disabled for experienced games.

It takes soooooo long to get through text boxes. Every time you accidentally fall off of Skyloft, or try to buy something takes a while to get through. If you want something done multiple times, there isn’t a quick “duplicate this purchase/task” button. You have to read the entire text again (to be fair, this is a common thing I’ve complained about on games like Minish Cap or Wind Waker). Besides the useless text, there’s a lot of time wasted in showing you things like how the map works in excruciatingly slow detail every time a new section gets opened up. Like, I get it, OK? I don't need to be reminded what each bug is every time I get one. 

I’m still bothered by the Lore that’s ignored/changed, the fact that there was another Link before this one (Hylia’s Chosen Hero), and suddenly there’s a 4th goddess we’ve never heard about even though it’s supposed to be the first story chronologically. Somehow an ancient society in the Lanayru Desert had such good tech but is now lost (this continues in BotW - 10,000 years ago the Shiekah figured out how to make walking robots and lasers then somehow everyone kinda forgot how to make them). Link is given the outfit/hat with no thought of how “future” games address the issue. “Worldbuilding” isn’t something that’s taken into account much, as it seems that besides Aonuma, Miyamoto, and a handful of other top people, each Zelda game is made by a different team of programmers/designers. And it seems like this is the game where the Master Sword went from being the blade of evil's bane to being the sword that seals the darkness, and turns it into the ghost-containment unit from Ghostbusters. 

The Backtracking. Since the Gorko the Goron is able to show up in multiple places, it would be nice if all 3 areas got interconnected somehow eventually (or if there were a 4th and 5th region instead of re-using the same 3 areas). That would make it a little more “metroidvania-ish” and all the backtracking would be a little more justified (it seems like they were kinda going for this a little). The only problem is that the areas weren’t connected and the only real thing physically stopping Link from getting to some ledges/places was the hookshot. In other metroidvania style games, there are several obstacles that can be overcome, like wall hugging or double jumping. While I appreciate that the creators tried to make effective/efficient use of the same terrain while making each area like a dungeon puzzle, it just gets tiring having to retread the same ground with an additional challenge (Stealth, escort mission, itemless, etc.). Fast travel between bird statues would have fixed a lot of tedium and lessened the impact of the backtracking. I will say, however, that playing it less frequently (because Anne only plays a couple times a week) makes some of the backtracking seem less tedious. 

To top it all off, the boss rush mode is required if you want the last piece of heart and the best shield. I don't mind when games do it, I'm just not a fan of a boss rush mode in general. Most games just have the boss rush mode as a bragging rights thing, and skipping out on it doesn't impact the game. But this game forces you to do it if you want that stuff (which I do). So what it means is that instead of fighting Ghirahim and the Imprisoned 3 times each, it usually ends up closer to 6 times each (depending on the random bosses picked by the game). After feeling like it gets old having to re-tread the same 3 areas, having to do so with the bosses just makes it that much worse. I think if the three Imprisoned battles changed - like each time it became more human looking - it would have lessened the feeling of tedium and given a hint as to what it was. 

It seems weird that new races show up (kikwis, mogmas, parella [water people]) that don’t seem to be direct progenitors of other races, the way that Koroks are supposed to be evolved Kokiri and Rito are evolved Zora. This kinda goes back to the whole worldbuilding concept and working backwards from where they already had established lore. As a good example, George Lucas had the art designers “wedgie” out the capital ships on Star Wars Episode 2, and had other designs in Episode 3 that can be easily identified as the forerunners to Star Destroyers, X-Wings, and Tie Fighters.

For as few mini-games as there are in Skyward Sword, they aren’t as good/deep as other games. For example, not a lot of feedback is given during the duet with Kina. As simple as playing the harp is made to be, doing the song is really difficult. A meter like what Guitar Hero gives you would have been nice. And the skydiving one on Fun Fun Island seems to be based a lot more on luck than skill.

The following criticisms are still valid, but I don’t have much more to add to what I already posted: Skyfield is still empty, some of the bosses are kinda dumb-looking, and the enemy selection is rather small.

And for the amount people complain about the linearity of this game, the one part of non-linearity they put in actually had a game-breaking bug in it that required downloading a separate update channel for the Wii if it happened.

If I could remake the game . . .

I would give a left/right hand version choice for the sword (without mirroring the whole game) and a better UI experience (not so many stops/pauses to show bug inventory going up, faster shop dialogue, less pointless menu questions, etc.), and fast-travel between bird statues. These things should definitely be a part of any remake Nintendo does, and mainly falls in the category of “quality of life” upgrades. Just fixing these things (which would be easy and wouldn't involve having to re-program the whole game) would make it 10 times better. 

The Master Sword should have been forged from scratch, not already existing as the Goddess Sword which evolved. The “finding the 3 special metals” concept has already been done to make the Phantom Sword, so have 3 different swordsmiths each make a different part of the sword (handle, blade, and jewel or something) and have Link collect the 3 flames (that part doesn’t need to change) that are required to make the white fire to purify the metal and infuse the power of the Three Golden Goddesses in the smithy’s forge (which can be acquired in any order). And then have Fi enter the sword as the final step but sell it as a self-sacrifice before the final battle to give the sword its full potential/shine/beam. If Fi wasn’t so annoying it would be a bittersweet moment. This would all be much better than having the pre-made sword just magically change shape/color/size.

Discovering Hyrule for the first time should have been really cool. Seeing a few landmarks (Lake Hylia or spectacle rock), heck even MAKING a few landmarks (the forest draining could have been the start of Lake Hylia or Spectacle Rock could have been the last 2 remaining boulders from a large scale assault that Link was helping the Gorons defend, or something.

Make the timeshift stones a bigger part of the game, not just a specific dungeon/area. It was a really cool idea and was wasted on such a small portion of the game.

Conclusion

After playing through BotW, I now kinda see what they were going for but just didn’t do terribly well. My physics professor told me of a music experiment some people did where they took a whole bunch of popular songs and were able to figure out the common things, like a particular beat pattern, chord progressions, and such. After figuring out what people like, they constructed a song that had all the things in common. In theory, it should have been the greatest song ever. But it was pretty boring, actually. Meanwhile, a song put together of all the elements that weren’t so popular turned out to be somewhat more interesting. It kinda illustrates the point that, in theory, SS had all the Zelda elements there and by all accounts should have been the best Zelda game, while BotW was an open world game that was just kinda Zelda-ish and broke a lot of Zelda conventions, but was way better overall. I will say that a couple of areas where Skyward Sword shined were the weaker parts of BotW, namely dungeons and story.

Overall, I would say that the flaws overshadow the good parts. I was probably more disappointed that the game isn’t what it could have been, and disappointment is the gap between expectations and reality. I also get the feeling that there were high aspirations for this game but that they had to cut a lot of content, which is odd, given the long development time (5 years) between Twilight Princess and this one (from what I understand there are different teams that work on handheld and console games). I just wonder what else could have been.

But having said all that, a low-end Zelda is still about a mid-range game when compared to other games overall. If SS were a standalone game (not connected to the Zelda franchise) I probably would have been a little more accepting of it. But I hold Zeldas to a higher standard. The biggest reason for disliking it as much as I do is just the wide gulf between what I was hoping for/expected and what the final product was.

Update: Since the HD remake, I will add that it fixes almost all of the easily fixable problems, like UI/UX, skippable scenes, motion controls, disabling hints, and a few other things. Changing any of the story elements or lore would require a new game made from the ground up, so I understand why nothing of that nature was changed, but I very much enjoyed my third playthrough of it using a combination of motion controls and button controls. 



List of specific callbacks for the 25th Anniversary

In my previous post I mentioned that they tried including elements from past games, but I only listed the bad ones.


AoL: Goddess looks like Trophy (this one might be less intentional)

OoT: Headmaster Gaepora, the 6 symbols around the Sealed Grounds dome

MM: hand in toilet, swimming

OoA: Losing all items and having to refind them

WW: Whip/Grappling thingy, Groose catapulting Link was like what the Pirates did

FSA: Zelda breaking out of her crystal was similar to the captured maidens

MC: Mole Mitts, Gust Jar

TP: A “twilight” world where you collect tears, flamboyant colorful cannon man,
       double clawshots, final boss distracted by bug net, Gate of Time resembled the
       Twilight Mirror

PH: Revisiting the same areas/dungeons. Guardians chasing you around.
       Treasure hunting. Drawing on goddess wall. Tears collected look like
       gems P/W/C gems.