I just finished The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD last night and had an awesome time playing it. It’s not perfect, but it’s really really good. I was a Wii fanatic back in 2011 when this game originally released but never bothered picking it up– not sure why. Like all Zelda games, its reception among fans has had its ups and downs. The HD remaster was a good opportunity for fans– and Nintendo –to revisit the game and give it another shot. A few thoughts:
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The art direction is fantastic: Something between the cartoon aesthetic of Wind Waker and the gritty realism of Twilight Princess. The realistic body proportions keep things from looking too stylized, but the painterly appearance sets it apart from its brethren, and plays really well to the low-resolution Wii’s strengths. At 1080p60 in the HD remaster, it really shines.
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The music is so grand, epic, and full of detail. It reminds me a lot of the wow-factor that Super Mario Galaxy’s score had: Tons of instruments, dynamic range, and some fantastically over-the-top renditions of our favorite Zelda melodies. Plenty of new earworms too; The Knight Academy, Bazaar, Faron Woods, Eldin Volcano, and Voyage on the Sand Sea all have some great tunes. Could never get the hang of playing the harp though haha
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I really enjoyed the world layout and compact level design. Three main areas with a few distinct mechanics, and you revisit each area three times to explore a new zone or make use of the mechanic in a new way. It helps that each of the mechanics were fun and afforded plenty of depth. The time shift stone areas were excellent, especially with how it tied into the game’s themes!! And oh man, the final temple– Tightly designed despite its complications, feels like a greatest-hits of the game’s mechanics, and even throws in some allusions to the original The Legend of Zelda?? 10/10
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Alright, the motion controls: They’re great until they’re not. One of the most frustrating things a game can do is penalize you when you feel like you’re doing everything right. It’s easy to learn from your mistakes when it comes to digital button presses, but the same can’t be said for gyroscopic motion. The entire game is built around these mechanics, so when they work it feels very slick and satisfying (Nintendo is always very good at this), but when it doesn’t work it feels immensely frustrating. That feeling doesn’t really go away: I did get to have an awesome swordfight with
GanonDemise, but it definitely had its fair share of frustrations. -
The characters and the setting were really intriguing, and definitely won me over in the end. I love the idea of setting the game at the beginning of the “Zelda continuity” (whatever that means) and it was a ton of fun to watch the story slowly evolve into the beats we’re so familiar with. Fi was only fairly annoying in the HD remaster so I can only imagine how much worse she was at launch. Groose, on the other hand, had some awesome growth– I loved how he became such a helpful asset in the end because it made me reflect on how annoying I found him in the beginning. And Ghirahim! Delightfully evil in every way, and the reveal at the end
that he’s basically Ganon's Fi was exciting. -
Another boring Zelda overworld, in my opinion. Just like riding Epona or sailing on the King of Red Lions, the act of flying Loftwing isn’t arduous but it always feels too slow and isn’t very engaging. BotW and its sequel are very different games but exploring their overworld is way more fun.
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Man, it is so cool to see the thread between this game and Breath of the Wild. Stamina, side quests, wall-climbing, waypoints, way less linearity. This is a true-blue 3D Zelda game compared to BotW and its sequel but it absolutely feels like a stepping stone to what they delivered, especially with Hidemaro Fujibayashi helming all three. Really makes them all feel more cohesive despite their differences.
I’d highly recommend it if it piques your interest. But enough from me. Have you ever played Skyward Sword? What did you like and what didn’t you like? Is the HD remaster any more palatable? And how does it stack up against its older and younger 3D Zelda siblings?
Let me prelude this on my circumstances. I didn't play or watch or read the witcher books at all until I decided to play the first witcher game. I decided to because of a sale, and the fact that I'm in a relationship with a witcher fan, so I not only played everything, I also had her along for the ride, and she had to admit to me that she herself never played the first game. And I have since tried my hand to read a bit of the source book materials to add some more perspective. So without further delay, let's go on my thoughts out. I'll try to offer a long winded just putting all my thoughts out and then piece them together at the end with an ease highlight to skim my points.
The Witcher Enhanced Edition
This is for many people the black sheep of the franchise. Understandably so in my eyes, this is the game that raises the most eyebrows, mine especially. This game has a bit of an identity crisis, and while I didn't know going through it blindly and even after finishing it, they go a bit more deep than I could ever realize. Now I'm not going to pretend to be a Witcher nut, or even that I can pinpoint every example to back the following claim, but this game simultaneously is both the most and the least accurate to the books.
There's simply no way to discuss the plot without going into spoilers, weirdly it's hard for me to say if this counts as book spoilers or not. I don't think I should have to introduce you to the setting to review the game, so suffice to say this. There's a big special bloodline in the franchise, this game introduces an impossible heir to this bloodline only so they can use all the special powers associated with it, but the character is completely made up and even some magic he gets from it is also made up. So the main campaign of this game feels pointless and is in fact ignored completely going forward in other games. They also play the angle of the main character having amnesia, this is actually going to be a mainstay for the first two games, and they only dwell on more directly canon related topics on the third game.
So the elephant in the room, this game unlike the next two games had a completely different combat system. If you played something like Dragon Age Origins it's a lot closer to that than the action combat the franchise is known for today, but way more simple. **It boils down to pick the correct method of combat (**strong attacks, fast attacks or group attacks), time your combos right, maybe dodge around a bit and position yourself better, use your witcher signs to your advantage and try to outlast your enemies. This game came with features like pausing your game while you mess with settings or navigate your inventory, keeping the action on the screen over opening an entire new window for it.
And, contrary to what many of you might expect, I adore this game for it. Look, if you ask me is this style of combat good, and would you recommend it for other games and other people to play this game for the combat? Absolutely not, a hundred percent no way. But, this game accomplished things that I think other games of this franchised failed in. The opening cinematic set up the tone of the game marvelously and it consistently kept it. You see Geralt prepare, you see him consume potions before he engages enemies, you see him struggle and nearly fail, you get the sense that yes he's strong but he's not a superhuman, but the things he's against are. And this game more than any other made me feel like I'm taking on the role of a Witcher. Drinking potions has a lengthy animation tied to them, most potions have over time effects or are incredibly expensive, so rather than rely on them to bail me out of a bad spot instantly I need to use them strategically. Crafting potions is also the most difficult alchemy gets in those games, and the feeling of accomplishment is real, you're not picking up a piece of paper then getting a "Fight Good Potion" added to a dropdown list, it isn't Geralt that learns to distil and brew potions, it's you.
Enemy variety in the game is pretty low, but all things considered this is pretty standard in the series. You'll learn about a form of zombie then fight a different form of zombie that only difference is that it's stronger and has a slightly modified model, so so with ghosts and what not, as far as combat is concerned most enemies just get a more dangerous paintwork. You can learn about some weaknesses, sometimes you have to pre plan when or where to look for something or someone. If there are two strengths of this game it's definitely that first, this game is very immersive on the way it's supposed to be. The second is freedom, this game will not hold your hand or coddle you, you can fail so many quests, including main story ones, in ways that you might not expect. NPCs will deceive you, your own jornal might have hints of alternative methods but just blindly following quest objectives can have unintended consequences, completing certain quests might fail others, and so on.
Pretty early on you'll realize that enemies spawn every time you visit a map, once you start ignoring them the game becomes much better. Grinding for experience is also not worth it in my opinion, progression in this game can be a bit odd there's not many equipment choices and . This would be why I wouldn't recommend a blind play on the hardest setting or anything, this game can catch you off guard but it's not hard on the sense of needing skill to overcome something just being unprepared for it.
To me without contest this game nailed the setting the hardest. The atmosphere is somber, tense, the outskirts of the city you start off look like they are barely scrapping by, but even the city itself isn't fairing much better once you get inside. The writing in this game is great, the way NPCs change their interaction with you depending on choices you make, the lingering feeling of not belonging anywhere, and that those people by and large live in a world where it's everyone for themselves, and going against the motto will only hurt you. But that's not to say this game doesn't have a sense of humor.
This game is also full of charm, a sort of charm present on big projects that are trying to shoot a hail Mary and not quite sure where to aim. There's an entire system for collecting cards that signify finding ways to get Geralt laid, it's very bad, but also made me laugh more than a couple times imagining how they had meetings and wrote this stuff, this is where the identity crisis comes back. A lot of effort is clearly put on being faithful to the source material, in fact this game has a hidden dialogue with the main antagonist of Witcher 3, and in this one scene you talk more to him and learn more about him than the entirety of that game. But they also seemingly tried to make this a sort of sequel to the books, and stepped on their own toes trying to figure out who this game was for. It's no wonder that most of the original characters here are never brought back up. There's also Dice Poker, the gambling game of choice for this game, a real banger if you ask me.
To conclude, if you've near no exposure to the franchise, should you start with Witcher 1 in 2024? My answer is, depends. With a multi franchise work like this it's difficult to say. If you're looking for a game that focus on action, skip this one. This game features two different top down perspectives, and a third person perspective, this game was clearly built with strategy and preparation first, and action second, so if this is not your kind of game, you can still enjoy it with a walkthrough and playing it on easy simply because the atmosphere and the writing is great. But it might not be the ideal starting point to you, and that's honestly fine.
tl;dr: The first game in the franchise is unlike the others, it doesn't look the best, it drops the ball on some areas, but I still love this game. Since the plot of this game is treated as non existent in future ones there's not a lot you're missing on by skipping it to understand 2 and 3. I can't lie I wasn't feeling the OC antagonist by the end had a good reason to do what he was doing. BUT, what a fantastic way to invest me on caring about being a Witcher. What an introduction to the franchise it was for me, in this game you don't feel like the chosen one on a quest to save the world. You're a mutant, distrusted by every faction but your own, tasked regularly with accomplishing the impossible by people that might want you to succeed as much as die attempting it. And this is why I can't ask enough that you give it a go if you haven't.
If you're a fan of RPG's, ones that focus on the setting and the story rather than combat and you haven't played this, the enhanced version goes for very cheap on either GOG or Steam on a sale, and it's definitely a better starting point to the franchise second only to the books. I played it vanilla, but some mods can help you enjoy it more in a blind playthrough, there are better mod recommendation lists out there than I can offer. Do not watch the Netflix series as your starting experience with the franchise.
