Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

20 to 40 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Solid"

Pros: Absolutely top-notch level design; A lot of content included; Lovely art style; Good music

Cons: The game feels like it holds your hand for too long; Dreadfully slow start; Motion controls can be inconsistent; Some late-game sections start to feel a little tired; Wading through tons of text

When Zelda moved into the third dimension it exchanged exploration in favor of puzzles. No longer were you dropped into a world and tasked with figuring out where to go; instead you were given some sense of direction (amount of direction varying with each entry) and had to figure out how to solve puzzles once you got there. For those wondering where I'm going with this: Skyward Sword is, in an essence, the biggest push in the puzzle direction that the series has taken. Those looking for exploration are going to be disappointed, but taken as is, The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword is a great game with some very excellent puzzles.

Or the game is at least great once you get through the first hour. As is par for the course of 3D Zelda games, the beginning takes forever to get going. To get acquainted with the basics of the game, Nintendo tasks you with searching all over a sleepy village looking for your bird. This involves a lot of walking with no danger, puzzles, or action-just walking and hitting the talk button until you find the person with the right information. Honestly, were this not the way every 3D Zelda game starts I would probably have quit right there.

Persevere through that first hour, though, and Zelda (a childhood friend in this game) goes missing (big surprise…) and you, as Link, must head out to find her, complete your destiny, save the world, etc. From this point the pace gets significantly better. The puzzles come fast and furious at that point with the only downtime coming from walls of slow scrolling text.

And the puzzles are really good-I'd even wager they are the best in the series. Inside and outside of dungeons you will have to use all of your tools to figure a way from point A to point B. This may involve blowing up walls, changing the flow of lava, and even sending portions of the world into the distant past. What's particularly great about Skyward Sword is that its puzzles are very efficient; you will need to use all of your items, and every room is dense with important objects so that you frequently have to revisit a room from a completely different perspective. In fact, using its content wisely, Nintendo has managed to reduce the playing area to 7 smaller (read: denser) dungeons and 3 major outdoor areas while still making a game that takes at least 20-25 hours to beat (without doing most side quests), and yet the game hardly gets boring. Sure, Nintendo goes a bit too far late in the game when you revisit major areas for the third time, but even then the developers are wise enough to change things just enough to keep things interesting.

That said, you only experience all of these areas gradually as Nintendo doesn't let off the reigns easily, and they make sure you don't so much as look at something the wrong way before you are ready to interact with it. Opting for a more controlled, smoother learning curve, Nintendo puts restrictions on where you can travel, opening one area at a time. Compared to the style of old Zelda games where you technically could go in any direction you pleased, but would likely get stuck until finding the right item, this makes Skyward Sword feel unnecessarily restrictive and condescending. The condescension luckily doesn't USUALLY extend to the puzzles, which can be pretty tough, though even here your partner Fi occasionally points out the obvious.

Besides puzzle-solving and controlled exploration, the other time in Skyward Sword is largely spent fighting enemies. Now, I'm not going to lie, I never cared for Zelda combat: it helps break up the pace and it works well enough, but it's not much of a draw. Skyward Sword comes really close to changing this, but gets sabotaged by the very innovation it attempts to bring: motion controls.

In the olden days of Zelda gaming, hitting B (or A in the VERY olden days) caused Link to attack an enemy with a sword. You may need to use other items to make the enemy vulnerable, but beyond that you mashed the attack button. In Skyward Sword every sword slash is controlled by the Wii MotionPlus controller, therefore enemies have been designed to require you to carefully pick your attacks to hit their weak points. Each enemy now requires your attention, and combat is much better for it when the motion controls work properly.

Unfortunately the controls only seem to work ¾ of the time. Sure this is the majority, but frequently there's a delay in your attack, or one swipe registers as a different one. I frequently did vertical swipes and got a diagonal slice instead. And trying to get the stab gesture to register was a nightmare. Electric enemies get particularly annoying because of these controls: one wrong move and Link gets zapped. When your swings don't register as intended, making the wrong move is incredibly easy, and irritating. Boss fights tend to suffer this problem a little less, using items instead, and are much more fun for it.

Despite my complaints, I really did enjoy Skyward Sword quite a bit. In the 24 hours it took me to beat the game, I was rarely bored beyond the intro, even as I battled the controls and text scroll speeds. Skyward Sword is generally fun, gorgeous to look at, and easy on the ears. It's a case where the good largely outweighs the bad and this game can be recommended to anyone who can sit through the intro.