It has its flaws, sure. But it also has some incredible parts.
eh. most of what makes it shit is the push for motion controls (and the hard locked resolution). otherwise it was actually enjoyable.
That and the fact you go to the same 3 areas like, 3 times. The only good one was the sand area because those time shift stones were nifty.
Ugh... Where's the good news?
It also has easily the best character in the series.
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/219126/6bace5f0-142d-4327-8384-665dc35ab537/09CD4DEA-D3CD-4331-9DC0-910C2D3899B4.png
I never had the chance to play skyward sword on the wii due to not having motion controls, but I did hear that I t didn't live up to twilight princess.
Having skyward sword on the switch would've pushed me to buy one, skyrim is already tempting me enough as it is though to be honest.
Shame it's got some seriously boring shit in it. Go here and collect ~15 pearls! Go here and collect ~15 notes! Also we're gonna re-use the same areas 50 times because fuck you. Do you like fighting bosses? Great, in this game you can fight a couple of them 3+ times!
Btw The Imprisoned is a dumb lookin boss that is hard to take as a serious threat because of how fucking goofy it looks.
The game can be fun at times but it's dragged down by the absolutely tedious gameplay loop. Oh, and having to actually strum the harp with motion controls is cancer imo.
Skyward Sword has an incredible story and aesthetic. Shame the game itself is fucking garbage. It is honestly one of the most frustrating games I've ever played, and I'm not even going to go into the motion controls that work about 1/3 of the time.
Honestly, I thought the motion controls were pretty neat. I just found the artstyle and world unappealing. I kinda fell off about halfway through. Maybe some day I'll give it another chance.
So I've literally written 11,000 words about Skyward Sword, as part of a very slow playthrough/blog about the entire Zelda series, in timeline order. (Which I really ought to get back to)
The biggest flaw of the game was the handholding. Bar none. It goes way overboard with telling you where to go and what to do. Practically every cutscene ends with Fi recapping that very cutscene, just to hammer everything home. The default UI has a giant Wiimote just in case you don't know where the buttons are. It has literally a dozen mechanisms to keep you from ever for a second feeling lost. Which, in a game about exploration, is actually a bad thing. You need a safety net, to keep people from not being able to get anywhere, but you also need to let them fall at least a little bit.
I have a theory that there was some late executive meddling to try to make the game a gateway Zelda - a way to convert all the non-gamers who'd bought a Wii just for Wii Sports into actual gamers, with a Zelda that was more approachable. So it's "first" in the series, despite having a heavy time-travel-to-the-past theme and a higher tech level than any previous Zelda. It's pretty damn easy, if you can get the motion controls down. It's very newbie-friendly - it basically assumes you've never played video games before, not just that you've never played a Zelda game.
But underneath that, and waaaay too many long unskippable cutscenes, is a pretty good game. The combat finally feels good - Ocarina of Time's combat was actually kind of bad, but successive games kept improving it and finally got to be pretty solid with Skyward Sword. The story is... not the greatest, actually, but it has its moments. The dungeons are cool, lots of nifty puzzles. The motion controls were a hindrance but not as much as you'd expect, the Motion+ really helped.
Porting it would be an issue. They'd need to do an HD pass on the textures and models. Making non-motion controls would be tough, since slicing at angles is absolutely crucial to the game. They would definitely want to add options to cut down on the handholding. And I don't know how portable their engine is - every 3D game from Ocarina to Skyward Sword used a version of the same engine, and that hasn't been ported to Switch yet. It was on the Wii U though (Windwaker HD and Twilight HD) so I imagine it's fairly straightforward to port from there.
The boss at the end of ancient cistern is one of the greatest bosses in the series.
He hangs out in the middle of the room at first where you can safely stay out of his reach, and after you rip his arms off (which he uses to cover his weak point) he gets up to beat your ass and this hits full force
https://youtu.be/YZG7nVXS8Lw
Then you proceed to beat him to death with his own swords
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOX6tYM070U
Say what mate.
Don't forget that Skyward Sword still commands a high price as far as Wii games go. Pretty sure it's still $30 at GameStop if you can even find it.
The combat mechanics weren't bad, the game just didn't really demand anything from you. People hype up Iron Knuckles but aside from the massive damage, Iron Knuckles was stupid easy. Add that to the enemies like Wolfos and Stalfos with attack patterns of "Block, until they attack, and then you block, and when they're recoiling, attack." Skyward Sword has its own problems with combat (especially with basic enemies) but its boss fights (aside from the imprisoned which was a pain in the ass) were a high point for the entire series. Skyward Sword had some bosses with actual combat depth that were a blast to fight. Ghirahim, Koloktos, and some of the mini bosses like Moldarach and Dreadfuse were a HUGE step forwards after the "figure out the gimmick and then you win" bosses of Twilight Princess.
I've never played past the first level because of it's atrocious motion controls. Believe it or not I'd actually like to be able to play an iteration of this game where that's either improved or gone. Legally on a Nintendo console no less, rather than resorting to dolphin or something. It would be real nice to have.
The motion controls were like the only thing that impressed me in Skyward Sword; but keep in mind this is the only mainline 3D Zelda I've never completed. The handholding nature of the game,, Fi, and I found the world/level design super lacking. I did like the art style too and it seemed to have a great cast of characters, but it wasn't enough for me.
Might be time to give it a run on Dolphin and see if my opinion has changed on it after all this time.
Hard to be too upset about it for me. I hated the motion control combat and those note collecting sections, probably one of the most frustrating games I ever finished.
Which is really too bad because the story, characters, bosses, and that one time shifting dungeon were all really great, the lows are really low though.
I would be all for seeing the game remade with BotW's engine and mechanics though.
Skyward Sword was not very well thought-out, repetitive, exhausting due to the focus on motion controls even if you did wrist flicking, and generally probably one of the worst Zelda games out there for gameplay. Yet as motion control's major swan song before the Wii U, it pushed the Wiimote Plus to the limit and did have plenty of neat ideas and bosses.
Honestly Nintendo needs to stop trying to either be Ocarina of Time or reinventing the wheel with little refinement, sit down and actually polish the gameplay they've got going into a mirror sheen. It's worked for a number of their other franchises. Zelda may throw out a new experience per title, but there's always some major niggle to it nowadays as if you simply cannot have a Zelda game anymore without a massive flaw or more, like a fucking monkey's paw. Not to say the series has gone terrible, mind you.
It's the only 3D zelda I've never played, so I'd at least like to experience it, despite its apparent faults
Honestly glad Nintendo has been stepping in to debunk rumors. It keeps people's expectations in check.
So there's a lot of problems that sort of add up to a pretty weak combat system. It was great for the time, I'm not faulting the devs for not getting a 3D action/adventure game's combat perfect when they had to practically invent the genre, but it stuck around way longer than it should.
The first big problem is that the swordfighting is entirely reactive. Enemies shield and there's nothing you can do to get them to un-shield but wait. It's "wait until you can press A to win", which isn't much better than "press A to win". I think the Iron Knuckle fight is the one exception to this. Every other fight is lots and lots of forced waiting. This works for some fights - Lizalfos and Stalfos duels are pretty cool - but absolutely doesn't for others (Octoroks and Keese).
The ranged combat isn't great either. Manual aiming is just awful to control. Locking on is tolerable but still clunky, fast-moving enemies are hard to hit unless you move in really weird ways to match their momentum, and it just overall doesn't feel good. And then most enemies could be temporarily invulnerable even to the bow, so it's yet more waiting.
Items besides the sword, shield and bow are relatively useless. Bombs are hard to hit anything with. The hammer and hookshot mostly just stunned enemies. Even the spin attack is rarely all that useful, just a way to charge up an attack while you're forced to wait for an opening and do a slight bit more damage.
There's just a very low skill ceiling to Ocarina of Time's combat. Once you get good enough to beat battles, there's not much room to get better. In a well-designed combat system, more skilled players will be able to beat enemies faster, especially when so much of the game is re-fighting encounters as you re-traverse areas, but Ocarina just doesn't let you do that.
Later games improved things incrementally. Windwaker added counterattacks, made far fewer enemies shield, and usually threw more small enemies at you so the spin attack would be useful. Twilight Princess added the shield bash as a way to force enemies out of shielding, and added a lot of special attacks to your arsenal to raise the skill ceiling. Skyward Sword made most shielding enemies vulnerable to an attack on one axis. Wiimote pointing (starting in Wii version of TP, improved in SS) made ranged combat better, and the Gamepad motion controls in the Wii U ports improved it further still. I'd argue it still never got to where it ought to be - even Breath of the Wild combat has a lot of kinks in it - but it's definitely better than Ocarina of Time.
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