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Trying to rank the newest Zelda title, Skyward Sword, or really any installment in the series in general, is probably a ridiculous prospect. Nevertheless, the installments have steadily swelled over the years, and as the milestone 25th anniversary title, it’s worth considering where this title falls in the pile, motioned as the predecessor to all entries to date.

The Legend of which Zelda now?

Prior to Skyward Sword’s release, 1998′s Ocarina of Time was chronologically the earliest entry in the series. It established the trinity of Link, Zelda and Ganon, as well as making an unholy mess of the timeline, after the people in charge of the series decided that there would be a history following the future Link left behind, as well as the past he returned to.

Skyward Sword, therefore, is the first “main” installment in the series without Ganon, pitting Link and Zelda against an unknown foe. The people of Hyrule live above a thick cloudbank, riding atop massive birds that are unwilling to cross the fluffy mire down to the world below. On the outset, Link and Zelda are cast into this unknown world, separated, and it falls upon Link (and the player!) the travel back and forth between the above and below in order to locate her and follow the greater quest.

In terms of story, Skyward Sword is not the strongest in the series, but it nonetheless benefits from the same sense of earnestness that many characters throughout the series convey. Many of the main installments in the Zelda storyline have become encumbered by a narrative arc which makes the flow of actions somewhat predictable though, to its credit, Skyward Sword tries its hardest to buck many of these restrictions.

Ocarina of Time told the idea of this story the best, while entries like Majora’s Mask and Link’s Awakening worked best because they left Hyrule behind, journeying into strange new lands and dealt with more grim and mature themes.

Skyward Sword, as such, straddles a place that is both Hyrule and not, literally situated in the clouds right above it, caught in the iron trap of the old story. It doesn’t do it the best, but it does it well.

Hey! Listen!

Since the Zelda series went 3D, one of the staples of the series has been a companion to help the silent Link along the way, and providing a voice for a character who himself gives none.

Ocarina of Time’s Navi is, of course, the archetype—a positive, albeit one dimensional character, admittedly marred by a tendency to provide an unbearable series of interruptions. From her, the allies Link found gradually developed, from a more interesting and mischievous fairy in Majora’s Mask to a talking boat in Wind Waker.

My favorite, far and away, was Twilight Princess’ Midna, the little imp who accompanies Link (and rides him like a beast!) throughout their journey. Midna made the journey memorable, connecting with Link not as a talking head or a floating light, but as a physical being who was there and connected with him.

She is singularly my favorite character in the series, and one of my favorite characters in gaming, period. The question, then, was could Nintendo top her?

Or, hell, would they even try?

Skyward Sword presents the player with Fi, an artificial intelligence (yes, you read that right) who resides in the Master Sword, whose power is forged throughout the tale. Fi speaks in precise statements, rolls off percents of success and failure, and undergoes virtually no development throughout the game.

In short, she’s a one-dimensional character who serves as the player’s guide, and little else. There are parallels with her and her role in regards to other aspects of the story (which I will not spoil) which prove to be quite interesting, but provide no further development or insight with regards to Fi herself.

Before I knew about Fi, I’d hoped Zelda would have a larger role in the story (as I often hope), and that perhaps she would accompany Link directly. Link and Zelda share the strongest personal connection they’ve ever had in the series, and one can’t help but feel Fi’s monotonous nature was crafted to avoid detracting from that.

The saddest part, if that is the case, is that Zelda still spends a greater portion of the game off-screen. Link is stuck with a helpful but unfeeling computer, and it ultimately sours the atmosphere, if only a little.

North, West, South, West

One of the most important things to me in a Zelda title is the overworld map. My three favorites in the series are the original, Majora’s Mask and Twilight Princess in part because they had expansive, dynamic maps that were a joy to explore and offered their share of secrets, surprises and variety.

It should come as no surprise that the Hyrule Fields of Ocarina of Time are a drag to me. I hated Wind Waker’s world not for the vast waters, but for the wasted potential that those waters could have held, with few enjoyable tangible secrets to be found.

Skyward Sword is in some ways reminiscent of Wind Waker, albeit from a more learned hand. The sky Link travels across is smaller, its secrets perhaps fewer but proportional to the land and the probing eyes, its rewards often more gratifying to the attentive explorer.

What makes Skyward Sword so anomalous to the entire Zelda series, and what makes it become a truly remarkable game, is that it eschews many conventions native to the series in terms of how the world is laid out.

In all past entries, the point of the Zelda game has been to travel the overworld and get to the dungeon, where the real challenge awaited. The dungeon was always the end, existing apart from the world, as a place massive and secreted.

Skyward Sword is the first game to cast that formula to the wayside. There are dungeons, to be sure, but they are not the massive, multi-floored places of old. Here, they are denser, yet more deliberate, forwarding greater challenges in more controlled spaces.

That could be enough, but no—the real challenge now, much more than before, is getting to the dungeons. Navigating the zones containing them, especially upon first arrival, is the real challenge. Opening up landscape and overcoming obstacles has become the focal point of the challenge, to the point that the dungeon is no longer the destination, but merely the last gasp of this challenge.

It’s true that there’s a little fanfare tied in when one makes it to the door and steps in, but the feeling isn’t the same. After doing so much just to get there, and with something more than a nebulous object waiting at the end (collect all 8!), the designers intent seemed to place one last wall to hurdle.

The sky in Skyward Sword is the hub, with openings in the clouds gradually allowing Link down to three separate lands in Hyrule. While it’s a shame there’s no direct conduit between these places, there feels a greater attention of detail to their design and structure, and that in itself deserves admiration.

What is unfortunate is that two of these areas feel embarrassingly archetypical. The Woods and the Volcano, while thoughtfully laid out, do precious little to inspire, though this owes perhaps as much to SS’s graphical approach. The third area, the Desert, starts off as unusual (traveling through a mine) and quickly turns remarkable, with the ability to turn back time in small, select patches, requiring the player to travel through the desert both as it is, and as it once was, when it was a lively, green place.

It’s Dangerous to Go Alone! Take This!

One of my biggest quibbles with Ocarina of Time was that it did little innovation with the equipment Link acquired. In truth, the game’s job was to take the Zelda series into the third dimension, and it did that admirably, but I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with the thing Link would find.

On the other hand, I loved Wind Waker’s grappling hook (and was disappointed when the hookshot came in and practically replaced it). Twilight Princess took greater strides to experiment with equipment old and new (the Double Clawshot was the best example, taking the idea of the hookshot and greatly expanding upon it), but it is Skyward Sword that truly does things best.

Many pieces of equipment in Skyward Sword have been seen before, but never like this. The bow and the slingshot? Okay, been done. The bomb can now be bowled as well as thrown, while the whip (there was one in Spirit Tracks) is both used to snag items as well as swing from branches.

Much of the gear works because nearly every piece is used with the Wii Remote in mind, more than ever before (the slingshot, acquired early in the game, does feel a tad useless once the bow is acquired)—the classic bug catching net comes back all the way from Link to the Past, but feels more involved now that position and timing turns bug catching from a button tap to a cautious hunt. The whip is lashed with a flick of the remote, while catching a target requires the player to pull it back at the right angle in order to loose their target from its keeper. A remote controlled beetle is navigated freely through the sky to snip ropes, hit buttons and snatch items.

The list goes on. This isn’t even getting into swordplay.

The sword, of course, is Skyward Sword’s selling point. Requiring an upgraded Wii remote (or an adaptor), Link’s sword swings now match the player’s gestures. The technology isn’t perfect- stabbing can be a pain in the ass and the nunchuk, tethered to the remote, may sabotage the more enthusiastic player (namely myself).

Nonetheless, a great deal of thought was put into this mechanic, and indeed nearly every mechanic in the game. A great many foes require expert aim, forcing the player to learn where and when to time their strikes, while fragile shields demand greater care when blocking, as well as encouraging the player to master shield bashing to deflect strikes and throw enemies off their guard.

Beyond all this, equipment for the first time can be upgraded using various parts and relics found throughout the land, while Link’s pouch for the first time has limited space, requiring him to stow surplus gear in town.

Really, I could go on. Skyward Sword’s purpose seemed to be to reinvent the Zelda wheel and with regards to inventory, there’s not a place where thought was not placed. Equipment is often the crux of a Zelda title and here it is done to its very best.

Zelda? More like Cel-da!

Ever since Wind Waker was first shown, taking a cartoony approach to the Zelda mythos, there’s been no end to discussion of how the games are supposed to look. A fair number of people seem fine with Ocarina of Time, yet there’s been no real manifestation of that style with the satisfying next-gen enhancements.

Wind Waker’s visuals, at any rate, seem to be forever locked in Nintendo’s portable realm, while Twilight Princess’ darker aesthetics and stitchwork details are conspicuously absent as well.

What Skyward Sword offers is a compromise, employing cel-shading technique with the look most people have come to expect. Results are… mixed.

The game is good looking, don’t misapprehend me. There is a great sense of artistry, animation (especially facial animation) is often excellent and distant environments have a sort of painted look to them.

Personally speaking, however, I have a strong orientation toward color tones, and Skyward Sword’s shades are often subdued or washed out, having more of a pastel look, failing to provide both Wind Waker’s vibrancy or Twilight Princess’ harder tones. Although one eventually “gets used to it,” the subdued tones leaves the game looking unfinished at times, which is frustrating considering how polished it otherwise is. It harms the atmosphere, making dark and ancient areas look brighter (dare I say happier?) than they should, which in turn hurts the sense of immersion.

Although I won’t object if Nintendo opts to stick with this animation approach in the future (part of the argument for Wind Waker was that it gave them greater freedom in facial and environment animation) I hope they do something about the colors. The WiiU at E3 had an excellent looking Zelda tech demo which was just right, visually… hopefully there’ll be a game behind it, eventually.

This Compass has a new feature…

One thing the series is guilty of, all too often, are tedious, pedantic and repetitive messages. The header for this section references a message I had to keep cycling through in Link’s Awakening, telling me about a sound that would be played when a key was in a room. It was useful information once, but having to hear it seven more times was tedious.

Never mind how much I replayed that game.

Skyward Sword does this in droves. Fi sometimes reiterates recently received info with the intent of providing clarification only to turn up as redundant, but the real crime comes in all the insects and upgrade equipment you find.

See, when you find an item once, Link holds it up and the game tells you what it is. That’s fine.

Skyward Sword does this with these items every time you reload the game. With some 30 of these items in the game, you can theoretically cycle through these messages a hundred times, easy, in a single playthrough (okay, depending on how much you need sleep).

Sooner or later, you hit the point where you just remember what an amber relic is by heart. While there’s a need to make sure players—especially those who took a prolonged break for whatever reason—may need a refresher, these messages serve no greater purpose after the first time.

Faces of Evil

Yeah, I went there.

The last thing worth discussing in detail are the villains of Skyward Sword. The main foe throughout the game is a demon named Ghirahim, who seems to have been intended as the anti-Ganon.

I’m not kidding. Think of Ganondorf, then invert the image, the behavior… everything. You’ve got Ghirahim, a bad Japanese antagonist stereotype. You fight him several times, and most of his boss fights manage to grate more than they do challenge, due to certain design and presentation choices, making his encounters the weak links in an otherwise solid run of boss encounters.

Ghirahim, it should be noted, is working to revive his master, who does have limited presence in the game and does manage to leave quite an impression by the end of the game, but is ultimately underdeveloped as one would expect of someone who is basically sealed away until the 11th hour.

These are not great villains. They get the job done, but one grates while the other imposes, albeit hollowly. Ganon has risked becoming a broken record, but he’s managed to maintain an imposing presence (being called the King of Evil doesn’t hurt).

Granted, this isn’t a series known for great foes, but more for the idea of good against evil. Half the decent villains have turned out to be Ganon in disguise, while the only others were a bunch of nightmares who didn’t want the dream to end, and an angry moon that glowers menacingly at the world below.

I’d love to see a Zelda game create an antagonist who is not Ganon and can create an impression. As long as their goals are for the “evils” of course, that’s probably not going to happen.

The Adventure of Link!

Skyward Sword is not my favorite Zelda game, but it is among the best ever made. As said, I love Twilight Princess, but it was built on the mold of Ocarina of Time, an effort to improve on a game that did so many things right for its time, and it shows.

This is a game that tries to do something different while still being true to the source material, and it does pull that off. Virtually every classic system is refined or adjusted in some way, and not just because motion control was added, though it’s done so in such a way that compliments the experience.

There are probably a dozen other little goods I can mention, probably far fewer bads.

The goods? A character who I thought I’d hate surprised me well before the story was done. The stamina meter in the game created tense moments when I had to choose between running or pacing myself. Various challenged turned what I feared would be mundane fetch quests into engaging excursions.

The bads?

…there was this annoying robot who showed up later whom I really wanted to punt.

Twilight Princess opened the Wii to the world, and Skyward Sword, while not its last game, certainly seems to be its last hurrah. Unless Nintendo of America decides to wise up and roll out a few decent RPGs over the next year, there’s likely nothing of note left until the WiiU hits next year.

In that sense, Skyward Sword is pretty much the end of the era. With some luck, the best of it will join us in the next Zelda game to come.