So I picked it up yesterday morning in eager anticipation. I've been waiting for this game since I saw the trailers at E3 last year, and now I've played about 7 hours into it. Man, I forgot how much they padded out Zelda games, but for some reason the lengthiness feels justified, and I'm absolutely thrilled that I'm nowhere near the end of the game. So I'd like to take this time to talk about my experience in the game's first 7 hours. Firstly, I'm impressed with the role they've given Zelda - she's no longer a damsel in distress, and rather she has her own mission to complete alongside you. An unfortunate hitch in the plan forced her to depart sooner than expected, so up until now, she's been running off ahead of Link in the story as she prepares for the mission. Whatever the mission actually is - I imagine it's something along the lines of cleanse the world of evil, but I'm gonna give Nintendo the benefit of the doubt and hope that there's more fancy twists than that in store. I'll be honest, I didn't see Ganondorf coming at the end of Twilight Princess at all =P
Speaking of Twilight Princess, that's probably the game I would compare closest with Skyward Sword, for obvious reasons. The way combat is handled is very different, and obviously the new items add some freshness to the game's puzzles and combat, but even with the radically different graphics, the game still feels very Twilight Princess. The way Link runs, climbs and swims is mostly the same, and I imagine they probably borrowed the same animations from the previous game, but the new Link is much more athletic, which really adds to the way you explore the world. The world itself underwent a huge change, and I'd probably liken it more to the kind of world found in The Windwaker or Phantom Hourglass. It essentially feels like you're swimming in a sea of clouds and descending to remote islands, which house a dungeon as well as a unique world in them with both friends and foes inhabiting them.
Now I'm probably going to spend a bit of time talking about the combat. It still pays off, at least against the weaker enemies, to flail the remote without paying too much attention to how the enemy actually blocks, because Link is able to swing his sword faster than they can change their stance. As soon as I realised this, I was both disappointed because I thought the combat would be much more strategic, and relieved because fighting hundreds of enemies would quickly become a chore if I was actually required to put effort into figuring out all their weak spots. I've only encountered one boss fight and one mini-boss fight, but both were against sword users, which helped teach swordfighting well, but were rather uninspired characters. The boss fight was against an important antagonist, which I wasn't prepared for, since usually the first boss in any Zelda game is some nameless overgrown behemoth unique to the dungeon. I'm happy for this, since it adds more depth and familiarity to the characters you meet, rather than just some evil mastermind in the background plotting things without really having anything to do with you.
The other characters also seem more full of life than in previous games, and the vibrant colours in the environments tend to remove a feeling of lethargy from the game, which I felt was present to a small extent in the previous game. The game certainly isn't bland, and they use this well to mask the aging technology of the Wii and its blurred textures and jaggy models. Collecting bugs and other little trinkets is now actually meaningful in the game, as they're used to upgrade potions and equipment, which compels me to explore a lot more than I would otherwise.
So far I'm impressed with what Nintendo have done with Skyward Sword, and I look forward to the 40-50 (or more) hours I'll spend with the game!
