The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

I abandoned this game on the Wii, so I was even hesitant to play the HD remaster. I didn’t even buy it, my brother gave me a copy as an early birthday present in July. Then after I beat 13 Sentinels, Allie asked me to play Skyward Sword so I could tell her if she would like it. 

At first I was skeptical. I had memories of the numerous times I started it back in the day, and never even made it out of Skyloft, the game’s starting town that is suspended in the clouds. There we so many annoying design choices and the controls were a struggle to get the hang of. Well Nintendo managed to clean up many of those design choices. Fi, our faithful companion spirit living in the Master Sword, now only chimes in during necessary moments or when called upon. Camera now has free control, instead of only a button click to center behind Link. Lastly, and most amazingly, is now whenever you pick up an item it only gives you the description the very first time you pick it up. On the original Wii version, this would happen every time no matter what, and did it get old fast. After all those improvements I was able to focus on the game without all the interruptions. Believe it or not, there was a beautifully fun game hiding under all those issues.

Skyward Sword is the origin story of all the all the Legend of Zelda game. It’s the event that precedes everything in the branching timelines. More information on that here. We open up with a bag of lazy bones named Link needing to be woken up by Zelda’s pet loftwing. A loftwing is a big bird that the residents of the cloud town Skyloft ride around on to explore the skies.  From there we’re introduced to the basic controls. Soon things start to ramp up as Zelda and Link take a ride through the skies and an unusually large wind storm resembling a tornado interrupts them. This leads to Zelda falling to the land below and Link must find a way to get down there and rescue her. There only three areas to explore on the surface, but they’re all a decent size and fun to explore. As the story progresses you open up new sub-areas to make them feel even larger. The design of the bosses are challenging and fun. The dungeons, while difficult, never once required me to look to the internet to solve the puzzles. The final boss design is also one of my favorites in a Zelda game to date.

One of the unique mechanics of this game is the way the sword acts compared to other titles. You have full control over the way the sword moves and is swung. Many enemies rely on attacking from certain directions, or even thrusting the sword straight ahead. Some bosses you even need to trick them by making them pay attention to your sword before you quickly swing it from an opposing direction. Overall, it’s a very fun mechanic that took some time to get used to.

There was only one thing in the game that really aggravated me. Towards the end of the game you need to do some trials to gather sections of a song called the Song of the Hero. Well one of these trials involved a very lengthy fetch quest that involved a lot of swimming and diving. I just thought it felt a bit much and took way too long.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable Zelda title. If it wasn’t for the HD remaster, I never would have gone back to give it another shot. Nintendo learned from their design mistakes and turned it around here! On that note, here is my favorite moment from Skyward Sword.