The Mariner is back, but this time he's in Legend of Zelda???
The game starts out kind of sluggish, its link's birthday (a young link by the way). Everything seems to be going great when a link sees a pirate ship chasing a HUGE BIRD, which is carrying a girl, that looks like links sister. The bird is hit with a cannon ball and the girl is dropped in to a forest. Link being a kind soul, goes to save her but when he returns his sister is kidnapped! Link decides to join the pirates to save his sister. This is the part where the game gets somewhat slow for a while. See link is sent into a fortress to save his sister but his sword is dropped, so he's defenseless. If link is seen the guards place him in a cell that takes about 1 minute to crawl out of. This is just for about for about a half hour. After this slow stealth mission, link is thrown out of the fortress, and lands on this island where he meets his main vessel.
After meeting the King of Red Lions (the boats name), you obtain the Wind Waker. This item is pretty much a baton that commands the wind (which is the main way of transportation since you travel around in a sail boat). You use this by playing certain melodies (different tunes give you different results) using the c stick. The sailing can be annoying, taking up maybe 5 minutes just to sail from one isle to another. But later on you learn melody that summons cyclones to sweep you up and carry you to certain points on the huge map. The map is very big there's about 50 islands, and everything in between is water. There is one very tedious part at the very end of the game where you have to collect tons of rupees (money) for tingle the fairy. That could take at least an 2 hours to finish.
The game starts to pick up, after you journey to an island, and the games first real dungeon begins. The puzzles and bosses, in this game's dungeons are the best part of the game. You'll travel through them solving puzzles and obtaining items from each dungeon (which are used throughout the game but mostly for the dungeon you obtain it in). They'll usually take up to an hour to finish. But before you finish there is always a climatic boss fight. These bosses are huge! And they all involve unique methods to kill them. But a down side is that even though all the enimies are cool (especially the bosses), they are also very easy.
The main difference between this and every other Zelda game (besides the water of course) is the graphics. Wind Waker decided to go with a cell shaded style that actually fits the game perfectly. Everything runs smoothly, there was one little glitch that I saw when sailing, where the water goes through the boat but that is very, very minor. Sky when sailing is probably the most detailed thing to look at. The clouds move, the weather changes, and day turns to twilight to night, to dawn and then back to day. Each island has a unique design, and is named accordingly. There is also a great deal of detail to link, when he jumps in water and then gets out you'll see water droplets dripping from his clothes, and his foot prints leave wet marks when walk up the shore (after getting out of the water of course). He also has some pretty funny expressions on his face during cutscenes.
The sound had the classic legend of Zelda tunes but there is a little bit of a remix with instruments for some of them. You'll most likely recognize the sounds for treasure, hearts, fairies, and bosses; they do have some other pretty interesting sound effects like wind, and character walking especially this little Korok (a race of plant people), and some enemies. There is no voice acting everything is text based, so you will be reading a lot; Link does yell when he hits enemies' with his sword.
This is definitely a long game, there's the main quest that will last you at least 25 hours. But there are so many side quests and items to get (heart containers, and some add-ons to the main items you get in the dungeons), that you'll probably want to stick around and do at least a couple of them. Doing all of them may add up another 20 hours though! Even after you obtain all items there's still side quests like taking photo's of creatures and giving the photos to a guy who makes sculptures, or reviving all the wilted Deku trees, for the Korok's.
This water world rendition of Zelda is another great and inventive slot in Zelda history which is why The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is a must have for the Game Cube. Even though there are some slow parts in the beginning and end; the dungeons, length, and side quests, make up 10 fold for that.