The best Zelda?
The first thing that made want to play this game is the graphics. While cel-shading its argued to be childish, I totally disagree, it's amazing. It's a very unique style and makes this Zelda game stand out among so many other games out there.
The classic Zelda elements are all present. Ganon, Princess Zelda, WInd, Water, Earth and Fire Temples, lots of cool gadets, etc. It's also got all those wonderful Zelda puzzles that we've come to love. Arguably the best thing about any Zelda game is all these puzzles and they definitly weren't left out in this installment.
The beginning of the game involves a bit of running around and talking to people along with a basic combat training. You'll then have to do a few more little chores and then be sent to your first destination. Here is the low point of the entire game, the stealth area. You have to do some stealth actions around this castle to go up and find your sword that you lost. Once you find your sword the area is fine, but for me anything stealth is practically intolerable. Knowing the awesomeness that lies ahead is what pushes me through this segment of the game.
After that the enjoyability of the game quickly ramps up. You are sent to your first area where you meet some people then venture into your first dungeon. From here you've got lots of sailing and dungeon exploring to do. Yeah, I said sailing. This is the "Wind Waker" and you will be doing lots of wind waking.
You have a conductor's wand and you will learn songs for it (just like in OOT you learned songs for your ocarina) and with them you will be able to control the wind in different ways that will lead you along your journey. To get from island to island you have a boat that you must sail on and to change its direction you must change the direction of the wind blowing into it's sail.
The sailing segments are the other low point of the game. Sometimes you have a very long ways to go and it's sometimes more fun to leave the game go and grab a snack. The scenery looks pretty nice though out on the water. After you get the spell that allows you to warp in a sense it gets a little better, you'll still have to do a bit of sailing though being as you can only warp to a few specified areas.
The game is packed with a ton of goodies you can do besides just play through the regular game. Some of them take a short amount of time to complete and otherstake hours upon hours to complete.....some are worth it, some aren't. But if you want to have all the hearts you can possibly have then your going to put forth the effort to complete them.
Bosses in this game are as awesome as all Zelda bosses are. They take some good logic skills to figure out how to get to the point where you can do damage on them. Although some concepts from older Zelda games are slightly recycled, they still feel new and fresh. Fighting them doesn't feel lame and repetitive. There are definitly good fights and they require you to think and use your tools available to you.
As I said when I started, I think this could be the best Zelda game yet, but they are all so good it's real hard to say. No one should miss out on playing this game though. It's a fantabulous game that really stands out and is a must have for any Gamecube library....I'd even go as far as to say buy a cube just for this game....then pick up Killer7 and a few others.