Adventuring at its best. Huge fields, horse riding, item collecting, dungeons and awesome bosses; this is
While many people may judge this game to be disappointing, even mediocre when compared to Ocarina of Time; when you put this game in an objective spotlight, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess excels Ocarina of Time in every aspect. It seems as though people have hyped this game to unreasonable levels, fuelled by the nostalgia from long years past. What this game does do, is tick every check-box in a big list of what makes a great Zelda game, or an absolutely astounding adventure experience.
Reviewing this game is slightly 'off'. What i mean is that, this game is just a Gamecube game which has been flipped from left-to-right, widescreen-added and wii controls thrown in. This IS an outstanding game in its own right, but what lets it down is due to technical reasoning rather than gameplay reasonings. As a game, this is a phenomenal piece of work. But, just as Gamespot has mentioned, there are low resolution textures, 'last-gen' sounds, and the crackly sound effects of the wiimote speakers which let this piece of work down. And i agree with these negatives, but Jeff's review has come off a bit too harsh in my opinion.
True, there are low res textures which looks bad every so often in close-ups in cut-scenes, BUT, the way the game is portrayed, the directing, and the overall aesthetics is just a work of art. Bloom is quite excessive at times, but the 'feelings' that it induces is fitting. When you're in wolf-form, it creates a very dark claustrophobic atmosphere. In Lake Hylia, the glow of the watery scene unfolding before your eyes, is just...beautiful.
Most people would be put-off if someone mentioned sound quality and midi. This game heavily utilises the midi format, however, orchestrally or in terms of the musical score, it is spot-on. A negative also comes up around the wiimote speaker. While it's surprising and refreshing to hear sound effects coming out of the wiimote, you just have to knock it for sounding crackly~as if the sound is coming out of a £1 radio. Put the speaker volume lower and then it's easier to game with.
In gameplay-terms, it's all there. The chest-opening, compass-finding, level-by-level, room-by-room puzzle solving, keys, weapons, abilities, field-roaming, money wallets, shooting 'gallery', mini-games, something-collecting, heart-finding, impressive-looking-bosses-which-feels too-short-and-too-easy. Yep, this IS a Zelda game. A lot of people knock it for being too familiar, but i honestly can't think of how to improve adventuring except in making the game more difficult, and just more of it.
Things that are slighlty different or improved in the Zelda series, seem to be ignored or just taken for granted. Swinging the sword is done by the 'waggle', which does feel a tad inaccurate but it makes up for it by allowing you to run and chop grass at the same time! Wahoo! :P It may sound like a small thing, but it definitely makes you feel like you are Link. The remote-pointing is excellent for archery, clawshotting. And the fishing feels very refreshing when you're doing the actions of casting, tilting, and reeling in the hook. This Zelda outing is now more cut-scene ridden than previous Zeldas, and the loading times have just slightly, marginally increased. The plot is decent, but can be a little underwhelming if you've been playing Zelda games for the past decade. The game is portrayed in a much more epic style and feels darker in tones than every other game Zelda game, darker than Majora's Mask.
It took me about 42 hours to get to the last boss and defeat him in the first go but that was playing the game at a leisurely pace, and without intentionally exploring around to get every heart piece, bug or items; just playing normally through the game till the end. At first, the d-pad controls, item-switching gets getting-used to but the 3d character movement feels right at home. The game takes off in a very linear fashion early on in the game and that extends a lot longer than it did in OoT; the feeling of a open wide landscaped world in first impressions is diminished when compared to OoT, however, it couldn't be further from the truth. The illusion is slightly broken by throwing the player behind the horse early on in the game rather than letting you go out on foot before attaining the horse from the farm. The game moves very fast, probably because of the cut-scenes, but i felt rushed in the first few dungeons; and the game only really picks up once you're about 15 hours in. The pace was probably too fast from the get-go for it's own good.
I've already mentioned some good highlights of the game, but some of the items are just great fun, magnetic boots, bomb-arrows, upside down walking, some spinning...and some new armour...it just feels awesome using these items. There are some new moves to be learnt, such as the shield bash, one hit kill and the 'head-splitter', which makes Link a joy to watch and play as.
This is one of those very few games with experiences that are worth the full asking price. But you'd ask why have i rated value quite low? Well, i just keep getting this nagging feeling that i could have had this game quite some time ago (before Wii-release), it's a GC game, and it's hardly pushing my brand new piece of hardware. Not to mention, now that it's on a full-sized DVD rather than the GC DVD discs, there could have been bonus extras or even some older Zelda game packaged together with it like the Wind Waker had on release. This is an awesome game in its own right, but lets down quite a lot if you're expecting a Wii-Zelda game, a Wii game made from the ground up for the Wii. Other than that, this is one must-have game.