You must buy and play. You Must.
The story is the most in depth and twisted version Nintendo has given us, it's deep and some of it may go over some peoples heads who are not familier with the series. I was impressed with this story, expertly told. Through the course of the game it may seem at times to be missing important points...why exactly do you care what's going on? and what's her deal anyway?, we don't even know one another. Things are wrapped up nicely at the end, there are of course some questions that you have and they don't get answered...but that's just the way the legend is....always something left for you to ponder on. If you are looking for a game with a great story - look no further - this is it.
Sound, now I am from the camp of the very first Zelda, so I've seen the sound design change since day one. The sound does not dissapoint me at all. A good mix of MIDI and live instruments spread out quite well across the game, with old themes appearing, my favorite is the dark overworld theme from A Link to the Past...it just sounds evil as hell in this game. You'll also hear other familier sound themes and sounds in general here. I do think however this title should be the last to feature all text box dialogs for a console release, yeah - keep Link silent, but give the other characters a voice. That's my only beef...oh...there is one more - I did not care for the wolf howling episodes, it did not carry a feel of music to me and was somewhat unfriendly to learn 'songs'..but that is very minor.
The graphics of this game are great, forget people talking 'jaggy this and jaggy that' - this is the most gorgeous Hyrule ever. Birds flutter about, bugs crawl and fly...enemies dot the landscape and speaking about the landscape - it's huge. Something very satisfying about looking at something in the horizon and then taking a journey to that place. I'd say if you're used to HD programming on a HD TV and play most games in HD, yeah - this isn't going to be on that level. The game still looks absolutly great, and the twilight is really nice, I prefer the light world myself with it's rich blue sky and clouds and lush greenery everywhere - to the barren dust filled canyon and desert areas. This is the world Ocarina wanted to be, but couldn't be.
Gameplay is still solid, I enjoyed the remote controls very much. It was fun to swing the remote for sword swipes and aim by actually aiming my arm like the hero does. A number of new mechanics have been added and work well, the wolf is great with the abilities that come with that, old routines are fresh with the remote mechanics added to the mix - it's a sense of familier with a dose of new injected. I rarley found myself wanting my wavebird to play this - although I am picking up the Cube version and will be playing it through classic style. My only complaint in the gameplay department is the difficulty, I feel it could have been a bit more challenging, it's a bit on the easy side - it gave me a bit more time to strategize and kill my enemies. Future installments should be a bit tougher though.
Overall this game does very little wrong and most everything right, it's a true blue addition to the series - one most of us have wanted since 1998. There were things I was suprised to see and some I was SO happy I didn't see. I think it's time to mix up the story, but this is an excellent end to an era, and a great way to start a new era. Worth the long wait since E3 2004, worth the money, worth the time to play...side quests are fun and don't feel like a chore.
If you are an old school Zelda gamer like myself - you'll love this. If you are a n00b to the series, this is a great game to play.
Twilight Princess delivers.