Nintendo have brought the series back to its 3-D roots with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and the result is a
Twilight Princess begins very similar to all the other Legend of Zelda titles. You’re a teenager (14-16 or so) who grows up in a peaceful town, who herds animals and occasionally hangs out with the younger children of the village. Not before long though, you come into possession of a sword and a shield and one thing leads to another, and eventually you’re given the task of saving all of Hyrule and of course rescuing Princess Zelda.
This time however, the land of Hyrule is being plagued by the mysterious Twilight Realm and it’s up to you to somehow remove Twilight from the land. There’s a catch though. Link can't enter the realm of Twilight in human form. Each time you enter into a "Twilight Curtain" you’re transformed into a Wolf. Early into the game, you’re introduced to Midna, a seemingly demonic, Imp-like creature, who guides you through-out the game. While you’re in Wolf form, Midna will be riding on your back as you rid the land of Twilight, but when you’re in human for, Midna will be hiding in your shadow, although she'll still occasionally pop out and give you some hints as to what to do next, or as to how to do it.
The game starts with you riding the land of Twilight, but that’s certainly not all you'll be doing. Most of your tasks, especially towards to end of the game, include collecting a series of items and things of that sort, but beyond the main quest there are a few side quests, most of which will earn you an upgrade to one of your pieces of equipment.
Speaking of equipment, Twilight Princess features tones of weapons and other pieces of equipment that you'll need to use to progress through the game’s dungeons. Overall there are about fifteen or so of these, which include the “Gale Boomerang” which possesses the element of wind, the "Hero’s Boe" and of coarse the Master Sword. All of these different items, weapons and the like add an amazing amount of depth to the gameplay, which makes up for the somewhat shallow swordplay.
The actual swordplay is done by using the Wiimote and Nunchuk's unique motion sensing capabilities. To perform a basic attack with your sword you'll be shaking the Wiimote around. To perform a spin attack you swirl the Nunchuk around in a small circle (although shaking it rapidly works well too). Thankfully, those two attacks aren't all the combat has to offer, as you can unlock a handful of new techniques throughout the course of the game. You'll also be using the Wiimote to aim with your Slingshot/Boe and Arrow, Gale Boomerang ect. and once you get the sensitivity right, this works very well..
When you’re not hacking away at enemies, most of the time you'll be navigating through some extremely well designed dungeons. There are nine or ten dungeons, each of which contains some great puzzles, most of which are quite challenging and rewarding to figure out. That’s a great thing, seeing that you'll be spending the bulk of the game in these dungeons. The dungeons themselves have some nice variance to them as well. There are fairly standard dungeons like the Forest Temple and a Water dungeon, but there are some more unique dungeons like the Temple of Time and the City in the Sky. Most of the more unique dungeons come along towards the end of the game, but the dungeons are generally fantastically designed from the beginning of the game, all the way to the end
At the end of each dungeon, you'll predictably be fighting a boss. Most of the boss fights are pretty simple in the sense that you'll primarily be using the new weapon or item you found half way though the dungeon to defeat it. Much like Wind Waker, most of the boss fights are really easy, although there are some rather epic boss battles towards the end of the game.
The same thing can be said for the games difficulty overall. For the most part, Twilight Princess is a relatively easy game as far as combat goes. Even if you’re new to the series, you can probably go through the entire game and only die once or twice in combat. With that said though, it’s not a game that you can just breeze through. Similar to the boss fights, there is the occasional tough dungeon. Fortunately, all of the dungeons feature some excellently designed puzzles, most of which are all challenging enough to make up for the lack of difficulty in other areas. From a gameplay standpoint, Twilight Princess is an amazing accomplishment, but it’s a shame the same can't be said about the games presentation, which at its worst, is plain and simply put; dated. The Wii isn't a technical brute, that’s no secret, but Twilight Princess looks like a Gamecube game. Its not necessarily like Twilight Princess looks bad from a technical standpoint (although it doesn't look particularly good either), its just that it seems Nintendo have put no effort into making the game look better than its Gamecube counter-part. The worst of the games technical shortcomings are some really low-res textures and some pretty poor looking character models (although generally the main characters look great, some of the other characters look pretty bad). To the game's credit though, the land of Hyrule has a rather large scope. A very large scope in fact, and if you take the time to explore the land, your bound to get rewarded.
From an artistic standpoint though, Twilight Princess looks incredible. For proof of this one must only take a gander at the Twilight Realm. Although it is a shadow world, if you take time to appreciate it, it’s quite the artistic achievement. But that’s certainly not where all of the artistic direction lies. The world of Hyrule is extremely varied and all of the dungeons have there own vibe to them. Again, its not that the game looks technically bad, it’s just that the game could have looked much better had some more effort gone into the graphics. (To be fair though, the game was built ground up for the Gamecube)
You'd think by now that Nintendo would have given The Legend of Zelda series an orchestral score by now wouldn't you? Well that’s not the case with Twilight Princess. The bulk of the music played in Twilight Princess is heavily sample based. Some of the pieces even resemble orchestral pieces, which makes you realize how much potential has been wasted. In addition, excluding some minor lines of dialogue and some gasping sounds, Twilight Princess features no voice work, which makes some of the cut-scenes feel somewhat under-whelming. The other interesting part of Twilight Princess' audio revolves around the Wiimote. Sounds like you sword slashes, bomb explosions and your Boe firing an arrow all come out of the Wiimote's speaker. Despite the low quality sound that comes from the Wiimote, it does add a little to the experience. It does however; get annoying when the Wiimote starts to cut out or static starts coming from the Wiimote's speaker (which occurs quite often when your Wiimore battery is low). On paper, this sounds like a fantastic idea, but once the Wiimote speaker starts to get some static, and even starts cutting out, it doesn’t actually work too well. The Wiimote speaker works best when used in addition to the speakers on your television set, but otherwise the feature comes off pretty weak.
Twilight Princess is a long game. The main quest will take you 30 - 45 hours depending on your past experiences with The Legend of Zelda series or really Action/Adventure games overall. You can easily add on another 5 - 10 hours or so if you plan on doing all of the side quests, earning every item and item upgrade and also finding every piece of heart in the game. The only problem here is, you'll only be able to get these items and item upgrades towards to end of the game, at which point you won't really need them. But still, if you’re the type of person that tries to get as much out of a game as possible, expect to spend 40 - 50 hours on Twilight Princess.
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is not without its flaws, most of which stem from the games technical presentation. But still, Twilight Princess is an outstanding accomplishment and is definitely one of the best Action/Adventure games in recent memory. It may not be technically amazing from a presentational standpoint, but if you’re looking for a superbly designed game, with rock solid gameplay, loads of artistic direction and a wide scope for you to explore, look no further than The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.