It all seems so dream-like, playing Skyward Sword, especially after five years of painful waiting, murky rumors, and cringing reveals. Link’s latest adventure finally arrived only a few days ago, and I’ve managed to pour a few hours into the massive journey. Like Skyrim the week before, I’ve only played enough to give my most basic impressions, but don’t let my meager time with the game fool you: Skyward Sword is most definitely the peak of Zelda games thus far, and it’s a lock that it will remain a classic.
The first few hours of Skyward are about as welcoming as any Zelda game can get. Right off the bat, you’re introduced to a Zelda game that doesn’t have awkward animations or scenes or dialogue. Instead, these characters are wonderfully animated, and more appropriately designed, unlike the mess of characters in Twilight Princess (sorry Malo) and more like the superb cast in Wind Waker (even the lovable Beedle shows up). The music is another improvement you’ll notice right away: the orchestrated tracks are a nice addition, adding to the Disney-like charm of the game. You’ll recognize some tunes here and there, but Yakoto’s score is mostly sparkling new, from the invigorating over world beat to the haunting melody in the first dungeon to the heart-melting romantic theme that plays when Zelda and Link share a precious and surprising moment of sexual tension. The use of music is also used in an incredibly dynamic way, changing or adding instruments seamlessly when you near an enemy in the clouds, or land a successful strike on a Bokoblin, or approach a vendor in the bazaar. All these instances are used to a great effect, either by revealing something about the gameplay to the player, or forcing them into a specific emotional state. Nintendo knows how to use music, and this definitely shows in Skyward Sword.
Speaking of new things, Skyward Sword almost shockingly doesn’t rely on nostalgia to get kicks from the player. The puzzles so far (I’m currently hanging around the Lanayru Desert) are all distinctively new and fresh, drawing from no previous Zelda game. Sure, some if not all items may be lifted directly from other games in the franchise, but they’re used in such ingenious ways that they rival Ocarina’s revolutionary mechanics. This is all thanks to the smooth and accurate controls, which I realize a lot of other writers are complaining about in their own reviews. I thought I would do a specific test to really see what could be truly said, so as soon as I obtained my first sword I tested out each directional slash, in all eight main directions. I performed each directional slash almost flawlessly, except for my horizontal swings. The Motion Plus was reading my movements too accurately, and any slight angle would cause my horizontal slash to deviate into a diagonal one. It’s a trifling matter, for sure, especially considering that the design of the combat encourages you to take your sweet time with the swordplay anyways: every time you want to swing your sword, Link has to stand still, and enemies sometimes patiently wait for your move and have easily readable patterns essential to defeating them. This causes the game to have a refreshing focus on combat, effectively turning each enemy—aside from a few basic ones—into a reflex-based puzzle.
Puzzles are a big part of Skyward Sword. Enemies now taking the role of puzzles themselves, it’s only fitting for the over world to take the role as well. Each area on the surface feels more like a dungeon extension rather than the traditional lead-in gamers have come to know and love (or hate) in Zelda games. No longer is that the case: instead, each dungeon begins almost immediately when you descend to the surface, though the game designers may not necessarily want you to know that, in order to make the game appear more seamless. This is a rather successful and welcome addition to the franchise, even though these sections of the game are laden with fetch quests, just because the puzzles you find in these areas are just as fresh and exciting and challenging as the dungeons thus far.
I won’t touch upon some of the story elements I’ve seen: I’ll save those for my final review when I complete the game. I can say that Skyward Sword is worth your time, from what I’ve seen of the game so far. The controls are all what they’ve been cracked up to be; a real game-changer in terms of revolutionizing motion gaming. The nostalgia doesn’t overpower the game, if it’s even a factor; Skyward Sword survives on its own merit, rather than the legacy of its predecessors. And production values have gone through the roof, reinforcing Nintendo as the master game-makers and catapulting the Zelda franchise into even higher heights than before. If you really want to know what it’s like to play motion-controlled perfection, you can’t look any further than this.
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