Fresh Takes: Pleasant Memories Break Through the Cloud Barrier with Skyward Sword HD

My history with Skyward Sword has been one full of its ups and downs through the years. I ended up disliking a lot about the game when I finished it in 2011, but not for the same reasons as most people. I’ve always felt that the motion controls were perfectly fine; my problems with the game came from how linear it was, how undeveloped the Sky was, and how some character arcs didn’t ever reach their full potential. Despite those shortcomings, believe me, I genuinely wanted to like the game.

The last time I played the game in its entirety was during a replay back in 2013. Twelve years removed from doing a full playthrough, I decided it’d be worth revisiting with the HD remake.

From Soaring Heights to a Complete Nosedive

My headspace going into this replay was one of positivity; I had an eagerness to play the game again, perhaps fueled by a glimmer of nostalgia. I have fond memories of the months leading up to Skyward Sword‘s release. The hype for the game among my friends and I was through the roof! I remember throwing my CD player and earbuds into my backpack the night before release, as anticipation built for a new chapter for The Legend of Zelda. The thought that in less than 24 hours I’d be playing the game made it nearly impossible for me to sleep that night.

It was overcast outside that morning when I left home on my skateboard to go up to the local mall, where the nearest GameStop was. After I bought the game, I went out into the parking lot and sat on a curb near a tree to open it. I took that moment to get the 25th Anniversary Symphony CD into my CD player so that I could listen to it as I went home.

And let me tell you, that trip home felt pretty awesome! I was immersed in that music, coasting on my board and looking up at the sky at points during the ride. As the clouds finally cleared to blue skies as far as the eye could see, I skipped ahead to the “Ballad of the Goddess,” daydreaming about what awaited in the skies of the game.

While I was still doing my first playthrough in the weeks after, I still found the game enjoyable, despite the aspects that I disliked. I had hopes that somehow my experience with the HD remake could recapture a similar feeling of playing the game for the first time.

But to my dismay, my initial reactions during the first few hours I played the game were not great. While the character models and depth of field were definite improvements over the original, I had a feeling that something about the lighting in Skyloft was strange in the remake (it felt way more overexposed than I remembered.) That issue is a minor nitpick, really; it may have been an adjustment thing because a few days later I returned to the Sky and felt that things looked alright. So much of the game does look better graphically anyway, so this was not something that would’ve deterred me from wanting to play the game.

Ultimately, gameplay is what keeps me invested in a game, and I was very eager to try out the new button controls of the remake. Going in, my only hope from it was that it would feel decent to use.

Button Controls Feel Strange and Calibration Issues Strike 14 Years Late

In all of my playthroughs of Skyward Sword, I’ve never spent more than two or three minutes on the sword tutorial. But using the button controls, I was stuck on it for about six minutes or more! That’s pretty wild, right? This wasn’t an issue of Joy Con drift, for clarity. The format of sword movement mapped to the joystick didn’t feel very intuitive to me. Now, I’m sure if I had continued using the button controls, I could’ve gotten used to them, but I wasn’t finding it enjoyable, so I switched to motion controls before setting out for the Faron region.

This gave me the opportunity to test out the button controls for flying the Loftwing, which I also found to be less than ideal. Winning the Wing Ceremony was never so tedious in the past. My main criticism is that it felt like there was a delay between my movements with the joystick and the Loftwing’s movements.

Overall, motion controls versus button controls are like night and day. Motion controls are so interwoven into the game’s design that playing without them feels wrong. When I switched over to motion controls, my experience instantly improved, although it wasn’t without some of its own hiccups.

This is going to sound odd, but I found myself actually missing the ergonomics of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. The Joy Cons don’t feel as form fitting in the hand, in comparison. I think there are also some aspects of the Wii experience and its button layout that are ingrained into my muscle memory, so the updated controls were throwing me off a bit.

However, the worst aspect of the remake’s motion controls was the alignment going out of sync often. I remember needing to realign the Wii Motion Plus on occasion, but not every three minutes or so like I found myself doing while playing with the Joy Cons.

Remember this terrible tech demo from E3 2010, where the motion controls were totally out of whack for Shigeru Miyamoto? I was having similar issues with the HD remake more than a decade later! This made the game feel more tedious than I could bear, so unfortunately my will to play fizzled out after completing Skyview Temple.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that most players also had similar issues with the remake’s motion controls. I thought it could’ve been an issue of my Joy Cons being very old, but I also tested the game with my Skyward Sword Joy Cons, which I barely ever use, and had the same problems. My best guess is that the IR Sensor for the Wii played more of a role in keeping the motion controls aligned than I realized back in 2011.

Closing Thoughts and Takeaways

I know it’s a pretty anticlimactic conclusion — I didn’t even get out of the area designed as a soft-tutorial. However, I really doubt any replay can ever make me like the story any more than I do already. If anything, if I go on to finish this playthrough, it will only cement to me that I still enjoy the parts of the game that I’ve always liked the best.

The Ancient Cistern is one of the most interesting dungeons in the series thematically. The Sandship and Sky Keep remain as forefronts of dungeon design in my mind. The Silent Realms were very fun stealth/evasion levels. The Harp is enjoyable to mess around on, and it’d be cool if they brought back instruments in future Zelda games (even if they don’t function as a mechanic to progress the game in some way.) Lastly, the game’s art style will always be distinct, and it serves as a pivotal influence in defining the art of Breath of the Wild.

So, what is my takeaway of this replay? I went in thinking the Switch remake, beyond improving the graphics, would provide the same, if not better, quality for motion controls as the Wii version. Coming out of the replay, I ended up having more of an appreciation for the Wii version of the game.

I find it funny that it took playing the remake for me to take issue with the motion controls. At the same time, it’s sad to see what should be better hardware functioning worse than the Wii Motion Plus technology. It really is a testament to how well implemented that technology was at the time — people were too harsh on it.

The best part of this replay was the memories it resurfaced. I haven’t thought back to that period before Skyward Sword‘s release and my first playthrough of the game in years; I had forgotten that I enjoyed that timeframe a lot. Although it was the tail end of the Wii’s lifespan, there were still some great first-party games as a sendoff, like Super Mario Galaxy 2, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and, of course, Skyward Sword. By extension, it reminded me that the Wii era as a whole was a fun time.

To cap this off, I want to invite readers to share some of their thoughts about the controls for Skyward Sword HD. Did you get used to the button controls, or did you also end up using the motion controls? Were alignment issues also a problem you encountered while using the Joy Cons? Let us know in the comments below!

Charles Xavier

Charles is a Senior Editor at Zelda Dungeon. He is a Visual Development artist focused on enviroments and pitch paintings. Check out his Instagram and Twitter to see his latest artworks, a lot of which is Zelda fan art! His favorite candy is Skittles – he feels the world should know this.