At its core, Skyward Sword offered many innovative and intriguing features as a whole. Chief among them was the new motion control system, which involved swinging the Wiimote like a sword, demonstrating immense promise for revolutionizing the series formula to all new heights. Other features included a real-time menu, weapon upgrades, and dowsing, all of which were exciting in their own ways at first. However, as the game wore on, several of these features--key to the core gameplay--gradually began to feel lackluster and overused. The motion controls lost their initial flare as I took out scores of selfsame enemies in one sitting, and oftentimes I found it hard to concentrate on getting the timing right.
Throughout the game, the main plot itself suffered from a ridiculous amount of rehashed objectives necessary to advance to the next stage, consisting of numerous fetchquests and repeated enemy encounters which served no purpose in moving the story in an effective manner. Despite there being a four to five year development period on a purportedly sensational project, the dev team instead focused on a cinematic experience, taking an edge off of the commonplace adventure of Zelda. Needlessly lengthy cutscenes and long-winded dialogues without the ability to quickly skip weighed any level of enjoyment down like a heavy burden; dying forced you to watch the introduction cutscene in full (thanks, Imprisoned) due to this useless incapacity.
Adding to the list of insufficient presentations--incapacitating to a should-be successful game--are the corridor-like paths that inhibit the boundless freedom of past titles. Although it was Nintendo's goal to make the "overworld" feel like a Dungeon, the concept soon became jaded as I discovered that I was running around in circles in many cases just to figure out what to do. Backtracking had never been a problem in Zelda for me until that point (trying to get the lay of the land without dowsing), leaving me stranded in a suffocating series of hallways and/or otherwise linear routes. On the brighter side of things, solving puzzles to open new areas was cool, but again, since each Province and even Skyloft was built like a Dungeon, the overall design scheme was consistently the same.
All in all, Skyward Sword felt incomplete and lacked impact in many regards, thereby disqualifying it as the "best Zelda game of all time". Majora's Mask pulled off the intriguing sequence of events and item-wielding aspects, whereas Twilight Princess achieved limitless liberation of exploration and uncovering secrets, and together these two form my strongest ideals of how a Zelda game ought to be made. I'd also argue that Skyward Sword isn't the greatest game on the Wii, and nor is it the weakest; the most fulfilling adventure game would either be Okami (example of effective Wiimote usage) or Xenoblade (an engaging, open-field escapade), depending on your tastes.
