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Spoiler Things Skyward Sword Could Have Done Differently/better?

Majora's Cat

How about that
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Sep 3, 2010
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I don't think you can really distinguish between the two terms.

Used with what I was saying, "problems" can cover anything from technical flaws, faults that detract from the overall gaming experience, or things that could just be improved on and fell short. The latter of these three examples is an example of a shortcoming, which can't quite be classified as simply a problem. The two have distinct meanings, and aren't exactly the same when used in context with visuals and graphics in Skyward Sword.

Axle the Beast said:
Either way, though, I'm confused as to how Skyward Sword has graphical, but especially story flaws. The story was handled on a level far greater than almost all of the modern Zelda games. The graphics, while poor compared to newer consoles, were pretty much top of the line for the Wii and looked great despite that because of the art direction.

I've said this quite a few times already as well. Skyward Sword has a story that is good enough to hold down the fort, and is impressive considering Nintendo's previous attempts at storytelling in the franchise. The visuals are inspired and boast an impressionistic style that won't tarnish for ages, so I don't see too much fault in the visuals either. Neither can compare to the visuals and intricate plots of Xbox 360 and PS3 releases, but that does not mean they're necessarily problems.

Everything in the game is assessed, from how sticky the controls are to how well the plot is. If a component is in the framework, it *will* be assessed and tested for optimal quality. SS may not being a high budget movie, however that doesn't mean it shouldn't strive for perfection or damn close to it. Once again, when making any recipe, you don't get some cheap ingredients if you want to serve a legendary dish to your customers. That's asinine and makes no sense whatsoever. As a customer, when I pick up that piece of chicken I will not say "oh, I was here for the chicken which was fresh". I will say, however, "I came here for the chicken but got too much chocolate and some weird...parsley flavouring, so the overall dish is rated lowly because it isn't as good as it could be". Translate the chicken to the gameplay, the chocolate to the story and the parsley to the graphics. Yet again, you do NOT throw some subpar ingredients into a dish that is supposed to be a legendary dish for the customers.

If graphics and stories are so important, then why do Zelda games (Skyward Sword included) have such high aggregate review scores?

VanitasXII said:
Axle, if you haven't played Super Mario Galaxy, I implore you to buy it (if you haven't already) and just get the first three stars of Good Egg Galaxy. All Wii games are plagued by lack of hardware antialiasing, but SMG does so well with certain shading techniques that, for some reason, makes Skyward Sword's graphical display look like a joke. Jaggies are so easily seen because of the art style, people can complain for that very reason. It's disappointing, really, and it truthfully hurts my eyes.

Skyward Sword has great visuals for a Wii game, and it's your opinion that they look terrible. Many will agree that the game has a very appealing visual style that smooths the rough edges that are more easily seen in Twilight Princess. SS was built from the ground up for the Wii, meaning it definitely has a more powerful graphical engine than TP, which was originally designed for GameCube only. Once again it's your opinion that Super Mario Galaxy has better graphics - it's not a fact.
 

MW7

Joined
Jun 22, 2011
Location
Ohio
The dungeons in SS I would say were more streamlined and...concise(? is that the word?) whereas dungeons of other games had a couple of 'joke' rooms in that the reward wasn't anything you really needed (for example, completing a room of a dungeon in Ocarina of Time may give you a chest with a Recovery Heart in it). That streamlining the game casued the dungeons to feel, seem and actualize the easy difficulty in my opinion.
I'd say simplified, but I think a large part of why people are noticing the dungeon length is because Twilight Princess's dungeons were some of the longest ever. I'd recommend that someone should take a nap before tackling City in the Sky but can't say the same for any of the dungeons in Skyward Sword. I actually felt the dungeon difficulty was comparable to the rest of the series. Short dungeons and difficult dungeons aren't mutually exclusive; it's just that game designers tend to make longer dungeons harder.

What would make the dungeons better IMO would be to add optional stuff that actually matters. Two games in the series come to mind: Legend of Zelda and Majora's Mask. Legend of Zelda's items were mostly optional (7/12 I think). I don't think the series could go back to having dungeons without a necessary item (I think it's a good idea but it'd never happen), but an alternative would be to have a second dungeon item that is optional. Like a defensive tunic or something like that. Also taking another idea from LoZ would be to have a magic key to open all locked doors. It would probably work better in a modern zelda if the magic key only works in a particular dungeon.

As for Majora's Mask, I think that game came as close to perfecting dungeons as the series has ever come. The one idea from Majora's Mask that I think could be really great in some form would be bringing back something like the stray fairies. Those were completely optional and immensely helpful. Having optional things to complete in dungeons improves replayability and adds complexity to the dungeons. Yeah Stone Tower Temple is hard but getting all the fairies makes it even harder.

Now that I think about it, Skyward Sword already had a decent amount of optional things in dungeons: some of them had a heart piece, the fire sanctuary had a bottle (and a heart piece), lots of treasures, and you could always skip the dungeon map (only saves significant time in the Earth Temple and the Sandship though- maybe the Fire Sanctuary as well if you don't help the Mogma since you wouldn't have to talk to him again). However, I don't think it's possible for more optional content to ever be a bad thing and there's a lot of things that could be added between Skyward Sword and the next Zelda release.
 
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Ventus

Mad haters lmao
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I'd say simplified, but I think a large part of why people are noticing the dungeon length is because Twilight Princess's dungeons were some of the longest ever. I'd recommend that someone should take a nap before tackling City in the Sky but can't say the same for any of the dungeons in Skyward Sword. I actually felt the dungeon difficulty was comparable to the rest of the series. Short dungeons and difficult dungeons aren't mutually exclusive; it's just that game designers tend to make longer dungeons harder.

Also taking another idea from LoZ would be to have a magic key to open all locked doors.

As for Majora's Mask, I think that game came as close to perfecting dungeons as the series has ever come. The one idea from Majora's Mask that I think could be really great in some form would be bringing back something like the stray fairies. Those were completely optional and immensely helpful. Having optional things to complete in dungeons improves replayability and adds complexity to the dungeons. Yeah Stone Tower Temple is hard but getting all the fairies makes it even harder.
Ah, thanks for the tip. I see where you're coming from too; the longer dungeons (eg CitS) are longer and feel lethargic in a sense, so people perceive them as hard. On the other hand, a dungeon such as Skyview is shorter (and smaller) so people generally wouldn't think of it as hard in comparison. Still, short dungeons can be hard (Sky Keep), and long dungeons can be easy (Lakebed in my opinion).

Optional items, or even different pathways as far as items collected (so for example, you have a choice of going path 1 and getting the Bow + Arrows or path 2 collecting the Boomerang) would make for much more dynamic dungeons and bosses as a whole. Being able to return to any dungeon only to find it infested with more/stronger enemies would also do quite well in my opinion.

I'm actually going backwards as far as my general attitude, but I think a magic key would work best as a Super Guide sort of option. I recall back in 2010 there were threads speaking of if "Zelda Wii" was going to utilize Super Guide (that option in games such as NSMBWii, Super Mario 3D Land's P Wing, Donkey Kong Country Returns, etc). We now know that ZWii won't and doesn't use Super Guide, but the magic key could definitely work. You know, a "solve all dungeon rooms" thing for the very desperate player, or just give them a key in the instance that they still want to solve the puzzles for themselves but cannot for the life of them do any one certain thing. Building upon that, instead of the extensive tutorials that SS gave us, perhaps Nintendo could've traded them for a Super Guide option? It'd be especially useful for bosses, I'm sure. The visions didn't quite cut it for me, and truth be told I forgot they existed in SS.

STT was just...insanely difficult for me.
I'd love for the "collect X in dungeon, see Y NPC for Z reward" system to return. It kept me hungry for more, and getting something like Double Magic Meter or Great Fairies' Sword made me feel so happy. Like you said, it adds extra layers of replayability on top of just generally being awesome. Skyward Sword easily could've made room for the optional but helpful collectibles, beyond the Upgrade System that is.
 
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Joined
Dec 29, 2011
i really hated that you could only have a few items you cant carry every thing you need with the few they give you i liked ocarina of time and majoras mask where you had to have all your items to continue the game the way you utilized your bottles and other items the item system really could have been better but i still love the game you cant make a game perfect
 

Ventus

Mad haters lmao
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Hylian Champion
i really hated that you could only have a few items you cant carry every thing you need with the few they give you i liked ocarina of time and majoras mask where you had to have all your items to continue the game the way you utilized your bottles and other items the item system really could have been better but i still love the game you cant make a game perfect
Well, that was for realism's sake. No human could honestly carry that much stuff; a weight system would also have to be entailed because all of the equipment would've weighed Link down. I get that being able to carry everything you get makes the game easier and more convenient, but realistically Link couldn't hold all of that stuff.

*cough* OoT *cough*
 
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Dec 19, 2011
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I think the boss battle could have been better (i know a load of people b**** about it) because once you knew what to do i was a fairly easy (even though i used a fairy and two one whole bottle of fully upgraded heart potion) and like true Zelda fashion there is usall three stages of a boss battle but there was only 2
 

Deeds

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The sky should have more islands that you could land on, like town's in Skyloft. This would create a larger sense of adventure, or in my opinion; A sense of adventure.
 
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The sky in the game was pretty lacking, I had hoped for more to have been there like in Wind Waker, but with less time being spent doing the flying/sailing because that gets really old after a while.
 

JuicieJ

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Not an incredible amount. I just wish that the combat had been more like Red Steel 2's where the swings had to be wide and strong to do some real damage. I know Nintendo did what they did so all ages could play it, but swinging the Wiimote like I did in RS2 was ridiculously fun and satisfying. Nevertheless, the motion controls were flawless, so I have no legitimate complaints about them. I also wish the Whip had been more involved and had more freedom of use (meaning not only being able to crack it forward, but able to aim up and down without something to Z-target). The treasure and bug notification thing was a bit annoying and could have been avoided, as well, but it wasn't as annoying to me as some people make it out to be. Other than that, I have no huge problems with the game.

Now, onto what you said.

Enemy AI
All of the enemies in the game literally had a tracking device on them so that they would be forced to respond to the position to your sword. It was a huge limitation and a huge let down that I had to WAIT TO BE STRUCK BY THE ENEMY. I realize that the projected majority of SS players are newcomers however the learning curve could've been put to better use, y'know, BEFORE the actual dungeons themselves. Combat while it does pump adrenaline sometimes, wasn't as fast as I expected it to be. It didn't give me the feel that I got out of Twilight Princess combat. Better, more OFFENSIVE AI would be an additive for future Zeldas, and definitely would have worked with Skyward Sword.

I actually expected the enemies to be like this. The change of combat to 1:1 swordplay was an enormous shift and slightly difficult to get used to. If they had made enemies as aggressive as in previous titles (which wasn't too much of a difference, even in the beloved OoT), fans would be telling horror stories of how difficult it was to defeat a simple Bokoblin. I'm quite certain the lack of attacks were just for this game so we could get used to the new combat system. I wouldn't have any worries about the enemy difficulty being amplified in Zelda Wii U. (The enemies also block plenty of attacks early on in the game, so it's not like they were no challenge at all.)

Learning Curve
The learning curve of Skyward Sword, meaning the tutorials for ingame actions and so on...they were so drawn out and strewn across the game, I thought they'd never end. The game constantly has to hold our hand, even so much to the point that dungeons aren't filled with enemies like they should have been. Every new enemy encounter is a learning curve because of the ridiculous motions of each enemy. We cannot immediately strike to get the upper hand, again due to the enemy AI. We can't be STRUCK OURSELVES for a disadvantage, because the game forces us to learn each and every single new thing.

We have to get notifications in order for us to figure out for the FIFTEENTH DANG TIME that we picked up an Amber Relic. We need to have a four hour long introduction plus an accompanying tutorial dungeon for us to get the hangs of combat and moving about. We still have to let enemies sit around for fifteen seconds each time for them to strike, with a few obvious exceptions (namely, Ghirahim, who takes even longer, and a couple other special enemies like him). What's happened with you, Nintendo, that tutorials have to be entirely too long and FORCED at that?

Gee, I wonder why, maybe because it was a completely new style of swordplay? If there hadn't been the tutorials, getting used to the controls would have been that much more of a challenge, and that would have been more annoying than what you're complaining about. The treasure explanation was a bit annoying, yes, but at least it wasn't as common and silly as finding a stinkin' blue rupee in Twilight Princess.

Also, the tutorials are not forced. You can completely skip the tutorials the second time you play the game. If you didn't figure this out, go back and try to leave right after getting the practice sword. You'll be able to without cutting any of the logs.

Story
I don't even want to comment on the story. Nintendo, listen. We need a different story with each new release or else you'll telegraph your attacks like the novice you are aren't.

Wait, what? Are you serious? The story was the best Zelda's had yet. It was thick, rich, and extremely emotional. Everything about it flowed together seamlessly and did nothing but build the entire time. There wasn't a climax in the middle of the story this time around, unlike in WW and TP. The plot twist didn't even feel like a plot twist. The motive behind Link's actions didn't really change at the midpoint of SS. In fact, the motives didn't change until he finally caught up with Zelda and learned that she was Hylia reborn. That's a huge change to have the true plot twist about 85% in the game. The formula of SS was much different than past titles, and you're not giving it the credit it deserves for that.

Characters
I've said this before and I'll say it again. We have a bunch of characters, of which we only have four characters that mean anything on the protagonist side, and only two characters that mean anything on the antagonist's side though the second one really doesn't mean much besides a final encounter.

Of the four protagonists, namely Link Zelda Groose Impa (LIZG), truthfully speaking only Link, Zelda and Groose mean anything OUT OF THE ENTIRE CAST OF CHARACTERS EXCLUDING THE TWO VILLAINS. Link and Groose are our two protagonists with Link on the Hero side and Groose on the comical side, while Zelda is our damsel in distress [yes, it doesn't seem so, but we still have to save her and get her back to Skyloft all the same]. Impa is just a side character who is the Link for Zelda in the meantime. That obviously needs to change. Pipit, Gaepora and maybe even Batreaux could've been part of the protagonist's crewboat. All of the Knight Academy, actually, should've been down at the Surface. Zelda, get that stupid look off of your face and ACTUALLY DO SOMETHING. No more singing, no more dancing, no more 'magic'. GET PHYSICAL.
Impa, WIPE THAT SMIRK OFF YOUR FACE BEFORE I STICK THIS BLADE OF EVIL'S BANE INTO YOUR CHEST.

What in the world are you talking about? You're treating this like it was a fairy tale. That couldn't be any further from the truth. If the smirk you're talking about is Impa when Link couldn't follow Zelda, that was hardly a smirk. The whole point of that scene was to build the drive to keep searching for Zelda, and it worked perfectly. I felt some real anger when Impa bluntly told Link that he was late and that Hylia might have been "mistaken in her choice of agents". That's really saying something. No Zelda game had made me feel real anger like that. Impa's also not a side character. She's in the game as much as Zelda is and is very important to the story. Without her, Demise would have returned early in the story. She's very important. How can you not see that? And what stupid look on Zelda's face? She was telling Link about everything that was going on and that she was Hylia in her past life. That was an emotional moment. Seriously, how could that not spark a moment of "NO, DON'T GO!" in you? I respect opinion, but what you're saying is way off. I can't get any nicer than that.

Nintendo could've introduced more than two villains. Yes, Ghirahim was cool, but he was useless in the end. Demise was a joke. We saw his ugly beast form three times, and his cool demonic form...well, that didn't last more than an epilogue.

False. Ghirahim was the key to Demise's revival. Without Ghirahim, Demise would have never returned. Ghirahim wasn't another Zant. He maintained a presence throughout the entire game that only kept getting better. Demise not appearing in true form until the end also isn't a problem. The whole point was to keep him from coming back. And Link succeeded...until Ghirahim took Zelda to the World of the Past. Demise had a presence throughout the whole game, just like Ghirahim did, only it was highly mysterious. That's a huge improvement from Ganondorf suddenly appearing in the middle of TP and disappearing until the very end of the game.

FINAL FREAKIN BOSS
Demise. You're an absolute joke. You take no skill to beat. People can speedrun you in little less than 28 seconds. What in the heck is wrong with you? Where is your insane ability to warp dimensions? Where are the giant flying swords and lightning rods? Come on, up your game broski. For a final boss, you're as pathetic as Ganon of OoT.

Really? Hm. This explains why so many people said they had a hard time with him and died multiple times.

Come on, Demise is not a joke. He's easy only if you know what you're doing. He was a strategic boss rather than being an all-out attack boss, and there's nothing wrong with that. It displayed true sword combat in needing to open a weak point and dodging attacks. You're just too used to final bosses not having any true strategy and attacking mercilessly. That isn't what makes a boss great. What makes a boss great is if it takes advantage of what the controls offer, and Demise pulled that off perfectly.

The Sky
Nintendo, you've made the gameplay really great swordplay (just need offensive enemies), now where is the flight? After all, Sky is in the title too, so it should be emphasized just like the Sword was. We got a barren sky, just like Hyrule Field in TP except...a distinct lack of enemies. I know you can do better.

I don't think this is worth complaining about. I mean, it's the sky. If there had been islands everywhere, it'd have been too cluttered, causing the free-range feel to be absent. The whole point of it being open was, one, to have a sense of freedom and, two, to keep the surface the real threat. I mean, really, would you expect the monsters to litter the sky when their presence is supposed to be on the ground? The only reason monsters were in Skyloft at night was because of Batreaux. When he's no longer a demon, the monsters are gone. That's because they weren't ever supposed to be there. Simple as that. The sky was set to be completely distinct from the surface by being open and not filled with puzzles and what not. That's not a problem. That's called balance, and it worked very well. I agree there could have been a few more islands, namely ones that were a bit larger, but it stilled worked out just fine.
 
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G

gimnastic

Guest
I'm playing SS right now (I'm at the Earth Temple) and I'm very emotioned when I'm going to play it. At general terms I like it very much, specially for the fact that it differs from other's Zelda games for the mechanics: It's more strategical, more RPG-like than others, and after I played in a row Alttp-LA-Started OOA, I have to thank the diversity. SS is also very interesting to manage to reach the dungeons, there are lots of things to do before.
But, I have the sensation that as I advance in the game (I've played 9 hours) i thing this game is going to be short, and that, as a Zelda fan, panics me. This sensation sure comes from the absolutely linear story. "Go there, then there, Oh! I arrive!, so go to next spot". I adquired SS for the experience to beat new dungeons, see new places and challenge myself, but I think this game is more of the style of games that you like a lot and you are extremely proud when you finish it, but is so repetitive of scenarios and charging that you only complete one time on your life, perhaps 2, long time after and not that game to play over and over. And this is not like a typical Zelda game, a typical Zelda game is more about exploration. I hope I'm wrong on this.

Others things to comment:
- My actual mode of play is advance a zone in the game (Faron Woods, Temple, Volcano, Temple) exploring all, but, suprisigly at one point I get tired and escape from this going to the sky, flying to the Goddess cubes I found and hanging out in Skyloft
- I was literally shocked when, at the entrance of Skyview Temple, I upgraded my Wood Shield, and I left it lose it's vitality completely before applying the Repare potion on it. It disappeared! It made me very angry and entered the temple without a shield in rage. Nintendo thought very bad at this spect.
- Also, at the beginning I saw SS pretty similar to TWW (First Zelda I played), specially for the Sky with islands, the story, etc.

I actually like the game, and perhaps as I advance in the game I change my opinion, but those are my thoughts at the moment.

P.D. Sorry if my English is not good enough
 
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