Hi all,
i've just registered to tell you my feelings about this.
I am/was a huge Zelda fan, have played all the games in the 90s for gameboy, SNES and of course Ocarina of time for N64. I loved Ocarina of time, due to its adventurous feeling, lovely graphics and gameplay. I also played Wind waker on Gamecube which was slightly more boring than ocarina because of the long distances and less content in the game. Since then i havened owned a nintendo system so i couldnt really play the other games (apart from some weekend sessions at friends/family).
I can actually agree with you about some parts of Wind Waker like the sailing and the Triforce quest being extremely tedious and boring and the game could've been much better if those things had been improved.
well but i never really forgot how beautiful ocarina of time was (and partly wind waker) and about the great time i had with this game. Then i heard from the anniversary of Zelda, and read that probably the "best Zelda ever" is going to be released soon and i decided to give it a try and bought a wii and the game on release date.
Since then ive played around 5 hours and just yesterday finished the first temple (which was very short somehow).
I think the length of it was OK considering it's the first dungeon in the game, for comparison the first TWO dungeons in OoT were pretty lame, very short and easy as hell.
And i am asking you this: What the hell is this sh**?? Is that really zelda?? it hasnt made any progress in tha last 20 years?
_The graphics is worse then in Ocarina of time?! really?! Why?
Like many here have already said, this simply is not the case. Polygons, details, variation etc are far behind those of SS. I think that OoT's graphics have aged the worst in the whole series, the 2D games, especially aLttP look still fresh today but OoT, being the first 3D Zelda, looks very dated now. Especially Hyrule Field was very empty and had a monotone look, no comparison to for example Faron Woods in SS.
For the artstyle: I think it's good and doesn't try too hard just to look realistic, this sets it apart from 95% of all other current-gen adventure/RPG/FPS/sports... games.
But I have to admit I liked TP's a tad better and what they've shown us with the Wii U demo looks very promising too, if they go further into that direction with detailed, high res but yet very colourful and rich-in-contrast graphics that stay distinct from others and don't participate in the realism arms race, then I see no bad future for the graphical department.
_The areas i have explored are a total joke, in the sky there is like 3 or 4 islands so small you can barely land on them..
Can partially agree here too, there could've been more sidequest islands like the one where the pumpkin bar is on or even some as big as Skyloft. There was more potential but after all it's OK as it is.
_The "sky city" itself has like, dont know 20 NPCs? What kind of life is that when they are living just in that town for centuries havent seen anything of the earth land and still are just 20 people?
I think it was big enough, I also rather have a little less characters that are more in-depth (like in MM) instead of some which you only see once or can't even talk to at all (Yeah, I'm thinking of TP castle town)
_The areas on the earth (have just finished wood area and a bit of vulcano) are really small and very straight forward, i mean even the "worlds" in Super Mario 64 (where you have to jump through a painting) had more freedom of exploring and were almost as big as one of the (only!) three areas in this game?! Furthermore there is like no life on the earth, there are occasionally some enemies (who hold up their swords very awkwardly by the way, just to have a reason for the annoying motion playing?) but nothing else? No cities, no villages nothing? are there even quests down there, except going to the temple? Why is this damn whole in the sky then not directly above the temple?
While it's right that the game has become quite linear and I think there should be multiple ways to a goal like in aLttP, I actually like the areas way more than in TP/OoT because they just feel denser and more realistic than the corridor-connected areas in previous games. It's a step into the right direction again, the last overworlds I really thought were designed well were those in aLttP and MM. And there's much more to them later in the game, each of the areas becomes considerably larger and each of the areas have some strong environmental changes throughout the game.
_Quests? Are there any? Have done exactly... one! since ive started the game. Wont spoiler here, because that might be the only quest in the game( something about a girl).. Main story line is more like a long manga or comic book for me rather than a quest line, there are no real quests in it just go here and there. Im playing skyrim too since 2 weeks and its like the complete opposite you can go to talk to anyone in the vast amount of towns and villages and almost everyone has something to say or do.
Haven't played Skyrim (I'm actually interested in it, but they don't offer a demo on their site so I won't blindly spend €50) but I think those two cannot be compared. I guess you can do different parts of the story in totally random order, right? Yeah, I wish there was more non-linearity in Zelda again, but I don't know how this would go with the storyline. But there are many optional sidequests in SS too.
I think the most annoying thing is really that you have nothing to explore, the sky world has really so few content it feels like it was orginally planned to be a screen saver in the nintendo offices. And the earth areas are just bad. just really bad. you never have the option to go either this way or that.. i hope this gets better during the game, though.
Yeah, like I said the sky world holds much unused potential, but the earth areas do get better later on.
Last thing im really confused of, since when do you repair shield and upgrade swords with butterflies and bugs? Wth?!
As it has been clarified, you use different raw materials for the shield, the sword cannot be optionally upgraded at all (this is part of the main quest) and the insects are used for the potions.
You really shouldn't give up on the game yet, it's a typical Nintendo spleen to have rather long tutorial phases at the beginning of games which can become boring for experienced players of a game series. This started with OoT where the tutorial actually lasted until Jabu-Jabu's belly which IMO was the first somehow (comparably!) challenging dungeon in the game and it was repeated in WW and TP, there should be an option to skip or at least accelerate that process for experienced Zelda players :/ But there have been other examples where you just slammed in your cartridge and were ready to go exploring the world after just a few minutes (especially in Link to the Past and Majora's Mask) without any long and boring tutorial where nothing happens. SS wasn't all that bad in this respect IMO, it went some sort of middle way by combining tutorial and story elements.
So... of course noone can force you to like this game and you made some valid points here, so maybe Zelda just isn't the right thing for you (anymore)...
Hi, had no intention in insulting the game or offensing anyone. Why do you react so harsh? Dont even know what troll is?!
Thats just my opinion of the game but it seems like i am the only one feeling this way
PS ich bin auch deutsch^^(=I'm German too) That's why I can tell you why you're amazed by the reaction here. What is a normal discussion in a German forum may sound like a fiery flame war to English speakers when translated 1:1, at least that's my experience, it's just the language barrier and different discussion culture, you have to get used to it. I know your intentions weren't bad but some might have interpreted it differently and felt attacked personally.
EDIT: Just have to jump in again after this
You know, i'm suprised this thread hasnt been closed already... putting that aside anyway. Skyward isn't as horrible as a few of you Zelda "fans" seen to say. Honestly, if you're going to beat down on the game of the year, then you haven't played it to it's full potential. This is Zelda we're talking about, not some random Mario game only released in japan.
This is exactly what irks me here at ZD lately. As much as I enjoy this community here, premature closure of threads and even bans seem to get out of hand, just because people have different opinions that don't conform to the apparently desired mainstream. People have the right to dislike parts or even the entirety of a Zelda game, we as fans should be able to deal with criticism and counter it if we think it's wrong.
If someone is on a minority opinion here, and the majority/you doesn't agree then you should be able to counter with good arguments and not with censorship. It's not that this guy has been just trolling for attention (that's an accusation made too quickly on the internet nowadays), there were some valid points we can discuss about, it's not that everyone else besides the OP has the same opinion here and that "everything is said".
It won't affect anybody's else love of the game.
