I recently started playing through Twilight Princess again. I believe this is my 9th playthrough. It is my joint favourite game, sharing the top spot with it is Ocarina of Time. However playing through again simply points out some blatant flaws and things that have not been done so well.
At E3 2004 the trailer for Twilight princess was met with screams of excitement and applause, whilst I had no real knowledge of this at the time I only knew of the games existence and had seen the odd screenshot I never really got excited until I saw a trailer for it on the TV and that was when it was released.
I was not over hyped for the game like many others were and it gave me no expectations that were not met. When I played it in 2007 It looked great, it played great, the story was great. I play it now in 2012 and to be honest, it looks terrible. I like the art direction and what they were going for, it probably looks ok on a little screen however I have a very high end 40 inch 3D LED TV, links face is barley visible, Ordon village looks like a green and brown haze with a splodge of purple or orange here and there. It actually looks better when you squint at it because all those nasty blurry edges disappear. On the Wii this problem is inevitable, it is a low powered SD console which does the game absolutely no justice whatsoever. The only way this problem could go away is a re-release on Wii U. It would be nice to see it with improved and updated HD textures, but even if they used the old ones it would look a whole lot better without the power limitations of the Wii.
The outdated appearance of the game due to the Wii's technical limitations is not my only complaint about the game. Skyward Swords intro in my opinion is a bit long and the tutorials can be annoying however Twilight Princesses introduction is long and boring, you have to perform mundane tasks such as goat herding helping a lady carry a cot to her house only to be rewarded with a fishing rod and then using it to catch a fish only to have a cat steal it from you. And that is only to put the obese shopkeeper in a good mood so she will sell you a slingshot. Then you must go and play with the villiage children where you learn the sword moves and practice using the slingshot, which is useful of course, but this could have been done sooner. It takes too long to get into the main story of this game. OOT and Wind Waker were straight in with the story. In OOT sword training was completely optional, in WW it served a purpose, to save somebody's life. There was a sense of urgency there, however the reason for sword practice in TP is to please some kids and to chase down and then probably bludgeon a poor monkey to death.
The game tries to accustom you to characters that are not only boring and dislikeable but are completely useless outside this introduction. Most will never be seen again. Very few of the important characters were fleshed out either, Bo the Mayor could have been a little more involved since he is of importance later on and Illia who is a main character I never cared for. In SS I cared for Zelda because of how well they introduced her, she was lovely sweet person, when she got captured it was a sad moment. If Illia had been clubbed to death by the bulblins instead of being captured I would not have given a crap. Simply put most of the character development in TP was bad. There were likeable and quirky characters who should have been involved more, but they just weren't, most of the good secondary characters were one hit wonders.
I found the soundtrack to Twilight princess to be rather good, the actual quality of the music itself was high. So why then must it be all MIDI apart from two tracks? There are several instances where the MIDI-ness of the music ruined the piece itself. I'll use the example of the track 'Dark Beast Ganon' it had a good sound to it, yet the blatantly synthesised choir and drumbeat let it down. It reduced my enjoyment of what was an epic fight. 'Dark Lord Ganondorf' also suffered from the same problem, along with all of the other boss fights and the various village themes and Hyrule Castle Town's theme, and Gerudo desert and I'm not going to continue. The game should have had full orchestra, end of.
Finally it is the difficulty of this game which I think it did wrong. In particular enemy damage. It is rather difficult to actually get killed in Twilight Princess especially towards the end (even if you just stand still and let something attack you). Enemies in general did pitiful amounts of damage, like half a heart to a heart. In OOT and MM there were enemies that dished out 5 hearts of damage at a time. One particular instance in Twilight princess where the sad lack of enemy damage is most noticable is in the final fight with Ganondorf. It was an epic battle to be sure, the thundering beat of the music added to the feel of it. You would expect to be fighting a powerful foe who deals heavy damage, and who is more powerful than the Dark Lord Ganondorf the wielder of the Triforce of Power? Not to mention he has a 6ft greatsword that glows, it just looks deadly. BUT NO! HE DOES 1 HEART OF DAMAGE FOR EVERY BLOW... 1! The final boss is easy!
Now those are the big three things about TP that really annoy me, there are other minor things that can be improved but today it's Graphics, Intro, music, difficulty and Character development which are the things that stick out like a sore thumb. I one day hope that this fantastic game gets a remake and that some of its flaws can be corrected especially the ones I said above.
If you took the time to read it all, what are your thoughts on my points? Were they your main problems with the game?
Please post what you think could have been done better and what could be improved if a remake was ever done?
Do you think it deserves a remake sometime, as the best selling Zelda game with over 8 million copies sold(excluding OOT combined with OOT3D)?
At E3 2004 the trailer for Twilight princess was met with screams of excitement and applause, whilst I had no real knowledge of this at the time I only knew of the games existence and had seen the odd screenshot I never really got excited until I saw a trailer for it on the TV and that was when it was released.
I was not over hyped for the game like many others were and it gave me no expectations that were not met. When I played it in 2007 It looked great, it played great, the story was great. I play it now in 2012 and to be honest, it looks terrible. I like the art direction and what they were going for, it probably looks ok on a little screen however I have a very high end 40 inch 3D LED TV, links face is barley visible, Ordon village looks like a green and brown haze with a splodge of purple or orange here and there. It actually looks better when you squint at it because all those nasty blurry edges disappear. On the Wii this problem is inevitable, it is a low powered SD console which does the game absolutely no justice whatsoever. The only way this problem could go away is a re-release on Wii U. It would be nice to see it with improved and updated HD textures, but even if they used the old ones it would look a whole lot better without the power limitations of the Wii.
The outdated appearance of the game due to the Wii's technical limitations is not my only complaint about the game. Skyward Swords intro in my opinion is a bit long and the tutorials can be annoying however Twilight Princesses introduction is long and boring, you have to perform mundane tasks such as goat herding helping a lady carry a cot to her house only to be rewarded with a fishing rod and then using it to catch a fish only to have a cat steal it from you. And that is only to put the obese shopkeeper in a good mood so she will sell you a slingshot. Then you must go and play with the villiage children where you learn the sword moves and practice using the slingshot, which is useful of course, but this could have been done sooner. It takes too long to get into the main story of this game. OOT and Wind Waker were straight in with the story. In OOT sword training was completely optional, in WW it served a purpose, to save somebody's life. There was a sense of urgency there, however the reason for sword practice in TP is to please some kids and to chase down and then probably bludgeon a poor monkey to death.
The game tries to accustom you to characters that are not only boring and dislikeable but are completely useless outside this introduction. Most will never be seen again. Very few of the important characters were fleshed out either, Bo the Mayor could have been a little more involved since he is of importance later on and Illia who is a main character I never cared for. In SS I cared for Zelda because of how well they introduced her, she was lovely sweet person, when she got captured it was a sad moment. If Illia had been clubbed to death by the bulblins instead of being captured I would not have given a crap. Simply put most of the character development in TP was bad. There were likeable and quirky characters who should have been involved more, but they just weren't, most of the good secondary characters were one hit wonders.
I found the soundtrack to Twilight princess to be rather good, the actual quality of the music itself was high. So why then must it be all MIDI apart from two tracks? There are several instances where the MIDI-ness of the music ruined the piece itself. I'll use the example of the track 'Dark Beast Ganon' it had a good sound to it, yet the blatantly synthesised choir and drumbeat let it down. It reduced my enjoyment of what was an epic fight. 'Dark Lord Ganondorf' also suffered from the same problem, along with all of the other boss fights and the various village themes and Hyrule Castle Town's theme, and Gerudo desert and I'm not going to continue. The game should have had full orchestra, end of.
Finally it is the difficulty of this game which I think it did wrong. In particular enemy damage. It is rather difficult to actually get killed in Twilight Princess especially towards the end (even if you just stand still and let something attack you). Enemies in general did pitiful amounts of damage, like half a heart to a heart. In OOT and MM there were enemies that dished out 5 hearts of damage at a time. One particular instance in Twilight princess where the sad lack of enemy damage is most noticable is in the final fight with Ganondorf. It was an epic battle to be sure, the thundering beat of the music added to the feel of it. You would expect to be fighting a powerful foe who deals heavy damage, and who is more powerful than the Dark Lord Ganondorf the wielder of the Triforce of Power? Not to mention he has a 6ft greatsword that glows, it just looks deadly. BUT NO! HE DOES 1 HEART OF DAMAGE FOR EVERY BLOW... 1! The final boss is easy!
Now those are the big three things about TP that really annoy me, there are other minor things that can be improved but today it's Graphics, Intro, music, difficulty and Character development which are the things that stick out like a sore thumb. I one day hope that this fantastic game gets a remake and that some of its flaws can be corrected especially the ones I said above.
If you took the time to read it all, what are your thoughts on my points? Were they your main problems with the game?
Please post what you think could have been done better and what could be improved if a remake was ever done?
Do you think it deserves a remake sometime, as the best selling Zelda game with over 8 million copies sold(excluding OOT combined with OOT3D)?
