blubb
Ash Gala Wonderful!
- Joined
- Mar 9, 2010
- Location
- 49.9°N 8.2°E
Obvious spoilers in here, not going through the hassle of hiding every single one separately, so be warned.
Gameplay and controls:
I think they did a good job with the motion controls overall. Never had any of the problems other people complained, only when I hectically flailed the Wiimote in the earlier boss battles, but this was obviously not the game's fault. Not panicking but calming down there helps a whole lot! The swimming felt a bit unnatural at the beginning but one could get used to it after a while. It confused me that there was a switch from stick to motion if you changed from surface to underwater. The only complaint I have about the bird was the need to constantly flap just to maintain speed. This may make sense physically but could get slightly annoying after a time. This should've been mapped to a button or completely dismissed (auto-flap).
The number of dungeons was OK, I just felt that some of them were a little short (Earth Temple). Enemies finally did some decent damage again after the cakewalks that were WW and TP. Also, bosses were very creative IMO and varied from man-sized/quick to giant/slow. I'm one of the few people who wouldn't have liked it if the Fire Sanctuary's boss had been a "cool looking" but gameplay-wise boring huge dragon popping out of nowhere à la Argarok with the usual defeating method (use dungeon item on obvious weak spot then hack/slash away, repeat twice). I prefer it the way it is with Ghirahim.
I generally enjoyed the new items like the beetle, but some could've been implemented more creatively (hookshot, whip). The Silent Realms were a welcome addition to the gameplay but since there were four of them they could've mixed up the concept a little more between them (by for example making them having to do something with the associated Triforce part and the fourth one a challenging mix).
In my personal taste, the overworld should've had more possibilities to explore, but I'll take it as an intentional design choice to not do so ("dungeon-like overworld"). Oh, and I would've preferred a connected OW with maybe some additional regions like ice or swamp.
What I didn't like at all was the excessive hand-holding by Fi and being forced to sit through so many cutscenes and tutorials in the first couple hours of the game. They really should've made that optional instead of assuming that none of those playing SS has ever played a Zelda game before and that everyone cares a lot for story (I personally don't).
Overall the gameplay and progression felt much more "fluid" than in any previous 3D Zelda game, which was certainly also an effect of the new ability to run. The flow of the game would've been perfect if there weren't that many mandatory Fi/cutscene/tutorial interruptions.
Art style and graphics:
This was pretty "meh" for me. Neither amazing or breath-taking to me nor did I totally dislike it. I generally prefer OoT3D and Wii U trailer style, those have the best balance between "credibility" (= so that you can somehow feel like you're in the game and associate it with reality) and "fantasy", not distorted but not too realistic and with many details. Here I felt the detail level was rather low when looking at single textures like Link's skin or single leaves, but the overall picture was better and very rich in contrast while not exaggerating it like WW did. Just one thing I really couldn't stand: Link's lips. Seriously, since when do men inject botox there?
The technical level of the graphics was indeed a bit weak for 2011, the total lack of anti-aliasing combined with the low resolution led to very visible staircase artefacts and the clearly visible polygons even on main characters such as Link really made it look more like a 90s game. Yes the Wii hasn't got the best capabilities, but they managed to make much better looking games with visibly less artefacts and polygons for the same system with SMG, SMG2 and Xenoblade, so no excuse here. Playing it on Dolphin, cranking up the resolution to 4x and disabling the ugly DOF (distance blur) effect at least got rid of the staircases but the polygons and low-res, low detail textures are still there. Still, this of course didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the game too much.
Music:
They did a good job here again. I personally prefer TP's soundtrack by a little but that's just complaining on a very high level. Once again there were lots of very memorable tracks from beginning to end, at least to me. The atmosphere was usually caught very well by the music, and the timeshift effects on the BGM added to that. Nothing much else to say here.
Finally, even though it might sound like a lot of complaints, most of them are rather minor. I'd give this game around 9.2/10, therefore it ranks only below aLttP/MM (both my favourites) and above OoT for me.
Gameplay and controls:
I think they did a good job with the motion controls overall. Never had any of the problems other people complained, only when I hectically flailed the Wiimote in the earlier boss battles, but this was obviously not the game's fault. Not panicking but calming down there helps a whole lot! The swimming felt a bit unnatural at the beginning but one could get used to it after a while. It confused me that there was a switch from stick to motion if you changed from surface to underwater. The only complaint I have about the bird was the need to constantly flap just to maintain speed. This may make sense physically but could get slightly annoying after a time. This should've been mapped to a button or completely dismissed (auto-flap).
The number of dungeons was OK, I just felt that some of them were a little short (Earth Temple). Enemies finally did some decent damage again after the cakewalks that were WW and TP. Also, bosses were very creative IMO and varied from man-sized/quick to giant/slow. I'm one of the few people who wouldn't have liked it if the Fire Sanctuary's boss had been a "cool looking" but gameplay-wise boring huge dragon popping out of nowhere à la Argarok with the usual defeating method (use dungeon item on obvious weak spot then hack/slash away, repeat twice). I prefer it the way it is with Ghirahim.
I generally enjoyed the new items like the beetle, but some could've been implemented more creatively (hookshot, whip). The Silent Realms were a welcome addition to the gameplay but since there were four of them they could've mixed up the concept a little more between them (by for example making them having to do something with the associated Triforce part and the fourth one a challenging mix).
In my personal taste, the overworld should've had more possibilities to explore, but I'll take it as an intentional design choice to not do so ("dungeon-like overworld"). Oh, and I would've preferred a connected OW with maybe some additional regions like ice or swamp.
What I didn't like at all was the excessive hand-holding by Fi and being forced to sit through so many cutscenes and tutorials in the first couple hours of the game. They really should've made that optional instead of assuming that none of those playing SS has ever played a Zelda game before and that everyone cares a lot for story (I personally don't).
Overall the gameplay and progression felt much more "fluid" than in any previous 3D Zelda game, which was certainly also an effect of the new ability to run. The flow of the game would've been perfect if there weren't that many mandatory Fi/cutscene/tutorial interruptions.
Art style and graphics:
This was pretty "meh" for me. Neither amazing or breath-taking to me nor did I totally dislike it. I generally prefer OoT3D and Wii U trailer style, those have the best balance between "credibility" (= so that you can somehow feel like you're in the game and associate it with reality) and "fantasy", not distorted but not too realistic and with many details. Here I felt the detail level was rather low when looking at single textures like Link's skin or single leaves, but the overall picture was better and very rich in contrast while not exaggerating it like WW did. Just one thing I really couldn't stand: Link's lips. Seriously, since when do men inject botox there?
The technical level of the graphics was indeed a bit weak for 2011, the total lack of anti-aliasing combined with the low resolution led to very visible staircase artefacts and the clearly visible polygons even on main characters such as Link really made it look more like a 90s game. Yes the Wii hasn't got the best capabilities, but they managed to make much better looking games with visibly less artefacts and polygons for the same system with SMG, SMG2 and Xenoblade, so no excuse here. Playing it on Dolphin, cranking up the resolution to 4x and disabling the ugly DOF (distance blur) effect at least got rid of the staircases but the polygons and low-res, low detail textures are still there. Still, this of course didn't affect my overall enjoyment of the game too much.
Music:
They did a good job here again. I personally prefer TP's soundtrack by a little but that's just complaining on a very high level. Once again there were lots of very memorable tracks from beginning to end, at least to me. The atmosphere was usually caught very well by the music, and the timeshift effects on the BGM added to that. Nothing much else to say here.
Finally, even though it might sound like a lot of complaints, most of them are rather minor. I'd give this game around 9.2/10, therefore it ranks only below aLttP/MM (both my favourites) and above OoT for me.