Skyward Sword What Was So Difficult About Skyward Sword?

[AncientPoe]

I've seen people mention that Skyward Sword was one of the most difficult of the 3D Zelda games they've played. Rather than derail someone else's original topic, I wanted to start a separate thread. What were the things you found challenging in Skyward Sword? I have trouble relating to this mindset as I found it to be almost insultingly easy in a few ways, so I'd like to hear what other people have to say on the subject. Please refrain from talking about how easy you found it, I don't want people who felt it was difficult to be shouted down.

 

[Iridescence]

I didn't find it very difficult. But due to the combat being centered around motion controls, some moments were frustrating and some moments had a big difficulty spike.

On the cerebral side of things, the story wasn't difficult to digest, and the dungeon, while they're some of the most creative in the series, are overall easier to navigate and solve than in Twilight Princess. Some areas made you think outside the box a bit, which may have stumped some. Also, dowsing and searching for items can become time-consuming, which I wouldn't quite equate to difficulty.

 

[Mercedes]

Nothing?

 

[AncientPoe]

Nothing?

Please kindly listen to the original post. I want commenters talking about what they found hard, not people saying it was easy. This was a simple instruction so that people who genuinely did have difficulty don't feel invalidated. Please follow it.

 

[Snow Queen]

I found it to be difficult but fair. The enemy designs often times require precise slashes, and many enemies can counter or parry your attacks. Many of the puzzles were significantly hard to figure out, and much less obvious. Hearts seemed to be less common than normal. The shield can break, which takes away your defense.

 

[AncientPoe]

I found it to be difficult but fair. The enemy designs often times require precise slashes, and many enemies can counter or parry your attacks. Many of the puzzles were significantly hard to figure out, and much less obvious. Hearts seemed to be less common than normal. The shield can break, which takes away your defense.

Ok, a few things I'm wondering:

enemies- did you find that some were difficult because the motion controls got your attacks wrong? I found that happened a lot.

puzzles- can you think of any specific examples of ones that really stumped you? I can only remember one, and that was more of a mechanical issue (specifically, realizing i could stab those little water droplet fruit things too).

 

[Ronin]

Skyward Sword is less arduous than it is tedious to play. The gameplay is fairly simplistic (deciding which way to swing a sword via the Wiimote), and because of that it may seem repetitious in its own regards; button movesets arguably offer more diversity in terms of control. Additionally, I've always found "button-mashing" to be more reliable since I know that holding down A or B will activate a Spin Attack, whereas swinging the Wiimote more often than not just did a normal attack (whenever I wanted it to do a Spin Attack).

But the true source of SS's mediocrity lies outside of the controls--rather, it exists in and permeates throughout the missions. Normally Nintendo loves doing things in three in Zelda, yet in SS they took that a step farther than they should have, and instead made it a linear, coercive cycle. Starting off from Skyloft, the hub world, Link would fly to one of the three provinces below and complete his assignment, then return in selfsame fashion. That was...pretty much all of the game. Now, let's take that example and apply it to a whole playthrough. You'd have mandatory undertakings such as fighting The Imprisoned (between three to six times), dueling the pirate robots (twice and in the same enclosed space), battling Ghirahim (two repeat battles, one epic fight), and the Silent Realms (three below, one on Skyloft).

That's not counting the various fetchquests strewn throughout the game, such as collecting the windmill gear or getting the "hot tub" from Faron. Another worthy mention is Instructor Owlin's obligatory tutelage on the Air Charge, which should have been introduced at the beginning alongside more enemies in the Sky, and not shoehorned in halfway into the game.

Skyward Sword was a test run, of sorts, designed to try a lot of things out and find out how much the fans would enjoy/dislike it. While it wasn't overly difficult save for a few areas, it mainly suffered from the aforementioned desperate attempts at lengthening the game, and was committed in a very repetitive manner at that. The Imprisoned battles were especially taxing on me, and I really wish that they were implemented without a time limit (what other Zelda boss involves a time limit?) because at times it took me over an hour to progress. Nobody should be troubled with a "race to the top" scenario which automatically equates to the end of the world, let alone three times.

The usual enemies weren't a bother to me, with the exception of the Lizalfos; getting the pattern down was a lot harder than I preconceived and even then it was a matter of the utmost precision.

 

[Jirohnagi]

That Harp oh gods alive that harp. So stupidly stupid. It screwed you up and either messed the song up or your tempo changed randomly.

 

[Link Floyd]

The only reason I can't get past certain things is the motion controls. I think they're cool to a certain extent, but using them all the time is an annoyance.

 

[AncientPoe]

One thing I'm wondering is if people talking about difficulty in relation to this game are distinguishing genuine difficulty from tedium. I'm right with Crusader on that one, there were many aspects of this game that were incredibly reliant on backtracking. Trotting out The Imprisoned three times was just pointless. So I suppose what I should be asking people is something like "did you experience challenges in skill/execution with Skyward Sword", or "did you experience challenges in patience with Skyward Sword?" I suppose there's room in there to ask about challenges in cognition as well.

So for those who did find any measure of difficulty in this game, where did that challenge lie? In physically performing the tasks needed? Fighting enemies, beating bosses, hopping over ledges and the like? Did you have a hard time figuring out a dungeon? Sleuthing out who you needed to talk to next to access a new area? Tracking down various objects or people? Did you have trouble tolerating it all? And if you did have trouble in any of these areas, do you think it was on your end, or on the end of the game designers? (for instance, did it take you a while to figure out the solution to a puzzle, or was the puzzle designed in a very unintuitive fashion?)

 

[AncientPoe]

Oh man, Silent Realm challenges. If the designers top goal was to make them a nerve wracking as possible then A+. Mission Accomplished.

Yeah, The Mining Facility felt like them taking the kid gloves off. I like how the music there perfectly encapsulated what you would find.

 

[Doc]

I distinctly remember two specific spots that I struggled get through. One was in the Earth Temple. I spent ages trying to figure out that there was a bombable wall that you could ride the floating ball through. Even in a subsequent play through, I forgot and couldn't figure it out.

Another was in the Sky Keep (which was pretty challenging already) and I absolutely could not figure out how to get through the Lanayru-esque room with the piece of the triforce. If you don't know which I am talking about, it is the large room with quicksand and a timeshift orb. That puzzle left me frustrated (in a good way).

As for combat, the fighting in SS wasn't too difficult if you can master it quickly. Some can and some can't. If you can't correctly time a shield bash, you're not going to breeze through. I certainly was not doing the best in the beginning.

 

[Spiritual Mask Salesman]

Who said it was hard? Its not that hard, atleast to me it wasn't. In this case I think what people meant by hard is that it was annoying to play due to the motion controls, this has been a heated debate since the game was released. Honestly I think the problem was SS came out at the end of the whole motion controls fad, had it came out two or three years prior turning out exactly as it did I think it would have been more accepted by people maybe. See a lot of people claim it was hard because of the motion controls, a lot of times people say it was faulty, which I guess it could be on occasion, for example if one were to wildly swing the remote Link's sword on the screen would eventually come out of allignment. That's one reason why people say it was hard.

I guess one could say some of the silient realms were challenging, the most challenging dungeon was sky keep, but all in all I wouldn't say the game itself was hard, it was about mild in terms of difficulty it definately could have been better than it turned out.

 

[Princess Niki]

It wasn't that bad the only part I had issues with is whenever I had to fight Ghirahim, I would hurt my wrist trying to break the sword free from his grasp when he caught it. Other than those fights I was fine.

 

[Emmanuel]

I felt that almost any unusual difficulty in Skyward Sword came from the motion controls. Combat was a breath of fresh air compared to previous entries in the series, but there were times that it caused me to stumble. Off hand, I remember being knocked down several times by Deku Babas several times because they would open their mouths one way or another, leaving themselves vulnerable to attack, but only in one direction; I might intend to deliver a vertical strike, but the motion sensor bar would register it as a horizontal strike and the Deku Baba would strike as I recoiled.

The first boss battle with Ghirahim was extremely frustrating for me on my first play through. Like PrincessNiki, my wrist would physically hurt trying to break the sword free from Ghirahim's grasp. Unlike most Zelda bosses, Ghirahim does not have an obvious weak point; you need to beat him in a true sword fight before you can make him vulnerable. This seemed almost impossible before really mastering the motion controls. (I eventually had to "fake him out" by leading the sword in one direction and then rapidly striking from a different angle... it was the only way I could catch him off guard.) Another boss that I found very difficult was Tentalus... there was a very brief window when his eye was vulnerable to being shot, and the arrow had to be aimed so precisely that I often couldn't line it up quickly enough with the Wiimote.

I remember a puzzle-based challenge in the first dungeon where there was an eye on the wall that needed to be disabled to open a doorway. I kept trying to stab at it, slice, shoot at it, etc. When I realized the eye was following my sword around, I tried to make it "dizzy" by swinging my sword back and forth, running in circles, doing spin attacks, etc. Nothing worked. Eventually, I had to look it up online. In the end, I just had to rotate my sword in a circular motion in front of me. It seems so obvious now, but I hadn't anticipated using the motion controls in that way, and I wasn't fully thinking in those dimensions. This wasn't difficult, but it sure was tedious.

And speaking of tedious, do you remember the mini-games in Skyward Sword? It took me dozens of tries to beat the rickety coaster in the time limit. Fun Fun Island was enjoyable, but also required real precision with the motion controls which were finicky. And playing the song on the harp at the Lumpy Pumpkin? Don't even get me started...

For all of the challenges in Skyward Sword, I would agree that there were times when the game was insultingly easy. I remember a particular puzzle on the pirate ship. Link finds himself in a room below the main deck with iron bars in the roof. To proceed, he needs to trigger a timeshift stone by shooting an arrow through the bars up to the top of the ship. This would have been an excellent puzzle, except that the game's camera hands you the solution by panning directly to the timeshift stone above. It was kind of ridiculous.