Better than its Wii counterpart, but still a mediocre Zelda game.
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD (SS) has the unpleasant position of being a Zelda game on the same platform as that other Zelda game on the Switch… Link’s Awakening. I’m kidding of course, it’s Breath of the Wild (BotW). For players who already own or have any interest in owning a Switch, there is no contest which Zelda game is better. BotW is one of the most innovative open world games of the generation. SS in comparison is an HD remake of a ten year old game maligned for its reliance on motion controls and hand holding tutorials.
Fortunately SS is not simply a remake with better graphics. The game includes numerous quality of life improvements like a button-only controller option, less forced tutorials and improved loading times. Players disappointed by the lack of dungeons in BotW will have their fill in SS. The game represents a more traditional Zelda experience and boasts the most creative and elaborate dungeons in the series.
SS should have been an easy homerun for Nintendo, but the game is marred by busywork and annoying backtracking. Environments and enemies are heavily recycled. Everything after the first act of the game becomes a series of collecting various macguffins. And the same bosses are fought multiple times. When I reached the credits, I was disappointed in the amount of padding and filler I endured throughout the journey. The numerous hours spent playing mini-games, pursuing side quests and upgrading gear felt worthless. SS is a game best mainlined for most players.
The plot in Zelda games are not usually a highlight, but SS makes for a promising introduction. SS takes place in the beginning of the Zelda timeline. There is no Hyrule, no royal family and no Master Sword. Link and Zelda are childhood friends and part of a civilization that lives on an island called Skyloft situated above the clouds. Link and the other adolescents in Skyloft train to become knights by riding Skywings as a rite of passage to adulthood. Link wins a contest amongst his peers and is awarded a special gift from Zelda. The two fly together in celebration until suddenly Zelda is hoisted from the skies by a tornado. No one is able to rescue her as the clouds are too thick for the Skywings to penetrate except for Link who uses the reward he won in the contest. Link with the assistance from a magical being that lives in a sword named Fi, dives down past the clouds to rescue Zelda.
The original game on the Wii was infamous for utilizing motion controls. Link’s sword is mapped directly to the Wii-mote. On paper this sounds like a great idea because it forces players to think strategically instead of literally hacking and slashing away at foes. In reality, the game leveraged motion control mechanics to an absurd degree with almost every action requiring motion controls even if it made little sense such as piloting the Skywing and swimming underwater. The HD edition significantly changes this by including a button-only controller option. To be completely transparent, the game can be played with motion controls like the original using the joy-cons but I chose to play the entire game in button-only mode.
The button-only mode makes SS play very similarly to other Zelda games except the sword is mapped to the right analog stick. The controls are somewhat intuitive but require some practice. It took me a while to reliably execute the spin-attack and fatal blow because they require moving the analog stick back and forth in a specific rhythm horizontally and vertically respectfully. The camera controls will irk some players as the only way to manually control the camera is to hold down the L button and then move the right analog stick. Even after twenty-five hours of playing SS, I would accidentally draw my sword when I wanted to control the camera. It is possible to play the game the “old-school way” by pressing on the ZL button to center the camera behind Link. Strangely the Y button which is used to recalibrate the joycon positions is completely unused in button-only mode. Nintendo could have added an option to map the Y button to draw/sheath the sword but they never thought of this.
The general gameplay in SS is relatively similar to other Zelda games. Link explores a level, reaches a dungeon, discovers an item and uses the item to help with puzzle solving. A strange outlier is that even compared to past games in the series, there’s a scarcity of environments and enemy designs. Throughout the journey, Link will revisit the same places numerous times fighting the same enemies with different palette swaps. Another outlier is the introduction of Spirit Realm challenges. They are obstacle courses where Link is stripped of all of his items and has to collect 15 Spirit Orbs while avoiding getting caught. Neither of these outliers are particularly enjoyable and SS becomes astonishingly stale even before the halfway point.
Skyward Sword is a solid yet flawed experience that runs at a silky smooth 60 FPS in both docked and portable mode. I enjoyed the intricate dungeons, a greater emphasis on the plot and quality of life improvements, but the amount of backtracking completely spoiled my experience. If the game was named anything other than the Legend of Zelda, I would have been able to overlook its shortcomings. But because of the pedigree of the franchise, Skyward Sword is simply nowhere near as good as other Zelda games and best left ignored unless you can buy it at a steep discount.