Around 10 batteries and a wrist injury I finally beat the game so lets talk about it.
Let’s start with the main problem: the game thinks you’re stupid. Remember how Twilight Princess’s Hyrule Field was like huge but without content, well in SS the dungeons are just 1 floor and just 6 rooms, but to make up for how short they are they have big rooms but without content!!!!
So you get inside a room, kill one or two mobs(or none at all since this game lacks enemies) get in the middle and press C to look around until you find a switch to open the door. That’s it, no riddles, no puzzles, no anything. Just find a switch or a cracked wall which is hiding a switch. Remember those days figuring out stuff like burning webs or solving light mirror puzzles or moving statues in shadow temples or moving blocks in an ice surface? well there’s none of that in here, just look around up or down and shoot the switch.
Well i guess technically there are puzzles but they are like… they have these notes in the room that practically tells you exactly what to do step by step. like wtf they don’t even mask stuff with riddles or a poem or something, they tell you what the fuck you have to do and you just waste time reading it because the “puzzles” are obvious.
I think even resident evil 4 had harder puzzles than this game.
Worthy note than the dungeon design is awful. You always go in the room you need to go, no options, no rooms with different paths, it’s all straightforward. There was only one dungeon that actually felt like one the fire sanctuary, and it lacked a boss! they recycled Ghirahim who you also fought as boss of the first dungeon and the battle doesn’t change at all it’s the same but takes like 3 more hits to kill him, this is just lazy.
Speaking of bosses, I seriously thought they couldn’t get easier than the twilight princess bosses… I was so wrong. One of the bosses comes directly from Monsters Inc. So I guess this game is aimed at 4 year olds who can barely kill jelly mobs. Maybe this is the reason for the lack of puzzles.
So much for motion plus shit, they didn’t implement it in any way other than swimming and flying which was really atrocious. The sword moves in all angles thing was totally wasted since to kill the mobs just strike once from the left once from the right and you break their defence. The plants are also a waste of time lamest way to showcase the motion plus, pfffft move your hand up and strike down or do it horizontally seriously it’s no different from pressing b to kill the plants in OOT, you do it in the same amount of time but dont get tired. So motion plus for the sword is irrelevant and lame. One would think “oh man oh man we get epic sword fights now right right?” well no, the last two bosses are sword users and they are easier than the giant jelly boss in Minish Cap (which is a pretty ok game than everyone should play at least once).
Seriously with Zant in Twilight Princess you had to figure out how to attack him depending on the stage he casted and evade his attacks, not exactly hard but entertaining, now how do you kill the second to last boss? just wave your damn wii remote in any way, motion plus my ass just wave it he doesn’t defend or attack. You just have to push him from a platform that’s it. And how do you beat the last boss? when he attacks jump back and wave your sword, then he gets mad and you have to switch strategies to a more complex pattern which is: when he attacks you jump to the side and wave your sword. That’s it, you go from jumping back to jumping to the side.
Now I don’t remember exactly how was the fight with Ganondorf in TP but it couldn’t be easier than this. At least there was a horse fight, that was more interesting even if only for visuals… and a fire circle damaging you like in Ocarina of Time. here there’s nothing, no obstacles or something. No falling ceiling or having to time your spin attack to deflect enemy beams, nothing!
And the last boss is called “DEMISE”, oh come on! what’s the next big bad going to be called “DARKNESS”? he’s also a generic ogre thing. If anyone played or watched Fate Stay Night the last boss in zelda is berseker.
Now from bosses to the standard enemies, I think there’s the same amount of bosses as minions. The same enemies you see in the first area are the ones you encounter in the whole game except they change colors to show that they’re stronger, but since you also upgrade your sword they take the same amount of hits to kill so it’s irrelevant. You get a good chunk of bats, jelly mobs, plants, some mini ogres and sand dwellers. There are a couple of more special grunts but they appear like once or twice, like some phoenix mobs that appear in two areas but you fight like three in each area.
Going back to puzzles there’s this area Lanayru Desert which revolves around time traveling. Not like Chrono Trigger time travel where you go to a different area and explore and make changes and go to the present and get the reward then to the past to use the reward etc… just hit a switch get in a mine car and watch a scene of how a circle around you becomes the past until the car reaches its destination. That would have been a good place for some puzzles but no, just follow get in the mine car and that’s it.
Actually this is the whole game, this is Skyward Sword. A really huge area where you hit a switch and watch how a cutscene makes everything for you for 2 minutes. Grab your item then hit the next switch so that a cutscene can create a path for you.
Oh god and the beginning of that desert area is annoying as hell, you get this bug thing which can carry bombs and drop them in some door things to make platforms appear in the sand but the process is really slow and tedious. And you cant direct it with the joystick you have to bend your wrist. This process is overused in the area, you have to do it five times for each sand pit and then do in the dungeon as well to reach a switches that are not even hidden. It’s a waste of time and to think that the only thing of the game that actually feels like you’re making something is just watching a bug for five minutes carrying a bomb and then repeat it four more times.
The hookshot (clawsomething in SS) gets no love. the places where you can use it are very limited and you use it as much as the bow which also gets no love. You can’t Z target and use your bow, if you are z targeting a mob or boss and choose the bow you go into the normal bow view, what’s the point of z targeting then?
How about that awesome fairy who plays the role of Navi and Midna? she has near infinite knowledge granted from the Goddess so she must be great help (not that you’ll ever need it in this game). She’s called Fi but we all know her real name is Captain Obvious.
Someone tells you, hey you have to go here and get this from this spot, after that Fi says: “Master we should go here and retrieve this from this spot to advance”. You hit a switch and the layout of a room changes and Fi says “Master the layout of this room changed”. You see a door with the boss lock mark and Fi says: “Master I believe the boss is in this room”, well no shit Sherlock. If you ask help for a boss she says something like: “This boss is in fire because it lives in a volcano”, then you get a choice for more information or stop, press more info and she says: “That’s all the information I got, but instead of stopping there she throws you these three dialogue boxes of how if you ever need help you should press the down arrow on the D-pad. She always says this. ALWAYS!.
Speaking of always, another annoying thing is: If you catch a bug the game tells you its name and a little info with funny style, ell ok now I know what bug I got, turn off your Wii and turn it on again and catch the same bug and the message appears again. And this goes not just for bugs but for other objects too!, and it’s not just a dialogue box, it automatically opens the gear menu screen and takes like 10 seconds to increase the number of that object and another 10 to close the screen so you can return to the game!!!
WTF WHY?
Characters in other Zelda games usually have some charm that goes with their wacky designs and style of the game like Malon from lon lon ranch, the Kakariko windmill guy and the Gravekeeper. Well in Skyward Sword there are almost no secondary characters. That’s right no other civilizations to go into their towns and talk and get quests and do stuff. There are some Mogma moles but you only meet two who appear every 10 hours and are just annoying.
There are like three more but you only save them from some chains and they never appear again, well two do appear again but one just for like 10 seconds and the other one creates some minesweeper game.
The Parella race appear just one time. They are like six in total and all say the same, something like: “The queen is over there” or “I don’t like you”. There is also a kikwi race composed of like five members. They hide from the monsters and you have to find them so you can never talk to them again, except the elder who says irrelevant stuff so he might as well disappear like the other four Kikwis.
That’s it…… oh right Skylof, island of the creepy people. There are like fifteen people there all weird just because they need to be all different. They’re all very forgettable except for Groose who plays a part in the story and is just a cool bro. Theres no character charm in your main town there just creepiness.
Now the “important” side characters are Three Dragons who are the land protectors or something along those lines. Well they are important because they are big. Two have the same design with a different color palette and the other has a beard. Why is it always dragons? why cant they use sacred dogs or sacred snakes or sacred zebras or anything, why is it always fucking dragons? WHY?
I seriously thought the last boss’s true form was going to be a dragon because of how original this game is. Any creature is fine except a dragon…
…
*Sigh* I wish the last boss would have been a dragon.
The harp has to be the most useless plot instrument in any Zelda game. There’s no using it to command statues and solve puzzles (obviously because there are none here) not even change day and night in an instant, NOTHING!.
You don’t learn melodies to play every now and then to teleport or anything, just get your harp when you see butterflies and strum it the way you want, fast or slow it doesn’t matter you’ll summon a sheika stone or wall painting to get hearts, fairies or arrows which you wont be needing anyway because the bow is horrible.
Who the hell came up with dowsing? who approved it and why? It’s horrible.
Why can’t someone give you a clue like maybe with a view on the place for a couple of seconds so you can explore around and find a way to get there moving blocks and sutff?. Just select downing which prevents you from running and follow it until you find a Kikwi in the ground, boring and slower than it needs to be. It’s lame and you use it trough the whole game. This is one of the worst search systems I’ve seen.
One usually don’t expect too much in a zelda story, big bad wants to resurrect ganondorf or become ruler of the world and you have to collect a number of jewelry to create a holy object to defeat the bad guy. All of that is here, but to get a certain object you have to get two objects and to find those objects you have to find like 10 more objects. the same for the others.
Like the water dragon knows I’m the goddess’s chosen one, yet she is like: oh you want my piece of the song to save the world from the evil being who matches the supreme celestial being in strenght? well get like 30 notes from underwater and form it, I won’t give it to you because i need to extend the game somehow even if it’s in the lamest way. I have the damn triforce in my hand what more proof can she need? things like that should be side quests or minigames.
This game has a really lame way to extend itself. You beat the first three dungeons, and then they make you run through them again to find a switch that you couldn’t reach before so you can get a new item. Why can’t that be in a new dungeon? They just make you go to the same places you already went to find just one more room where you were missing a glove or something. Theres this time where you’re in the volcano and the enemies take away all your gear, and they make you sneak around the same area but they added fences and some towers all over the place to make it look like a new area.
Theres this boss called The Imprisoned which you fight like five times because who cares about having different bosses in a game.
Not counting the DS and CD-i games because I haven’t played them. This is the worst Zelda game by far. It’s a stain in the franchise and I hope it’s not a glimpse of how it will evolve.
salemchon 
You sound upset.
Possibly the best game series ever!