The silver lining
Visually, Skyward Sword is a success. Taking a somewhat impressionist approach, the aesthetics tend to look like a blend of watercolor paintings and mosaics. This grants the game a colorful and vibrant feel, but it’s also very deliberately used to cover for the system’s underwhelming processing power. At one point someone walked by and said, “My God this game looks terrible!” They had just finished Uncharted 3, so their standards are much higher than the average Wii owner’s will be, and while I still yearn for a magnificent Hyrule in all its HD glory, I disagree that Skyward Sword looks bad. It has a few rough patches, particularly with draw distances, but overall it’s a joy to behold.
Though my favorite part of Skyward Sword is hands-down Fi, the spirit of the sword Link brandishes. Appearing in the form of a robotic girl, Fi is infinitely less annoying than Navi and Midna combined, and she can actually be of use in giving hints or analyzing enemies (somewhat similar to Metroid Prime). Since Link is a voiceless robot himself (not literally), it’s entirely up to characters like Fi, Zelda, and the game’s villains to carry the weight of the dialogue and story. It’s unfortunate that Fi doesn’t track all of your quests, however. The game features a sizable dose of optional sidequests, and once you activate them there’s no way of tracking them, another amateurish oversight on Nintendo’s part. But it makes little difference since the sidequests are boring filler. Why would anyone stop to rescue a cat from a ledge or deliver pumpkin juice when all existence on the planet is being threatened by a demonic force?
Sidequests aren’t the only half-baked attempts to further pad the game; you can now upgrade Link’s equipment or even his potions by finding crafting ingredients. These range from bugs to ores and various other objects, but the entire system is too poorly implemented. You’ll only encounter a limited number of these items during your travels, and I found they tended to be more trouble than it was worth. If I didn’t have the parts I needed to upgrade an item when I visited Skyloft, I’d skip over doing it altogether. And never once did I think to myself, “Damn, I should have upgraded….” So it’s not just a lacking concept that’s been done far better elsewhere, but also a pointless one that doesn’t add anything meaningful to this game.
Conclusion
The more I played Skyward Sword the less I liked it. Like many Nintendo games or even consoles, there are some core features and gimmicks that can be entertaining under very specific circumstances, yet they’re utterly bogged down by obsolete conventions, repetitious filler, and undeniable proof that the Wiimote flat-out doesn’t work as a viable replacement for a standard controller. I did enjoy parts of it here and there, and if you only own a Wii then it’s not like you have many other quality options available to you, but as Nintendo refocuses on next year’s Wii U, this game acts as a somewhat disappointing sendoff to the console that, for better and for worse, changed the gaming industry forever. Even when the many flaws or ineffective controls aren’t getting in the way, it’s all just so familiar. Skyward Sword imitates not only other, better role-playing games and past Mario/Zelda titles, but it also copies and pastes massive chunks of content from within itself as well. I know that fans and Wii loyalists will rabidly delight in this game, but until Nintendo learns some new tricks or, at the very least, can keep up with other modern day developers, I think I’ve finally, reluctantly, outgrown the Zelda series. 65 out of 100
