CoN 25th Anniversary: 1997-2022
Skyward sword review

Posted: 11th April 2012 08:58

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My review:

GameplayI am going to separate this into several sections:

The combat for the most part is excellent.Everything is in real time,and you can slice in 7 different directions.Some enemies can be a bit overpowered,but that has to do with the difficulty curve at times,like trying to stab beamos in the eye.

New items:

Beetle:Its a remote controlled flying robot bug.This thing allows you to pick up objects,and it uses the same flight as the bird you use to fly in the clouds.
Mitts:The first one allows you to just dig up rupies,but the second one allows you to literally dive into the ground and dig a tunnel underground.
Bellows:This one i didn't like at all.I wasn't excited about getting it all.This one allows you to magically blow wind at dusty objects,and destroys the dust magically in the air.
Whip:This is yet another object you get.Its actually kinda cool,and the wiimote format thing makes it kinda fun to use.I liked using it to pull enemies on the floor and beat them.I wish there was a boss like that,because that would actually be kinda fun.

New flight mechanic:The new flight mechanic was good,but it still felt a bit stiff.
You are going to end up being very frustrated trying to do certain stuff related to flight,and god help us all if you have a time limit with flight in it.

Other stuff that uses the innovative wiimotion:You can roll bombs with a movement of your wii,and even play a harp.The controls for the harp are very simple.

Mini games:Most of the mini games aren't bad at all.

Bug catching game:This involves memorizing all the locations of the bugs and catching them with a net(I recommend you upgrade your net first to make catching things easier.

Fun Fun island Rupee game:This game involves a game of luck of flying into rings and getting a X10 bonus(X2 per ring) and landing on the 50 rupee sectin of the spinning wheel.This is a pretty annoying game,and the rewards are less than the cost.

Bamboo cutting game:Good for ingredients really early on,not worth it later on.

Harp game:You play according to the rythm of the people watching you.You have to pick one of two.If you do badly,you get nothing,if you do mediocre,you get nothing.If you do great,you get some rupies.

Mine cart game:This one involves a time limit,and not falling off the cart.You have to steer the mine cart with your wiimote,to prevent falling off the sides.I kinda liked this game the first time,and its actually pretty easy too.

Boss Rush mode:This game involves fighting 1 boss you choose with only what you had at the time of that boss,and after the first boss you choose and kill,the fights get chosen for you.I thought this was well implemented,but please train on some of tose bosses because its going to take time mastering all the weaknesses of that boss.The rewards get better as you advance,but past level 8,the rewards are just money.

Digging game:A waste to do.It is basically windows landmine game.You have to dig up rupees,and the better the rupee,the more likely there is a bomb hidden near it,so you are supposed to guess which patch has a bomb on it.

Hero mode:This mode is a hard mode of this game,and you don't get hearts and supposedly a ocarina of time mode of some sort.


Side Quests:
Gratitude crystals quest:This is just like the skullatula sidequest.You get goodies as you improve,and you get to see something at the end for completing it

Goddess Cubes:These unlock islands you can fly to,and treasure chests you can get.There are 26 or 27 i think in total.

Music:The music seems fitting a lot of the time.I have a few pieces of music that stick out more than others,like the hyrule theme remixed and the flight theme and temple theme.

Graphics:The characters seemed detailed most of the time,but there is a weird graphical expression on fi's face,like she is having some sort of frontal lobotamy or something.She begins to spaz out as you play the harp and it always ends up making me laugh.Also:A lot of the time,i don't find fi all that usefull.Whenever you get stuck,she usually gives you useless information,like:How long you've been playing and hints on how to play the game,rather than hints on what to do in the room.

Overall score:9.0

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

Post #199994
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Posted: 16th April 2012 08:47

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I want to add something else:I liked the new villain:Demise,not that other guy ghaandra or whatever his name is.The other guy looked silly.Gaandra looked as if he wanted to rape link.Also:Ghaandra was annoying as tey get, but really really easy during the game.

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 25th April 2012 10:08

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Lunarian
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I haven't actually made it to the first boss fight in Hero Mode yet so I can't comment there, but I felt like the game was really well made. For me, the artistry was brilliant. It made me think of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess art combined into one.

The story was a lot of fun and I felt like the dungeons were pretty challenging.

I also think I liked pretty much all of the weapons and items.

The Wii remote technology was really cool and made some of the fights a lot of fun, especially in
Possible spoilers: highlight to view
the final fight with Ghirahim where you have to slash his fire blades back at him like you're playing tennis.

However, I often found myself slashing when I stabbed and constantly having to recalibrate/recenter the cross-hair when using items like the Gust Bellows and the sling shot . That drove me nuts, especially considering the stab/slash mix up would generally happen in really bad spots. I had 16 hearts taken out by the sand scorpion mini-boss before hitting him once I got rid of his claws simply because every time I would stab Link would attack with a vertical slash. It got unbelievably frustrating. Still not anything that really ruined the game. Just recalibrate the remote and start the fight over.

I really loved the time shift crystal zones and the puzzles in Lanayru. Lanayru was probably my favorite region (which is rare because really I'm an Eldin Province kind of guy; Death Mountain, fire, all that). There was something about the atmosphere and the puzzles that almost made me feel like I was playing A Link to the Past in 3D.

I found the guide character, Fi, in this game to be more useful than any of the other guides in the series. Some of the bosses posed a challenge finding their weaknesses. I often spent about ten minutes getting smacked around before figuring out what I should be doing. Fi constantly provided me with information about the enemies I was facing and I loved it. I felt like she was really user friendly for someone who stepped away from the game for a e days and forgot what they were doing. If you probe her for the right information it's really easy to figure out where you need t be going, objective-wise.

I was disappointed in the lack of side-quests. I feel like previous games in the series have a lot of extra activity to stretch the play time or give reason for replay. This one doesn't really have that. My reason for replay is really because I'm interested in finishing it on hero mode and I enjoyed the game a lot the first time. The game had about 60 hours of playtime and about 50 of those hours were spent doing mandatory quests.

Overall, I really enjoyed it. Would probably have to say it's been a really long time since I played a game I enjoyed that much. All things considered I would say that the music, art work, and puzzle work, combined with the story made it my favorite game in the series so far.

I give it a 9.5 out of 10

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles
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Posted: 25th April 2012 17:45

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I'm glad you enjoyed it,i did too.

I also agree about the recalibrating.In some areas,the game will drive you nuts,but overall:Its very well done.


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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 25th April 2012 18:43

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Black Waltz
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All the sidequests in SS were collect missions, which honestly is what most of the Zelda sidequest are anyway, but I didn't find these ones to be particularly worth it considering how tedious flying tends to be. All the quests involving Scrapper are fine though.

--------------------
I fear my heart and fear my soul
Life goes on, it surely will,
Without me and I wonder:
Will I ever see light again?

Life goes on...
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Posted: 25th April 2012 19:40

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Quote (Sherick @ 25th April 2012 13:43)
All the sidequests in SS were collect missions, which honestly is what most of the Zelda sidequest are anyway, but I didn't find these ones to be particularly worth it considering how tedious flying tends to be. All the quests involving Scrapper are fine though.

I didn't do all of the side quests. Not even close. When I finished the game I had 32 gratitude crystals. I believe there are 80.

The problem I had with the side quests is that the gratitude business didn't make me feel like I really got much out of the side quests. I want a few of them to yield really good rewards from the commissioner of the quest.

It's also my understanding that doing the quest where you find the missing kid is what really opens up the string of side-quests and you won't really see many available until you find the kid and Link learns about the gratitude crystals. If that's true, I think it kind of sucks, and even if it's not there is still the fact that that specific quest does in fact give you the ability to trade the crystals for treasure and items. Skip that one and there's no point in doing hardly any of the side quests.. Someone could simply decide not to do the one quest and then never be able to reap the rewards of any others until they give in and look up a walk through.. which I don't really mind going to a guide for help, but the best part of Zelda is figuring out the puzzles on my own, to me.

This post has been edited by Sephiroth on 25th April 2012 19:43

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles
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Posted: 25th April 2012 20:42

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Black Waltz
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All the gratitude crystals gets you is a larger wallet. And no, saving the kid is not mandatory to do the miscellaneous side quests since none of them are connected to the gratitude crystal quests.

--------------------
I fear my heart and fear my soul
Life goes on, it surely will,
Without me and I wonder:
Will I ever see light again?

Life goes on...
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Posted: 25th April 2012 22:04

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Quote (Sherick @ 25th April 2012 20:42)
All the gratitude crystals gets you is a larger wallet. And no, saving the kid is not mandatory to do the miscellaneous side quests since none of them are connected to the gratitude crystal quests.

That sidequest is much like the skullatulla quest in ocarina of time,or:OOT.

The results are also exactly the same.


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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 26th April 2012 05:26

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Magi, what did you not like so much about the Gust Bellows?

I really enjoyed the roll it played in the giant sand scorpion fights. Of course, it could be better with tweaking, I believe.

This post has been edited by Sephiroth on 26th April 2012 05:27

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles
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Posted: 26th April 2012 08:02

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Some of the items,i've clearly seen in other zelda games.Some of them weren't as fun as others.The whip for an example,reminded me a lot of castlevania.

When i got the whip,i instantly said:Here we go in zeldavania.The bellows was ok i guess,but i liked the beetle more.

The only real downside,is that you are actually flying it like a bird,rather than having decent controls over the flight of stuff in this game.These aren't that bad with the bird,but they become seriously irritating when you can't hit your mark,because your bird skids too far and misses the mark.It becomes an even bigger annoyance when you are on a time limit.

This problem also persists with the beetle,and becomes far more visible.
I like the idea,but i wish they would fix that.

The scorpion fight wasn't that bad.Stabbing at times was hard,but it was still plausible.What was really annoying,is doing it to the beamos.I swear,beamos are the hardest enemies in the game due to the controls,and if you fail,you get instantly electrocuted.The worse thing is:In some areas,there are multiple enemies with stun rods,and they will instantly gang rape you while stunned.

Most fights in this game aren't too hard themselves,and here are a few examples:The final boss:

There was a moment,where i actually had the pattern down to almost enough to block every single attack,and counter attack every attack.I did do this fight over and over,but it was the second fight that kept killing me.The difficulty,doesn't come from luck based or artificial means.Instead,it is hard until you know the strategy itself.Once you know how to kill the scorpion,or ghaadra in his last form,then you have it easy.I think that one of the few bosses that was actually annoying to kill,was demise himself,and that was in arena,because it is so annoying.You also have sort of a time limit,so its a race against time to bring him down.

If you want strategies,i can give you them in a private message to prevent spoiling for everybody else.

Any other questions?

This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 26th April 2012 08:11

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 26th April 2012 17:20

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Thanks, but I enjoyed working out my own strategy for the boss fights.

I did the final fight multiple times too, but I wouldn't say it was terribly hard. The reason I did it so much was because it took me forever to realize I could steal his lightening and use the Skyward Strike to stun him. Once I realized I could do that I gave it another go and killed him in about 30 seconds after the second phase of the battle came.

I do have one question though.. Who is Ghandra? Are you talking about Ghirahim?

http://zelda.wikia.com/wiki/Ghirahim

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles
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Posted: 26th April 2012 20:48

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Yeah,i meant ghirahim.

Actually:I had some similar problems at first too.
The first form was pretty easy for me,but the second form screwed me over a few times due to having to wait for lightning to strike.

Doing this game in hero mode must be painfull.


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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 26th April 2012 21:23

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It's not bad until something goes wrong. I think for Hero Mode to really be proper the Wii remote issues need to be fixed. Though, it's not going to stop me from finishing it in Hero Mode.

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles
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Posted: 27th April 2012 10:23

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Right now i am playing a different game,but i might come back some day to test the higher difficulty.


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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 27th April 2012 17:59
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Quote (Sephiroth @ 26th April 2012 17:20)
I did the final fight multiple times too, but I wouldn't say it was terribly hard. The reason I did it so much was because it took me forever to realize I could steal his lightening and use the Skyward Strike to stun him.

I didn't realize this either. I killed him very very slowly, one slash at a time. Only after beating the game and watching some videos on youtube
Possible spoilers: highlight to view
did I learn you could use lightening/stun him.


The final boss was really cool, but far and away the greatest boss in Skyward Sword (maybe in Zelda history?) is Koloktos! Man that battle was amazing to me. I was very happy that
Possible spoilers: highlight to view
the Thunder Dragon lets you replay boss battles.


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Posted: 27th April 2012 19:56

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Quote (BoBear2681 @ 27th April 2012 17:59)
[QUOTE=BoBear2681
is Koloktos! Man that battle was amazing to me. I was very happy that
Possible spoilers: highlight to view
the Thunder Dragon lets you replay boss battles.

I personally thought that demise was better as a final boss than ganon,and i usually don't say that.



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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 27th April 2012 20:30

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Black Waltz
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Koloktos was a great boss. I didn't realize until the Thunder Challenge that you can destroy his feet before you take out his arms, making him completely vulnerable. happy.gif

That battle though was epic the first time. I felt exhausted afterwards. Demise was a really fantastic final boss; you really couldn't even contemplate defeating him without the Hero Shield. Of course you could also
Possible spoilers: highlight to view
whip out the Bug Net and make him drop his guard
.

--------------------
I fear my heart and fear my soul
Life goes on, it surely will,
Without me and I wonder:
Will I ever see light again?

Life goes on...
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Posted: 27th April 2012 20:34

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AHH thats the fight i was talking about:Koloktos.
That was easilyone of my favorite fights.


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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 27th April 2012 20:40

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Quote (Sherick @ 27th April 2012 15:30)
Demise was a really fantastic final boss; you really couldn't even contemplate defeating him without the Hero Shield.

It's actually not that bad. Once you figure out the timing for all of his moves you can stick and move instead of using the shield and you won't get thrown off balance. I never got the Hylian Shield . I finished the game with upgraded Sacred Shield (Goddess Shield). It recharges so there was plenty of juice when I needed it.

This post has been edited by Sephiroth on 27th April 2012 20:43

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Climhazzard is the timeless evil robot who runs some of the cool stuff at CoN (mostly logging chat, since there are no quizzes at the moment), all the while watching and waiting for his moment to take over the world. -Tiddles
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Posted: 27th April 2012 21:48

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Quote (Sephiroth @ 27th April 2012 20:40)
Quote (Sherick @ 27th April 2012 15:30)
Demise was a really fantastic final boss; you really couldn't even contemplate defeating him without the Hero Shield.

It's actually not that bad. Once you figure out the timing for all of his moves you can stick and move instead of using the shield and you won't get thrown off balance. I never got the Hylian Shield . I finished the game with upgraded Sacred Shield (Goddess Shield). It recharges so there was plenty of juice when I needed it.

Do it just for completion sake.

Also:Thanks guys for keeping this topic so active.

I never knew there were so many passionate zelda lovers on this site.


This post has been edited by Magitek_slayer on 27th April 2012 21:49

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We are stardust.Our bodies are made from the guts of exploding stars.

Neil Degrasse Tyson.

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Posted: 27th April 2012 22:57

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Black Waltz
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Quote (Sephiroth @ 27th April 2012 15:40)
Quote (Sherick @ 27th April 2012 15:30)
Demise was a really fantastic final boss; you really couldn't even contemplate defeating him without the Hero Shield.

It's actually not that bad. Once you figure out the timing for all of his moves you can stick and move instead of using the shield and you won't get thrown off balance. I never got the Hylian Shield . I finished the game with upgraded Sacred Shield (Goddess Shield). It recharges so there was plenty of juice when I needed it.

I didn't really use it either once I memorized the pattern, but you still don't really wanna go in with the Sacred Shield, because of his barrages that thing will break pretty quickly especially in Hero Mode.

--------------------
I fear my heart and fear my soul
Life goes on, it surely will,
Without me and I wonder:
Will I ever see light again?

Life goes on...
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