I beat The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword over the weekend, three years after its release. Because half the fun is figuring out the puzzles in the dungeons, I swore I wouldn't play it except in the company of friends, i.e. Jen or Paul, so that's why it's taken awhile. I feel it's a solid addition to the series. According to the new Nintendo timeline, this is chronologically the first game in the series (I'll write a post about that shit some day), so they tried to intertwine of the Zelda back story with the goddesses this time around. In the end it doesn't really matter because all Zeldas are more or less the same shit with different flavors. There's Link, you've got the Master Sword, and there are dungeons you have to beat. And really, that's why we're playing this shit. Ultimately though I feel this is a step back from Twilight Princess.

Since Ocarina of Time, more often than not Link has some sort of companion, probably as a method to deal with him being a silent protagonist. There's Ocarina of Time's Navi, Majora's Mask Tatl, or Minish Cap's Ezlo. I've ranted about Skyward Sword's Fi before, but there's also the problem that she's completely emotionless. If you're serving as Link's voice, give me some sort of personality. I don't care if it's a bitch like Tatl or Midna, but give me something. Instead Nintendo created some sort of machine that can only generate lines that are either completely obvious or annoying. Unlike other games where your heart would break a bit at parting, I was so fucking glad when Fi was gone. Leave and never come back.

The second is the controls. They really tried to utilize the Wiimote this time around, and Link will swing his sword the same way you would the Wiimote. Consequently half the enemies had to be hit a certain way, like vertically or horizontally. Okay, that's fine. But then there were some enemies that you had to trick; you had to move your sword in one direction so that they'd guard themselves that way, and then hit them in another direction. Actually accomplishing this was a goddamned trial because as far as I could tell that sword was going all over the place. This is normally when I start whining about the Wii, but when Moham tried it he had no problems at all, so perhaps it's just my inability to play video games.

Fuck those sneaking sections. I actually had to put the game down several times because they frustrated me so. I don't know why they keep on insisting on putting this shit in Zelda games. I hated it when they started in Wind Waker and it's never gotten any better.

A lesser complaint is the upper and lower world; each time you wanted to enter another area, you had to launch yourself into the sky and fly yourself to it, which reminded me of a shitty version of Wind Waker. I was actually okay with the sailing because there were interesting islands to explore in it, but here's nothing. The game is literally wasting my time making me go from place to place like this. Yeah, there are small islands but there's nothing of interest in them so you just fly past them.

Besides that, the dungeons were fine and there were new additions to Link's repertoire that were fun. In particular I liked the timestones that could change the landscape and trying to work around them was always a challenge. Graphics were... okay. They were trying to aim for an impressionist type of feel with the backgrounds, which I'm still on the fence about. Music was fine but not amazing. The character design is keeping with the fine Zelda tradition of being hideous as possible. I actually like it. It's as if you're in some sort of freak show and I approach each character from each angle to get full blast of the ugliness.

Overall I think it was a good game, but I have no desire to replay it just because of the sneaking sections. They did horrible things to my heart, but I don't think it would affect other people the same way. So once I get 100% on this, I'm done. That's it. Never again.