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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)

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In the heyday of the Nintendo Wii, everything utilized motion controls. It was the core feature of the console, and of course The Legend of Zelda could not miss the opportunity to implement sword fighting with the Wiimote. And there is no doubt that The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword attempts to maximize the use of motion controls. Unfortunately, a handful of issues with the nature of motion controls along with some questionable design decisions make this my least favorite of the 3D The Legend of Zelda titles.

Skyward Sword has an incredibly unique setting in the series. The last remnants of humanity live on a flying rock, high above the clouds. They’ve built a small community and learn to take to the skies by flying on the backs of their loyal Loftwing birds. Rumors of the surface are nothing but folklore until Zelda gets swept into a vortex and plunges below the clouds. The player of course sets out on a journey to rescue their friend by exploring a handful of locations.

The best moments of Skyward Sword are when the player is left to explore, solve puzzles, fight enemies, and conquer dungeons unimpeded. There’s no doubt that the game boasts some of the best dungeons in the entire series. There’s some wildly creative ideas and well-crafted trials that are the highlight of the game. The desert area in particular has dungeons that make use of timeshift stones that create localized pockets of the past. Using these stones to reveal ancient devices and to clear away millennia of sand to progress forward is a phenomenal idea for puzzles. And the dungeons in the forest are wonderfully atmospheric and serene. Even the moments leading up to dungeons are interesting and unique, utilizing new mechanics and ideas that slowly ramp up in the classic The Legend of Zelda fashion.

Unfortunately, moments in which Skyward Sword lets the player play without interruption are fleeting. From the outset, the game bombards the player with text and cutscenes. The game constantly stops in its tracks to spew unnecessary dialogue, breaking the flow of gameplay. The biggest culprit of this is the spirit of your sword, Fi. She regularly will appear, stating the obvious. It often feels like the game is treating you as if you were stupid, halting progress to tell you “I have calculated the place that you are going towards has an 80% probability of being the correct direction”. The excessive handholding not only feels like an insult to the player’s intelligence, but it also actively impedes the player from having fun.

When I think of The Legend of Zelda, I think of adventure and exploration. The structure of Skyward Sword is far more linear and constrained than the other games in the series. Outside of the starting town in the sky, there are only 3 main areas: forest, volcano, and desert. The game revisits these biomes multiple times each, often revealing new areas that were previously hidden. Occasionally these retreads are interesting because there are spirit trials that test your navigational knowledge of these familiar zones. But after the third visit to each area, I was longing for something fresh. And it didn’t help that the last third of the game felt padded out with unnecessary fetch quests, repeated boss fights, and retreading.

It’s worth mentioning that each zone is completely isolated. The only way to go from the forest to the desert for instance is to find a statue, teleport to the sky, fly to the appropriate hole in the clouds, then drop down into the desert. It feels disjointed, and the sky ends up being a giant level select screen rather than its own thing. And it doesn’t help that flying is a dreadfully boring affair. There’re rarely any obstacles or anything to do in the sky, just fly in a straight line. And because of the motion controls, you’re forced to keep your hand pointed straight, waggle the remote to flap upwards, occasionally pointing downwards to gain some speed. It’s tedious and uncomfortable.

The sky itself is completely devoid of anything. There’s a bunch of tiny islands with practically nothing on them. And there’s occasionally a floating rock with an enemy that shoots rocks at you. That’s it. It’s pretty uninteresting mechanically and visually. Flying should be exciting and thrilling but it’s just boring and cumbersome in Skyward Sword. The one redeeming aspect of the sky is that the game’s main town, Skyloft, is amazing. It’s dense, has cozy hobbit houses for its residents, lots of side quests to discover, and a central town bazaar that hosts all of the shops. Skyloft has a ton of personality to it and I love it, even if the surrounding sky is a barren wasteland.

Even though motion controls never really caught on past the Wii era outside of some niche uses, I appreciate how dedicated Skyward Sword is to this control scheme. Nowadays, motion controls are a gimmick, but Skyward Sword was fully committed to maximizing its use of motion controls. The sword fighting, aiming the slingshot and bow, puzzles, and even basic movement all incorporated motion controls in some way. I don’t think it was always successful, but I appreciate that the developers didn’t treat the game’s central mechanic as just a gimmick, but as the guiding principle of design. It’s a unique scheme that helps Skyward Sword stand out from all the other The Legend of Zelda games. When it works, the motion controls are immersive and give a tangible, weighty feel to your actions. You aren’t just pressing buttons, but swinging your arms and aiming your controller like you would a sword and bow respectively. Unfortunately, the motion controls don’t always work.

It’s an extremely common occurrence in Skyward Sword for the motion controls to just not quite do what you want them to do. Many of the game’s enemies and obstacles require specific directional inputs, and having your attacks rebuked because the game reads your stab as a slash is frustrating. Unfortunately, motion controls will never match the preciseness of traditional button controls. When you press a button, you know exactly what will happen. When you try to swing horizontally, the game may interpret a slight diagonal angle and cause a misfire. Despite the fact that Skyward Sword is a fairly easy game, it is consistently frustrating due to the flukiness of the motion controls.

Another factor in the frustration of Skyward Sword is the enemy design. The game clearly wanted to emphasize the motion controls in sword fighting. Most enemies need to be hit from a specific angle to deal damage, and enemies with swords constantly block in different directions, requiring you to attack where they aren’t blocking. This is fine, the problem is that many of these sword-wielding enemies read your inputs and instantly block wherever you decide to attack. If they are holding the sword to their left, you try to swing at their right side, but the game instantly snaps their sword to the right to block your hit. I found it more effective to just flail around randomly rather than take my time to strike precisely because the enemies would just block my attacks if I tried to fight the “proper” way. It really is a shame because the sword fighting is the area where the motion controls could have shined, but it’s way simpler to use other strategies rather than engage in a proper duel.

My final gripe with motion controls is that they make the entire experience mentally exhausting. There is no break from them. You will always be fumbling trying to make the game do what you want it to do. I want to just be able to play for a few hours, get absorbed with the world, and go on an adventure. But the motion controls constantly break the spell of immersion, which is the exact opposite effect that they should have. Even when flying in a straight line you need to focus on keeping your wrist straight. There’s no escape from fighting the controls, which makes the entire game a drag.

I actually quite like the presentation of Skyward Sword. Visually, it’s a middle ground behind the cartoonish Wind Waker and the more realistic Twilight Princess. I think it’s a happy medium, and the impressionist environments are quite pleasant to look at. At a distance, the environments look painted with visible brush strokes and streams of light. I do think the game lacks scenic vistas due to the isolated nature of the areas, but it is pretty nonetheless. The soundtrack is fully orchestrated, and despite it being perfectly enjoyable it doesn’t have that memorable quality that The Legend of Zelda is known for.

I don’t really play The Legend of Zelda games for their stories, but I was pleasantly surprised by Skyward Sword in that aspect. It follows the same good vs evil as every other game in the series, but what makes this entry stand-out is its characters. There’s a handful of character arcs in the game that demonstrate actual growth, which is something rare in the series. I don’t think the story is revolutionary by any means, but I was pleasantly surprised by it.

I played the game in the recent HD remaster for the Switch, which came with a number of quality-of-life changes. The remaster reduced the number of interruptions that Fi forces upon the player. It also fixed one of the most infamous bugs of all time in which every item would halt the game to display a description every play session. I’m glad that the remaster did away with these intrusions, because even in the remaster there are a painful number of halts that kill the pacing. 


Overall, Skyward Sword is my least favorite of the 3D The Legend of Zelda games. Despite having some of the best dungeons in the series, there’s just far too many massive problems that I have with the game. The disjointed world, the constant interruptions, and the imprecise motion controls firmly cement Skyward Sword as the worst in the series. I appreciate its attempts to be unique and have a novel control scheme, but motion controls never reached the level of refinement that would be needed for anything other than some gimmicks. Still, it’s worth playing Skyward Sword for its cleverly designed dungeons.

Pikmin 4 (2023)

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Pikmin has always been a series that has had underwhelming sales numbers. The cutesy aesthetics paired with the horrific reality that you will lead your squad of adorable little guys to their brutal demise means that the audience for these games is limited. I suspect people are discouraged by the time limit or the stress of having your pikmin get eaten, electrocuted, lit on fire, or otherwise killed. After the long hiatus following the release of Pikmin 3, it feels like Pikmin 4 is an attempt to appeal to a larger audience. In some ways, this is a fantastic thing. Pikmin 4 is the biggest, most complete game in the series. On the other hand, the concessions made in hopes of attracting new players actively harm the game.

Like every other game in the series, Pikmin 4 is a real-time-strategy game where you grow hordes of cute creatures known as pikmin to complete tasks for you. They are fairly brainless, so they form a symbiotic relationship with the player. You lead them around and command them to fight enemies, retrieve treasures, and carry pellets back to base so that more pikmin can sprout. Individually, each pikmin is weak, but as an intelligent swarm they can conquer the environment and tackle massive foes.

The most impressive aspect of Pikmin 4 is its scale. This game is bigger than its three predecessors combined. And it combines all the elements from the previous games to deliver the most complete experience. Every zone is a sprawling playground to explore with dozens of treasures to find. Caves make a return from Pikmin 2, but are intentionally designed rather than relying on randomized layouts. Challenges from Pikmin 3 are now woven into the main campaign and are honestly my favorite aspect of the whole game. Every type of pikmin makes an appearance. It’s genuinely impressive how much they managed to squeeze into this game.

The larger areas don’t feel overwhelming as they are somewhat split into smaller zones. As you explore there are predetermined spots for you to move your ship and the pikmin’s onion to, making it easier to haul treasures and grow more pikmin without having to run all the way back to the original landing site. Much of the game’s content is also found in the caves. While I wasn’t a fan of caves in Pikmin 2 due to their repetitive nature and random layouts, I think Pikmin 4 executes on the idea much better. They have intentional design to challenge the player on their puzzle-solving, combat, and navigation skills. I still much prefer the open surface areas to caves, and I do think that Pikmin 4 has a handful too many caves, but the dungeon-crawling they provide is a fun detour from the open-ended exploration.

Aside from caves, there are also Dandori challenges to be discovered as you explore. Dandori is the art of strategizing and executing a plan for maximum efficiency. To me, this is one of the strongest aspects of the Pikmin series. Dandori challenges come in two forms: time trials and battles. The time trials are 5–10-minute challenges in a small arena where you have to strategize how to get all the treasure as fast as possible. I loved solving each of these challenges like it was a puzzle. Figuring out where I should start, which pikmin to pluck, which enemies to defeat, and what order to do things was quintessential Pikmin. Getting all the platinum medals on these time trials was challenging but achievable, and it was my absolute favorite aspect of Pikmin 4.

The Dandori battles on the other hand had a major flaw in their execution. These battles are similar to the time trials, but you are facing an opponent with their own army of pikmin. You both try to collect treasures to gain points, and it is a frantic experience as treasures and enemies frequently respawn. There’s also power-ups and items to sabotage your foe. I really like the idea behind these battles and there is an extra layer of depth as you have to consider which treasures are worth fighting over. But the big issue I have is that for some reason these battles have a split screen view. Half the screen is dedicated to the AI opponent’s point-of-view. It makes playing these battles feel super claustrophobic and hard to tell what’s going on. I don’t think I ever looked at the opponent’s screen to see what they were doing. At the very least, this should have been a toggleable feature so I could turn it off and focus on my own strategy.

Another major shakeup to traditional Pikmin gameplay is the inclusion of night expeditions. These are missions solely focused on defending your base from enemies. You command a new variety of pikmin, called glow pikmin, which excel at combat. These missions are fairly short and aren’t particularly difficult, but I did enjoy taking a break from normal daytime exploration to partake in some frantic defense. Ultimately, I think Pikmin 4 attempts to appease every aspect of the series’ fanbase. Between the combat focused night expeditions, optimization heavy Dandori challenges that require multitasking, dungeon crawling caves, and the laidback exploration of regular areas there is something for everyone to enjoy. 

Not only does Pikmin 4 impress with the scope of its gameplay, but it also is one of the best-looking games on the Nintendo Switch. The environments, characters, and creatures all look fantastic. More importantly, I love the environments of the game. Every area is obviously inspired by micro-slices of Earth. A backyard garden becomes a massive area to explore. The shifting tide on the beach leads you to climb a sandcastle. My favorite area is the inside of a house. Figuring out how to navigate the furniture in the living room and kitchen is a great mix-up from the more naturalistic environments that Pikmin is known for. I really do love the focus on the environments created by humanity. It inspires imagination about what sort of life exists at the micro scale on our planet. Who knows, maybe there are little aliens running around collecting bottle caps and buttons when we aren’t looking.

Despite everything that Pikmin 4 does right, it also makes a ton of mistakes in an effort to appease new players. The issues are immediately apparent from the start as Pikmin 4 has one of the most painful tutorials I’ve ever played. The game takes forever to let the player start playing. And when it does, it constantly wrests control away from you to give you a tutorial on even the most straightforward of mechanics. Even after the tutorial the game throws giant text boxes on the middle of the screen during gameplay. After playing for 30 hours, I don’t need my vision obstructed by a tip telling me that there are pikmin at my base ready to be plucked. 

There’s just too much talking in general. The original Pikmin was an isolated, alien experience. After every day the characters talk on and on about nothing. Despite the large cast of characters, I can’t remember anything about any of them. In Pikmin 4 you take the role of a member of the rescue corps on a mission to rescue characters stranded on Earth. The rescue corps sets up a base where everyone you rescue hangs out. I appreciate the idea of having a cozy hub to hang out in, but it’s extremely barren and all the characters just feel like they are stapled on. I wish some temporary buildings or structures would be built as you progressed. Like having shops for items, upgrades, and cosmetics rather than just having those characters stand around in the open. I would have loved it if this hub had some personality.

Gameplay wise, there’s a wealth of issues. First and foremost is the control scheme. The game forces automatic lock-on on the player, with no way of toggling it off. The result is that many combat encounters are dumbed down to a single button press. You no longer have to aim your cursor; the game takes that skill out of the equation and guarantees that your thrown pikmin will land on target. The mechanic also becomes unwieldy during late-game encounters with many enemies because the automatic lock-on is incredibly “sticky”. A frequent annoyance is trying to prioritize a high-threat enemy but the game decides to prioritize random treasure or other tasks.

Pikmin 4 provides the player with a massive toolset. There’s a robust upgrade system that not only increases your health and elemental resistances, but also provides utility such as calling all idle pikmin to your side. There’re purchasable items such as bombs and stunning lightning to be used on tougher enemies. But the biggest addition to your arsenal is Oatchi. Oatchi is an alien dog trained to assist in rescue missions. Listen, I love dogs, and it’s hard not to love Oatchi, but Oatchi borderline breaks the game. 

The problem with Oatchi is that Oatchi is too good at everything. Oachi can fight enemies and can defeat most of them single handedly. Oatchi can carry heavy objects. You can ride on Oatchi’s back with your squad of pikmin. This is particularly useful because it makes it remarkably simple to have your squad of pikmin avoid enemy attacks. In previous games, having a squad of 100 pikmin could be unwieldy to control, but now it’s a breeze with Oatchi. You can also charge at enemies which deals damage, stuns them, and flings your entire squad of pikmin on their back. The vast majority of enemies are decimated by the combo of being stunned and having 100 pikmin attacking them. It genuinely feels like the game isn’t designed for the havoc that Oatchi can wreak. It’s until the final boss of the post-game that I encountered an enemy that felt designed with Oatchi in mind.

Aside from Oatchi, another major addition is the inclusion of ice pikmin. This new type of pikmin can freeze bodies of water if enough of them are occupying it. This is a great strategic addition as it creates traversable paths for your squad, but at the temporary cost of dozens of pikmin. In combat, ice pikmin are extremely overpowered as they can rapidly freeze enemies. This is balanced by having ice pikmin do less damage, but just a handful of them is enough to freeze enemies while the rest of the squad deals the damage. They are at least somewhat kept in check by the fact that your supply of ice pikmin is limited until very late in the game.

I think there was massive potential with providing the player all these overpowered options such as items, Oatchi, and ice pikmin. It could be framed that beating the game is a foregone conclusion, but maximizing your efficiency to do it quickly is the point. There’s only one Oatchi, so choosing what to have them do could be an interesting decision. Picking the optimal place to use items to save time could be fun. Ice pikmin would be more balanced by their lack of damage if you had to go quickly. But unfortunately, I don’t think Pikmin 4 does a good job at encouraging this efficiency by default.

For a game that emphasizes the concept of Dandori, there is very little need for speed outside of the Dandori challenges. There is no day limit in Pikmin 4. Every individual day has a timer, but it’s irrelevant since you can just end the day and start a new one rather than risking running out of time while doing a task. Dandori challenges and some of the post-game content are my favorite aspects of the game because they do put some pressure on the player. Having to think about the best way to use the tools available to you and what route to take is engrossing even if the combat is on the easier side.

The major flaw of Pikmin 4 is that it lacks an edge. There’s no element to provide friction that inhibits the player from just steamrolling the whole game. The wealth of new tools makes most combat encounters easy. Without a time limit there is no need to optimize and think about how to tackle exploration efficiently. There’s not even a significant number of puzzles like were present in Pikmin 3. As I played, I often felt that I was just going through the motions, that the game just kind of plays itself. I really would’ve appreciated something that made the moment-to-moment gameplay a tad more thoughtful. I’m ok with the game being relatively easy, but there still needs to be a threat to keep the player engaged.

The Pikmin series is one of evolution. You could never say that it’s stagnating or failing to implement new ideas. I love the grandiosity of Pikmin 4; it certainly feels like the ultimate Pikmin experience. But the lengths gone to attract new players makes the experience feel neutered. The automatic lock-on, the drawn-out tutorial, the lack of an overarching time limit, and the overpowered tools that the game provides all dull the edge that the series once had. It is for these reasons that I give Pikmin 4 a 7/10. Every game in the series has something to offer, and while Pikmin 4 may lack friction, it’s a solid collectathon with a ton of content.

Pikmin 3 (2013)

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It should be no surprise that the 9-year gap between Pikmin 2 and Pikmin 3 led to massive visual and technical improvement. Not only does the game look better and feel smoother to play than its predecessors, but it further enables one of the best aspects of the Pikmin series: multitasking. What makes me excited about the Pikmin series is that the games aren’t necessarily iterative sequels. Each one of the games has its own unique structure that places emphasis on different aspects of the series. The first Pikmin was all about time management, Pikmin 2 focused more on combat and reacting to sticky situations, and Pikmin 3 hones in on multitasking. For full context, you can read my reviews of Pikmin and Pikmin 2.

The game begins not with our beloved Captain Olimar, but instead we follow the story of a crew of 3 new characters. Alph, Brittany, and Charlie have been tasked with searching the galaxy for a new source of food as their planet faces starvation. They crash land on Earth and lose critical ship parts that they need to get back home. As they track down the ship parts, they also discover the bounty of fruit that grows on Earth and set out to collect all the seeds that they can to revitalize their own planet.

The structure of Pikmin 3 is more objective based than its predecessors. You are often given an obvious goal to pursue whether it be tracking down a signal to a ship part or trying to rescue a crew member. There’s no looming 30-day limit like in the original Pikmin, but you do need a steady supply of fruit juice to stay alive. As you explore the world you collect fruit, partly to bring the seeds back home, but also to turn into juice for immediate nourishment. It’s more lenient than a set day limit, but I do appreciate that there was some form of time limit. Even if you’ll probably have way more fruit than you need, having that motivation to maximize every day is a good thing.

Having 3 crew members to control is just the beginning of how Pikmin 3 emphasizes multitasking. You can switch between them freely and have each character control their own horde of Pikmin. You often need to solve puzzles that require you to toss the crew across gaps or on higher up platforms. But the big addition is the “go here” functionality. When you open the map, you can click on a spot and command the character that you are controlling to walk there automatically with their horde of Pikmin. This enables the player to have all 3 characters be actively doing something and allows them to optimize for speed. You could be fighting enemies with Alph, have Charlie walk back to the base to pluck Pikmin, and have Brittany lead her horde to a new location all at the same time.

I also enjoyed the addition of both new Pikmin types. Pikmin 3 excludes the Purple and White Pikmin from Pikmin 2 and replaces them with Rock and Flying Pikmin. Not only are they adorable, but they have distinct strengths and weaknesses. Rock Pikmin can shatter crystals and do a ton of damage if thrown on an enemy, but they cannot latch onto enemies for repeated hits like other Pikmin types. Flying Pikmin can soar over terrain to carry objects and are great at dealing with airborne enemies, but they deal low damage overall. Both these new types are useful without being overwhelmingly powerful like the Purple Pikmin were.

There is also a plethora of quality-of-life improvements that make Pikmin 3 a much smoother experience than its predecessors. The Pikmin AI is much better in general and they rarely, if ever, get caught on terrain or fall off ledges. Instead of haphazardly swarming you can now use the specialized charge attack to order your Pikmin to rush at an enemy or item. But one of the bigger changes is the lock-on functionality. In previous games you constantly had to be aiming your cursor at whatever you were tossing your Pikmin at. In Pikmin 3, you can just lock onto your target and throw with confidence knowing your Pikmin would land on target.

The downside of having so many quality-of-life improvements is that it also results in the game being significantly easier than its predecessors. Without worrying about Pikmin killing themselves in frustrating fashion you can command your Pikmin with much more confidence. The charge attack makes it simple to burst down enemies quickly. The lock-on functionality makes it exceptionally easy to run circles around enemies. While I don’t think aiming should be the primary focus of a real-time strategy game, I do think it was a meaningful skill expression to keep the cursor on enemies as you kited. I’m torn on the inclusion of lock on because of this. Moreover, I feel like Pikmin 3 enemies have reduced health for whatever reason, making the game even easier. Basic enemies are just too easy to takedown and don’t pose much of a threat.

Even though regular enemies were a bit too easy, I did enjoy the dynamic boss battles that Pikmin 3 offers. They aren’t super challenging by any means, but they are fantastic spectacles with interesting arenas and mechanics. Figuring out how to exploit the boss’ weakness is an enjoyable experience, and it can be a little tense if you are running out of time during the day. Even if they are easy, I had fun with them. But if you are looking for a real challenge, you’ll have to look towards the mission mode.

The mission mode in Pikmin 3 is additional content outside of the campaign. These are timed challenges with a few variations: treasure hunt, battling enemies, and boss battles. These are specifically tailored maps that you really have to plan out routes and optimize if you want to get a platinum medal. I spent a good amount of time getting a handful of platinum medals on the treasure hunt missions. I think this was an excellent inclusion because it lets players play around with optimization, time management, and multitasking without having to replay the entire game.

Pikmin 3 is one of the best-looking games of its generation with wonderfully detailed microbiomes. It hones in on one of my favorite aspects of the Pikmin aesthetic: miniature naturescapes. Every level is like a little terrarium to explore with towering foliage, streams with lily pads to hop across, and dark caverns filled with bioluminescent plants. The visual fidelity and environmental design are absolutely superb. And I love that there is an occasional rainy day to add some ambiance even if it doesn’t have any gameplay implications.

I personally played Pikmin 3 on Nintendo Switch with the remastered Pikmin 3 Deluxe edition.  Aside from being graphically enhanced, it has some gameplay changes like having a bigger whistle radius, being able to call loose Pikmin back to the ship, and the charge attack only using the Pikmin type that you have currently selected. The game originally was designed for the Wii U and made use of the gamepad for the map, but I didn’t have any frustrations with having to open the map separately. There are also some new additions such as the Piklopedia and new side stories for Olimar and Louie. Overall, this is the best way to play the game.

I don’t think Pikmin 3 is my favorite in the series. It may be because of nostalgia, but the structure of the original Pikmin was just so compelling. The tense 30-day limit to find all your critical ship parts provided a real sense of urgency. I do appreciate that Pikmin 3 did reintroduce some time limit with the juice system. The focus on multitasking and the ability to order all 3 characters at the same time is superb. And of course, Pikmin 3 is technically and visually impressive. It certainly has my favorite environments, levels, and bosses of the series thus far. I will always vividly remember riding a lily pad downstream on a rainy day as dandelions tower overhead. I can’t wait to finally give Pikmin 4 a try.