Zelda

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.

Despite being one of the most prolific and well-known series of all time, The Legend of Zelda has few notable spin-offs. At first glance, it seems odd that a crossover was made with Crypt of the NecroDancer, a rhythm based roguelite game. As a game series known for its carefully crafted adventures, the randomly generated roguelite worlds seems antithetical to what The Legend of Zelda is known for. While I do think Cadence of Hyrule: Crypt of the NecroDancer Featuring The Legend of Zelda has fun combat, the roguelite formula does not lend itself well to the traditional The Legend of Zelda style.

The strongest aspect of Cadence of Hyrule is without a doubt its presentation. The modern version of the classic top-down The Legend of Zelda world and characters is phenomenal. The sprites are clean, the colors are vibrant, and the animations are fluid. Being a game with a heavy emphasis on music, Cadence of Hyrule knocks it out of the park with its remixes. The Legend of Zelda series is brimming with memorable tracks, and Cadence of Hyrule brings them all back with style. It truly is fantastic how identifiable yet fresh all the tunes are, they are top tier remixes.

Crypt of the NecroDancer is a unique roguelite dungeon crawler in which you move to the beat. On every beat of the song, you have a small window to move in a direction. Enemies also move in a similar fashion, each with their own patterns. Some only move if you step directly in front of them, some move predictably every couple of beats, and some move erratically. It’s definitely an interesting twist on traditional dungeon crawling. Movement is essentially turn-based, but you have to think quickly and time your inputs to the beat.

It can be remarkably tricky to get a handle on the beat-based movement of Cadence of Hyrule. The majority of my deaths in the game came from the first hour or so while I was figuring out the rhythm and how to maneuver. I was pretty frustrated initially by constantly missing the beat, but eventually it becomes second nature to sync to the rhythm. I appreciate the fact that there was an optional mode to disable the timing-specific beat system. In fixed-beat mode the enemies move only when you move. While I did not personally activate this mode, I think it was an important inclusion given the initial awkwardness of the beat system.

There is a bit of an awkward difficulty curve in Cadence of Hyrule due to this system. Traditionally, games should get progressively more difficult as you keep playing as a way to test your mastery. Unfortunately, I felt that Cadence of Hyrule was the most difficult at the very beginning. The combination of learning how to move and having no health or weapons made for a brutal beginning. As soon as I got a grasp on how to play, got some health upgrades, and got a more powerful weapon the game became pretty easy aside from the very last dungeon. I wish some of the mid and late game content took more mastery, as I was able to steamroll most screens without much regard for strategy.

Despite the uneven difficulty curve, I do think the movement and combat in Cadence of Hyrule is enjoyable. It’s a solid twist on traditional top-down adventure games. Once you get in the rhythm, it becomes natural to strategize on the fly. It’s fun to learn the enemies’ patterns and they best approaches to deal with them. Maneuvering around each battle becomes second-nature, unless you lose the beat. While it’s not a system that fits every game, I think it is fantastic and creative approach. Especially when paired with the glorious soundtrack.

It’s important to note that Cadence of Hyrule is not a true roguelite, but instead is much closer to being a more traditional adventure game with intermittent checkpoints. While there are some roguelite elements like losing some items upon death and a randomized map, I felt that it was closer to a traditional The Legend of Zelda game than I initially expected. To be honest, I wish they went even farther in ditched the roguelite formula altogether for this spin-off.

The randomized overworld just does not work well in a The Legend of Zelda game. These games are about exploration and progression. They are carefully crafted adventures that carefully guide the player in where to go, every element is intentionally placed. Unfortunately, I felt that Cadence of Hyrule just felt forgettable outside of a few distinct locations. Most screens are just generic layouts filled with enemies. There are some puzzles and upgrades to be found around the world, but ultimately the sense of adventure is lacking in comparison to the main series.

A key facet of a roguelite is to provide some variation between subsequent runs, to keep things fresh. I had no desire to play Cadence of Hyrule multiple times because I felt there was nothing remotely different after a single run. You will always unlock the same upgrades, weapons, and items. The only difference may be the order. The overworld is randomized between runs, but that really doesn’t accomplish the goal of replayability. It doesn’t really change anything that the desert area is now in the Northwest instead of the Northeast for example. You can improve your score between runs, but really that’s not a compelling reason to be a roguelite as plenty of games have a scoring system.

Truthfully, I believe Cadence of Hyrule would have been more enjoyable if it entirely abandoned its roguelite aspects. If the world was more intentionally designed like a traditional The Legend of Zelda game, it would have been more enjoyable to explore. The roguelite elements add nothing when there are plenty of checkpoints and there are always the same weapons between runs. I can appreciate the rhythm-based movement and combat that comes from Crypt of the NecroDancer, but the other elements just don’t work as well in Cadence of Hyrule.

Overall, Cadence of Hyrule is a fun mash-up that has some flaws as a result of its DNA. While I love the fact that an indie developer got a chance at The Legend of Zelda, and I think they did the series justice, I felt that it was missing the sense of adventure. The presentation is extraordinary, and the combat is fun once you get the hang of it, but to me exploration is key to the series. The randomized world of Cadence of Hyrule made exploration uninteresting and repetitive. It is for these reasons I give Cadence of Hyrule a 6/10. While I enjoyed Cadence of Hyrule, more than anything it made me yearn for a new top-down The Legend of Zelda game in the classic style.

stephensopinions

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (2011)

Cadence of Hyrule (2019)