Skyward Sword was always weird to me. When the game released in 2011, I hated it and stopped playing when you enter Faron Woods. I gave the game another chance in 2014 by playing it with a friend. We both still thought the game sucked and due to certain events, we stopped playing after reaching the Fire Sanctuary. In 2016, I once again booted up the game and restarted my adventure, thinking maybe this time it would click. It did. The entire game clicked for me. I then proceeded to replay the game every year and dropped it after the HD version came out. This means I have technically started a new game of Skyward Sword on Wii 7 times, and completed it 5 times.

I began to understand the motion controls and how cool it is to have one-to-one sword combat based off your arm movements. Using your inventory never pauses the game, so there's a neat risk factor in opening your adventure pouch to drink a potion while an enemy is about to strike. The level design in each province and dungeon is top notch. Skyward Sword's proudest achievement are the Spirit Realms, which add a sense of atmosphere and brutality to the game. It is played best on Hero Mode, where you have to put effort into learning the mechanics so you don't get a game over. The only real flaws are the repeated Imprisoned fights and forced tutorials. A couple of padded sections also ruin the pacing. Other than that, Skyward Sword is not as bad as people make it out to be.