My early childhood was defined by Zelda. I first played A Link to the Past on my father's SNES when I was 3 (somehow, I made it as far as the Water Temple. Looking back, really unsure how I managed that.) the 3D games were a bit harder for me to get a grasp on, but when I did, I spent many, many hours exploring Hyrule in both Ocarina and the Great Sea in Wind Waker. (Though I did not beat either until I was a bit older.) A little bit older, my Dad showed me the now-iconic E3 2004 reveal for Twilight Princess. As time moves so slow for little kids, it felt like an eternity waiting for it. It was all I wanted for Christmas 2006. When my Mom found out the game I wanted so badly was rated T, she told me that I would probably be too young to play it. When she said that, I ran and buried my face into a soft chair in the living room and cried for what might have been hours until my Dad got home and reassured me that yes, I would get Twilight Princess that Christmas.
I got it, and spent a lot of my next few years poring over every nook and cranny of this new version of Hyrule. If you've read some of my other reviews for Zelda games, you might know that I accredited A Link to the Past with kick-starting my life-long love for video games, when I played it as a very, very young child. If that is what kick-started it, then this game helped to solidify it. I was shocked by the scope of it, unlike anything I had played before, stunned by the expanse of Hyrule Field and the sense of weight and tightness of control I had as I explored it, far exceeding it's predecessors in my mind. This was the second game I ever beat. (The first was Minish Cap.)
So it is somewhat difficult for me to really talk about this game (or really, any Zelda game) without my obvious and inherent bias in favor of the series kicking in, but still, I can try.
Considered a return to "what the fans want" after the experimentation of Majora and Wind Waker, it plays it a bit safer with a tone that almost tries too hard to be grim and edgy (in a way unlike the seemingly effortless, surreal psychological darkness of Majora) and a return to a very Ocarina-like structure.
Despite playing it safe a bit too much in some regards, this is still an extremely solid game. Unlike the Zelda games that it's surrounded by, it doesn't really have a fatal flaw I can point to (like Wind Waker being unfinished and Skyward Sword's everything) and is on the whole an extremely solid Zelda game. It has an extremely solid set of dungeons, and combat has been expanded upon significantly, which makes encounters that could be very stale in previous games a lot more interesting.
Unfortunately there are some downsides. The return to a realistic graphical style has ensured that the graphics have aged exceedingly poorly, and the HD rerelease on WiiU had so little effort put into it that it can be difficult to tell which is the original and which is the remaster. The overworld can be a bit sparse, and it would have gone a long way to fill up its size with a bit more meaningful side content. There is still plenty of secrets to be found through exploration, but Hyrule can still feel overly large and at times empty. Additionally, many dungeon items, while unique and interesting at first blush, end up being woefully underutilized in the larger scope of the game.
Like I said, none of these are fatal flaws. The gameplay overall is pristine, the music is consistently excellent, the story tries a bit more than in typical Zelda games, and the dungeon design is probably the best out of the 3D games. It is absolutely still worth playing.
I got it, and spent a lot of my next few years poring over every nook and cranny of this new version of Hyrule. If you've read some of my other reviews for Zelda games, you might know that I accredited A Link to the Past with kick-starting my life-long love for video games, when I played it as a very, very young child. If that is what kick-started it, then this game helped to solidify it. I was shocked by the scope of it, unlike anything I had played before, stunned by the expanse of Hyrule Field and the sense of weight and tightness of control I had as I explored it, far exceeding it's predecessors in my mind. This was the second game I ever beat. (The first was Minish Cap.)
So it is somewhat difficult for me to really talk about this game (or really, any Zelda game) without my obvious and inherent bias in favor of the series kicking in, but still, I can try.
Considered a return to "what the fans want" after the experimentation of Majora and Wind Waker, it plays it a bit safer with a tone that almost tries too hard to be grim and edgy (in a way unlike the seemingly effortless, surreal psychological darkness of Majora) and a return to a very Ocarina-like structure.
Despite playing it safe a bit too much in some regards, this is still an extremely solid game. Unlike the Zelda games that it's surrounded by, it doesn't really have a fatal flaw I can point to (like Wind Waker being unfinished and Skyward Sword's everything) and is on the whole an extremely solid Zelda game. It has an extremely solid set of dungeons, and combat has been expanded upon significantly, which makes encounters that could be very stale in previous games a lot more interesting.
Unfortunately there are some downsides. The return to a realistic graphical style has ensured that the graphics have aged exceedingly poorly, and the HD rerelease on WiiU had so little effort put into it that it can be difficult to tell which is the original and which is the remaster. The overworld can be a bit sparse, and it would have gone a long way to fill up its size with a bit more meaningful side content. There is still plenty of secrets to be found through exploration, but Hyrule can still feel overly large and at times empty. Additionally, many dungeon items, while unique and interesting at first blush, end up being woefully underutilized in the larger scope of the game.
Like I said, none of these are fatal flaws. The gameplay overall is pristine, the music is consistently excellent, the story tries a bit more than in typical Zelda games, and the dungeon design is probably the best out of the 3D games. It is absolutely still worth playing.