Nintendo Wii - Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Highly recommended

Format
Nintendo Wii
Publisher
Nintendo
Developer
Nintendo
Country of origin
Japan
Release date
UK: 25 November 2005
Genre
Action RPG

Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess

By David Rasmussen
25th Jun 07

It’s been quite abit of time since we last felt as good about a Zelda game as we do now.
Not since the past gen console that was the Nintendo 64, and the groundbreaking release that was Legend of Zelda : Ocarina of Time, have we felt this good about a Zelda game.
OK. Not counting the re-release of Ocarina of Time on the GameCube that came when you pre-ordered Legend of Zelda : Windwaker from certain outlets (if memory serves which it might not). That would probably have been great too, though I didn’t pre-order Windwaker so I didn’t get it.

However you were probably more disappointed with the strangely drawn Zelda outing (and don’t get me started on the freakishly disgusting hentai spawned from the creation of Windwaker… thank you, Team Zelda, for creating a Zelda game that inspired the most disturbing hentai ever seen short of Powerpuff Girl hentai) especially if you remember the beginning of the 21st Century promising a Zelda that Windwaker didn’t fulfill. But years passed (and a retro gen instantly forgettable multiplayer game release known as Legend of Zelda : Four Swords), and that long wait finally paid off as Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess finally released to a long waiting fanbase.

Sure, if you believe hype then the reason Twilight Princess didn’t come out sooner was because they didn’t want to rush it’s release. They wanted it just right. Well, if that was the case then they could have actually stood to keep it in a little while longer since it could have been just a wee bit better. But it seems to me the withholding of Twilight Princess had more to do with forethought than a desire for perfection.

By the time this game was made no doubt the race to build the next gen of consoles was already on.
It was the start of the 21st Century, and while the triad of GameCube, PS2 & Xbox was doing well enough each company was probably already developing the technology that would be the next logical step in the evolution of their respective consoles in the ever growing console wars. You know the results of that, don’t you. The Wii (which… cough cough… actually has a mostly unspoken glitch or two still locked into it’s white case that isn’t widely spoken of, though slowly showing it’s head with such releases as Avatar : The Last Airbender, Spider-Man 3 and… yes… to an extent Wii Sports).
The PS3 (which is far more glitch ridden than the Wii from what I heard of it, lots more expensive than the Wii too while I’m at it) and the XBox360 (first out of the gate, first to sell it’s soul to evil in exchange for a video game partnership with… dear lord… Burger King).

It seems to me that the real reason for holding back on Zelda was to use it to herald in the new age of the Wii (originally named the Revolution way back when), as well as see the end of the GameCube’s era.
Why is this so important? Nothing much… except for the fact that Nintendo weighted it’s bright star of release usually upon a different source of inspiration in it’s past launches, mainly the mushroom chugging Italian Stallion of the plumbing world (Mario). NES, SuperNES, Nintendo 64 and… maybe not the GameCube… but most Nintendo launches to date have started it’s life with a Mario title as either the tie-in launch game or somewhere in the first gen of launch titles (if not close to it).
The Wii happens to be the lone exception with only now seeing the most relevant Mario launch to date (Mario Party 8, to be reviewed soon) while Zelda this time out leads off the charge into Wii-dom with the aforementioned Twilight Princess.

And what a launch it is. But first… a brief history.
Apparently there was a good reason for Windwaker, mostly since Twilight Princess seems to be a sequel to Windwaker (but moreso the sequel to Ocarina of Time).
Now crank up the familiar Zelda music, and put Drunk Link from X-Play back into rehab, because we’re looking at Twilight Princess starting with what came before.

I’m not entirely clear on this, but here it is from my POV.
We start off with the events of Ocarina of Time, no need to recap that since you know it by heart (right?)
But as the game ends apparently you DON’T get the girl (Zelda) and end up wandering away from Hyrule and vanishing (to appear in Majora’s Mask). This was the end of that, right?
Apparently not.

Apparently you left Hyrule too fast, because you left one vital thread open… I.e. Gannon.
It seems Gannon didn’t die at the end of Ocarina of Time, apparently he lived and (after building a prison in the Gerudo Desert he is the first shuffled off and imprisoned in something called the “Twilight”. A dark dimension where others who thrived to raid the Sacred Realm are locked away).
Time passes, the events of Windwaker take place (and the landscape is altered severely in the aftermath of the giant floods of Windwaker… or whatever) but the realm of Twilight goes on without notice.
It is there a new civilization is formed and they seemingly live in peace… until Zant arrives and throws everything into chaos as he attempts to retake the realm of light (Hyrule).

You start the story as the newest Link (no doubt descendent of past Links) working as a farm hand wrasslin’ goats and becoming all lovey with the hot female of the village (this story’s version of you know who who used to raise horses in Ocarina of Time). Anyway you get sent to Hyrule Castle to deliver a gift but never get there as you are attacked by evil, your gal (and some children) are kidnapped, and you find yourself stuck in the Twilight as a wolf… and you without your flea collar.

You are freed by a rebellious member of the Twilight who becomes your constant (though only somewhat helpful) partner throughout the game, and thus launches your quest to put an end to the threat of Zant (and the real threat behind the scenes which controls Zant like a puppet on strings) by taking out the Twilight one fused shadow at a time… then forging a path into the Twilight to confront your enemy(s) and destroy them.

Thus launches the most ambitious Zelda launch since Ocarina of Time, giving you a world to explore and new adventures to have… and yes, with that comes a sense of achievement and disappointment.

First the good news.
This game makes it incredibly easy to grasp the Wiimote, and learning all of Link’s moves is easy (making it quite simple to grasp the game and get it going right out of it’s jewel case). Some moves, like grappling and working with your new wolf form, will take abit to learn… but once you do so it’ll be easy to manipulate this game and really work it.

The world is abit large, though on the downside it is not as… OK… let’s get this straight right off the bat.
It actually IS to an extent freeform gameplay, to a sense. However you have to log down many hours of strict storyline gameplay before you can enjoy the land and roam as you wish, and once you can do that most of the important things have been done and all your doing is side quests (finding golden bugs, poes, etc) and wasting time (if you want to follow the story you’ll have to go where the game tells you and do what the game tells you). Abit of a downer since Ocarina of Time was more freeform, but you have to take what you get in this game.

Another downer is that the game ultimatley follows the same pattern of all previous Zelda games.
You are given a quest to find x amount of items, and this turns into a red herring chase as you end up losing whatever you had or whatever. Then you have to find the Master Sword, and quest again for the right items to complete the quest. Along the way you visit many “temples”, fight boss monsters, and eventually reach the end of the road and the final boss.

This is a pattern we’ve followed since Ocarina of Time (and before in Link to the Past, which you can purchase for your Wii on the Wii Shop with Wii Points), so while I do like the game it is once again the same story pattern with the same logical results… in other words you should be able to predict how the story goes for the most part (except the makers do manage to throw in some curveballs you’ll never see coming in terms of story).

The big thing about the game isn’t the dungeons and the boss fights (though they are impressive and have a new batch of big enemies to tangle with, though for some odd reason the next to last fight before the Sky level (and the final mirror shard) is somewhat of a disappointment as it’s boss is a pushover (the giant spider with the eye on it’s back). No, the big thing about this game is the many many lovely toys you’ll get to play, which does go through the standard rhythm and roll of Zelda games… only to reveal the newest toy in the arsenal, the premiere of the Spinner. This item, which looks like something inspired by (heaven forbid) the show “Beyblade”, is a giant spinner you can ride on which allows you to railgrind walls and rails, attack certain enemies (which are vunerable to the bladed disc) and ride over quicksand. Though I don’t recommend it as a long term item to use (it won’t make your travel across Hyrule go any faster, it won’t make you walk on water, and you could conceivably drive yourself off a cliff since it‘s not the easiest thing to control) it does have it’s use and opens up areas of Hyrule that you can only traverse by rail grinding walls (and it makes going downhill fun as long as you‘re not near large ravines).

The other big toy is an old friend, now doubled. In this game you can get ahold of two hookshots, which allows you to attach yourself to a wall, then turn and use the second shot to attach yourself again (making it easy to scale areas). Unfortunately you don’t get this nifty addon to your hookshot to near the end of the game so you’ll have to wander about Hyrule on your own to get full use of this before going through the mirror for the final fight with Zant.

As you probably noticed, Link is only proficent in using a reed to call Epona (or birds from the sky), and doesn’t seem to have his Ocarina license like last time (and nobody seems to have returned the Harry Potter-esque “Windwaker” to the game… thank god). This time out your musical appitudes is done through the wolf form, as you’ll take a lesson in howling 101. This is a nice twist on the musical puzzle aspect, but harder as you are actually required to memorize pitch tones and match them with your howl (pressing up, down, or holding level to make the tone pitch match the tones of this other wolf (who provides valuable fighting lessons to Link if he can find the markers as a wolf and then find the wolf as a human)).
You can get a grasp of this, though this is only good for lessons (you can’t make the sun/moon rise, go backwards or forward in time, change the wind or any of the other things you once did with the Ocarina of Time or the Windwaker).

And did I mention the story is unique, with a brand new spankingly hot Zelda (though you only briefly see her), a new girl AND lots of weirdness including the return of the weird postman, those wacky Gorons and the lofty water living… hey! You can find sunbathing female Zora over at the Goron hot springs after you free their domain of ice… strangely enough it’s kinda weird and yet kinda interesting to see that.
Oh, and amongst the weirdness is a level dedicate to Oregon Trail as you must ride shotgun keeping a wagon from catching fire as no good varmint evil people ride after it on boars shooting it with flaming arrows, a strange girl who is the queen of golden insects, and the first child merchant (I kid you not).

So when it comes to a score? With all that is packed into this game I’m going to give it a perfect score.
What? It’s not perfect you say? Well let me put it to you this way, and I’ll only ask you one question.
Despite Zelda’s flaws here and there can you (at the time this review published, though I’m sure later on down the road this question will have a different answer) find a game that packs 40-50 hours of gameplay, which is as deep as Zelda is, and offers up as much RPG elemental fun as this game does?

The answer, as of this posting, is no… mostly since there is no game out there right now that is Zelda’s equal (or better as a matter of fact). Sad to say Zelda is getting a perfect score because there is no present competition against it on the Wii to this date worth talking about, but that is the hand your given when considering what RPG to buy at this time for the Wii. What? Spider-Man 3? Hell no. That game is glitchy (after 4 hours of non-stop play the glitches become apparent and make you worry there’s something wrong with your Wii) and only sports 12-15 hours of gameplay.

To say Zelda is the best the Wii has to offer in it’s genre goes without saying, mostly because Zelda is at present the ONLY thing the Wii has to offer in it’s genre at this time. Still, I’d like to think that I’m giving The Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess a good score for a reason other than the fact it’s the only game in town of it’s type. Once better RPGs come out I’m sure Zelda will continue to withstand the test of time as a game worthy of your attention, a place in your collection, and the score I’m about to give it.
So then, not going against the grain of others who have already reviewed this game (including my favorite X-Play) I’m following suit and giving Legend of Zelda : Twilight Princess a 5... Out of 5 (aka Gold Star Standards).

So… does this mean the sequel will be (blank) free after what happened in this game? I didn’t finish the game yet so I’m just asking…

-- David Rasmussen 25th Jun 07

Nintendo Wii Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Images