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Posted on December 4th, 2006 - 8085 Reads

Rated Teen The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Nintendo Wii Review Silver Award

-- Written by Clark Kent Nielsen



 Zelda fans are the hardest to please. Since Ocarina of Time, we expect every subsequent sequel to be just as good, if not infinitely better (which is probably impossible). Because of this, many fans found Majora's Mask too strange and Wind Waker too cute. But I love about this series is how every Zelda is so distinctly separate from the others. I realize I represent a small minority, though, since so many others have been pining for a true successor to Ocarina of Time for some... er... time. Well, the whining stops now. Because you finally got it.

Twilight Princess really is a more mature Ocarina of Time. It follows the same style but improves on the N64 graphics to create, quite possibly, the most realistic Zelda we'll ever see. But as such, the game is noticeably dominated by dark greens and browns. This will come as a big disappointment to Wind Waker fans who enjoyed that game's colorful lands. Twilight Princess still impresses, though, with very fluid animation and large, sweeping landscapes. All of this is seamlessly tied together, too; while there are a couple long fade to blacks, you won't find a single load screen anywhere. Twilight Princess was built as a GameCube game, however, and it shows with somewhat blurry textures and sharp polygonal edges. Even then, this is one of the prettiest GameCube games ever made, and it's already one of the best-looking games for Wii. The twilight realm alone is amazingly realized. This "alternate reality" uses a rich, soft palette to create an atmosphere akin to Ico and Shadows of the Colossus-- only here it's much more surreal and mesmerizing.

But the sound department isn't so sweet. As is the case with most Zelda games, Twilight Princess reuses a lot of old tunes. Not that there's anything bad about playing on familiarity. It's odd, though, how these ancient songs don't sound like they have improved much over time. Instead of sounding like the compelling orchestra we expect, a lot of them still reek of MIDI ancestry. And the Wii remote speaker is used way too much. Just about anything you do triggers some kind of noise out of the remote, whether you're shooting an arrow or putting an item away or ramming into a wall. Some of it I enjoy, like when your helper character, Midna, giggles to get your attention. Most of the sound from this speaker, though, is quite loud, annoying, and scratchy. Hearing the "you found a secret" melody in such tinny fashion is almost painful.

You have probably already read, too, endless articles about the lack of voice acting. This doesn't come as any surprise, though. And the game is probably better off for it, considering other Nintendo games like Star Fox Assault and Super Mario Sunshine have had some bad voiceovers. Still, with absolutely no spoken dialogue, Twilight Princess does feel a little empty and lifeless. And cut scenes with multiple characters get a little confusing when there's no clear sign as to who is speaking.

All of that is secondary business, though, and you know it. Zelda has always been about genre-defining gameplay, and this one's no slouch. Twilight Princess feels very similar to Ocarina of Time but is a lot bigger and has a lot more content. Kakariko Village, Zora's Domain, Epona, and the Gorons all return. There are even the mandatory forest, water, and volcano dungeons. So anyone who has played Ocarina of Time (i.e. everyone) will recognize much of what this game has to offer. But Twilight Princess isn't a remake. Dungeons are not the same, and the familiar locations, like Zora's Domain, are three times larger. The scope of Twilight Princess is enormous. It's almost intimidating having spent five hours in the game, looking at your map, and realizing you haven't even left the first area yet.

On top of the usual hookshot and boomerang, many new weapons and items are available, including a powerful ball and chain. The rest, I don't even want to spoil, because it's really fun to discover them on your own. And with that, Twilight Princess presents some of the most creative dungeon and puzzle designs I've seen in the past several years. You'll pound your couch and swear, because it's too daunting, then smile when you discover how clever the solution turns out to be. The iron boots return, of course, but the ways they are used are some of the strangest and most brilliant anybody could have come up with.

But the Legend of Zelda isn't just about going from dungeon to dungeon. You will frequently have to take time aside to cater to villagers' problems before you can move on with the adventure. These mini quests aren't as numerous as they were in, say, Majora's Mask, but they do add a lot of diversity to the game. At one point, you need to navigate a flying monster through a canyon. Another time, you have to stave off attacks on a traveling carriage. And to do this, you actually fight from your horse. No more having to climb off Epona if you want to swing your sword. It's not a huge addition, but it's a nice touch that shows just how much energy went into crafting this game.

Twilight Princess gets its name because of a dark "twilight realm" that is slowly blanketing Hyrule. When you enter the twilight realm, everything becomes drastically different. Birds are now grotesque monsters, and villagers have turned into spirits. More importantly, in this realm, Link is no longer human. He becomes a wolf. Don't worry, this is no big surprise. You find this out quite early on. Playing as a wolf, though, is incredibly refreshing and makes the game feel even more diverse and unique. The wolf can't use items, but he can dig up the ground, talk to animals, and follow scent trails that people leave behind. It adds a new layer of complexity to Link's usual sword-swinging character, and I welcome it.

Exclusive to this Zelda, of course, is its entirely new control scheme. Thanks to motion-sensing technology, you can now aim a bow or swing a sword with fairly pleasing results. Neither option makes me jump in the air and scream, "Hallelujah! Video games are saved!" but they are rather cool, little additions. Aiming is especially rewarding when you snag a pesky monster or far-off target, because the task is made more personal. Swinging a sword doesn't have the same effect, though. It isn't exactly 1:1, and because Link is always putting his sword away, you find yourself shaking the controller a lot before he finally takes it out again and starts swinging.

What doesn't work at all is the random assigning of buttons. Twilight Princess uses every button on the remote and nunchuck and to much confusion. In previous Zelda titles, when you paused the game, you were taken to the status screen. From there, you could tab over to the item screen and map screen. For Twilight Princess, all of these essential screens are assigned to different buttons. Status screen: plus button. Item screen: minus button. Map screen: 1 button. That last one is extremely difficult to comfortably hit, because the button sits too low when the remote is held in the standard position. In the item screen, you assign weapons with the D-pad and B button and exit with the A button. Yet on any other screen, the B button exits. Oh, and you weld items together with the Z button. Who thought of all this?! It's sad to say that it took me nearly 20 hours with this game before I finally felt like I knew the controls. By then, I was quite liking the setup, but that doesn't change the fact that no game should have that steep of a learning curve.

Getting used to a new control setup accounts for a lot of why this game is difficult. It isn't necessarily frustrating, it just takes some time to master. Twilight Princess does feel considerably harder than previous Zelda games, though. Heart pieces are hidden better and require five pieces instead of four. Enemies also seem to dish out varying levels of damage, and falling in lava or a bottomless pit really knocks your life down. I made it through Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker without dying, but I ran into the Game Over screen in this one multiple times. However, the boss battles aren't up to the same level. They look big and scary and mean, but they're too easy. You never feel in danger of dying, because you know they really can't hurt you. Still, it's nice not to be able to just breeze through the rest of the game.

On the other hand, the Legend of Zelda series is showing its age, and the great gameplay mechanics introduced in Ocarina of Time are starting to feel somewhat archaic and, dare I say, annoying. The Z-targeting system too often tries to focus in on an enemy when all you want to do is flip the camera around so you can see where you are. It's also a hassle when new enemies swarm in and drag your focus away from what you were trying to zone in on. Much of this was fixed with Wind Waker's awesome free-roaming camera assigned to the C-stick. Since the Wii remote doesn't have a C-stick, though, this novelty is gone, and it's back to the basics.

Zelda titles also need to stop drawing attention to when you pick up money. For newcomers to the series, it's necessary to describe what a rupee is or how much a red one is worth. But this should only take place the first few times you encounter these. Well into the last dungeon, already having spent 30 hours at this, the game was still pausing the action to let me know, "You found a blue rupee!" I know what a blue rupee is! I've found hundreds of them before! Worse, even, is that the game thinks rupees are such a wonderful reward. You might uncover a secret grotto and spend a good 15 minutes looking for a treasure chest in there. When you find it, all it has inside are 50 rupees which you can't even take, because your wallet is already full! It makes all the rupee treasure chests feel like a complete waste of time and a major letdown when you were expecting a heart piece.

In that sense, finding all the heart pieces is a little harder than usual. Most of them are hidden rather well, so don't be surprised if you don't even find one within the first five hours. Needless to say, this game is huge. There is so much to do, and it's all spread out believably so. The map definitely feels like the biggest map of any Legend of Zelda game (Wind Waker shouldn't count since so much of its map was just water). The number 75 has been thrown around a lot, too, when talking about Twilight Princess and its length. I think that's giving the game a little too much credit, but don't mistake this for a short experience. You can expect to spend anywhere from 30-40 hours just beating the game. Then, of course, you'll want to go back and look for more secrets. There are elaborate poe and bug hunting side quests as well as a robust fishing hole which will take you several hours to get sick of. So there's plenty to do in the end.

Final Comments:
Is this the best Zelda ever? No. Is it still fun? Absolutely. Twilight Princess is as immense and epic as adventures come and should be an obvious choice for new Wii owners. But that's where this game falters. You can't ignore this was supposed to be a GameCube game, and nothing proves this more than how unintuitive the button layout is on the Wii remote. It takes way too long to get used to. The only thing that kept me coming back was that, hey, this is Zelda. And Zelda is awesome, technical problems notwithstanding. Twilight Princess really is the biggest and prettiest Zelda to date, it just lacks that special magic which made Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, and Majora's Mask such classics. But all of these are great games, so don't miss out on this one just because it's not as good as one of the best video games ever made.

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