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Hey Skyward Sword is pretty cool

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
Feinting is the basis of swordplay in this game. They overtutorialized about how to control it, but were all but silent on what actions lead to success.

The flow of combat is, generally, quite a bit slower than you might expect. Remaining calm helps.
 

Droewyn

Smol Monster
(She/her, they/them)
For me it's not exactly Fi that's the problem, although she's a huge step down from Midna. It's that (at least in the Wii original) she rarely shuts up and lets you think for yourself. There's a particularly good puzzle on one of the last dungeons and she immediately drops a hint so heavy she may as well just tell you the answer.
That's it exactly. Fi the character is fine. Fi the helper was obnoxious af. She's much better now!
 
I 100% get the gripes on the holding L to use the camera on the R-stick.

But I disagree. In the midst of a fight, I don't want to be holding another button down ON TOP of ZL. I don't want to mis-remember and pan my camera at an inopportune time when I need to be swinging my sword.

The sword may be used less, but it is more critical that it work without a hitch when it is needed than the camera. ZL targeting to quickly adjust the camera or face your foe works with the press of a button if you're in a hurry.

I grant you neither setup is perfect, but between the two, I prefer it as it is.

Now the shield bash mapped to L-press? The shield bash is OP and the best move in the game, allowing you to forgo almost all the complex swordplay, and it should be on a proper button. I personally swapped L-stick press for R (item pouch) in the system setup and never looked back.
 

Lokii

(He/Him)
Staff member
Moderator
Just past the mini-boss on the Sandship and Skyward Sword rules
 

chady

(He/him/his)
Tonight I arrived at the Fire Sanctuary. An interesting thing that I noticed is that I remembered most of the conceits/themes of each of the dungeons, but I had completely forgotten the individual puzzles/tasks you have to do in them ... except for the Sandship. I think it's because the Sandship is just so damn good, it's very memorable.

Having tried both the regular and motion controls ... I think I prefer the motion controls! Which kind of surprised me. There's still a few little hitches and annoyances in parts, but I do feel like it's better than it was before. So far the most frustrating thing was the Ghirahim fight at the end of the first temple, which was also the most frustrating part of my original playthrough 10 years ago. I think it's because what you're supposed to do is not well telegraphed, which is very uncommon in modern 3D Zelda.

I also have memories of the third act dragging quite a bit, so we'll see what happens when I make it there.
 

Gaer

chat.exe a cessé de fonctionner
Staff member
Moderator
It's true that the gyros used in the Switch are a million times more sensitive and accurate than the Wii Motion+.

Still salty I can't use them outside of aiming.
 
I realized the other day I should be more forgiving to people who prefer the motion and remembered that my overall saltiness toward motion in this (and Wii Twilight Princess) is that I'm LEFT HANDED and Nintendo made no effort to cater towards this significant minority.

My options on the Wii were to (A) use the intended scheme, which involved swinging the sword and aiming with my right hand (not ideal) or (B), move Link with my right hand (thumb) and swing with the left hand (also not ideal, my right thumb is not trained for that). But then, what's the alternative? Swing, aim and move all on the left hand? That sounds like a recipe for disaster, too. Maybe I'm just cursed in this case.

But at least on the Wii I could choose to swap hands. That... doesn't really work with the joycons.

Button controls work well for me because my right thumb can handle aiming and the 8-way sword swing without much trouble.
 
I thought the motion controls in Twilight Princess were fine. My problem with the motion controls in that game were not because I was inherently against the motion controls, but more the unfortunate side effects of hastily patching motion controls into a game that wasn't originally designed to have them:

1) They mirror flipped the entire world as a lazy way of making Link right handed for a game that was developed to make him left handed. It's really not the worst thing in the world, but it's very confusing and off-putting when at that point you've played Zelda with relatively consistent topography for Hyrule and now it's just all backwards for no good reason.

2) The enemy AI for the Wii version is significantly dumbed down to accommodate players adjusting to using motion controls for the first time. Playing Twilight Princess on the GC is a challenging and fun game to play because the enemies present clear and dangerous threats and act very intelligently in moving around, blocking, and and working in unison to fight Link. In the Wii version, enemies form a circle around Link and just stand still waiting for Link to kill them. At best, they'll attack one at a time being very courteous and patient with the player. Once you get the hang of the motion controls, the game becomes way too easy and is a lot less fun as a result.

This last part I thought was a significant factor in a lot of people's criticisms of the game when it came out. I would consistently hear players complain that the game felt lacking and not challenging, and that just didn't vibe AT ALL with my experience as a GC player. I always thought that it was very unfortunate that most people played it on Wii instead of GC, and I'm happy that the GC version was essentially given new life in the WiiU port. I'd love to be able to play it ported to the Switch. And I'm glad that Skyward Sword was designed from the ground up to use motion controls, because it's a way better game for it and doesn't really come across any of the issues I had with TP.
 

chady

(He/him/his)
It's true that the gyros used in the Switch are a million times more sensitive and accurate than the Wii Motion+.

Still salty I can't use them outside of aiming.

I'm finding the sword thrust to be MUCH easier to do this time around. But the small frustrations I had/have with the motion controls in Skyward Sword are only about half with the sword ... the item usage is very clumsy. Hold ZR to change items ... unless you have an item out, in which case it will use it, depending on the item. In the middle of the action, did you accidentally just push the item button, but not hold it long enough? Well now your item is out, and you have to push a different button to put it away, and then hold ZR again to open the wheel. But opening the wheel doesn't pause the action, or even slow it down! Did your gyro get out of whack somehow, which is a thing that happens quite often? Well good luck selecting the item you want to use, because first you might need to push Y to reset your gyro (which is much easier to do now than before, thx Nintendo) and then select the item you want.

It doesn't really matter though, because it feels like I'm never really in danger with most enemies, and I think most of the bosses only require one item and you can just set it before the fight. But in the heat of things I have screwed up and unselected my bombs, and had trouble getting them back, and it was frustrating to me.

I forgot to mention my personal method for dealing with Bokoblins in Skyward Sword, which is to never lock on, still works. If you don't lock on, they hesitate following your sword to block, so you can just wail on them.

1) They mirror flipped the entire world as a lazy way of making Link right handed for a game that was developed to make him left handed. It's really not the worst thing in the world, but it's very confusing and off-putting when at that point you've played Zelda with relatively consistent topography for Hyrule and now it's just all backwards for no good reason.

2) The enemy AI for the Wii version is significantly dumbed down to accommodate players adjusting to using motion controls for the first time. Playing Twilight Princess on the GC is a challenging and fun game to play because the enemies present clear and dangerous threats and act very intelligently in moving around, blocking, and and working in unison to fight Link. In the Wii version, enemies form a circle around Link and just stand still waiting for Link to kill them. At best, they'll attack one at a time being very courteous and patient with the player. Once you get the hang of the motion controls, the game becomes way too easy and is a lot less fun as a result.

This last part I thought was a significant factor in a lot of people's criticisms of the game when it came out. I would consistently hear players complain that the game felt lacking and not challenging, and that just didn't vibe AT ALL with my experience as a GC player. I always thought that it was very unfortunate that most people played it on Wii instead of GC, and I'm happy that the GC version was essentially given new life in the WiiU port. I'd love to be able to play it ported to the Switch. And I'm glad that Skyward Sword was designed from the ground up to use motion controls, because it's a way better game for it and doesn't really come across any of the issues I had with TP.

I always thought it was odd that they mirrored all of Twilight Princess instead of just mirroring Link. I suppose mirroring the whole game is the lazy way, but it feels like it wouldn't have taken that much more work to just mirror Link on his own ... or maybe even provide a handedness option! As far as I can tell, it doesn't make too much difference which hand Link swings his sword with, considering that he can swing the sword in both directions anyway.
 

Droewyn

Smol Monster
(She/her, they/them)
I realized the other day I should be more forgiving to people who prefer the motion and remembered that my overall saltiness toward motion in this (and Wii Twilight Princess) is that I'm LEFT HANDED and Nintendo made no effort to cater towards this significant minority.

My options on the Wii were to (A) use the intended scheme, which involved swinging the sword and aiming with my right hand (not ideal) or (B), move Link with my right hand (thumb) and swing with the left hand (also not ideal, my right thumb is not trained for that). But then, what's the alternative? Swing, aim and move all on the left hand? That sounds like a recipe for disaster, too. Maybe I'm just cursed in this case.

But at least on the Wii I could choose to swap hands. That... doesn't really work with the joycons.

Button controls work well for me because my right thumb can handle aiming and the 8-way sword swing without much trouble.

*fistbump of solidarity* ALL OF THIS. Also, I will never forgive Nintendo that Link is Just Righthanded Now.

I thought the motion controls in Twilight Princess were fine. My problem with the motion controls in that game were not because I was inherently against the motion controls, but more the unfortunate side effects of hastily patching motion controls into a game that wasn't originally designed to have them:

I pulled a muscle in my shoulder fighting a Twilight Princess boss. NOT a fan of the TP motion controls.
 

Gaer

chat.exe a cessé de fonctionner
Staff member
Moderator
Yeah it’d be great to be able to use the new motion controls with the joy cons what with being able to continue to use the left stick for movement… if there was a left handed Link to go with it.

I keep trying to get my salt under control about this but I can’t. Man fuck Nintendo. This is such a great game and I had to wait this fucking long to play it as it was not intended.
 
I pulled a muscle in my shoulder fighting a Twilight Princess boss. NOT a fan of the TP motion controls.
I don't blame that on the controls. If anything I blame that on marketing. Nintendo's marketing was all about immersion and trying to get people to perform the kinds of actions in the game that they'd do IRL for certain activities. Wii Sports didn't help with that either. But the reality was, the way the gyroscopes worked on the wiimote meant that small flicks of the wrist and very minute motions were received with the validity as wildly flailing about your arms like a madperson. No inherent action in TP (or any Wii game for that matter) necessitated you moving about to the degree that you bust your tv or your shoulder. But Nintendo encouraged as much with their marketing. It did wonders for sales, but the unintended results were thus.
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
Yeah, I have an entire set of (mostly useless) skills in minimizing the amount of motion necessary to do actions in Wii games. And I don't remember being very annoyed by Twilight Princess' motion controls, because I quickly adopted those flick techniques.
 

Sarcasmorator

Same as I ever was
(He/him)
I didn't know that about the Twilight Princess AI! I only played the Wii version (I don't remember it being particularly hard or easy).
 

Bongo

excused from moderation duty
(he/him)
Staff member
Oh no: the most important decision in the game (whether or not to have Link hit on Peatrice) has arisen much sooner than I was prepared for.
 

Gaer

chat.exe a cessé de fonctionner
Staff member
Moderator
Oh no: the most important decision in the game (whether or not to have Link hit on Peatrice) has arisen much sooner than I was prepared for.

You homewrecker, you.
 
I didn't know that about the Twilight Princess AI! I only played the Wii version (I don't remember it being particularly hard or easy).
I didn't get a Wii at launch (Somehow was able to find one on Christmas Day early in the morning at a local Target which was wild), Zelda is one of my favorite franchises and I didn't want to wait, and I was really put off by the world-mirroring, so I went with the GC version and powered through it really fast. A month or so later, I was hanging out at a friend's place who had the Wii version and watched him play, and it just struck me as really weird that specific segments of the game I remember being difficult because of the flood of enemies that come at you, being so incredibly easy for him. I asked him hey dude, just pause for a min. Don't fight back, just stand still for a while. And the enemies literally just played ring around the rosy with Link instead of attacking en masse. It was wild! There were times where I would go from full life to running away in a panic in less than a minute because of underestimating the enemies in the GC version, but on Wii from what I played and observed, you're rarely in any actual danger.

Oh no: the most important decision in the game (whether or not to have Link hit on Peatrice) has arisen much sooner than I was prepared for.
There's a lotta Zelda games where Link and Zelda have almost nothing to do with each other like OoT, or even have an antagonistic relationship like TP. But Link and Zelda here are the most OTP they've ever been. I can't even entertain flirting w/ Peatrice.
 

chady

(He/him/his)
I take back anything nice I ever said about this game. I’m trying to win the heart piece from Fun Fun Island, and after missing by less than the distance of one Link six different times I’m ready to chuck this chubby bastard over the side of his stupid island.

EDIT: I finally did it, though I blew through over 600 rupees trying, and had to reload a save and go back before I was able to do it. At least there's an easy way to cheese the pumpkin game.
 
Last edited:

Exposition Owl

more posts about buildings and food
(he/him/his)
I have a question for British tyrants. Skyward Sword and a few other 3D Zelda games feature an item that's called a "slingshot" in the U.S. localization. Do British versions of the games call these items "catapults"?
 

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
Yeah, it's "slingshot". More often than not we get the American translation complete with missing u everywhere and weird names for stuff.

I was so excited when Kirby's Epic Yarn had the word "trousers" in the opening minute.
 

Gaer

chat.exe a cessé de fonctionner
Staff member
Moderator
Well I finished it the other night, and found 100% of items etc. on my own.

I really enjoyed it, and can see how BoTW would be their next game. Maybe I can write up what I mean later, but knowing me I'll flake.
 
Re: Fun Fun Island - I did that for like, 4 times before I bailed. I do not need to get every doodad in a Zelda game anymore, and no sense in beating my brain out over an antifun island like that.
 
I can safely say I didn't enjoy any of the minigames I can think of in this Zelda. Bug island, Fun Fun, Pumpkin toss (despite the cheese), and Harp karaoke are all pretty awful in my opinion. None are as bad as original sword baseball, mind you (looking at you Ages), but I don't like them.
 

Gaer

chat.exe a cessé de fonctionner
Staff member
Moderator
I liked pumpkin toss but did wish there was a mounted birb archery contest.
 
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