Review
Release Date: 11.19.2006
Platform:
WiiDeveloper:
Nintendo EADPublisher:
Nintendo of America, Inc.Reviewed by
Ash Paulsen on 2.22.2007
| Review Rating: 10/10 | User Rating: 9.32/10 |
The
Zelda series has long been legendary both in name and in quality; many seasoned gamers consider it to be one of the very best franchises video gaming has to offer. But the series' latest iteration,
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, is legendary for a third, unique reason: the path it took from its very first unveiling in trailer form at E3 2004 to its final landing on store shelves was uncommonly long, twisted, and full of what can be kindly described as "bumps in the road."
Multiple delays tied to bids for more development time to make a better overall product are only part of what this game went through on its way to retail. After finding a secure place in many a Nintendo fan's heart as the ailing GameCube's final hurrah, Nintendo turned expectations upside down at last year's E3 by announcing that not only was
Twilight Princess no longer exclusive to the GameCube, it was also to be the next-generation Wii's flagship launch title -- and would hit store shelves sooner than the original GameCube version, to boot.
Immediately following that announcement, Nintendo would face a veritable gamer-blizzard of worry over the final product and feelings of betrayal on the part of GameCube owners who had only kept their purple (or black, or platinum) cubes for the sole purpose of playing the latest
Zelda adventure. Would the wacky new motion-sensing, remote-controlled Wii be a comfortable, natural home for such an ambitious game that had already spent years in development for a traditional console? And how could Nintendo betray GameCube owners by announcing the game just for them originally, yet releasing the Wii version three weeks beforehand?
Well, I don't have an answer for the latter question about you GameCube faithfuls; you pretty much got screwed. But that first question, about whether or not the Wii would make a comfy fit for such an ambitious game originally designed for a very different console? If you couldn't guess from the review score, I'll put it for you here in very simple terms: you have absolutely nothing to worry about. From the moment you first slide the game disc into your Wii and pick up the Wii Remote to the final moment of the ending credits,
Twilight Princess is a wholly unforgettable experience that feels like it was designed from the ground up for Nintendo's "new-gen" console. It is not without its flaws, but any issues I have with the game stem from the game experience itself and not with any hiccups in one version compared to the other. In fact, once you've played the Wii version of Link's latest outing, I reckon you will find (as I did) that playing the GameCube version feels immediately dull and unintuitive by comparison.
This is mainly because
Twilight Princess for the Wii has been designed to take complete advantage of the system's novel control interface that, once you've gotten used to things and overcome the control scheme's fairly quick learning curve, allows for an unbelievably fluid, streamlined gameplay experience. In many ways, the game's controls will be familiar to players already accustomed to the series' past 3D outings. The A button is your main, context-sensitive action button and will be used to perform many different actions based on where you are and what you're doing. You can assign up to three different items to three of the directions on the remote's directional pad, with "up" still being used to call for in-game help from Link's traveling companion (the impish and wholly cool Midna, in this case). The remote's rear-facing B button uses whatever item you have currently set to it. Finally, the nunchuk attachment's analog stick moves Link around, while its Z button is used for - what else? - targeting, and the C button is used for the all-important first-person view mode. It's a lot to take in at first, yes, but after your first hour or two of gameplay you'll likely feel right at home.
One of the biggest reasons Nintendo was able to make a control scheme like this work is because they had no need for an attack button. Yes, as you've undoubtedly heard (or experienced) by now, to activate Link's basic sword attacks you must "shake" the remote and/or nunchuk. Now, are you listening? I'm only going to say this once: please don't let anyone fool you into thinking this is any kind of huge, arm-exhausting endeavor. It isn't. It won't be long before you learn that getting the remote to register an attack takes little more than a slight wiggle of the wrist, and after that, the constant remote-shaking you'll be doing becomes a second-nature reflex free of all but the slightest conscious thought. Honestly, it ends up proving to be a lot more intuitive and precise than constantly mashing on the same attack button, and frees up your fingers for other tasks, such as fluidly switching between items, repositioning the camera, or targeting a foe. Simply put: it works really, really well.
Yet, that's only half of the superior control aspect that I believe makes the Wii version of
Twilight Princess the clear winner over its GameCube cousin. The other half? The Wii Remote's aiming/pointing mechanism, which is used in
Twilight Princess to aim all of Link's point-and-shoot items, and in my opinion is such a wonderful innovation that it should forever replace the traditional analog stick as the primary aiming method in any future Wii title in which anything needs to be aimed anywhere. That's a lofty statement, to be sure, but it's one I fully stand by. It works like this: you set an aiming item -- for this example, let's say the tried-and-true bow and arrow -- to the B button. Holding the B button thereafter will make Link draw an arrow and pull it back, ready to let it fly. Then you use the Wii Remote to aim anywhere on the screen, let go of the B button, and watch the arrow soar right to its destination. I don't believe there are any words I can use to accurately describe how much more intuitive and, in the end, accurate this is than using an analog stick to line up your target. There's no additional component to it; you set your arrow (or other aiming item) and just
aim by pointing the remote anywhere in Link's field of vision. Once you get over the initial adjustment of using this new aiming interface (which doesn't take long), you'll be picking off your targets without a second thought because you're actually aiming at what you want to shoot at, rather than relying on minute thumb movements to make your aim true. The remote works wonderfully in this regard and I never encountered any technical errors with the aiming mechanism. I'll just say this: I messed around with the GameCube version of
Twilight after finishing the Wii version, and I was left with a feeling of disbelief that there was ever a time that I played 3D
Zelda games with anything other than the Wii Remote. At least for this game, the traditional GameCube controller just cannot compare.
Much ado has been made about the Wii version's lack of a manually controllable camera. After having played through the game's entirety and searched every single last one of its many elusive corners, all I can say is, "so what?" The camera control, in any case, is assigned to the Z (targeting) button, so that when you press it when no enemies are nearby, the camera re-centers itself behind Link, giving you an instantaneous view of what lies ahead of him. Yes, it's true that there were a few times I wanted to get a better view of a particular place in the game world and could not because the game would automatically target (and shift the focus towards) a nearby enemy until I defeated it. These instances, however, were altogether uncommon in the 70 or so hours I spent with the game, enough so that I don't consider it an issue worthy of knocking the Wii version for not having a manually controllable camera. Honestly, the game's camera is smart enough on its own anyway that ninety-nine percent of the time, the limited control you have over its functions never becomes an issue.
One of the other major components of
Twilight Princess' gameplay revolves around Link's new ability to transform into a wolf. It won't be long into your adventure before you get your first taste of Link's lupine side, and while this component adds something new and never-before-seen to the roster of
Zelda gameplay experiences, it does not come off as being particularly memorable and playing as Wolf Link does, in fact, come off as feeling significantly limited and restricting compared to his tried-and-true human form. This is not helped by the fact that the game's narrative is front-ended with a lot of scenarios in which you are forced to play as Wolf Link until you can meet certain objectives. This contributed to the feeling that, by the time I had the option to switch back and forth between both forms at will in the second segment of the game, I was tired of the wolf form and seldom wanted to use it any more than was absolutely necessary. It becomes less useful and feels more tacked-on as the game progresses anyway; while the wolf can move faster than human Link and has the unique abilities to use heightened senses to follow scents and dig into the ground for items and secret passageways, Link is a much stronger and more versatile warrior in his human form (he can't use any items as a wolf) and the wolf's sensing and digging abilities are only needed occasionally. The tacked-on feeling only grows when you consider that the
Twilight's story never clearly defines why Link can even turn into a wolf, and where that element came from in the first place. It can be summed up like this: if you've really got a hard-on for playing as a wolf in your video games, go play
Okami -- it does the whole playing-as-a-wolf thing much better.
Besides, you're not playing the newest Zelda game because you heard Link can go lupine this time around, are you? No, you're playing it because it's the latest installment in a series known for breathtaking, involving, high-quality gaming experiences, and it is in this area that
Twilight unsurprisingly succeeds immensely. Link's latest quest is a long, sprawling one: your journey will take you through no less than nine dungeons, the first seven of which are massive and all of which rank among the best dungeon designs this series has ever seen (though I am not ready to admit they all outrank the best of
Ocarina of Time's dungeons). There is plenty of required (story) and side content to pad out the playing time between dungeons too, so you'll be spending lots of time outside of dungeons and exploring the varied geography of Hyrule, from the sprawling Hyrule Field (which is
many times larger than the
Ocarina of Time version and is just littered with secrets), to the deep valleys of Zora's Domain and the lofty, snowy mountain peaks of, uh, Snowpeak -- and beyond.
But to be honest, there is a staggering - and at times off-putting - sense of familiarity here if you're a veteran of
Ocarina of Time. Throughout much of the
Twilight experience, you may likely find yourself unable to shake a feeling of "been there, done that" -- a pervasive feeling, to be sure, but it is there. Much of the game's first "segment" (the first three dungeons and the subsequent objective-altering plot twist) often mirrors - sometimes to an outright scary degree - the front end of
Ocarina's quest. You'll start out in a sleepy forest village and, later, learn the ropes in a woods-based tutorial dungeon, then move on to Kakariko Village and the fiery Death Mountain whose Goron residents are being plagued by - surprise! - intermittent earthquakes, and finally come to the aid of the aquatic Zora people, whose aquatic kingdom has been frozen - the exact same plight their ancestors suffered a century ago, and the exact same crisis another Link delivered them from in
Ocarina of Time. Even the special items you'll find in
Twilight's first three dungeons don't stray far from what you first got in
Ocarina. Now, I understand Nintendo took a lot of (undeserved, in my opinion) heat for straying so far from the expected formula with
The Wind Waker, and knew that all eyes would be on them to repeat the success of
Ocarina after revealing
Twilight to be another adventure starring an older, more mature Link and a darker, edgier look. But
Twilight sometimes sticks so close to the trail that
Ocarina blazed that it has a difficult time standing out on its own, a problem I felt never plagued
The Wind Waker. Indeed, at times the game feels more like an unofficial "Ocarina of Time 2" than a
Twilight Princess, and the strict adherence to such a formula can get frustrating, especially for those of us who feel that the different direction Nintendo went in with
The Wind Waker was nothing short of genius. As a result, to me
Twilight just ended up feeling less risky and, ironically, less ambitious in comparison.
Most thankfully, these feelings of gripping familiarity are much less common in the game's second segment (the second set of four dungeons and the finale), as Link explores more exotic locations and acquires some unique items that aren't immediate throwbacks (or aren't related at all) to
Ocarina. But it is my opinion that even if Nintendo's clear reliance on the
Ocarina formula as a whole doesn't make the
Twilight experience
worse per sé, it does contribute to its being a little more predictable and having somewhat less of a "wow!" factor than some of Link's other adventures.
As I briefly mentioned above, the
Zelda series staple of an almost overwhelming amount of side quests and optional content to pursue is in full effect here. There are plenty of Pieces of Heart to find to max out Link's life meter, of course -- more now than ever before, in fact, because it now takes five pieces to make a full Heart Container. There are also the requisite upgradeable bomb bags, quivers, etc. to find and/or earn, and you will of course want to track down all four Empty Bottles and the like. But there's so much more than that. You'll also be searching for Golden Bugs all around Hyrule for a freaky bug-collecting girl, doing plenty of fishing for "fun" and prizes, doing good deeds for various Hyrulians, searching for Poe (ghost) souls using the wolf form's heightened senses, and more... and no good deed in
Twilight Princess goes unrewarded. As with most
Zelda games, it's often very, very difficult to get from point A to point B, even when you have a good idea of exactly what you want to do or where you want to go, because there is just so much off the beaten path that piques one's interest and demands investigation -- and before you know it, you'll be waist-deep in a sidequest or optional mini-dungeon or what-have-you that will suck away just a couple more hours of your time before getting back to (oh yeah!) the quest at hand.
Link's previous GameCube adventure,
The Wind Waker, drew a lot of ire from longtime series fans for having a staggeringly low level of difficulty. Finishing the game without so much as a thought of possibly dying was a complaint constantly levied at the game, and often attributed to the game's "kiddy" aesthetic, what with its adorable, wide-eyed pre-teen Link and cel-shaded art style. One would hope, then, that
Twilight Princess, with its significantly darker undertones (arguably the darkest the series has ever seen) and more realistic, mature visual style, would have a difficulty level suitable for more mature players too. Unfortunately, one's hopes would be dashed --
Twilight Princess starts out hand-holdingly easy and, in terms of enemy difficulty and the fear of ever actually dying, just gets easier all the way to the end as Link gets stronger and enemies, well, don't. It's not just a possibility you'll get through the game without a single death, it's downright likely. It's frustrating because it can serve to pull you out of the game experience, especially during the game's epic boss battles. Sure, those bosses always look huge and imposing and are usually faced down in epic, multi-segmented struggles that appear to have the odds heavily stacked against Link. But even those boss encounters, cool as they are, lose a lot of their gravity when you find that Link only takes minimal damage from even the most painful-looking hits -- and as Link's life meter grows throughout the game, the likelihood that you'll ever get a game over becomes even smaller, and that's not even taking into account the many different sources of life replenishment you can take into battle. Even the game's climatic, multi-stage final battle poses little threat to our green-clad hero.
It should be noted, however, that the series' token puzzle elements are in full effect here, and that
Twilight's many dungeons will often leave you just the right amount of stumped to press you on, but never confuse you so much that you'll get frustrated, having no idea what you're supposed to do. (There is thankfully nothing like
Ocarina of Time's dreaded Water Temple to be found here.) So, yes, while
Twilight's fantastic dungeon-based puzzles will leave you scratching your head more than once, the "action" part of the game is once again far too easy, often to the point where it's frustrating. Please, Nintendo, if you're going to make a Zelda game to cater to a more mature audience, jack up the difficulty level while you're at it, okay?
Twilight Princess' narrative is an interesting topic to discuss. While this is definitely the most story-driven
Zelda game to date, with more in-game cutscenes and character development than you likely have come to expect from the series, the story itself really isn't as big a deal as all the pre-release fervor would have you believe. In the end, it's pretty standard
Zelda fare compared to
The Wind Waker, which was a whole lot more ambitious in terms of what it did to established series staples. It can also be frustrating at times, too, as Nintendo once again jacks up continuity despite pushing this as a direct sequel to
Ocarina (albeit 100 years later). A lot of plot and world design elements here (especially a certain dungeon) seem to come out of left field when you try to consider the connection between the two games, and all told,
Ocarina and especially
The Wind Waker just told more engaging tales in my view. But as long as you don't go into
Twilight with your story expectations too lofty, you'll enjoy what you find here. It should be noted that
Twilight benefits from an absolutely fantastic English script and some of the best character development the series has ever seen. The developers have taken a page from
The Wind Waker and once again use facial expressions to great effect here, once again making Link as human and emotionally resonant as he can be without having any lines of dialogue. Link actually comes off as a human interested in saving his world and the people he loves and not just an avatar for the player to control. Oh, and his new companion, Midna? She's one of the most wonderful, immediately endearing characters this series has seen to date. Bravo, Nintendo, for giving Link a companion many times better than a certain fairy "helper" he once had...
Twilight Princess' soundtrack is one of the best the series has yet seen. Though it does, at times, suffer from the fact that Nintendo refuses to use great synth for its game soundtracks and doesn't even attempt to go for an orchestrated sound (which it really should), the music here is consistently great and is several times better than
Ocarina's. The main overworld theme, which purists will be disappointed to find doesn't draw very much from the series' main theme, is suitably heroic, catchy, and is long and varied enough so that it never gets tiresome. As expected, a lot of familiar tunes show up here once again but in remixed form, and that's nice.
Twilight also cuts down on the series' recent over-use of ambient sound, so that night-time field exploration and many of the dungeons are often accompanied by music. It's minimal, but in my experience minimal music is oftentimes better than no music, and it's proven to great effect here. The game's soundtrack is also once again context sensitive, with appropriate shifts in the soundtrack occurring according to the time of day, your proximity to an enemy, and more.
The series' tradition of fantastic sound effects is upheld to great effect here. If you know what previous 3D
Zeldas have sounded like, you have a pretty accurate idea of how
Twilight sounds as well. Of particular note is Link's voice track -- he's never sounded more "hardcore" than he does now. The menacing grunt that accompanies his sword-impaling finishing move never gets old, and altogether gives off the empowering impression that this is one man you don't want to mess with. Other characters, of course, also have a wide range of grunts, moans, shrieks, etc. in lieu of actual voice acting. This is the way it's been since
Ocarina, and it works once again here, especially when you consider what potentially-bad voice acting could have done to the game.
From a graphical standpoint,
Twilight Princess is at once impressive and humble at the same time. As you're likely already aware,
Twilight, despite being ported to the Wii, was originally developed for the GameCube and, as such, looks like a GameCube game. In past-generation context, then, the game looks fantastic; the purple cube was never a slouch in the graphical department and
Twilight is one of its finest-looking games.
Twilight does fail to impress, though, when held up against current-generation standards, especially if you've been playing a lot of Xbox 360 games recently. But the ultimate question really is, "does it matter?" No, it really doesn't. This is because the visual
direction here -- the world design, character designs, the visual
experience of the game -- is absolutely top-notch. Much like the PS2's
Shadow of the Colossus, there is a lot of ingenious visual design at work here that is limited only by the processing power of its native console. Thus,
Twilight is a game you will certainly enjoy looking at as you take in the game world and appreciate the character the developers have given the game itself. Sure, like
Colossus, you'll sometimes wonder what it could have looked like if the developers had had more processing power to work with. But you'll realize that it doesn't really matter pretty quickly as you're drawn into an altogether fantastic game whose quality has nothing to do with the number of polygons it pushes.
And that is what
Twilight Princess ultimately is: an altogether fantastic game. It's a token
Zelda experience through and through, and many gamers will be quick to tell you how special an experience that is. It isn't necessarily the most unique or ambitious title in the series, it doesn't defy series convention like
The Wind Waker did (to wonderful effect), and it does retread some trails blazed by its spiritual predecessor,
Ocarina of Time. But the Wii version of
Twilight Princess blazes a trail of its own with its revolutionary control scheme that allows for a much more intuitive, fluid gameplay experience than its traditionally-controlled predecessors ever did, and there is no denying that, no matter which platform you play it on,
Twilight is certainly the most vast, expansive
Zelda game ever, not only in terms of the length of its quest but also the size of its world, and the seemingly endless amount of things to do in it. It is not perfect or even the best game in the series in my eyes, but no game that ever earns a 10 does so by being perfect or the best there ever was. It does so by standing out as an exceptional gaming experience that you will recall fondly years down the road, and in that respect,
Twilight Princess carries on the
Zelda series' torch proudly.
