Again, TP's bosses were much more enjoyable than SS's, overall. They felt so damn epic! Much more epic than a Cthulhu impressionist who looked like he got rejected from a Jamaican knockoff of Monsters Inc.

Ashei is too quickly forgotten. She needs a spinoff with Groose. Their babies would be badass.

So, beat Skyward last night. Fantastic. Maybe not as much emotional kick as some of the other games of recent years, but damn. HUGE. And so much cool. For the size and fun factor, I'm thinking this has to be my new favorite.

Also, yeah, Groose is the shit. Just wait you guys who aren't there yet. The ole' Groosenator will win you over soon enough.

I haven't even played SS yet and I like Groose.

zelda looks absolutely gorgeous in this game...kinda makes me wish I was her. Link's lucky.;-)

Yeah she is adorable in a Taylor Swift way like the whole game. Very charming. Still only like my fourth favorite incarnation of Zelda, though (my first three are in order WW, Oot, and TP.)

I beat it last night! I gotta say I was a little disappointed with the ending, especially how Ghirahim turned out. I thought he was the best Zelda villain I know, so it was kind of a waste. He's still awesome though.

I have to admit I cheated on the last Silent Realm, I downloaded a save right after it. I really couldn't be bothered to try it again and again. And they're the sole reason why I won't be playing this game again so soon, if ever.

interesting, i quite liked the silent realms. they were like a callback to my favorite portion of phantom hourglass

I enjoyed the Silent Realms as well, but I could see how they could be frustrating. I had to restart Din's Trial after getting all but one or two of the tears and that was pretty annoying. Still, I thought they were well done, beautiful, and a great way to put some variety in the game play. Speaking of which, another thing I felt was great about the game was that the pacing was pretty fantastic. The break points are a really nice touch as well.

Exactly that. Plus the fact that it takes one... ONE hit... and it's all over. You can't fight back, you can barely dodge. And then you have to go through all the hard work all over again, you can't pick up where you left off. The scene it shows every time the guardians awoke was annoying and my nerves couldn't take all the anxiety when they were awake, or when you were doing so good, but suddenly fell into a trap, be it the water or the poe things with the lamps. We had not one of these, not two, but FOUR increasingly big trials. I guess one can tell by now how deep my hatred for these trials go haha.

I didn't experience extreme difficulty with it but that scene that it shows every time annoyed me to no end. The game has a really incoherent theme where they do some things to streamline the gameplay like dashing, leaping, no pause item screen, and then they do all these things to break the flow, it's like giving a massive team 5 years to make this game was too much for Nintendo to keep them all on the same page

That and every time you started playing the game on another day, you'd get the description for each treasure you collected again, even if it wasn't new.

That's even worse from a design standpoint because everyone already complained about rupees doing that in TP, there's no reason for them to have thought that would be a good idea that everyone wouldn't hate

This game makes me angry with things like that because I WANT to love it, on the story and presentation side I think it's the best Zelda in a long time, the art style might be my favorite in the whole series, but it has -so- much bad game design...

To be honest, I don't think this had any better of a story than any other Zelda game.
And despite everybody's love for the art style, it really just seemed like an excuse for the wii's limitations to me. The tree in Faron Woods come to mind, and how they have "billboards" for branches/leaves. And yes, I did love WW's art as well as TP.
I also didn't particularly like the whole sky thing and how you can't go from Faron to Eldin (for example) without going back to the sky first. I'll take exploring with Epona over flying to holes in the clouds with a giant bird any day.

too bad the resistance in that game was like, the biggest useless pile of fucks in any Zelda game ever.

I mean, no one in any Zelda game ever does anything except for Link, Zelda, and Ganon, but these guys did nothing yet the game treated them like they were huge heroes and a big help to Link.

I actually kind of hoped that when the castle just up and exploded, the resistance was caught up in that explosion.

I felt like that was a cop-out by Nintendo to decrease how massive the world could become.

Yeah, I heard something about that. But IMHO, I liked it massive, like in TP.

The sky was definitely a disappointment, both in segregating the surface regions and because the sky itself was very underdeveloped. Really not much to do other than track down goddess cube chests and a few things at the lumpy pumpkin, I think there was much more potential there

I think I like the story more than WW and TP but it isn't saying too much, MM and LA are the best games in the series in that regard IMO

The art style could be seen as covering the Wii's limitations but I'm not sure that even makes sense, the textures in a lot of places actually look worse than what you might see in TP. I like the concept behind it but it does have obvious technical issues

Yeah, the only village, so to speak, in the game was Skyloft. Really makes the sky uninteresting. I thought the sea in WW much more... immersing?

y'all make my job waaaaay too easy sometimes

Finally got a chance to finish this and did so this morning. Hadn't even looked in this thread yet because I wanted to avoid any and all spoilers.

Absolutely loved this. I was mildly bothered by the same things that everyone else has brought up (too much unnecessary text - be it at the bazaar or finding items I'm already familiar with or obvious observations by Fi, forced clues that I didn't need/want, and just a touch too much flying, and the same boss battle three times,) but the things they did right more than made up for it.

I could post plenty about what I enjoyed, but it would mostly just be reiterating what's already been said. A couple points, though:

What really made this stand out from other entries in the series was the story -- not necessarily the plot itself, which was fairly solid if formulaic, but the WAY it was told. The characters had far more nuance and personality than I remember ever seeing before. There were so many little touches that made the narrative engrossing. For example, I knew I was going to love immersing myself in this world with the little note after I got the sailcloth: "(It smells nice, too!)" I was also blown away by the localization, and I'm surprised no one's mentioned it.

Regardless of any compensatory reasons for the art style they chose, the art direction was gorgeous. There were several times, especially in some of the cut scenes that I just really appreciated the visual feast.

As for the music, very few standout memorable tracks, but most of it did a great job to support the environment. The cut scenes again were notable, as they made the most use of the orchestra.
I wasn't humming this track the next day, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFvequXpMZw, but I thought it added a ton to the scene.

I think everything else has been covered above. Anyway, fantastic game. A little jealous of you if you're still looking forward to it.

Just finished Skyward Sword last week, I think. Totally worth it and in my top five for sure. It doesn't bump off TP or OoT from the top spots, but definitely fun and worth it. Some of those mini-games were damn brutal, though.

Lanayru was the best part of the game IMO. The "time travelling" mechanics there were so cool and beautiful looking. I loved the little robots too.

I think that the characters in the game were a breath of fresh air. Groose was absolutely menacing, but by the end I couldn't help but love 'em. My lady still thinks that Princess Zelda is quote "a total bitch" for pushing Link off near the beginning of the game, but I think this iteration of her is very likeable. She's always seemed more standoff in other games.

My roomates and I started work on making our first video game based on those mechanics. We're not very far (school got in the way) but definitely an awesome mechanic that I want to explore.

Both of you hit the nail on the head IMO. Timeshift Stones were brilliant and it's nice to see Link and the other characters finally have personality--multidimensional personalities at that. Zelda is finally relatable and down-to-earth and no longer just a legend or the being placed on a Jesus pedestal you have to play the entire game to get to. Skyward Sword was a step in the right direction for the series. I hope the next Zelda builds even further on it!

*disclaimer: Massive generalisations within - I started typing and more came out than I expected :???: *

I did like them but they did my head in trying to work out whether the characters were simply brought forwards from the position they occupied a thousand years before or regressed to the same state... I.E. how aware were they that they were in the future?

Not sure i'd say it was a 'step in the right direction' myself, because for me that implies I thought TP was a step in the wrong one and I enjoyed that game.

I always just think that Zelda goes through the same motions as Final Fantasy. As in: "Oh crap, people complained about this aspect in the previous game, we must proove them one with the next one!"

Case in point:

FF8 - fairly linear story
FF9 - less linear story
FFX - very Linear (complaints about linearity)
FFXII - Open world with very few constraints (complaints that it isn't structured enough)
FFXIII - ULTRA LINEAR (more complaints
FFXIII-2 - ULTRA NO DIRECTION AT ALL!!!!

For gods sake, stop listening to you fanbase whining and just make the game you want to make. It just seems to me that every decision made is a reaction to how the previous game went down.

Zelda does the same (but not as bad):

OOT - EPIC STORY
MM - Dark, twisted story (complaints from people that it's not epic enough and too creepy)
Wind Waker - bright, cheerful yet epic (complaints from people that it's childish)
TP - dark, brooding, epic (complaints from people about it being a rehash of OOT and that Ganondorf pops up at end)
SS - bright, cheerful, less cutscenes, no Ganondorf (although... )

Personally, I've always felt WindWaker did a great job bringing multidimensional personalities to the table, particularly with Ganondorf. In that aspect, it even trumps SS, since the villain was, once again, evil just for the sake of being evil. Windwaker made Ganondorf into a wonderfully sympathetic villain. Finally, we were shown some of his motives for striving to take over Hyrule. On top of that, the thousands of years locked away seemed to have done him well, to the point where he was far less ruthless, and willing to let Link and Zelda live, so long as he got his dream. To me, WW made the player feel a sense of regret at finally killing Ganondorf, a sentiment that Zelda games have yet to replicate.

Skyward Sword not the best Zelda in terms of gameplay, but easily I think it's my top in terms of lore and character development.

I definitely agree with Wind Waker. Wind Waker gave a face and a personality to child Link. Skyward Sword got the job done for adult Link. Both gave a fresh approach to who Zelda is, that she is a regular person who learns she encompasses something greater, rather than other Zeldas where she is a Jesus figure from the get go.

Okay, I didn't mean to pull the conversation too far away from SS.

Bumpity bump. Copypasting my thoughts from another forum. Shouldn't be any big spoilers in here.

So I beat Skyward Sword a short while ago. Wonderful game; they did a magnificent job implementing the motion controls for everything, and it was more fun for it (i'm lookin' at you, c to draw bow). However, I did have some difficulties with the controls (not rolling or using the shield when I did the right motion, not doing the fatal blow with the same deal, which was a pain in the final fights) and there were several times I had to recalibrate it mid-game.

The story presentation was very well done, and all the characters were very well done. All of them had their flaws and weaknesses, and it used them to good effect. Also, Groose is awesome. I don't care, they did a great job developing his character throughout the game. Also, the boss fights were rather creative and unique. As were the dungeons for that matter. They all seemed to fit into the environment naturally.The music did a great job setting the stage for whatever area you were in, and the gimmicks for each area were very well implemented (namely the timeshift stones).

I've heard complaints about lack of exploration, but honestly I did plenty of exploring on my own, just messing around and looking for bugs and stuff. The Goddess Cubes were a great touch too.

Also, collecting the treasures to upgrade your gear is a perfect addition to the series, as was the stamina gauge. It all worked out so well, and I loved the little details added too. Like Beedle's change of speech at night, or the little throwbacks everywhere (Kukiel says a variation of "its dangerous to go alone" when you first meet Batreaux, and I think one of the Mogma says "its a secret to everybody").

Speaking of which, while I was glad there were still some Gorons, I enjoyed the new races. The Kikwi were cute and had some clever characteristics, while the Mogma were greedy but hilarious. Ledd and his partner definitely had a good dynamic, for the little time you see them. The robots were pretty funny too (especially Scrapper), and the Parella were just... annoying. I also wasn't thrilled with the design used for the dragons.

All in all, a very well done game with a good amount of content (as in mini-games and item upgrades). The Adventure Pouch seemed limited at times, but for the most part it was okay. Especially once I had all 8 slots. Anyway, I hope the next one forgoes motion controls because it's a pain in the ass to have to pause and recalibrate the controller so left is left again and not up-right and backwards for some odd reasons, but they worked about 95% of the time in this one. And they were used quite cleverly.

Not much related to the game, but I bought the Zelda poster sets from Club Nintendo and am framing my favorites.

http://i.imgur.com/5sUzE.jpg

I'm sure this was explored already but here's my 2 cents ..

I beat the game a while ago. I couldn't help but think that throughout the game, I never felt many "wow" moments. I kept thinking back that Ocarina of Time blew my mind, and Twilight Princess and Windwaker were very solid, unique games but Skyward Sword was very ordinary to me.

There's the LoZ formula--explore different temples, put the Triforce together, etc etc .. which I just felt were done perfectly in past games without being too repetitive, while still managing to create a unique game. While playing Skyward Sword I just felt like it was doing the same old stuff again and felt predictable.

I want to play it again. I did unlock Hero Mode after all ..

Really? I felt the opposite. Nearly every boss fight had my heart racing and made me feel like such a badass. Especially that sea monster and that clockwork golem thing with all the swords. The music during those fights was perfect. And at least for me, the difficulty was perfectly set so that I'd beat it on the first try but barely make it out alive.

The only ones that kinda annoy me are the sand scorpion (because it's so disappointingly easy) and the flaming spider eyeball thing (because it was a pain in the butt to figure out, and once I did it was also disappointingly easy).

Agreed on all these parts. Plus Koloktos had you use his own swords against him, which was one of my favorite parts of Wind Waker (using enemy weapons against them).

Actually, after I beat Koloktos I grabbed one of the swords and just swung it around randomly for teh lulz. XD

You know, call me crazy or call me maybe, but no joke I played this while my living situation was not good. Hear me out, I was renting this room out where the landlord was some sort of monk, and the place smelled like incense all the time, visitors were not allowed, him and his friends were chanting all the time, and he would always knock on my roommate's door (the guy directly next to me) for being too loud. Point of the story: Literally whenever I played Skyward Sword, the volume level was way down, and being an audio guy I LOVE music and sound. It sounds a little nutty but I bet this definitely and negatively affected my perception of the game. I need to play it again ... and thus I will.