Skyward Sword and the Importance of The Little Things
I am loving the latest Zelda title to be (re-)released for the Switch for some reasons great and small.
I’m not sure I would have liked The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword if I played it when it was first released on the Wii. Then again, maybe I would have. I bailed on the series’ main console entries for a few games when they decided to make use of the Wii’s motion controls for Link’s movements. Little did I know the first of the two motion-based games, Twilight Princess, was released on the GameCube simultaneously with button controls. I still have not cast my Guardian-like gaze upon that blind spot. Hopefully, Nintendo will make it easy on me by releasing some way of playing a button-controlled version of that game on the Switch sooner rather than later. That being said, Nintendo rarely makes things easy for its customer base.
Then again, they did release an HD-remaster of Skyward Sword and released it on the Switch as part of the franchise’s 35th anniversary celebration. I got it on release day, much like I did Super Mario 3D All-Stars, and I played the hell out of it over the weekend. As of writing this post, I have not completed it, and by the time you’re all reading this, I probably still won’t have defeated it because pesky things like “work” and “home responsibilities” get in the way. Still, games in the Zelda franchise aren’t really meant to be completed in a few hours, a few days, even a week anyway. Sure, you might go back and blow through the first Zelda now in a few hours, but when you were a young kid in the ‘80s and the Internet was but a dream of Al Gore, you still labored through that game like it was Breath of the Wild.
The length of the game is where the familiarity is. Time spent ambling around the various incarnations of the land of Hyrule (or the Dark World or Koholint Island or Lorule) is a staple in any game, whether it be the first installment or the last. The enemies are the same as in other versions for the most part. You carry a sword, a shield, empty bottles for storing various potions, bombs, and other items to use in your quest. Even flying in and around Skyloft is reminiscent of sailing in the Great Sea in Wind Waker. These familiarities are what bind the game to the rest of the series, but what makes it so fascinating, and thus so great, is how much it differs from the rest of the series.
Even playing in the button-controlled mode, the combat-and-item system feels different from both the predecessor to its predecessor, Wind Waker and its successor, Breath of the Wild. The A, B, and X buttons are for triggering actions, movement, and music playing respectively. All of the classic Zelda nuts and bolts are held within the R joystick and the two Z buttons at the top of the controller. The ZL button fills the classic Z-button role all the way from Ocarina of Time in targeting, but the right side of the controller is your combat haven. R joystick swings the sword, and ZR chooses the secondary weapon, which you can then utilize using both the R joystick and the ZR button. For longtime Zelda players, the controls may seem a little counterintuitive, but once you get the hang of them, they start to feel natural. I’m not sure if the differences here are markedly better than classic button mashing, but I appreciate the attempt at building a combat system for a game built on motion controls with buttons and joysticks that remain in that spirit without making things too clunky.
It's the combat that’s at the heart of what makes this game so unique in the series. Zelda games, since the first one, have been kind to players who just want to let fly with their swords for most of the game. Yes, there are enemies that need special means to defeat, from the Pols Voice in the first game who are bested easily with your arrows (and were almost targets for a microphone attachment for the NES whose plans were thankfully scrapped) up to Dodongos all along the timeline who need to eat bombs or be blasted in the face with smoke to be vulnerable. Shigeru Miyamoto never intended for Zelda to be a franchise based on the clashing of swords blindly into the night, but that’s what his franchise turned out to be in part at least. The best games have always combined this offensive explosion with creative puzzle solving, which is what Miyamoto meant for the series to be, but the former never really bothered with needing any touch, even in the game that succeeded this one, Breath of the Wild.
I wouldn’t say you need to be a skilled fencer to combat in this game, but the swordplay takes a lot more thought than it does in any other Zelda game I’ve played. It all has to do with how you swing the sword using the R joystick (or motion control). Different inputs into the joystick correspond with different swings of the sword, so while you can stab straight at an unguarded Bokoblin to damage them, your sword with the same move will just plunge right into a Chu Chu with no damage done. You have to think about how you’re going to fight an enemy before you first encounter it. Of course, once you’ve slain a few of the same enemies, fighting them becomes second nature, but that leads into the enemies for which you may never be able to get a feel for defeating easily.
As you progress in the game, Bokoblins carry heavier swords that they used for defense, and other enemies, like Moblins and Stalfos, have shields that you may need to navigate around. Hacking at them won’t work. Instead, you have to employ patience and in some cases strategy to take them down. It’s not a complex battle system by any means, but for the Zelda series, it is more refined than anything that came before (except for Twilight Princess which again, I cannot speak upon because I haven’t played it) or the two games that came after, Breath of the Wild and Link Between Worlds. Some people might find it tedious or difficult, which is fine. Everyone’s tastes are different. To me, it’s a wrinkle, one that when done well can elevate a game higher than it could have been if there had been no effort to freshen things up or take a chance on a different technique.
There are plenty of other things to enjoy about this game, like the beautiful scenery and music, the ingenious dungeon designs, and the attempts at creating lively NPCs who provide fun sidequests. I’m not sure where this game got such a poor reputation unless the Wii motion-control-only version was buggy and hard to command. Still, even if that was the case, this update has been a dream to play so far, so much so that I hope that if you read this a week after it’s been posted, I’m still not finished playing it. But that’s the beauty in playing a Zelda game. The best ones keep you hooked to it for days, weeks, sometimes even months. The best games are always ones you want to keep playing anyway.