literature

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess Retro Review

Deviation Actions

Bladefinger's avatar
By
Published:
498 Views

Literature Text

Way back in the days before I was writing blogs on IGN, there were only three kinds of games I'd play: Pokemon, Fire Emblem, and Zelda.  And one of my most played Zelda games was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.  Oh man, was I ever excited for this game.  This was the game that made me want a Wii in the first place, and while I may not have gotten my hands on the Wii and its version of Twilight Princess until months later, I played the GameCube version in the interim, and, in some ways, I think I prefer that version of the game.  I loved the game when it first came out and played it non-stop.  It was practically the only Wii game I played for the first year or so I had one!  Then, I started frequenting some Zelda fan sites and was rather surprised by all the disdain for Twilight Princess.  Don't get me wrong, opinion of it was still favorable, but not so favorable as other games in the series, most notably, Ocarina of Time.  So, naturally, I started to develop a “disdain” for it as well, a disdain that can be easily noted in my earlier Twilight Princess review.  Lately, however, with new game releases being a veritable desert, I decided to replay the GameCube's swan song and the Wii's opening act with a fresh perspective.  Is it really an inferior Zelda game?  Or might it just be one of the best games in the series?

If you've never played Twilight Princess before, I would warn you that it has one of the worst game openings you'll ever see.  To put it into perspective, when I tested it out earlier, it was 45 minutes before anything even remotely interesting or relevant to the plot occurred, and it would be another hour or so before I could get into the first dungeon.  You know dungeons, right?  Those things the Zelda series practically revolves around?  Yeah, it'll be about two hours before you get to explore one in Twilight Princess, and that's if you skip cutscenes.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is Twilight Princess's greatest flaw, it tries so hard to be cinematic.  This is evident from the cutscenes.  They're drawn out and establish very little in informing gameplay.  They seem to be there mostly for show.  Which is fine, seeing as you can skip them if you want to get to the meat of the game and there's some interesting cinematography on show if you decide to stick around to watch them.  But they're brought down by the lack of voice acting.  The emotional scenes are lessened by having characters convey their thoughts through text blurbs instead of voicing them.  I can understand why the GameCube version might have lacked voice acting, considering GameCube discs never had a lot of storage space and Twilight Princess is such a huge game to begin with.  But clearly the Wii version would have space on its disc to spare.  It would have given a clear edge to the then next gen version, assuming the voice work was at least half-way decent.  I suppose I should stop beating around the bush and just say it.  Nintendo, if you want Zelda Wii U to have any sort of narrative elements beyond collect mcguffins, kill evil, rescue princess, please have some voice acting to help convey that narrative.  Kid Icarus: Uprising had fantastic voice work, so I know you can do just as well with Zelda.

To Nintendo's credit, the story itself is rather interesting.  It involves Hyrule being swallowed up by a mysterious twilight that heralds the arrival of terrifying alien monsters that easily take over the kingdom.  When Link is drawn into this twilight, he is transformed into a wolf and kidnapped by the monsters.  Escaping his imprisonment with an imp named Midna, he joins her on a quest to drive the twilight out of Hyrule.

And speaking of Midna, I must commend Nintendo on their work with this character.  As far as Zelda sidekicks go, she's a bit like Minish Cap's Ezlo.  She'll talk quite a bit, but makes up for it with an interesting, dynamic personality.  She starts out ordering Link around and talking to him as if he were an idiot.  As the game goes on, she grows to respect him more and treats him less like a dumb mule and more like a true companion.  And she's also an integral part of the plot, but I won't spoil any details for those who haven't yet played this game.

A lot of effort was put into making Twilight Princess the largest, most expansive land-based Zelda we'd ever seen, or seen since, for that matter.  And it shows.  Twilight Princess's Hyrule is absolutely massive.  And it feels surprisingly connected and open, in spite of having to load every time you enter a new area.  Part of this is thanks to being able to see landmarks and dungeons off in the distance.  For instance, I'd be diving off a waterfall in Zora's Domain and I could see Hyrule Castle on the horizon.  Or, I'd be boating down a river at the bottom of a ravine and I could see one of Hyrule bridges hanging far above me.  But this expansiveness comes at a price.  While Twilight Princess does indeed have the largest version of Hyrule we've yet to see, even to this day, it's also one of the most flat and empty.  There aren't very many secrets for you to uncover.  Enemies are few and far between and you can just as easily ignore them.  Quests seem to be restricted to the few towns.  The landscape is almost completely flat with few noteworthy landmarks.  Now, you all know that I love Wind Waker, and that game has Twilight Princess beat in both size and quantity.  When sailing the Great Sea, you couldn't go far without finding a new island to explore, an enemy platform to ravage, or sunken treasure to bring up.  In short, Twilight Princess's over world may be large, but it's so thinly spread, journeys feel less like an adventure and more like a chore.  And Twilight Princess features a lot of running from place to place for sidequests and story progression.  Thankfully, you get the ability to teleport after the first half of the game, so getting around isn't so time consuming.

Once you get around the lengthy exposition and over world exploration, Zelda's core elements are as good as they ever were.  The dungeons in the game are fun to navigate, the bosses are awesome if a bit easy to fight, and the design plays around with some neat ideas.  The themes for these dungeons are cliché, to be sure.  You'll go through your Forest Temple, and your Fire Temple, and your Water temple, and your Desert Temple.  Once you get past those, Twilight Princess starts throwing aside dungeon conventions and comes up with some pretty cool ideas.  After braving the Desert Temple, you'll go to the token ice-themed dungeon, only to find it's not a temple at all, but a mansion inhabited by a pair of friendly yetis (very, very friendly yetis).  After that, you'll go up in the sky to explore a floating city made up of egg-shaped domes filled with surreal-looking chicken men being plagued by a ferocious dragon.  Perhaps the most visually striking dungeon in the game is the Twilight Realm.  The soft, glowing colored lines against hard black stone with square-shaped particles makes for a beautiful effect.  I just wish we got to explore more of the Twilight Realm outside of this one temple area.

You do get to explore Hyrule under the blanket of the twilight, but it doesn't look as pretty as the Twilight Realm itself.  It lacks the neon on black theme and it can only be explored in Link's wolf form.  Why is this a bad thing?  Because Link's wolf form isn't very fun to play as.  Since he can't use any of his usual arsenal, Wolf Link is left with fewer moves for combat and exploration.  It doesn't help that every twilight-covered Hyrule section involves carrying out a tedious fetch quest, searching for x number of light tears to rid that section of twilight before you can finally head off for the dungeon.

Thankfully, playing as Hylian Link is really fun.  The combat system seems largely unchanged from Wind Waker.  But the parrying ability was taken out and replaced with hidden skills Link can learn throughout the game to better his fighting ability.  The items are basically the same, with a few exceptions and modifications.  They still work well and integrate smoothly into gameplay, but many of the items in Link's arsenal are barely used at all.  Most people would use the Spinner as an example of this, and while that is a prime target, I can think of one item that has even more unfulfilled potential: the lantern.  Early trailers of Twilight Princess implied that it would have a much darker atmosphere, an atmosphere so dark Link would require a light source to see clearly.  Imagine, if you will, night falls on Hyrule and it becomes so dark, Link can't see more than a few feet in front of him.  Monsters would attack him as if from nowhere from the shade of night, unless Link had a lantern handy to illuminate his path.  Or if other parts of the game were darker as well, like certain areas within dungeons or Hyrule Field.  It would make an interesting risk-reward situation, with Link having the balance to risk of traveling in darkness against the possibility of running out of oil.  Should he forge onward regardless or head back to town to stalk up on oil or just wait out the night within it?  A mechanic like this would certainly have made the lantern a more integral item, and it would have made lantern oil worth buying.  Whether the lighting engine wasn't up for such tasks or the design team thought against it, the game wasn't dark enough for the lantern to matter.  As it stands, the lantern is only needed for a few optional dark tunnels and a handful of torch puzzles.

One thing Twilight Princess brought back to the Zelda series was horseback riding, a feature I'm glad is being revived again with Zelda Wii U.  But Twilight Princess does horseback riding better than Ocarina of Time ever did.  For one thing, you can use more items than your bow while on Epona, which makes horseback battles all the more dynamic.  Unfortunately, like the Spinner, the lantern, and so many other inanimate objects in Twilight Princess, Epona doesn't see much use in the main campaign.  There are only three horseback battles throughout the entire game.  All else you'll be doing on Epona's back is traveling from A to B, fighting some optional monsters if you feel like it, or herding goats.  Let's just hope Epona gets to see more action in Zelda Wii U.

After having played Twilight Princess, I came to a realization.  This is not one of the worst Zeldas.  In fact, I'd say it's one of the better Zeldas.  And now, I'm going to say something that would would have gotten me flogged in the Zelda fan sites I used to frequent, but I'll say it anyway.  I think The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is better than Ocarina of Time.  Whatever Ocarina of Time did well, Twilight Princess did better.  It looks better.  It plays better.  There's more stuff to do.  The dungeons were more interesting and the bosses were much more satisfying to fight.  And while Twilight Princess does tend to lose its momentum with all the cutscenes, Ocarina of Time wasn't afraid of drowning players in unnecessary exposition either.  At least Twilight Princess lets you skip most of it.  And, yes, I know it's unfair to compare the two when Ocarina of Time came out on vastly inferior hardware and therefore had to be built within those limitations while Twilight Princess, being on GameCube and Wii, had a lot more power to work with.  But how many times have you heard someone bemoan how the Zelda series has lived in the shadow of Ocarina of Time?  While I, myself, once held Ocarina of Time as the pinnacle of the Zelda series, I can safely say I don't think that way anymore.  More interesting stuff has been done with the Zelda series, even back on the N64.  While Ocarina of Time is a very good game, putting nostalgia aside, it's arguable that it has been surpassed every time a new Zelda game comes out.  And, Twilight Princess might just be one of those Zelda games, at least in this reviewer's opinion, and it's not even my favorite Zelda.  Now, about that other Zelda game that released on Wii...
I've got a feeling the last paragraph might upset some people.  If that's the case, please keep things civil.  And, before anyone points this out, yes, I have reviewed Twilight Princess before, I just felt like doing a "second thoughts" sort of thing with it.
© 2014 - 2024 Bladefinger
Comments0
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In