I've been a lifetime lover of Zelda. Beaten almost every game in the series, handhelds included, and I have to say, Skyward Sword is one of the most middle of the road Zelda games made thus far.
On one hand, Skyward Sword has some of the most inventive and creative puzzles yet devised. Most puzzles and stages feel unique and challenging, allowing you to stretch your brain for a solution quite frequently. This was by no means an easy game, and the newness of the puzzle design really was fantastic. I applaud these ideas.
On the other hand, Skyward Sword is marred by pacing issues and (at least for me) serious control problems. Skyward Sword can't ever seem to get out of its own way in the storyline department. Whenever you think the story is about to progress or you are about to figure something out, some kind of quest jumps up and blocks you progress. At every turn, the game asks you to do yet another arduous task in order to move on (and probably breaks that task up into multiple portions). The frequency with which I repeated the same tasks was similarly frustrating. Fighting two different bosses on three different occasions with minor tweaks is NOT ENJOYABLE. Nor is repeatedly doing the same difficult task to open up key locations ("silent" areas). I just wanted the game to be over by the time the credits rolled.
Then there are the controls. I know this is an area of contention for a lot of people, but frankly, I think any argument claiming Skyward Sword somehow legitimizes the wiimote as a reasonable control scheme is hyperbole at best. Countless times during my experience my controls either refused to respond, or seemed too imprecise for the action the game demanded of me. The difference between a horizontal slash and an angular slash is obvious on screen, but I'll be damned if I could make the controller understand the difference with any consistency. Match this with an IR targeting system that I needed to recenter after almost every use and a nunchuck that would only periodically understand that I was trying to block, and it's safe to say that in all but the most leisurely enemy combat I found the controls infuriating. This is of course to say nothing of the bad camera system or poor hit detection on ledges and other surfaces that require a near perpendicular connection for Link to grab the edge. I really feel like the majority of my frustrations with the game were derived from controls which simply couldn't deliver on what the designers envisioned.
So please, someone argue with me. Show me where I'm wrong, because I just don't understand the praise Skyward Sword has received. I think beyond puzzle design, there is little to like about the game.
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