The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Wind Waker is a game that has been subject to a modicum of controversy. To my recollection, it could very well be the most controversial kid-friendly, cartoon-styled piece of family entertainment to not feature cropped-in naked girls or questionable wording. (Go on Youtube and look up “Disney sex” to skewer your perception of The Lion King). Part of this is the cause of Zelda fans and haters, arguing the merits of cartoonish graphics versus adult Link swim graphics. Tedious sailing across all-too-vast oceans versus tedious horseback riding across all-too-vast fields. The tradition of telling the same “rescue Zelda and Triforce from Gannon” storyline versus the monotony of telling the same “rescue Zelda and Triforce from Gannon” storyline. Only Zelda 2 on the NES gets as many questions of merit as this Gamecube game, except I can close the book on the former title’s argument by simply saying “too freaking hard for normal people.”

As for me, I don’t know if I’m a Zelda fan or a Zelda hater. This is my second attempt at reviewing this game. The first attempt was over 5 years ago, back when I didn’t believe in spelling and grammar checks, but was rife with urine and vinegar for which to spew hatred on the game. I was young then, and bitter that this was the next-generation follow-up to Ocarina of Time. At the same time, I had recently re-bought a copy of The Wind Waker to play on my shiny Wii, so either I secretly enjoy playing this game or enjoy hating myself for playing this game. In any event, join me for a spiritual journey of self-reflection and fetch quests.

You play as a Link-like boy, whom you can name whatever you desire. Pirates invade your island, and with them a giant bird kidnaps your sister, and thus you’re off to an adventure of great peril. Boy goes on epic journey, discovers his destiny, all of the usual players get involved. There’s a Zelda, a Triforce, a Gannondorf, a King, a boomerang, a sect of key items that you must collect to advance your quest, same old song and dance. But the game does at least tinker with the location and history of its universe. Instead of typical old grasslands paired with the Nintendo cliché ice and fire worlds, you get a large ocean tiding several smaller islands…including the ice and fire islands.

Once upon a time, hardcore Zelda fans had panic attacks over the deviant art style of The Wind Waker. It seemed outrageous to follow the mature and realistic Ocarina of Time (well, the mature and realistic PG-worthy Ocarina of Time) with big eyes and bright colours. Back then, fans were insecure about Nintendo’s reputation as a “kiddy” company (you know, in contrast to nowadays when Nintendo doesn’t even cater to the kids with their major titles!) We can look back now and say that Wind Waker benefits exuberantly from the bold change/reversion to a cartoonish style. Almost every character, be it generic enemy or pointless NPC, exudes personality and originality. The animation and explosion effects are vibrant and the world is a shining never-neverland of possibility for you to spend far too much time sailing around in.

Sailing isn’t really a love-it-or-hate-it affair. It’s more like a hate-it-or-begrudgingly-tolerate-it relationship. Link’s mode of transportation between all of these lovely islands is a small red sailboat. The “wind waker” is a baton that commands the pitch of an imaginary choir of passionate singers, and playing certain epic ballads can have assorted magical effects, not the least of which being control over the wind’s direction. The nuisance in this is that a sudden change in direction means you’ll be made to play a certain song once again and break the flow of your adventure with great orchestral might. The other issue with sailing is that there’s so much ocean and so much to explore that if you already have a set destination in mind, you’re just going to have to sit your little green butt on the boat and sail for a good few minutes fighting off the scurvy. One song that Linky boy learns later in the game musically summons a typhoon that can teleport you to key parts of the map will help alleviate this woe…slightly. 

But sailing your little boat across a wide land can also put you in the mindset of a hungry explorer. It’s hard not to want to explore every square mile of ocean and get that strange British Columbian-Native-Tribe looking fish to chart every location on the map. Each square mile has some kind of island or landmark containing something of possible value. So there becomes an incentive to get curious and explore each island and seek the reason for their existence.

Which is fortunate, because the game hits you with a rather burdensome fetch quest towards the end of the game. Your talking boat kindly asks if you could obtain eight pieces of the fragmented Triforce in order to advance. Each piece is located at the bottom of the ocean scattered across the Zeldaverse. To make these pieces accessible, you must first collect its respective Triforce map. To be able to use these Triforce maps, first you must complete a small side-quest to rescue Tingle, the Richard Simmons of the Nintendo universe. Then you must pay this fruitful personality 398 rupees, rupees that you cannot even carry unless you’ve discovered at least one of the two hidden fairy fountains that magically upgrade your…wallet. In retrospect, the grinding for rupee cash may actually be the most frustrating part of this otherwise interesting and (in a way) open-ended fetch quest. But a kick in the groin is still a kick in the groin, no matter how delicate the kick is or how stylish the neon-green shoes the kicker is wearing. And this end-game fetch quest is a real genital punt.

Which is a shame because the rest of the game is so strong. While the dungeons and combat have been streamlined (which may have been the source of bile in my original fanboy review), they both come out winners. The dungeons each contain a distinct art style and atmosphere. They are neither too confusing as to stump the player, nor too dull as to bore thee. The boy-wonder Link is smaller and more agile than his grown-up ancestors, and the crux of combat in the Wind Waker is often to find a way to slip behind enemies and deliver key rectal blows. All the while, musical notes celebrate your successful attacks and enemies have distinct responses to assorted scenarios; a dog-knight can panic over dropping his sword, run away, pick up the weapon of another fallen enemy and renew confidence in his ability to not just be a roadblock for you to conquer.

My last note of fault with Wind Waker is the lack of voice-work. I understand that this being a Gamecube disc that storage capabilities were limited at the time. Also, Nintendo may have shied away from the notion due to past attempts at fully voice-acted games falling flat on their asses (Super Mario Sunshine). But the simple argument to that is “you hire GOOD voice actors and writers people!” I felt that many key story moments didn’t reach their true emotional potential due to the limitations of scrolling text, nor did the characters reach their true charismatic potential.

In retrospect, I feel as though my original grievance with Wind Waker was simply that I had compared it too much to its predecessor, The Ocarina of Time. That game was (sort of) harder and (sort of) longer, and I, like many fans, were waiting for that game’s real next-generation sequel. Then we got that sequel; Twilight Princess. That sequel was competent but uninspired, bland, dull and replaced the one grand end-game fetch quest with several smaller, more annoying fetch quests. Wind Waker isn’t a completely smooth, crotch-friendly game, but play it with an open mind and you may develop a thirst for adventure.

4 stars.

Here’s that gloriously bad original review for anyone interested. Boy did I cringe.

Wind Waker is a sign of the times. Nintendo, once able to pump out classic after classic, has yet to develop a truly stellar Gamecube game. Melee was from Hal, Metroid was from Retro, Eternal Darkness was from Silicon Knights (before anyone says that Nintendo helped them, keep in mind that these are talented devs that know what they're doing, and as indicated by Prime's control scheme and Kirby's Air Ride adopting the "simple is better" philosophy the big N now preaches, the Nintendo touch may actually be the touch of death.) Wind Waker feels rushed - either that or the devs were too lazy to create a complete game, as its arguably the worst in the series.

This has nothing to do with graphics. In fact the best part of the game is the cel-shaded look, and I hope that Nintendo actually sticks with it for future Zelda games. Every character has some personality just by appearance, the water effects are terrific, you can see very far ahead of you, and everything animates terrifically.

The game controls very similiarly to that of OoT. Combat is slightly improved thanks to being a smaller, more mobile Link and the addition of Parries. The dungeons are solid here, but they are all too easy, and two of them involve switching between Link and another character. (But to switch, you need to play a song with the Wind Waker, and constantly having to play a song over and over gets repetitive.) And worse is that there's only a few dungeons. Nintendo claims that they took out 2 dungeons to make it easier for kids to play, but I strongly doubt the existence of these dungeons.

Instead we get sailing. See, the whole game takes place on a large ocean with islands, and to go from place to place, you have to sail. It takes a couple of minutes to move from one area on the map to another. Even with the Whirlwind spell (think the flute song from A Link to the Past, but replace the bird with a cyclone)it takes a good while to get anywhere. The one positive is that there's many places to go, treasures to uncover and enemies to fight on sea, it just takes a LONG time to get there.

Now get ready for the real killer. After you finish the dungeons, you are forced to go on this incredibly lame fetch quest. First, you must find maps that will reveal where on the sea a piece of a certain item is. To get some of these maps, you'll have to go through these mini-arenas where you have to kill the same enemies over and over again. But wait, before you can use the map, you must get Tingle to translate the map. He charges a lot to translate. If you only have on Wallet upgrade and thus can only carry 999 rupees, then you can afford a whopping 2 translations. Even if you have the second wallet upgrade, you'll still be very short of having all maps translated. So now you have to go out and collect enough rupees (this takes a long time) and then you can follow the maps and get these pieces. All of this requires a lot of sailing. So not only is the game short, but there's this incredibly large section of filler thrown in to make the game longer. GREAT JOB NINTENDO!

While Wind Waker still has its redeeming qualities (from a story standpoint, its one of the strongest in the series) its hard to forgive such a lazy job of development. I doubt that my review has stopped anyone from getting this game, but for those who haven't but view the Zelda franchise that's invincable and justify buying a system alone, think twice before you view Wind Waker as the GC's diamond.