I recently played this game concurrently with its same system counterpart Twilight Princess, and I think it's had quite an effect on my opinion of it. Either Twilight Princess makes Skyward Sword look better by comparison, or Skyward Sword makes Twilight Princess look a shitload worse. Or maybe, you know, Skyward Sword is just a damn fine Zelda game.
Subject to rave reviews upon its release but a rather tepid response in recent years, Skyward Sword might not hold up to the perfect scores laid at its feet in 2011, but the game gushes with all of the things Twilight Princess lacked. It bursts with color at every step, painting in soft, watercolor-y pastel tones. Its story has more heart than any Zelda game has any right to. Its characters (though still designed with some of that freakish flair held over from Twilight Princess) are rather stock, but still more defined than anything offered inthe previous game. The live orchestra soundtrack - a series first - meshes perfectly with the game's sunshiny airborne aesthetic.
The temple design here is so fundamentally sound that it feels like the game is teaching a college course on the subject. While that occasionally gives the temples a sterile or simplistic feel, it's far superior to the alternative: a bunch of scatterbrained confusing messes strung together. Plus, there's enough gimmickry and inventiveness in each level that no two temples feel the same and your welcome is never overstayed.
Where Skyward Sword trips up is in the minutia. Its desire to bug you about every item you pick up every time you turn the system back on is a small but infuriating drag. Its inventory system leaves a lot to be desired. Its Wii Motion+ controls do fine with the grand sweeps, but occasionally falter when precision is necessary. And those goddamn hide and seek fetch quests featured in Twilight Princess rear their ugly head here, too.
Almost every wrong in Twilight Princess feels righted here. Skyward Sword may not feel like a wholly unique Zelda experience and might not push the series forward in the ways some of its predecessors have, but it does everything it sets out to do so well that I can excuse it for not reinventing the wheel.