RetroPiece Theater: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Rolling out a new blog series this year that merges my recurring RetroAchievements rundowns with a retro game review format. I'm going to try and publish two of these a month, one exploring an old favorite while the other examines a game that's new to me.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (Nintendo EAD, 2002-03)

February saw the Legend of Zelda series' 40th anniversary, and while I may have missed doing anything Zelda related in that time I can at least fit two RA playthroughs in the bookending months of January and March. The January game, if you recall, was A Link to the Past (my personal favorite) and this March sees me take on my fourth favorite game in the series: The Wind Waker for GameCube. Now, I'd probably suggest anyone jonesing for a happy high seas adventure with their talking boat might be better served waiting for Nintendo to finally rerelease that Wii U HD version—not only graphically cleaner but with a very welcome heap of quality-of-life improvements, especially around travel and that figurine side-quest—but that version doesn't have achievements and this one does, so... here we are. The Wind Waker arrived at a strange but exciting time for the Zelda series: after the huge success of 1998's Ocarina of Time, Zelda fans were soon treated to three (technically four) odd experiments with the format: we have the OoT quasi-expansion that was Majora's Mask, taking much of Ocarina's assets and reorganizing the Zelda blueprint into a time-looping puzzle game with a sinister personality; the two Capcom subsidiary-developed GBC games with inter-connectivity features, Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages, both released in 2001; and Four Swords, an optional multiplayer mode found in the 2002 GBA port of A Link to the Past which would go on to inspire various more multiplayer Zelda experiences by way of Four Swords Adventures and Tri Force Heroes.

As if to create some space to be its own thing, The Wind Waker opted for its now legendary "toon" style, using cel-shaded graphics in lieu of the relatively more gritty, realistic tone that Ocarina/Majora were heading towards (at least compared to the colorful A Link to the Past) and dropping Link into a vast ocean world that didn't resemble the Hyrule of old in the slightest barring the occasional bit of triangular iconography. This was all the idea, of course: if there's a central theme in The Wind Waker it's in embracing change, letting go of old traditions, and in turn having the freedom to go where you will. In that sense alone already it shares a lot of thematic DNA with the two most recent 3D games: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. However, replaying the game now in the 2020s it's become clear that much of Wind Waker's more open world design precipitated the Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom survival sim format, if perhaps not necessarily by way of a direct continuance given the fifteen year gap between TWW and BOTW. All three include: Plenty of incidental exploration of a largely inessential nature, such as taking out little camps of Bokoblins for minor rewards simply because they happened to be on the way; "spoils" that apply for a few fetch quests but otherwise exist as something enemies can drop besides hearts, rupees, or finite tools such as bombs and arrows; natural, randomly occurring weather patterns in addition to Ocarina's day/night cycle that affected NPC schedules; a de-emphasis on traditional dungeons, at least of the longer types full of puzzles and map navigation (Wind Waker only has five of these), compensated by having more in the way of smaller challenges found in caves dotted around the landscape/waterscape; and just a whole lot of contemplative, unhurried downtime in general between moments of major story progression which includes the time spent simply travelling between locations as well as an adjusted ratio of optional and critical content where completing all the side activities will take far longer than mainlining the story—a ratio I can't really see applying to any previous game in the series, even Ocarina and Majora with their many side-quests and mini-games.

Bless Baby Link's little heart that he always looks so surprised by every chest he fishes up, even if it's the 100th one that day.

The Wind Waker is still an exceptional highlight of the series and I think one that's retroactively better served now that it has a couple of very well-regarded spiritual follow-ups that support the more laid-back approach to the series' unchanging design goals of encouraging exploration and instilling a sense of wonder in its audience. I loved the new cel-shaded visuals then—I was a big Jet Set Radio guy, fascinated by any game that took on that particular 3D aesthetic—and they've barely dulled in the two decades since, something very few polygonal games of that vintage can boast. As has now become expected of its RetroAchievements sets, The Wind Waker has a tough but fair assortment of achievements to obtain, and owing to the game's size has 126 to Ocarina's 97 and ALTTP's 109 which also makes it one of the bigger Zelda sets on the site (it's beaten only by Twilight Princess (149), the Ocarina of Time: Master Quest (128), and... uh, Freshly-Picked: Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland (131)). Like any good RA set it serves as equal parts progression checkpoints to show new players the way, highly difficult challenge conditions, a thorough examination of all the side content, and a few "did you know?" discoveries: you will see everything this game has to offer by the time you're through, it's about as comprehensive a playthrough as you could imagine. With a median mastery time of a little over 60 hours it's also RPG-length, which dovetails nicely with my earlier statement about how it preempted the time-vampires that were the Switch games. We'll get into some individual achievement rundowns in the usual section below but suffice it to say this was not quite the gentle weekend playthrough I was anticipating; those cute graphics can really lull you into a false sense of the game's magnitude. But hey, no such thing as too much Zelda.

RA Challenges

The RA set is dominated by three 50-point achievements in a manner I want to believe is a deliberate nod to the Triforce. To that effect, I've assigned one of the three Triforce to each of them; see if you agree with my take here.

"Glass Cannon" — Defeat Ganon with only 3 Heart Containers and 1 bottle.

A.k.a. The Triforce of Courage

The classic Zelda RetroAchievements challenge: completing the game without ever extending your heart gauge. Naturally, this is a challenge that gets tougher later into the game as the enemies become stronger and hit harder: some late-game enemies and bosses can and will wipe out full three hearts in a single attack (oddly enough, the enemy that does the most damage is the large pig on Outset Island that you can cajole into digging up treasure for you). There's ways to mitigate this uptick in enemy aggression that don't involve HP upgrades though, such as the side-quest to acquire the "Magic Armor" (confers invulnerability but eats your magic like crazy), though it seems the best bet is to just get real good at the game's parry-heavy combat engine and don't get your ass kicked by any of the bosses while you're trying to snap a picto of it. The lack of bottles is another concern: unlike A Link to the Past, where you weren't allowed a single bottle, in Wind Waker you don't have a choice but to accept that first one since it's required to access the first dungeon. Any others are optional and thus forbidden. Fortunately, one bottle is enough for a single fairy safety net which is still a whole lot better than nothing.

Let's just play this song over here, a good five yards away from the item that will instantly void this achievement.

The challenge of this limitation didn't really kick in until that sequence after the Tower of Gods dungeon when you go pick up the Master Sword in the sunken version of Hyrule. There's another achievement down here where you have to clear out the hallway of Hyrule Castle once all the monsters wake back up without ever healing once; that's about a half-dozen each of Moblins and Darknuts to deal with on only three hearts and it's not exactly a walk in the park when you have the six or more you're supposed to have by then. Most of the game's harder challenges, like the one below, do at least sit outside the core progression so you can sweep back around to them in the post-game after grabbing all the heart containers in the process (which patiently await where they spawned across various boss chambers). It's one of those achievements which occasionally tosses hurdles your way but isn't quite as intimidating as it sounds. It does help that Wind Waker's generally a bit easier than previous Zeldas, or at least when the Z-targeting camera is behaving itself.

"Lasting Trauma" — Complete the Savage Labyrinth without losing more than a total of 15 hearts and without using magic.

A.k.a. The Triforce of Power

The true test of combat might, the Savage Labyrinth is a fifty floor gauntlet of enemy battles that includes almost every non-boss creature in the game, excepting environment-specific foes like the sharks. While the strict health limit is a killer (I found it best to go in with 15 hearts total and never heal, just so a failure will also conveniently kill you and let you start over) what might be the bigger pill here is never using magic, which disables your strongest crowd-control attack (the hurricane spin), your best defensive option (magic armor), and some of the stronger ranged options (the magic arrows, though you still have regular ones as well as the boomerang for stuns). This is a grueling endurance challenge made worse by being far too easy to accidentally mess up one way or another. I particularly didn't care for how the final floor had four Mighty Darknuts (which each do one full heart of damage per attack) in a room surrounded by flamethrower traps: quite the situation to walk into when you're a few hearts away from failing a challenge you've already spent over 20 minutes pursuing. Then again, how often do you get to play a Zelda with those kinds of stakes involved?

"Gotta Get 'Em All" — Obtain all figurines in the Nintendo Gallery.

A.k.a. The Triforce of Wisdom (or Patience, at least)

The Nintendo Gallery refers to the in-game figurine collection side-quest where you're meant to take photographs (or "pictos") of every enemy, boss, and NPC in the game, sail on over to the gallery which is near where the Great Deku Tree and Koroks hang out, wait a full 24 hours for each picto to be crafted into a statue (you can whiz forward with the time-changing song at least), and then repeat the process for the one-hundred-and-thirty or so other spaces in the gallery. One additional irritation here, at least for the GameCube version (the HD remake ameliorated this process significantly), is that your Picto Box can only hold three photos at once and the dude doing the sculpting is even more finnicky than Professor Oak about what qualifies as a "good shot" of some horrible monster with bizarre anatomy: mostly, it has to be full body and directly from the front, which makes some NPCs harder to snap than they ought to be (and enemies won't stop moving, so good luck with those). It's the missables, mostly the bosses, that are the real pain because you have to snap them, defeat them, then head over to see if your shots are accepted while hoping you didn't save accidentally on the way if ol' Picky Mickey(angelo) decides he can't make out what this giant floating skull enemy is supposed to be because the frame clipped off the top inch of its head. Not my first rodeo with this side-quest, fortunately; nothing that managed to blindside me on this run at least.

The Helmaroc King fight is tense not because of the fight itself but because this is the only opportunity I have to take a picto of this thing. Gonna be real easy to get all this in frame. Sir, I have met Zapdos. I have shot Zapdos. You are no Zapdos.

"First Intention" — Score 1,000 hits on Orca during sword training.

Not difficult so much as anxiety-inducing. You have the option to duel the old fisherman sword trainer dude in the starting village at any time after the prologue and you'll be rewarded a piece of heart if you land 500 hits on him before he lands three on you. You can parry him but the smart (if tedious) choice is to get in a quick full combo and then guard in preparation for his counterattack and just keep doing that in a loop for what feels like an hour. Since he has unique dialogue and ends the fight immediately if you score a thousand hits that's what they decided would make for a fun achievement here. (The unique dialogue is that the old man asks you if your left index finger is OK after holding down the lock-on button for that long. Looking a bit swollen, thanks for asking gramps.)

"A Leaf in the Wind" — Clear the enemy gauntlet in the Shark Island grotto without getting hit 10 times and without using magic.

This is basically a smaller but still as intense version of the Savage Labyrinth challenge, above. Trouble here is that you're constantly surrounded by those creepy "da-nah!" Miniblins and even if they do a tiny amount of damage the goal here is to not take more than ten hits, regardless of the harm incurred. On the plus side I discovered that if you toss out some of that bait you're meant to give to the map fish the Miniblins just flock around that and leave you alone, and that made this challenge a bit easier to deal with. It's a gauntlet where enemies are constantly pouring in from above, including two Wizzrobes who can easily hide in the crowd tossing fireballs your way and around five Darknuts because I guess you can't have too many of those menacingly skulking after you. Once again, you also can't conveniently use your Hurricane Spin because magic is verboten; it really does trivialize this fight otherwise, in fairness.

Guys, please, a little space?

"Run off the Cold" — Open the chest that contains the Iron Boots within 1 minute and 15 seconds of thawing Ice Ring Isle.

"Hot Take" — Retrieve the Power Bracelets from Fire Mountain within 1 minute and 15 seconds.

Two similar timed challenges around two elemental islands that I guess were going to be full dungeons with those items in them except the developers ran out of time after creating four-dozen mostly incidental isles instead. 75 seconds is not a whole lot of time to get cracking on these two chests, especially since you have to climb to the top of each island before dropping in and solving another puzzle before the chest appears. I found the volcano (fuck off outta here with your "FIRE MOUNTAIN") a bit tougher than the iceberg, if only because there's a risky shortcut you can try for the latter.

"Ten Years at Sea" — Defeat Puppet Ganon without leaving the water.

Almost every dungeon has a unique challenge for either its boss or its sub-boss, in addition to the whole game-wide three-hearts ordeal. This was the one that stuck out the most though, owing to the fact that this is probably the hardest boss fight in the game already—it's where you fight through three variations of prior games' bosses in a battle that's eerily reminiscent of the final encounter of Link's Awakening—and his last form in particular, a take on A Link to the Past's Moldorm fight, moves around like crazy and can so easily push you out of this donut-shaped pool you're forced to stand in. It creates new problems with his other two phases as well: the first phase has you cutting the Ganon puppet's strings with the boomerang, which means the camera's facing up the whole time as you're walking around aiming for those things which makes it harder to see where you're walking; and the second phase involves Spider Ganon descending from the ceiling and if you're in the central pool area it's hard to both avoid its drop attack and be in a good place to strike its weak point. Though an irritatingly easy challenge to insta-fail (I one-shotted it but many others on RA weren't so lucky) I have to admire the clean way such a simple directive added distinct wrinkles to each stage of this fight.

RA Discoveries

Even though I've 100%ed this game twice before I was discovering new shit almost from the jump here, like how you can break the vase on top of the vase-carrying-girl's head (and incur a fine) or that there's two 100-rupee chests hidden right next to Grandma's house. Someone around here sure was saving for retirement, huh.

Oh jeez, just what I always wanted. At least, I really hope that is sap.

A few of the others that were new to me involved using or upgrading the Tingle Tuner. I certainly had a GBA link cable back when I was playing GameCube regularly—I want to say I got mine gratis with a copy of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, since it's hard to play that without one—but I don't recall either of my Wind Waker playthroughs including Tingle constantly dropping hints on a hooked up GBA sitting nearby. Far from simply explaining all the puzzles to you though, the Tingle Tuner also offers a few services that have made this RA playthrough a bit more palatable: the first is that you can order services like a bomb or a period of invulnerability or flight to get past certain obstacles far easier, or summon chests that might have some handy (if inessential, given not every player would have access to this tool) items inside. You can also call Tingle's pal Knuckle (no relation) from anywhere to buy items whenever you get low on stock, including bombs and arrows. His selling price is higher than Beedle's but you can't argue with the convenience. Tingle tends to bail before you enter a boss door so he's no use in there but the Tingle Tuner has saved my ass a few times in the later dungeons where the enemies and traps take a harder toll on your very limited health. The RA set has at least four Tingle Tuner specific achievements—mostly ways you can finagle discounts out of him by following some scavenger hunt prompts—but pretty much every "get all the chests in this dungeon" achievement also included the Tingle Tuner-specific ones. Only issue here is that, if you're someone who believes a little Tingle goes a long way, this might be a bridge too far. Why the hell does he have different-colored clones now?

Oh yeah, and Tetra is actually Princess Zelda! That was a wild thing to find out.

With that, I might actually be done with Zelda playthroughs for this year, if nowhere near done adding more masteries of them to my RA profile. All that's left for RetroPiece in March is my "never played before" pick and I've gone pretty old-school with it this time, celebrating another venerable series that recently turned 40 and yet still has new entries on the way. That's how it is with us 40-somethings: we just keep on going, whether others want us to or not.