The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
GameCube
A lot of people gave this game a hard time before it even hit the shelves. After Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask for the Nintendo 64, many had been clamoring for a more realistic looking Zelda title. Instead they got the most cartoonish looking Zelda yet. I am ashamed to admit that I am one of the people who was initially angered by the game's presentation. Luckily, however, I came around quickly once I started playing the game and I realized how amazing it was.
A lot of the focus on this game is on its visual style, and rightfully so. The game is gorgeous. Even playing it now, nearly 15 years after its initial release, it still holds up. It's not a perfect looking game and it does have a few notable visual flaws, mostly if you are playing on a big high definition TV. An hour or so into the game, though, you stop noticing them.
The world of Wind Waker is bright and full of color. It looks like you are playing through a living, breathing cartoon. All of the characters are full of detail, nicely animated, and pleasing to the eye. The environments are large and expansive. The game is simply enormous, and there is much to explore. And the game's cartoon like look and feel definitely helps contribute to making exploring a fun thing rather than a chore.
The game looks good enough as it is, but a lot of small visual touches really put it over the top. The blowing wind and ash before you enter Dragon Roost Cavern. The lava and fire effects once you get inside. All of the glittering fairies floating through the air in Forest Haven. The feeling you get as you walk through and slash the tall grass. The storms that pop up as you sail through the night. Even how your enemies vanish in a cloud of purple smoke when you defeat them is a fantastic touch.
I would recommend putting on headphones while playing the game. Wind Waker's musical score is epic, perhaps the best yet from a Zelda game. It goes hand in hand with the visual style of the game. All the classic Zelda tunes and jingles are here, along with some fantastic new songs and sound effects. Put on some headphones, kill the lights, and lose yourself in this tremendously immersive atmosphere that Nintendo has crafted for you.
It doesn't matter how great the game looks or how immersive it is if it is not any fun to play. And I must tell you that this game is a blast. I guess I should tell you about the story of the game before I go any further.
The game takes place thousands of years after Ocarina of Time. Hyrule has been flooded and only the people who retreated to the mountaintops are still alive. These mountain tops are now a scattering of islands located all over the map. But these islands are far apart from one another and can only be reached by long boat trips.
Ganon has broken free from his long confinement and has begun a mad search for the Triforce. He knows that the last descendant of Princess Zelda holds one of the pieces, so he begins capturing young blonde girls from around the world. When Link's sister is captured, he embarks on an epic quest to find her and to stop Ganon once and for all.
There is no overworld as we traditionally recognize it from past Zelda games. As I mentioned earlier, the surface of the planet has been flooded, and only a scattering of islands remain. A lot of the game takes place on a boat as you sail from one island to the next. Much of the game's fun lies in its exploration. You start with a blank sea chart, and as you progress and discover new islands, your chart begins to fill up. Each island has a purpose, even if it is not story related. There are SO many secrets and things to discover in this game. Wind Waker is one of those games that keep you playing even at times when it seems like there is not much going on with the game's story. It is just that fun to play and explore.
The game is very easy to control. Everything works exactly as it should. If you have ever played a past Zelda game, you will find no surprises here. I guess if I did have a complaint, it is that I found it annoying you couldn't invert the camera controls when trying to look left or right. I had just played a game with the opposite camera controls before playing this, and it really threw me off for a while there. Also, I wish there were more than three inventory spaces so I didn't always have to pause the game to change items.
Despite the fact that the game takes place on a series of islands, this doesn't mean that there aren't any dungeons. There are. Some of the islands are quite big. The dungeons were not too difficult to navigate. In fact, they were quite easy. The only one I really had a problem with was the Wind Temple, and even that wasn't too bad. Zelda is known for its big, intuitive boss fights as well. There are epic fights in this game, but again, I found them very easy. Easy dungeons, easy bosses. Even the regular enemies were quite easy as well. I found that the game's main sense of challenge came from piecing the game's story together.... finding out where to go and what to do next.
It is a huge "overworld" and a lot of times it doesn't quite seem clear where you are supposed to go next. For example, when you need to find all the Triforce charts and pieces late in the game I hadn't discovered Tingle's Island at that point yet. The game is just like: OK go find the Triforce pieces now. And it doesn't point you in a direction to go. As I said, the overworld is huge. I could have been looking for days and days if I didn't know beforehand what I was supposed to do. I could imagine a new player being very confused as to what they were supposed to do next. One of the Triforce pieces is, almost unfairly, a real bitch to find too. It is inside a building with all these puzzles, but the puzzles are a red herring. You have to look up into the ceiling of the building for something you can grab on to with your rope, and pull it to ring a bell. This unlocks the Triforce piece. I NEVER would have found this if I didn't have to look up the solution online. And I've played and beaten this game twice in the past before.
I feel as if the game could have done a much better job explaining a lot of things. But as I said, the dungeons and enemies are pretty easy, so I guess they made the exploration side of things a little more challenging to make up for that.
One major complaint I hear about the game is the excessive amount of boring sailing you have to do. This is true to an extent. There is a spell that allows you to warp from island to island, but it is possible you could play the whole game without finding it. As I said, I have played through this game twice before (albeit both play throughs were years and years ago). Even with the game knowledge I had coming in, I still almost missed the warp spell because I couldn't remember how to get it.
Even with the spell, you do a lot of sailing. And it can be very time consuming. At least the game keeps you entertained by putting enemies out at sea, along with little outposts to raid and barrels of gems to collect on the water. As you play you also discover treasure maps, and these definitely help keep sailing entertaining. Even if I was close to my destination I still constantly found myself stopping to explore and check things out.
It seems as if my last several paragraphs have been bitching about the game. Despite this, Wind Waker is still an excellent game. The pros are bountiful and far outweigh the cons. I had an amazing time with the game and found it very hard to put down. It is so well done. You can tell a lot of thought and hard work went into making the game as great as it is.
You can tell a game is really good when even me with my short attention span can't put the game down. Usually it takes me weeks to beat even a medium length game, but I was finished with Wind Waker in under one week. And I played the game nearly to completion too. I explored the whole map, collected nearly everything there was to collect. And I never got bored once. Maybe a little irritated with all the sailing, but never bored.
This is truly an amazing game. I was going to give it an A+ before I wrote this, but now I question giving this game an A+ with all the flaws I was harping about. But still, I think I am going to. It is a terrific game. The Zelda series has had a long history of success, and this may be my favorite entry in the series. That is no small accomplishment.
If you have never played this game you are doing yourself a disservice. There is even a new HD version for Wii U if you are worried the game hasn't aged well. Play it now.
Overall:
A+
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