Well, after all the hype and the Wii coming out, and all the air around TP, I was hoping for a Zelda game that would knock me back in awe. It honestly didn't. Now, I love the Legend of Zelda. I have played most of the games in the series, and I believe I am qualified to say (no more than the rest of you) that Twilight Princess was not traditional, nor was it, to me, mildy mature. Aside from about two actually creepy cutscenes, a few boring but well-designed bosses, and the fact that the Triforce was mentioned. TP was a vague world that left out a lot of explinations. For one: How did Ganon escape from the Sacred Realm to invade the Twilight, and then come back again to force the Goddesses to flood Hyrule? Not only does this destroy any shred of sense in the beginning of the WW explination, it leaves us more stumped about the timeline than ever.
Why is TP not traditional? First off, Link wasn't even that important. He was the "hero" and the mystical beast to save people. That's just about it. Nothing told about the Triforce of Courage that appears breifly in a cutscene and on his hand before he gets his Linky clothes. After that... it's just about a little imp forcing him to do the work. Actually, I liked Midna. I liked Navi from OoT, as well. They both contributed something new to the games, which I thought was a great new change. But OoT was justified by this change by the large spirit of the game, which was very Zelda-like. (I, personally, liked MM better, although Alttp is a very close second.) Continuing on with my rant about TP.
Ganon. Not explained. Not much more to say.
Zant... pointless.
Link. Made straight and therefore added a note of stupidity to the usually unknown sexuality, and left almost nothing for the player to make for him or herself.
Zelda. Pointless as well.
Master Sword. Okay, this one pisses me off. The Master Sword, the pinnacle of OoT and WW, is just POINTLESS BEYOND A DOUBT. So it breaks a curse.... uhm... he could have gone to a spirit. They are made of light. The Master Sword is in a temple that looks like it was destroyed. In fact, it was. That wasn't the Temple of Time at all. It was a cheap cop-out of a sword and place trying to please old fans of the series. It annoys me tremendously.
Enemies and Bosses. Easy, with few exceptions. Most of these were hack and slash.
Dungeons. I actually liked the dungeons, aside from the Forest Temple.
Items. I adored them. The Ball and Chain weapon was a great addition and one of my favorite new items to date.
Music. Meh. It was okay, but there was absolutley nothing memorable to me in there. It was just... repeats of old songs we've heard before. With maybe a few more "instruments" in it.
Gameplay. The controls were somewhat easy, although I think the auto-shield was pretty dumb. The R button was utterly pointless except for the shield attack, which was also pointless.
Originality. Pretty much the same Zelda as usual. Nothing really catching to the eye, and the only thing revealed was the Twilight Realm.
Tradition. Very little. I don't even need to point this out. It's utterly obvious how much was left out that would have made the game whole. Not more of the same things, obviously, but for the most part, this was a decently good Zelda rendition.
My overall rating: 8.4
Don't scream at me for the rating. Zelda was good, but there are a lot of things for me that have to be judged before I feel like it is truely worthy of the title "The Legend of Zelda". For me, it only BARELY hit that mark. It had too many of the same things in wrong places, and too many new things where if it had been used as usual, it would have made the game better.
Please post your comments below!
I like to hear opinions on Zelda.
