I’ve returned to Mississippi to visit my parents for Christmas break, and as there is scarcely anything to do in Mississippi besides enjoying the company of others, I hoped to find some free time to finish Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Let me preface the remainder of this entry by saying that it is entirely spoiler-free.
One reason why I started Garden of WiiDS is because I’m a bit of an extremist. I don’t mean that I am a hardcore gamer; far from it. I consider my gaming abilities to be modest or average at best (aside from rhythm games at which I seem to have an uncanny natural ability). I am extreme in the sense that my interest in gaming is heavily tied to my music, movie, and traditional art sensibilities. I’m not a gamer, but I sometimes enjoy games in my spare time. Therefore in picking up and playing a game as mainstream as Zelda, I expect to have more trouble with it than the average person.
Initial reports put this game at 70+ hours for the first tester playthrough. Some reviewers said it was closer to sixty having finished the game in around fifty-five. A guy at work said that it took him about fifty hours to complete. Well, last night in my parents’ living room I went through what turned out to be the final dungeon and encountered the final boss. I took a lot of damage during the (long) fight, but I didn’t need any restoratives that were not readily available. After trouncing the boss, there was a short and relatively unfulfilling ending followed by credits. I just knew there had to be something left; every Zelda game I’ve finished had an incentive for playing through the second time. But no, I finished it and that was it. I looked at the clock. Fourty-two hours. It took me longer to beat Okami, and the ending was far more satisfying.
Don’t get me wrong, this outing of Zelda is one of the best games I’ve played. I guess I expected more. While the Internet was in an uproar about the art style of The Windwaker, I loved that game. I played through it twice consecutively. The art style was gorgeous, and the music suited the environments. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun and immersive. The art style in Twilight Princess doesn’t really impress me save for the twilight realm, where thankfully you will spend quite a bit of time. The music is also incredible — good enough to spring for a subscription to Nintendo Power to get the soundtrack. But in the end, while the puzzle design in the fourth through the seventh dungeons is second to none, the first three are comparatively a joke, and the last two lack depth. I guess I’d call this a pacing problem. Finally, while Ganondorf and his puppet made me eat a fairy or two in The Windwaker, the final boss in Twilight Princess never put me in mortal danger. Each strategy change by the boss resulted in a number of cheap hits that had me swearing at the screen, but I quickly got the hang of it.
Am I wrong to expect more? From any other company, maybe. But this is Nintendo we’re talking about.
I hate to admit it (especially since they seem to be so biased against the Wii these days), but Gamespot was right: The Windwaker was better.
