Week One with Skyward Sword

I don't think I'm going to be blogging this entire game, but I definitely wanted to give you all my week one reactions, especially since, a) I've been waiting and saving over two years for this game, and b) I know quite a few people who haven't been able to play it yet, and have been asking me what I think. This'll be long, and I apologize in advance - but there are many pretty pictures to look at!

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword came out last Sunday, and I got it last Monday because I don't shop on Sundays. On Monday mornings I have an American Literature class, but this game was all I could think of the whole time. Gamestop, the store from which I preordered the game, doesn't open until 10, so when I got home at 9:30 the only thing to do was wait.

I've never preordered a game before, so I wasn't 100% sure what I was supposed to do. The store said they would call me when it was ready to be picked up, but by 11:00 I decided to just head over and see if I could get it. I've also never been inside a video game store, so that in and of itself was an experience; the guys were nice, and there weren't very many people there that early in the morning.

The guy helping me out took a minute to figure out where their Skyward Sword bundles were, which worried me, but I finally got it and paid and drove home as fast as the speed limit would allow. I couldn't resist the urge to touch the game on the seat next to me and pull it out of the bag when I hit a red light, admiring the shiny gold cover.

I paid 20 extra dollars in order to get the Zelda 25th Anniversary Golden Wiimote bundled with the game. I refuse to play this game now with our normal black wiimote.

When I got home, I felt obliged to take a series of Unboxing photos and post them on Facebook. Since my camera has been acting up lately, and my mom took hers to class, I had to take these photos with my phone. The quality's not great, but I was kind of anxious to just get started on the game, so I didn't care.

I took the jacket off the Golden Wiimote, because I never had a need for them.

After syncing up the new Golden Wiimote and starting the game, I was treated to the opening sequence, which goes over the creation myth of Skyloft and explains who the Goddess is to the viewer (you can watch that intro sequence here). Skyloft is the hometown of Link, the protagonist of every game in the series, and his childhood friend Zelda, who is, I was surprised to find out, not a princess in this game.

The game starts, as most games do, with a tutorial sequence, letting the player get used to the controls. We are being summoned by Zelda, who is supposed to play the role of the Goddess in some sort of Skyloftian ceremony, and she wants us to practice our flying some more before we have to join the pre-ceremony race.

Zelda's Loftwing bird rudely wakes up Link.

I'll get into the flying later; for now, I want to explore the Knight's Academy, which seems to be a sort of school all the Skyloft children go to in hopes of becoming knights. What these knights do, I'm not sure, because even now, a week later, the islands in the sky seem to be the most peaceful place ever. For the first few minutes, I run around, talking and trying to learn the names of the different people in the Knights Academy.

View of Skyloft with the Statue of the Goddess in the background.

I spent probably the first half hour or more of the game just exploring Skyloft. Luckily the bazaar and most of the houses were cut off, so I couldn't waste too much time doing this, but this also helped me get used to the controls. Link kind of jogs around in this game, which is fast enough, I guess, but if I want him to run I have to hold down the A button, which uses up Stamina. Stamina isn't new to gaming, but it's new to Zelda, and I kind of like it; it's realistic, because in previous games we've had Link rolling all the way across Hyrule Field without even getting dizzy. The Stamina meter adds a layer of complexity that needs to be accounted for when strategizing, something I find fun, personally.

I also want to note the artwork used in this game. I've been fawning over screenshots for the past two or three months, but finally being able to explore this giant watercolor painting for myself felt wonderful. I especially loved how things in the distance would look, splotchy and vague as a real painting would, and then how they'd become clearer and more well defined as I got closer. This art style is a mix of Twilight Princess' realism and Wind Waker's bright cell shading, and I don't think they could have done a better job.

I eventually make it over to where Zelda is waiting and move on with the plot, but we're still in Tutorial mode, I soon realize. At this point, it turns out that my Loftwing bird is missing (we find this out in probably the most horrible way imaginable, but I'll leave you to see that for yourself). Having read up on the game before hand, I'm already suspicious of Groose, another Knight Academy student who seems to have the hots for Zelda and, therefore, hates me (er, Link) with a passion.

Deku Baba are one particular enemy
you have to attack just right

My inkling is correct, and I have to go pick up the first sword of the game before I can free my Loftwing. Picking up the sword activates a sword tutorial, and this is where the game's controls become really important. As advertised, the WiiMotion Plus utilizes 1:1 swordplay, which is a fancy way of saying that when I swing my sword, Link matches my movements exactly. The controls take a while to get used to, because I'm familiar with Twilight Princess' 'flick your wrist to swing your sword' style.

Because the WiiMotion Plus is so precise, it takes a bit of readjusting, not just for me but for my wiimote as well. See, as I'm playing through the game, I'm adjusting how I'm sitting, and the WM+ (I'm abbreviating) attempts to adjust with me - which is cool, except that it doesn't always do it right, and sometimes I end up with my wiimote pointing directly towards the screen, but the cursor drifting somewhere off to the side. This is easy to fix; literally, I hit one button, and the wiimote readjust so that wherever I'm pointing now becomes the center of my controls. Essentially, this means I can be sitting sideways, waving my sword hand off to the side somewhere, and the WM+ will pick it up as if I was facing forward.

This takes a bit of getting used to, but it translates into some of the best controls ever. I love Nintendo, but I hate having to point my wiimote at the screen all precise and everything. With Skyward Sword, I will literally never have to. If only the Wii Netflix app had the same function.

I finally get my bird back, and we jump into a flying tutorial. I have a bit of beef with this; for one, none of the Loftwings seem to have names. It's always "Link's Loftwing" or "Zelda's Loftwing" or so on. I believe this could be fixed. Also, this flying tutorial is way too short. Flying the Loftwing is a bit confusing until you know what you're going, and I feel like this tutorial only gives you a taste of what you're supposed to be doing. This can also get messed up if your WM+ is incorrectly adjusted but, again, this literally only takes one button press to fix.

There's a bit more plot and then the Loftwing race starts, and you're thrown out into the sky with your bird, racing against Groose and a couple other Knights Academy students to be the first to catch the Golden Snitch Bird. I was stressing out at this point, because I had little experience with controlling my bird. I'm assuming that there's no way for you to lose this race, because I did pretty terribly and I still won.

I wont go over everything that happens next, except to say that, basically, Zelda gets snatched out of the sky by some evil thing and we are visited by a strange blue girl in the middle of the night. The blue girl leads you to the Statue of the Goddess, at the base of which lies the Skyward Sword, which you must use to free Zelda. The blue girl is Fi, an almost machine-like entity bounded to the sword who reminds me of Midna and GLaDOS, if GLaDOS was actually nice and not trying to kill you.

THOSE EYES.

Zelda's father, who we met earlier, is the Knight's Academy Headmaster, named Gaebora (appropriate enough, because he looks like a freaky human version of Ocarina of Time's Kaepora Gaebora). He seems to know more about what's going on than we do, and urges us to go fulfill our destiny or something.

After all this, the tutorial stage is over. We have free reign to explore Skyloft, and as any good Zelda player, I do that for the next half hour instead of actually going out to find Zelda, snagging my first Empty Bottle and trying to figure out the names of a few more of the island's residence. This is hard, because nobody has their names displayed when they speak. I believe this is one of the few things turn-based RPGs have on Zelda.

The bulb on his back turns into a puff of tall grass when he wants to hide.

On that first Monday I visited the first major area of the game, Faron Woods, met my first new Zelda race (The Kikwi's, a distant relative of the Korok/Kokiri, and possibly Deku Scrubs), and got through the entire temple, stopping just before the Boss door because I didn't want mom or dad to be around as I fought the boss.

 The boss the the game's first dungeon was, as I suspected, Demon Lord Ghirahim, who is simultaneously freaky and awesome. We had only seen a glimpse of him up until this point, and even now, a week later, I still know very little about him or his back story. Ghirahim styles himself the Lord of all the demons on Surface (which is what the Skyloftians call the land below), and fights us only because he was too slow to catch up to Zelda, and now he's bored. This battle is actually pretty difficult; Ghirahim has a habit of catching my sword point and disappearing is a puff of diamonds. He's easy enough for me to beat, eventually, and disappears after giving me access to a new heart container.

Some people have been complaining that Skyward Sword starts you off with six hearts instead of three, but in my opinion it's completely necessary. It seems like every enemy does a full heart of damage per attack, and while there are plenty of hearts around to refill your meter, it's still easy to get depleted really fast. I pick up my heart container reward for this first battle, having never had a desire to do a three-heart run and with no desire to even attempt a six-heart run in this game.

We didn't find Zelda here, however; it seems she's met up with someone who's helping her escape the demons and move along to fulfill her own destiny (we're supposed to be doing something big, but no one is telling me what that is yet. I'm sure a couple people are annoyed by this, but I find this more intriguing; instead of spending the entire game constantly working towards the same goal, I need to work to solve some immediate problems first and move on to figuring out what's really going on from there).

Bird Statues dot the land, and these give us the ability to save or return to the sky practically whenever we want to. Though most of the plot is happening below the clouds, Skyloft never feels too far away. Once I get used to traveling by bird, flying around the sky because super easy, traveling from one corner of the map to another in about a minute (all without having to change the wind direction!) At this point, I need to return to Skyloft before I can move on to the next area of the game. Instead of progressing, I, well trained Zelda player that I am, look around for Sidequests, but there didn't seem to be any at this point.

What there does seem to be a lot of in this game is falling. In order to get onto my Loftwing, Link has to run off the edge of Skyloft, falling out into the open sky for a few seconds before the bird catches him. There's also no way to land; if I need to get off my Loftwing and on to one of the various floating islands, I have to jump of at just the right moment and control Link's fall, pulling out a parachute just in time. This also gets easier with time, but I still feel like I'm going to die whenever I plunge off the edge of an island.

The second area is Eldin Volcano, where I meet the second new race of the game, the Mogma. Seriously, Skyward Sword seems to be introducing an unequal share of new races to interact with, and so far I haven't met any Zora and only a single Goron (I'm starting to think he's going to end up being the only Goron in the game). The Mogma are mole-like creatures who love to dig for treasure and talk in a funny, overly-familiar way which I love.

I got stuck at Eldin Volcano, for the first time, spending probably an hour wondering around before finally looking for a clue up at Skyloft and feeling stupid that I forgot I could roll bombs on the ground as well as tossing them in the air.

You also get these nice cheat lines while rolling or throwing.

That isn't to say Skyward Sword is easy; my major beef with Twilight Princess was that it was way too easy, I passed through all the dungeons no big deal, and only had minor trouble with some of the boss fights. Skyward Sword implements a lot of more situational puzzles, making it enjoyably challenging the whole way through.

Girahim finally showed up again in the boss room to the second dungeon, but annoyed at us for making him too late to catch up with Zelda again, he decided not to fight Link and instead sets a crazy large fire-rock-spider thing on us. This fight is pretty difficult; I know what I'm supposed to be doing pretty much the whole time, but it's not easy to do it, because the boss moves faster than I expect. It takes me a while to finally get into the grove of the fight and take him down (at which point I remind myself that it's only going to get harder from here).

This was all last week, before Thanksgiving for the most part. I haven't had much time to play this weekend, but I've gotten up to just before the boss room of the dungeon at Lanayru Desert. The Desert also proved a bit difficult for me, and I felt stupid for not realizing what I was supposed to do next. There's no new race here, except for a a bunch of robots built for the once extensive mine.

I spent the week before this game's release writing extra words every day for NaNoWriMo, in order to have time off to play, and I have been having trouble getting back into the writing groove ever since I started this game. My final verdict? Skyward Sword is awesome. The controls are a bit complicated to explain, but they're ridiculously smooth and easy to use; the artwork is gorgeous, and yet more proof that you don't need Bethesda's perfect realism to make beautiful scenery; flying around on my Loftwing is exhilerating, now that I've gotten used to controlling it, and only in part because of the epic music that plays while I do so.

My in-game map, more or less, at the moment.

I've got most of my in-game map filled in, and yet I'm positive I'm not even halfway through yet; at some point I know I'm supposed to be getting a harp, and I don't even have half of my game equipment items. I'm already a week in, but now that NaNoWriMo is almost over, I'm sure it wont take me that much longer to finally beat the game.

I painted my first watercolor in years in honor of this game and it's special graphics style, and I've changed my profile picture on every social media site I use to match. You can see a thumbnail of the painting to the side - this is supposed to be me, holding the Golden Wiimote, which I'm imagining to be Fi's Sword. I'm quite pleased with how it came out, and I wont be changing it until I'm finished with the game.

So far, Skyward Sword has the makings to be one of the best Zelda titles yet. Instead of trying to come up with some fancy, well-worded ending for this blog, I'm just going to start playing again.