The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

GAME: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

DEVELOPER: Nintendo

PUBLISHER: Nintendo

PLATFORM: Wii (Later released for Nintendo Gamecube)

RELEASE DATE: November 16, 2006 (Wii), December 11, 2006 (Gamecube)

GENRE: Action-Adventure

(This review will cover the Wii version of the game.)

 

Characters from top to bottom and left to right (black and red creatures excluded): Zelda, Zant, Midna, Epona, Link, Midna again, Link again

 

SHORT REVIEW

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a throwback to the best days of possibly the best series ever, and the end result is nothing short of amazing. C'mon, people, it's Zelda. You can't go wrong.

 

LONG REVIEW

If you want to count games here, Twilight Princess is the 13th game in the Legend of Zelda series, with a total of 14 out while I'm writing this. And no series could possibly last so long without becoming stale, except Zelda (well, I guess you can argue Fire Emblem, Mario, and Final Fantasy here, but I'm talking about Zelda right now). The reason? Every Zelda game has contained the same core components that keep it familiar, and new features and innovations that keep it fresh. So, I won't delve too deeply into the basic Zelda format here; if you're not hopelessly anti-Nintendo, you should know how a Zelda game works by now (explore a wide-open world, find dungeons, crawl through said dungeons, kill stuff, get items, use said items to solve puzzles, beat bosses, gather quest-related items, "OMG it was Ganon the whole time?!", gather more quest-related items, and face off in a multi-phase final boss battle. ...What? Can you name one Zelda game that doesn't apply to?). And I don't know, but something about that formula just never gets old.

 

A lot of this review may not make sense to you without a little backstory, so I'll give you a quick run-down of this game's story. A young man named Link (and he is ALWAYS named Link... seriously, I'm considering naming my first child "Link" to see if he ends up saving the world someday) from a small village on the outskirts of a forest is chosen to deliver a gift to the Royal Famliy of Hyrule for the upcoming festival. However, on the day of the delivery, the village is attacked by monsters, Link is knocked unconscious, and all the kids in the village are taken away. When Link wakes up, the woods around his village are surrounded in an eerie, yellow-green light, and when he goes to investigate, a weird creature (see one of the black/red things in the above picture) grabs him and pulls him into the strangely-colored part of the woods. Once inside, Link turns into a wolf (again, see the above picture, but look at the wolf this time), and he is taken away and locked up by the creatures. When he wakes up, he tries to free himself, but to no avail. However, he is assisted (and technically rescued) by a strange imp-like creature.

 

 

A strange imp-like creature.

 

(Storyline continued through the rest of this paragraph)

The creature identifies herself as Midna, a member of the strange Twili race, and explains that the strangely-colored world that she and Link are in is a parallel universe known as the "Twilight Realm". In return for her having rescued Link, she wants his help to find three strange objects (she calls them "Fused Shadows") and she also wants him to help her defeat a member of the Twili race that took over the entire Twilight Realm, named Zant. So she and Link set off to look for the missing kids, stop Link's world from being completely taken over by the Twilight realm, and defeat Zant. ...Oh, and it turns out Link is the hero and savior of the world. Who knew?

 

So, as I said, I'll focus more on the differences, new features, and changes. As per usual, you'll go through the game in two seperate ways. This time, you'll be either killing enemies and crawling through dungeons as Link in his human form, or trotting through the Twilight Realm as Link in his wolf form, hunting for items with Midna sitting comfortably on your back (seriously, she's there so often I'm surprised she didn't strap a saddle onto you).

 

The dungeons are expertly designed, and at times are very challenging, and often annoying. But it makes it all the sweeter when you finally finish them. ...Actually, that's not entirely true. A majority of the puzzles will have you stumped for hours on end, and once you're finished, you'll want to chuck your Wiimote through your TV after seeing how simple the puzzle really was.

 

Remember, kids, always wear the wrist strap! It could save you hundreds of dollars in damages!

 

Frustrating puzzles aside, the game offers a slew of intresting and fun (though often tedious) side-quests (mainly made up of searching for a bunch of things). There are a multitude of fun mini-games as well, and if you get frustrated, you can always take a little time off of saving the world in order to go fishing (ah, Zelda fishing. The single most relaxing experience ever.). But after that, it's right back to the side-quests, and while you're searching for a bunch of shiny bugs, Zant is enslaving the people of the Twili race, and Ganondorf has found seventeen new ways to kidnap Princess Zelda and destroy the world (not necessarily in that order). But I understand, collectables come first, right Link?

 

After spending hours searching across a HUGE field for these things, you will grow to hate all bugs in existance; not just gold ones.

 

Having Midna as your obligatory sidekick isn't very bad, either. She's a little annoying at times, but she's a very interesting and complex character, and you'll quickly grow used to having her around (which makes for some tender moments during the game, and a particularly tear-jerking ending). Of course, every Zelda game needs a sidekick. You've had Midna, Tatl, Linebeck, Tetra, The King of Red Lions, and... *shudders* ...Navi... ugh, I can hear her incessant, shrill voice ringing through my ears right now. "HEY! HEY! LISTEN! HEY! WATCH OUT!"

 

For the first time in my life, I agree with Kanye West.

 

The motion controls aren't very immersive, but in all fairness, the game was designed for the Gamecube rather than the Wii (ironically, it came out on the Wii first). But still, you have some basic and fun controls; aim at your screen to fire arrows, etc., shake your right hand to swing your sword (though flicking your wrist will do the trick just as well), and a couple others. It's actually a very nice balance; you don't want everything controlled by the motion controls, but you definitely want some in there.

 

All my bickering aside (I think I picked on every little thing I could throughout this review), the game is still completely amazing. Nearly flawless. The graphics are a little iffy at times, but for a Wii game, they're really good. A lot of the time I was playing, I couldn't even discern any difference between Twilight Princess and other games on other next-gen consoles. The length is nice, too; long enough to keep you entertained for quite a while, but short enough to stop before it becomes boring. All in all, anyone who likes a good adventure should pick this game up, assuming you have a Wii or Gamecube.

 

FINAL SCORE: 9.9/10

I realized that I gave out quite a few 10's earlier, so I'm going to correct that now; from now on, my review scores for the following games are as follows: Halo Wars = 8.5/10 (went down 1.0), Eternal Sonata = 9.5/10 (went down 0.5), Grandia II = 10/10 (unchanged), and Pokemon HeartGold = 9/10 (went down 1). I just realized that I have about four games that I'm itching to review that I intend to give 10's or 9.9's, so I had to raise the bar a little.

 

Anyway, thanks for reading my review. Until next time!