Link is a student at the knight academy in the floating town of Skyloft. His childhood friend Zelda is helping Link prepare for his knighthood ceremony which involves flying large birds called Loftwings. After being introduced to a rival group and completing the ceremony, Zelda is lost in a storm, and falls to the land below the clouds.
He soon meets Fi who tells Link of his destiny. He takes the Goddess Sword and travels to the land below. There he meets the antagonist Ghirahim the Demon Lord who wants to capture Zelda for her power.
The initial set-up seems more story-heavy and provides stronger characterisation, but then this idea is soon abandoned, and feels like the usual grand adventure with brief encounters with side characters, and follows the usual story-beats; acquire a stronger sword, acquire the Triforce, defeat the main enemy.
Skyward Sword's hub design can draw comparisons to Wind Waker with large areas of nothing, then small islands as distractions. However, this time it's the sky rather than the sea. You travel on your Loftwing, initiated by leaping off the land and calling your bird, and can subsequently leap off and glide down using a parachute to land. I didn’t feel compelled to explore given that you often needed items to acquire the treasure, so you may as well leave it till you are at least 75% way through the game.
The graphical style is like a cross between the last two console Zelda games, but leans towards cartoon; it looks drawn like a pastel painting. The style looks cool but then has the disadvantage of looking very blurred at a distance. I'm not sure if it was because I was playing on a large TV or maybe the Wii U's emulation, but there seemed to be a lot of dithering in places, especially in the sky.
The game gets off to a very slow start. The text speed is a bit slow and characters can be a bit dialogue-heavy. Nintendo still aren't modernising with the mechanics; so it still has basic sounds representing speech but no proper dialog: gasps, hey, hmmm. You can choose what Link says in places with a few pop-up boxes, but he stays silent in terms of audio. When you find Fi, she acts as your guide like Navi did in Ocarina of Time. I think Navi was infamous for being annoying but they stepped it up here. Fi pops out and has a distorted robotic voice. She loves explaining things that don't need explaining (often stating the obvious, and even telling you multiple times where you need to go), but you can also call on her yourself to give you hints or remind you what you were doing if you’ve put the game down for a while. That aspect is a good idea, especially since it is a long game. Even when I put it down for only a week, I sometimes needed reminding of what I was actually doing. Other aspects are more fourth-wall breaking: "Master the batteries in your Wii Remote are nearly depleted… " Yeah, thanks, I can see the low battery icon on the screen.
Link has some rigid movements like when climbing ladders, and some ladders are overly long. Link auto jumps when running off platforms, and I often fell off. Falling down bottomless pits or in lava simply places you back on flat land so it's not so much of a problem. Falling down onto land and having to climb up again is very frustrating but that was an uncommon occurrence. When intending to jump, I found I often jumped at the wrong angle. I think I am blaming the Wii's hexagonal casing around the stick, making Link move more rigidly.
Using the equipment often reminds you that you may need to press a button to reset the cursor - as if the developers weren't confident with the controller. The motion controls are fine for the most part but there's moments of frustration, and the centre point does seem to drift over time. Tightrope walking is slow and awkward, and I wasn't sure if the tilting was registering as there seemed to be a lag before Link rebalanced.
The equipment in the game is mainly fresh ideas rather than relying on common tropes. Sure, you get a slingshot as the first item, but the next one is a flying golden beetle that can retrieve items, cut through threads, and carry bombs. Shortly after discovering the Bomb flowers, you are given the ability to store them for later use. Bombs can be thrown or rolled (although the movement for doing so is frustratingly fussy). The Gust Bellows are supposed to blow, but given the sand or dirt seems to deplete, it kinda seemed like it was sucking like a vacuum. Next is a whip which allows you to swing, and sometimes pull out of reach levers. Clawshots can pull Link towards certain wall plates. The Mogma mitts allow you to dig items buried in holes, then later upgraded to tunnel underground. The bow is used for hitting certain targets at a range, and seems way more sensitive with its movement which makes it hard to use.
Using the sword is fully controlled by motion. Many of the combat encounters require specific slashes, so the piranha plant style enemies have a split mouth and you need to match the direction or else your attack gets blocked (sometimes it can be a bit fussy in the precision of the slice too). Moblins move their sword to block a direction, so you need to slash with the side that's not defended. The problem is that they seem to react and block your attacks which is very frustrating when the battles drag out. I find that most enemies can be repeatedly slashed once your first attack hits, so it's often a case that you carefully wait for the opening, then just waggle frantically. Holding the sword up is supposed to be like He-Man and this charges your Skyward Strike. This can be quite imprecise and takes a bit of minor adjustments to trigger, but wasn’t that annoying when most of the time you are aiming at static targets (e.g. Goddess cubes that lead to treasure). This drove me insane on the final boss though when you need the controls to be reliable. You can perform a spin attack by moving both the Wii remote and nunchuk at the same time.
The general game design is a bit more open with more puzzles before you get into a dungeon. Some of the design can be a bit unclear with winding paths and cliffs making navigation a bit more cumbersome. Even the starting town and central hub Skyloft is a bit messy with winding paths and bridges. There's definitely some unintuitive parts and a few fairly hidden switches that you need to find.
Link has a stamina bar so has limited running distance, although there's these green seed things which restore it, giving you an extended run. For the most part, the mechanic is annoying. If depleted, you need to wait several seconds to restore and are blocked from using items until it replenishes.
The camera system loves panning down for some reason. If you are standing on a ledge, it makes sense, but when you want to plan your next move and get the lay of the land, you end up needing to switch to free look.
There’s some moments of tedium across the game and obvious signs of padding. Like when you need to find the missing windmill piece which has fallen to the world below. So you fly across, choose the appropriate spawn point, go down a ramp, pick it up, then have to backtrack and fly back. There’s a few moments like this, some with even more tedious sequences, and it would really benefit from being able to warp between worlds with ease.
There’s potions to purchase, but most of the time I needed empty bottles for the main quest. Some quests tell you to transport water,so I ended up dumping the potions I had paid for. There’s an upgrade system but it’s mostly an idea thrown in there without much thought. You need to find items like feathers, and tumbleweed to use the upgrades, but I’m sure tumbleweed was found in one small area and was a pain to acquire.
You start off with a wooden shield but then encounter fire enemies that can burn it. So you acquire a metal shield but then the next area has electrical enemies so need to switch back to wood. The shields have limited durability but can be repaired, or bought again. Next you get a shield that can repair itself. I found the shield less important apart from enemies that you specifically need to shield bash.
At a certain point of the game, you need to go to the 3 areas and enter the Dark World. Here you get a time trial of sorts to collect orbs scattered around the map and each one restores a timer. When the timer depletes, or you are spotted by the enemies carrying a light, or you stand in water, the main guardian enemies are alerted to your presence. Being hit by these enemies means you have to restart. There are 4 of these and there was only 1 I had to repeat for failing but I can imagine these missions will be a source of frustration if you can't find the last orb.
There’s usually a musical theme in these games, and this time Link acquires a harp. This is played by moving the remote left and right to a basic rhythm.
The motion controls and more defensive enemies makes it a harder game. You start off with 6 hearts but in usual Zelda fashion, you end the game with a massive health bar. Replenishing your health bar seems a much harder task because the frequency of heart drops from enemies or by cutting grass is really low. This is another frustrating element when your health bar is flashing, a sound is chiming, Fi's icon is flashing (and calling Fi will just tell you that your health is low), yet you cut up large patches of grass and might only get rewarded with 1 rupee.
I felt Skyward Sword was caught between wanting to be classic and modern. The focus on motion controls was a bit frustrating at times especially when they didn’t quite respond the way you expected. I have many fond memories playing some of the earlier Zelda games but this one seemed dull to me. It dragged way too much and really lost my motivation to play it towards the end.