Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

Finally did it, my two cents are that it’s amazing for the first half to two thirds (10/10), then quickly falls to a 6 or 7 for the remainder (except for maybe some thrilling boss fights). I now get what people mean when they say it’s repetitive and, my least favorite part of the game, fetch quests with no end (go get this and you can have that, oh thanks for bring that back, but now I need this, oh yes and this. Ok your all done! But now get this for me. Oh yes, I have two brothers that need you get get something for them, too). I did enjoy the motion controls tho, but I was never very good at getting skyward strikes to work when I really needed them.

Just given the game ago despite getting it day one. God I hate the non-waggle controls otherwise it's just as good as I remembered even if it isn't moving up my favourite Zelda game list the same way Wind Waker HD jumped up the list by fixing a lot of it's initial flaws.

I want o get this, but the Wii U virtual console version is less than half the price.
Are the graphical upgrades and QoL worth the large price difference?

I guess if you don’t mind being limited to motion controls and playing on the TV, you might enjoy it.

The remastered version is a lot smoother though. It’s like giving Fi some money so she lets you play in peace.

I really enjoyed the Wii version back in the day but, having played the re-make, there's no way I'd go back to it now.

For a lot of people, I'd think that the QoL improvements are going to be the difference between finishing the game and not. You can't really put a price on that.

I do think the improvements, though mostly subtle, make it worth the upgrade. For me, the graphics aren't even the biggest deal, it's mostly the smaller stuff and the availability of the stick controls for the times I just feel like chilling and not waggling. I also have the original version for my Wii U, and there's just no way I'm going back to it after I played through this one.

I’ve played through this game on wii and Wii U I think like 4 times and I can say I will never go back, the graphical upgrades are massive and I even having enjoyed the motion controls previously I have found I prefer the button controls, I think they are well done. I have done regular and hero mode on switch.

So I picked this up following my clearing of BOTW as I heard this might be more to my tastes. Just played a quick hour or so to give it a try.

First thing I have to say is I hate the controls. Holding R to look around on a controller… why? And why is there not just a dedicated attack button? It is so awkward and imprecise trying to mirror motion controls on the right stick. Yet I wouldn’t say the motion controls are much better, they do allow you to look around like a normal game and the combat controls feel much more precise, but it basically stops me from being able to play it handheld and with the way in which my room is set up, there just isn’t a way to play motion comfortably.

That aside, I think this is a pretty good start. It doesn’t feel as amazing out of the gate as BOTW did for me, but I still enjoyed what I tried here. I wish I had my Loftwing in BOTW.

The stylised visuals lend themselves well to the remastering, it looks less muddy and blurry than BOTW did. This is surprisingly sharp and vibrant, especially for a Switch game. There are some lower res textures, but BOTW had some too and both played it off through general visual style. Oh and the 60ish FPS feels almost weird after playing so many games on my Switch at 30 fps or lower.

Biggest surprise of all is Link has shown more personality in this hour than he did for the entire of BOTW. Actual facial expressions and body language? Dialogue choices?! You really took this out of BOTW and added in survival mechanics? Why? Honestly, in general, it seems this game is actually letting me play the story rather than only experiencing it through optional cutscenes. And that sounds good to me.

Oh. Please God. Please

I actually just 100 percented this over the weekend, all I had left was one goddess cube, the minecart game, and fledge's pumpkin toss game, those minigames stunk so bad, but now I'm pretty happy.

The pumpkin toss mini game made me realize I don’t really need to have a full set of heart containers. 🙃

@Pizzamorg good to hear you’re enjoying it!

@Eel I kind of cheated lol, I realized I could hit them the moment they left his hand and just did that the whole time hehe

If that is a response to me, why not just put me on your ignore list?

@FroZtedFlakerZz worst part is I tried that

Seeing this thread makes me wish we'd get Twilight Princess HD on switch or something. I've been wanting to play through it, and I don't want to dig my Wii U out.

Also, to be fair, the reason why Skyward Sword HD has better textures than BotW is because BotW itself is an open world game, where as Skyward Sword is extremely linear. I'd go as far to say that it's probably the most linear game in the series... or at least it feels like it is. The combat is the one reason I never really enjoyed the gameplay of this game, and I don't know if the port really helps that to be honest, since the stick combat seems finnicky from what I've seen on it.

Stick combat is extremely effective. Some people even find it a bit too precise.

I didn’t really intend for that to come across as a dig at BOTW, I was genuinely just trying to share how impressed I was with how this looks and runs, not ever HD release is a winner… GTA Remastered Collection lol, but they made a ten year old game look like a modernish Switch release.

But yeah the controls… yikes. In fairness, the stick does the job for sword combat, since you can sorta just spam and waggle it, but when things require precise slashing movements I just don’t feel I have enough accuracy on the stick. Not to mention getting the game to register you’re trying to swing the sword on the stick just seems much more unreliable than motion and I wonder how many times that’ll get me killed.

The motion controls are for sure better, but just not very practical for me and how I like to play. Plus somethings like needing to put both joycons in one hand and do motions with them is so clunky and unintuitive I’ll probably never do it again outside of the tutorial unless I specifically need to.

The trick to mastering stick controls is not trying to play like it’s motion controls.

You can instantly, and accurately, slash in any direction with a quick flick of the stick. Do not try to “wind up” your attacks or hold the stick the entire time like it’s your arm with a joycon (unless you actually want to hold your sword in any particular direction of course).

For general combat, with this mindset in mind, the stick isn’t actually so bad. In fact, being able to aim your attacks is actually quite nice, slashing one of those bat things and then smoothly arcing your sword down to slice a goo thing in one fluid movement feels really nice, even if a lot of it does still feel kinda sloppy to me, like I am just waggling and hoping for the best. The only time it is really problematic though is just when it asks you to slash a very precise line, I find it isn’t very easy to do on the stick.

Worse controls are the flying though, holy *****. I did that bird race thing and I honestly couldn’t tell you what I did. I flew seemingly right into the statue dozens upon dozens of times and nothing happened, until it suddenly just did for no explainable reason and then I won the competition despite being the worst rider there by a significant margin, lol.

The little interacting between Zelda and Link afterwards was a nice reward, though. It is a very different tone to BOTW, but I think I prefer it here. Or maybe it’s just because there is more narrative/character focus in general, I dunno.

Certainly enjoying myself though, overall.

I think you'll get used to the camera and the flying as time goes on. They're somewhat jarring when you first pick the game up as they don't work in the way you'd expect them to.

Using the stick for combat also became instinctive to me, to the extent that I had to unlearn it when I went back to BotW for another play through and was wondering why my attacks weren't going off.