The Wind Waker HD Review

a year ago I reviewed the Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker as part of a series of zelda reviews now with the release of the Wind Waker HD it's time to revisit that game and talk about the changes that have been made I highly recommend watching my original Wind Waker review before watching this one in this video I'll just be giving my thoughts on the changes that have been made in this free release so let's begin the biggest gameplay addition to the Wind Waker HD is the use of the Wii U gamepad to control the map in the inventory initially this kind of uses of limited value but as the game progresses and Link accumulates more and more items it really pays off having a screen dedicated to swapping these out can save a serious amount of time and makes the experience more fluid the gamepad completely eliminates any need for the game to be paused items can be swapped out on the fly while continuing to move linked to his next destination the final dungeon in particular benefits from this since the player needs to use the Deku leaf Iron Boots bow bombs hook shot and wind waker at various points I'm also quite partial to using the grappling hook and boomerang in combat and I found myself able to use all eight of these items with ease the gamepad alone has a huge streamlining influence and it's clear that this was the team's biggest goal with this addition many of the complaints from my previous Wind Waker video have been addressed I previously said the grappling hook was one of the least fluid puzzle-solving items in Zelda history but this time around the animation time has been reduced and the player can change Link's rotation as he swings which is a great improvement it no longer feels much different from using any other item I previously complained about the Wind Waker unnecessarily playing animations a second time and those have been removed for most of his songs in a smart little move the first time you play a song after booting up the game the animation will play but subsequent ones will be cut until you restart the game I have to admit even though I complained about them in the last video I would have missed them a little had they been removed entirely this solution caters that nostalgia means the work done on those animations doesn't go to waste the wins Requiem sees less use in this version thanks to the new Swift sail but the command melody benefits from the removed animations immensely making the earth wind temples far more enjoyable than they were before last time around I suggested two sails should have been mapped to the regular action buttons and now that's been implemented they've even gone one farther and put the cannon and grappling hook on their own dedicated buttons for the boat as well another minor change to the boat is an increase in the cruising speed which makes combat a lot more bearable than it was before since it's easier to dodge the enemy attacks on top of that if an attack does happen to hit the boat then link is only rarely knocked out into the sea making the combat less frustrating I wouldn't say these changes make the naval combat outright enjoyable but it's a lot less annoying and messy than it was previously the Swift sail is a useful inclusion as well drastically cutting down on the amount of travel time it was a great idea to include this as an upgrade rather than a basic change to the sailing speed of the boat it's more satisfying to unlock this than to be handed it from the start and gives the sailing a little better sense of progression although it's a very simple addition the Swift sail has a huge impact on the pace of the game another gripe of mine was the pick tow box and The Associated Nintendo gallery quest the maximum number of pictures has been boosted to 12 and it will now let you know straight away whether a picture is good enough for approval the new tingle bottle feature ties into this as well pictures inside bottles can be saved and brought in a Nintendo gallery meaning players can accept help from the online community if they wish it's still not the kind of quest I'm interested in finishing myself but I'm glad it's no longer so insanely demanding of the players time the way drudging of treasure works has been changed as well but I feel like they overcorrected on this one when sailing in a new version of the Wind Waker I quickly noticed that every chest I dug up had a purple rupee inside so I made it a personal mission to dig up as many chests as possible I never found anything other than purple rubies in any of the chests this arguably makes the treasure hunting less enjoyable since it's pretty clear what will appear each time but I still think it's better than getting red rubies instead perhaps in retrospect lower value rupees should have been swapped out for trinkets like gold feathers to maintain an element of surprise the more minor but more problematic change for me was the animation time when using the grappling hook which is about three or four times faster on paper this sounds like a great idea but in reality it gives the impression that the Great Sea is actually the great puddle this is basically a trade-off between convenience or immersion and I didn't feel like the sacrifice and immersion was worth it in this case with more substantial treasure in every chest the original way time wouldn't really be a problem another change which doesn't sit well with me is the way the wind direction is chosen this time around previously when changing the wind direction the best course of action was the point link in the direction you wanted the wind to go then it was a simple case of pointing the analog stick in the direction he was facing this time the camera no longer pans overhead when link is in the boat instead he spins around as the player moves the direction which makes it far more difficult to determine which way you wanted to send the wind worse than this though is the UI for the wind has been moved to the bottom right-hand corner and the input networks differently instead of pointing the analog stick in the direction you want to win to go you have to spin the cursor around on the wheel until it points the direction you want this is a vastly inferior system to the one that was in place before if you want to reverse the wind direction you now have to move the stick left or right and wait for the arrow to land on the correct spot there's a much higher chance of moving the stick the wrong way and getting confused especially if you played the original I can only guess why this change was made but I imagine it's because the GameCube controller had eight notches on the analog sticks making it easier to choose those directions without those notches the developers must have worried that players wouldn't be able to choose the correct direction personally I think if someone can't accomplish such a simple feat when they have clear visual feedback from the UI then they're unlikely to get far enough to ever use the winds Requiem anyway I admit this is a very minor change but it eret ated me a lot because of how uncalled-for it was and how it's clearly a worse system in comparison to the original which was both faster and easier to use on the flipside one brand-new addition I grew to enjoy was the use of gyroscope controls for the aiming they're a great fit for a Zelda title since the first-person aiming usually only lasts a second or two each time this is enough for the gyroscope to provide a tangible benefit and speed and accuracy compared to an analog stick but not so much time that it ends up going out of sync or otherwise becoming a pain to use another addition I loved was the inclusion of hero mode and amazed Nintendo have made the right decision to allow players access to this right from the get-go something many developers still don't bother to do it may be a case they only made this decision because they knew many players would be replaying the game and thus will be ready for hard mode but I hope they seriously consider this for the next Elder it works the same way as in Skyward Sword the enemy damage is doubled but the far better change is the removal of recovery hearts dropped by enemies are found in grass this makes every piece of damage the player takes more impactful and encourages more careful playing combat the Wind Waker was always a very easy game so this isn't quite enough to make it much of a challenge but combined with a self-imposed tree heart run you'd have a pretty intimidating game those are most of the major differences I'm not going to go over everything but it would suffice to say that there are more convenient put substantial changes for example the Triforce is now found directly in five out of eight chests cutting down on the number of charts that need to be deciphered the wallet is now able to hold 500 rupees from the get-go the tech speed is also vastly increased there's lots of others most welcome someone necessary but not necessarily very detrimental for example the forest water now expires in 30 minutes instead of 20 combined with the Swift sale it makes the core oxide quest laughably easy it no longer has much tension to it I encountered at least one change that was just baffling Orcas letter has a little less charm in the new version perhaps this was just an oversight overall I'd have to say I enjoyed the vast majority of these differences but perhaps the best thing about the changes and new additions is how most of them are left in your hands if you don't like the gyroscope aiming you can turn it off if you don't like the Swift sail you don't have to buy it if you don't like the tingle bottles you can disconnect from them if you don't want to use the gamepad their support for the basic controller the options here are far better than they ever have been you can even invert the camera controls I'm having difficulty explaining just how pleased I am with all these changes I think they show have some very minor tweaks and some careful attention to detail can make a good game so much better gameplay wise the Wind Waker HD is a substantial improvement on the original in many ways is this the definitive version of the Wind Waker that's the big question I'm trying to answer here based on everything I've said so far the answer would have to be yes but there's a catch in addition to the aforementioned gameplay updates Nintendo have also attempted to update the art style as well and in this regard they weren't nearly as successful this isn't to say the Wind Waker HD looks bad very far from it in fact if I had never seen the original version of The Wind Waker then I'd probably be completely enamored with the style in many ways it's untouched for example the geometry of the game is exactly the same as the original where the changes become noticeable are in the lighting department before I continue though I need to explain something I'm comparing the art style of the Wind Waker HD to the original but if you think about it the original art style is at a huge disadvantage in this comparison because it can only be shown at a much lower resolution it's important to note I'm not comparing the Wind Waker HD to the original directly I'm comparing the two art styles to one another because of that I think it's only fair to show the original art style running at the same resolution as the new one after all that's the way the Wind Waker HD would have looked had a Nintendo not decided to tamper with it one of the things I loved about the original Wind Waker is how relaxing it is on the eyes especially out in the ocean a solid block of blue with Lincoln his little boat floating in the middle is very easy to look at unfortunately in the new version an excessive amount of bloom has been added to almost every single scene I'm assuming Nintendo listened to feedback on this one because it's toned down compared to the initial reveal of the game but not nearly toned down enough as far as I'm concerned where this annoyed me the most was out on the great sea where those solid colors are now intruded upon by bloom raining down from the sky I may be alone in this but I firmly believe one of the best things about the art style of the original Wind Waker was how easy it was to look at the whole game is built to be comfortable and simple to parse bloom on the other hand simulates overwhelming light sources I'm not against bloom in principle in fact I think it can be a very effective technique when used the right way but its application in the Wind Waker is haphazard it bleeds into every scene without discrimination and seems that odds with the original art style established a decade ago another major issue for me was the presence of gradients on the character models which become visible and and scenes these are most noticeable when a character is surrounded by a bright light source or totally immersed in shade when in regular sunshine the hard-edged shadows make the gradients much harder to see and give the impression that link in the wind waker HD is still cel-shaded but it's certainly nothing like the same technique they were using before if anything it simply looks like it's still being cel-shaded the same way sometimes because the textures are so simple and were designed to work in tandem with cell shading in the first place in a traditional cell shading renderer the type of gradient you can see sometimes in the wind waker HD shouldn't be possible the entire point of a cel shader is to take colors average them out and turn them into solid blocks looking at the original windwaker in this scene we can see that's clearly the case Lynx face and hair have only two different hues one in shade and one highlighted by the Sun you can pick any point on his face here and the color value will be the same compared with the wind waker HD now link has a steady change going down his face and hair as a result it's easier to distinguish his shape which goes against the initial style where link would blend together in the new version he has a clearly visible jawline and his hair hangs outwards whereas in the older one his entire head was just one big block as a result his eyes and mouth now look tacked onto his face this often makes him look like a Nintendo me to put it another way if the wind waker is a cartoon then the wind waker HD is a plastic toy of that cartoon the new lighting system is a completely global change which shows up orally in a couple of other areas as well for example the lighting on the Marlin lamps which used to cast a nice simplistic looking light on the floor now looks needlessly realistic the mini game host had an unfortunate shadow cast across his face which ruined his scenes I found myself getting annoyed by these minor changes probably more than I should have and also by the drastic shifts in the way link would look from one scene to the next sometimes out in the Sun it looks arguably better than the original whereas opening a chest results in an absolutely hideous change in lighting it's not all grey clouds though there are some silver linings the outdoor environments benefit most from the new lighting system the addition of environmental shadows gives them a sense of space that they previously act the shadows are well implemented they're hard edges separate drastic changes between light and dark which matches perfectly with the ideas behind cell shading the texture work on the new version is also fantastic perfectly matching the originals in fact they may even be the original textures in an uncompressed format for all I know as you can see in the emulated footage the original textures don't hold up well in higher resolutions and they're a crucial element to the visuals given how minimalistic the models and terrain are despite a few upsides all this begs the question of why the visuals in the wind waker HD had to be changed so much or why this game even had to be made in the first place there's many other Nintendo games which would have benefit from an HD re-release more than the Wind Waker there's even better choices in the Zelda series itself in fact one could argue the Wind Waker HD is perhaps the least necessary HD remake Nintendo could have done apart from the fact that it can't be played in widescreen the original GameCube version holds up extremely well to this day ultimately the way Nintendo handled the release of the Wind Waker HD is a double-edged sword the gameplay enhancements are an improvement which never would have occurred had a Nintendo not been willing to dip back into the game and make a few changes on the other hand there are pointless enhancements elsewhere such as the frozen Hyrule section which has been changed from black and white to sepia tones this looks vastly inferior to me but what eats at me more is I don't understand why this decision was made when the original style was perfectly fine another example is a soundtrack which has been extensively tweaked to include more natural sounding instruments this didn't really backfire but it didn't pay off much either it seems like a risky decision to redo so much of the music for so little potential benefit coming back to that question from earlier then is this the definitive version of the Wind Waker my answer would have to be no but not because it's not necessarily better than the original in plenty of ways it is rather I think a definitive version of the Wind Waker no longer exists which is kind of a shame in and of itself I couldn't help but shake the feeling that this new iteration of the Wind Waker seeks to overwrite the old one rather than preserve it as much as I enjoyed it I hope it doesn't succeed in that goal the new version of the Wind Waker is well worth but so is the original I can only hope history has enough room for two wind wakers

Channel: Matthewmatosis

Views: 301,554

Keywords: Wind Waker, Twilight Pricess, Majora's Mask, Ocarina of Time, The Legend of Zelda, Zelda, Wii U, Gamecube, Skyward Sword

Id: ajndmZ5B3a8

Length: 15min 45sec (945 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 23 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/doublsh0t]

I was recently juggling between the dilemma of which game to play - Skyward Sword or The Wind Waker, and in searching for some reviews, I came across YouTube user Matthewmatosis who has excellent reviews--critiques, really--of 4 Zelda games over years. All were extremely enjoyable, and very well thought-out. He makes impressively thoughtful observations of Zelda games and games that are the focus of his other reviews that really make me wish game developers would consult with him in the game-making process. Interestingly, his reviews of Skyward Sword and the Gamecube The Windwaker ultimately made me decide not to play either.

And so after spending the past two days parceling out his lengthy reviews, and considering messaging him querying as to if/when I might could expect a Wind Waker HD review, he just uploaded it today hah. Enjoy!