The Wind Waker Review

hello ladies and gentlemen this is the third in a series of five reviews that I'm doing on the Legend of Zelda if you haven't seen any of these videos before then I'd have to recommend you start with my Ocarina of Time video instead in this video I'll be talking about the Wind Waker in depth so spoilers for the entire game will follow The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker is released back in 2003 for the Nintendo GameCube in the run-up to the game's release it became the center of a large controversy surrounding the decision to change the art direction of the series dramatically instead of the somewhat realistic take on the graphics that Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask adopted for the Wind Waker went for a cartoony cel-shaded approach but this is just one element of a much larger game and regardless of how you feel about the visuals it's worth considering how well the Wind Waker stands up as a Zelda game and as a game in general it starts out on the appropriately named outside island where the latest incarnation of Link looks just like a regular boy living with his grandmother and his sister it's his 10th birthday which means he has to wear the ceremonial outfit matching that of the old hero most likely link from Ocarina of Time the story kicks off when tetra is dropped onto outset by a bird that's been kidnapping young girls link goes to rescue er which turns out well but the bird kidnapped his sister instead it's as good an excuse as I need to get link out onto the great sea where most of the game takes place what this whole sequence does better than any Zelda game before it is established link as a real person it was some sort of life before the game starts he seems like any other boy until he gets the green tunic and he has people that he cares about who care about him tetra allows link to get on board the pirate ship and by this point you've probably figured out the cheese Zelda in ocarina of time they pull this trick as well but it was far more unexpected because sheik was so different from how you would imagine zelda to be and because they hadn't had a twist like that before nobody who played ocarina was about to be fill twice it's not a big deal but it begs the question of why they even bothered or why they didn't try to do something a bit different I mean maybe they could have had some other girl who seemed more princess like as a red herring and then BAM sneaky pirate tetra turns out to be zelda all along considering tetra is a blonde girl the same ages link and she's obviously going to play a big role in the game anything would have been more surprising than what's in the game currently after boarding the pirate ship Niko challenges link to a surprisingly annoying test where he has to traverse the room by swinging on the lanterns it's pretty tricky to learn when to jump so you don't overshoot your landing and missed the platform entirely it's probably better that they got to set it away though because it's essential training for her sake and fortress where this stuff is put into practice the lanterns that link can swing around on are a nice addition to the game allowing him to interact with the world a little bit more but they're surprisingly hard to get a grip on Oh this cutscene here's the first time a Zelda game had ever made me laugh out loud and it's a great use of Link's expressive new face it just goes to show how a simple approach can sometimes work brilliantly I mean links face is nothing more than a tiny nose and some very simple textures representing everything else but it conveys every emotion it would ever need to and it does it so well that it's still putting other games to shame to this day you can have a million polygons on the character's face and not come close to achieving something on par with links expressions in the Wind Waker the forsaken fortress is probably the longest stealth section in xela history I can say I'm very fond of it but I like the way it utilizes the enemies weapons being knocked out of their hands and teaches you that you can steal these links ridiculous expressions as he sidles along the walls and tries to stay out of sight are great - if you get caught you wind up in prison and simply have to break out and I think this is why they went with a style section for the start of the game because it almost entirely removes the possibility of death which would be off-putting for anybody who had never played a game before like say children attracted by bright colors once you've got the sword back there's a pathetically easy mini-boss and the game continues on link is brought up to Ganondorf who tosses it away because that worked so well last time eventually link washes up on windfall island and meets a friendly talking bow called the king of Red Lions windfall itself is most populated island in the game and while it doesn't open up more until later on there's already some nice touches to be seen here the characters are as vibrant as you would expect from a Zelda game and there's some fun touches like the poor old man who you're forced to listen to if you come close enough or the little kids that follow link around if you stand still they'll walk around him in a circle trying to look intimidating and if that wasn't enough detail the leader of the bunch has a more pompous walk than theater so you can tell that he's the guy in charge Zelda games in general have always had some nice touches in them but the Wind Waker takes it to a whole new level most likely because the simplified visual style meant to people doing animations and creating the world had more freedom to do what they wanted and they could get their work done faster allowing them to move on to other things this is one of the major benefits of moving away from hyper realistic styles because it puts an emphasis on the little touches and reduces the workload on the artists when somebody spends hours trying to get the stubble to look right in a Space Marines face it's probably not a really worthwhile endeavor the whole thing suffers from diminishing returns where the realistic details are necessary just to keep up with everybody else but don't really add much experience the windwaker removes these unnecessary elements but subtraction alone isn't an orphan would have made the game just lazy instead the effort is clearly spent on other areas it's one of the greatest virtues of the switch to the cartoony style anyway once you have the sale it's after dragon roost Island the game won't really let you go anywhere else but that's understandable since without the Wind Waker to change the wind direction you'd easily be stranded I'll talk about the sailing a little later on but I want to get to small problems out in the open that annoy me to no end about being in the boat they're very small issues but considering how much time is spent sailing they grade on me more and more over the course of the game and I think if I mention them now they might just grate on you more and more over the course of the review the ocean frequently clips with the bottom of the boat which looks awful considering how much time is spent in there there should have been a lot of work gone into this thing to make sure that it always looked great but you know the bottom of the boat just clips with the ocean presumably this was the team not accounting for the camera which could zoom out see when you're zoomed in it looks normal but as soon as you zoom out you can see the bottom of the ocean clipping with the boat the other problem is the water breaking over the sides which looks pretty okay on calm water but when you're on less clear water it looks terrible because you can clearly see there's not having any effect on the ocean itself it's just a tax to the front of the boat if over the course of review you manage to stop focusing on this stuff whenever it's on screen then congratulations you're less of a pedantic than me in all seriousness I know that these are very small problems to be complaining about but I've already talked about how the game's aesthetic style and now the artists to create more little details in the game and I think considering how little detail there actually is when you're out on the ocean it's a shame that these things weren't better thought-out dragon roost Island is the first part of call and the game's first chance to showcase its massive draw distance it's really achieved however since you'll just see the silhouette v'l until you get close enough for the details to start filling in it's a simple effect but it's necessary since naturally the sea is so flat it would have looked terrible to have the islands popping in and out of nowhere as you progress I also think this helps to improve the exploration in the game as you get a mysterious looking silhouette every time you're approaching an island it's a chance for the game to build some anticipation sometimes that anticipation is dashed when you get there and don't find much but it's a worthwhile inclusion nonetheless the dungeon on dragon roost is the first place apart from the ocean to make use of the game's vibrant color palette the place is swimming with such in red colors and while it's easy to forget about it once you've spent some time inside it's a striking contrast when exiting out onto the cliffs unfortunately there's not much going on for this dungeon otherwise it uses the waterpots well but that's really it the grappling hook has introduced to late and even and it's a very cumbersome item to use it has to be manually aimed at targets and once it grips onto an object a totally unnecessary cutscene plays even when you get onto the thing there's no guarantee you'll be facing the correct way in which case it's laborious process to make link stop swinging face the right direction and build up some momentum again overall the grappling hook in the wind waker is probably the least fluid puzzle-solving item in zelda history for what it achieves there's just too much time wasted thankfully its use in fights is significantly better as it can be used to steal items from enemies a particularly nice touch is that most enemies will actually have the item visible on them before you steal it and when you take it away it'll vanish from their model the boss fight here continues to traditional Zelda formula of using the most recent item found to tackle the fight it's all right up until you can't use values tail anymore and then it's just lazily designed you have to continue using the grappling hook to pull the boss towards you but how the hell does this thing latch on to the boss it seems to be fired directly onto his eyeball there's no cues given that this would work at all but it's the most obvious solution simply because that's how Zelda bosses work you get the item you use the item on the boss it's become pretty formulaic by this point after this link learns the wins Requiem which allows them to change the winds direction at will giving link a conductors baton instead of an instrument is a particularly fun choice when using it all the player has to do is move the c-stick in one of the four directions or simply let it rest in the middle the nodes automatically played at the correct time I assumed this was implemented to stop people from totally butchering the songs as could be done in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask in those games you could play something a completely the wrong pace but the game would still trigger the correct song you I can see when in tender would want to enforce this restriction on players so that whenever they play a song it sounds the way it should however this adds time to the process the thing is though people played the songs in ocarina and majora at the wrong pace because they were trying to play them as quickly as possible after you've heard Zelda's Lullaby for the 20th time it can only hold so much charm so the next time you need to use it you just hammer it out as fast as you can to shorten the waste of time the Wind Waker lacks the ability to do this all in all the length of time it takes to use the Wind Waker is one of the biggest complaints about the game and with good reason from pulling out the Wind Waker to resuming control of link it takes 15 seconds to change the wind direction doing it as quickly as possible since you have to use the Wind Waker for a variety of songs it's probably not a stretch to imagine the average player using it 200 or so times over the course of the game assuming this is true then this adds up to a staggering total of 50 minutes of play time well this could not be removed entirely a lot of it is completely unnecessary for example when you play the song the song plays again just as it did in ocarina and majora in ocarina of time and majora's mask playing the song back to the player makes some sense because as I mentioned before they may have totally ruined the way the song sounds if it's played back then they hear the song as it should be in all as well in the Wind Waker this is pointless because a song that's played back always sounds identical to whatever the player just did by my estimates the simple act of cutting out the repeat of the song each time would shave roughly 16 minutes off the average players time just consider that for a moment if you've completed the Wind Waker it's likely that you've spent 16 minutes of your total playtime just listening to songs you've already played being played back to you for no reason after using the Wind Waker for the first time it's strayed into another dungeon this time link gets the Deku leaf which alongside the grappling hook is one of only two new items introduced in the Wind Waker it's a good addition but it's use definitely wanes early on and in the latter parts of the game it's really only used for the occasional gliding I find that the best thing about this item is funnily enough how easily forgotten it is it leaves the occasional moment where you're stumped about how to cross a large gap and then you suddenly remember you've had the Deku teef all along the way the gliding interacts with the wind is good too and it's a shame that more items in the Wind Waker don't play off this mechanic it's disappointing how lacking the items are in the Wind Waker the Deku leaf is a good addition but the grappling hook feels like a slightly tweaked version of the hook shot that's not much fun to use Majora's Mask featured no major new items either but it did have the transformation masks which fill in a lot of the gaps I can see why it's important to preserve some items across Zelda games like the hookshot of the boomerang some of these just work so well and are such a core part of Zelda that feel weird playing a Zelda game if they were all absent that's not an excuse for just repeating the same thing over and over however to put it simply with the exception of the grappling hook in the Deku leaf all the major items in the Wind Waker were present in ocarina of time and the majority of these were present going back even further to a Link to the Past or the very first Zelda game itself for me one of the most enjoyable aspects of playing a new Zelda game is experimenting with the new items so this part of the Wind Waker was significantly diminished this area houses the Deku Tree any insanely weird Couric's which are heavily implied to be the descendants of the Kokiri from ocarina of time I'm not sure why these weren't just crafted to be their own race rather than some weird evolution of the forest kids from Ocarina it's almost as though Nintendo really does believe that evolution works the same way it does in the Pokemon series and an animal which you might start flashing and turn into a transhuman the more likely answer is this is simply a shoehorn reference the ocarina of time would have many other in the Wind Waker for seemingly no reason at all there's no time travel in the Wind Waker link has no connection to the previous one apart from his clothes the game doesn't even take place in hyrule not as we know it anyway overall the references to the hero of time and all that still feel pretty forced and the core arcs in the Rito are the two worst examples I mean why in a world full of water are thes aura not thriving instead they've evolved into birds birds which probably wouldn't do a lot well in water the idea of setting a game and was essentially a post-apocalyptic scenario of Hyrule is wonderful but its attempts to continue on from ocarina of time seem incredibly half-assed and not very well thought out part of me wonders if these ties the walk arena were added in towards the end of development the next item added to the Arsenal is the classic boomerang with a slight twist that it can lock on to five targets at once before being flung the boss fight using the boomerang has an amazing use of colour when the boss is vulnerable the whole room bursts into a vibrant teal color for a short time this use of strong colours to indicate the status of the fight is you another boss whites in the game and helps him to feel more dynamic after the forest Haven is completed the ocean really opens up and it's up to the player to decide where they want to go at this point the whole ocean is uncharted so it's up to the player to use the bait on the fish to fill in the map when you consider that there's 49 squares on the grid this should feel like a tedious task but it's spaced out at a comfortable pace and there's something very satisfying about seeing the entire world map come together piece by piece each grid contains an island sometimes small sometimes large there's usually something to be found by exploring the smaller out-of-the-way islands but the game suffers from the dilemma when it comes to exploration if you are able to just wander onto any Island and explore it immediately the game would feel shallow so instead some obstacles are placed in the way it might be a tree you need to hook shot or a stone head that needs lifting out of the way this is better than making the island stall but because of the vast scale of the ocean it's also punishing for anybody who decides to explore early on if you choose to explore before obtaining most the items you'll find yourself spending time traversing the ocean only to be rebuffed once you arrive at most locations I can't see any way this could be resolved it's an inherent issue with the way the game is laid out and there's not much that can be done other than removing the ocean entirely that said if you're replaying the wind waker some day then i'd recommend not to do much exploration until the hunt for the triforce charts comes up having played my most recent playthrough of the game this way I can say it vastly improves the experience exploration is one of the core elements to the Zelda series Shigeru Miyamoto used his childhood experience of exploring a forest near his house as the inspiration for the very for a Selda game and in that game exploration plays a massive role the world in the forest Isle the game is very open and leaves it up to you to decide where you want to go a next there was a ton of very well hidden secrets and it took a lot of time to find everything tucked away in that game of all the Zelda games since then I think the Wind Waker best embodies the spirit of exploration that was such a key concept in the original Zelda every island has its own little secrets and the world in general feels more open and untamed than I need Carthon the original my biggest complaint about the islands themselves would be how many are lacking content while many do have little caves and things to be found tucked away on them some of them are simply boring and insubstantial here's a map of the game first thing I'm going to do is remove the fairy islands because there's nothing to them and no reason why they couldn't have been turned into a smaller part of a larger Island the next ones I'm going to remove are the reefs which has basically nothing but some ships and treasure chests there's no land to explore here I'm also going to pull out the triangle islands which are tiny and have nothing on them and lastly a couple more reefs and islands that have insignificant amounts of content on them many of the ones crossed out right now feel like pointless filler this is already looking pretty bad but you could go even further than this if I remove everything but the major islands this map looks much worse I'm being a bit arbitrary in deciding what counts as a major island here but even if you disagree with some of these exclusions I'm still being fairly generous by including mother and child oils and tingle Island which really don't have much on them speaking of tingle though I really feel like I should say something about them since I neglected to cover him in the majora's mask review and he won't be popping up in twilight princess or Skyward Sword it's probably a lot to say about tingle and I mean you could yeah got nothing got nothing going back to the map then I might as well draw this little Easter egg Oh as well first you start out by connecting forest Haven and dragon roost where you get the first two pearls then you add in grade fish oil we're supposed to get the third pearl and then you connect these three islands to where the pearls are eventually placed I can only speculate but I assume that crayfish island was initially supposed to house a dungeon where link would obtain the third pearl instead when you arrived there the island is destroyed and you have to find job on that outside island instead this is just the first example of cooked content from the Wind Waker the game was most likely supposed to have a lot more after the pearls to because it's set up in the same formula as a Link to the Past an ocarina of time where the player collects three artifacts and in a massive shift takes place no such shift occurs in the Wind Waker and sadly the game has only five main dungeons six if you include forsaken fortress this is disappointing and made much worse by the fact that there hasn't been many changes to the game structure to account for this missing content instead you get dragged down to old Hyrule to see fields you'll never run across and then after a mere two dungeons the gamepad's out its length with a massive amount of fetch quests it seems to me like Nintendo had a certain amount of playtime in mind for the game and after they had to make cuts they just decided to do whatever they could to fill in the remaining time this all starts to happen after the Tower of the Gods when link acquires the Master Sword in one of the best sequences in the game even though the old Hyrule segment is a massive tease that goes nowhere it highlights a simple but effective combat in the Wind Waker it's similar to that of previous games but a bit more fluid and with the addition of a counter-attack that they can perform sometimes these counter-attacks are brilliantly animated and work really well in the dark not enemies where link has to counter their attacks to slice off their armor the addition of a musical cue that occurs when an enemy is hit and a satisfying pop of purple smoke when they're defeated leads to some of the most enjoyable combat in the zelda series even if it is a bit on the simple side of things while I'm on the camera I'd like to commend the enemy designs in the Wind Waker every enemy is always very simple to read you get an idea immediately about what the capabilities are in battle and the various effects and little touches on each one are great I particularly love the way the cloth on the Marlin spears drags around on the ground as they move in a lesser game at a time this stuff will just clip right to the floor the progressive increase in difficulty of the various colour choo-choos is great as well one of my favourite enemy types of the mini blends which swarm all around link while making bizarre little noises I'm pretty sure that these things just spawn randomly in an area near link but never where the camera is facing leading to the feeling that you're being attacked by surprise on all sides and you're not sure oh hell it's a simple effect but it leads to a very dynamic battle as you constantly swipe the camera around to make sure you're not about to be stabbed in the back the camera itself is much improved from the n64 games thanks to the addition of a second analog stick on the GameCube controller it does feel a little stiff sort of like the first person holes which are still a little difficult to get a hang up but it never becomes a problem even though the camera itself feels like an afterthought rather than the integral part of the experience that is it continues to utilize the lock-on mechanics in ocarina of time and they feel more fluid than ever partially thanks to the removal of the fairy companions but mostly just because the camera is more willing to lock on to enemies and does it quicker than before since the fairies are gone links companion this time around this is boat the inclusion of companions and Zelda games is mainly a fail-safe in case the player forgets what they're supposed to be doing which is reasonable or not a typical console installment in the series will last anywhere from 20 to 30 hours so it's unlikely anyone but the most avid fans are going to complete games in a single sitting therefore it's nice for the player to be able to turn the console back on and ask someone to remind them what they were doing last time around they also serve to give the game some more personality since there's usually not much of a chance for Zelda games to give a single character a lot of screen time apart from link but you know he's not going to say anything the king of Red Lions is a fairly boring psychic but he's also possibly the least intrusive in Ocarina of Time Navi would occasionally remind the player about where they should be going in the Wind Waker the king of red lines will rarely interrupt the flow of the game to remind the player of anything and really just waits for the player to talk to him before saying anything there's inevitably a trade-off here where the mora companion pops up the more of a chance they have for the character to shine but this will also slow down the pacing and likely increase the number of interruptions to the gameplay even though the king of Red Lions is kind of boring and I'd never put him above the others of the companions in a lot of ways he's the best one because he actually gets the game happened without intruding so much after visiting old Hyrule there's a brief trip back to forsaken fortress where phantom Ganon puts in an appearance pulling the same tricks as last time the hammer is obtained it being one of the most simple items in every Zelda game it's in it's mainly is just a smash pegged into the ground and during the boss fight with the bird which is all really simple and not very challenging the story then picks up with Link tetra and Ganon all ending up in the same room the kids are just barely saved and tetra needs to be hidden an old Hyrule the reveal that tetra is Zelda is perhaps the least taught at moment in Anna's elder story ever as soon as she's revealed to be the princess the king of Red Lion starts referring to her as Zelda for no reason presumably names in the Zelda universe worked the same way to do in the real world presumably tetra has been going by the name tetra for as long as she's been alive it's even left ambiguous about whether or not she knew about her heritage at all so white and is she sudden renamed Zelda as soon as she discovers her lineage this alone might not seem so bad maybe we could assume that her name was Ella all along and tetra just an alias but her clothes are suddenly replaced and she seems to undergo a complete personality change she's no longer a freewheeling aggressive pirate but suddenly seems to be a refined caring princess even if we go out on a limb and assume that Zelda's personality somehow awakened inside of tetra then that's a pretty terrible fate in and of itself it's as though tetra was just a vessel to be overwritten from here there's just two dungeons remaining to power up the Master Sword the progress any further link has to acquire the Cyclones that allow you to teleport across the map these help make the sailing less tedious and I think they're placed in all the right locations giving just enough added mobility without making the sailing itself utterly pointless the sequence to use it is a bit long but this really can't be helped considering the game is likely using this time to load the new location the map is really opened up at this point but many more of the islands becoming explorable after obtaining the fire and ice arrows the iron boots and the power bracelets in quick succession in classic Zelda style there's plenty of minigames to run across out in the Great Sea and there are varying success all on all the minigames in the Wind Waker suffer from being quite shallow the battleship game is too random to be consistently in the Canon game is a little easy to master after just a couple of tries whoever seeing this grumpy guy put his face into a piece of wood and scream like a little girl has to be the most charming thing I've ever seen in a computer game there's the flight platform game which again doesn't have much depth to it and can't be beaten until you've acquired the increased magic meter once you've done that there's not much incentive to try again there's a boat race as well as though the game needed more sailing lastly there's a letter sorting minigame which is just as shallow as the rest although enjoyable for what it is curiously fishing is absent for some reason it seems like it would have been a good fit here but there's conflicting information about whether or not there are even fish in the Great Sea on the one hand Ganon says this and on the other hand this talking fish in the great sea says this ok actually ignore what he's saying the point is he's a fish and he's in the great sea also did anyone get the impression that he's the only fish you talk to I mean the first time you see him he says to keep an eye out for his brothers but I've always had a sneaking suspicion that he just follows link around in order to get more food he'd probably be happy just to have someone to talk to as well must be lonely being the only fish out in the Great Sea there's only three main side quests in the Wind Waker a trading one one involving the Pictou box I'm one with the core ox the picta box stuff must win some sort of prize for being the most over-the-top and pointlessly tedious collection included in any game ever after unlocking the deluxe picked a box which takes photographs and Colour link can take these Nintendo gallery near the forest haven in order to get a figurine made there's a different figurine for every character and enemy in the game but the pick the box can only hold tree photos at a time there are 27 people on windfall island that means just to complete windfall island alone you would have to make nine trips to Nintendo to get all the figurines and this is the optimal scenario where you never accidentally take the same photo twice or take a picture that winds up being rejected when you get there to make matters worse there's some characters you can miss if you go too far through the game without snapping a picture which means you'll have to start over again if you hope to get them I'm not really complaining about the inclusion of this because it's completely optional but it's unnecessarily time-consuming and I can't wrap my mind around how much effort it must take to get this thing done the trading quest isn't a whole lot more enjoyable and mostly just counts on the player randomly stumbling across the traders as they're out sailing it does contain one of the best Easter eggs in the game at least this quest has a nice outcome as well where more and more decorations are gathered that can be used to decorate windfall island whoever the player likes the last major side quest is the one involved in the core ox you need link to get some forest haven water and pour it on all eight trees it's a race across the Great Sea rushing from island to island I think it's kind of hilarious to imagine this from the Couric's perspective there they are worrying about their a dying little tree when link hops out of a boat Sprint's over for some water and runs away again without saying a word you can talk to them as well but it's not nearly as funny that way there's a few little bits and pieces to do for people in the game but overall that's it I think the Wind Waker has a surprisingly weak collection of side quests and minigames considering how large the world is there are two dungeons left for me to discuss the entrance to the air temple requires the power bracelets which don't see much use and the best thing I can say about them is how amusing it is to see link lifting such massive objects the issue I mentioned in my Ocarina of Time review is still present where link will struggle with smaller blocks even after he's able to move much bigger things around I know it must sound petty to bring this thing up again but I think it annoys me because I like the power bracelets as an upgrade for link I just don't think they've been utilized very well so far in any of the treaty installments of the series medley the rito girl introduced earlier is required for this dungeon using the command melody the player can swap freely between her and Link and use both of them to solve puzzles it's a good mechanic although it doesn't add quite as much depth to the puzzles as it should and using the wind waker to swap around is once again an unnecessarily slow process this dungeon gives link to mirror shield if you've watched my ocarina of time review you may remember that I said the mirror shield should be included in every the game and it's as true here as it was an ocarina it integrates with the existing controls for the shield meaning you never have to fumble into menus to equip it it has less utility than a lot of items in Zelda but its use is very fluid something the items in Zelda could do with more of the usage of medley in this dungeon is the one Ocarina of Time homage in this game that I really like I think it's a fun idea that thousands of years after link had to carry Ruto to jabu jabu's belly in ocarina of time the same thing will be happening again with her descendant the difficulty in the latter two dungeons is thankfully increased what enemies like tree dead in the wall masks are being reintroduced but it never hits anywhere near the heights of the preceding games if you're comfortable with Zelda games and grab a fairy every now and then you're unlikely to ever see a game over screen not only do the enemies tend to do less damage in the Wind Waker but the puzzles in the dungeons are much simplified compared to Ocarina or majora in those games several of the dungeons required the player to become familiar with the layout of the area and move around intelligently from one space to another performing an action in one room could affect something elsewhere in the dungeon and keys were often distributed far away from the doors they were required to unlock the Wind Waker dungeons are well designed - but in a totally different way they often lead the player along through a logical progression of rooms rather than turning into a more sprawling areas that the dungeons used to become the earth and wind temple branch out from this but still don't quite match the challenge of the previous dungeons from the other games I don't know if this was an intentional design decision or not you could argue the Wind Waker was always meant to have more simplistic puzzles which probably has a lot of truth with but the way the earth and wind temples increase the challenge lead me to believe that the first batch of dungeons in the Wind Waker were meant to be easy ones like the ones from Ocarina as an introduction to the game the problem is thanks to the code content the game barely ventures past this introduction resulting in drastically reduced difficulty the Wind temple repeats a similar pattern to the earth one in this case makaras Link's companion the iron boots see some extensive use in this dungeon and thankfully none of it has to do with going in the water the usage of the boots has also been improved no longer requiring entry into the menu instead they're just equipped by using one of the buttons Makara controls much the same way as medley and can even plant some trees in the ground which end up seeing uses hookshot targets the hookshot is the last major item acquired in the Wind Waker so it feels as though it's introduced particularly late considering what an important item it is I feel this was a mistake but at least doesn't end up replacing the grappling hook too early on the grappling hook is the first item gained and the hook shot is the last sort of well spaced apart anyway as good as the earth and wind temples are they're the last two dungeons in the game it's almost certain that more dungeons were planned for this section of the game but had to be scrapped due to time constraints after the master sword gets powered up the hunt for the Triforce begins which takes place out in the Great Sea with the exception of the savage labyrinth there isn't much to this part of the game even the ghost ship which should have been a cool concept Falls entirely flat once you board it and find out that you just need to kill a few enemies to get to a chest the savage labyrinth is fun because it allows the combat some uninterrupted room to shine and often throws huge numbers of enemies into the fray at once something the game should have done more often judging by how well it turns out here the rest of the quest for the Triforce charts and eventually the shards themselves is all sailing and occasionally a bit of walking around on an island or solving a small puzzle the sailing in the Wind Waker suffers from a few major problems that compound on each other to make it a much less enjoyable experience than it should be as I've mentioned before it is the slow use of the Wind Waker which makes changing the wind direction bring the game to a complete stop this is terrible because if you overshoot your destination making your way back will require use of the Wind Waker and cost you about 15 seconds or you might just bitterly choose not to use it and float slowly back the way you came probably losing even more time in the process funnily enough the wind of all things is the biggest issue when sailing around it makes it impossible to sail in a circle without coming to a complete crawl just destroying any mobility to ship has in any battle or any situation which isn't sailing directly from one island to another there are other issues with the sailing as well though the boat itself is an issue for instance when cruising along at high speed and direction you want to go it feels terrific there's a sense of motion there that the developers nailed completely and being out on the vast ocean with the wind behind your sails feels great everything else doesn't nearly every interaction you can perform in the boat is a clunky mess the cannon is hard to aim and makes your boat a sitting duck in fact using any items at all brings the boat to a complete stop because the sail is pulled down the sail really should have been mapped to the B button since it's not in use when you're piloting the boat anyway this would have allowed the use of a sail and an item at the same time which could have opened up a lot more possibilities despite what it might feel like at times there is actually a lot of stuff to see in the wind wakers ocean there's platform salute boats to sink octaves to fight sharks that assault you tornadoes to avoid sunken treasure to dredge up those big annoying flying things ships to plunder and little barrels that pop up but rubies on them the problem isn't that there's nothing in the ocean it's that the boat controls Ortoli discourage you from bothering to look at any of it the treasure is a particularly bad example just like using the Wind Waker to change the wind direction digging up a chest takes approximately 15 seconds and that's not counting the time slowing down and any attempts where you miss the chest assuming a player does this a hundred times over the course of the game that's 25 minutes and most of those will be for a red Ruby or something equally mundane no player should ever have to wait for 15 seconds to be told they've been given something so small the last major issue with the sailing is the size of the ocean itself it's incredibly vast some would say pointlessly so and they'd probably be right I think the ideal size would be about 75% of what it is now which is probably a much less drastic change than what most people would suggest even though it's often just a flat solid blue color there's something I really like about the ocean in the Wind Waker and I think it works well when applied to this vast scale go any smaller than half of its current size and I just don't think it would feel right since the sailing is the major thing the Wind Waker brings to the table at previous Elda games didn't it's a shame to see so many issues playing it as I've said earlier on you can offset how bad all this becomes during the Triforce quest by leaving most of the exploration until this point in the game this gives you more to do when moving from point A to point B as they'll probably be some Arlen's to discover or something to do to break up getting charts and taking them back to tingle to find another piece of the puzzle obviously players won't know to do this on their first playthrough but I do think it's worth mentioning because it vastly improves what is otherwise the worst section of the game the Triforce Quest is obviously something placed into the game to cover the length of whatever planned dungeons were caught but there is something to be said for the way it forces the player to explore the ocean it gets the player out onto the great sea actively looking for things and as far as questions elegans go it's very open-ended you can grab the charts and pieces in any order as long as you end up getting them all so it's really going to play out for every player although it's easy for the sailing to wear out its welcome there's one aspect of it I never got tired of the music incredibly the sailing team managed to be a joy to listen to over countless hours of play the way it is track swells up and downwards is a perfect complement to the setting and makes the ocean seem that much more vibrant and full of life the rest of the music in the Wind Waker is no slouch eater it's got less iconic songs than ocarina of time but it does a wonderful job of keeping in tone with the game's whimsical visuals even a lot of the boss music sounds of beef once the Triforce quest is over it's back down to Hyrule where the player can briefly step back out into the green fields beneath the waves it's a shame there's not more to this setting ideally I would have loved to see a whole dungeons below the surface and access the old Hyrule I get the feeling this might have been on the cards before cutbacks were made to the game ultimately there's just one short miniature dungeon before fighting Ganon the papa cannon fight is surprisingly creepy for what it is and it's enjoyable as well but the real thing comes later on because Ganon always has several forms the setting for the finale of the game is nothing less than spectacular standing atop a tower in old Hyrule the whole place is flooded with water crashing down everywhere around the tower Zelda plays an active role in the fight as well which is great its most in character things she does in the second half of the game the fight itself feels incredibly cinematic even if there's not a lot of strategy to it beyond countering Ganon's attacks impossible the ending to the fight is amazingly satisfying as well if only for how shockingly violent it is there's no better way to take down Ganon than by ramming the Master Sword directly into his head the ending to the game sees Hyrule washed away with the kids future left in their own hands we know now that the story continues on into direct sequels to the Wind Waker those being Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks but taken on its own I think this would have made a fitting ending to the entire zelda saga games could have still been set before the Wind Waker to allow the series to continue in Samarra but the Wind Waker itself would have made a nice conclusion to the series as a whole Ganon Hyrule and the Master Sword raw lost beneath the waves and life moves on it would have made for a nice ending so that's what I have to say on the Wind Waker I've avoided as much as possible talking about the art style because I wanted to talk about the game separate from that issue entirely as you've probably noticed though I have let a few little pieces slip in and most of those have praise now that I've gone through most of the game I'd like to take the time to say - I think the art style of the Wind Waker is nothing short of amazing the graphics have aged excellently in the atmosphere radiates from every frame with a sense of childlike wonderment the vibrant colors are easy on the eyes and the simple shapes and textures have allowed the game to age incredibly well more likely a great strength when creating the game - because alterations will be easy to make a new content wouldn't have taken so long for the artists to generate link is more full of personality and alive than ever his eyes for example track interesting objects in the environment and because they're so big and noticeable it can actually help to bring things to the players attention his feet also don't clip on the ground and his stance will change if he stops halfway up some stairs rather than floating in mid-air or falling below the floor his foot actually rests comfortably on the ground his hair and his hat blow in the wind and his expressions change depending on what's going on around them these might not sound like much but all these details combined to make Lync fit perfectly inside his world link in general is such an insanely likeable character thanks in no small part to his new design and her expressive he is when he defeat a boss and he bursts into a dance it's hard not to feel happy for him speaking of the bosses the designs on the ones in the Wind Waker helped him stand out so much Morden aided in previous games and the nature of these giant creatures translates into the new art style much better than it ever did previously I also think it's worth mentioning just how different in tone the Wind Waker is to the previous console installment in the series Majora's Mask where Majora's Mask went to great lengths to create an atmosphere of dread and depression dwindle Acre is simply content to spark a little happiness in the player the whole world of the Wind Waker is just nicer link heals up his grandmother and she rewards him with soup the ghost of the Dead no longer seemed to be bewildered or in emotional pain but rather seemed happy to be given the chance to help their ancestors Lynx grandmother and sister will send them rubies in the mail overall I don't think a be a push to say that the Wind Waker has some of the best art direction I've ever seen in the game and I would love to see it used again in another console Zelda game the vast difference between the Wind Waker and Majora's Mask also goes to show one of the greatest strengths of the Zelda series as a whole which is the willingness to change I love the challenge of majora's mask but i have to admit that the reduced difficulty in the Wind Waker is kind of a good thing and the last person who wants to see Zelda dumbed-down to cater to a wider audience but I have to admit that it suits the game the entire thing is just one feel-good ride from start to end it's incredibly easy to become absorbed in the world of the Wind Waker and have a great time personally because of this reduced stress after sitting down and writing up on my thoughts on this game I'm surprised by how negative it all is and how easy it was for me to write up the bad parts of the Wind Waker I think that's because many of them are so obvious like the sailing and the lack of dungeons it's easy to find flaws in the Wind Waker they're abundant but I also think in many ways it embodies some of the best things about the Zelda series all the neat little touches in the game the sense of adventure and the ability to explore so freely are accentuated here for all the complaints about the sailing and the obvious issues with the game this doesn't change the fact that the world of the Wind Waker is fun to explore and feature some nice tight controls wandering around the islands is very satisfying so much so that while you're doing it it's very easy for the problems with the game to be forgotten I could never sit here and say that the Wind Waker is in the flood game because it is at times frustratingly so the cooked content is a particularly sore point for me because I hate to think about how much more the game could have been if given a little bit more development time despite how flawed the Wind Waker is I'd also have to admit that it's a game that I love to play usually when I play a game I'm sitting in my chair with a typical zombie-eyed expression as I passively let something take over my life for a few hours when they play the Wind Waker I'm often smiling at the time of its release it was uncommon for a game to make me as happy as playing the Wind Waker made me now it's even more rare in the next video I'll be looking at the gloomy lycanthropy of Twilight Princess so I hope you'll join me then thanks for watching

Channel: Matthewmatosis

Views: 533,091

Rating: 4.8870525 out of 5

Keywords: The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword

Id: ivl1QfzTatw

Length: 41min 17sec (2477 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 25 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/Alwayz_Be_Closing]

Bro spoiler alert