Twilight Princess Review

hello ladies and gentlemen this is the fourth in a series of five reviews that I'm doing on the Legend of Zelda if you haven't watched 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 looking at Twilight Princess in depth so spoilers for the entire game will follow The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess was released in 2006 for both the GameCube and the Wii the game had originally started its life as a GameCube title but was eventually released as a launch title for the Wii as well first and foremost I want to say that I won't be talking about the GameCube version of the game in this review I've never played the GameCube version and I'll be looking at the Wii version simply because that's the version Nintendo wanted us to buy the Wii version released first and if you were to ask someone from Nintendo which version of Twilight Princess was the definitive version they'd likely say the wee one I don't mean to annoy anyone who prefers the GameCube version as I'm sure it has its merits but I'm not going to be factoring it into this review Twilight Princess introduces us to a link livin in a quaint village on the outskirts of Hyrule the player has dropped into the village to herd goats and talk to the villagers it's an opening reminiscent of the Wind Waker where link is set up just to be an average person living a simple life however between watching cutscenes herding goats catching fish and running errands around the village it can take upwards of half an hour before the player is even handed a wooden sword that might not sound too bad on paper but just for comparison's sake in the Wind Waker Link will have his recognizable clothes on and his sword within about 10 minutes leaving the island only takes a couple more minutes along the way were introduced to tetra and her band of pirates given justification for link starting his quest and treated to a cutscene where linked emotionally waves goodbye to his grandmother helping us to bond with him as a character but a 30 minute mark the player is in forsaken fortress the slow pacing in Twilight Princess wouldn't bother me so much if not for the fact that there's barely any time to play as link with his wooden sword before being thrown back into more cutscenes and then playing as a wolf for the better part of an hour in Majora's Mask the player couldn't play as link for quite a while either but this came across to me is just another way for the game to make the player uncomfortable Twilight Princess doesn't really benefit at all by not allowing the player to stretch their legs too constrained linearity along with the abundant momentum destroying cutscenes make the first two hours of Twilight Princess a chore to get through feels like an overly drawn-out intro the companion for link in this game is Midna sort of impo rescues him from imprisonment of all the Zelda companions so far I drank mid not among one of the best she's got more personality than the others and she serves as a genuine used to link she can warp him around from one location to another and transform him into a wolf she's got her own agenda too she's not just plodding along towards the same goal for no discernible reason she interrupts the flow of the game less than navi and unlike a certain someone in a certain upcoming review she doesn't go on forever and ever about your percentage chance of success the Twilight Realm is introduced early on and while I was personally disappointed by the decision not to continue with the art style at the Wind Waker I have to praise the look of these Twilight sections the palette of colors in the sky combined with the soft bloom effect blends are beautiful and slightly eerie look to the surroundings I'm also a fan of the visual style of the enemies in the war portals there's an almost digital element to them that makes them feel strange and out of place but never to the point of ridiculousness special mention to the weird and wonderful feedback type noises at the flying enemies make it's a strange direction to take the art and sound but I think it paid off well once link breaks into Hyrule Castle Zelda is introduced she's pretty aloof and more like a princess than she's ever been she doesn't show much emotion and she's not easy to connect with as a character at least there's a flashback establishing good guys and bad guys that's really all we needed at this point since Lincoln Midna have already teamed up in order to restore the area link has to hunt bugs for some reason okay this this bug hunting section of the game feels like padding on the side part is it's repeated twice before the end of the game these sections make me feel like they decide them the concept of link turning into a wolf before they're really taught about how much this would add to the game they also comprise a huge percentage of the time spent visible and they don't really bring much to the table the best thing I can say about these parts is I like the way it forces the player to find alternate ways into places that would otherwise be easy for link to reach having to tunnel into a house rather than open a door makes a lot of sense in wolf form unfortunately there's just not a lot of stuff you can do as a wolf you can use the sense mode to find trails you can attack stuff you can wander around sometimes you can jump a bit farther than usual to make this worse it seems you can't teach an old link new tricks once you get the will form there's nothing else to be discovered about it all the abilities are there from the get-go which is also true when it comes to the combat you can bite stuff or you can use midlas hand to cube attacks that's it I find it particularly odd that you can do a finishing blow on enemies while in human form but not in wolf form surely a feral animal is going to want to tear its prey to shreds it would have felt pretty satisfying to jump on top of enemies and rip them apart but instead you have to wait for them to get back up and stop being invincible it just doesn't feel very animal-like overall the wolf farm has about as much utility as one of the three transformation masks from Majora's Mask here's a quick comparison the wolf form can bite use madness attack jump long distances use the sensing vision dig and talk to animals do Deku farm can blow bubbles spin skip on water glide through the air and allows link to speak to Deku as though he's one of them on top of all this Majora's Mask had to order masks on a time travel mechanic there's no reason the wolf in Twilight Princess should be as shallow as it is once the book hunt is over it's time to finally enter the forest dungeon ever since the advent of the Wii it's clear that Nintendo have been striving to make their games more accessible you can see this in Twilight Princess even though it's started development as a GameCube title the excessively long intro lays down the mechanics of the game all at once you have a horse tutorial a sword tutorial a slingshot tutorial it's a shame to have to go through so much hand-holding in a row if three main problems becames which force tutorials on the player in the beginning firstly it ruins the pacing at the start of the game I hate to lay down rules that every game should stick to because every game is unique but one thing that should be true across the vast majority of games is they should capture the players interest as quickly as possible tutorials don't accomplish this secondly they annoy experienced players who will probably have a good idea how the control scheme is going to work to be fair this is less true of Twilight Princess since it was a wee launch title and those needed to introduce players to that control scheme but the controls were nowhere near being so complicated that someone couldn't figure them out five or ten minutes into the game lastly they destroyed the willingness of a play to go for a second playthrough it's highly unlikely that any player no matter how inexperienced they were when they first played the game will want to be forced through tutorials if they choose to play the game a second time the reason I'm getting at all this now is because I think the first dungeon in the game represents a nice attempt at a compromise the monkeys in a dungeon give a clear indication about where the players should be going next without intruding on the pacing for people who are experienced with gsella games they don't talk they don't have excessively long cutscenes they don't explain things they simply run around and give the player a decent indication about what they should be doing next the thing that makes this good even though it makes the dungeon very easy is that it doesn't slow down people who don't need to be slowed down anyway as a reward for repeatedly stabbing a baboon up the ass link gets a boomerang this is the start of a trend that I really enjoy in Twilight Princess where items from previous games in the series return but without it functionality in this case the boomerang generates a tornado as it flies around it's not much but it's a nice addition to an otherwise standard and some might even say play it out Zelda item this little twist on a Zelda classic is a nice touch and continues with the iron boots which I use magnetically for the first time link moves incredibly slow when he's upside down though sometimes I wonder just how much time is spent in the second dungeon trudging along the wall to the ceiling and while I'm talking about that I might as well also say that climbing id on the walls is terribly slow as well mind-numbing Lee pointlessly infuriatingly slow just real slow in between the first and second dungeon of horror sees more use movement and the horse is fine but the combat is a bit hit or miss sometimes if we have fluid and at other times hassle some using the sword in particular it doesn't feel as good as it should I put this down to the reach you have to get right next to an enemy and even when I hit connect it doesn't have as much energy as it should using the ball was better but doesn't feel as involved it's a little too easy to just lock onto enemies and fire away considering how taxing this would be for link it's a shame it doesn't take a bit more skill for the player to pull off the jousting type event which takes place on the bridge is one of the best opponent moments in the game I think this attack pattern should have been used on the enemies more off Theater enemies in the game will very rarely force these head-on situations to occur the second dungeon is significantly lengthy and a big step up from the first by the end of this dungeon the iron boots on the bow are sitting in links inventory this really makes me question why the slingshot is even included in the first place it's made obsolete before link even has five hearts the uses of the slingshot up until this point are pretty superficial you don't use the money of the boss whites and it's basically just used for picking some bugs off the vines before crawling interminably up them I have three reasons in mind when intend on might have chosen to include the slingshot firstly because it was in ocarina of time secondly because a kind of sort of counts as an item those padding at the inventory and thirdly because Nintendo wanted to train people had to point at the screen by having a tutorial early since it would have been too early to hand over the bow they handed over to slingshot instead I don't think any of these are valid reasons for its inclusion and I can't think of any reason why it couldn't be cut from the game with no negative impact on it at all the bow and the slingshot used the Wii Remote for aiming with the player pointing at the screen to select where they want to shoot this works really well and is one of the best uses of motion controls in the game and particularly like any analog stick is used to survey from side to side this is much faster and more fluid than scrolling the edge of the screen whenever the player moves the cursor there it's much easier to pick out distant targets than it wasn't any of the previous games and it feels more involving as well it's in this phase of the game that Hyrule really opens summer and expire more massive than it was in Ocarina of Time but it suffers from some problems the geography is somewhat similar to Majora's Mask with the town sitting in the center of the overworld and the adjacent areas spreading out in all directions unfortunately unlike Majora's Mask where the field surrounded Clock Town Castle town and Twilight Princess is accessed via bridges this also divides up the various part of hyrule field into a ring around castle town there's no quick way to go from one side of the ring to the other so you're forced to go around a great distance I'll go on foot through to town I'm pretty sure this is so you can be forced through several bottlenecks giving the game time to load the next area considering the game was built for GameCube hardware I do think it's nice that Hyrule is free of load times but it's had a detrimental impact on the level design it's worth noting that Transport has made much easier as the game progresses via the use of war points but I see this as a bit of a crutch the world in Twilight Princess is nowhere near as vast as that at the Wind Waker so if Nintendo had ensured that moving from point A to point B was interesting then war points wouldn't really have been needed this could have pulled the experience together a bit more and would have given it pone as so much needed screen time for the first part of the game you're often stuck in wolf form once that ends you can warp around freely and it's only well after that point that you get the horse call item that allows you to call opponent from anywhere the end result is that there's barely any reason to user for most of the game despite some issues the overworld isn't bad it's hard to shake the feeling that the motivation behind it was anything more than someone at Nintendo saying ocarina of time but bigger but even so there's plenty of stuff to find and it does reward exploration I find the layout of hidden areas and extras are all too often spread around the edges of areas though this unfortunately means that the areas are pretty barren in the middle and if you're looking to findings you can just gallop around the edges and look for things to use an item on castle town acts as the de-facto hub for link during the game I have a personal hatred for when level designers slap down tree houses in the middle of nowhere in Calder town it's something the Zelda series is guilty of but gladly castle town and twilight princess fields as big as it should there's plenty of structures in sight and it seems to be a fairly big town something worth sitting in the middle of Hyrule Field at least there's also plenty of people which initially seems good there's a bustle about the streets people coming and going it helps to keep the place feeling alive after this bit happens though the attitude of the people in castle town ceases to make any sense whatsoever there's a joint prism covering their beloved Castle and they don't seem to care in the slightest this is made much worse by the fact that Majora's Mask had a similar situation where a town was faced with an overwhelmingly bleak scenario and it handled it perfectly the people in Twilight Princess don't seem to care or even be aware of the kind of things that are happening around them which makes it hard for the player to care either after hunting more bugs in lake hylia is an exposition heavy cutscene this cutscene highlights twilight princess's attempt be a dark game after many fans of the series felt alienated by the wind wakers lighthearted visuals and atmosphere Nintendo decided to try going in the opposite direction for the next game these attempts never really connected with me however link turns into a generic evil version of himself with no eyes and that's supposed to be disturbing really it's just the kind of thing you'd write into a bad horror film don't even get me started on this sequence either the way this whole scene plays out has never made much sense to me I don't think the story gains anything by showing the story in this way did we really learn anything about link or about the ancient tribe by presenting the story in this fashion I really don't think so the sad fact is for all its attempts to be dark and moody nothing in Twilight Princess managed to shock and disturb me as much as walking into the destroyed town in ocarina of time did comparing Twilight Princess to the art Alya pressing an amazing atmosphere of majora's mask wouldn't be favorable either this is an incredibly subjective one as well but I honestly don't feel anything in Twilight Princess is as intimidating as the redeads from The Wind Waker either the only thing in the Wind Waker dye was supposed to be scary is better at it than anything in Twilight Princess the following dungeon introduces the hookshot mercifully early it's a solid dungeon and again quite lengthy a lot of the dungeons in Twilight Princess are quite large which I consider to be a good thing they're more linear than the ones in Ocarina or majora but they're definitely a step up from the wind wakers dungeons in several ways this water dungeon utilizes a different tunic feeling and this works really well you simply put the tunic on at the start of the dungeon and then you don't need to worry about any more no item usage nothing you're all set just by wearing the tunic after this the few shadows are all together and Zant the primary antagonist is introduced it's worth noting how calm and collected he acts during this cutscene this is the transition to the next phase of the game and it was almost a very good one but one small thing ruins at all in short Midna is sick and Link is trapped as a wolf so he has to go get help it's a great set piece a chance for a game to engage the player more and make us care about the fate of Midna all the pieces are in place Midna is slumped over and looks to be dying link is trapped in wolf form unable to communicate with anyone and the music has been replaced by a piano track softly setting the mood it's good until you get near an enemy the change in music when this happens shatters the atmosphere entirely and ruins a moment which could have otherwise been one of the highlights of the game in majora's mask the music which plays six hours before the moon crashes takes priority over most of her songs and audio in the game it's always there reminding the player what the most important element to the game is at that time this sequence in Twilight Princess is obviously trying to forge a connection between the player and Midna and yet the music doesn't see this as the top priority it's an incredible chain but such a small omission could have such a detrimental impact on an important part of the game despite this issue the audio in the game is generally very good the music isn't as memorable as in previous titles but considering what it had to compete with it's not bad to say that Twilight Princess filed somewhat short personally I love - Twilight music which again sounds very synthesized and digital echoing the designs of the enemies there it's worth noting as well that midnight had considerably more voice acting than any other character in the series to that point she speaks gibberish from time to time rather than simply grunting or making some other kind of substitute for a voice there's a lot of people out there who would love to see the Zelda series have voice acting I think it's inevitable that Nintendo will make this change sooner or later but I'm hoping when they do it that the characters continue to speak gibberish if they actually attempt full-on voice acting I have no doubt that it would be a train wreck I don't want to hear any character in Zelda speak recognizable words it would make it too easy to find flaws in the delivery and for the lines to come across badly it also raises more problems when it comes to localization only two Japanese voiceovers would get the full attention of the development team with the other stuff being left in the hands of teams which may not be up to producing something of Zelda quality eventually some language is gonna get a horrible dog thankfully if Midna is any it seems likely that they'll sidestep this issue and allow the characters to speak he'll e'en which would be the best of both worlds I think once Midna is patched up the next thing is to grab the Master Sword while I'm on the topic of the Master Sword though I'd like to talk about the combat in human form I already gave my reasons why the combat in wolf form is disappointing but don't worry I have entirely different reasons why the combat in human form is disappointing the combat in Twilight Princess feels surprisingly natural and the moves that link can learn and expand upon the basic mechanics well there's nothing wrong with the implementation of any of Link's skill set apart from the fact that learning most of it is optional which has huge ramifications by the end of the game a lot of the techniques are all but handed to the player the stones which lead to the training sequences are mostly placed in obvious locations this means it's easy for players to have a wealth of tricks to pull off during a fight there's the shield bash the helm splitter the mortal draw and so on the problem is because they've been left optional the game has to assume that the player never got any of them the best comparison would be the dark knight enemies in Twilight Princess and the Wind Waker in the Wind Waker these were some of the most interesting enemies to fight because the counter-attack was needed to slice off their armor before any damage could be dealt in Twilight Princess the same enemy can be killed just by waiting for the right time to strike and slashing away this difference naturally exists because in the Wind Waker link could counter-attack from the start of the game whereas in Twilight Princess this technique isn't mandatory there's a reduced emphasis on the shield as well even though it was a core feature of combat in the previous games Twilight Princess contains far more robust and interesting combat mechanics but is unable to take advantage of it if all the moves that link had were utilized in the enemy designs then Twilight Princess could have had some amazing combat the fighting continues to use the lock-on mechanics of the previous games and it feels just as good as it did in the Wind Waker the rest of the camera is much worse though since there's no second analog stick on the Wii controller here's an interesting fact about the series actually out of every Zelda game released to date excluding the GameCube version of Twilight Princess the Wind Waker is the only one to make use of two analog sticks having an analog stick dedicated to the camera is something that the vast majority of action-adventure games do since two sticks became the standard on controllers it allows the player to more easily take in their surroundings which is a very important aspect to play and most importantly it aids immersion by a great deal I can't speak for everybody but I know when I'm playing action-adventure game might um immediately defaults to the right analog stick whenever I'm not pressing a button this is because the camera is such a hugely important element I probably spend as much time if not more time moving the right analog stick around as I do pressing the face buttons in an average game in this way Twilight Princess feels like a major step backwards it's something that's hard to adjust to I'm not sure why there's no option to use the Gamecube or classic controller when playing the Wii version of the game considering the game was obviously built with the GameCube controller in mind I suppose it's because it would have incurred a need for more testing but I also think it's just a case of Nintendo wanting people to play with the motion controls and assuming that motion controls were the best control scheme that may very well be the case for most people but let's assume for the sake of argument I'd prefer to play the game with a controller now I have a choice I can either play the GameCube version with the controls that I enjoy or play the Wii version with progressive-scan and widescreen support if the Wii version had allowed for the other control schemes it would have included the best of both worlds as for the Wii controls themselves they don't bother me doing my little flicks of the wrist to strike out with a sword is fine it'll always be less precise than having a button for the simplicity of it all means there's little room for misinterpretation on behalf of the Wii Remote I think the implementation of these controls is surprisingly good considering Twilight Princess was in development solely for the GameCube to begin with the only area I can think of where its outright bad is when attacking with the world apart from that the controls at worst are about as good as they've ever been but in some cases like when it comes to aiming they're actually far far better one of my favourite things the new control scheme allows link to do is run and cook grass at the same time this is obviously a very small feature but anyone who's enjoyed a Zelda game has probably enjoyed cutting some grass so it's nice to be able to do it while on the move when link learns new combat techniques he's trained by a style force figure which could easily be taken to be linked from ocarina of time since it's said in that game Annie Hindley in which enters the last woods is doomed to turn into a stalfos if any of the various incarnations of link have gotten a hard time its Ocarina of Time link he lives to see hyrule town destroyed by Ganon and then ends up in a nightmarish land of termina on a perpetual tread of annihilation in the end he winds up as a star foes the goddesses didn't exactly treat him well as good as these sequences are they're part of my biggest problem with Twilight Princess it feels like it was made to be Ocarina of Time too the art style is the first the most obvious give away the return to a realistic approach after the Wind Waker was certainly an attempt to appease fans who hated the changes of the Wind Waker despite Majora's Mask in the Wind Waker finding new settings for the game to take place in Twilight Princess returns to the traditional Hyrule set up and also features Hyrule Field despite link starting Ocarina as a child and being a child for the entirety of majora and Wind Waker Link is an adult in Twilight Princess the similarities don't stop here and the desert temple is a good example in Ocarina the desert temple is the one temple that requires both child and adult link similarly the desert temple in Twilight Princess requires use of the wolf it also takes a cue from the forest temple in Ocarina which had the player tracking down four ghosts the Lost Woods makes an appearance again as due to Skull Kid and saria's song there's a temple of time in the game as well which features the same music as ocarina and sees link returning the Master Sword to the pedestal in order to progress a pony returns and appears in the title screen in a manner reminiscent of the title screen from Ocarina of Time Goma and Morpher return in slightly altered forms even the hilly in shield hadn't been seen since Ocarina of Time the game is structured in the same way as well link completes three dungeons grabs the Master Sword and then completes five more dungeons the ending to both games is a showdown with Ganon inside and eventually outside Hyrule Castle Zelda games always have elements in common they're part of the same series after all so it's only natural but when looking at majora's mask or the Wind Waker it's clear that each of these are distinct titles they have flaws of course but they're not simply Ocarina of Time retreads to twist stay applied to the basic Zelda DNA were substantial far more so than anything Twilight Princess does The Legend of Zelda is one of the longest-running computer game franchises ever and I think one of the major reasons why that's the case is because of the unique mixture of the familiar and a new placed into each game when going into a Zelda game there's a few basic elements you can be pretty much sure of there'll be swordplay there will be puzzle solving items there will be dungeons there'll be exploration there's comfort in knowing that the game you sit down to play will provide these base elements but still a tower room for something new even though two games might have of exploring the exploration in one could be completely different from the exploration in another anybody who plays a couple games in the series will understand the basics of every Zelda game which means they're free to breeze through the opening of the game will never struggle with the core mechanics and can focus on enjoying the new stuff this is not to say that the Zelda games are too similar to one another in general well I would like to see the series take more risks there's certainly much much more effort placed into differentiating Zelda games compared to most game series and just because two games feature Link Ganon and Zelda doesn't mean they're not very different from each other this is a tough balance to maintain however and after the complaints from some people that Majora's Mask and the Wind Waker were too different it was probably inevitable that Nintendo would eventually produce something too close to the Ocarina of Time old Twilight Princess does include some new elements even though the wolf's form is lacking the items are generally good additions there's plenty of good dungeons and are long enough to make them worthwhile the problem is it never felt to me like it was allowed to be its own game it seems like it's very consciously designed to appeal to people who consider Ocarina the pinnacle of the series even at the expense of the Twilight Realm and the wolf sections which feel incredibly underdeveloped the side quests in Twilight Princess are pretty lacking as well there's two main collectathon Poe Sol's and insects they're not a detriment to the game but neither one is very compelling the one involving the howling stones where link learns new moves is good but I've already explained that I don't think that should have been optional at all the cave of ordeals is the most substantial SciQuest and twilight princess it's a simple inclusion what I'm sure was easy for the developers to put in but it's worthwhile nonetheless the minigame selection is thankfully much better the star minigame sees link using the jewel claw shots to shoot around an arena in order to grab everything it's a great use of the item the platform game simply requires link to land on a target this game would have been a lot easier if there was any way to see directly downwards while in the air since much of the difficulty in this one comes from the poor camera angle it feels a bit cheap it's also a laborious task of getting into a cannon watching a cutscene and grabbing another KooKoo before you can try again the flying minigame frustrates me due to the decision to use the motion controls for the movement I despise want to have any difficulty with a section of a game simply because it uses moe ingen Falls I crashed into walls a couple of times here and I really don't think this would have happened had I been using the analog stick instead there's no reason the player couldn't have at least had the choice between the two since movement is all this game consists of there's no need to restrict the player to one or the other even despite the poor controls this minigame doesn't take many attempts to master the fishing minigame uses the motion controls as well and while I wouldn't say it enhances the experience at all at least it's a natural fit there's some river rafting target practice which works great it's similar in concept to the horseback archery minigame from ocarina but the rafting setting makes it feel much more fleshed out and energetic than before lastly there's a snowboarding minigame which isn't very complex but feels great nonetheless I'm especially thankful it doesn't use motion controls for the movement otherwise this would have turned into a mess as it is it's a great little distraction after obtaining the Master Sword there's 5 dungeons left link gains the ability to transform into a wolf at any time the transformation itself is fairly smooth and it's nice to have it constantly mapped to the UP button the desert temple makes nice use of the wolf form even if it does feel like a sly attempt to mimic ocarina it also introduces the first new item at while a princess the spinner if you set aside the dungeon is very limited but for the time it lasts it's a great addition bouncing from wall to wall to avoid obstacles is a great use of the item the boss fights up until this point up in what you would typically expect from Annie's elder game and it gets more predictable every time his boss whoever star-lord even though it plays into the usual formula of using the latest item to defeat it feels totally unique and very memorable next dungeon is unique and memorable as well a rundown mansion resting in a snowy mountains is a wonderful setting for a dungeon and makes a surprising amount of sense considering how link is always hunting for keys to unlock doors this place includes the second new item of Twilight Princess the ball and chain it's kind of like the hammer of Twilight Princess mostly used to smash blocks but it also has some utility and vowel and has animated very well with a nice sense of weight whip all-in-all it's not about inclusion better than the hammer at least and the boss fight using it is one of the better fights in the game after a second trip back through the last woods the temple of time is the next dungeon this dungeon introduces the dominion rod which is functionally very similar to the command melody from the Wind Waker the best thing about this item is how streamlined it is rather than having to play a song every time link needs to possess an object simply a matter of equipping the rod and firing it at one of the statues this is exactly the kind of streamlining that Zelda items and ability sorely lacks sometimes so I'm delighted to see it rectified here moving the statues around is way more involving than it ever was in the Wind Waker Twilight Princess streamlines item use in general very well thanks to the inclusion of a quick select menu for items rather than having to win to a pause screen scroll over to the page the item is on and assign it to a button there's just a menu wheel which makes it easy to swap out several items within the space of a second or two there's also four assignable items as well instead of tree now only the one assigned to the B button can be used at any given time where it's just a case of pressing the right button to swap them out with no interruptions to the flow of the game even though the quick select menu is a very simple addition to the game it's something that the console Zelda games have sorely needed since ocarina of time so it's a big bonus for Twilight Princess another nice touch is the way link will leave rupees back in their chests if the wallet is full meaning or not wasted this does have a side effect where the chest will remain on your map and you could easily forget what's inside if you're in the dungeon looking for a key you might end up going back to the chest containing rupees in waste sometime it would be ideal if the chest was marked with a rupee symbol on the map after seeing what's inside overall though this is a good change and reduces the frustration mainly present in the Wind Waker where you could easily pick up a hundred rupees that would be wasted since the wallet was full also walking into a ferry with no health won't waste it anymore meaning it can still be bottled for later these are the kinds of tiny changes that are great to see happen as a series progresses after the Temple of Time there's a section where the player needs to scour Hyrule for several L statues in order to proceed I consider this part to be like a miniature version of the Triforce on from the Wind Waker it makes a lot of sense to put this section into the game and at this particular time link will now have the majority of the items in the game and transport from one location to another is very easy this forces some exploration onto the player and thanks to how late into the game it is it's a good chance for the player to use items they've acquired so far to search around for pieces of Paragon or the rewards this section of the game also sees link heading to an abandoned town and finally restoring Ilias memory the fact that this takes so long is one of the weirdest things about Twilight Princess is story it meanders around kind of aimlessly after the children are kidnapped at the starting game link rescues them and finds Elia with no memory he then meets her a couple more times over the course of the game but in between all this there's a plot about Hyrule being in jeopardy and the game ignores alia for huge spans of time making it difficult to get invested in her at all but the conclusion of all these events I found it hard to care any more the game just introduced too much before resolving things from the start of the game and none of the characters felt very fleshed out or interesting there's a greater emphasis on story in Twilight Princess but the story is so insubstantial that it all feels rather pointless to sum it up some kids get kidnapped and this sends link out on his quest he meets Midna and Zelda who let him know Hyrule is in danger so he resolves to help out no amount of Zelda looking sad is going to change the fact that the story has no more going on than the one in Ocarina of Time the next dungeon introduces my favorite Zelda item the jewel claw shots initially I was disappointed when I opened the chest containing it as I didn't grasp all of its potential it turns out it's a fantastic way to modify the classic hook shot this also benefits from the new aiming mechanics which allow link to zip from one wall to another effortlessly of all the 3d Zelda games this is my favorite item in any of them because it allows for tons more mobility without being game breaking the boss fight using it is also very enjoyable the items in Twilight Princess are great but do suffer from the problem of being rarely used outside their respective dungeons particularly the ball and chain and spinner suffer from this problem the lantern in the slingshot are also mostly uses after the first three hours or so of the game order Zelda games suffer from this as well but usually to a lesser degree the Wind Waker for example seemed to be making progress on this front the Deku leaf was largely underutilized but later in the game had formed a nice combo with the iron boots similarly if you equip the iron boots on the hookshot you could pull down obstacles while even these situations were rare they were a nice touch I've learnt Lee skipped by commenting on most of the dungeons and the bosses so I want to stress again that Twilight Princess contains some lengthy and satisfying dungeons I wouldn't say any of them are difficult but they're enjoyable on the whole every dungeon and Twilight Princess is solid I wouldn't say there are any weak ones and I wouldn't say there are any amazing ones but I think it's impressive that the quality was kept so consistent throughout the bosses however are far less memorable than the ones in the Wind Waker since the game doesn't have the same artistic flair I should also say I don't think the game has aged usually anywhere near as well as the wind waker even though it was produced several years after the funny thing is the Gamecube was on par with other console hardware at the time so it could have pulled off a realistic style as good as any other game at the time would have been able to the Wii however was only slightly more powerful than the Gamecube so if any Zelda games should have focused more on style of a realism it probably should have been Twilight Princess the game is only six years old at the time with this review and it already looks considerably aged the largest stature mental impact the art style of Twilight Princess has on the game is unlink himself in the Wind Waker link was made incredibly likable by his art style he was amazingly expressive and it was fun to be able to read his emotions as they change depending on what was going on around him Lincoln Twilight Princess is the exact opposite half the time he doesn't even seem to be paying attention to what's going on and he often has blank expressions on his face even when he's supposed to be expressing something something about his face just looks lifeless even when he's supposed to look excited link is a typical silent protagonist because he's the lens through which the player views the game I don't have any problems with link remaining silent in fact it's probably for the best this way but I don't think he should be a totally blank slate either the final dungeon takes place inside the Twilight Realm which is one of the best looking parts of the game it contains one of my favourite enemies in Twilight Princess as well which is the wall master enemies are very often recycled between Zelda games but it's always best when they find some new way to utilize a familiar foe in this dungeon the wall masters aren't interested in picking link up and dragging him back a few rooms instead they're after the orbs which are needed to complete this section of the game since the orb needs to be set down at some points this is actually more difficult than if the wall master were chasing link it's a nice twist on the classic enemy and I think the enemies in Zelda games would be more interesting if they could find ways to do stuff like this more often this section of the game is where the Zant stuff finally goes off the rails he had only been seen rarely before at this point but he was shown to be a restrained and creepy villain who managed to be pretty intimidating had they kept this up he could have easily substituted as Ganon for the game's main villain then this happens sense character is flushed down the drain in the space of a minute and it turns out he's just another boss to defeat on the path to the real villain Ganon I don't think there was any point to establishing Zant as a villain at all if he was going to be replaced at the end of the game with Ganondorf the fight with Zant is pretty lazy as well it's a compilation of the various bosses up to that point and mainly consists of remembering which item you used on that particular boss the first time around equipping the items and using them on the bosses was routine enough the first time it didn't need repeating as usual there's a short dungeon before the final fight with Ganon this fight starts out with a possessed Zelda which is essentially a phantom Ganon fight after this it's time for the fight we can in himself his beast form requires link to turn into a wolf as well which is a nice touch and it's good that the wolf sees some use during this final fight since it was supposed to be such a key element for the game there's a horseback section as well which sees Zelda firing off light arrows as the player maneuvers around and eventually there's a one-on-one sword fight to end the game you can argue it's a bit ridiculous giving the final boss four different forms but I like the way this closes at the game sword combat horseback combat and wolf combat I'll see yous which is good it really feels like the culmination of everything the player has been through so far there's a bittersweet ending to the game which sees Midna and Link permanently separated from each other I think many players probably found themselves surprisingly attached to Midna by the time this part rolled around so I'd classify this moment as a success one did a few real success stories of Twilight Princess is narrative it was ruined a little for me by being a little too similar to an ending of another Zelda game released before Twilight Princess but I won't say which one so I don't spoil it on anyone that's the thing about Twilight Princess it all feels familiar even the parts of the game which don't echo Ocarina of Time have all been done before the wolf is like the transformations from Majora's Mask the Twilight Realm is like the dark world from a Link to the Past even though Twilight Princess takes many elements from previous games and in a lot of cases refines or improves them the very fact that it's been done before left me less engaged and I would have been otherwise Twilight Princess feels more like a sequel to ocarina of time than Majora's Mask did and I don't consider that to be a good thing at all as I mentioned earlier in general Zelda games make more effort to differentiate themselves than a lot of series do and while I think it's a good thing about the series I also think at this point it's the bare minimum the series needs to do to survive when talking about Zelda compared to other game series it's important to note that Zelda has 15 main titles usually a lot more than any other series as ever lucky to get to imagine if Ocarina of Time Majora's Mask and the Wind Waker were the only Zelda games nobody in the right mind would accuse these games of being too similar if that was the case but because the series has been going on for so long any similarities are bound to stick out and if the game is too similar it becomes tiresome if not for the fact that it repeats so many elements from previous games Twilight Princess could very well have been the best Zelda game it had a lot of room to branch out the Twilight Realm could have been utilized more the wolf could have had more skills Midna could have played a larger role from a gameplay perspective these are just three elements to the game which could have been improved but there was plenty of other places the game could have made itself stand out more as well such as the overworld which is very similar to ocarina and majora you may have noticed if you watch the other videos in this series that I rarely compare any of the games to the ones which came afterwards this is because I think it's unfair to compare earlier games in the series to later ones which benefit from being able to smooth out the bumps and improve on their predecessors if you ask me to directly compare Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess as two completely separate games I might have to say that Twilight Princess is the better game despite its horrible pacing for the first or two at the start if it was a robot maybe I'd be able to tell you that while their princess is better than ocarina of time I'm not though the fact of the matter is I don't respect while that princess in the same way I respect Majora's Mask in the Wind Waker even though those games have failings they don't exist in the shadow of their older brother I could never say I hate Twilight Princess it's too well put together for me to say that it's a good game but it feels like I've already played it before in the next video there's a 75% chance I'll be looking at Skyward Sword so I hope you'll join me then thanks for watching

Channel: Matthewmatosis

Views: 551,650

Rating: 4.683115 out of 5

Keywords: Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, The Wind Waker, The Legend of Zelda, Wii, Gamecube, N64

Id: cXOgL6sYzDY

Length: 40min 38sec (2438 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 13 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/dialMARK4acti0n]

I honestly disagree with him about Zant and I know I'm in the minority on this but hear me out.

Zant was calm and collected, intimidating even when he had control, or at least when he thought he had control. He wanted to rule the Twilight Realm and be its king. He wants control. When he can't do this he is frustrated. To him, it's his right to be king and he wants to be in control.

To him, Ganon is a god, because he grants him everything he wanted just as he is lamenting about not being king. It's almost miraculous from Zant's perspective. He wants to be that cool, badass that rules everything and toys around with wannabe heroes like Link.

Except Link is The Hero and despite all of his major accomplishments, Link is ever closer to dethroning him. So, when Link arrives to Zant in his THRONE room, ready to fight, Zant just snaps. His life of wanting to be in control, feeling like being in control but no controlling anything at all drive him mad and make him descend into insanity.

Zant to me is scary, not because he's calm, collected and intimidating, but because he's crazy, unpredictable and therefore, scary.

Plus, I loved his boss fight. I liked the callbacks to previous bosses with the corrupted Zant tune (which is a great soundtrack btw) and that Zant was desperate to defeat Link with what he had, even though those tactics already failed him before.

I like it when games make their penultimate boss a throwback to all the other bosses. It's pretty fun to see where you've been and where you are now.

[u/Dlinefivenine]

Makes me not want to play it. Not sure I wanted to feel that way.

[u/potnachos]

I've heard a lot of praise for Matthewmatosis' reviews, and he certainly has a great eye for game design. But he seems to nitpick so much that I can't really get into many of his videos. It's one thing to point out flaws that detract from a game, but it's another to bring up every minor detail that didn't please you.