Zelda Skyward Sword HD | The Completionist

hey everyone and welcome to an all new episode of the completionist where we don't just beat the games we complete them i have to give a quick disclaimer that i was given a free copy of skyward sword hg for the nintendo switch by nintendo as well as a bunch of free zelda items hashtag free product however i was not paid for my views that you are about to hear in this video so again i did not get paid by nintendo to present the following video to you they just gave me a copy of the game early so i could try and complete it here for the show we all remember that feeling when you're a kid walking alone and you see it laying on the ground a branch or stick that is immediately perfect transforming into a super badass sword or lightsaber that instantly you pick up hacking away at trees with reckless and mildly terrifying abandon so to build an entire video game around this feeling makes sense especially in the context of the nintendo wii and its motion controls and that feeling is one of the entire reasons the nintendo wii became so popular so when the legend of zelda skyward sword was announced and it became clear that it was aiming to be a zelda game in which the player actually got to do their own real-time sword fighting with the aid of the wii motion plus i was hopeful but the divisive motion controls ended up dominating pretty much the entire conversation around the game which to be fair makes sense some people found them totally unworkable and skipped this entire installment of the zelda franchise immediately despite it receiving almost universal praise amongst games critics at the time for myself personally i really enjoy the original game motion control issues aside which meant that i was very excited when i heard about skyward sword hd for the nintendo switch now with the option to control the sword with the right thumbstick instead of motion controls while still maintaining the motion controls for those veterans that desired it this felt like a reset an opportunity to engage with this game in a different way and judge it on its own merits while also allowing the original fan base that supports it to continue their passion for the game remember this guy yeah me too today i am very excited to be covering skyward sword hd because it's a bit of a minor landmark here for the show this is the final 3d zelda game that i have not completed for the channel and i am very stoked to cross it off this list but i'm even more pumped to give this game a brand new shot i liked it when it first came out and don't even think the motion controls were entirely a failure check out my skyward sword defendant video for more information on that but it's impossible to deny that there were a lot of deal breaker moments here for a lot of people in skyward sword now the game is playable without them though i feel like it's a great opportunity to step back and approach the content of skyward sword hd on its own merits and i know the motion controls are still an option and yeah it's probably better for some people now but i'll say up front for this playthrough i can put the entire game with the pro controller and i've found that it works very very well it may eliminate that feeling of swinging a stick around like it's a sword but now i feel like i can approach it more as an installment of the zelda franchise rather than as a gimmick driven oddity within the series so i guess today when we complete skyward sword hd we're not going to be needing this guy anymore let's begin [Music] all yes goes to the winner [Applause] [Music] [Applause] each 3d game in the zelda franchise has its own visual palette with some leaning more towards gritty realism like twilight princess another staring harder into a bright and colorful cartoon vibe with wind waker probably being the most extreme example skyward sword lands its visual choices somewhere in between those two zones in hindsight it feels kind of like a dry run for the miyazaki s grandiore of breath of the wild but at the same time it felt like it was sort of just unable to commit to one or the other so while this hd remaster obviously can't totally overhaul the style it does sharpen it and make it crisper allowing me to see that it's as meticulous and lovingly crafted as pretty much any other zelda game out there most notably the game now runs at a constant 60 fps which makes pretty much everything in the game look way prettier the smoothness allows the visual choices to take on a life of their own and justify themselves a bit more now that it runs better the overall aesthetic is clearer as a deliberate choice and feels like a unified vibe instead of a weird combination of all the past identities of the series i will say that some of the textures still don't look a hundred percent amazing with occasional moments that almost feel ps2-esque and since this is a full price remaster it definitely feels like they could have put just a little bit more elbow grease into it since polishing it up is basically the whole point of re-releasing a game like this okay fine with this particular game i acknowledge that the main point is probably fixing and replacing the motion controls but still if you're gonna charge full price for a remaster of a game i want the upgrades to be apparent in essentially every frame it sounds nitpicky but the reason why it stands out to me more than usual is because lots of the game did get uprest even during some cutscenes the character models look greatly improved while other cutscenes looked like they needed a little bit more time it's still pretty to look at even if it could use some more polish and the visual style isn't necessarily something i would have chosen but it works for the story and the vibe of the game which is set at the very beginning of the vast and ever shifting zelda timeline that's right skyward sword is technically supposed to be the first zelda game in the franchise with regards to story skyward sword begins in skyloft a floating city where link is training at the night academy with the help of his childhood friend zelda who is also the headmaster's daughter the residents in skyloft have basically no concept of the surface world which was closed off after a devastating war with a demon king named demise flying around on loftwings which are giant colorful birds used to get around the sky islands zelda gets snatched up by a tornado and is cast down to the surface this leads to link learning that he's a prophesized hero of destiny who not only has to save his best friend but the entire surface world together this game also starts kind of as a prequel to how the master sword was made with our new spiritual successor tanavi being phi link works with the goddesses and the dragons of the various lore of zelda and essentially is the reason why the master sword is created the character work in skyward sword is super endearing the main characters are for sure lovely the relationship that zelda has with link is not the only one that i love in this game i love the bond between impa and zelda and how that connection is there the entire game without us even realizing it there's a lot of little smart time travel back to the future-esque character moments that immediately put this game in a higher standing for me i love all the characters in this game from the item check lady who starts to fall in love with you to pippitt's mom who wants you to clean her home to the weird romantic triangle between pippi colin and karine to the pumpkin patch owner that makes you pay off the chandelier you broke and how could i forget bruce and his gruesomator groose is a criminally underrated character in zelda's history and i'm stoked to see nintendo of america's social media account dive deeper into their own meme and lore for groose every single side character in skyward sword is one that at first glance i didn't care about it all this time around i loved every single one of those characters in this gaming world and that even includes my admiration for ghiraheim now to be clear giraheim was the character of this game that i always thought was gross him and the imprisoned fights i generally do not enjoy originally i didn't like fighting him so many times because i felt like a test it felt like uh hey you've been playing this game for several hours do you want to see if you're any good this was the clippy of testing your skills in skyward sword now i've learned that fighting gearheim was not just testing me but testing my relationship with phi and my progression as a character trying to save my childhood friend and when you realize that giraheim is demise's version of five for you and the master sword you really understand how evil he really is so within myself i found an appreciation for not just the side characters but for all of the characters in this game for me i think that the setting of this game at the beginning of the zelda timeline is very dope i like that they gave us the origin of beloved little series landmarks in a story that's not immediately tied to the most famous zelda iconography like hyrule or ganon and while other games like link's awakening have changed up the setting and given us other villains skyward sword feels different because instead of introducing new stuff it makes the old stuff that we know feel new and unfamiliar by taking us way way way way back in time the thing that i found most successful about the game story when i first played it when it first came out many years ago and still thinks that it stands out to this day is the relationship between zelda and link this is a relationship that varies widely from game to game but always feels kind of abstract zelda's a princess link has to save her there's weird unspoken tension between them and we all know how that goes but it's here in skyward sword that the relationship between them not only has more history because they're childhood friends but also feels more lived in like link is determined to save her because he actually cares about her as a person rather than an abstract concept tied by the sands of fate to me it ends up making their relationship feel a little romantic which immediately creates a different dynamic that's exciting and very fresh it makes the romantic tension between them actually feel earned and makes the whole game feel more relationship driven in fact i'd go so far as to say that it's the only zelda game where the central link slash zelda relationship really works for me and feels like a character focused bit of storytelling obviously i always care about both link and zelda individually and respectively but here they really work as a unit which also helps get the game's story through an otherwise slow start the things that drove people away from this game are very fair but when it comes to the story and world here in skyward sword there's just as much to love as there usually is in the zelda game which is an awful lot the same goes for the music which was done with the live orchestra and feels right at home in the overall pantheon of zelda tracks now initially i found that there aren't necessarily any tracks that i would call instantly iconic but all flows and fits with what the game is doing and feels very cohesive it's one of several ways that this version allows the game to get out of its own way a little bit however 10 years has passed since the original game came out and the music here in this game became more important to me because of my 1 000 hour long journey in completing hyrule warriors all the skyward sword music in that game got a bunch of rock and roll metal infused into it which is so freaking cool and that to me reminded me of how much i love skyward swords music so credit where credits do same goes for phi the prototype fairy who used to chime in way too much or even in the way the game only slows down now when you get an item for the first time rather than every single time you pick up an item that you've already gotten outside of those little quality of life changes do i necessarily think that this remaster offers a brand new version of the experience i don't know do you want to bust out your wii or wii u every time you want to play skyward sword in hd technically speaking the wii u does upconvert to 1080p but the control scheme here is still rough not including the controls which i'll get to in a little bit this is very much the same game and whether or not you think it's worth the full 60 bucks is going to be up to you if you like zelda and dig this game and want to experience it in a new way then yeah it's probably worth it but if you feel that the original controls kept you from experiencing it properly and now you can then great go for it now one of the biggest complaints i've seen online is that people are upset that the ability to fly from anywhere you want in the world map at any given moment is a brand new feature that is reserved specifically for those who purchase the brand new skyward sword zelda amiibo and to be fair yeah i'm not a fan of this now to be clear i'm a fan of using amiibo for content in that sense i've got almost every amiibo out there zelda and non zelda based but i can't use any of them in this game except that brand new one to me this was a huge oversight and mistake as it would have shown customer loyalty real quick i want to give a big thank you to maverick on twitch aka dan who sent me this at the very last minute i completed this whole game twice without using this guy and as i was making this video i got this guy in the mail so thank you dan and i've spent some time with it now and i can confirm that the function of this amiibo is really not worth it the fast travel mechanic is a weird mechanic that isn't necessary because my point still stands that there are plenty of bird statues in the game to not only save but travel out of the world you're visiting and that kind of puts this thing a little bit more on the obsolete side however i will say one of the cool features about this guy is that if you use them in a dungeon it takes you out the dungeon right away no matter where you are and if you use it again while you're in the skies it'll transport you back to the exact area in which you use this guide to warp you out so it's really kind of like a flagpole to remember where you are in the game and for that that's pretty cool i still stand by that you can't really get these guys anywhere so again you're not missing out on that much if this is a big deal to you just buy one of those amiibo disks that they're out there that'll let you save all the data locally it'll save you time and money the unfortunate truth is that all of these new improvements are not necessarily going to win over anyone who strongly disliked the game initially if you're judging the game based on its story and gameplay content but i'm not sure that's what this remaster is for because this remaster has only made the game more of itself the visual style makes a bit more sense now and the story is still very cool but it's not like a major overhaul or anything and the game is what it is but now it's free of some of the other baggage i feel like i was able to approach it on its own level of content it's still not even close to being my favorite 3d zelda game visually but it definitely has a style and vibe now that it commits to and because of that it is now in fact climbed up my list of favorite 3d zeldas in fact that's one of the main things i'll say about this game is that it really commits to all of its choices for better and for [Music] worse all right it's time to talk about the elephant in the room the motion controls but more importantly the way that every single original design choice in the game pivots around those controls and how the game feels when translating these choices onto the control stick instead skyward sword initially came out kind of late in the nintendo wii's lifespan when the novelty of motion controls was starting to finally wear off but the promise of doing some zelda style swordplay with the wemo was still appealing to me even if it didn't quite end up working out that way whether it was with the motion control plus adapter or with the special zelda themed wiimote that had wii motion plus inside of it the reality of swinging link's sword around didn't live up to the fantasy all the time to be clear i never thought that the motion controls for this game were completely terrible rather they were just wildly inconsistent which led to many people having super understandable frustrations with how it felt to play through the game sometimes they'd work great and then other times they felt impossible and only led to me wildly flailing my arms around like an idiot when the whole point of sword controls like this should be to make the player feel cool so i don't judge anyone who bailed early on or wrote skyward sword off as the one major zelda game that they're just never going to get around to i think that's totally fair which brings us to this port and the introduction of something that i always will love options now i'm sure that the updated motion controls for the switch version are a bit better than they were for the nintendo wii i tried them out for a little bit and thought they felt pretty much the same but that's fine that's just my take the main draw here is the option to use the sticks instead which is how i chose to engage with the game this time around both because i felt like it would streamline the completion process which it absolutely did and because i liked the idea of experiencing the game in a totally different way and judging its content as a zelda game beyond the device of control setup and honestly i think it's great to have that choice if the motion controls are integral to the experience for you to have then go for it and enjoy this port as nothing but a remaster but now people who bounce off this game the first time can give it another shot and i think that everything maps onto the stick very well considering how integral the motion stuff was to the original design nearly all of the combat and puzzles in skyward sword are built around directional attacks or being able to hold up your sword in any direction like the skyward strike in which you raise the sword above your head straight up before bringing it down quickly to throw a projectile enemies need to be attacked from specific directions from the ground up the motion controls are key to pretty much everything the game is doing and it makes sense because pretty much every zelda game has some kind of key gimmick or mechanic that's built everything around yet the control stick can do pretty much everything that motion controls could do outside of capturing that feeling of transforming a stick into the world's coolest sword but honestly even the motion controls themselves didn't really do that all that well so i'm not sure that much was lost i will say that everything feels much quicker and easier to me with the stick and i say that as someone who didn't even hate the original controls now playing with the stick it feels like enemies die way faster instead of being a whole thing every single time you got into an encounter i was even blasting through some of the dungeons in less than 30 minutes where they normally would have taken me closer to 90 minutes before and there are pros and cons to how quick and effortless everything feels now but i'm mostly cool with it enemies can get bopped way faster now puzzles require less arm waving trial and error and overall it feels better i wanted to bring some food for thought for you guys that i definitely kept thinking about as i completed the game and that is the shield parry originally in the game parrying required you to thrust your nunchuck towards the screen to protect yourself but with the stick controls you can simply just press in the stick to pairing an enemy attack it's here that i realized one of the reasons why skyward sword is relatively easy is because of well dark souls and souls associated games in the last 10 years every souls game that came out taught all of us how to parry properly even making many games want to include a parry system skyward swords perry window is so large that when you parry you've got not only a bunch of time to mess it up but to effectively launch a massive counter-attack with great ease it does at times feel like it pivots the game from being too hard to being too easy but it was only ever hard because of the controls now though link swings his sword so fast that it sometimes felt like i up a boss so quickly that he never even had a chance it reminds me of a terminal montage cartoon on youtube and i don't really have a problem with it and it's definitely better than the alternative which eventually led many people saying screw this and giving up i mostly just think it's kind of hilarious watching link slice a guy 30 times before he can even do anything about it but like i said the new controls mostly allow the game to step out from the shadow of the wiimote and be approached to as simply a zelda game the opening hour of the game now feels like way less of a slog and it feels quicker and easier to dive in and get invested because now if you're playing with motion controls it's because you were given the choice rather than having no other option if you want to experience the latest zelda a lot of people are asking why did they port this game and the reality is it's been 10 years since it came out which means there are going to be 10 year old kids who experience breath of the wild more recently who now get to experience a new entry in zelda for them and if the rumors are true skyward sword might tie in heavily to the future of the breath of the wild franchise many games in skyward swords used to be super annoying but now they're fine certain enemies used to be in exercise and frustration but here they're just slightly harder enemies it lands the fundamental differences that this game has from the others in the series shine through rather than just being the one where you have to wave your arms around a bunch and hope you do something even back when i played it the first time 10 years ago i appreciated how different it felt the airborne city of skyloft is a really cool world and flying to different floating islands and surface portals feels wonderful rather than trudging everywhere on a horse it takes the sky concept seriously and makes it really fun to bounce back and forth between the clouds and the surface world i do wish however that there was a new upgrade in this version that increases the speed of your bird like a saddle or maybe more wings to burn through similar to how they added a new engine in the wind waker hd port to speed up the travel process it's fun to travel for sure but you start to feel tired of moving around as you start doing all of the side content even fast travel is insanely easy with bird statues pretty much being everywhere there is that amiibo support that lets you travel from anywhere you are but it honestly doesn't seem necessary to me because getting around is already really simple and convenient the dungeons themselves feel kind of streamlined and part down especially now that everything moves along so much faster and that's not necessarily a bad thing a few of the dungeons themselves are actually low key bankers like the sand ship which may actually be one of my favorite zelda dungeons of all time one of the common complaints about skyward sword is that there's only three areas to travel to and that's true you have the farron woods the volcano and the desert sometimes you have to go back and forth between them to further the plot but i never felt that i was slighted by this it didn't feel bad because the dungeons and the areas around them got expanded sometimes you'd revisit another dungeon you just completed but for the most part there are six different dungeons that are in three locales and all the mechanics for all six dungeons feel very very different it doesn't feel like you're revisiting the greatest hits again and although there are only six dungeons there's kind of nine main story tasks to complete by the time you're done with the game including the final triforce goddess temple dungeon towards the end one of the most underrated things that i love about skyward sword are the items like the beetle claw shot and gust bellows they feel really strange and different from your typical zelda items but in a good way however the menu that pulls up your pouch in order to equip and use items is kind of janky and that wasn't really fixed here in my opinion it's extremely difficult to use when you get into the heat of combat and i think that's maybe one of the reasons that these items don't get the recognition for being as cool as they are i also think it's super weird that you have to get additional pouches in order to carry more items and you have two different categories of pouches you have your key items like the claw shot and the gust bellows and then you have your adventure pouches and these items can be bottles your shield bigger bomb bags or bigger ammo bags for different items and even metals that increase the drop rate of different items i personally don't like this system because you have to invest all of your money into acquiring all these pouches when you can or completing certain side quests but at the end of the day i think that's kind of the point with taking zelda into a different direction right skyward sword crawled so that breath of the wild could run and the evidence is here in this game all of this made me realize that the motion controls were the only thing about this game that i never really gelled with they were fine but they kept me from seeing this game in the same light that i see so many of the other 3d zeldas like my brain just kind of automatically slotted skyward sword into a different category altogether but now i can see the ways that it fits into the larger picture of the franchise and it's actually really dope you can see the little elements that are being planted here as the future of what would come in breath of the wild such as item durability for your shield and a stamina meter that you have to constantly monitor but in that game they just got more room to uh breathe i know i know i know although i still understand people who are upset at that 60 dollar price tag i also think that this re-release will allow people to experience skyward sword as the solid zelda game that it actually is rather than as some weird motion control novelty that isn't to say that those novelty elements aren't still there because they are when you look past that this is definitely a zelda game that deserves to be played by anyone who loves zelda seeing the beginning of the timeline is wonderful it's much prettier now and it's got options for how to play so you don't have to risk being totally turned off by the controls and missing out and that's amazing because no one should miss out on a new maine zelda game ever it's zelda it's pretty much always good so it's a huge bummer that there was a game that even a bunch of hardcore fans were like now i'm gonna skip that one sure skyward sword may not be one of the best 3d zelda games but it makes big choices and commits to them and now thanks to this remaster and port it's easier to appreciate those choices whether or not you choose to continue grappling with the motion controls those controls may define a lot of this game's design choices but they should define every player's interactions with the game because even a zelda game that's just pretty good is still better than most other games out there [Music] completing a zelda game usually means two major things outside of finishing the main story collecting all the game's many collectibles mostly involving a bunch of citizens of hyrule and finishing a second run on some version of a hero mode which makes everything harder and both of those criteria apply here which leads to a completion experience that feels pretty standard for a zelda game now that wrestling with the controls isn't a part of it sometimes hero motors tricks the overall number of hearts or makes enemies way harder to kill but here it vastly reduces the amount of health spawns found throughout the world to zero and causes the enemies to deal double the damage which is fine as long as you're not getting hit but really sucks as soon as someone gets you even once overall though it's about the same level of added difficulty that i expect from hero mode in a zelda game two playthroughs is what i expected and that's what i got and it's only on hiromo that you can get to the true end of the thunder dragon's lightning round of bosses which i want to talk about a little bit right now it's a boss rush mode in which you can fight any bosses you've already beaten in the story which means the game's final bosses aren't available until you get back to the thunder dragon on your hero mode playthrough but a lot of people understandably tapped out from frustration before they even reached this gauntlet which means they missed the game's best reward after each battle the dragon gives you the option to quit which will give you a reward generally rupees but if you get to the end after the eighth fight you'll get the helium shield which is easily the best shield in the game obviously lots of people complained about the game's breakable shields without knowing that this iconic item was waiting for them later in the game however this boss rush is no joke in the first playthrough the final reward is the helium shield and stops before you get to the final boss in hero mode you have to fight the extra gear heim fights horde battle before it and the final battle with demise doing so completely fills out your wallet to max rupees it ends up being a bit of a bragging rights situation which is totally okay considering that this challenge is very optional but for us completionists out there bring it on now the reward is not worth it in my opinion but the challenge definitely is which brings me to the collectibles this game definitely has fewer heart containers to find but if you have two heart piece metals there are actually 20 containers as usual and it definitely feels like a lot less compared to previous zeldas because the game started with six heart containers at the very beginning yet in the usual fashion there are in fact 24 heart pieces to find there's less bosses in this game that gives you full heart containers so you've got to get those extra medals too if you want the 20. but i also upgraded all the items including getting the wall capacity to 9900 and the adventure pouch capacity to eight because you're not a true adventurer if you can't carry a bunch of stuff but that's not all because this is definitely a zelda game and while it's not nearly as collectible crazy as something like breath of the wild there's still plenty of stuff to find including 5 bottles for storing various liquids 10 metals that provide bonuses when equipped 16 collectible treasures which are actually materials used to upgrade your items 12 bug types that can either be sold to a bug aficionado or used to upgrade your potions and 27 goddess cubes each of which unlocks a corresponding treasure chest when you strike it with a skyward strike we can't count out all of the goodwill that we do in skyward sword as most of the hard pieces items and side quests are accomplished by collecting gratitude crystals there's a monster who's been cursed who deeply just wants to be a human in order to do so you have to help all the different denizens of skyloft and when doing these things you'll get reward markers in the form of gratitude crystals every 10 to 20 gratitude crystals nets you in items such as a heart piece bigger wallet maybe a metal and so much more which means you'll have to collect all 80 gratitude crystals in order to make the beast human everything i just said times by two because i had to do once again two full playthroughs doing all this with the motion control seems like it may have felt like a lot but when removed from that context and placed in the context of the rest of the series it's all pretty reasonable especially considering that playing with the stick made me feel like i was blasting through the game so all the collectibles just kind of fell into place each play through here still took me somewhere between 20 to 30 hours a piece because i actually wanted to go everywhere and do everything twice that amount of time investment obviously would be a bit more with the original controls but even when those hours would feel like way more if i was battling with the motion controls the entire time and 20-something hours for one playthrough of zelda game is super reasonable when each of those hours is pretty easy and enjoyable and i know not everyone's gonna vibe with either the control schemes enough to do two full playthroughs of this game but hopefully having options of how to play will encourage everyone to do at least one full playthrough so they can experience an incredibly solid entry of the zelda franchise from beginning to end and judge it on its own merits as a game because there's a reason that this was the last 3d zelda game i never completed for the show and that's that it never felt worth it until i had those options but i never regretted playing it before either and i don't regret playing it in a new way now when it comes to whether or not this remaster is worth it each person has to make their own decision and call for this but for me it definitely was because at the end of the day the main zelda games are pretty much always worth it and no matter what directions future entries take i don't see that changing anytime soon i have finally reached a place of acceptance with skyward sword thanks to this hd re-release and i hope you have too i totally understand why so many people just couldn't deal with the wildly inconsistent controls and i also get why a lot of people wouldn't want to drop 60 bones on a remaster but i stand by the fact when considered outside of all that extra baggage this is a great zelda game and while a second playthrough on hero mode is probably only necessary if you found the original run too easy the story is cool and relationship driven the items and dungeons rule and i've even warmed up to the art style over all of these years which means that whether you chose to experience skyward sword with the joycon motion controls or with the stick we can finally lay this contentious bit of zelda history to rest respectively i'm gonna i'm gonna rest it right here no one's gonna use the wiimote so i'm just gonna put mine down there too so with that in mind guys i give this game my completionist rating of finish it [Applause] finish it [Music]

Channel: The Completionist

Views: 345,198

Keywords: zelda, skyward sword, skyward sword hd, the legend of zelda, legend of zelda, link, nintendo, switch, nintendo switch, ganon, the completionist, completionist, g4, g4tv, attack of the show, triforce, projared, normal boots, hyrule, breath of the wild, breath of the wild 2, botw, review, game review, game reviews, gameplay, zelda skyward sword hd review, skyward sword review, skyward sword hd review, skyward sword hd gameplay, action, adventure, rpg, jirard the completionist, wii, nintendo wii

Id: BMR0GLMUIDc

Length: 33min 49sec (2029 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 07 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ericlikescoffee]

I Really LOVED The WII Motion Controls in TWILIGHT Princess and Skyward Sword was bummed Twilight Princess HD Didn't have them so I Never bought it stuck with the WII Version because of the Motion Controls and Navi the Fairy was your Pointer I'd make it her swing around links head Saying Hey Listen in the WII Version of Twilight Princess