Twilight Princess... in HD!
It was interesting playing through Twilight Princess HD, considering how long it's been since I played the original and how it seems to have garnered a less positive reception in recent years compared to other Zelda games. Having now beaten it, here's how I think it holds up.
Pros
- The gameplay is as good as ever and evolves nicely from The Wind Waker. Combat is quick and satisfying, and the controls are easy and responsive. Using the Gamepad to switch items or check the map on the fly is really great and helps tremendously in dungeons.
- The dungeon design is great, with interesting puzzles and a good sense of progression.
- The story and characters are some of the best in the series. The characters all have personality, and many of them have actual character development. Midna in particular is probably the best helper character in any Zelda game, and one of the few to have her own character arc. The story also stays interesting, as you travel Hyrule and learn the truth about the titular Twilight Princess.
Cons
- This game has too much filler and backtracking between dungeons. For example, here are the steps to get from the second dungeon to the third: It's not all bad and it gets better once you get to the Master Sword, and I realize it helps the story progress, but it can get really irritating if you just want to beat dungeons.You have to find the spirit Lanayru and the tears of light, so leave Kakariko Village and head towards Lake Hylia (which is on the other side of the map), where you'll become a wolf. Find your girlfriend's purse and follow its scent to Castle Town, where you find her with a dying Zora kid (there's a tear here, but you can't keep it until you get to Lanayru) Go to the Hylia Brigde and jump down to the lake. You can't reach Lanayru yet, so talk to the cannon guy and go over to the spot he points out. Fight the guy on the bird who shows up, and ride the bird upstream. Go to Zora's Domain, but since it's frozen, warp to Death Mountain and use the hot boulder to unfreeze the lake. Now you can reach Lanayru and get the tears. Now you have to backtrack to everywhere you've already been to find the tears. Once you have them, go back to the lake and fight a boss for the final tear. Now that you're human again, go back to the castle (you can't warp while human, so you have to go by foot or by horseback) and talk to your girlfriend. Now you have to escort her and the Zora kid to Kakariko (which while cool can get annoying when their cart keep getting hit by bombs and going in circles until you hit the bomber which only shows up when the cart gets to a specific point). Once you get there, go to the graveyard and get the Zora Armor to breathe underwater, go to the bomb shop and swap your normal bombs for water bombs (if you forget to do this you'll have to go back to Kakariko), and head back to the lake to blow up the boulder blocking the entrance to the dungeon and swim inside. This doesn't include any of the multiple cutscenes you have to watch.
- A lot of the items from the second half of the game are pretty limited in use, and are rarely useful outside of their respective dungeons.
- The game leans too heavily on Ocarina of Time. The woirld, enemies, and dungeon progression all mirror Ocarina, and can make certain elements too predictable. And about the ending... Ganondorf didn't need to be the final boss in this game. He really didn't. Zant was a great villain with more personality and connections to the characters and story and should have stuck around for the end. It feels like Ganon was just added to tie the game closer to Ocarina. I guess he's a trope namer for a reason.
Others
- The graphics look really nice and are much sharper and smoother than before, but they don't look as good or as transformative as The Wind Waker HD. It looks like how you remember it looking, for better or worse.
- The Wolf Link amiibo is really well-made, but it doesn't add much in terms of gameplay.
Overall, I still really like this game and recommend it if you want a Zelda game with a great story. But if story doesn't interest you and you just want gameplay, you should probably look elsewhere (I recommend A Link Between Worlds in that case).
Also I didn't mean to go that long with the filler section wow.
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