The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess Review

The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii) - Game Review

A review by: Doc

The latest game in it's series, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a launch title for the Nintendo Wii. It was also released for the Nintendo GameCube console. As of Tuesday, July 31, it took the average WiiPal's member 38.5 hours to complete this game.



Background Information - The Legend Of Zelda series has gained immense popularity since the release of it's first game, The Legend Of Zelda, in 1987 for the NES console. Most, if not, all games in the LOZ series have a similar plot: save Zelda, defeat Gannondorf (also known as "Gannon".) Similar to Mario games, Link is the hero, Zelda is the princess awaiting to be saved by the hero, and Gannondorf is the villian (like the Mario, Peach, and Bowser relationship.)



Most games in the LOZ series also take place in a village called Hyrule, created by 3 goddesses named Din, Nayru, and Farore. The goddesses had also left a magical object in the Secret Realm, called a Triforce.



The Triforce is divided into 3 sections as shown above: power, wisdom, and courage. If the person that obtains the Triforce has a balance of all 3 elements, they will receive the whole Triforce. If they are unbalanced, they will receive a portion of the Triforce that best represents them. Link had received Courage, Gannondorf had received Power, and Zelda had received Wisdom. Gannondorf wants control of all pieces of the Triforce to become immortal, so he kidnaps Zelda, and uses her as bait to attract Link, so he can defeat them both and obtain all the pieces of the Triforce. Link's mission is to save Zelda, and defeat Gannondorf, to prevent Gannondorf from gaining complete control over the Triforce.

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Now, about the actual game LOZ:TP. The game begins as Link living and working on a ranch in a village called Ordon, caring and herding goats in his time. Monsters being to invade the small village of Ordon, and capture the children of the village, which were Link's close friends. After trying to save his friends, one of the monster's pull Link through a portal, which turns Link into a wolf (which is his Twilight form.) As Link awakes, he is kept a prisoner at Hyrule Castle. Minda, a strange creature "adopts" Link, and guides him through out his journey out of the castle, and overall, through your whole journey.



They end up meeting with Zelda, the Twilight Princess, and she explains that Zant, The Twilight King is trying to take over Link's world, and how Link is the only person who can save his people. The rest of the story is Link trying to save his people. Link meets new friends, transfers in and out of the Twilight world, finds his Twilight self, battles different creatures from the Twilight, obtains new weapons, and attempts once again to save the world in which he lives in.

Controls for LOZ:TP are very unique. This title can only be played using the Wiimote-Nunchuck combination. In all modes of transportation, including walking, riding Epona, etc., you use the joy-stick on the Nunchuck to steer. Movement of the Wiimote can allows you to control Navi, swing sword, aim weapons, and cast your fishing rod. Your D-pad is used to communicate with Midna, and activate select inventory items. The "A" button is used for context-sensitive action, the "B" button uses active items and locks-on with selected weapons. "Z" is used for Z-targeting, and the C-stick is used for a first person view. "+" pauses the game.

This game was phenominal. There were many different things that I enjoyed about this game, including the new horse-back combat feature, where it allows Link to actually fight enemies while riding on Epona, using the Nuncuck to steer and the Wiimote to weild your sword.



The Legend Of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a great Nintendo Wii launch game because it uses the Wiimote to it's full potential, including: fishing, where, in order to cast your line, you really need to pull your Wiimote back and fling it forward, and how you need to actually move the Nunchuck in a circular motion to reel fish in; combat, where if you wanted to swing your sword you would swing the Wiimote in the desired direction; and shooting, where you could actually aim to different locations on your television by directing your Wiimote, and then pressing the "A" button to release your arrow. I also liked that you could name your horse, rather then it's default name being Epona. I also liked the new character Link in wolf form. The Wiimote's overall controls wern't meant for Link on wolf form, because you had controlled him using the Nunchuck. However, for the parts of the game needed, using the Wiimote for gameplay was definetly a plus, it was easy and sensitive enough to get the game flowing, it wasn't frustrating at all. The sound track for the game was fairly decent, like all Legend Of Zelda games, I especially liked the music when you were fighting bosses. The music actually let me know when the boss was about to strike, because it would go to faster beat, which I noticed in the beggining of the game, and I used it to my advantage durring the remainder of the game. This particular game focused more on land than it did water, unlike The Windwaker, for example, focused more on traveling across seas, which I didn't really care for personally. It was definetly more of a land game, like the title Majora's Mask, a comparison of LOZ:TP and LOZ:MM shown below.



I liked the slow build-up of the game, which leaves you well-prepared for the unpredictability of the later characters and overall objects of the game. I was graphically impressed by this game, it looked very real, which was nessesary to get the full feel for the game, especially for the Wii title, because to interact completely with the game it has to look somewhat real.

As you can see from a random demo I found below, the game is graphically impressive. Now, because this is a video and not the actual game on a television, the pixels will be distored some, but you can still see that this game is graphically impressive compared to other Wii games out at the moment.



Now, for some downfalls on the game. For you who have played most, if not, all other Legend Of Zelda games in it's series, you may consider it rather boring at some points, mainly because it is a repetition of all other Legend Of Zelda games, just with a new adventure, new puzzles, and a few new characters, which was expected as soon as we determined that a new LOZ game was being released. The plot is still somewhat the same: rescue Zelda, defeat Gannondorf. I must say this game of it's series was the easiest game, which I beleive was made this way because of the use of the Wiimote. I beleive this game had work put into it, but was mainly a tool to help Wii consumers get used to the controls for upcomming Wii games. As much as I loved this game, I hope it will not be the best game ever for the Wii. I always look forward to playing better games than the last, especially for the LOZ series. Not the best Legend Of Zelda game, but definetly a great one. The Wiimote feature helped me enjoy this game to it's full potential.

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Graphics: 9.2/10 - Spectacular graphics for a Nintendo game. There was room for improvement. I've noticed minor flaws in the graphics that could have been fixed. Cut scenes were phenominal.

Storyline: 8.3/10 - Storyline was kind of expected, because it was mainly a repition of all other LOZ storylines, but added characters that gave the storyline overall defenition compared to the rest of the LOZ games.

Controls: 9.4/10 - Unique controls that took me a few days to get used to, but overall, a great addition to the game. Perfer to use the Wiimote over the GC controller any day because it's a very different way to play a video game.

Music: 9.3/10 - Helped me determine when bosses were going to strike, which dramatically helped my performance against bosses in general. The music didn't loop.

Overall Rating: 9/10 - A great game with minor flaws. This game is worth the money nessesary to purchase the game. I would suggest with this game in particular, to rent it at a local movie/video game store and play a small portion of it, and then determine whether to purchase it or not. Because this game is so different from any other games released, it will be very different for all consumers.

- D o c