I finiiiiiiiished. The main feeling I have coming away from this game? It’s the prettiest game EVAR. Just about everything was pleasing to look at, EXCEPT … for just about every humanoid model in the game. -__-;

Exception being Zelda. SHE WAS SO PRETTY. Midna (un-imped) would have looked pretty too, if she wasn’t wearing that bulky cloak. But the Zoran Queen BEATS THEM ALL. ZOMG SHE WAS PRETTY. XD

Actually, I really loved anything that had ANY water in it (very, very, VERY pretty water) and Zoras. The Zora model in this game was really amazing (even the fish helmed ones) and they swam so smoothly and they were easily the most compelling race in the game. Huge improvement over their lackluster N64 versions.

Um, wait, okay. Let’s try to organize this review more coherently, shall we. >_<

Story

Er, okay. It’s Zelda. Not expecting anything really groundbreaking here, but it wasn’t that bad. They did do a pretty good job of making Midna all mysterious and creepy and you didn’t know whether she was good or evil. And I did like the Zora side story (ooh, and that water armor was cool — I like how they actually made it functional instead of passing it off as magic… like there’s a cloth that actually covers Link’s mouth when swimming :x ).

The pacing wasn’t so hot, though… I was expecting more revelations halfway through and I got exactly… um, zero. ::lol:: That was kind of frustrating, but I guess it was mostly my fault for thinking it’d follow the traditional formula. Most of the plot was revealed in segments at the end.

Sound / Music

Man, Link’s … um, grunt track, I guess… it sounded so anime. :P Oh well. Interesting to note that Midna was the only one who got to speak the entire game, even if it was in total gibberish. I really did think the vast majority of music was very good, though, especially since you end up revisiting old music more often than not. They included stuff from the Gameboy versions, so I didn’t recognize all of it.

Wolf howling instead of playing an ocarina… ummmm. ::lol:: It was cute, but Link needs some serious howling lessons. XD

Gameplay

Hmm! One of my favorite things to do in the N64 Zeldas was firing mah laze— I mean, my bow and arrow, a mechanic that was completely destroyed by the upgrade to Wiimote aiming. Oh well. On the other hand, this game really developed swordfighting in its place and had — holy crap — mounted combat. That was immensely cool, to be able to use ALL your weapons on horseback and being given scenarios for doing so. The wagon escort was definitely a highlight of the game for me. :)

I do feel like the difficulty level was generally toned down by a ton. The hardest “fight” I ever had to do was (seriously) the sumo wrestling at the beginning… since I couldn’t always tell which way to dodge in time and I think I only got passed that section through luck. Everything else was fairly easy, after you figure out what exactly you’re supposed to do. I used some potions, but generally wasn’t low on life and I died way more to falling off when you’re not supposed to than to actual monsters.

Dungeons? I was impressed, actually. I usually really dislike dungeon crawling, but I found the ones in Twilight Princess to be pretty well done. The one exception being Arbiter’s Grounds… which wasn’t really a bad dungeon, but it really freaked the crap out of me. (spiders and invisible rats FTL. also… hate quicksand.) I was also super glad that the water temple involved only raising the water level, rather than going up and down and up and down… XP

Favorite dungeon by FAR is the Temple of Time, which was a significant throwback to Ocarina of Time. The place just looked so amazingly majestic and I absolutely loved the Dominion Rod. XD Second favorite was the Snowpeak mansion… I liked that it wasn’t your traditional dungeon, plus the soup making was amusing. (And the snow wolfos monsters were reaaaaaaaally cool.) Third favorite dungeon… mmm, not sure I have one, but I really liked the concept of the Goron mines… using magnetism for the iron boots. Unrealistic because Link should have passed out from the blood rushing to his head all those times, but hey… it was fun. XD

Bosses were my ultimate favorite thing to do in Ocarina and they were SO NERFED IN THIS GAME. ARGH. But there were still some memorable ones, though they were all just a little too easy… I really think the hardest boss in the entire game may have been the first one. -_- Zelda bosses generally follow a pattern of (1) disable and (2) slash slash slash and these did not disappoint. I like it though, since it makes you do more than just button mash the entire time.

Morpheel, though… was a total Shadow of the Colossus rip. Seriously. One of the Ganon phases was a little SotC-y too. >_> In fact, a LOT of the game felt SotCish at times as far as scale and architecture. (and the other half of the time it felt like Okami cause of Wolf Link! ::cough:: I mean…)

I have to say, my favorite fight was probably Armogohma… Gohma’s ancestor, I suppose. It wasn’t really any more challenging than any of the others, but taking control of a huge statue and squishing the oversized spider boss with a giant stone hand was extraordinarily satisfying. :X

Ganon fight? Not impressed. ;_; The horseback part wasn’t so bad, but everything else was just too short and easy. Final swordfight with Ganon… I’d had better duels with those heavily armored black knight mobs. Though the “chance” sequence was kind of nice, but the rest of it just felt a little too random and my strikes felt like they landed because of luck rather than skill. Kind of sucky when the system had generally worked so nicely up til then.

Ending was all right, nothing special. I was let down by the fight, which felt so anticlimactic, so wasn’t expecting much from the ending itself. I suppose it could be considered satisfactory. :P

Overall score? Hmmm… A-, I suppose! I really enjoyed myself for the most part… “too easy” is not really something you can honestly mark a game down for. (mebbe I just has skillz.) It was a gorgeous, gorgeous game and I really wish there were more screenshots on the web to do it justice!

::goes to hijack the soundtrack::