I’ve had newest installment in the long running and immensely popular Legend of Zelda series in my possession for about 48 hours now, but I’ve only managed to squeeze in about three hours of actual game play so far. It’s been a good three hours, though.
The graphics have changed slightly since the last game (2006′s Twilight Princess), but the feel is still distinctively Legend of Zelda. Like the more recent Zelda titles, the first twenty minutes or so of the game has you running around your island village in the sky, accomplishing minor tasks for NPCs, all while getting you accustomed to the basic controls in a way that keeps things moving and feels natural. Of course, if you’ve played Twilight Princess, you won’t need to learn most of this stuff, but you’ll do it anyway, just because it’s Legend of Zelda. Once you get your first sword though, things get a little bit trickier. With the introduction of the Wii MotionPlus Remote (Either a MotionPlus Remote or a MotionPlus attachment for the standard Wii Remote is required), some of the controls have been modified to allow more control of the swordplay. Now, Link’s sword moves wherever the Wii Remote moves, in real time. It doesn’t change things too much, but it does make combat a little more interesting, since you can swipe diagonally left, right, downward and horizontally by actually making those movements yourself with the Wii Remote.
Soon enough, you’ll listen to everybody that’s insisting that you hurry along because you’re late for a ceremony that involves a race amongst the young men of the village. All of the participants leap off the edge of the island, then call for their loftwings (large flying birds), who swoop in to catch them. From there on, it’s a race to catch the lead bird that’s carrying a small statue. The first to grab the statue wins. The flying itself, it seems, is going to become a fairly large part of the game as things move along, so luckily, the controls, while maybe not completely intuitive, do make sense and don’t take long to master. Steering is handled not with the control stick, but with the motion sensor of the Wii Remote. Gaining speed is also a little unusual. You can do some boosts with the A button, but to get real speed going, it’s best to flick the Wii Remote up a bit so your loftwing beats it’s wings once or twice to gain some altitude, and then tilt the Remote downward to dive.
It takes a fairly long time to get to the crux of the story. Zelda has disappeared following the ceremony, and it’s up to you to find her. To do so, you’ll have to venture to the fabled surface world, below the cloud layer, where the loftwings don’t dare to fly. I’m not going to spoil how you get there, or what happens on the surface, but this is when the adventure really starts to settle in. Most of the tutorial stuff is out of the way and it’s time to start exploring the unknown.
There are a few other weird things, that aren’t bad, just weird. For one, there are save points. There are bird statues scattered around the world that you have to seek out and interact with to save your game. Truth be told, I’ve gotten so used to the auto-saving feature in other games that twice in the last two days I was forced to resume playing at an earlier point than I’d intended because I just shut the Wii down without thinking about it. Despite that, I’m actually in support of the save points. Auto-saving, while handy, has taken away a lot of the risk and accountability from games. But that’s a whole other discussion for another time. Needless to say, you may forget to save once or twice, but it’s a lesson you won’t soon forget. Also, at least as far as I’ve gotten, you have pretty severely limited space for items. You can leave excess items at the item check counter on the floating island, but I’m hoping that doesn’t mean I’m in for a lot of doubling back to get the one super important item I left behind because I assumed there was no way I’d need it where I was going.
All in all, so far the game has felt appropriately like a true Legend of Zelda game. Familiar, with a memorable world populated by entertaining characters with a variety of different personalities, but with a few new twists to the gameplay to make it more than just a carbon copy of the previous game. There’s no telling how long Nintendo will continue to make Legend of Zelda games, but if they continue to evolve and keep the series fresh like this, fans of the series should be set for a long, long time.
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