The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD

[DarhkFox]

33 minutes ago, Rob Rule said:

I'd love to see a non-crap fan texture pack of a classic one day, but as usual, this isn't it. It's just tasteless wood and sand photo textures replacing a strong art style, with little coherence or beauty. 

 

I've not played it, maybe these video wasn't the best example since it's a couple years old. However this modder in particular uses AI to upscale a lot of the textures so assumed that was the case.

[Stanley]

8 minutes ago, Retroid said:

My list:

 

A Link to the Past

Majora's Mask

Ocarina of Time

Breath of the Wild

The Legend of Zelda

Wind Waker

A Link Between Worlds

Link's Awakening

Oracle of Ages/Seasons

Phantom Hourglass

Minish Cap

Spirit Tracks

Twilight Princess

Zelda 2

Skyward Sword*

*Not played

 

No, I’m not having Spirit Tracks ranked above Skyward Sword & Twilight Princess, and have you played Zelda II, like really played it? There’s a reason they abandoned ever making one like that again. Likewise Minish Cap is a far, far better game than the two DS outings. 
 

[davidcotton]

6 hours ago, Stanley said:

And loads of underwater stuff - indeed that would be the ultimate Zelda, imagine skydiving through the clouds seamlessly and landing anywhere 

Think you are getting Zelda mixed up with pilot wings:)

[Majora]

1. Breath of the Wild - 10 

2. Majora's Mask - 10

3. Ocarina of Time - 10

4. Wind Waker - 9

5. Twilight Princess - 9

6. Link to the Past - 8

7. Skyward Sword - 6

8. Link's Awakening - 6

9. Phantom Hourglass - 5

 

Zelda is a legendary series and one I generally love dearly but I've never bought into this whole 'even the worst Zeldas are amongst the best games ever!' rhetoric.

[BitterToad]

A lot of these lists are really good, with the slight issue that they're not right. The correct order is as follows;

 

Breath of the Wild

Wind Waker

A Link to the Past

Majora's Mask

A Link Between Worlds

Ocarina of Time

Skyward Sword

Twilight Princess*

Minish Cap

Phantom Hourglass*

 

*not finished

[CS2x]

I didn’t quite get along with SS, but I’m so disappointed in this (as it is looking now), because I always thought the game could have been a gem if aspects of it were reworked in certain ways and its painterly look pushed further. I had hoped a remaster was in the works for the Switch, because there was something special trying to push through in the original, particularly the dungeon design, music and story - but this looks like a real missed opportunity. If I’m honest, at this point I can’t overlook the graphics, let alone any gameplay issues that haven’t been seen to. As many of us who have been gaming for a while probably do, I can often easily “see past” poor visuals - and also appreciate even ‘ugliness as a style’ (some animes utilise crude or unattractive visuals in cool ways.) But this just looks so bland and horrendous now. If it had been properly re-textured in a really stylised way I reckon even the claustrophobic feel and some of the environments’ issues would have been rendered in a new more positive light, but as it stands the new look “brings out” the worst aspect of the original’s already uninspiring visuals and looses the (intended or unintended) attractive dreaminess. Sharper visuals and 60 fps is generally a good thing though, so at least there’s that. 

[Made of Ghosts]

1. Breath (10/10)

2. Ocarina (10/10)

3. Majora (10/10)

4. Past (9/10)

5. Ages (9/10)

6. Worlds (9/10)

7. Awakening (8/10)

8. Twilight (8/10)

9, Wind (8/10)

10. Seasons (7/10)

11. Legend (7/10)

12. Minish (7/10)

13. Skyward (6/10)

14. Phantom (5/10)

15. Spirit (5/10)

[Stanley]

32 minutes ago, Majora said:

1. Breath of the Wild - 10 

2. Majora's Mask - 10

3. Ocarina of Time - 10

4. Wind Waker - 9

5. Twilight Princess - 9

6. Link to the Past - 8

7. Skyward Sword - 6

8. Link's Awakening - 6

9. Phantom Hourglass - 5

 

Zelda is a legendary series and one I generally love dearly but I've never bought into this whole 'even the worst Zeldas are amongst the best games ever!' rhetoric.

Edge 6’s, naturally.

[Stanley]

Breath Of The Wild. 

 

[Kevvy Metal]

4 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Edge 6’s, naturally.

 

An Edge 6 is pretty good for Link's Awakening. The best 2D Zelda ever made. 3rd best in the entire series and arguably the best Zelda ever if you were in a mood where the 2D games are actually superior.

[Nobuo's Organ]

Zelda games I've actually finished ranking league of fun:

 

Breath of the Wild
A Link to the Past
Wind Waker
Link's Awakening

 

As I was adding Skyward Sword to the "can't be bothered to finish this" pile, I swore it would be the last one I bought if they kept using the same formula - that worked out well

[Sarlaccfood]

Aside from a bit of clean-up for modern TVs, I just don’t get this need to update visuals so it looks like it was made on newer hardware. Skyward Sword was a Wii game, Mario 64 was an N64 game. Why pretend otherwise? 
 

[Benny]

1 hour ago, Majora said:

Link's Awakening - 6

 

[Super Craig]

Zelda is all about the dungeons for me, so there's no way I could have Breath of the Wild anywhere near the top of a list.

[kensei]

Link to the Past was born perfect. It was amazing 30 years ago and it's amazing now. 

 

Ocarina disappointed me because wit didn't match it. 

[Ninja Doctor]

I recently tried to play through ocarina again but abandoned it on the volcano dungeon as an adult. 
 

I’m sorry but it just wasn’t fun. It has aged terribly. 

[Retroid]

1 hour ago, Stanley said:

No, I’m not having Spirit Tracks ranked above Skyward Sword & Twilight Princess, and have you played Zelda II, like really played it? There’s a reason they abandoned ever making one like that again. Likewise Minish Cap is a far, far better game than the two DS outings. 
 

 

 

After some reconsideration, Minish might be a little higher than the DS iterations - I just remember how frustrating it was trying to get the pieces of those medallion things and I think one of them was pretty much unobtainable. It had it's moments but I was a little annoyed by how linear they managed to make using the Minish Cap be. Felt inconsistent. Twilight felt almost like a CoD single-player campaign at times - but it was beautiful and I liked the setting and story. The disappointment was real though.

Zelda 2 - I've played like the first couple of dungeons, I do want to give it another shot at some point - it went up in my opinion by a short retrospective I watched; it's ambitious and a huge game that got rushed out and had a worse concept than the prequel. It definitely deserves some respect for what it tried to achieve and the building blocks it set out for the franchise.

[kensei]

6 minutes ago, Ninja Doctor said:

I recently tried to play through ocarina again but abandoned it on the volcano dungeon as an adult. 
 

I’m sorry but it just wasn’t fun. It has aged terribly. 

 

I've been through it a few times over the years and managed to get hilariously stuck in the Water Temple despite not having trouble the first time round. 

 

I think the core mechanics and dungeon design remains very sound, but like LTTP I'm now too familiar with it to want to play it again. The 3DS version is a much better way to play these days, though. 

[dreamylittledream]

5 hours ago, Wiper said:

The correct Zelda list (assuming we're being strict and not counting Little Big Adventure, Beyond Good & Evil, Smash or Soul Calibur 2 as Zelda games) is obviously:

 

1 Breath of the Wild

2 Hyrule Warriors 2

3 Hyrule Warriors

= Wind Waker

4 Majora's Mask

5 Four Swords

= Link's Awakening

 

So I guess what I'm saying is, where's my Four Swords rerelease on Switch? It'd be perfect for 4-joycon local play!

 

I won't pay £50 for it, mind.

 

Four Swords Adventures (the Game Cube one) was great - just saying

 

I probably would pay £50 for it....a revamped version with some more content definitely

[Made of Ghosts]

Switch is a perfect machine for the Four Swords format, it's baffling they haven't at least ported it over.

[CS2x]

3 hours ago, Sarlaccfood said:

Aside from a bit of clean-up for modern TVs, I just don’t get this need to update visuals so it looks like it was made on newer hardware. Skyward Sword was a Wii game, Mario 64 was an N64 game. Why pretend otherwise? 
 

 

I guess - with a somewhat less revered title like this one - it can be an opportunity to improve the game? It wouldn't be fiddling with an older, "cannon" classic. I already rambled about this in my last post, but I really think this could have been an opportunity to make something special out of something flawed. Even the few quest changes to Wind Waker massively improved the game for me, apart from the carefully and mostly brilliantly upgraded visuals. A properly tweaked, souped up, prettier Skyward Sword could be an unusual and pretty brilliant Zelda game. I do see what you mean in one sense, though. If Nintendo did want to put this out pretty much as it was, then this should be priced around £20 in my view - or included as part of a bundle. The price is pretty outrageous. I don't think it right to excuse this kind of pricing, even if someone hasn't played the game before. 

[mdn2]

5 minutes ago, Made of Ghosts said:

Switch is a perfect machine for the Four Swords format, it's baffling they haven't at least ported it over.

It wouldn't surprise me if some form of it makes its way onto Nintendo Online for its 35th anniversary. 

[Stanley]

9 minutes ago, mdn2 said:

It wouldn't surprise me if some form of it makes its way onto Nintendo Online for its 35th anniversary. 

I thought of that too, that’s if they bother even doing that for Zelda as surely they would have mentioned it with the Skyward Sword reveal? 

[R0b]

28 minutes ago, CS2x said:

 

I guess - with a somewhat less revered title like this one - it can be an opportunity to improve the game? It wouldn't be fiddling with an older, "cannon" classic. 

Ocarina, Twilight and in particular Wind Waker and Majora's were all hugely fiddled with in their ports. 

[Sarlaccfood]

42 minutes ago, CS2x said:

 

I guess - with a somewhat less revered title like this one - it can be an opportunity to improve the game? It wouldn't be fiddling with an older, "cannon" classic. I already rambled about this in my last post, but I really think this could have been an opportunity to make something special out of something flawed. Even the few quest changes to Wind Waker massively improved the game for me, apart from the carefully and mostly brilliantly upgraded visuals. A properly tweaked, souped up, prettier Skyward Sword could be an unusual and pretty brilliant Zelda game. I do see what you mean in one sense, though. If Nintendo did want to put this out pretty much as it was, then this should be priced around £20 in my view - or included as part of a bundle. The price is pretty outrageous. I don't think it right to excuse this kind of pricing, even if someone hasn't played the game before. 

That’s so subjective though. Skyward Sword already is an unusual and pretty brilliant Zelda game to a lot of people. Sure, some QOL changes to how much Fi talks to you or tidying up the visuals is fine but if you go too far you’re pretty much in Trigger’s Broom territory.
 

Anyway, my point was mainly about the demand to completely re-do textures, models etc. on older games. It just seems odd to me unless you were doing a full remake. 

 

As for the price, surely we all know at this point the amount of effort something took to make rarely matters when it comes to how much something is worth?
 

 

[ryodi]

I'm probably alone here in liking the more restrictive Zelda games. While I appreciate what BotW does it still has the same problem as UbiSoft open world games in that I spent more time commuting between locations than actual solving puzzles, give me one big dungeon over lots of small ones any day.  I beat the four divine beats and stopped playing after 50 hours because I'd lost interest. 

 

My top 5 Zelda games that I've completed:

 

1. Link Between Worlds

2. Wind Waker.

3. Ocarina of Time

4. Oracle of Ages

5. Minish Cap

 

I did like Phantom Hourglass but I think that is more because I wanted another game in the Wind Waker style and took what I could get. I'm looking forward to playing Skyward Sword with button controls, I enjoyed the game when it came out and didn't think its pacing issues were anywhere near as bad as Twilight Princess but I hated waggle controls. Hopefully the new button controls work well. 

[skondo]

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/19/the-legend-of-zelda-games-ranked

 

The definitive list I'm sure.

[Jolly]

Looked at this thead just before bed last night and then engaged in possibly the least erotic pillow talk of all time by explaining to my wife how wrong you all are, what the correct order is and why. So thanks everyone. 

[Steven]

On 19/02/2021 at 22:55, ryodi said:

I'm probably alone here in liking the more restrictive Zelda games. While I appreciate what BotW does it still has the same problem as UbiSoft open world games in that I spent more time commuting between locations than actual solving puzzles, give me one big dungeon over lots of small ones any day.  I beat the four divine beats and stopped playing after 50 hours because I'd lost interest. 

 

 

Not alone - I haven't even finished BOTW. I liked it but it felt slightly hollow just collecting bloody seeds and fighting a differently coloured variation of an enemy. I loved the temples to start with but after a while I'd had my fill and was happy to move on. Like a lot of open world stuff, it felt a little bloated with fluff.

[Isaac]

2 hours ago, skondo said:

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/19/the-legend-of-zelda-games-ranked

 

The definitive list I'm sure.

 

It's actually not a controversial list at all.

 

I agree with most of the choices and the general order.