Zelda: The Wind Waker

[Alex W.]

A solid and enjoyable game, but a bit too easy and the intricate combat system is never really useful. You can just button-bash it. Still, for the most part it's great, but the Triforce Shards were just utterly in-ex-fucking-scusa-fucking-ble. Added three months to the game because I simply could not be fucking bothered with it.

[Meh]

Its probably the biggest pile of wank Nintendo have pulled out with since Yoshi's story. How did they mess it up so badly. After the semi-messup that was OOT they made a comeback with Majora's Mask... and then fucked it up with TWW.

Miyamoto should be relived of artistic control of this series before he destroys. Get rid of toon shading, shit dungeons and a bias towards small game worlds and lots of wank mini-games and bring back LTTP and AW style large land masses and devious dungeons.

Cant wait for Four Swords

[Takizawa]

I think its the most beautiful game ever created, it has no equal in terms of style.

my only negative about the game was the lack of any real land mass, less sailing and more wandering would have done it for me but its still my favourite GC game by a mile.

[McCoy]

Yeah I know what you mean.

Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time were almost flawless for their implementation of gameplay,graphics and gameworld size for the time in videogame history they appeared.

The time the Light and Dark worlds open up in LttP is still one of my most memorable gaming moments.

When TWW was released, with the supposed advancements in processing power and data storage inherent with this generation of consoles, I admit, I wanted TWW's main story thread to last at least four times as long as it did.

In my mind, if it could've been that much bigger, it would've, without doubt, been one of the most enjoyable and beautiful games in history.

Alas

Hopefully they'll rectify this in part two

ps.The menu flicking to choose items WAS a pain at times, how about a Goldeneye/Deus Ex quick item select system? *drools*

pps.The Ocarina of time horse was called Epona wasn't it. Great part of the game.

Am I the only one who finds Zelda games (and games in general) far too long to maintain my interests. I really love playing the games but I just don't have the attention span to devote 30+ hours to one game (what did they reckon the play time was with OOT, 50?). They are great games but I have never finished a Zelda game. I still like them and I'll buy the next one but if anything I rather it was a 5 to 10 action packed adventure than a 30 leasuirly walk in the park. And I would suspect that this would be the case with a lot of other people who buy the Zelda games and looking at the replies on here many of you gave up half way. Give me a ten hour action adventure epic anyday, there'll always be something to distract from a game eventully.

On a side note this thread encourged me to go back to Zelda WW and have a quick play around it is a great game but after all this time I had no idea what I was meant to do so I gave up. In future games please could nintendo let me save inside a dungun so I don't have to replay the whole thing again if I get stuck and give up.

[hughes]

I think one great thing about TWW, is that it will probably age very well.

I say this because the cell shading is so vibrant and crisp, compare that to games that use traditional textures, that will not only look drab, but will almost seemingly 'lose detail' in a matter of years.

I think the same can be said for super mario world as well, vibrant crisp loveliness that is.

[fasteasyfree]

I really liked TWW, although I preferred OoT. It just felt more epic.

Charles: Totally disagree with you on the amount of game hours required. There's no way that I'd condone Zelda being squeezed into 10 hours. Most of the fun I derive from Zelda is simply wandering - I don't think of the game as a race, I think of it as an unfolding story. OoT remains my favourite ever game due to memories of strolling down to the lake and watching the sun rise, or galloping through Gerudo valley on Epona. Don't get me wrong, I loved the dungeons and fight sequences too, but they didn't make the game for me. There's too much to go into now though.

I agree about the saving inside dungeons though. Pissed me right off that did.

[DC Lemon]

I thought this was a great addition to the Zelda universe. The opening was great, which isn't always the case, and the first two or three dungeons were classics both in how they played and how they looked. It was superb until I spent ten minutes in a boat and turned it off never to play it again...

[kamrantaz]

I think you need to define this.

ok.

The dungeons were brain achingly simple and and the game in general treated us like bufoons. The combat was shite. Required little or no skill. Not a problem as LTTP has only one sword attack.

The combat isnt an integral part of zelda. Its exploration and dungeon completion. These days nintendo focuses on mini side games which IMO are fun in limited doses (OoT got it right).

TWW has a limited simple world. The sail is so simple, its mind numbing. The Cel shaded areas look great and as said earlier do have the zelda atmosphere sadly the game world doesnt. Hyrule castle is a sad glimpse of the game that could have been.

The characters are shite. Tingle needs murderising.

[fasteasyfree]

I was gutted when teased with the glimpse of Hyrule. The black and white effects were fucking ace though.

[D-Side]

The characters are shite. Tingle needs murderising.

Surely you need to lay the blame at Eiji Aonuma's door, rather than Miyamoto's.

[kamrantaz]

I nearly cried when i entered hyrule!

It was like i was 12 again when i played LTTP! I beat Aaarghim and thought i clocked the game BUT then a whole new world with 3 times as many dungeons opened up.

I thought to myself nintendo didnt let me down! Hyrule is here in TWW GREAT!!!.

Then i was told to come back upto the surface. What a pile of wank.

[kamrantaz]

Surely you need to lay the blame at Eiji Aonuma's door, rather than Miyamoto's.

he shouldnt have ok'd it.

[Landshead]

Surely you need to lay the blame at Eiji Aonuma's door, rather than Miyamoto's.

Your not mistaking tingle for miyamoto are you, u baffoon

[D-Side]

Your not mistaking tingle for miyamoto are you, u baffoon

Yes. That's exactly what I'm doing. Hmmmyes.

[Landshead]

The wind waker is a truely brilliant game, perhaps not as great as Ocarina of time.

But clearly not 'WANK' as you say.

The triforce section did nearly ruin the game for me, Plus as much as i liked the sailing, i must admit that it was starting to get on my nerves by the end of the game.

but perhaps nintendo will learn from these mistakes and wind waker 2 will be the best thing ever.

[kamrantaz]

TWW takes 15 hours MAX to complete.

Where the hell are you guys getting 30-40 from?

Compared to other zelda games it was a demo.

[dr_lha]

TWW takes 15 hours MAX to complete.

Where the hell are you guys getting 30-40 from?

Compared to other zelda games it was a demo.

Personally I took time to enjoy it, rather than ploughing through it as quick as possible. Sure it could easily be finished in 15 hours, but I think I took about 25 hours myself.

That said I won't disagree that it could have used a few more dungeons.

[Alex W.]

I played TWW one dungeon per night in the company of friends and alcohol. It's the only way to game.

Tracking down the Tingle Tuner opened up a whole new world of madness too.

[bidge]

There are only a few games out there that as enjoyable as WW.

Remember it is all about Game Play.

The games I rank better are Goldeneye, Pikmin, Stronghold, Populus and Meglomania.

Everything else is just wannabes.

[Floppy]

I think one great thing about TWW, is that it will probably age very well.

I say this because the cell shading is so vibrant and crisp, compare that to games that use traditional textures, that will not only look drab, but will almost seemingly 'lose detail' in a matter of years

Dunno about that. Only the characters and spot effects tended to be cel-shaded, most of the graphics were 'standard' 3D just with simple, N64-level textures. One year on I personally don't think the game has aged well visually.

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

I fucking hated it. Every Zelda game on every new Nintendo platform added something to the mix. LttP features huge worlds, light/dark world, weather, light/dark effects. Beautiful.

Ocarina of Time went 3D and in a way never seen before. The first game that had a world that felt alive, which was beautiful, lush and exciting.

The Wind Waker however, did none of this. It dumbed the series down (it made it easier), it removed all sense of dread and darkness, and instead of expanding it just shrunk the experience down. And not in a good way.

The graphics look dull and flat. I don't mind toonshading, but I DO mind ugly toonshading. From the characters to the colour schemes, I found it dull and lifeless like a bad children's drawing. Technically getting everything out of the cube? No. While there were more animation frames, guards would glitch through barrels, people would glitch through walls and the camera indoors was pure evil. No talkies, but still those boring old textboxes with every important object highlighted. And what would the characters do while talking to them? Stare blankly in the camera, wiggling back and forth like fucking morons. They would do so for an hour if you didn't press [A]. This would be acceptable in the early days, but these days I expect the level of animation to be equal to a real life movie, or in the case of toony stuff, like a disney movie.

The Wind Waker does not look like a Disney movie. It looks like one of those 30 minutes ads for Japanese crappy toys which are made with a minimum budget. I fucking hate it. I wish it would die. I wish I never seen it, so my memories of other Zelda games like Link to the Past, the Oracles, Link's Awakening and Ocarina of Time (10/10, oh yeah) wouldn't have been affected.

[dr_lha]

You hated TWW Napole0n? Wow that's the first I've heard of it (sarcasm)

[kamrantaz]

^^^^ This guy knows that he's talking about. ^^^^

[TheSlugFormerlyKnownAsNap]

You hated TWW Napole0n? Wow that's the first I've heard of it (sarcasm)

Yes, but I used to love Zelda so much, that I would marry her. Believe me, if I wasn't such a Zelda fanboy, I wouldn't even care enough to rant.

[kamrantaz]

The fact that both i and nappy here (may i call you that?) are long term zelda fans and have uber cool retro avatars (although mine is better) shows that we're right and YOU ARE ALL WRONG!!!!11

I am scared to see the abomination that is TWW2 AKA "all the bollocks we thought wasnt good enough for the main game".

Nintendo can stick that sail boat up their arses. Not that i wont be buying the game. Its zelda after all but i wont be happy.

[Cyhwuhx]

.::: I 'liked' TWW to a certain extend. I never got on with OOT as it got rid of the grid-layout all the previous ones had (which were due to hardware limitations I take).

So TWW was the first 3D Zelda for me in a way and it felt very 'simple'. Not one dungeon managed to spark a sense of accomplishment. With the 2D Zelda's dugenons became more and more complex, abusing the limitations of the respective systems.

With TWW I got the feeling they had thrown all of that expertise out of the window and had started generating dungeons from scratch in 3D.

While Link's Awakening was a sort of condensed Zelda imo, TWW was quite the opposite; a watered down installment of the series (excuse the pun).

That said, I genuinely liked the sailing and the 'gigantic world' it allowed. Of course that got all ruined once I reached the Triforce-hunt.

It's certainly not a bad game, it's good. But to me it's a step backwards instead of forwards (just like OOT is to me).

[frumious]

Nintendo can stick that sail boat up their arses. Not that i wont be buying the game. Its zelda after all but i wont be happy.

That'll learn 'em.

[Jack]

The combat was shite. Required little or no skill.

Short of the addition of the parry attack, I thought the combat was identical to Ocarina of Time. BUT TAHT CANNT B RITE CUZ YUO LUB OOT ADN WIDN WANKER IS FUR KIDZ LOLOLOLOLOL

[jonny_rat]

ok.

The dungeons were brain achingly simple and and the game in general treated us like bufoons. The combat was shite. Required little or no skill. Not a problem as LTTP has only one sword attack.

The combat isnt an integral part of zelda. Its exploration and dungeon completion. These days nintendo focuses on mini side games which IMO are fun in limited doses (OoT got it right).

TWW has a limited simple world. The sail is so simple, its mind numbing. The Cel shaded areas look great and as said earlier do have the zelda atmosphere sadly the game world doesnt. Hyrule castle is a sad glimpse of the game that could have been.

The characters are shite. Tingle needs murderising.

Cheers for the answer. In true Rllmuk fashion I'd have to disagree on many points, though.

I realise you've put combat to one side here, but that's one area that certainly hasn't been dumbed down; in most senses, it's functionally equivalent to that in OOT (although with the addition of the counterattack, which to my eyes added a whole load of potential for showboating).

As for exploration.. well.. I'm sure that's what I was doing for most of the game! I loved spotting something on the horizon and heading out to it. The basic principle was the same as in the other Zelda games: find an object/structure you can't access yet, come back to it when you can. I really don't get how this aspect was any more 'kiddie?'

Dungeons: I guess this is where our opinions will really differ. I found these sections frustrating in OOT and Majora, mainly due to the all the backtracking that was necessary to understand how all the rooms (and puzzles) linked together. Hence I much preferred the one-room puzzles of TWW. Didn't you find them engaging at all?

The characterisation has been paper-thin in every Zelda game I've ever played (except perhaps the Mask Seller..), so I don't get how that fits into it.

I think you're getting 'kiddie' mixed up with 'easy,' to be honest. Maybe you've just become better at games?

[Davros sock drawer]

I fucking hate it. I wish it would die. I wish I never seen it, so my memories of other Zelda games like Link to the Past, the Oracles, Link's Awakening and Ocarina of Time (10/10, oh yeah) wouldn't have been affected.

That's possibly the most childish post I've ever read on this forum. Well done.