Full Review for The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker by Forgoten_Scars

Introduction

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is a game developed by Nintendo and released onto the Nintendo GameCube on March 24, 2003. For those of us keeping count, this is the 10th installment to the seemingly never ending series known as The Legend of Zelda. True, this game is a bit old by now but I strongly felt it needed a quality review by someone who has played and beaten this game multiple times over the years.

This game features the return of the all too famous, green outfit wearing, Keebler elf known as Link. Joining him in the return of the series is the princess with the outstanding ability to always find herself in trouble, Zelda. Place these two on an endless ocean with but a few islands scattered all over it and an evil villain wanting all he can get his hands on, and one finds themselves playing Wind Waker.

As usual, I like to provide a small overview of what the game's story mainly consists of, so that anyone that's thinking about buying it will know what they're getting into. The game starts out in a storyboard form along with some small music, telling a story of a great evil that was vanquished by a great hero. After a bit of this, the real story starts and the main character, Link, is introduced into the story as nothing more than a small child on an island. It doesn't take him long to get out of his normal clothes and into the famous outfit everyone recognizes him by. After a bit of trouble on the island, Link comes face to face with a female pirate right as his small sister get kidnapped. This pirate takes him off to save his sister and the story starts to unravel from there. After a bit of searching, Link learns that he must collect 3 items to reveal a hidden place. Once done, he fights an enemy in the Tower of the Gods so that he may go and retrieve the Master Sword. Once done, he begins collecting the Triforce pieces to restore the sword's power. After all that is done, he's able to find Ganondorf (The enemy here) and save not only Zelda, but also his little sister.

Graphics

The graphics for this game were definitely different from anything I've ever seen before playing this. Not the best in the world, but pretty well made overall. There are only a few bad points to it.

Allow me to start off by saying that this game's graphics are immediately going to be comparable to a cartoon, as that's the way they were intended to look. With a nice mix up of 3D and 2D elements, this game manages to pull off a look like no other. Example of this would be the explosions in the game, which one will tend to see often while playing through this storyline. They're nothing more than a mass of 2D images made to turn, expand, move, and shrink in order to make the appearance of an anime style explosion. The way the light casts shadows here are another example of how this has been made to look like a cartoon more than a 3D video game. There is no gentle transition from light to shadow, just a straight line like seen in most cartoon shows. It can be a bit difficult to see some details at times, but the fun of just enjoying the artwork makes up for that.

Most people enjoy a small break from the game in the form of an enjoyable little cut scene that helps tell the story. Well, sad to say, but there aren't all that many in this game. While there are a few, they're generally not all that long, and also use the same form of graphics used in the main gameplay. Most games improve on the graphics of the game during the cut scenes, but I'm guessing that the developers of this game figured that the graphics were sharp enough in this anime style game to not need much of any improvement to still look good.

The game's characters and elements seemed to be well made. Crisp and detailed, I could tell that a good bit of work went into the making of them. Sure, it's not life like, as most people buying games might want, but it's different enough to be good in it's own way. A very good job was done on making sure the graphics of the characters mixed well with their surroundings.

One complaint I have on this is the technique they used to conserve memory on the GameCube. When the player gets too far away from an object, it blurs a little and soon just becomes a gray mass in the distance. This somewhat sticks out against the anime style graphics they were going for, and just looks bad in my opinion. Though, one can't expect all that much from a game of this age. Another complaint I have is the weather that seems to be in constant change while playing this game. Just the way it looks, the creators of the game used a bad mix of colors when changing to the start of a storm or something similar. Brown skies definitely do not mix well with the other bright, vivid colors around it.

Overall, I would have to give the graphics of this game an 8 out of 10. It was a really good effort, but a few small flaws have brought down my opinion of it by two points.

Sound

The sound of this game was odd, to say the least. I don't have much to say here, because there didn't seem to be a lot of different elements to it.

The game's sound seems to be centered around the music that's constantly playing throughout the story of the game. Constantly changing, depending on the type of situation the player was in. When in a normal situation, the player would hear beautiful music meant to relax. When in a dangerous situation, the player would hear music meant to excite and thrill. This element of the game seems to have been well made, in how the music mixes well with the sound effect also blended into the mix.

As far as the dialogue goes, there isn't much to hear other than a few screams, squeaks, and squeal. Seeing as the game heavily relies on the text to show what the characters are saying, the developers have completely left out any form of speaking. Downside, but not exactly a game killer. Would have been a lot better if there had been some speaking int he game.

Overall, I would have to say the sound of the game deserves a 9 out of 10, just for the music of the game being so good.

Gameplay

I have a bit to say about the gameplay of this game, both good and bad.

Lets start off with the way one travels across this great ocean covering most of the game. The player has to go across this vast area on a small boat that doesn't travel very fast at all. Needless to say, this can become quite repetitive at times seeing as the person playing the game will have to go from one side of the map to the other, multiple times throughout the game. They've tried to add in a few enemy battles here and there to shake things up but it just doesn't really cover for the time wasted trying to get from one place to another in order to progress through this game. One thing the player has to constantly change via a small musical instrument is the direction of the wind. If it's not blowing in the right direction, the player has to stop, play a little song, select the direction of the wind, and start sailing again. This can be quite annoying at times.

The combat in the game seemed to be done well enough. I guess they would have to do it well since the game is in almost a constant mode of battle. The player gets to choose form a a multitude of weapons to use, along with several different sword attacks that affect the enemy in a different way. When faced against an enemy, I never really felt that it was just doing the same thing over and over again, seeing as the enemies the player is attacking can defend and attack in all different ways. This means that the player constantly has to switch up their strategy in order to defeat the enemies and progress further into this game.

As anyone who has played the Zelda games before, this one also relies heavily on puzzles. Now, the majority of the puzzles in this game weren't all that hard, but a select few did manage to stump me in my progress and take me several days to figure out. The most annoying part of these puzzles is how, at some points during them, the player could be carrying something vital and it could easily be destroyed/captured, meaning that the player would have to start the puzzle all over again. Not bad, just that there could have been other ways to fill the gap and expand on how long these puzzles took.

The game is one of those just packed with a lot of useless things that most people will not bother with or do not want to bother with. Granted, it is a good thing that the developers are willing to take time to put this in just for the pure entertainment of some people, but it's mainly just a load of extras in the corner of the game. For example, the health in this game is made up of small hearts the player has. It's really no problem beating the game with only a few hearts, but the developers have given the option to the player to collect more and make the game easier near the end. Same with a lot of items. Great, and constantly reminded of them, but just not needed to most people who play the game. Instead of putting this in, they could have spent their time coming up with better story fillers.

What I mean by the above statement is that the game is filled with small missions that barely relate at all to the main story itself, but the player still has to go through it in order to progress. Things such as collecting a bunch of maps and decoding them. This isn't all that much fun, and can be the down point of the game to most. The smaller missions could have been vastly improved on because they just bring down the quality of the gameplay by making it repetitive.

Overall, I would have to give this game a 7 out of 10 on the gameplay section. Sure, I mentioned a few bad things in there but it was an overall enjoyable experience to play though.

Lastability

The lastability of this game is actually quite impressive. I would give someone a few days of playing through this before they got to the end, because it's just filled with so many small things that need to be done. If someone is wanting a good game that kills a good bit of time, I would recommend this to them.

Overall, I would say the lastability of this game deserves a 9 out of 10 for just being so long.

Overall

Overall, it was a very good game and the developers of this definitely get my thanks. Sure, the game has a few downsides to it but it's an overall enjoyable experience to play. I know I've liked it so much that I've played through it several times, and I'm sure the same could be said for a lot of people.

9 out of 10, for a final score.

Final Score: 84%