The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is an action adventure video game developed by Nintendo EAD and published by Nintendo for the GameCube on 2002-12-13. An HD version was released for the Wii U on 2013-10-04. This is the first game from The Legend of Zelda series released on the GameCube.

In the game's story, they player's character is an island dweller whose ancestors emulate a mythical hero, a boy who wore green adventure's clothes and saved the world from evil. Your island is attacked by a giant bird who is kidnapping young girls, and your younger sister is its latest victim. As the player tries to rescue his sister, he meets a band of pirates, a talking boat, and all sorts of other strange characters living on islands all over the ocean.

Personal

After I got a computer that could run emulated GameCube games at full speed, I started playing games from the series I love. This was among the first three I tried. Although hugely disappointed at the horrible controls of the previous 3D Zelda games, I had high hopes that Nintendo would have perfected the technology after several years worth of games. They had not, and I spent much of the game being frustrated with horrible camera angles and terrible controls.

Status

I don't own this game, but I am playing it.

Review

Good

• The cel-shading is nice, and the depth-of-field blurring on distant objects really helps the quality of the visuals.
• I like that, even as two men are begging you to rescue their kidnapped daughters, you can blow them off to play hide-and-seek with some truants.

Bad

• The game play is slowed down a lot by frequent cut scenes (every time you enter/exit a door, every time a chest appears or door unlocks, every time you use various items like the grappling hook, etc.). I wouldn't mind seeing these things once in a while, but they happen all the time throughout the entire game. There is also a lot of dialogue that is not important, but you can't skip it (like the 50th time you get a key).
• Link's facial expressions, along with most of the other character's from the game, look stupid.
• The game puts too much emphasis on slap-stick humor for my tastes.
• The stealth parts of your assault on the Forsaken Fortress start out fun, but quickly become tiresome. And, each time you're caught, you're sent all the way back to the far end of the fortress to do it all over again. Likewise, all the falling into lava in Dragon Roost Island is annoying, and, the terrible controls make this very frequent.

Ugly

• The controls and camera, though not as broken as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, are still so atrocious they ruin much of the fun of the game.
  • Something as simple as reading a sign, opening a chest, or even walking in a straight line requires effort to do correctly, and often results in missed attempts.
  • Each time to enter a new room, the camera is focused on link instead of the room, so you have to manually rotate the camera to see the room. Every. Single. Time.
  • While in enclosed rooms, the camera often zooms in on Link's head obscuring your view. This is especially annoying while fighting in a small room.
  • Even in outdoor regions, the camera often faces Link, rather than show where he's going. This is nice if something is chasing you, but a pain in the butt for the majority of the game.
  • There are all sorts of sections in the game where these poor controls and camera angles make something obnoxiously difficult, like trying to throw the bomb flowers into the statues to get across the lava on Dragon Roost Island. Through most of the game I was fighting far more with the controls than with the enemies.

Media

Box Art

• 

  GameCube, Japan - The original Japanese art captures the more childish aspects of the game. I love that art style, but it doesn't show any of the game's action.

• 

  GameCube, USA - The American cover has Link sailing a ship. Pretty dull.

• 

  GameCube, Europe - The European cover uses the US cover, but makes Link more visible.

• 

  Wii U, USA - The HD remake take the Japanese link and flanks him with the game's other characters in gold.

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  Wii U, Europe/Australia - The European HD remake is like the US cover, but with full color. This is my favorite cover.

Links