Reviews: Twilight Princess

I heard great things about Twilight Princess, from the internet and from friends. And I have to say, it lived up to all of the expectations, I was extremely impressed. I would give it an easy 9/10, maybe a bit more, but it wasn't quite perfect. Some things to say about it- The writers, it seemed, wanted to give the Mario Bros franchise a run for their money in "Most-trippy-plot-ever." Despite being incredibly bizarre and weird, the plot worked well. The wolf/Link was an awesome addition, it changed the game completely. The graphics were, in true Wii form, not unbelievable, but decent to get by. The items you receive are awesome, definitely a step up from other games, it seemed they wanted to expand upon the traditional ones, and they did. My only complaint is you can't use them enough outside of the Temple you find them, for example, the Dominion Rod is cool and all (the Spinner was my favorite) but in both cases outside of the temple...not terribly useful.

The dungeons were awesome. I don't know if it was me, but it seemed like they were all a bit shorter than in the past, which was good. They were a good chunk of time, but with the exception of one temple, I never was getting bored of them. That exception was the devil known as the Sky Temple, where the weird fetuses (as we call them in our suite) live. God did the double-hookshot get old fast. All the temples in general seemed sufficiently puzzling, yet not frustratingly long (which some previous Zelda's were, cough cough Ocarina Water Temple). I also liked how they diversified them, ie- Yeti's mansion, Sky temple, Shadow world, etc. They really varied it up. Speaking of varying it up, fighting Zant was awesome, revisiting all the dungeons, and Ganondorf was awesome too, you really used all your different skills. Oh, another big thumbs-up was the sword-fighting skills. In most games, learning new moves is completely useless. In Twilight Princess, they are enormously helpful.

My only real criticism of the game was it seemed, more than most Zeldas, too focused on the plot. I almost never found myself browsing around the town doing random sidequests or in general, doing something unrelated to the plot. Some say "well you weren't looking for it" but in the previous two, they just kind of happened. The plot was great but you don't really associate with Hyrule or its people much....all the side missions were actual parts of the main storyline. One of the problems with this is it shortens the lifespan of the game. It was an awesome game, but now that I've beaten it, I really don't have any desire (or need) to go back and play around. A phenomenal game though.