The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess Review
Introduction:
I have been interested in Twilight Princess a long time now. I know Zelda longer than I know Final Fantasy which means a lot and the first Zelda game I ever owned was A Link to the Past which was my favourite Zelda game for almost 20 years now.
That however, changed in the last 3 weeks.
Through twitch I have been watching a bit of Twilight Princess last year and I immediately was fascinated by its style. Zelda games always have the problem of being repetitive for me. It is not like I do not want to go through dungeons but at one point it is just too much of it in my opinion which is why, even though I really like the franchise and have played ALttP, Minish Cap, Oracle of Ages and Ocarina of Time before, never actually finished one of them except ALttP. Even back in 2003-2004 or so I pretty much only watched a friend playing from start of the game to start of Ganon's Tower of Ocarina of Time and that was "playing it together" for me. Nowadays I still have not played it any further than to JabuJabu.
With Twilight Princess that will change though as Twilight Princess is made in a way that I, at least for a while, can look over these things. I bought Twilight Princess in December 2015 for Game Cube and started it and very much liked it - I immediately was aware this pretty much will become my new favourite Zelda. But I did not finish it because I had to study and also played other games.Now when I started it again I got to know that the release of the HD version would be soon - I only knew it will be released early 2016 but not exactly when - so I stopped at the Forest Temple and waited, as it was only like 4 days until then.
So, then I bought it for Wii U. And what I expected became reality. Twilight Princess, the sequel to Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, totally became my new favourite Zelda game.
Story:
Twilight Princess focuses way more on its story than most Zeldas that I have played do. As sequel to OoT and MM it takes elements from there, such as the same life of Ganondorf, and brings them back - which in my opinion is awesome. Yes, the story is never as deep and complex as in RPGs like many Final Fantasys but it definitely does its job. Typical Mirror World of Zelda is corrupted, this influences also the Light World, et cetera. The Twilight Princess Midna herself joins you early in the game and in my opinion is probably the best Zelda character in the franchise's existence. The plot in my opinion suffers a bit from how they handled Zant. I do quite understand the idea of Zant but it still is weird that he is treated the way he is at the end after he was shown so intriguing and cool at first. Also he is way too long around for the fact that there are two villains. Him not being the main villain would have been better handled if 1-2 dungeons earlier the battle against him would have been fought out, and yes, I know it was not possible because of the story of the mirror. It should have been written different then or the Mirror was restored earlier or something like that. Overall though it is fantastic and the way the story comes to its conclusion is just great, the entire final battle plays a major role for me here, both the scenes as well as the battle.
Gameplay:
The Gameplay control-wise is fine enough. For the Game Cube version though I would not necessarily say that because of the controller itself. What you need is implemented in the game well enough thoughh so you should be able to learn it realtively easy. I am not too fond of the difficullty of some parts though that mainly come from the controls. Sometimes you very easily could master a situation - just that you need to know that a certain button ot whatever is necessary and that happened to me often enough. Even in the pen-ultimate state of the final battle - such things even happened in the Wii U version actually. Though these kind of things mainly are from lack of knowledge comig from a first playthrough. As long as you are not forgetful it should be fine afterwards in later playthroughs.
The dungeons as mentioned are great. Not too repetitive but even in Twilight Princess some moments are very dungeon-esque and yes, sometimes I even thought "how many dungeons left?" but overall they feel very natural most of the time and that is a big plus for me. The puzzles are very imbalanced though. In general - and that comes together with my complaint about the controls and not knowing one single thing sometimes, even some hints of how to get to the next room or how to make any progress in general is very imbalanced. Sometimes it is ridiculously easy in comparison to the next step. And that actually did not only happen dungeon-wise.
Some also complain about how easy it is to play this game, especially because of the enemies - to be honest: For the first playthrough, even on easy, it was hard enough for me. I understand it, as, as people mentioned it, I always had it in mind but some dungeon moments or some enemy moments were annoying nonetheless and I had a Game Over more than once. First Playthrough, yes - but I in general have the game not incredibly hard instead of it being more annoying. It had enough annoying moments and even if they would not have been there, at least easy progress would have been there. It was there most of the time anyway.
Soundtrack:
Epic Soundtrack. Twilight Princess takes some of the classic Zelda themes and rearranges them in a more subtle way. Sometimes that is good, sometimes not so good.
In Comparison:
Lost Woods:
Twilight Princess > Ocarina of Time
Kakariko Village :
Twilight Princess < Ocarina of Time
Link's House:
Twilight Princess >= Ocarina of Time probably
Hyrule Castle
Twilight Princess > A Link to the Past
It definitely lacks some epic ones like Kakariko, Song of Storms, Gerudo Valley and the likes of them though. However, others are less annoying like the Enemy Theme. I thought in Ocarina of Time it was just annoying and here it is fine. And Midna's Lament, God, Midna's Lament. What a fantastic theme. Also the Ganondorf Theme. Just epic.
Where both Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time fail in comparison to A Link to the Past though is Hyrule Field.
Overall:
Twilight Princess is an incredible and fantastic game. It made me play through the first Zelda that is not A Link to the Past in almost 20 years. If that does not mean something, I don't know. I can definitely recommend it, especially to everyone who likes a more serious and realistic looking Zelda, an actual great looking one when it comes to that. My brother saw it yesterday and even said it looks almost like a cartoon (well even the DS Zeldas or Wind Waker do but I thing you know what he means).
Characters:
Link: Great (he is never too much fleshed out so there cannot be really a better one to be called Great instead)
Midna: Great +++++++++
Zelda: Good (lacks screentime and story)
Ganondorf: Great (lacks screentime and story but a) he is the one from Ocarina of Time and b) the screentime he has he uses perfectly, especially the final battle, oh man)
Music: 8-9
Gameplay: 8
Story: 9 as more fleshed out in comparison to others
Dungeons: 9 for me as they feel more natural
