<\/a><\/p>\n

Until the current console generation, I’d not gotten into the Zelda games. But when I tried out Twilight Princess, I fell in love. You’ll notice that when I listed my top five favorite games<\/a>, Twilight Princess was number five. “So!”, I said, “This is what all the fuss is about. Zelda games are awesome! I needs to try me some more! That Ocarina game seems to be one that everybody loves; I’ll try that.” I downloaded Ocarina of Time on the Wii Virtual Console, played for about an hour, and got bored. Or maybe I got distracted. What else was I playing back then? No More Heroes? Oblivion? Elite Beat Agents? Not sure. But just recently, I started playing Wind Waker based on a friend’s recommendation. He said that Wind Waker was his favorite Zelda game. I finished the game yesterday and I really did enjoy it. But did I enjoy Wind Waker more than Twilight Princess?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Wind Waker had a number of things going for it. The cel-shaded art style was a big one, although I felt that the cel-shaded graphics in Okami<\/a> were way better. Wind Waker’s music was also stellar. The music in Wind Waker was even integrated into the combat, with musical hits coinciding with Link’s sword strikes. The “Mini Boss” battle music is fun, “Graaandma” is a very simple piece with a lot of heart, and I particularly enjoyed the music for the battle against Gohdan. The various themes for the island towns are all good. The sole advantage that Twilight Princess had in its music was the fact that it was performed by an actual orchestra, whereas Wind Waker’s music was synthesized. Nonetheless, I preferred the songs in Wind Waker. The ocean travel music was amongst the best bits of the Wind Waker soundtrack, which was good given that you do so damn much travelling in the game.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And that was one of my main complaints about Wind Waker – the monotonous ocean travel. Whereas Twilight Princess had scenic views, forests, and fields with landmarks, Wind Waker had just… water. I suppose it was a cheap way to make the game world big, but I much prefer Twilight Princess’s Hyrule over the vast “fishless oceans” in Wind Waker. And on that note, I really hated the sea battles. Whenever possible, I avoided them. Fleeing was so much easier than spending five minutes trying to hit some swimming enemy with a cannonball, getting knocked off of my boat four times, and ending up at half health all for no reward at the end. Those Gyorg<\/a> were the worst. They’d pursue me for fifteen minutes straight while I sailed from one corner of the world to another. Often I’d set down the controller for five minutes and surf the web while travelling from place to place since it was so boring, but those damn Gyorg would force me to spend the time dodging instead. Once I got the Song of Winds this was less of an issue, but still a pain.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Looking back now on my original review<\/a> of Twilight Princess, I remember many of the things I’d forgotten about Twilight Princess. It did so many different things, and it did them all so well. I’ve discussed gameplay variety<\/a> a number of times before, and Twilight Princess accomplished that variety better than any other game I can think of. In Twilight Princess you snowboard, herd goats, go fishing, hang-glide from a chicken, sumo wrestle, and a number of other things I’m sure I’m forgetting. And Twilight Princess’s dungeons were the most creative I’ve ever seen. The water temple with its waterway-related puzzles was a standout, but Twilight Princess’s other dungeons had you swinging from ropes, swimming underwater, walking on walls, and hook-shotting on a floating island. I’ve heard people speak of the game’s muted colors, and I guess that I can see them if I really look, but to me the pros far outweigh the cons. Wind Waker had a bit of stealth gameplay at the very beginning which I really liked, but not nearly the variety of Twilight Princess.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

All this talk really makes me want to replay Twilight Princess, but it was such a long game, and I’m wary of Zelda burnout given the upcoming Skyward Sword game, to which I’m very much looking forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until the current console generation, I’d not gotten into the Zelda games. But when I tried out Twilight Princess, I fell in love. You’ll notice that when I listed my top five favorite games, Twilight Princess was number five. “So!”, I said, “This is what all the fuss is about. Zelda games are awesome! I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5],"tags":[149],"class_list":["post-2916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retro","category-wii","tag-zelda"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2916"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2927,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2916\/revisions\/2927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greghowley.com\/lungfish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}