The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD was released earlier this month, and as far as remasters go, it’s a great effort.
Several big changes were made to the game, including an entirely new control scheme to allow for button controls instead of mandatory motion controls. In addition to enhanced visuals and audio, there are also plenty of quality-of-life improvements that weren’t present in the original game.
Although Skyward Sword HD is a standout game with more positives than negatives, there are still several things that annoyed me while playing it. Some of these could have been straightforward changes, while others would have taken a lot more time and effort to fix.
In any case, here are five things I still hate about Skyward Sword HD that I wish could have been different.
Combat
It’s a bit tricky to discuss the combat in Skyward Sword HD. Motion controls play a huge part in battling, but I’m not complaining about the motion controls themselves. In fact, Nintendo did a fantastic job in the remaster by creating a control scheme that works well with both separated Joy-Con and traditional button mapping.
I didn’t have a problem with motion itself when playing Skyward Sword HD. I played primarily in handheld mode, swinging my sword with the right analog stick. It worked well.
The part that I still hated was the combat itself. Nearly every enemy in the game is designed around motion patterns. Bokoblin holding its sword to the left? You need to swing from the right. Deku Baba with its mouth open vertically? You need to swing horizontally. Beamos with a vulnerable eye? You need to perform a jab. Nothing else would work.
While each of these enemy battles seemed creative at first, by the end of the game, it felt like a chore to defeat them all in such specific ways. It often slowed down combat as I tried to remember how I should be fighting even the most basic monster.
I found myself longing for a more fluid combat style such as the one in Wind Waker HD, where consecutive sword swings chopped up an enemy seamlessly without the need for intricate strategy.
Repetitive Areas
The discussion of Skyward Sword’s repetitive areas is as old as the original game itself. There are really only four unique areas in the game: Skyloft, Faron Woods, Eldin Volcano, and Lanayru Desert.
It’s quality over quantity here; these regions are incredibly unique and interesting when first exploring them, but we go back and visit them so many times throughout the adventure that they become stale by the end of the game.
The game attempts to change things up on each visit, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still the same map each time with repetitive objectives as well. I groaned when I had to climb Eldin Volcano again to lead Scrapper to the top after I had already done so twice before despite having a warp point at the summit.
I’m not sure how the remaster could have fixed this problem without making major content changes to the game. While I appreciated the high quality of the areas, they felt a bit ruined to me by the end because I became exhausted by them. Turns out there is too much of a good thing sometimes.
Imprisoned Battles
Another repetitive aspect of Skyward Sword HD is the Imprisoned battles. You fight him three times throughout the course of the game, and even though each battle is slightly different, they are not fun at all and feel like a giant waste of time.
I don’t want to slash that giant avocado’s toes. I don’t want to run up the hills with my limited stamina and wait for Link to catch his breath every few seconds. I don’t want to hold my stupid sword at just the right angle to slash that stupid spike into his stupid head so many times.
And I certainly don’t want to repeat this process on three separate occasions.
The only fun part of the fight is launching Link onto the Imprisoned’s head using the Groosinator in the third battle, and even this sucked because you had to run really far to get there while Groose yells at you.
The Imprisoned battles are something I wish they had changed in the remaster. They could easily have cut out the second battle and nobody would have missed it. Honestly. If you would have genuinely missed one of these three battles, please tell me, because I don’t think a person like this exists.
Empty Sky
The empty sky complaint is another commonly discussed fault of Skyward Sword, and it’s pretty warranted. Simply put, there’s just a distinct lack of things to do, and flying takes forever.
Sure, there’s Pumpkin Landing with a few side quests to complete there, and Bamboo Island, which is fun for a grand total of two minutes.
Fun Fun Island has an entertaining mini-game, but it can’t be unlocked until a certain point later in the story, and you need to explore Lanayru Desert to find the item just to make the game possible.
And…that’s basically it. The rest of the islands serve as landing spots for Goddess Cube chests or a quick Gratitude Crystal spot. Most of the time, I didn’t really care to spend a few minutes flying across the entire sky just to get a chest with some rupees in it.
I wish they had populated the sky with more exciting things to do. Perhaps they could have added more mini-games to play. Maybe they could have added a few larger islands with exclusive equipment to uncover.
If nothing else, I wish that the Skyward Sword HD remaster had added faster Loftwing flying akin to the Swift Sail in Wind Waker HD.
Story Pacing
Skyward Sword has one of the most compelling stories in the Legend of Zelda series, and it’s a shame that the pacing of it feels off. The most exciting things happen at the very beginning of the game and at the very end, and there’s a whole lot of nothing in between.
(Minor story spoilers ahead!)
The beginning might even have too much story packed into it. The whole introduction is dialogue box after dialogue box, and it feels like they could have sprinkled some of the character backstory and lore throughout the course of the game instead of hitting us with it all at once.
We get down to the surface region for the first time, learn a little about Ghirahim and where Zelda is going, and after the third dungeon, the story slows down significantly. We then have to work on powering up our sword so we can keep following after Zelda, and it takes a good deal of time with not so much happening otherwise.
There are parts of the story mixed into the middle that feel like filler. For example, the entire Song of the Hero quest has no reason to exist. We already proved ourselves in these regions; why do we have to do it again? There’s no story significance here; Link already has the Master Sword, so there’s no reason why the dragons shouldn’t see him as the chosen hero.
It isn’t until the very end of the game that things finally start to come together in a meaningful way. It takes a long time for the interesting parts to actually happen, but when they do, they’re fantastic. I just wish that the story felt compelling throughout the entire game and not just at the beginning and end.
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