Game Review: ゼルダの伝説：トワイライトプリンセス
2017-Dec-27, Wednesday 21:15![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dorchadas
I played Twilight Princess back when it first came out, when it was a Wii game that required swinging the WiiMote around to attack. When schoolpsychnerd and I got married, our friends pooled their money and efforts and got us a Wii as a wedding present, back when Wiis were at the height of their popularity and people would stand in line for hours just at the rumor of stock arriving. They also got us two games, one for each of us--schoolpsychnerd got Cooking Mama, which she played for probably fifty hours, and I got Twilight Princess, which I played for maybe six. At first I really liked it, but I soured on it pretty quickly. I had never bought into the anti-Wind Waker craze, so while I liked the new art style I didn't view it as a return to the true spirit of Legend of Zelda or any of the other pre-release complaints about Wind Waker you can hear read in the Retronauts Wind Waker episode. No, I didn't like the controls.
There were games where the Wii motion controls really worked, like Super Mario Galaxy, and games where they didn't, like Twilight Princess. Movement with the nunchuck was fine, but combat was painful. The last straw came with the fight on horseback with King Bulbin, which took me almost half an hour. I eventually won, but put the game down and never went back to it, and whenschoolpsychnerd and I moved to Japan, we left our Wii behind in America because we (incorrectly) thought that Japanese TVs used a different television system than America's NTSC. And until this month, I never played it again.
But this time I played the GameCube version, so the controls were just fine.
The Japanese name doesn't have any special meaning here. It's just a transliteration of "Twilight Princess."
Twilight.
I don't know whether or not Nintendo cared about criticism of Wind Walker in the run up to Twilight Princess. I don't even know if they knew about it. Maybe not, since even recently Yoshinori Kitase only learned that Western fans hated the art in the mobile port of Final Fantasy VI from being asked about it in a Kotaku interview. But it feels like they cared and wanted to do something different. It's obvious in one of my favorite fan reactions, at the way the crowd at E3 2004 lost their minds when they realized that the Lord of the Rings-esque trailer they're watching is for the next Legend of Zelda game. It's obvious in the game's opening, which, in contrast to Wind Waker's cheery melody under a sunny ocean sky, has a choir singing elegiacally as Link rides Epona across a crumbling bridge under the red light of a setting sun.
In Minish Cap, Link and Zelda are childhood friends. In Twilight Princess, Link lives alone in a tiny nameless village--it's called トアル村 (Toaru Mura, "Toaru Village"), but this is a pun, since とある means "a certain" or "one particular"--and his closest friends are the only other children in the village, most of whom are half his age. The very early game involves a plan for one of the villagers to take a sword as a gift to Princess Zelda without realizing that it's already too late. The entirety of Hyrule has been swallowed by the Twilight, and Toaru Village is the only part left.
This isn't unusual for the Zelda series, since the first game took place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with survivors huddling in caves, but I think the Twilight is more effective because Link is there when the apocalypse happens. When the Twilight washes over Toaru Village and turns the villagers into shadows who don't realize they've been transformed, Link can listen to their fears of the monsters they see prowling outside as they're trapped in stasis, unable to move forward, eternally afraid.
Monster vs monster.
Also, Link is a wolf.
The reason for this is never explained in the game. Midna, the creature of Twilight who accompanies Link for most of the game and provides snarky commentary and hints, says that Twilight transforms people into spirits who still think they're alive and trapped in a world of shadows, but not Link. Link gets a fursona.
This is the primary gimmick of Twilight Princess, and most of the early game is divided into two stages. An area is shadowed in Twilight, and Link must explore it in wolf form to find the shards of light and restore power to the local spirit. While a wolf, Link has heightened animal senses, the ability to leap long distances, and a wolf's combat skills and ability to leap on enemies and bite them repeatedly. Once the spirit's power is restored, Twilight fades from the area and Link (and everyone else) is restored. Then Link does the usual Legend of Zelda activity list, talking to everyone, collecting trinkets, riding around on Epona, and looking for the temple to raid to progress the plot. Three temples, something happens, more temples, the game ends. The usual.
After that something, Link gains the ability to transform into a wolf at any time, though Midna warns him not to do it in front of witnesses. However, there's never any reason to do it at all unless there's an immediate task to accomplish. If there's a ghost to kill, transform into a wolf so Link can see it and bite it. If there's no way forward, transform into a wolf and see if there's soft ground where Link can dig a hole. Otherwise, don't bother. Jumping, digging, and smelling are the only tools wolf Link has available, so it's almost always inferior.
Skate or die.
That's a major problem with Twilight Princess--it's too conservative and too close to Ocarina of Time's venerable formula, and even when it tries something new, it doesn't have the confidence to do much with it.
This is most evident in the slingshot, the first item that you find. In Ocarina of Time, there was a clear reason to have both the slingshot and the bow. Child Link uses the slingshot, Adult Link uses the bow, and since the game involves swapping between each time period, there's always a use case for each weapon. Twilight Princess has both the slingshot and the bow, and once you get the bow there's no reason to ever use the slingshot again. Even after getting just the Gale Boomerang, the slingshot becomes superfluous. It just takes up space in Link's inventory.
This is true of most of the new dungeon items too. In the first temple of the second half of the game, there's a new item called the Spinner that lets Link do sick kickflips while grinding on rails throughout the temple. It looks like a top that's covered in spiked wheels and it's fantastic. And then outside the Execution Site (Eng: Arbiter's Grounds), there's one place for sick kickflips, a few small rails scattered here and there, and nothing else. The Hawkeye, which lets Link look into the distance and can be attached to the bow to make sniper shots, is almost never useful. The Ball and Chain is great for smashing ice and frost monsters in Snowpeak Ruins, but otherwise its usefulness is debatable. It can kill Gibdos in a single hit, but there aren't enough of them to matter and for any other enemy its power is outweighed by its sluggishness. The Copy Rod (Eng: Dominion Rod) is required for a long, multi-room puzzle in the Temple of Time involving transporting a statue from one end of the temple to the other that's a lot of fun, but after that it's literally useless for the next few hours and after that is just a glorified shovel. Basically, anything that's not a Zelda staple like the hookshot or the bow or the boomerang is underused.
Really, it's a problem with Zelda puzzle design. "Switch to Item, use in Place" is still about as sophisticated as it gets most of the time, and that doesn't leave much room for creatively using most of Link's toolset.
It's high noon.
In some ways, my favorite part of the game is the way it feels, the kind of thing that can't be given a numerical score but is an invaluable part of the experience of play. Hyrule Field feels expansive in a way that it doesn't in Ocarina of Time, and riding across it with Epona was a joy. The way the setting sun bathed the terrain in a red glow meant that I took almost as many screenshots of the game as I did in Wind Waker, even with the mid-00s abuse of bloom lighting and the blurry filters laid over half the game. Link twirling his sword around and then sheathing it with a serious expression is almost comical, but I'd be lying if I said I thought it was stupid. It looks great, especially when he does it right after an iaijutsu strike.
Even the tools that aren't required are still fun to actually use. I'd sometimes switch to the ball and chain and send enemies flying, especially if I was fighting bulblins riding on giant boars. I think I used bomb arrows more often than I used regular arrows. The various sword techniques that Link learns are more flashy than worthwhile, but I already mentioned the iaijutsu strike, which felt amazing when I could pull it off.
And if Epona counts as a tool, she's one of the best ones. Partway through the game you gain the ability to warp, and after that Epona loses a lot of her utility, since until almost the very end it's only possible to summon her in very specific spots. But she's enormously fun to ride. In a time when Elder Scrolls: Oblivion still made me slowly dismount before drawing my sword, being able to perform both archery and swordplay from horseback was great. Riding enemies down never stopped being fun. Even the way the field of view narrows when using a speed boost seems deliberately crafted, and I wish there had been more reason to use Epona, or even an outdoor dungeon that required a horse to navigate. She didn't get her due.
"I wonder if we're just collecting bizarre things?"
Unfortunately, I can't say that I had the same attachment to the other characters. Other than Midna, who is with Link throughout the entire game, I barely remember the others. There were the kids in Toaru Village. One of them is named Malo, and I only remember this because he opens a shop. Iria is obviously set up to be the childhood friend who has a crush on Link, but she gets kidnapped early on and then loses her memory, so she's not around for most of the game. Moi the swordsman seems set up to be an important character, but outside of Toaru Village he barely appears.
Teruma runs a bar and has a society devoted to investigating the weird things happening in Hyrule but doesn't really explain why she's doing it. Kakariko Village is half-ruined, with run-down buildings and monsters in the shadows at night, but the village is more interesting than anyone who lives there. Hyrule Castle Town is bustling, with dozens of NPCs going about their business, and it finally looks like a realistic urban center. But most of the NPCs are only there for color and can't be interacted with.
Hello. I'm evil.
I think I'm spoiled after Wind Waker. Wind Waker gave Link a relationship with Zelda that developed over the course of the entire game, and even managed to explain why Ganondorf became evil and what the wish in his heart was when he laid hands on the Triforce. It had Link's obāchan, who I stopped by to check in on whenever I was near Puroro Island and whoschoolpsychnerd constantly asked me about.
In contrast, Zelda barely has any screentime in Twilight Princess and doesn't speak to Link until the end. Ganon has even less--the best comparison I have is to one of those Final Fantasy bosses like Zeromus or Necron who appear out of nowhere and reveal they were the real villain all along. Ganon gets no buildup and not even any explanation. He's the real mastermind, but anyone who doesn't already know who he is would have no reason to care about the reveal. They'd probably just be confused about who this weird redhead talking about darkness is.
There are Zelda games without Ganon, like Majora's Mask. Zant had a connection to Midna, plenty of buildup during the game, and a reason for his power play over the World of Shadow. They should have had the confidence to just make him the ultimate villain. It would have been a stronger story in the end.
Fangirls.
Like I said, it seems like Nintendo heard the criticism of Wind Waker, and I think they went too far the other way. The whole kingdom drowned in shadows, with only a tiny village left. Horseback duels in the rain. Ganondorf as an evil god providing power to his disciple. Sweeping vistas, creatures of shadow, and a Zelda that shows up in memes as a heartless monster.
Twilight Princess was a lot of fun to play, but there was no emotional context for me. The only moment I felt anything not directly related to pressing buttons was at the very end with the teardrop and the mirror. Everything else was just something I thought was Very Serious but not particularly resonant.
It's a good game. I doubt I'll come back to it.
⏮ back to Legend of Zelda reviews index
schoolpsychnerd and I got married, our friends pooled their money and efforts and got us a Wii as a wedding present, back when Wiis were at the height of their popularity and people would stand in line for hours just at the rumor of stock arriving. They also got us two games, one for each of us--schoolpsychnerd got Cooking Mama, which she played for probably fifty hours, and I got Twilight Princess, which I played for maybe six. At first I really liked it, but I soured on it pretty quickly. I had never bought into the anti-Wind Waker craze, so while I liked the new art style I didn't view it as a return to the true spirit of Legend of Zelda or any of the other pre-release complaints about Wind Waker you can hear read in the Retronauts Wind Waker episode. No, I didn't like the controls. There were games where the Wii motion controls really worked, like Super Mario Galaxy, and games where they didn't, like Twilight Princess. Movement with the nunchuck was fine, but combat was painful. The last straw came with the fight on horseback with King Bulbin, which took me almost half an hour. I eventually won, but put the game down and never went back to it, and when
schoolpsychnerd and I moved to Japan, we left our Wii behind in America because we (incorrectly) thought that Japanese TVs used a different television system than America's NTSC. And until this month, I never played it again. But this time I played the GameCube version, so the controls were just fine.
The Japanese name doesn't have any special meaning here. It's just a transliteration of "Twilight Princess."
Twilight.
I don't know whether or not Nintendo cared about criticism of Wind Walker in the run up to Twilight Princess. I don't even know if they knew about it. Maybe not, since even recently Yoshinori Kitase only learned that Western fans hated the art in the mobile port of Final Fantasy VI from being asked about it in a Kotaku interview. But it feels like they cared and wanted to do something different. It's obvious in one of my favorite fan reactions, at the way the crowd at E3 2004 lost their minds when they realized that the Lord of the Rings-esque trailer they're watching is for the next Legend of Zelda game. It's obvious in the game's opening, which, in contrast to Wind Waker's cheery melody under a sunny ocean sky, has a choir singing elegiacally as Link rides Epona across a crumbling bridge under the red light of a setting sun.
In Minish Cap, Link and Zelda are childhood friends. In Twilight Princess, Link lives alone in a tiny nameless village--it's called トアル村 (Toaru Mura, "Toaru Village"), but this is a pun, since とある means "a certain" or "one particular"--and his closest friends are the only other children in the village, most of whom are half his age. The very early game involves a plan for one of the villagers to take a sword as a gift to Princess Zelda without realizing that it's already too late. The entirety of Hyrule has been swallowed by the Twilight, and Toaru Village is the only part left.
This isn't unusual for the Zelda series, since the first game took place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with survivors huddling in caves, but I think the Twilight is more effective because Link is there when the apocalypse happens. When the Twilight washes over Toaru Village and turns the villagers into shadows who don't realize they've been transformed, Link can listen to their fears of the monsters they see prowling outside as they're trapped in stasis, unable to move forward, eternally afraid.
Monster vs monster.
Also, Link is a wolf.
The reason for this is never explained in the game. Midna, the creature of Twilight who accompanies Link for most of the game and provides snarky commentary and hints, says that Twilight transforms people into spirits who still think they're alive and trapped in a world of shadows, but not Link. Link gets a fursona.
This is the primary gimmick of Twilight Princess, and most of the early game is divided into two stages. An area is shadowed in Twilight, and Link must explore it in wolf form to find the shards of light and restore power to the local spirit. While a wolf, Link has heightened animal senses, the ability to leap long distances, and a wolf's combat skills and ability to leap on enemies and bite them repeatedly. Once the spirit's power is restored, Twilight fades from the area and Link (and everyone else) is restored. Then Link does the usual Legend of Zelda activity list, talking to everyone, collecting trinkets, riding around on Epona, and looking for the temple to raid to progress the plot. Three temples, something happens, more temples, the game ends. The usual.
After that something, Link gains the ability to transform into a wolf at any time, though Midna warns him not to do it in front of witnesses. However, there's never any reason to do it at all unless there's an immediate task to accomplish. If there's a ghost to kill, transform into a wolf so Link can see it and bite it. If there's no way forward, transform into a wolf and see if there's soft ground where Link can dig a hole. Otherwise, don't bother. Jumping, digging, and smelling are the only tools wolf Link has available, so it's almost always inferior.
Skate or die.
That's a major problem with Twilight Princess--it's too conservative and too close to Ocarina of Time's venerable formula, and even when it tries something new, it doesn't have the confidence to do much with it.
This is most evident in the slingshot, the first item that you find. In Ocarina of Time, there was a clear reason to have both the slingshot and the bow. Child Link uses the slingshot, Adult Link uses the bow, and since the game involves swapping between each time period, there's always a use case for each weapon. Twilight Princess has both the slingshot and the bow, and once you get the bow there's no reason to ever use the slingshot again. Even after getting just the Gale Boomerang, the slingshot becomes superfluous. It just takes up space in Link's inventory.
This is true of most of the new dungeon items too. In the first temple of the second half of the game, there's a new item called the Spinner that lets Link do sick kickflips while grinding on rails throughout the temple. It looks like a top that's covered in spiked wheels and it's fantastic. And then outside the Execution Site (Eng: Arbiter's Grounds), there's one place for sick kickflips, a few small rails scattered here and there, and nothing else. The Hawkeye, which lets Link look into the distance and can be attached to the bow to make sniper shots, is almost never useful. The Ball and Chain is great for smashing ice and frost monsters in Snowpeak Ruins, but otherwise its usefulness is debatable. It can kill Gibdos in a single hit, but there aren't enough of them to matter and for any other enemy its power is outweighed by its sluggishness. The Copy Rod (Eng: Dominion Rod) is required for a long, multi-room puzzle in the Temple of Time involving transporting a statue from one end of the temple to the other that's a lot of fun, but after that it's literally useless for the next few hours and after that is just a glorified shovel. Basically, anything that's not a Zelda staple like the hookshot or the bow or the boomerang is underused.
Really, it's a problem with Zelda puzzle design. "Switch to Item, use in Place" is still about as sophisticated as it gets most of the time, and that doesn't leave much room for creatively using most of Link's toolset.
It's high noon.
In some ways, my favorite part of the game is the way it feels, the kind of thing that can't be given a numerical score but is an invaluable part of the experience of play. Hyrule Field feels expansive in a way that it doesn't in Ocarina of Time, and riding across it with Epona was a joy. The way the setting sun bathed the terrain in a red glow meant that I took almost as many screenshots of the game as I did in Wind Waker, even with the mid-00s abuse of bloom lighting and the blurry filters laid over half the game. Link twirling his sword around and then sheathing it with a serious expression is almost comical, but I'd be lying if I said I thought it was stupid. It looks great, especially when he does it right after an iaijutsu strike.
Even the tools that aren't required are still fun to actually use. I'd sometimes switch to the ball and chain and send enemies flying, especially if I was fighting bulblins riding on giant boars. I think I used bomb arrows more often than I used regular arrows. The various sword techniques that Link learns are more flashy than worthwhile, but I already mentioned the iaijutsu strike, which felt amazing when I could pull it off.
And if Epona counts as a tool, she's one of the best ones. Partway through the game you gain the ability to warp, and after that Epona loses a lot of her utility, since until almost the very end it's only possible to summon her in very specific spots. But she's enormously fun to ride. In a time when Elder Scrolls: Oblivion still made me slowly dismount before drawing my sword, being able to perform both archery and swordplay from horseback was great. Riding enemies down never stopped being fun. Even the way the field of view narrows when using a speed boost seems deliberately crafted, and I wish there had been more reason to use Epona, or even an outdoor dungeon that required a horse to navigate. She didn't get her due.
"I wonder if we're just collecting bizarre things?"
Unfortunately, I can't say that I had the same attachment to the other characters. Other than Midna, who is with Link throughout the entire game, I barely remember the others. There were the kids in Toaru Village. One of them is named Malo, and I only remember this because he opens a shop. Iria is obviously set up to be the childhood friend who has a crush on Link, but she gets kidnapped early on and then loses her memory, so she's not around for most of the game. Moi the swordsman seems set up to be an important character, but outside of Toaru Village he barely appears.
Teruma runs a bar and has a society devoted to investigating the weird things happening in Hyrule but doesn't really explain why she's doing it. Kakariko Village is half-ruined, with run-down buildings and monsters in the shadows at night, but the village is more interesting than anyone who lives there. Hyrule Castle Town is bustling, with dozens of NPCs going about their business, and it finally looks like a realistic urban center. But most of the NPCs are only there for color and can't be interacted with.
Hello. I'm evil.
I think I'm spoiled after Wind Waker. Wind Waker gave Link a relationship with Zelda that developed over the course of the entire game, and even managed to explain why Ganondorf became evil and what the wish in his heart was when he laid hands on the Triforce. It had Link's obāchan, who I stopped by to check in on whenever I was near Puroro Island and who
schoolpsychnerd constantly asked me about. In contrast, Zelda barely has any screentime in Twilight Princess and doesn't speak to Link until the end. Ganon has even less--the best comparison I have is to one of those Final Fantasy bosses like Zeromus or Necron who appear out of nowhere and reveal they were the real villain all along. Ganon gets no buildup and not even any explanation. He's the real mastermind, but anyone who doesn't already know who he is would have no reason to care about the reveal. They'd probably just be confused about who this weird redhead talking about darkness is.
There are Zelda games without Ganon, like Majora's Mask. Zant had a connection to Midna, plenty of buildup during the game, and a reason for his power play over the World of Shadow. They should have had the confidence to just make him the ultimate villain. It would have been a stronger story in the end.
Fangirls.
Like I said, it seems like Nintendo heard the criticism of Wind Waker, and I think they went too far the other way. The whole kingdom drowned in shadows, with only a tiny village left. Horseback duels in the rain. Ganondorf as an evil god providing power to his disciple. Sweeping vistas, creatures of shadow, and a Zelda that shows up in memes as a heartless monster.
Twilight Princess was a lot of fun to play, but there was no emotional context for me. The only moment I felt anything not directly related to pressing buttons was at the very end with the teardrop and the mirror. Everything else was just something I thought was Very Serious but not particularly resonant.
It's a good game. I doubt I'll come back to it.
⏮ back to Legend of Zelda reviews index
