Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess - Review

I love the Legend of Zelda franchise. I have very fond memories of playing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link on the NES over at my Cousin's house as a kid. Since then I've played almost every single incarnation of the Legend of Zelda that I could. NES, SNES, Gameboy, it didn't matter, I loved them all. I rank The Legend of Zelda a Link to the Past as one of my favorite games.

When the Wii came out I was very excited to hear about Twilight Princess, I wanted to play it, I needed to play it. So when I finally bought my Wii it was the first game I picked up. But something wasn't right...

When I played Twilight Princess on Wii, something felt off. I couldn't get into it, I played it for about five hours and nothing pulled me in. The controls felt off as well, despite the fact that swinging around a wiimote to control your sword should feel natural, it didn't. It just felt wrong.

So I put it on hold for a bit, decided to play some other games. Maybe I just wasn't in the mood of a Zelda game.

One day while waiting for a game to come from Gamefly I decided to start up Twilight Princess again. I got about five hours into it and had the exact same thought as before. Something felt off. So I put it down again.

It was kind of a disappointment. As much as I love Legend of Zelda I just couldn't get into Twilight Princess, and yet I really wanted to play it.

A couple months down the road I had an "Aha!" moment. I didn't like the controls on the Wii... but it was also available on Gamecube. So I threw it on my Gamefly queue and waited.

There really was no difference between the Gamecube version and the Wii version, visuals aside. The first five hours or so of the game were not anymore exciting on the Gamecube, but this time I was ready for it. Ready to push on through.

The controls weren't any better either. In fact the controls were sometimes downright frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I went left when I meant to go straight, or how many times I accidentally jumped down a hole when I didn't mean to... tons of little examples of controls just not being what I thought they should be. I also wasn't able to invert my Y axis either (It might be Z, I can't remember which is which).

And yet I was having fun. Even with all the problems I was having with controls I was still having fun.

After about the six hour mark, the game started to pick up. Slowly at first but then at an increasing speed. By the twentieth or so hour I was having a lot of fun, it felt like Legend of Zelda again.

The new additions to the game felt natural, the double claw shot and the spinner were great. Though I wished they had been used more during the game. Going from Light Link to Dark Link was also fun, especially when you could do it at will. Everything new felt like it could be old. It worked out very well.

At the end of the day I had a great time playing Twilight Princess, it took me about 58 hours or so to beat it and at least 53 of those were incredibly enjoyable... the other 5 weren't bad, just kind of like a boring walkthrough tutorial.

If I had to suggest either the Wii version or Gamecube version I'm not sure which I'd pick. Despite the control issues the Gamecube honestly felt more natural. Maybe it's because I didn't play it enough on the Wii, but to me the Gamecube control felt the way a Zelda game should be, though that's just my opinion.

If you haven't already played Twilight Princess and you own either a Wii or a Gamecube I highly recommend picking it up.

Squid.