Nintendo Releases The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

mayberry42 writes "Finally, the wait is over — for European fans, anyway. After months (well, over a year) of delays, the latest adventure of Link is finally out. Reviews for the game are consistently favorable. Famitsu magazine has given it a perfect score. IGN says it's 'the greatest Zelda game ever created,' and even the best game for the Wii. Of course, some of you may have already known this, given that it has already been hacked to run on an emulator (and yes, it looks even better in HD). I would love to hear the opinions of you Europeans who've played it. Is it as good as they say?" (Skyward Sword doesn't come out in the U.S. until Sunday, and not until next week for Japan and Australia.) While still complimentary, Giant Bomb's review goes into a bit more depth on the game's shortcomings.

Re:First!

[tlhIngan]

It's nice to get the first last for once, but I have to say that I don't understand why developers still release their games at different dates in different regions. Especially with the internet, reviews are going to be coming out as soon as the game is out anyway, which if the game is bad will reduce sales in the regions where the game comes out later (not that this is a concern in this case).

i18n, mostly. Translating the story, translating the script, hiring voice actors to say the lines, re-doing UI elements in case stuff doesn't fit (like it often doesn't), doing culture checks etc. (some gestures may be considered obscene, some graphics may be illegal, etc.).

Doing 20+ languages simultaneously would drive anyone up the wall - a problem in one language then has to be fixed, and the fix tested on all the other languages to make sure they still work correctly, etc.

At least, you do Japanese first (easy, Nintendo's native). Then you do English(/French) for North America (maybe Spanish as well). Then you pick either Europe and do the other languages, or Asia and its languages.

Imagine the chaos caused if a worldwide release is held up because someone discovered a bug in some little used language.

Also, doing this allows the disc pressers time to press discs so they're not having to make millions of copies in a month, but hundreds of thousands as the demand ripples through the world.

Re:Slashdot is way behind

[sexconker]

I believe it's the E3 demo that has been out for weeks, not the full game.

Played the demo at Target

[rjejr]

I played the demo at Target today and to misquote Dr. Zira "It's just so damned ugly". I love cell shading, and the cartoony graphics ,and the great color scheme, but it is in my eyes a pixelated mess. I know the Wii can't due HD, but I really thought Nintendo could pull some magic out of a hat on this one and have it look good. I have a hard time looking at most Wii games except the Nintendo ones, both the Galaxy game and SSBB look great. Monster Hunter Tri even looks better than this. I'm really looking forward to playing this come Sunday, but I'm not sure how happy I'll be looking at it (52" 1080p LCD tv).

Re:First!

[BinarySolo]

According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: EU November 18, 2011 NA November 20, 2011 JP November 23, 2011 AU November 24, 2011 As you can see, Japan is in fact not first, and the proximity of the release dates doesn't seem to fit in with your theory that working on localizations is the reason for the staggered launches.

Re:First!

[antifoidulus]

It has to do with retailers really. For whatever reason, in most areas of the world new games(and movies, and music etc.) are only released on a certain day of the week. Not sure why they continue that tradition, but there it is.

Re:motion plus

[Anonymous Coward]

It works decent enough. It is sometimes a little off (for example, a spider enemy needs a thrust to kill, but the Wii Motion generally picks up a thrust as an overarm swing), though for the most part it gets better as you get used to avoiding certain gestures.

One partciular annoying factor is having to recalibrate the controler every now and again. When your character starts swinging the sword in the opposite direction from you, you know its time.

Also, you may have a lot of headaches if you use a third party controller with this game.

Started it last night...

[RogueyWon]

I picked up a copy yesterday and started it last night. Verdict so far? It's ok - pretty good. Heading for a 7/10 or 8/10 kind of score.

It's difficult stepping back to Wii level graphics these days. I didn't notice the difference so much early in the console cycle, but Wii games really do look very grim indeed next to anything else around. The artwork goes some way to compensating - it's very good in places. That said, it doesn't have the really strong visual style we've seen from other games over the last few years; Ratchet & Clank, Gears of War, Dark Souls, Mirror's Edge etc have all carved out really distinctive art styles - and have done so on better hardware. Even on the Wii, Xenoblade Chronicles has had more visual impact. There's just a bit too much "generic fantasy" around Skyward Sword (which is a criticism that can be levelled at a lot of the recent Final Fantasy spin-offs from Square-Enix).

The controls are undoubtedly better than Twilight Princess. There are occasional issues with the motion sensing refusing to register an attack at all, but they're the exception rather than the norm now. That said, I know this is a point about the Wii in general, rather than this game in particular, but I remain unconvinced that motion controls really add as much immersion as they were supposed to. There's that same "lack of connection" feeling that has always undermined motion gaming, be it on the Wii, PS Move or Kinect.

To be honest, if Zelda has one really, overwhelmingly huge problem, it's called "Dark Souls". I know that stylistically, the games are worlds apart (Zelda being a bright, colourful fantasy, while Dark Souls shares its palette with the original Quake) - but they are very similar in gameplay style - the same mix of exploration, combat, back-tracking and problem solving. And in every respect, Dark Souls is infinitely superior; not just to Skyward Sword, but to pretty much everything else in the genre. It's a pity that the reviews focussed so much on the difficulty (insanely hard though it is), because there is a supremely awesome game in there as well - and one that took me 79 hours to beat. The game's melee combat sets the new standard for this genre, with a real and distinctive sense of weight and mass to every weapon. After that, a bit of Wii-mote waggling, even with the Plus enhancements, just feels a bit limp.

Sorry, the text above is more negative than intended. This is a fun game. It's not kept up with the competition, but if you haven't played the competition yet, that might not matter to you.