Revisiting Skyward Sword

As already mentioned, I'm currently revisiting Skyward Sword on the Wii (U) again to get a better appreciation for the upcoming HD remaster. For this I've picked up a Hero Mode savegame from four years ago, where I was replaying the game as a preparation for Breath of the Wild, but I didn't finish the run, because the new Zelda game arrived and was naturally more interesting.

For now this was ideal, however, because I could dive right back into action without taking away too much away from playing Skyward Sword HD on the Switch. And you can take the "diving" part quite literally, because four years ago I left off at the start of the Song of the Hero quest, which is what many consider to be the worst part of the game. If I can get through that again with the old Wii experience, then the Nintendo Switch version should feel like a blessing...

It's actually not that bad, however. The third Imprisoned fight is the easiest and can be done rather quickly. I also already had two Air Potions+ in my Adventure Pouch, which make hunting for the Tadtones in the flooded Faron Woods somewhat fun. Only problem was that I was unable to go straight, Link was always drifting slightly to the left or right while swimming. The same can happen with the Beetle, where this probably just was a calibration issue.

When I was playing through the game originally, I never had too many issues with the controls other than that it failing to register when you're holding your sword upwards, which can be extremely frustrating whenever you need Skyward Strikes in a battle. My biggest issue this time, however, was using items, especially if you need to use them quickly. I'm already pre-selecting whatever I may need, but to use the item you have to briefly press "B" again, but often the game then thinks that I want to switch items and then I stand there with bombs in my hand instead of the bow. It then also doesn't help that the gameplay keeps going while you switch items.

So, I seriously hope that the button controls of Skyward Sword HD will make switching and using items less prone to mistakes. But at the same time I'm also worried that the sword controls with an analogue stick will simply not do it for me, where I will have to try...

I also hope that they will improve the information about the Goddess Cubes by maybe adding counters on the map and the locations of the ones you've already found. On the Wii all you have is the dowsing feature, but that's slightly inconvenient. They could even add one more cube per area to make it a full 30, while they are at it.

Anyway, the whole "Tokayblin" part at Eldin Volcano is also quite relaxed, but the part of the Song of the Hero quest that I hated the most is Lanayru. Overall I like the desert the best in this game, but that last bit is just not fun, where my troubles with quickly using items even made me fail a couple of times, because I kept getting shocked by Technoblins, while trying to kill them with the bow.

And I'm not a fan of the whole Lightning Round. I wanted to complete all side-quests, while I'm at it, but the majority of boss battles in this game are just not fun anymore in my opinion. And to make things worse, you can only choose the first boss and then the dragon keeps throwing them at you at random, so you can't just go for the easier bosses, where in Hero Mode you might also have to already face the final Ghirahim, who can be tough. Luckily, it always saves Demise for last.

Well, I used to be quite skilled at fighting all the bosses nine years ago, but that's long in the past and now I was struggling with some of them, especially with the timings of the shield bashes during the Ghirahim battles and all that. Here I can totally see how people could get frustrated with the controls and you really need to practice all the bosses first, before you can attempt to get the Hylian Shield.

So, for me this was probably not the best start into "Skyward Sword month", but it can only get better from here on out. I'm really curious how the HD remaster will play now.