Skyward Sword HD: Controls Hands-On

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD was released today and its big new feature are the new button controls. Let's take a look at how the game plays now and how the different control options compare.

First of all, the game supports every way you want to play: Joy-Cons, Pro Controller, handheld mode or on a Nintendo Switch Lite. When playing with Joy-Cons you can switch between motion controls and button-only controls at any time via the options, which is very practical. With a Pro Controller or in handheld mode you're stuck with the button controls, of course. You still have the option to use motion controls for aiming (similar to all other 3D Zelda remasters), however, and to use motion controls for steering the camera, where both of this can be set individually.

There are also options to invert the camera controls, both horizontally and vertically, but this will invert the controls for aiming / the first person view as well, where there are no separate options for this. This was already done better by other Nintendo games, like Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, and hopefully will get patched in later on. At least there is a separate option for inverting the vertical steering of your Loftwing, Beetle and so on. That was thoughtful, because the inverted scheme might feel more natural here, especially with the Loftwing.

Now, the following button layout is the same for both the motion and the button-only controls:

• A: actions
  
• B: dashing / Loftwing slow down
  
• X: use Harp / Loftwing charge
  
• Y: re-center motion controls
  
• ZL: target enemies
• ZR: swap and use items
• R: access items in your Adventure Pouch
  

For the button-only controls, you will use the right stick to do most of the actions that normally get done with the Wii Remote or the right Joy-Con. So, you will swing your sword in the direction of the stick inputs and you can stab by pressing the stick. It's also used for throwing or bowling objects in your hands, as well as using certain items, like the Bug Net.

The Bug Net feels really awkward, however, where it snaps back to the center whenever you let go of the stick and it's not so easy to change its orientation properly with just the stick. You might accidentally scare off the insects with that behavior, before you ever catch them.

And while sword works overall quite well, using the stick comes with a slight amount of delay, where this latency can be quite critical... Deflecting Ghirahim's projectiles with the sword for example seems now a lot harder than it used to be because of this.

This delay is probably there, because the game makes you hold out the sword when you press the right stick in any direction. To actually swing the sword you have to flick the stick, where the game probably first has to check that you're not holding, which then causes this latency.

All actions of the Nunchuk / the left Joy-Con motions got mapped to the L-stick button, so you roll while dashing and perform shield bashes by pressing the left stick. This sounds awkward at first, but actually works surprisingly well.

What doesn't work so well is switching items, because you have to hold the R or ZR button for this, then press the right stick in the direction of the item, hold the stick and then release R / ZR. If you release the stick before the shoulder button, nothing will happen. This worked a lot more intuitively with the motion gestures.

This is similar for throwing or bowling objects in your hands, like bombs, where you have to press and hold the R-stick either up or down for this, aim with the L-stick and then press the button.

And while it's nice that you can move the camera freely now via the right stick, having to hold L for this takes some getting used to and might lead to some accidental sword swings.

But the weirdest part about the button controls are Spin Attacks and Fatal Blows, for which you have to quickly move the R-stick left, right, and left again or up, down, and up respectively, which also works in the mirrored way. That's prone to errors, where the motion controls with moving both Joy-Cons in the same direction work much more reliably for this.

Overall the motion controls feel quite close to the Wii (U) counterpart. They are somewhat better, because you get two gyroscopes instead of just one, which makes all actions that originally got performed with the Nunchuk (like shield bashes) a lot more reliable.

However, since the Nintendo Switch doesn't come with a sensor bar, there is no way of automatically re-centering your controllers towards the TV. Of course this used to be a double-edged sword, because other light sources could interfere with the Wii Remote. You won't have this issue with the Joy-Cons, but you'll also have to re-center them very often with the Y button.

This doesn't seem to happen on its own whenever you use one of the items that require aiming, like the Slingshot or the Beetle. You activate the item and it can already start off-centered, which is super bad and can even screw you up during battles. An easy fix would be to re-center your aiming automatically whenever you swap to an item. This would solve a lot of issues here, where hopefully Nintendo will provide a patch for this as well. Curiously, if you use motion controlled aiming for the button controls, it already does exactly that.

So, neither the button-only controls, nor the motion controls seem fully ideal for this... Which is a shame. The game works mostly fine with either variant, but mistakes will happen, maybe even more so than back on the Wii.