Skyward Sword HD Blade Journal, Entry 5

My first journey through Skyward Sword HD has been finished. And when I had started this blog series, I didn't expect it to last this many posts. Of course it's still less than the other 3D remaster or remakes, like the Twilight Princess HD Diaries from 2016, but it's still a good amount, considering that the only novelty were the new controls.

And I kept using the new controls for most of the time, where I wouldn't want to miss them from this point on. The third Ghirahim battle worked significantly better with the stick controls, where for example it's much more reliable to reflect his sword beams and to stab his chest. And fighting Demise was great as well, simply because you don't have to worry about Link not holding his word up properly.

But first things first. Before going into the Sky Keep, I actually spent some more time at the Statue of the Goddess to farm Skyloft Mantises and Sky Stag Beetles, just because I can. I'm not sure I will go to the same extremes as on the Wii, where I had 99 of almost everything, but I'm having fun with this and I want to spend more time on making the most out of this savegame, before I go in to a New Game+. 

This includes minigame records as well, where I'm spending some more time getting good times against the individual bosses and in all the Silent Realms. For the latter I wanted to score at least a rare treasure with each one, where Lanayru has specific time requirements for every single Silent Realm.

With some of the other minigames I want to have some good scores as well, where I've managed to get below 63 seconds in the Heart Stopping Rickety Coaster for example. This particular minigame seems to give people some troubles, where you normally need to go under 65 seconds for a Piece of Heart. I also want to achieve those 43 cuts in the Clean Cut, but I couldn't do it yet with either controls...

Anyway, after all these distractions it was finally time to go into the final dungeon, the Sky Keep. And this is still one of the most unique final dungeons in the series thanks to the idea with the slide puzzle. The rooms themselves are simply based on the six main dungeons, where this is similar to the final dungeon in Ocarina of Time and some other Zelda games, so nothing too special. But the fact that you can rearrange the entire dungeon via terminals always makes this interesting to play.

Still, the different themes, as well as the combat sections give you a good idea how a Savage Labyrinth / Cave of Ordeals could have looked like in Skyward Sword, where it's a shame that they didn't consider to add such a dungeon for the remaster. With the new confidence that I've found in the button-only controls, I would have liked such a challenge.

It also could give you some additional rewards, like more Medals or another empty bottle. The five bottles in the game are enough for all five different potions, but I like to keep one fully upgraded potion of each time around for my "collection". And with that it would be nice to have a sixth bottle for some other stuff, like fairies.

Well, one enemy where I would have to practice a lot more is Dreadfuse, where I find this battle in the Sky Keep to be quite frustrating, because this mechanical monster just behaves so erratically different from everything else in its third phase that I'm having quite some troubles with it. And since this fight has you completely cornered, there is no way to catch some breath. You have to figure it out somehow quickly or it kills you.

Now, I want to play the game again in Hero Mode soon, maybe even once I'm done farming treasures and insects, as well as competing in minigames and the Lightning Round. I'm not sure when this will happen, probably around September, where this might keep me busy until Metroid Dread comes out.

About Hero Mode, I completely forgot that you can start a new quest log in Hero Mode as well, where this lacks the New Game+ aspect of it. This would have been more interesting when I was replaying the Wii version four and a half years ago, before Breath of the Wild came out, because without the need of collecting treasures and insects the game wasn't really that enjoyable to revisit.

This might sound contradictory right now, as I'm in the middle of preparing such a Hero Mode playthrough yet again, but I think this is okay for playing the game in Hero Mode again right away. But should I decide to play Skyward Sword HD a third time in a couple of years, then a fresh Hero Mode quest log will certainly be the way to go. It's effectively a third way of playing through the game.