I might try and post my thoughts on Skyward Sword over the course of my play through. As such, each one of my posts will start with this:
SPOILER WARNING: DO NOT READ ON IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW
I’m going to keep my spoilers to a minimum, but I need to toss that at the top because I might stumble upon some story tidbits or some puzzle help that you might not want to know if you plan on playing through the game yourself.
You’ve been warned.
Last night I worked through the Skyview Temple. Truth be told, this would probably be considered the Forest Temple in older parlance, but there you have it.
There is an image of the entrance to the temple for you. I think I need to start by really praising the art direction and graphics of this game. SS is an incredible mix of the cell-shaded look of Wind Waker and the “realism” of Twilight Princess. No screenshot is going to really be able to tell the whole story, but there are going to be a couple of “whoa” moments as you play through the first temple.
This wasn’t even one of them.
It is a standard Zelda temple in the sense that you solve puzzles, defeat enemies, get a new piece of gear and then use it to get yourself to the boss at the end. The puzzles are varied and sometimes rather funny (I admit that I needed to look how to get past the second real puzzle … moving your sword in a circular motion to make the sentinel eye “dizzy” to unlock a door … it makes sense now), and a lot of puzzles are packed into this one temple.
One thing I did notice is that as the first temple, the difficulty seemed to be ramped up. This is NOT the Great Deku Tree, but you will be able to get through it if you have any video game ability at all.
Finally, you do not find Zelda … so on to the next area!
I was simply floored while playing this yesterday and was really surprised with how well the combat is coming along. While it is still too early to really form any opinions (only five hours into a 50+ hour game), I can see why some people have been calling this the best Zelda ever.
It might just be THAT good.