Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

I just recently had the pleasure of access to a Wii, and one of the first games I had to finally play was LoZ Twilight Princess. Since I have been playing it, I wanted to start a thread and see what others thought.

I have only been playing it for about 20 hours now, and my feelings are really mixed. First off, the controls seem extremely dated, as do the visuals. Art direction is nice, but actual models and textures are just a step or two over the N64 Zelda's. My theory is that where normally a company will use the same engine for a sequal on a similar platform, they couldn't do that since they wanted a drastically different art presentation from Wind Waker. So, to save time and money, they took the Ocarina/Majora's mask engine and worked from there. Still, the game was delayed a great deal and I know it's now been out over a year.

I can get past the visuals, but the controls are a different matter. After playing games with better control schemes featuring even more things mapped to the controls, it seems crazy that they use pretty much identical controls as the now 7 year old Ocarina of Time. It gets annoying having so many things mapped to the A button, and having Link leap off ledges when he gets near them. Assasin's Creed controls may seem complicated at first, but now that I am reminded of these older control schemes, I appreciate Assassin's Creed controls much more. Altair does what I want a lot easier then Link. During certain scenes in Zelda, such as riding on Epona while fighting enemys and protecting a wagon, you have to coordinate a lot of things (fighting the guys around you, shooting birds out of the sky, putting out the fires on the wagon), but thanks to the controls, this turned out to be much more of a chore and annoying, rather then the fun and exciting scene it could have been. I don't even mind challenging, if it weren't the controls that were the challenge. I am getting used to the controls, but no amount of getting used to them will change that they could have been better.

Also, Zeldas often run a fine line between a game that is made up of chores, and game that is fun. This one started out slow and almost lost my interest before I could finally get out of the first village area.

Anyways, this all sounds negative, but the game still pulls me in with its ingenious puzzles and huge world layout, and general fantasticallity of a Zelda. So, I am enjoying it enough to stick with it so far, but I wanted to know what other people think since I missed the boat on its intial release.

EDIT: I also wanted to say that if you ever want to get into game design, put on your resume that you like escort missions. Because, despite anyone I have ever known saying that hate those, those missions pop up in almost EVERY game. So, obviously the only people who like them are designers who have made it into the industry. College might help, but that's probably moot if you like escort missions.

I got bored with this game after 7 or 8 hours in.

I haven't touched it in over a year.

It was the first Wii game I bought when I picked up the system on launch day on 2006. I got stuck towards the end of the game trying to catch a stupid red fish in the Zora's waterfall cave...so I pushed the game aside for awhile. Shortly after that I bought a 360 and to be honest, my Wii hasn't seen as much playtime since!

Up until that point, I loved the game. I'm not a huge Zelda fan, but I enjoyed the varied gameplay between the wolf and human forms. I'll probably revisit it again soon as I really want to see the outcome of the story.

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I hate, hate, hated it. So much. So very much.

Any particular reason? I guess I want to know if you agree with some of my points againts it.

My favorite Zelda game to date...well, besides Majora's Mask. Nice to see them go for a darker story rather than "frolic through Hyrule" like usual.

Great story, great characters, and fun to play.

I played it on the cube, and it was just... so boring. So very, very boring.

Too many dumb fetchquests, took forever even to get started, the first dungeon was annoyingly large and lacked any sense of fun, wonderment or adventure like a Zelda dungeon should.

I preferred Ocarina of Time, and I didn't like that a whole lot either.

Boring.

I got stuck in the sky temple/dungeon, that was early/mid last year, I havent touched it since.

I'm a huge Zelda fanboy, and it still gets a "meh" from me. It really felt like a step backwards from Wind Waker, which I think was the direction the series needs to take. Ocarina is one of the best games ever made, but I don't want to play it over and over again. I'm still hoping that the next game is much more of a mix of Wind Waker and Majora's Mask.

Well, I loved most of the Zeldas, but I felt Wind Waker was a little annoying because of "boating" everywhere early on. otherwise it was good. I also felt Majora's Mask was a little tedious and felt more like a chore then a fun game. Ocarina is probably my favorite, but if it came out now, I'd probably be saying similar things about it as I am about Twilight Princess, but this isn't 1998. Either way, Twilight Princess still took longer to get out of that initial boring beginning town stuff then Ocarina did.