Full Review

After Nintendo took The Wind Waker in an entirely different art direction with the cell-shading on the Gamecube, many gamers weren't too sure what to think. The gameplay was completely Zelda, but most fans wanted the realistic visuals that brought the series to huge new levels with The Ocarina of Time on the Nintendo 64; the marvelous 1998 record setting hit.

Then, it surfaced.

Sometime in 2003, Nintendo released footage of a new Zelda for the Gamecube with the same realistic visuals as Ocarina of Time. After numerous delays, and finally one giant delay to reconfigure the control scheme for a Wii release, The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess was released for Gamecube in January 2007 (a month after the Wii release). Twilight Princess had a lot of build-up before it finally came out, and a year later it's damn near safe to say that it lived up to the hype surpassing many expectations along the way. After all, it had a lot to live up to after the high mark that Ocarina of Time set on the N64.

I'm not going to say that it is better than OoT, but it is the most fun I've had since then. The story in TP dives very deep on the weird side and drags at times. Actually, I wasn't too impressed with the story, but it had it's moments. TP starts out with our hometown homie Link in the village of Ordon. While Link is being scolded by his best friend Ilia (that's "i", and then "L") for not taking care of Epona very well, they're interrupted and charged at by some kind of fugly looking monster on a giant boar. Link is knocked to the ground and nearly unconscious when the monster sweeps up Ilia and their friend Colin and rides away. After you're introduced to the strange character, Midna, and take control of a wolfy Link, you end up in a creepy dark area which looks eerily similar to Hyrule Castle. Once Midna sort of explains a bit of what's going on, you begin to get into the bigger picture of the Twilight, a darkness that's taking over Hyrule Castle, and threatening to devour all of Hyrule. Again, the plot has it's interesting points, but most of the time it wasn't enough to keep any more interest than just getting to the next point in the game.

The twilight is pretty much what the game revolves around. While Link's in the twilight he is automatically transformed into a wolf, which simplifies fighting to lunging at your opponents. Attacking as wolf Link is clunky, and after the first few areas of twilight the only thing you're going to think about next is when you transform back to Link. Once Link is able to transform into a wolf and back outside of the twilight and you can do it whenever you want, then playing around as a wolf every once in awhile is okay. The only advantage to Link transforming into a wolf are three key abilities; wolf sense, digging, and transporting. There are areas in dungeons that require either the wolf sense or digging, or both, in order to continue on to the next area or to complete a puzzle. There were tons of times where I'd walk around an area far longer than I was suppose to and start to get incredibly frustrated at the game. It would usually just ding on me to transform and use the wolf sense, and several minutes of frustration is solved in less than five seconds. After defeating fights against certain special enemies, you can also transport from area to area without having to backtrack on foot when the story requires it. That way, if you're way up North of Hyrule in Zora's Domain and you are suppose to be back down in Southern Hyrule to do something in Faron Woods, it takes a minute to transport there instantly.

The normal gameplay is fantastic. The same physics from OoT are here, as well as the basic mechanics that have made the Legend of Zelda, well, legend for 20 something years. Movements and fighting have been polished so that they are a lot more fluid, making it much easier to pull off Link's signature 1-2-3 swinging sword move than it's ever been before. As you make your way around Hyrule you're going to come up to stones where you have to transform into a wolf and repeat a sequence of different pitched howls; by memory. When you do it correctly, a Golden Wolf appears somewhere in Hyrule. When you go up to this wolf, you're transported to a foggy area with a Skeleton Warrior in front of you who will teach you different moves that can really help (and look bad a*s while doing it) in battle. If you unlock and learn all of the moves, the game becomes a cake walk, but they're fun to use and keeps fighting fresh. Nintendo really got fans rowdied up after they released a video of Link riding around a giant field on Epona while shooting at enemies, a feature that may very well have been the cause of many Nintendo fan's wet dreams ever since gamers took Epona's reins in 3-D in Ocarina of Time. Nintendo delivered. You can fight with your sword and shoot arrows while on Epona in Twilight Princess with relative ease, but Nintendo didn't flesh the feature out enough as fans would expect. There are only two or three scenes where you're forced to fight while on Epona that do not last very long, and are nowhere near as epic as the video depicted. But the feature is there, and it is fun to play with and nice to finally be able to do.

Some of the new items/weapons in TP are completely genius. The boomerang makes its return with a new kind of power. Yes, power (more power! *cue Tim Allen grunts*). Instead of another boring cliche weapon, the Gale Boomerang is infused with the power of wind. When you set it to either X or Y on the controller and bring it out to use, you can select up to five targets for the boomerang to hit with a giant swirling wind of gust when you let go. Another of the new weapons is the Double Clawshot. Finally! Why it's taken until now, I don't know, but the Double Clawshot is awesome. Now when you hook on to something, you can reach with your other arm and hookshot to another target instead of being limited to only dropping from the first target you hooked to. There are other new items, but the boomerang and clawshot are old-time favorites with some new school flavor. Many of the completely new items are best to discover while playing, there are a couple that require the words "holy sh*t" as a description. As in previous Zelda's, the dungeon layouts are designed heavily on finding hidden switches and completing puzzles with the use of items you pick up along the way. The general area designs are back like the wooded area Faron Woods, the watery Zora's Domain, and even the Gerudo Desert.

Coming out at the very end of the Gamecube's life (actually the Wii version came out first), Nintendo's had the longest time to work on the game. After the five hundred delays, Twilight Princess turned out to be one of the best looking games on the system. Most of the game has such a large draw, it reminds me of when I played Final Fantasy XI for the first time and was in complete awe at the vastness of the world. The different elemental areas are full of a lot more details, and every area in general feels like there's so much more going on. The bosses look gigantic and cleverly designed, but they're way too easy to take down most of the time. I'm always impressed with the sound in the Zelda titles, and Twilight Princess is no different. Every little sound effect and instrument used in the music playing in the background adds a bit of realism to the game, helping to completely devour you and take you out of the real world and into Hyrule.

Overall
I'm sure that many gamers will concur, but when I first started up The Legend of Zelda: The Twilight Princess, I had the same giddy and mesmerized reaction that I got from OoT almost 10 years ago. If you're planning on getting a Wii anyway (good luck finding one even now), skip the Gamecube TP and get the Wii version. The graphics are slightly cleaner, it uses full functionality of the Wii mote, and the only major difference in the game is that the levels are flipped from the Gamecube version. So North is South and East is West. Whichever system you get it for, any Zelda or Nintendo fan needs to add this game to their collection.

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