The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker

The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker was not really worth the time I spent on it. It was a very long game, as a matter of fact – a lot of gameplay hours, which is usually a good thing, but that’s only if there’s a really good plot driving things. Here, unfortunately, the game got rather repetitive and the delays I encountered weren’t because of taxing puzzles that really made me think, but because so much of the game is spent sailing about, looking for tiny little islands or even moving cyclones, without which you cannot progress. Some of the things you had to find were really quite obscure – in the end, I resorted to using a guide.

Let me explain the way I like to play RPGs. In the old days, when I was quite the little computer geek, I would play a single game tirelessly for weeks on end, until every last secret, every last event had been discovered. I would always play it through once on my own, agonising over the difficult bits until I solved them, and wouldn’t check an online guide unless I had been truly stumped for days on end. After that, I would play again with a walkthrough, and make sure I collected absolutely everything there was to collect.

So, after all 108 allies in Suikoden were assembled, and Cloud and gang had a gold chocobo and could summon the Knights of the Round Table in Final Fantasy VII, I was satisfied. I played a dozen or more others, but those two remain my favourites, followed by Chrono Trigger and Wild Arms, though the latter was let down by a painfully slow combat system.

Well, games drifted out of my life in my later teens. I blame the quality of the games for this! And the fact that I made the dubious decision of buying a Japanese PS2. Anyway, these days I only play once, normally on my own, resorting to a guide if I get stuck for about an hour.

I play for the story, and pursue any sub-games I stumble upon until they get dull. So in The Windwaker, for example, I found The Nintendo Gallery (a silly, endless sub-game where you take photos of all the characters in the game), but didn’t bother taking many photos. I went to various hidden island, but needed someone to tell me where to find the ones I needed to get to in order for the game to continue. It’s the most satisfying way, and I just end up feeling that there are better things to do if I play for too long.

The game wasn’t a bad one by any means. It’s a good, solid combat system, which means you don’t have to go through the tedium of levelling up all the time. The story starts out much like any other RPG: the young hero’s sister is kidnapped, and in the attempt to rescue her, he stumbles across an evil plot that threatens the world, and discovers his true destiny. Unfortunately, it pretty much remains as generic as that, and at no point did I particularly care about my little neo-Link (who I called Link anyway) or his little friends. This wasn’t because of the cutesy graphics – they’re fine by me, and a lot more detailed than FFVII’s Cloud ever was, not to mention the sprites of Suikoden! I would perhaps have preferred something a little less twee, but that’s what the upcoming sequel will deal with, I’m sure.

No, it was the lack of anything to really interest me plot- or character-wise, and the repetitive structure (collect so many of these, then so many of those, and fight the same 10 or so baddies over and over again) that were the disappointments. Plus the fact that the game was very easy, despite its length. Oh well! Tomorrow I shall try something new! The game invited me to start all over again (with a worrying moment where the main character is given invisible clothes…but that only meant he stayed in his regular outfit, not that there was going to be some sort of nude mode, which REALLY wouldn’t suit this game!), but I don’t think there’s much appeal to that!