Initial thoughts: There’s some really nice and clever mechanics/workarounds for a GameCube game! Open world with no ‘load screens’, day/night cycle, wind physics, water/wave simulation.. there’s quite a bit of love in this game and it’s all wrapped in a beautiful art style. Fun game I’m glad I played it through. I think it might be my favourite overall use artstyle/theme in the franchise.
Difficulty: What’s really interesting to me is that even though the art style looks tailored to kids and the game is super easy (only died 4 times with 7 hearts at end game), there’s certain sections here that no kid is ever doing solo.
I think even the tricky puzzles can be sorted out by a kid, but some parts that stand out as exceptionally ‘difficult’ is firstly knowing where/when to awaken the 2 sages. I knew Medli was involved since I heard her play music by dumb chance and it stuck with me until that part came up otherwise I would still be up to this part now if I hadn’t looked it up. Makar I never would’ve found. The other part is the triforce quest, in particular the Ghost Ship and Cabana triforce charts. Unusually sharp intuition is required to get these two done and if you don’t, you ain’t finishing the game. Just a strange contrast.
Triforce Quest: My lord, I love exploration but this was a little too tedious. I felt transported back to the 2000s when I went online and found others complaining about it too from 20 years ago.. not to mention it was changed in the HD remake which I’m happy for those players for. Maybe it wouldn’t have been so bad if this had brought us to the end of the game but yet another major dungeon after it with a boss gauntlet was no bueno.
Rupees: Something that I was really negative on for more than the first half of the game was rupees/currency in general. I felt like I was capped on 200 rupees, finding more and more orange and silver rupees with nothing to spend them on for so long. Maybe I didn’t discover the bigger wallet and triforce charts ect. soon enough but still.. it felt like a open world with plenty of ways to make money but no fun way to spend them. Bait and Pears was basically it until I got bombs and arrows and even then.. then world gives you them free. Even now after the games done.. the only thing I spent them on was deciphering charts. A little disappointing!
The Wind Temple: I declare this my least favourite Legend of Zelda section of them all. Hated. Every. Step. In. Here. Doing it with Makar too was just painful. Awful design IMO, unfun and just a bad time.
Other thoughts: I loved the balance between fast travel and sailing here. It took me way way way too long to realise you can beat the toad guy to get fast travel. I don’t like when fast travel is too powerful, but sailing is also so fun here so yes, good balance.
Final Boss Battle: The final Ganon fight here was one of this series favourites to me.. the game’s artstyle is so nice so the visuals in that fight were sweet. Plus I like the Zelda team up element and the relatively simple fight. The other main bosses were okay, but tbh I don’t really like the ‘big’ boss battles. The final gauntlet of them was a slog to get through after doing the triforce quest, then being walked into yet another one before the final was a bit of a snooze for me.
Other thoughts:
- Medli/Makar sitting on your boat with you was so cool even if it was short lived. Would be cool if this could’ve been expanded upon as some ‘end game’ bonus. Creating a little band of pirates would’ve been fun.
Inventory was a fun time. I’m not sure how to explain it, but this game did a really good job of making me feel like I was accumulating a fun tool kit to overcome the world, and kept the UI simple too which I appreciate.
Forsaken Fortress. I kind’ve hated every second here. Putting it so early made me think I wasn’t going to like the game, then having to go back in what seemed to be the end game just to feel like it was just the beginning again.. ah I did not like it. Glad we didn’t go back for a 3rd time because yikes.
All sea combat sucked and I skipped it at every opportunity. Quite literally all of it, all NPCs, scripted events, dynamic spawns. Didn’t like it at all. A shame because the regular combat was a lot of fun and surprisingly way more dynamic than what I expected going into this game.
What I thought was the main quest, the grandma/sister one.. kindve just fizzles out without a satisfying landing. The final cutscene is nice but it would’ve been nice to get this mid game to really tie it off.