My RNG rolled for me to review Twilight Princess next a few days ago, and I’ve been sitting here trying to formulate why I just didn’t like it. There are countless reviews bashing the game in for cliched reasons like “it’s OOT 2.0″ or “there’s nothing original here” or “worst Ganon fight ever” or “brown and gritty, grim-dark Call of Duty wannabe.” Obviously, these criticisms range from sort of having a point to being completely absurd. I often see a picture posted on message boards describing the Zelda cycle, in which everyone hates on the latest Zelda game then hails it as a masterpiece when the next comes out. Indeed, it seems like perceptions of Twilight Princess have changed since its initial release: many consider it their favorite entry in the series, and I’m left scratching my head. Not as much as when others hail Skyward Sword, but I’ll get to that one eventually.
So, to begin I’ll focus on the “OOT 2.0” criticism. I would not have minded if Twilight Princess came out like a modernized Ocarina of Time. See, I liked Ocarina of Time and think it’s largely a victim of N64 era games aging poorly. Ocarina kept things simple, having a rudimentary plot that didn’t interrupt the game too much. Hyrule Field was relatively small while still feeling open, and allowed the player to explore areas he couldn't do much in yet ahead of time, sort of like Link to the Past did. It wasn’t my favorite Zelda game and never will be, but it got the job done and laid a good foundation for the rest of the series’ 3D entries. Twilight Princess is NOT like Ocarina of Time. It is a game with tons of intrusive dialogue (which doesn’t work out so great since Link has no personality and the player doesn’t even weigh in on what he’s saying like the Persona protagonists do) and little to no possible exploration. I was pretty hard on Wind Waker in an earlier review here, but that game at least let you wander the Great Sea.
The overdone storytelling is a big problem to me. Nintendo has been making its games wordier and wordier lately, and not to their benefit. This is worrisome because I think that games, ideally, should be able to function as competent works of literature, and the progress the RPG genre has made in the last thirty years should have been a good sign. Unfortunately, Nintendo tries to force drawn out conversations in games that have no business with them. Super Mario Galaxy‘s cutscenes before facing Bowser are loathsome and unskippable to boot. Metroid: Other M tried to analyze Samus’s character and produced downright offensive results that may even have assassinated her character for good–any Metroid fan can explain why Samus keeping silent most of the time was a positive thing. And now, the Zelda games are punctuated with moments of sitting there and skipping text, wondering when Fi is going to stop her explanation of how you need to carry potions in to dungeons for the fifth time. There’s a time and place for this kind of narrative, but if Nintendo is not willing to let Link get involved with the story around him, then words need to be kept to a minimum. Super Mario RPG is the prime example of a game getting this balance right: there’s dialogue, but it’s short and to the point, and even the silent Mario gets involved by acting out certain conversations and making exaggerated gestures. In other words, there are options. The minds behind Zelda are not taking advantage of any of them.
Another negative aspect of the story is, for lack of a better angle, how seriously it takes its ‘dark’ qualities. Foreword here: this is pretty subjective, and I expect some people will downright disagree, but I’m going there anyway. When I hear “The Twilight Realm” and see the cartoony beasts that inhabit it and Midna’s baffling character design, the first thing my mind jumps to is the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, which is straight up impossible to take seriously. I also think of Shadow the Hedgehog, but that’s probably unfair. And yet, Twilight Princess thinks I’m going to find this menacing. It doesn’t help that I can beat the scary monsters easily in Link’s ‘inferior’ Wolf form. Comparing the supposed dark elements of Twilight Princess to those in Majora’s Mask, the latter is certainly the more intense and frankly frightening game. That’s because Majora’s Mask is more subtle about its creepy elements. The Happy Mask Salesman appears two or three times in the entire game, but he makes an impression because the scenes involving him stand out: they are odd moments in an otherwise normal world. (See also: Majora’s mask itself, Link screaming when transforming, the Elegy of Emptiness statues, etc)
Gameplay-wise, I feel Twilight Princess is just doing the same old thing with a couple of new toys. It’s not as bad of a rehash as some claim, and like I implied earlier, I don’t inherently mind so much if they rehash Zelda. The new items like the ball and chain and Spinner are pretty cool, honestly, although they suffer from some odd design decisions. Chief among them: you don’t use the new items much outside of their dungeons, which is frustrating, and it’s one of the few things I think Skyward Sword improved on. One of the best changes made to the series was the ability to swing the sword while running. It expanded Link’s flexibility in a very positive way, and sadly has not returned since this game. What the heck, developers?
So at the start I expressed that I can’t really explain what I disliked about Twilight Princess. After freewriting and coming up with all these comparisons to other games in the series, I guess what it boils down to is this: Zelda has been running a long time, and it’s plainly been done better than what Twilight Princess offers. If it were the only Zelda game I had played, maybe I’d see more in it. Does this mean I can’t look at the game objectively? Well, I think I could if I could be bothered to play it again. Unfortunately, the lack of free exploration makes that prospect unappealing. I enjoy getting lost in Zelda games. I like trying to learn the geography of the land, just as I did as a kid in Link’s Awakening. The newer games simply don’t offer that feeling. Everything’s handed to you on a silver platter, and I don’t feel accomplished at the end of the game. I don’t remember what the dungeons were like because I didn’t struggle in them. I can tell you the layout of every dungeon in LTTP by heart. Basically, I’m complaining about the same things I did in Wind Waker, only now the vibrant art design and great music aren’t there to distract me from the game’s underlying flaws. In closing, I want to stress that it’s entirely possible I have just outgrown this series and it’s still as good as ever, but man, I’m bored with it now.
5.5
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