I really enjoyed my time with
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD in a way that makes me regret
frequently bashing on the
original
Twilight Princess for so many years. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely still have notable
criticisms of the core game, but
Twilight
Princess is undeniably a great adventure. Besides some questionable bug-hunting
scenarios in the game’s first half, its main quest is near perfectly-paced and
is simply one compelling venture after another, full of atmospheric dungeons to
explore and monstrous bosses to take down. Just when you think you’ve seen it
all, the game peels back a new layer and hidden pockets of the world reveal
themselves. Its music, its varied bestiary, its quirky characters, and its
large yet focused world all have a high level of special care and attention
paid to them, and its mechanics and feel of play is snappy and satisfying. It’s
not one of my favorite
Zelda games,
fairly far from it in fact, and to me it’s not one of the more special or
stand-out games in the series, but it’s a grand quest that has been carefully
crafted, and one that I always enjoy undertaking.
My biggest criticism of
Twilight
Princess used to be how derivative and redundant it feels. Right from the
get go, it was conceived as a “true successor” to
Ocarina of Time and a service to fans displeased with
The Wind Waker, and therefore the game
has always had a bit of a sour aftertaste for me, given just how much I admire the
series’ daring creativity in following up
Ocarina
with
Majora’s Mask and
The Wind Waker and how brilliant I feel
those games are. While the game’s legacy in this regard is still a sore subject
for me, I’ve gained a better appreciation for the familiar world and callback
nature of
Twilight Princess over the
years, and in my recent playthrough of
TPHD,
I openly embraced this side of the game more than I ever have before. The game
makes it clear that this is the same world that we adventured through in
OoT, but great attention has been made
to show how it has developed and changed. Magic is a thing of the past and
Hyrule has largely embraced technology. This is fitting with the narrative
actually, which deals with dastardly magic-wielders who were imprisoned ages
ago for misusing their power, and I get the impression that, either
figuratively or literally, magic is outlawed in this particular incarnation of
Hyrule. Link’s own arsenal reflects this: instead of using magical fire and ice
arrows, he constructs more pragmatic “bomb arrows”, and instead of magic spells
and wands, he uses a high-tech gear to glide across walls, a no-nonsense ball
and chain, and a more realistic-looking Hookshot than ever before. The game’s
most “magical” item is probably the Dominion Rod, but even this is some sort of
ambiguous mix of science and magic.
Basically, although they largely contain the same locations,
TP’s world actually
feels much different than
OoT’s,
and it’s neat to see how that world has evolved. Kakariko Village is now
straight out of the American Wild West and has a decidedly industrial feel to
it; the Gorons now wear clothing, have a culture centered around sumo
wrestling, and use gigantic magnets to mine ore; Castle Town has grown into a
bustling city, complete with a medical clinic and a ritzy shop reserved for the
upper class. As one further ventures into Hyrule’s historic landscape, echoes
of the past begin to reveal themselves. The most magical area in the whole game
is hidden deep within the forest and that is exactly what it feels like: an
echo, a distant memory of a more enchanted past. It was in this area where it
particularly hit me that
Twilight
Princess is a cleverer
Ocarina
follow-up than I’d previously thought, and the “magic” that I’ve long felt the
game was lacking in comparison to that N64 classic might be quite intentionally
absent…and that’s actually quite brilliant in its own way. While I still don’t
exactly want to be paying Kakariko Village and Zora’s Domain a visit in every
new
Zelda game, I’ve grown to
appreciate what
Twilight Princess
accomplishes, and my initial disappointment in the world’s overt familiarity
has long since worn off and been replaced with an admiration for how this
artfully-crafted world has been constructed.
My biggest criticism with Twilight Princess these days is actually its central narrative,
which is unfortunately plagued with examples of poor storytelling and shallow
attempts to be something “dark” and “deep”. Whereas many previous Zelda games contained a fairly
straightforward and simple plot on the surface with deeper themes embedded in
the details, Twilight Princess goes
about things a bit less subtly and attempts a more overtly complex tale,
utterly tripping all over itself in the process. The situation is dire in the
game’s compelling early sections, but the whole intriguing premise of an eerie
otherworldly force slowly turning Hyrule into a netherworld full of bizarre
monsters and its citizens into spirits terrified to leave their homes completely
falls apart as soon as Link enters Hyrule Castle Town for the first time and
finds that its citizens are simply living out their lives as normal, with the
only hardship being a water shortage that people are only marginally concerned
about. One guard standing in a corner exclaims “I’m so bored…” when you listen
to him as Wolf Link. Dissipating the Twilight from this area literally changes
nothing except for the fact that Castle Town’s citizens are no longer ghosts.
This is very poor storytelling and it all but shatters the game’s eerie
atmosphere in the early bits. A compelling series of events at the mid-game
notwithstanding, the central narrative all but falls off a cliff in the game’s
second half when the game’s antagonist decides to take a vacation until the
finale, but not before supposedly encasing Hyrule Castle in a giant golden
diamond that’s supposed to be threatening I guess? There’s just no narrative
impetus at this point, and the game turns into an adventure for the sake of an
adventure.
Perhaps that’s not the worst thing in the world though, as these later bits
contain some of the best scenarios in the game and one tends to forget why
they’re doing any of it simply because they just can’t wait to see where the
game will take them next, from making soup with Yetis far off in the snowy
mountains to absconding to a City in the Sky ruled by nightmarish chicken
people. Though the whole affair largely lacks the narrative cohesion and
context of many other
Zelda games, by
the time the credits role after an epic finale, one really feels as though
they’ve been on a satisfying adventure. The narrative isn’t all bad as well and
certainly has its strengths. While I wish there was a bit more to it, the Twili
have a fairly compelling backstory and Midna has a decently compelling
character arc (plus, her and Wolf Link are just really cute together). Besides this, the many subplots are often what shine brightest
in terms of
TP’s storytelling, from
touching moments with the timid Colin, to the notably emotional story of Rutela
and her son, to Link’s adventures with the aforementioned Yetis, one of my
favorite sections in any
Zelda game.
This is to say nothing of the Hero’s Shade character, a facet that I’ve always
loved, as well as a memorably subtle narrative moment during the endgame
involving a certain resilient enemy that has hounded Link the whole game. If
nothing else,
Twilight Princess has
heart, but on the whole its main narrative is the kind that is entertaining the
first time through the game, but simply doesn’t hold up under scrutiny or subsequent
playthroughs, and lacks the depth and lasting appeal of previous titles like
Ocarina of Time and
The Wind Waker. Having lots of flashy cutscenes, copious amounts of
dialogue, and being “cinematic” doesn’t necessarily equal good
storytelling in a video game, and
Twilight
Princess, for me, serves as a sterling example of this compared to its
predecessors. There’s much more I could say here, like how laughable and silly
the game’s frequent attempts to be “cool” and “edgy” are, but suffice to say
Twilight Princess has an ambitious
narrative with some high points and some very low points, but is unfortunately
too sloppily-delivered to reach true greatness.
All of this is praise and criticism I could apply to the GameCube and Wii Versions
of
Twilight Princess, but we are
talking about
Twilight Princess HD
here, so let’s talk about what’s new, and whether or not this is a worthy
remaster. The most obvious and strongest aspect of
TPHD is…well…the HD. More specifically, the developers did some
fine texture work here, and this crisp new look shines a new light on the
game’s detailed world, illuminating every moss-covered stone and Hylian letter.
This remaster proves that
TP deserved
an HD remaster just as much as
The Wind
Waker, if not even more so since the original didn’t age as gracefully on a
technical level. I have always loved the art direction in
Twilight Princess: that strange otherworldly glow at night, the
bizarre creature and character designs, and its bright green fields under
perfect blue skies. Taking a walk through Castle Town really demonstrates how
much more vibrant the world feels in
TPHD,
and this game’s artfully-crafted world deserved to be appreciated on modern
televisions. If nothing else, this remaster makes a decently compelling case
for that “realistic”
Zelda game that
many pine for. My qualms with the game’s visual makeover are few, but I do have
some: some textures could have been a little more cleaned up and some graphics
were oddly taken out, like distant bluffs in Kakariko Village. Also, the
lighting seems a little off in some sections and the game’s signature
“atmospheric glow” (aka
bloom) has been muted somewhat, which I found fine for
most of the game but this does take away some of the surreality of the Twilight
sections and especially the late-game Palace of Twilight area, which has lost a
lot of its visual luster in this version. While I’ve yet to go back and
directly compare to the original, I found the look of the game to be mostly
faithful on the whole though. Overall the texture and resolution work cleans up
and polishes
Twilight Princess’s
Hyrule and lets the game’s creative and beautiful art direction truly shine.
Besides the visual makeover (which the game’s screenshots and trailers
really don’t do justice), several smart tweaks have greatly improved the
overall play experience here, each in their own small way, with only a few
questionable outliers. Many animations have been made faster or streamlined
somehow, alleviating some of the most tedious aspects of the original: Link no
longer takes a decade to climb up vines and transforming into a wolf and back
is now only a tap on the touchscreen away. The game’s infamous rupee problem
has been thankfully copiously addressed: no more rupee reminders every time one
turns the game on (thank the goddesses), rupees no longer get thrown back into
an unopened chest when they don’t fit in Link’s wallet, and all of the wallet
upgrades have grown in size (though perhaps still not as much as they should
have). In addition, fifty new collectible “stamps” for use in
Miiverse posts
have been scattered throughout the world, giving the player something new to
find instead of another purple rupee, though I do wish more effort was put into
integrating them into the game’s world. It can be quite jarring to be exploring
an ancient crypt only to open a chest and stumble upon the “Surprised Midna”
stamp. The reward for collecting all of the stamps is also a big spoiler for
those who have never finished
Twilight
Princess before. What is neat though is that there is a stamp for every
letter in this game’s Hylian alphabet, making it easier than ever to read the
Hylian liberally featured throughout the world on signs, in dungeons, on
monuments, and so on. There is also a new “Ghost Lantern” item that makes the
Poe Soul-collecting quest easier to manage, and the game even adds Poe counters
to each area and to dungeons, just like
Ocarina
of Time had with the Golden Skulltulas.
Of course, the game makes use of the GamePad in a similar way to
The Wind Waker HD as well, though not
quite as adeptly as that game did due to some unfortunately awkward interface
issues. Having all of Link’s many gadgets and items always at the ready between
one’s hands is as convenient as ever, but I found myself almost never using the
map on the GamePad’s screen in
TPHD.
This is partly due to the fact that the world map in
Twilight Princess is a lot less important than the one in
The Wind Waker, but is also simply
because I’d rather view the maps on my big TV screen rather than squint down at
the GamePad. Unfortunately and frustratingly, however, the map can not be
scrolled on the TV screen with the right analog stick (which uselessly copies
the function of the left stick) and the designers force the player to use the
touchscreen to scroll the map. Switching to bomb arrows also probably could
have been less awkward, as in order to do so one needs to pause the game, tap
on the bombs on the GamePad, hit a button to combine them with the bow and
arrows, and then unpause, which totally breaks the flow of the experience and
defeats the whole purpose of having the items readily available on the
touchscreen in the first place. Similar to Wolf Link, why couldn’t there just
be a quick “combine” button somewhere on the touchscreen?
Besides this, there are some other additions and tweaks that I’m mostly
indifferent to. I appreciate the ability to use gyro motion control for aiming
and some other functions, as well as the option to aim either in first or third
person, and in my opinion this includes basically the only worthwhile
unique feature of the Wii Version of
Twilight
Princess compared to the GameCube version in this package. Still, I almost
always played with the motion controls off as these days I more and more
appreciate the consistent accuracy of sticks and buttons. It should be noted
that in order to walk around freely in first-person, the player needs to hold
down the “ZL” trigger, unlike in
Skyward
Sword and
The Wind Waker HD,
which is odd. There are less Tears of Light to collect in the first half’s
Twilight sections, though this ultimately doesn’t change too much since one
still has to traverse basically the same ground; there are just a few less bugs
to squash along the way. Still, if someone wants to just blow through these
sections (which are easily the weakest in the game in my eyes, despite an
interesting atmosphere and some good narrative moments) as quickly as possible,
this will shave some time. Finally, there is the Wolf Link amiibo included with
the physical version of the game (the other
Legend
of Zelda amiibo can also be used, but as I don’t own any of them, I won’t
be talking about their functionality…it’s pretty shallow anyway). Wolf Link
basically serves two purposes: it can be used as a “quick start” at the title
screen to immediately jump into a save file, and it can transport Link and
Midna to the new “Cave of Shadows” mini-dungeon. Similar to the new stamps, I’m
disappointed that zero effort was put into organically integrating this new
area into the world, but nevertheless it’s a decently challenging and decently
well-designed new bonus, even if the way it is set up is a bit annoying. It
contains three sections that unlock at certain milestones over the course of
the main game and previous sections need to be redone to get through the whole
thing. The ultimate reward is a new “Colossal Wallet” that holds 9,999 rupees,
which I found to be laughably useless considering how late it is that the game
first lets you acquire it. While I was iffy at first about locking a section of
the game behind an amiibo, ultimately the Cave of Shadows is basically just a
Wolf Link-exclusive
“Cave of Ordeals” aka enemy gauntlet, and is something
completely extraneous that can be easily ignored without missing out on too
much.
Twilight Princess HD
is overall a very solid remaster, but while amiibos can be ignored, several
notable shortcomings cannot. The only tweak that I really have a big issue with
is the change made to horseback riding control, which feels notably stiffer and
more awkward. Riding Epona across the vast fields of Hyrule is one of my
favorite aspects of the
Twilight Princess
experience, and I almost always prefer galloping to my destination and taking
in the breadth of the world over instantly warping. While I eventually more or
less adjusted to the new controls, getting there was a trial as I struggled to
make turns effectively and frequently bashed straight into walls. I still mostly
enjoyed this aspect of the game, but even up until the end something just felt
off. This change brings to mind the tweaks that were made to the Zora swimming
in
Majora’s Mask 3D, and while those
were far more detrimental to that experience than the horse controls are here,
I really just have to scratch my head and truly believe that
Zelda series producer
Eiji Aonuma and
the people who work on these remakes and remasters really need to take the old
adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” to heart. It’s quite frustrating to
me that what I feel to be two of the most fluid and enjoyable mechanics in the
whole
Zelda series have now been
mucked up in both of their games’ respective remakes. I’ve also heard that the
swimming controls were altered in
TPHD as
well, but hardly noticed and luckily had no issues with them.
My biggest issue with
Twilight Princess
HD though is actually probably its omissions and several things that
weren’t tweaked. It’s irritating that fluid mechanics like the horseback riding
that needed no altering were messed with, while some areas of control that
really could have used some tweaks, like the wonky flying and snowboarding
mechanics as well as Wolf Link’s slow and clunky-feeling movement, were left unaltered
(as far as I can tell anyway). Likewise, I’m a bit disappointed that the music
seems to be mostly untouched after
The
Wind Waker HD at least got a few remastered songs. If any of the music was
remastered or altered, I didn’t notice, except for maybe the ending credits
theme. While on the subject of music, it’s a shame that the
enemy battle theme
still drowns out
Midna’s Lament, which really kills the mood during that
pivotal scene. I have some other minor quibbles, like the terrible Magic Armor
item being exactly the same piece of garbage as it was before, and also the
weird fact that they got rid of the great cinematic that used to play after the
title screen, but my personal biggest peeve and what I feel is a really glaring
omission is the inability to remove most or all of the heads-up display elements
on the game’s main screen. An uncluttered HUD has been an option or simply the
default in every
Zelda game since
2011’s
Skyward Sword, including
The Wind Waker HD, and I find it odd and
worrisome that it was forgotten here, especially since I almost always
appreciate such a feature in games.
Besides these issues, Twilight
Princess HD is notably unpolished for a Nintendo title. There’s nothing
game-breaking or anything, but I consistently encountered glitches and examples
of poor coding throughout my experience with the game. Grass glitching out, a
totally immobile enemy, a frequently stuttering camera, movement control
occasionally getting wonky, and the “ZR” button randomly and very annoyingly
sword slicing instead of shield bashing on a quite frequent basis are some of
the issues I encountered. In addition, I happened to notice enemies floating in
the sky over the places where they were set to spawn in a few instances and perhaps
most glaringly of all was when I turned the camera while looking out a window
in a certain dungeon, only to find that I could see the entire next section of
the dungeon floating in a white void outside the window, a particularly sloppy
and inexcusable flaw that I can’t imagine someone missed. I also noticed some
framerate stuttering that I don’t remember being present in the original in a
few sections, such as in Zora’s Domain. Granted, I happened upon a few
technical issues (including slowdown) in The
Wind Waker HD as well, but not nearly as many as I encountered here.
Perhaps some of these issues were present in the GameCube and Wii versions of
the game, but I have never noticed any of them or any other glitches or bugs in
my countless playthroughs of the GameCube version and one playthrough of the
Wii version.
Due to these technical issues, some strange
omissions, and overall perhaps not as many alterations as there could have been
(and one notably negative alteration), Twilight
Princess HD is overall an inferior remaster job to The Wind Waker HD, but it’s still very solid and I’m glad it exists,
mainly for the new visual polish it brings to the game. Simply playing through TP this particular time has made me find
a new appreciation for the game and in this playthrough more than ever I’ve
focused on what I really love about this experience, and this is perhaps in no small
part due to the remastered visuals and the handful of smart tweaks that
streamline the game and fix some of its annoying little quirks. Despite my
qualms with the narrative and some other factors, there’s a lot I love about
this game. I’ve replayed Twilight
Princess many times in part because I am always looking to find some new
epiphany with the game; to see something in it that I haven’t before. While
I’ve gradually grown to appreciate the game more and more over the years (and admittedly
have also just found more to criticize), I feel as though with this most recent
playthrough of Twilight Princess HD,
I’ve finally found what I’ve been looking for. I’ll always have somewhat of a love/hate relationship with the
game, but as I’ve run out of things to criticize over time, I’ve only noticed
more and more the strengths of this flawed masterpiece, like its atmosphere,
its well-constructed main quest, its excellent dungeons, its beautiful world, its strong art direction,
its varied monsters and characters, its more unique and creative elements, its
crisp mechanics, and even the comforting pleasures of a traditional Zelda adventure that doesn’t break the
mold too much. I don’t much like the term “definitive”, but even despite the
bugs and some other small gripes, Twilight
Princess HD makes enough smart design tweaks and effectively polishes the
visuals enough that I’d at least call this the best version of the game, and the one I’m likely to default to playing
in the future.
