The shine of a ‘Skyward Sword’ HD remake is dulled by awkward controls

It’s very weird to review a remake. Most of what could be said about a remade game has already been said years ago, and the time that has passed since the original game’s release can have a massive impact on how the game is received in its second wind. For example: The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is a high definition remaster of a 2011 Wii game about which much has been said, debated, and lamented, but in the 10 years since its release the Zelda franchise produced one of the most successful console video games of all time.

Though it is unfair to compare The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with its upgraded predecessor, there is enough connective tissue between both games to make the comparison automatic in a way that only enhances the weirdness of reviewing it at all. Should Skyward Sword HD‘s faulty stamina wheel, annoyingly breakable shields, and limited potion system be judged on their own merits? Or does the experience of playing Skyward Sword HD suffer as a whole because players know how much better things got in Breath of the Wild?

And then there’s the lurking question — does Skyward Sword HD even need the comparison to Breath of the Wild to be kind of a disappointment?

It’s dangerous to go alone! Take — wait.”
Credit: Nintendo

To start with the good news, Skyward Sword HD looks great. There’s a new clarity of image that makes the dreamy color scheme pop instead of fading into fogginess, and as a whole the game looks about as sharp as any contemporary with a similar cartoonish style is going to get. However, when it comes to updating a game as initially controversial as the original Skyward Sword, a visual upgrade alone was never going to cut it.

Does Skyward Sword HD even need the comparison to Breath of the Wild to be kind of a disappointment?

When Skyward Sword came out in 2011, Nintendo staked its baseline playability on the Wii’s motion controls. Those controls were unreliable, frustrating, and unavoidable, and any given player’s enjoyment of the title stemmed from whether or not they could find a way to look past using wobbly Wiimotes that required near-constant recentering. The Nintendo Switch’s Joy-Cons have more sophisticated hardware and are technologically superior to the Wiimotes… but they still suck to play Skyward Sword with.

Anyone who had high hopes that the hardware element of Skyward Sword HD on the Switch would fix any of the problems with the motion controls should abandon those hopes now, because the controls remain hopeless. Even though some of the combat moves are satisfyingly intuitive, what with the directional slashing and poking, much of the game requires a finesse that lies beyond the capabilities of the Joy-Cons. Whether it’s constantly holding your arm out and tapping Y to find out what the game interprets as the “center” of your screen or requiring you to sloooowly rotate a Joy-Con to find out exactly which angle will produce the pose for a Skyward Strike, the experience of using the motion controls is too finicky to be any fun.

It’s very hard to hack this guy’s feet off with motion controls. And you have to do it a lot.
Credit: Nintendo

Thankfully, Skyward Sword HD gives Switch and Switch Lite users the opportunity to play this adventure as it’s never been played before: on handheld like an actual video game. Handheld mode is more enjoyable by an order of magnitude and will likely be most new players’ method of choice, but it’s also not a perfect solution for a number of reasons.

Handheld mode will likely be most new players’ method of choice, but it’s also not a perfect solution.

While porting Skyward Sword to handheld is a net gain for the game’s playability, there’s a huge lack of coordination between playing in handheld mode and using the motion controls. For example, I played the first five hours with the motion controls before giving up on them, and from there did almost everything in handheld mode — almost being the operative word.

With the exception of a replayable basic combat tutorial, Skyward Sword HD doesn’t have a mechanic to re-teach players how to navigate when they switch methods of play. This resulted in me realizing I had no idea how to dive and roll on handheld, so in order to perform that move I had to remove my joy-cons, wiggle the left one around to roll, and reattach them to continue playing every time Link had to bowl his own body into a tree.

There are also experiences ranging from spinning underwater to entire boss fights that were clearly designed for motion controls and don’t work as well (or at all) in handheld. Crucial moves like tricking enemies with sword feints and whipping the arms off a giant mechanical homunculus while strafing require a range of wrist movement that’s difficult to replicate with thumbsticks. The overall result is a game that works about 60 percent fine as a motion control title and 85 percent fine as a handheld title, with bizarre and frustrating gaps between those experiences.

Um.
Credit: Nintendo

In those 60 or 85 percent of moments where the gameplay is going smoothly, Skyward Sword‘s clever puzzle design and wacky story absolutely shine. Sure, this is a Zelda game where flying around on terrifying Lisa Frank pelicans is a core gameplay mechanic and there are three entire boss fights where the point is to hack off a scaly potato kaiju’s ickle toes, but that humor and unpredictability is what makes the fun parts fun.

Skyward Sword‘s puzzles are just noodly enough to make players feel smart when they solve them, and some of their elements, including localized time travel, are so cool they really ought to reappear in a later Zelda title. The level designs are smart and repeatable, and half the joy of getting a new item comes from knowing you can use it to go back to a previous area and unlock something new. The characters are funny and charming, with the exception of one uncomfortably svelte villain whose menace trends way too close to horny. And the plot is…super weird, to be honest, but its thematic implications for the rest of the Zelda games is cool to think about.

The most frustrating thing about The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD remake is that it really does have its merits, just like the original version. It’s unfortunate that the remake didn’t go farther with its quality of life improvements and actually improve the experience of playing the game with motion controls or otherwise. And that is the weirdest thing about reviewing this particular remake. It’s almost impossible to see what’s actually changed.