Hard to believe it’s actually been 10 years…
Twilight Princess was a game that I’d found tough to enjoy when I first played through it. I’d been new to the Zelda series at that point, having only had real experience with Wind Waker and really liking it. But though I’d been looking forward to Twilight Princess up until its release, the game’s strong emphasis on dungeon crawling prevented me from really having fun with it.
Since Twilight Princess, I’d gotten to experience Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask on the 3DS, along with Skyward Sword, which I thoroughly enjoyed, on the Wii. My love for the Zelda series and appreciation for its dungeons developed as I became more familiar with it. Going back to Twilight Princess now, I’ve discovered a game that, while I can completely see where I was coming from 10 years ago, I’ve grown a new appreciation for and one that I’ve had a ton of fun with this time around.
It’s still important to note however that Twilight Princess follows Ocarina of Time’s more dungeon-driven direction, with the game’s long, sprawling dungeons making up by far the bulk of your playtime. It’s something that likely appealed majorly to fans of the dungeon crawling aspects of this series, while those of us who were just as much into exploring the world, interacting with other characters, and appreciating the narrative aspects of the series maybe felt let down by Twilight Princess as a result.
In that sense it’s hard to go back to my original review of Twilight Princess and say that I was wrong, because I still agree that this game features (at least) one or two dungeons too many, and that its story and cast of characters seems to disappear for hours on end at various points throughout this adventure.
But having developed a familiarity and fondness for the Zelda series’ dungeons over the years, I found Twilight Princess HD 10 years later to be an incredibly fun, surprisingly lengthy action/adventure game with some of the series’ best boss fights, atmosphere, and combat. Some of its dungeons, such as the Fire Temple, have become favorites of mine, but even the aspects of Twilight Princess that don’t stack up to other entries in this series don’t change the fact that this is another Zelda adventure, and it comes with a lot of the charm and the fun that Zelda games almost always come with.
The HD upgrade has served Twilight Princess incredibly well. It’s true that its graphics style may not be as timeless as that of Wind Waker’s, and every once in a while it becomes apparent that this was originally a Gamecube game. But for the majority of the adventure, I’d forgotten that this was an old game and enjoyed seeing its beautiful art direction, once hindered by aging Gamecube/Wii hardware, given the chance to really shine.
This is an interesting world; mellow in tone and a good deal less cartoony than we’ve come to expect from this series, Twilight Princess exists in a fantasy setting that you view in both light and dark capacities; a curse which turns Link into a wolf, along with the will of his traveling companion Midna, brings him back and forth between the two worlds. Earlier in the game, which version of Link you control is dictated by the story, but as the adventure goes on you are given the ability and the need to change between them on the fly.
It’s a gameplay mechanic that helps Twilight Princess stand out from its fellow Zelda titles. Inevitably the time spent as the wolf (where you have far fewer moves and items) is less fun than the time spent controlling Link, but this HD version helps remedy the problem by reducing the Tears of Light that you’re required to collect as Wolf Link early on in the game, which kicks up the pacing of Twilight Princess’ earlier hours just enough to make a difference.
The various dungeons you’ll encounter are exactly what Zelda fans have come to expect; the formula of picking up one key to unlock a nearby door, before reaching a dead end/mini boss and earning a power that helps you to access a new area, ultimately leading to another key or two until you unlock the Boss Key and retrace your steps to use it and fight the dungeon’s baddie….are all in full effect here. There are one or two situations where this is switched up (Temple of Time) but for the most part the formula is followed to varying degrees throughout. The dungeons were designed to be incredibly epic in scale, and though many are well-paced and fun to explore, and though they usually use the unlocked powers in clever ways, they’re all quite expansive. It’s a real show of their great design that only in the last several hours of the game (on this playthrough, not on my first) did I really begin to face dungeon fatigue and want it to end.
The world above features many nooks and crannies to explore; ranging from forest to desert, from lakebed to sky, this is a large world with much to see and unlock. This version of Hyrule Field sadly isn’t one of the series’ better worldmaps, and with its iffy horse controls and both natural and unnatural barriers preventing you from going from Point A to Point B on foot, most gamers will likely be making heavy use of the available warp feature to get from one place to another. It always bums me out a little to use this type of feature, knowing how long it took the developers to create this world and knowing how many secrets there are to stumble across along the way. Twilight Princess however seems to have been designed with this warp feature in mind, and eventually I stopped fighting it and warped to my next location most of the time. Not doing so would have added many hours to what’s already a pretty lengthy adventure.
The locations you explore once you pass the empty fields are a sight to behold, especially in HD. The opening Ordon Village and the deep, windswept forests surrounding it are ridiculously atmospheric, while Castle Town feels appropriately bustling. The swordsmanship in Twilight Princess may actually be the series’ best yet, as the system in which you unlock new powers and abilities is a fun one and continues to evolve throughout much of the game.
The music of course retained the mostly MIDI format of the series’ past, (something thankfully finally updated in Skyward Sword, its successor) but it bothered me a lot less here than it did 10 years ago, along with the lack of voice acting; these are the quirks of the Zelda series, and at this point I think I’ve simply accepted and gotten used to them. The interactions you have with other characters, whether in town or in the cutscenes, have that perfect Zelda charm that’s so hard to explain but so easy to like.
It’s all this that makes me wish even more that Twilight Princess didn’t have what I see as its big weakness: you don’t get enough time with this world or its characters. The game early on relies heavily on the capture of the village kids, who remain in captivity for what basically amounts to about 1/3 of the adventure, yet you hardly get to experience a resolution to this story before you’re whisked off to the next plot point, usually involving dungeons to complete and objects to collect. Twilight Princess has a tendency towards this sort of storytelling; big events do happen, though they’re hardly talked about again. Zelda is given such little screen time (about 3 scenes) that she hardly registers, and the less said the rarely-present villain Zant, the better. Castle Town’s a bustling hub, but it serves very little narrative purpose and it too fades into the background. Twilight Princess is a Zelda game where Link barely feels like he’s a part of the world or its events, and it builds to what’s meant as an epic series of battles. It’s just hard to feel that much of anything is at stake.
I’d have gladly sacrificed a dungeon or two for some more character-driven content, or for a couple more story scenes or adventures in Castle Town. I felt the same way about Ocarina of Time, though Ocarina definitely featured a stronger story and characters. All in all, Twilight Princess HD falls just short of what it could be: something that a stronger narrative and a couple less dungeons would have helped make reachable.
Verdict:
But Twilight Princess HD is still a lot of fun. It’s an HD Remaster that I’m glad I played, one that allowed me to go back and re-discover a game that in the past I’d never really understood. It’s a shame that a weaker than expected plot, an abundance of dungeons, and a heavily used warp mechanic bury the game’s world so far in the background, as it’s one brimming with the same charm, sense of adventure, and discoverable secrets that make The Legend of Zelda such a great series. With its strong boss battles, fun (for the most part) dungeons, great art direction and atmosphere further enhanced by this HD upgrade, Twilight Princess HD remains a worthy installment to the Zelda series, and one that I’m glad I took the time to rediscover.
Pros:
Gorgeous HD graphics and atmosphere
Some cool use of a light/dark mechanic
A vast array of fun dungeons and bosses
Cons:
Never really makes the most of its interesting world
Amount of time spent in “dungeon gameplay” becomes excessive
One of the modern series’ weaker storylines
4/5
