Retro Review - The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

Tim ‘Madness’ Manness is back and has been kind enough to donate his second Retro Review!  Tim for some odd reason or another decided to play through one of my personal favorite games of all time… and the only Zelda other than the original NES one I’ve actually made it through.  I won’t steal any thunder here from Tim so here he goes…

I don’t know why I recently decided to pick up my GameCube controller to give The Legend of Zelda “The Wind Waker” another go around. It may have been that one of my friends just started playing The Twilight Princess and I too wanted to enjoy the wonderful world of Zelda, or maybe I just had an urge for a great adventure game. Whatever the reason I found myself sailing the high seas once again.

For the most part you know what you’re getting into when you play a Legend of Zelda title. You know that large chunks of time will magically disappear out of your day. You’ll wake up in the morning and pick up the controller only for a few minute you tell yourself “maybe I’ll just try to get to the next town or quickly find a piece of a heart container before I go and do something productive with my day.” The next thing you know the sun is going down, you’re still in your pajamas, there’s dried oatmeal on your face and you haven’t made any real progress in the game. You know what I’m talking about and this game provides those enjoyable moments.

The Wind Waker is your typical Zelda adventure with a few interesting differences. The major ones being the game doesn’t take place in Hyrule and you are not Link. Yes that’s right the game takes place on the ocean and you play as some random blonde haired kid. Sound a bit strange to you? Well I whole-heartedly agree. The ocean part is not so bad but not playing as Link!? Are you for real Nintendo? What’s next, playing Mario Brothers as a tall accountant named Stewart? Well luckily since this is a retro review we know that Nintendo did not follow the same path ever again. To Nintendo’s credit shortly into the game you get the little green elf suit which allows you to look like Link but at the very core it’s not a true experience.

 

Putting those rather large details aside the game does stay true to the world of Zelda in almost every other way. You get all the traditional sword fighting, boomerang throwing, bomb dropping, arrow shooting and heart collecting joy that you’ve come to expect. As with all Zelda games The Wind Waker was broken up into two sections. First you have your main quest and second you have all of the side quests and mini games. Usually they each account for around half of the game play but unfortunately that was not the case with The Wind Waker. I found the main quest to be much shorter than other Zelda titles; it should only take you 16 – 20 hours to complete, this falls well short of the 35 – 45 hours it takes for most of the others. Unfortunately along with the shorter main quest came a less refined one. I found the dungeons to be kind of boring and the puzzles didn’t really peak my interests either. As I was making my way through the rooms I felt like I was just going through the motions, there were however exceptions but over all a bit dull.

Getting to the side quests I was pleasantly surprised. Normally I don’t spend too much time straying from the main quest in Zelda games; however, The Wind Waker was an exception for me. I loved sailing in the wrong direction trying to find a new island to investigate. Each island holds its own mystery and as soon as I figured it out I hopped in my boat and moved on to the next one. Along with the island hopping there’s also the more traditional side quests which can be found on the main island where the townspeople are. These are the type of quests where someone tells you they need something and would be awfully grateful if you could go out and get it for them <wink> <wink>.

I normally avoid these quests like the plague and there’s a very good reason for that - it always seem like the mission is easy but turns out to be anything but. You’ll be asked to go to the next island and rescue some guy’s cat from a tree… ok sounds simple enough I can do that. So you get to the next island to find out that there’s some magical spell on the island that you need the magic boots to get past, but unfortunately the magic boots are on the other side of the world buried underneath a mountain. Don’t bother going there yet because you need mountain gear first. To get your mountain gear you must go in the other direction for a really long time until you find a guy who challenges you to a race. In the race you can’t use your legs but the guy your racing has 8 of them. If you can somehow manage to beat him, get your mountain equipment, sail across the world, climb to the top of a mountain, make your way through a hole in the top, climb down, grab the boots, climb back up and sail back across the world to the magic island you find out you can’t even put the boots on because you don’t have the golden socks yet. After all is said and done and you manage to get the cat back to the guy, he rewards you with 50 rupees which you can’t carry because your wallet is already full with 200 and even if you could carry an unlimited amount of rupees you’d already have around 6 million of them.

Now obviously this is a grand exaggeration and it doesn’t actually happen like that in the game but we’ve all had an experience similar to this at one time or another. I no longer have time in my life for this type of let down which is why I’m a main quest type of guy. If you do enjoy the side quests then you’re in luck because this game will run you 80 – 90 hours to complete the majority of them.

So I’ve ranted and complained a bit but that’s only because I’ve been spoiled by other Zelda titles. Truth of the matter is that this game, as an adventure, is miles beyond any non Zelda title. The graphics are fantastic and still look good today, the game play is very smooth and extremely fun, the twists and turns are rewarding and exciting and there’s a ton of replay value. Even though Nintendo decided to roll the dice and try something new they still managed to create one of the best adventure games ever released. If this game somehow passed you by I highly recommend playing through it, you won’t be sorry.

My overall is 9.3 / 10

Tim Manness