Reality Meltdown
Never let your liking a game get in the way of a review.
I loved the damn thing. In fact, this game is almost as addictive as pokemon, but with a longer lasting hold. In fact, I may die addicted to this game. It sits in your room and calls out to you. Cooing your name as you trya nd drift off to sleep, until you finally cave and spend 7 hours playing it, only to rush off to a midterm the next morning. It's so compelling you may find yourself standing some where, perhaps some gulley or desert, clutching the game's box, caressinging it slowly and carefully, before you realize you have no game system, no tv, no water, no pants, and you're not really sure where exactly you are. Cocaine addicts should just buy it when going into withdrawls. Biggie size their addicition.
Why so addicitive? The main quest is neat. Cliche as hell, but Zelda has had the same basic plot for forever. Save some girl. Hell, Mario had this plot. Every Zelda but the second one... wait, no! The princess was asleep by magic spell. See? The quest is always to save some chicks sorry ass! Anyway, theres always stuff to do. Basically, you got your boat.. and plop, a big ass map for you to sail around on. All of the miniquests and such will keep you going for HOURS. Just filling in your map cna be a very time consuming process.
You boat... it... it talks. And so you sound retarted telling your friends to wait up, because you ahve to get your stupid chatty boat over to that fish. And damnit, those fish are important! They dont understand what an hour of work it takes to talk to the stupid fish! I don't want to do it over again!
Some parts are very annoying, some are uber nifty. Items were pretty cool. Each item does diffrent things, and a good number have boat functions too. The grappling hook turns into this boom you can search for sunken treasure with. Granted, if you overshoot the treasure, it's impossible to grab, since the boat moves at .0006 mph without a breeze in the sail.
The biggest problem is the game is short. Sure, getting everything takes hours and hours and hours; but of the neccessary plot parts, theres only about 6 real dungeons; and while the enemies, I thought, were tougher than Ocarina of Time, once you get enough hearts, it's no problem. I didn't die once in the game. The final fight was the only time I was close, using 2 of my 3 faires (but none of the uber-potion, aka. soup). I mean, the battle system made it harder to kill anything, but it was easier to dodge and whatnot. I mean, I battered that old man and his training to hell and back. Just to do all the required stuff isn't that time consuming, and it's not that much of the game as a whole. I think side trips just accoutned for too much of the game. Alot of the islands weren't useful for anything but a treasure map and a sunken chest. And others, were just a small cave with soem important item. Ocarina had 3 dugeons as a child (and a half again as a child); 6 adult dungeons, and the breif castle del Gannon. Wind Waker has maybe... 5 total? Including Gannon's place. The enemies were cool, but I was missing a few. Like Skulltas, for christs sake! And moblins! And only 4 bosses? Whats going on?! Its like they unsuccessfuly tried to unite Majora's Mask with the Ocarina of Time. No! No! Bad dog! No! Majora's was neat, but the lack of a consolidated plot for most of the game was a hindrance.
The game is friggin beatiful. Everything that happens is like watching some movie. Scenes are fluid, loading is negligble... you just play. And alot of the battles are very varied. Thigns are diffrent. Enemies can injure one another, you can steal their weapons (nifty!) which isn't very useful, but it is neat. Enemies are all varied... and all smoke is amazing. it's got the poof, vapor... twirling... that's just plain nifty. The enemies all give items... many of which are limited in usefulness, but to get a potion you can kill alot of jelly guys, instead of forking over cash. It's neat. Don't hold the cartoon against it, it works, and damned well.
Boating was both very neat and very pain in the ass. There's way too far to sail around for. And changing the wind direction was boring. You'd do it every 10 minutes! And all the songs... I only used a few. Most were just... one shot deals. I mean, the warp wasn't even that useful except for visiting the 3 towns. It just wasn't something you'd use enough.
It's a good game, but not flawless. It's addictive, it's fun. It's a must have for nearly everyone, but it aint perfect.
