Skyward Sword fell flat on its face on everything that matters to a Zelda, except for dungeons, which where mostly good.
-NPC were few in numbers and not that interesting. The relationship between zelda and Link was refreshing at the start, but lost value rather quickly after it became the standard ''save the princess''.
-Dungeons were OK: timeshift stones where amazing, to be fair. But the starting dungeon, which was literally 4 rooms if i remember correctly was disappointing to say the least.
-The overworld was barren and the items rarely had any use outside of dungeons.
-Controls to me where awful: it lead to a recycle of enemies and even bosses required very basic strategy, which almost always came down to swing patterns. Zelda could learn a thing or 2 from the metroid prime series. It also didnt help that some bosses where recycled
-Lack of Towns. there only was 1. It kind of took a central meaning in the game, as did Majoras mask, but the remaining areas where completely void of any meaningful interaction, whereas Majoras Mask was amazing with lots of secrets and interesting NPC outside of it ''main city''. The upgrade system was nice, but not really needed with the difficulty.
-Difficulty. Nintendos focus on making games acceptable for wide audiences comes at a cost of challenge, and its ironically hurting the Zelda series more than Mario; Bosses and puzzles are way way WAY too easy, hearts are given almost everywhere when not at full health, AI of enemies takes a defensive ''wait and defend/stay back'': just filling time, instead of being aggressive and challenging approach and are generally defeated with 3 sword strikes MAX. The combat is also a step back from TP; the 7 hidden sword techniques are absent from this game and although they weren't really necessary because of easy enemies, that's a different subject entirely. They are absent in Skyward Sword.
-Sidekick with fii was kind of original at first, but quickly became cumbersome with all the tips, talking and hand-holding to the max. The worst sidekick out of the franchise imo. Also dowsing was awful and the constant popup of ''you picked up item X'' and explaining what it does was fucking annoying. Remember the ''you picked up 5 rupees'' message from Twilight princess? This takes it to a whole other level, which is saying something!
-Music was lacking. Now don't understand me wrong: the use of orchestral tunes where awesome and there where some nice tunes. However most tunes, although orchestrated, where lacking melody-wise: they didn't have any catchy direction, ''they where just there'' if that makes sense. Oh yeah, no title screen music...a serious disappointment when I first played the game.
-Tedious filler such as searching for tadstones in the dark with a timer and guards was worse than searching for tears of light in TP, and the boring sections of land which you have to travel before reaching a dungeon which you onl travel once, dont hold any interesting secrets and where void of any interactivity of NPC...only to be filled with tedious fetchqeusts; The reminded me a lot of phantom hourglass's areas before you enter a dungeon. Not exactly e compliment.
My god, I thought I'd name a few negatives and honestly state my opinion, but I cant stop with naming things I didn't like. And you may think I'm just a hater: nothing could be further from the truth: I listened to Skywards sword main theme months before release and was hyped as fuck. Bought the special edition with gold wiimote day 1, and couldn't help but notice all the negatives.
I guess my main gripe with Skyward Sword is that not only they didn't address the issues found in previous installments (Difficulty, lack of NPC, few towns, barren overworlds, filler fetchquests, etc.), but those issues are even more apparent than ever before. Zelda just doesn't get a free pass anymore, just because it is Zelda. Nintendo needs to know there is more to zelda than just dungeons, look at Majoras Mask and evolve the formula from there.
