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Review by grognard66
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I've seen this far too many times before. The "professional" gaming journalists leave their standards at the door in fear of backlash from the revival tent fanboys of a particular franchise (MGS, GT, Zelda, FF). At least in this case it has only taken a few months to hear them speculating aloud whether they may have over-scored this one. Yes, they did. Let me start by saying that this is a good, solid game which is quite enjoyable - nothing more and nothing less. This game fails to move the genre forward at all and stubbornly clings to its outdated gaming conventions and cliches as if the industry never evolved since Ocarina.
Here we are in late 2006 and the game still has extremely limited voice acting, rudimentary sound effects, brain dead A/I, linear level design and an atrocious game engine not even capable of meeting last gen's graphical standards. In addition, the game is very poorly paced. I get the distinct impression that Nintendo desperately padded the game by about 20 additional hours knowing this would be a launch title that would have to hold over early adopters for a few months during the inevitable post launch drought.
Even many fans have written that the game doesn't start getting good until about 5 hours in. When compared to shorter, modern games which offer an enjoyable rollercoaster ride experience from start to finish, how can Zelda get comparable scores when it doesn't even start to get good until after 5 hours? I would rather play a great 12 hour game than a 45+ hour game with about 15 hours of good content.
The immersion is hampered by frequent level loads, including every time you enter a small one or two room building. This might be excusable if that building was filled with detail and interactive items but instead you are greated to a blurry, low res texture with maybe one interactive item. The world of Zelda is still curiously populated by grass blades which spout out magical healing abilities and valuable gems. Given that, haven't any of it's inhabitants figured out that lawn mowing would be a lucrative trade in this world yet? In the Morrowind universe the characters may have figure that out, but in this world the characters are static and scripted with only a few phrases. Basically, they're a visual interactive menu rather than providing you with a sense of a vibrant, living world.
Anyway, there is some old-school fun to be had here and a sense of that endearing Nintendo charm. While the graphics can often be painful to look at when compared to other current offerings there is a nice aesthetic sense to the art style which is commendable. Sadly, the soundtrack is far too limited for a game this large, although what is there is pleasant, and the sound effects are straight out of the 16 bit era.
If you don't play any other systems and are limited to only a few titles each year this game represents a good value, but if you are fortunate enough to sample all that the gaming industry has to offer you'll realize that this franchise is treading water and was surpassed years ago.
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This comment made me lol:
'' haven't any of it's inhabitants figured out that lawn mowing would be a lucrative trade in this world yet?''
Keep up the good work, hope you write more reviews, negative or positive