I'm only a third or so through Skyward Sword, but it has really made me want a new handheld Zelda game. I've very curious if they're going to continue the gameplay and art styles of Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass should the next one be one 3DS. Ocarina 3D proved the system can handle a full 3D Zelda game, but I don't think that's what I want.
Yeah I'm pretty certain that any relevant hints said "use your map to find a room with two switches. One's above, one's below."
The hint that mentions a room with two crosses is on the other side of the main room, from memory. I'm pretty sure the hint that I'm talking about doesn't mention room at all, so it doesn't say to look in that room but doesn't say to looks somewhere else either. And this is before I went to the other side, got the map and knew that the switches appeared on the map as crosses.
it's hardly unreasonable for the game to expect you to look in an adjacent room, especially when water levels are involved which have precedent for affecting more than one room
but seriously how is Faron Woods at all like Fable
They can't really continue with the DS gameplay, since 3D is where they want to put their focus but it's not available on the touch screen. The DS games were completely designed around wherever you touch, Link goes there/interacts with that thing. Even if a pseudo mouse-based system would work (touch screen corresponds to top screen, like petting your dog in 3DS Nintendogs), Nintendo is not going to move in that direction. They'll say that it's not as intuitive for younger players or something.
But given their talk about that Mario 3D Land Zelda-esque level from an overhead view, I think they'll develop something in that style. It felt fine to look at and Nintendo seemed excited about it. There's something to be said for looking down on a tiny world of miniatures, like in Ghost Recon on 3DS for example.
Nintendo's new camera philosophy seems to be "don't give them much control over it, that's too confusing...just do it automatically and transparently." This is how almost all their recent games have worked, from Other M to DKCR to Mario 3D Land to Skyward Sword. I don't think they'll want to make another OoT-engine style game, I expect a Wind Waker graphics, overhead view, traditional-controlling Zelda.
It's not unreasonable, and it's not the worst thing ever. It's just an annoyance I found because the game seemed to be telling me to look for a switch (especially when Fi was telling me "Use C to look around") that didn't exist.
I did a quick GIS but couldn't find any good images to show what I meant, and I can't take screencaps. I can try to explain it more accurately when I get home and can talk about specifics, but from memory: most of Faron woods has the place you came in, the place you'll leave, and cliffs or bottomless pits all around. It doubles back on itself a lot to disguise this, and you can push logs down to create shortcuts later, but the first time you go through you almost always have two choices: go forwards or go backwards. There's a big central area, but it has one path from the entrance to the big dude in the middle, and then a few paths from there to the little dudes. So it's like a small hub with spokes coming off it.
I did a quick GIS but couldn't find any good images to show what I meant, and I can't take screencaps. I can try to explain it more accurately when I get home and can talk about specifics, but from memory: most of Faron woods has the place you came in, the place you'll leave, and cliffs or bottomless pits all around. It doubles back on itself a lot to disguise this, and you can push logs down to create shortcuts later, but the first time you go through you almost always have two choices: go forwards or go backwards. There's a big central area, but it has one path from the entrance to the big dude in the middle, and then a few paths from there to the little dudes. So it's like a small hub with spokes coming off it.
We know what Faron Woods is like. We just want to know how it's different from any other Zelda game ever.
For example, did you think Twilight Princess did a way better job than SS? Because
Even the big, open looking areas tend to have a lot of pathways that lead one direction.
Or if TP didn't do it for you either, which game did?
LttP looks pretty open, but its overworld is honestly just as full of one-way corridors as the 3D games.
I did a quick GIS but couldn't find any good images to show what I meant, and I can't take screencaps. I can try to explain it more accurately when I get home and can talk about specifics, but from memory: most of Faron woods has the place you came in, the place you'll leave, and cliffs or bottomless pits all around. It doubles back on itself a lot to disguise this, and you can push logs down to create shortcuts later, but the first time you go through you almost always have two choices: go forwards or go backwards. There's a big central area, but it has one path from the entrance to the big dude in the middle, and then a few paths from there to the little dudes. So it's like a small hub with spokes coming off it.
We know what Faron Woods is like. We just want to know how it's different from any other Zelda game ever.
For example, did you think Twilight Princess did a way better job than SS? Because
Even the big, open looking areas tend to have a lot of pathways that lead one direction.
Or if TP didn't do it for you either, which game did?
LttP looks pretty open, but its overworld is honestly just as full of one-way corridors as the 3D games.
I absolutely did not think TP did a better job, TP is the first Zelda game I was ever disappointed with, and that's a large part of it.
OoT is the one I have the clearest memory of, so I'll use it. Even though it used the same rooms-connected-by-corridors design, the rooms were relatively bigger, and had more points of interest, which made it feel more open, and allowed exploration. Gerudo Canyon is linear, but it leads to the Fortress, which is a bit of a maze-like warren. The path up the mountain is linear, but Goron city is more open. It's got a lot of little towns, which are always more open and explorable.
I'm not saying Skyward Sword is linear, OoT is open, and that it's simple, black and white, and obvious. There's a sliding scale of one big open room - big connected open rooms - little connected open rooms - one big corridor. I feel like lately Zelda's been shifting towards the corridor side, and so far SS is further to the right than I wanted.
For further comparison here's Gerudo Fortress, which is by far the most dungeon-like of the overworld areas (the SS overworld is pretty dungeon-like as well) but is clearly more segmented than SS
Here's Link to the Past, these are basically your options in the early game:
A lot of corridors, disguised as an open world.
Do you not know what a corridor actually is?
That's not a corridor. Those are big areas you can explore and finds all kinds of shit. Yeah, one area leads to another but that doesn't make the entire thing a corridor.
Here's Link to the Past, these are basically your options in the early game:
A lot of corridors, disguised as an open world.
Do you not know what a corridor actually is?
That's not a corridor. Those are big areas you can explore and finds all kinds of shit. Yeah, one area leads to another but that doesn't make the entire thing a corridor.
I'm sorry, but you fail at this one pretty hard.
You can choose which trees you want to weave between in Skyward Sword, too. It doesn't suddenly make LttP's more exciting.
Alternatively: You illustrated my point nicely, because LttP isn't just a bunch of corridors and neither is Skyward Sword. Both lead you along certain paths in the same way but give you enough to see and do along the way that they can't in all honesty be called simply "corridors."
I was actually thinking of the bit where you rescue the carpenters, but whatever, they're both similar in that they're kinda dungeon like. The reason I brought up Gerudo is that is moves from inside to out, which gives you a few different ways to get through it. For the longest time I was doing it the wrong way, going past one outside, entering where you're meant to exit, and going back. There are a couple of points to start it, and it's not always immediately obvious where to go, you have options and decisions to make.
With LttP, especially down the bottom the areas are a lot more open and explorable. Sure you still go in one place, out another, but there's other stuff in the area, not just cliffs hemming you in on either side.
Zelda has never been open and expansive like a Bethesda game, and I'm not asking for that, but it was just far enough to the open side of the spectrum to make exploring interesting, and to hide things around the area that you might not find at first. My complaint is not that they've gone from open -> linear, but from somewhere in between to a bit more linear, it changed enough for me to notice around TP and I was unhappy to see that this continued the trend, rather than going back a little towards open.
Because a lot of people thought what was supposed to be "content" in the more open world Zeldas basically amounted to "useless fat". I love open-ended vistas as much as anyone, even though it's all just an illusion, but you can't please everyone.
Alright and in this next scene all the animals have AIDS.
Its been way too long since I played a Wii game but what a game to come back to! Not far into it tbh but from what I played so far, I'm going to really enjoy this one. Just waiting in those rechargeable batteries. Thanks fire the suggestions on those! Abbas thanks again to my secret Santa @radiation for bringing life back to an unused console.
@AnteCantalope, I think you should ask yourself how you would design the Zelda game you want Skyward Sword to be. You want a more open world ... so would this world simply have less structured content, period, in it? Like a Bethseda game?
Something I think a lot of people tend to overlook is that every Zelda game is literally a giant puzzle. When you say you "want more freedom" or less hand-holding or whatever, well, if the game is going to let you get the whip before the hookshot, the game's designers need to spend extra time designing content and testing scenarios for "what happens if we let you have a whip in this area before the hookshot in this area?" That is time they thus would spend away from, you know, designing more puzzles, cooler enemies, or areas.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Zelda wears many more hats than other games. Zelda is a swordfighting-action game, a puzzle game, an exploration game, a first person shooter, a racing game, and a swimming game (sometimes). Most of the items you get in a Zelda game involve novel new gameplay and often new controls. And it does most of these things very well, mostly better than other games do even if that's all they do.
In a game like Skyrim, GTA3, Red Dead Redemption, with no key items and no puzzles, with environments that are basically empty in terms of player-interaction, and with basically one or two modes of gameplay, offering "freedom" isn't a problem. In a game like Zelda, when you say you want more freedom, you are also saying you want *less* of something else.
Edit: I do agree with your earliest post that the first five hours of this game are a fucking travesty. But the sword controls rock and you're probably just not good at them yet.
@AnteCantalope, I think you should ask yourself how you would design the Zelda game you want Skyward Sword to be. You want a more open world ... so would this world simply have less structured content, period, in it? Like a Bethseda game?
I'm not asking for a complete redesign. A Bethesda-style might work and might not, but it's not what I'm after. Just a shift in that direction. And I'm not even asking that they're more open than previous games! As open as OoT, MM, LttP, whatever. I've seen people ask for all sorts of games to be more like Bethesda games, and that's definitely not what I'm asking for. Not a sandbox, just wider environments, more paths to travel down, multiple options at any time. Some designer (maybe Avellone? Someone from Bioware? I forget) said that good gameplay requires making interesting decisions, and that's my biggest problem with both the environments and the combat. When I enter an area I want to see a few options, and have to choose between them, which is exploring the area and finding hidden parts - a big part of what I like about Zelda. In combat there are a bunch of ways you can swing your sword, but either there's only one that won't be blocked (no decision) or they're all equally good (not interesting). I know I'm not particularly good with the sword yet, because I often do diagonal swings when I don't want to, but that's something I can live with.
I was actually thinking of the bit where you rescue the carpenters, but whatever, they're both similar in that they're kinda dungeon like. The reason I brought up Gerudo is that is moves from inside to out, which gives you a few different ways to get through it. For the longest time I was doing it the wrong way, going past one outside, entering where you're meant to exit, and going back. There are a couple of points to start it, and it's not always immediately obvious where to go, you have options and decisions to make.
yeah this basically describes the experience I have had with Skyward's overworld, which is why I'm kind of confused. it's like we played different games.
I was actually thinking of the bit where you rescue the carpenters, but whatever, they're both similar in that they're kinda dungeon like. The reason I brought up Gerudo is that is moves from inside to out, which gives you a few different ways to get through it. For the longest time I was doing it the wrong way, going past one outside, entering where you're meant to exit, and going back. There are a couple of points to start it, and it's not always immediately obvious where to go, you have options and decisions to make.
yeah this basically describes the experience I have had with Skyward's overworld, which is why I'm kind of confused. it's like we played different games.
Well, I haven't got far, I'm really only talking about Faron Woods here.
EDIT: What I mean is maybe the later areas you're thinking of are more like I'm describing.
I think you have a rose-colored view of oot/mm's openness. Hyrule field was about as large as a single continent in SS, and the desert continent feels much more open than OoT's overworld. All paths in OoT/MM's overworld are linearly constructed—you can't get to Great Bay until you get the horse, you can't get to Gerudo Desert before you get the hookshot, etc. There are no more options in these early 3-D Zelda games than in SS.
And you're wrong about combat being without choice, too. Look through this thread and you'll see everyone has developed their own strategies for killing even bokoblins. And:
In combat there are a bunch of ways you can swing your sword, but either there's only one that won't be blocked (no decision) or they're all equally good (not interesting).
What you've just described applies to every action game, ever ... except Skyward Sword. It's not just timing a button press in SS. Most enemies shift their blockin gstance. Part of the skill in SS involves not just timing but also reacting. And what's more, many enemies not only shift their stance but shift it according to how you are holding your sword. You either have to fake them out or hit them a bunch of times faster than they can hit you back.
And there's something intangible about the feeling of physically controlling the sword's movement that I think adds something huge to the game. Maybe other people just aren't into it and prefer more abstract, less vicarious controls. For me, playing Zelda has always been about immersion, feeling like you're really in a place and really having swordfights. Other games accomplish immersion with graphics and open worlds, Zelda does it through controls, and SS is the first game since Ocarina of Time that adds significant vicariousness to game control.
Edit: if you're early in the game ... the third area is much more open than the other two.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
@AnteCantalope, I think you should ask yourself how you would design the Zelda game you want Skyward Sword to be. You want a more open world ... so would this world simply have less structured content, period, in it? Like a Bethseda game?
Something I think a lot of people tend to overlook is that every Zelda game is literally a giant puzzle. When you say you "want more freedom" or less hand-holding or whatever, well, if the game is going to let you get the whip before the hookshot, the game's designers need to spend extra time designing content and testing scenarios for "what happens if we let you have a whip in this area before the hookshot in this area?" That is time they thus would spend away from, you know, designing more puzzles, cooler enemies, or areas.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Zelda wears many more hats than other games. Zelda is a swordfighting-action game, a puzzle game, an exploration game, a first person shooter, a racing game, and a swimming game (sometimes). Most of the items you get in a Zelda game involve novel new gameplay and often new controls. And it does most of these things very well, mostly better than other games do even if that's all they do.
In a game like Skyrim, GTA3, Red Dead Redemption, with no key items and no puzzles, with environments that are basically empty in terms of player-interaction, and with basically one or two modes of gameplay, offering "freedom" isn't a problem. In a game like Zelda, when you say you want more freedom, you are also saying you want *less* of something else.
Edit: I do agree with your earliest post that the first five hours of this game are a fucking travesty. But the sword controls rock and you're probably just not good at them yet.
I think this is also the reason that, by comparison, large open world games control like shit. It is an absolute joy to move Link around and interact with the world around him. Characters in large open world games always feel somehow disconnected from their environment, like a world map sliding around beneath a looping animation of your character running... and god forbid you have to do any platforming. I would imagine Zelda designers spend considerable time just making Link's movements feel right, and I would rather they invest their time and energy there than in making the world larger and more "open."
I think this is also the reason that, by comparison, large open world games control like shit. It is an absolute joy to move Link around and interact with the world around him. Characters in large open world games always feel somehow disconnected from their environment, like a world map sliding around beneath a looping animation of your character running... and god forbid you have to do any platforming. I would imagine Zelda designers spend considerable time just making Link's movements feel right, and I would rather they invest their time and energy there than in making the world larger and more "open."
... I've actually found Link to be a bit uncomfortable to control, much more so than any other Zelda, but didn't want to bring it up because I was already complaining about a bunch of other things...
When the game arrived I took the first disc and put it in the Wii, and it wouldn't play and I thought "Oh fuck, either I've got a scratched disc or my Wii's dying", but it turned out I'd put the soundtrack CD in there. I'm beginning to wonder if I left it in there all along, because aside from 'Zelda' and 'Link', my game doesn't seem to be the one you're all talking about.
Hm, what do you mean uncomfortable? He's much more nimble in SS with the running and whatnot, but on the other hand you can't run and swing your sword at the same time. And a lot of the actions that were once handled automatically, like Z-targeted aiming, now require you to do the work.
Sometimes I worry I'm being too harsh on people who for whatever reason don't like Skyward Sword. There is a ton of stuff that pisses me off about the game. I guess what worries me is that people aren't rewarding SS for trying to change. I don't want to be playing games in 2018 that control the same way that Ocarina of Time did (or like OoT plus a right-analog-stick for the camera). And a lot of the criticisms I'm seeing of Skyward Sword seem to be by people who are experts at the OoT button-pressing way of playing, but who haven't taken the time and effort to embrace, or at least try to embrace, SS's new way.
Two things I found uncomfortable: When I want to move the camera, previously I'd look a direction and tap Z; if I did it quickly enough Link wouldn't react but the camera would move. Now Link drops (very briefly) into his fighting stance, and throws off my rhythm.
Second, sometimes if I want to run past a wall, as soon as Link gets near it he runs up it. It's the same problem as Assassin's Creed, just a little imprecision and stickiness.
They're not big problems, and I certainly appreciate the sprint and wall-climbing, Link's much more agile and I like an agile character, but whereas in previous games I felt I had precision control, this is just a bit off.
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minor incidentexpert in a dying fieldnjRegistered Userregular
I will just chime in to say that camera control in Wii Zelda games is unilaterally absolute shit. There's no getting around that.
The best I can say is that you get used to it. More or less.
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AbsoluteZeroThe new film by Quentin KoopantinoRegistered Userregular
Most of the time I just wish the camera would stay at Link's back.
Are there games with better camera controls? I guess you could say WW because you had the right analog stick to move the camera.
Or, you know, every other game released that supports two analog sticks for camera movement.
SoTC didn't control better, GTA games feel floaty and unworkable compared to Skyward Sword ... Darksiders didn't feel as finely tuned either. I mean I like having a second analog stick for camera, but I don't think it's necessary and there are lots of other elements that make a game feel good to control.
Wait, people had camera control problems with this game? I figured either I had gotten lucky with the camera or Nintendo had really good auto-camera programming, and the law of averages said I couldn't get lucky that many times in a row, so I went with the latter.
I will just chime in to say that camera control in Wii Zelda games is unilaterally absolute shit. There's no getting around that.
But there could have been, in SS at least; left and right on the D-pad go completely unused. I'm hoping there was a reason for this, like maybe a freer camera made the motion control a bit (more) wonky or something.
So, does anyone have proper guides to how to do thrill digger? I swear it's impossible to do expert, and you have to be really REALLY lucky to to medium. I did easy, easy enough, but the others are over my head, i don't get how you are supposed to know...anyone?
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The hint that mentions a room with two crosses is on the other side of the main room, from memory. I'm pretty sure the hint that I'm talking about doesn't mention room at all, so it doesn't say to look in that room but doesn't say to looks somewhere else either. And this is before I went to the other side, got the map and knew that the switches appeared on the map as crosses.
but seriously how is Faron Woods at all like Fable
But given their talk about that Mario 3D Land Zelda-esque level from an overhead view, I think they'll develop something in that style. It felt fine to look at and Nintendo seemed excited about it. There's something to be said for looking down on a tiny world of miniatures, like in Ghost Recon on 3DS for example.
Nintendo's new camera philosophy seems to be "don't give them much control over it, that's too confusing...just do it automatically and transparently." This is how almost all their recent games have worked, from Other M to DKCR to Mario 3D Land to Skyward Sword. I don't think they'll want to make another OoT-engine style game, I expect a Wind Waker graphics, overhead view, traditional-controlling Zelda.
Totally just guessing but yeah.
I did a quick GIS but couldn't find any good images to show what I meant, and I can't take screencaps. I can try to explain it more accurately when I get home and can talk about specifics, but from memory: most of Faron woods has the place you came in, the place you'll leave, and cliffs or bottomless pits all around. It doubles back on itself a lot to disguise this, and you can push logs down to create shortcuts later, but the first time you go through you almost always have two choices: go forwards or go backwards. There's a big central area, but it has one path from the entrance to the big dude in the middle, and then a few paths from there to the little dudes. So it's like a small hub with spokes coming off it.
We know what Faron Woods is like. We just want to know how it's different from any other Zelda game ever.
For example, did you think Twilight Princess did a way better job than SS? Because
Even the big, open looking areas tend to have a lot of pathways that lead one direction.
Or if TP didn't do it for you either, which game did?
LttP looks pretty open, but its overworld is honestly just as full of one-way corridors as the 3D games.
Here's some samples of Greatwood from Fable, which is segmented in a bunch of separately loaded areas
The part you were talking about with the pits is the Deep Woods, which is admittedly linear and closer to Fable but isn't the primary area
the design of Faron Woods is much more open than your description
I absolutely did not think TP did a better job, TP is the first Zelda game I was ever disappointed with, and that's a large part of it.
OoT is the one I have the clearest memory of, so I'll use it. Even though it used the same rooms-connected-by-corridors design, the rooms were relatively bigger, and had more points of interest, which made it feel more open, and allowed exploration. Gerudo Canyon is linear, but it leads to the Fortress, which is a bit of a maze-like warren. The path up the mountain is linear, but Goron city is more open. It's got a lot of little towns, which are always more open and explorable.
I'm not saying Skyward Sword is linear, OoT is open, and that it's simple, black and white, and obvious. There's a sliding scale of one big open room - big connected open rooms - little connected open rooms - one big corridor. I feel like lately Zelda's been shifting towards the corridor side, and so far SS is further to the right than I wanted.
A lot of corridors, disguised as an open world.
Do you not know what a corridor actually is?
That's not a corridor. Those are big areas you can explore and finds all kinds of shit. Yeah, one area leads to another but that doesn't make the entire thing a corridor.
I'm sorry, but you fail at this one pretty hard.
You can choose which trees you want to weave between in Skyward Sword, too. It doesn't suddenly make LttP's more exciting.
Alternatively: You illustrated my point nicely, because LttP isn't just a bunch of corridors and neither is Skyward Sword. Both lead you along certain paths in the same way but give you enough to see and do along the way that they can't in all honesty be called simply "corridors."
With LttP, especially down the bottom the areas are a lot more open and explorable. Sure you still go in one place, out another, but there's other stuff in the area, not just cliffs hemming you in on either side.
Zelda has never been open and expansive like a Bethesda game, and I'm not asking for that, but it was just far enough to the open side of the spectrum to make exploring interesting, and to hide things around the area that you might not find at first. My complaint is not that they've gone from open -> linear, but from somewhere in between to a bit more linear, it changed enough for me to notice around TP and I was unhappy to see that this continued the trend, rather than going back a little towards open.
Because a lot of people thought what was supposed to be "content" in the more open world Zeldas basically amounted to "useless fat". I love open-ended vistas as much as anyone, even though it's all just an illusion, but you can't please everyone.
I got a little excited when I saw your ship.
Something I think a lot of people tend to overlook is that every Zelda game is literally a giant puzzle. When you say you "want more freedom" or less hand-holding or whatever, well, if the game is going to let you get the whip before the hookshot, the game's designers need to spend extra time designing content and testing scenarios for "what happens if we let you have a whip in this area before the hookshot in this area?" That is time they thus would spend away from, you know, designing more puzzles, cooler enemies, or areas.
Another thing to keep in mind is that Zelda wears many more hats than other games. Zelda is a swordfighting-action game, a puzzle game, an exploration game, a first person shooter, a racing game, and a swimming game (sometimes). Most of the items you get in a Zelda game involve novel new gameplay and often new controls. And it does most of these things very well, mostly better than other games do even if that's all they do.
In a game like Skyrim, GTA3, Red Dead Redemption, with no key items and no puzzles, with environments that are basically empty in terms of player-interaction, and with basically one or two modes of gameplay, offering "freedom" isn't a problem. In a game like Zelda, when you say you want more freedom, you are also saying you want *less* of something else.
Edit: I do agree with your earliest post that the first five hours of this game are a fucking travesty. But the sword controls rock and you're probably just not good at them yet.
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I'm not asking for a complete redesign. A Bethesda-style might work and might not, but it's not what I'm after. Just a shift in that direction. And I'm not even asking that they're more open than previous games! As open as OoT, MM, LttP, whatever. I've seen people ask for all sorts of games to be more like Bethesda games, and that's definitely not what I'm asking for. Not a sandbox, just wider environments, more paths to travel down, multiple options at any time. Some designer (maybe Avellone? Someone from Bioware? I forget) said that good gameplay requires making interesting decisions, and that's my biggest problem with both the environments and the combat. When I enter an area I want to see a few options, and have to choose between them, which is exploring the area and finding hidden parts - a big part of what I like about Zelda. In combat there are a bunch of ways you can swing your sword, but either there's only one that won't be blocked (no decision) or they're all equally good (not interesting). I know I'm not particularly good with the sword yet, because I often do diagonal swings when I don't want to, but that's something I can live with.
yeah this basically describes the experience I have had with Skyward's overworld, which is why I'm kind of confused. it's like we played different games.
Well, I haven't got far, I'm really only talking about Faron Woods here.
EDIT: What I mean is maybe the later areas you're thinking of are more like I'm describing.
And you're wrong about combat being without choice, too. Look through this thread and you'll see everyone has developed their own strategies for killing even bokoblins. And:
What you've just described applies to every action game, ever ... except Skyward Sword. It's not just timing a button press in SS. Most enemies shift their blockin gstance. Part of the skill in SS involves not just timing but also reacting. And what's more, many enemies not only shift their stance but shift it according to how you are holding your sword. You either have to fake them out or hit them a bunch of times faster than they can hit you back.
And there's something intangible about the feeling of physically controlling the sword's movement that I think adds something huge to the game. Maybe other people just aren't into it and prefer more abstract, less vicarious controls. For me, playing Zelda has always been about immersion, feeling like you're really in a place and really having swordfights. Other games accomplish immersion with graphics and open worlds, Zelda does it through controls, and SS is the first game since Ocarina of Time that adds significant vicariousness to game control.
Edit: if you're early in the game ... the third area is much more open than the other two.
I think this is also the reason that, by comparison, large open world games control like shit. It is an absolute joy to move Link around and interact with the world around him. Characters in large open world games always feel somehow disconnected from their environment, like a world map sliding around beneath a looping animation of your character running... and god forbid you have to do any platforming. I would imagine Zelda designers spend considerable time just making Link's movements feel right, and I would rather they invest their time and energy there than in making the world larger and more "open."
When the game arrived I took the first disc and put it in the Wii, and it wouldn't play and I thought "Oh fuck, either I've got a scratched disc or my Wii's dying", but it turned out I'd put the soundtrack CD in there. I'm beginning to wonder if I left it in there all along, because aside from 'Zelda' and 'Link', my game doesn't seem to be the one you're all talking about.
Sometimes I worry I'm being too harsh on people who for whatever reason don't like Skyward Sword. There is a ton of stuff that pisses me off about the game. I guess what worries me is that people aren't rewarding SS for trying to change. I don't want to be playing games in 2018 that control the same way that Ocarina of Time did (or like OoT plus a right-analog-stick for the camera). And a lot of the criticisms I'm seeing of Skyward Sword seem to be by people who are experts at the OoT button-pressing way of playing, but who haven't taken the time and effort to embrace, or at least try to embrace, SS's new way.
Second, sometimes if I want to run past a wall, as soon as Link gets near it he runs up it. It's the same problem as Assassin's Creed, just a little imprecision and stickiness.
They're not big problems, and I certainly appreciate the sprint and wall-climbing, Link's much more agile and I like an agile character, but whereas in previous games I felt I had precision control, this is just a bit off.
The best I can say is that you get used to it. More or less.
But there could have been, in SS at least; left and right on the D-pad go completely unused. I'm hoping there was a reason for this, like maybe a freer camera made the motion control a bit (more) wonky or something.
Because if not..why bother with it?
I'm early game (just getting into the 3rd area), and I have 800 max rupees and not a damn thing to spend it on.