But I’ll talk about these changes a bit further in this review. It revamps the original game’s visuals, controls, presentation, design choices, and framerate. It takes the original source code and gives it a full remaster treatment that was clearly absent in Super Mario 3D All-Stars.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD is, by and large, a “definitive edition” of the 2011 Wii classic. Skyward Sword features the best version of Zelda.

But at the same time, I disliked tons of design and gameplay choices that I had never even considered disliking in any other mainline Zelda game.

Now I completely understand why this game is considered so divisive among fans. Even if the $59.99 price tag was nothing short of downright absurd (it’s Nintendo after all, they made us pay sixty bucks for three Mario ROMs), the idea of being able to play this game with multiple control options, and on-the-go, was way too interesting to ignore. I really wanted to play this game and find out why its reception was so mixed among fans, as critics had previously lauded it as the second coming of the messiah. The announcement of a Switch remaster came as a pleasant surprise. I knew it was considered the most divisive Zelda game ever made, with equal amounts of people loving it and hating it. It just stood there, waiting for me to play it, even though I really wasn’t keen on tackling a stupidly lengthy adventure with mandatory motion controls in around 2016-ish. I was one of the four people in the world who didn’t have a Wii back in the day, nor did I exactly feel like re-buying it on the Wii U years later.

Out of all “mainline” Zelda titles, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was the only I hadn’t played prior to tackling this Switch version.

Legend of zelda skyward sword wii rom