4.5/5 ★ – philip_acquaro's review of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD.

Started: December 30th 2022 Finished: February 16th 2023 Completed in: 40 hours I finally got around playing through the entirety of Twilight Princess for the first time. I got the HD release for the Wii U when it first released but only played through 11 hours of the game and never continued it after that according to my first save file. I think i got busy with other games at the time or got preoccupied with something else but looking back now, i made a mistake not finishing this game all those years back. I started a new file over a month and two weeks ago and played throughout the days of the week that i had free time or on the weekends whenever I wasn’t busy with school so that’s why it took me a while. Regardless though, this was phenomenal, and it’s an experience I will never forget. There’s so much to unpack here since I loved nearly everything about this game. I’ll start off with the story, the game begins in Ordon Village, which is a small forest village where Link has grown up. We’re introduced to Link’s mentor Rusl, the children from the village who look up to Link, Link’s childhood friend Illia, among many others in the community. We spend a lot of time here getting to know everyone and they really did a good job making you care for them with everyone having so much life and character to them. After finishing up helping out the people in the town and moving goats into the barn, Link is supposed to make a delivery for a sword somewhere in the castle town the next day until this monster riding a bull invades the village kidnapping the children and escaping into a Realm called Twilight. Link is knocked out and wakes up in Twilight until he is cursed and turned into a wolf. You’re then imprisoned in a cell where you meet a snarky and witty imp named midna. After being acquainted with each other, she makes Link help her get pieces of the fused shadows that will help her defeat the evil that has corrupted her parallel dimension. That isn’t until the creepy villain of the game, Zant, stops you after collecting these pieces of the fused shadow across dungeons and finding tears of light. Midna is severely injured after this and is rushed to get cured by Zelda, where Zelda would then sacrifice herself to save Midna. This is where we first see her change of heart for those of the world of light. Link and Midna would then go on to recover mirror shards that allow access between the world of light and twilight via a portal. the mirror was shattered into several shard pieces by the sages for the greater good. We later learn that she is actually the princess of Twilight who failed to stop the villain Zant from taking over her dimension. Throughout the whole game we see her grow to have faith in the people of Hyrule instead of only looking out for her own people through Link and Zelda’s actions that she looks up to. You’re ultimate goal in the game is to stop the corrupted Twilight Realm from taking over the land of Hyrule and everyone in the world of light. The character development in this game is so great, Link and Midna grow to like each other throughout the whole game and Midna’s character is really compelling. She starts out as a loner who is just using Link to get what she wants to truly caring for Link by the end of their long journey. The side characters are all amazing too, I loved Illia and Link’s relationship and how the children look up to Link after he saves them early in the game. Out of all the Ordon kids who were kidnapped, illia is the only one to lose her memory in which is recovered near the end of the game in a moment where she shows how much she cares for Link. Another one of the Ordon kids, Collin, looks up to Link the most and saves one of his friends in honor of Link’s heroism which was a moment i really liked. The main villain of the game, Zant was one that I found creepy and interesting, his backstory was very appealing and I loved how it tied into Ganon being behind it all at the end. Zant’s boss fight was also my favorite of the game, I loved how he manipulated reality and placed you in every dungeon atmosphere you’ve been in throughout the battle. Now onto the gameplay, riding Epona was so much fun. That sequence where you have to save Collin in a horse chase that cumilates into that extremely epic moment where Epona jumps up while Link poses with his sword illuminated by the sunset was one of my favorite moments of the whole game. All of the items you collect throughout the entirety of the game make for so much fun, variety, and creativity in the dungeons and gameplay as a whole. I absolutely love the combat in this too, it honestly might be my favorite combat system in any Zelda game ever. I prefer a system where you progressively gain more and more combat abilities the more you advance through the game which is exactly what this game does in a way that is just so cool. The way you gain new combat abilities is by learning them by a skeleton/spirt in armor called the heros shade who is said to be the Link from Ocarina of Time and Majoras mask who not only passes on lessons in combat but also advice in becoming the hero of Hyrule through his own experience. This is also one of my favorite parts of this game because Ocarina of Time is one of if not my favorite game of all time and having the Link from that game passing on the lessons he couldn’t in his lifetime to his descendant who is learning to become the hero that he once was, thus easing his regrets makes me love this game so much more. The final battle was really cool too as always with any zelda game, but this fight like the rest of the game was a lot darker and very serious. The setup after they trick you into thinking Ganon killed Midna makes the fight feel so much more monumental with a lot more weight. Having it be a sword fight with the beautiful orchestrated music and the final blow to the head making the game go silent made it feel grander than most final battles that came after in Zelda games. The dungeons were actual perfection in this game with my favorite being Snowpeak Ruins followed by Arbiters Grounds and Temple of Time. Snowpeak Ruins might be my favorite dungeon in any Zelda game, the whole concept of it all is so creepy and intriguing. It takes place in a cozy cabin/mansion where two married yetis live. The female yeti named yeta is sick and leads you down paths to find the mirror shard only to accidentally lead you to food ingredients every time to which her husband would aggressively take from you in the kitchen to put in his pot of soup. Once you traverse through the mansion with super fun puzzles and challenges, you are led to the room with the mirror where she comes with you to hand it over to you. This is where the big plot twist moment happens as Yeta starts mumbling to herself while staring at the mirror being seduced by it’s dark magic and then she turns into a monster with big red eyes and sharp teeth. Even though I suspected it, it was still shocking at the same time. The music in this game is beautiful too, the orchestra compliment those big sequences so well and the eerie, adventurous, calm, and peaceful genres in the OST are all fantastic as well. I also liked how instead of doing away with the tradition of link having a magical instrument, you now play songs when you howl as a wolf, and there are tons of returning tracks from OOT and MM in those segments which i found really cool. This game was not afraid to get extremely dark at times either, one of the moments that stuck with me through my whole play through was that cutscene that showed how the fused shadow pieces could corrupt someone with great evil just as it did to the “interlopers” who abused the powerful magic they had in attempts to rule over the sacred realm who were then sealed away. This backstory is conveyed by showing illia holding a knife and attempting to stab Link which then cuts away to link dropping his sword implying that he killed her, with his eyes now completely white he runs towards 3 dark links and he then starts screaming in front of the camera. After that, we see like hundred of upside down illias laughing hysterically and creepily. Link then wakes up from this dream that warned him what corruption under the influence of the fused shadows could bring to him. I loved the ending with Midna saying goodbye to Link too with a tear coming down her face, knowing that leaving link and zelda forever is the price she has to pay in order to keep her realm from harms way in the case that someone like Ganon takes over her dimension again. While I loved everything I just talked about, this game still has its flaws. There are some heavy pacing issues towards the end of the game in several parts which brought this game down just a little bit for me. during my play through, i accidentally forgot to save after doing one of my least favorite parts of the game which was the part where you have to recover illia’s memory and recovering the power of the dominion rod since it was just a hassle having to fast travel everywhere and doing so much back and forth between the hidden village and kakariko. So i had to do it all over again after it taking me an hour which was even more tedious. Also it would’ve been cool if Link and Zelda had more interaction with each other. Overall though, like I mentioned before this was a phenomenal game and experience. I could definitely see why this would be anyone’s favorite Zelda and while not my favorite Zelda game, it’s still one of my favorite games of all time