Gaming Journal: Skyward Sword Part 6

    I feel like every time I pick up this game my first thought is: “Wow this game looks and sounds beautiful!” I also feel like I need to mention this every time I write for some reason. Anyway, I completed the Earth Temple and here are my thoughts. Overall I enjoyed the dungeon. It was well designed with some decent puzzles. Right at the beginning of the temple you needed to open a large gate. By observing your surroundings you see a weird mechanism that has a rope attached to it, which should lead players to pull out their Beetle item and cut the rope. Not difficult at all, and being the second temple, informs the player that they will need to utilize items they previously acquired in other temples to progress through future temples. It’s simple, and builds up a sort of intuitive concept for players to grasp even if they don’t really notice it. That concept being all items are important, and you’ll need to use all of them to find the path forward. The temple wasn’t too difficult, but I didn’t feel like there was any hand holding which I appreciated. The introduction of the lizard enemies with more complex combat patterns provided a nice incremental difficulty increase to swordplay, and fighting two of them at once was pretty satisfying.

    Now on to the nitpicking. Getting the boss key was kind of weird. It felt too short. The boulder gimmick was fun and made me feel like Indiana Jones, but there seemed to be no puzzle involved which was a bit of a let down. In previous Zelda games getting the boss key took effort, and I didn’t really exert any effort here. The Boss was cool, and I was glad it fit the theme of the dungeon unlike fighting Ghirahim in the first dungeon. The biggest praise I have for the design of the Boss fight was that it required you to utilize bombs in every way you’ve learned to use them up until that point, just under a lot of pressure. It was a good test of things I’ve learned thus far. The big problem I had with it was that I beat it on my first try. As a kid I probably would have died at least once, but as an experienced adult gamer, one try was all I needed. I understand this was only the second temple, but challenge has become more and more important to me as I’ve grown older, and when I come across a boss that doesn’t adequately challenge me I do not feel the level of satisfaction I would like from defeating it. However I do recognize the target audience of this game is not a 37 year old man, and I did almost die at one point during the fight. So it wasn’t the worst designed boss I've come across. Perhaps I’m subconsciously comparing this game too much to Elden Ring. It’s just I know it’s possible for Zelda games to have challenging bosses so I guess I expect more from Nintendo here. Off the top of my head the most challenging boss in a Zelda game I’ve come across is Thunderblight Ganon from Breath of the Wild. I died numerous times fighting that boss, even after I figured out the steps to beat it.