Follower Saturday - Zelda: Twilight Princess

Saturdays have become the day of the week when followers of our blog here, on Twitter and Facebook are able to request what we blog. This week, we were asked to do a post on Zelda, and so Titus Proxima has chosen his favourite Zelda game (sadly, Valhalla never got to play Zelda). In this post we'll give you a brief summary of the storyline and a few thoughts about the gameplay before giving it out Gamer rating out of 10.

Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Link is a young ranch hand in Ordon Village, which is a relatively peaceful place. However, there comes a day when the village is attacked by evil, terrifying monsters who grab and take the children who live in the village. Link, enraged by the events that are occuring pursues the attackers, but encounters a wall of twilight. A shadow beast pulls him beyond the wall and into what appears to be the realm of twilight, where he is transformed into a wolf and imprisoned.

Time passes until eventually Link is saved by the imp Mid na, who guides him to Princess Zelda. The Princess ecplains that Zant, who is King of the Twilight, has stolen the light from three light  spirits and conquered Hyrule. In roder to save Hyrule, Link must restore the light spirits by entering the twilight areas whilst in wolf form before recovering the poor spirits. To do this, he must collect the tears of light, and once all of these are collected for one area, he restores the light spirit that resides there. As he restores them, the spirit returns him into human form.

At around the same time, Link also aids Midna in finding the Fused Shadows, fragments of a relic containing powerful dark magic. In return, she helps Link to find the missing village children. Once link has restored the light spirits and Midna has all the Fused Shadows, Zant emerges and attacks them. Taking the Fused Shadows he transforms Link back into a wolf using his own (Zant) magic, and seriously injures Midna in the process (he's not a very nice guy, is he?). Link brings the dying Midna to Zelda, who tells him that he requires the Master Sword to change back to human form, and then heals Midna before suddenly vanishing without a trace (suspicious).
Once Link has found the sword and is returned back to human form - discovering also that he can switch between wolf and human at will - Midna leads him to the Mirror of Twilight, which is the only known gateway between the Twilight Realma and Hyrule. Upon arriving, they discover that Zant has broken it (seven years bad luck there). The sages who reside by the mirrior explain that Zant attempted to destroy it, but as he was not the true ruler of Twlight he could not break it and was only able to shatter it into pieces. As an interesting side note, the sages decide to add that they send a group of theives named Ganondorf through the mirror and to the twilight realm around a hundred years ago.
 Determined to fix the mirror, Link and Midna set out on an epic wuest to find the missing shards so that they may use the portal. After a long and arduous search, they eventually find all the missing fragments and return to the mirror so that they may repair it. Once the mirror has been fixed, they open up a portal to the Twilight Realm. Just before they enter, Midna and the Sages decide to tell Link something incredibly important - that Midna is the true ruler of the Twilight Realm, and that she was changed into an Imp my Zant after he stole her power. They then enter the Twilight Realm.
When they are in the Twilight Realm, Zant informs Link and Midna that his go, Ganondorf (familiar name here), granted him great power to do with whatever he wishes so long as he used it to conquer Hyrule. As we were informed earlier, Zant successfully conquered Hyrule. Link then engages Zant in battle and defeats him. As Link defeats the apparant King of the Twilight Realm, Midna recovers the Fused Shadows and then destroys Zant after he tells them that only Ganondorf's death can undo Midna's curse.
The two return to Hyrule to find Ganondorf in Hyrule Castle with Zelda hanging above his head (I don't mean killing hanging, more like suspended). Link engages in battle once more (he likes a good fight it seems) and defeats him. He then takes on his Gandorf incarnation after possessing Zelda's body. Midna manages to revive the poor Princess and she and Link help her get back on her feet.
Ganondorf revives himself, and hurriedly, Midna teleports Link and Zelda outside the castle so that she can hold Ganondorf off with the Fused Shadows that were previously collected. Link and Zelda watch in horror from outside as the castle is wrecked before their eyes. It is then that Ganondorf appears before them on a horse with one of the Fused Shadows, which worked at Midna's helemt, in his hand. He hold it firmly in his grip and breaks it almost effortlessly. Hurriedly, Link and Zelda mount Link;s horse Epona and receive Light Arrows which they use to continue the battle against Ganondorf. Eventuall, the enemy is knocked from his horse and Link catched up, plunging his sword down and through Ganondorf's chest, killing him. The Light Spirits then go and reviv Midna who is restored to her true form now that the enemy is dead. Tearfully, Midna bids Link and Zelda farewell as she enters the mirror, returning to the realm that she rules. Once there, she destroys the mirror, severing the only link between the two worlds.
As Hyrule castle is rebuilt, a lone traveller named Link rides away from his hometown on the back of his loyal steed, Epona.

As a gamer who likes his graphics I have to say for a game of it's time I think Zelda is very impressive for it's generation. Nintendo stormed the modern world with exiting new graphics that impressed and thrilled those who were impressed by good graphics and they managed all this without throwing amateur gamers into the deep end. Despite being excellent at pulling gamers into the new world of graphics in fantasy adventure games they manage not to rush those less prepared. The Wii was designed with limited graphic capabilites. You could spend hours picking holes in the game for this but despite this Zelda has come out pretty darn well. One of the few problems with Zelda is that you get the feeling that the designers are either trying to hard or not enough because of it's cyclicle nature. Despite Zelda being an unmistakable gamer classic through the years it has lost some of it's originality, this is a shame but not unpredicted. Many games go through this and it is one thing that no game designer can avoid forever. Personally this has never put me off a game and it caertainly won't put me off Zelda which I love. Through the ages of Zelda, Link, the main protagonist, has never spoken. There is plenty of lines from other characters and it would be nice, now that nintendo have advanced, to create some actualy interaction. This one sided conversation is a very dated concept and it does bring up a nostalgic feeling but as gamers we expect new and exiting rather than old and comforting. I'm sure fellow players would agree that the controls are also surprisingly easy to use despite it being a Wii game, a console which I have allways found frustrating.

Now it's time for our Gamer rate. We are giving Zelda:Twilight Princess GGGGGGG (7 out of 10 Gamer rating). This is not bad but we do think it could do with some inprovements.

Titus will have Valhalla addicted in no time.

Titus Proxima and Valhalla, allways, thank you for following us and reading ur posts. We do this for you. We enjoy all the feedback we get and look forward to more of it. So please tell us what you think of Zelda.