![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Skyward Sword HD
Jul. 17th, 2021 08:31 amYou can play Skyward Sword HD without motion controls, which is good. Unfortunately, the controls still aren’t great.
Specifically, in order to free-rotate the camera with the right joystick, you have to hold one of the shoulder buttons on the left Joy-Con. This means that you have to apply constant pressure to a relatively out-of-the-way button in order to navigate the world. The Joy-Cons aren’t large or unwieldy, but this still hurts my hand after about fifteen minutes.
Also, since the “target” button is the other left shoulder button, maneuvering can be difficult, especially if the camera is set to an awkward angle during an enemy encounter. To give an example, you have to go through a small cave early in the game that has slime monsters on the ground below eye level and bat monsters in the air above eye level. Unfortunately, you can’t adjust the camera to look at either of these enemies while you’re targeting them, so you just have to swing your sword wildly and hope that your strikes hit.
The reason you can’t use the right joystick to control the camera is because this is the button that controls your sword. In other words, you can’t just hit “B” to swing your sword; you have to make a slashing motion with the right joystick. This is not precise, and I generally have to go through a few attempts in which Link just sort of raises his sword in the appropriate direction before he actually swings it.
This is extremely frustrating, especially because Link isn’t wielding his sword in any way differently than he is in, say, Ocarina of Time or Breath of the Wild. There’s no reason that the variety of sword slashes can’t be assigned to the same intuitive control scheme as the rest of the Zelda series. Like, it doesn’t have to be this difficult or complicated.
If I remember correctly, there isn’t actually that much combat in the game, so I also don’t understand why “controlling the sword” is the default setting for the right joystick instead of “controlling the camera.”
Also, the text scrolls very slowly, and there’s no way to speed it up either in the “Settings” menu or by pressing a button to make all of it appear at once. And there’s a lot of text! The game doesn’t have many cutscenes, but every conversation sort of feels like a cutscene.
I want to love Skyward Sword so badly, but it’s not fun to play, especially for the first ten hours or so. Hopefully I’ll get used to the controls and start enjoying myself once I get past the slow start.
Specifically, in order to free-rotate the camera with the right joystick, you have to hold one of the shoulder buttons on the left Joy-Con. This means that you have to apply constant pressure to a relatively out-of-the-way button in order to navigate the world. The Joy-Cons aren’t large or unwieldy, but this still hurts my hand after about fifteen minutes.
Also, since the “target” button is the other left shoulder button, maneuvering can be difficult, especially if the camera is set to an awkward angle during an enemy encounter. To give an example, you have to go through a small cave early in the game that has slime monsters on the ground below eye level and bat monsters in the air above eye level. Unfortunately, you can’t adjust the camera to look at either of these enemies while you’re targeting them, so you just have to swing your sword wildly and hope that your strikes hit.
The reason you can’t use the right joystick to control the camera is because this is the button that controls your sword. In other words, you can’t just hit “B” to swing your sword; you have to make a slashing motion with the right joystick. This is not precise, and I generally have to go through a few attempts in which Link just sort of raises his sword in the appropriate direction before he actually swings it.
This is extremely frustrating, especially because Link isn’t wielding his sword in any way differently than he is in, say, Ocarina of Time or Breath of the Wild. There’s no reason that the variety of sword slashes can’t be assigned to the same intuitive control scheme as the rest of the Zelda series. Like, it doesn’t have to be this difficult or complicated.
If I remember correctly, there isn’t actually that much combat in the game, so I also don’t understand why “controlling the sword” is the default setting for the right joystick instead of “controlling the camera.”
Also, the text scrolls very slowly, and there’s no way to speed it up either in the “Settings” menu or by pressing a button to make all of it appear at once. And there’s a lot of text! The game doesn’t have many cutscenes, but every conversation sort of feels like a cutscene.
I want to love Skyward Sword so badly, but it’s not fun to play, especially for the first ten hours or so. Hopefully I’ll get used to the controls and start enjoying myself once I get past the slow start.
