The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD Review

I recently picked up The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD Wii U bundle and I have to say that I’m impressed with both the system and the game.

This review will focus mainly on The Wind Waker HD but towards the end I will also give my thoughts on the bundle.

It’s no secret that Nintendo’s new console has had some trouble finding its way. Yet, with the release of The Wind Waker HD I believe that Nintendo will see a lot of their fans come out and support the game, and they should because it’s great.

I played The Wind Waker 10 years ago on the Nintendo GameCube and it quickly became one of my favorite Zelda titles. Now, picking it up again in HD was a real treat.

This game takes place 100 years after The Ocarina of Time (Another Zelda title). Hyrule has suffered from a great flood, leaving most of the kingdom underwater. Link originally sets out to rescue his sister, which he does, but is ultimately pulled into journey that has him saving Princess Zelda and stopping Ganondorf (the main antagonist of the series).

The Wind Waker got a lot of negative feedback about the way it looked. After the more realistic approach during Nintendo 64 days, fans wanted Nintendo to continue making real looking Zelda games. What we received was the total opposite; we received a cartoon looking world.

The world is now in HD and it looks great. My one complaint is that some of the lighting gets a little too bright in areas.

The look of The Wind Waker never bothered me, because once you started playing, this was the same old Zelda. Yes, the adventure was a lot less challenging but the world it was set in made up for that. The Wind Waker is huge and there are no loading times, it all goes together smoothly.

Now, playing through the game once again I realized it feels much shorter than other Zelda games. It might just be me, but I feel like this one lacked a good amount of dungeons. Yet, the dungeons that are in the game still hold up and it was great to relive them all.

Before I end this review I want to bring up one more thing. I hear a lot of reviewers complaining about the sailing in the game, that it’s too slow. The sailing is fine, it does take time, at first, to get to point A and to point B, but that all ends when you learn how to quick travel across the map. So, if you’re going to give this game a lesser score because of the sailing, consider the quick travel and the ability to obtain a faster sail through a side quest.

The only reason this game isn’t getting a perfect 10 from me is that I feel it needed more dungeons during its main story that might just be me though.

9 out of 10

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD bundle

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker Wii U bundle a download code to download The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD from the Nintendo eshop; the new Wii U gamepad that has a 6.2 inch, 16:9 aspect ratio LCD touch screen that is decorated in a Zelda theme; and a digitial copy of the book Hyrule Historia.

I would have loved it if an actual copy of the game was actually bundled with the system, I still like having a physical game, but besides from that this is a great bundle at a great price.