ned out. I had talked to my boss about taking a week off from work to go through the game. I had told my friends and family I would be virtually unavailable until my Zelda gaming experience was complete. When the day finally came, I immersed myself into the world of Hyrule as I had done many times before in my life.Yes, it was worth all the bantering I received from fellow employees when they learned I had taken that much vacation time to play a video game. The game has everything you would expect from a Zelda game. Rich environments, extremely immersive, smooth intuitive controls, great graphics (graphics are and were a little outdated, but the art direction more than made up for it), epic boss fights (visually), tricky well balanced puzzles, plenty of side quests, secrets, and other fun things to do (fishing!).
Well, now that I've talked it up so much, why doesn't the game appear on my Top 10 list?? Well unfortunately Twilight Princess was a victim of casual gamers being where the money is. You can read more about that here! So let me explain. This game could have been my #3, #2, perhaps even #1 favorite game of ALL time had the developers changed a few lines of code! Everyone that has played a Zelda game knows that fighting monsters is a big part of the game. Well unfortunately, in Twilight Princess, it's just too damn hard to get yourself killed.
After the first couple dungeons I thought, "Okay, maybe the battles will get harder as the game progresses". Nope... Seriously, they programmed this game so that anyone, and I mean ANYONE (that can hold a controller and distinguish
what the buttons do) can fight off monsters in this game without breaking a sweat. Your hit-points (or life) is measured in hearts at the top left corner of your screen. I can't even remember if there is one monster or boss in the game that can drain more than 1 or MAYBE 2 hearts in one hit.. The average hit will only drain half of a heart or even a quarter heart!! Where is the challenge in this? And to make it even worse, during almost every boss fight you are able to find ways to regenerate your health throughout the battle... Which makes carrying potions and faeries around with you mostly pointless.Not only does this flawed game mechanic make the battles in this game completely unchallenging, but it has other side effects as well. Most of the secrets that you find in this game will eventually lead to a "piece of heart" as a reward. Which end up adding the amount of total hearts (life, hit-points) you can possibly have at one time. In most Zelda games this proves extremely beneficial, and it is exciting to find them. However, in Twilight Princess, you are left feeling that they serve little purpose, and the excitement of finding these secrets is very diminished.
The most frustrating thing about all of this is knowing how easily this could have been changed. It would probably involve changing a few lines of code, and removing some pots and bushes from boss fights. So why couldn't have Nintendo released the game with two different modes? An easy mode (The current one), and a normal mode (for people like me). This is why I haven't been excited for Skyward Sword. I hope that Skyward Sword is great. I hope that it is everything Twilight Princess was and more, and most of all, I hope that the battles prove challenging and give me some feeling of accomplishment when I down an evil foe. But it ends there. I cannot be excited, only hopeful.
