The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for Wii: Controls and Reviews

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a 2006 action-adventure game from Nintendo EAD that came out for both the GameCube and the Wii. On the Wii, Metacritic prints a score of 95 out of 100, and the ESRB rates it T.

Overview

Link, a ranch hand in Ordon Village, follows Bulblins who have taken the village’s children and is pulled into a wall of Twilight, where he turns into a wolf. An imp called Midna frees him and guides him to Princess Zelda, whose kingdom has been invaded by Zant, the usurper king of the Twili. Link and Midna restore the Light Spirits and collect the Fused Shadows, fragments of a relic needed to match Zant’s strength.

Wikipedia places the story over a century after Majora’s Mask, in a timeline apart from The Wind Waker. The wolf form, combined with a sword-and-shield action mode, drives much of the exploring across nine dungeons joined by a large overworld that Link crosses on foot, on his horse Epona, or by teleporting.

The game began as a GameCube project, revealed under the working title The Wind Waker 2. Nintendo delayed its planned November 2005 date so it could add content and develop a Wii version alongside, and Eiji Aonuma’s team built a pointer for the bow first.

How it plays

The base scheme dates from Ocarina of Time: context-sensitive buttons and a targeting system. On the Wii, the player swings the Wii Remote to attack, and other moves use gestures with the Nunchuk. The remote’s built-in speaker plays the sound of the bowstring, Midna’s laugh and the series chime for secrets. The Wii version permits four secondary items to be equipped, against two on GameCube.

The control design was reworked after demo players found it hard. Aonuma admitted that his team had initially tried to force users to adapt, and then reworked camera and item handling for comfort. Because a right-handed swing controlled a left-handed sword, and there was no time to rebuild Link’s model, the team mirrored the entire world on Wii.

Release and credits

Nintendo EAD developed it with Aonuma directing and Shigeru Miyamoto producing. The Wii version was a launch title in North America in November 2006, with Metacritic dating it to 19 November, and followed in Japan, Europe and Australia the next month. The GameCube version arrived in December 2006 as the last first-party game for that console. Nintendo issued a Nintendo Selects edition of the Wii version in 2011, according to Wikipedia, which flags that detail as unverified in its own article.

A high-definition remaster for the Wii U, Twilight Princess HD by Tantalus Media and Nintendo EPD, appeared in March 2016.

Reception

Metacritic holds 95 out of 100 for the Wii and 96 for the GameCube version, both in its universal acclaim band. 1UP.com, Computer and Video Games, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, GamesRadar and GameSpy gave perfect scores. Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot found the Wii controls tacked-on, while 1UP.com thought the sword swings the most impressive in the series.

Graphics split opinion: IGN and GameSpy noted blurry textures, and IGN found the MIDI-format music thin. It earned Game of the Year awards from several outlets and sold 8.85 million copies worldwide by 2015, per Wikipedia.

Can you still play it?

The Wii disc runs on any Wii and in Wii Mode on a Wii U, where most software needs a Sensor Bar. Be careful with the product: the GameCube disc is a different release, and the HD remaster is a separate Wii U game.

Because the Wii version was a disc, the Wii Shop Channel closure on 30 January 2019 and the Wii U eShop shutdown of 27 March 2023 do not affect it.