"Fanboys, please defend this."
Okay.
So the first of the many complaints I hear about this game that I've personally deemed unjustifible from my position ontop of my self-appointed throne of gaming-critic-that-doesn't-actually-critique anything is that the game has bad controls and it's generally at this point I stop paying attention to anything that's being said by that person because anyone who can't grasp their heads around the controls of this game is either incredibly stupid or is literally trying not to much like a child that that's never tried pizza before is vehemently shaking his head and pretending that it tastes terrible because it looks icky.
In fact, on the subject matter, it seems that people who had problems with the controls tend to boil down to two groups of people consisting of those who were neutral on the subject (and I say neutral cause there was only 1 or 2 games that used Motion Controls+ and of those games I know exactly zero people who've played them so there can't be anybody who's positive about it) and the people who are naturally biased and want nothing to do with the controls and refuse to even try it.
To those people in the latter group I say "Instead of bitching, have you tried not sucking"?
Much like the old saying of "A great fisherman never chooses his own lure", a great gamer or even an intelligent adult should reasonably be able to figure out how to swing the Wiimote in the direction that it's required instead of sitting there jiggling their oversized limpwrist at the direction of the T.V. then spending hours on the internet complaining about it when I just stop reading when I see the word waggle being used. "C'mon, guys." I say to them. "If you're willing to learn overcomplicated button press schematics on a keyboard or even a controller why can't you learn to flick your wrist in a simple precise motion?"
"NO!" they would respond to me while fidgeting uncomfortably as they fold their arms and turn the other way in a pout-like manner resembling that of a cathlic schoolgirl except without the skirts and the implied jail ba-Where was I again? Oh yes, right, speaking of schoolgirls, I have a 12 year-old niece who doesn't have an issue with the controls and even prefers it to the older Zelda titles and if that doesn't embarrass you (As you sit there thinking of clever insults to imply towards a 12 year-old's opinion on a "mature adult game") then I ask if you even take these things seriously in the first place.
Now onto the much dreaded topic of the notorious "fetch quests" and "padding" which has been running so rampant ever since the days of Final Fantasy XI and World of Warcraft (which has seriously made me want to take a hammer to the server of every single MMORPG and shove the whole damn thing up the anus of the nearby maintenance crew as I slowly watch the whole place slowly consume itself with negligence) which everyone and their mother has been spouting out like a catch phrase. It's not a fetch quest, you loon. A fetch quest is where you're told to go find monster x and kill him y many times, possibly even doing the extra step of bringing back token z drop that you can't even use as a normal item and therefore doesn't develop the plot or even the character other than the fact that it's attempting to mask that you're just level grinding and you're going to be doing this over the next span of your ENTIRE LIFE. A fetch quest is not "any quest where someone has told you what you need to find" and yes, technically I'm aware of the fact that it's a fetch quest on the grounds that you're told to fetch something but saying that would allow me to call Super Mario Bros and RPG and I would be technically right so long as you're playing the role of Mario in a video game you twat.
It's not even really padding because every instance of a quest in this game is either in a new area which is labyrinth like in nature with baddies and treasures and off-beaten paths for you to explore OR it's the same area with drastic changes to it including more off-beaten paths different baddies and even whole new sections to explore that take you off to the above example of a whole new area with new things to see and new labyrinths to plumb AND THEN you have the example of the water pot and the dragon which is done in less than 4 minutes and you're even given a handy map, compass in the shape of Fi's dowsing ability, and the ability to warp there, which confuses me because obviously the effect of padding is to increase the game's play time with insubstantial long-lasting activities which you've already done adnauseum and blatantly beaten like the proverbial dead horse and not for it to be a quick in and out "we really don't want you to dwadle on this part too long because you have the rest of the game to play" section that simply tests your memory like a pop quiz which the only people who would have complained about are those who either failed it because they were too busy sitting in class not listening and texting their friend about what happened at the ol' ball game or the people who are simply want to complain about everything.
Exploration seekers always make me laugh in a Zelda game because there's only been one Zelda based on exploration and that was the original NES title which is a game that almost nobody in their late teens has even touched because they can't even stand to look at the graphics and the ones who have often go crying to their mums about how the bad game touched them in their dirty places because they can't handle actually having to search for shit without the game subtly guiding them in their right way. It occurs to me that this is a poor argument for suggesting that this game has exploration in it, saying that the other Zelda's don't, but that's the thing. They don't and I don't know where people get this idea from OR actually it's not exploration in the traditional sense but rather maze-solving would be a better word for what the Zelda titles do. People these days tend to take the word exploring and liken it to the phrase "Going off the rails" and imply that it's always a good idea after being given a wonderfully constructed plot, set of dungeons, monsters, items, and nefarious do-badders is to do the COMPLETE FUCKING OPPOSITE. In a game of Dungeons and Dragons this is called derailing the campeign and doing so will quickly find you on the DM's blacklist and all of your party standing around in a hastily drawn inn for some generic tolkein rip-off that he had to make up on the fly to accommodate your need to ruin your hosts labor-intensive well constructed plans.
Exploring is more akin to you're told what to look for, but you're not told HOW to look for it or where it is and in this aspect Zelda is abound as the game masterfully places you at the start of the maze you need to be at with subtle clues and by locking you into a one-lane race track that you didn't even notice because of all the pretty pictures on the way. That's right, start up any Zelda and quickly notice that all of them are "linear" (which is a holdover from bad FPS games that I hate almost as much as MMOs; see metaphor above) they just trick you into thinking they're not by letting you look at all the areas you COULD be at if you had the proper item and may even let you take a picture. Skyward Sword removes this illusion by taking out the windows, and suddenly everyone starts crying that the game has been made too straight-forward because they can't waste 10 hours trying to figure out how to get past a post in the ground that they could have gotten passed by just playing the damn game like they normally would, instead of badgering it like a ram trying to find. . .er, whatever it is that ram's like to ram into for. Hookers and booze? I'unno.
Fi is another interesting complaint I hear about because whenever I hear about it I can always recognize the people with insufferable Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. It's actually a very rare moment when Fi interrupts the gameplay in any significant way due to her text dialogues popping up almost exclusively when you enter into a new area from a doorway or during conversation scenes where you're already engaged in a scene you can't break away from regardless, so the only REAL time Fi has to interrupt anything that you might be in the middle of would be with her message about the low battery or the low heart gauge, and both of those you can completely ignore and will go away after roughly five seconds if you so choose to. In fact a lot of her non-conversational scenes require input from the player to even activate and it makes me wonder how any of these people got through ocarina of time or even could possibly say that they liked Navi more than Fi because Navi's chime is a lot more in your face with "HEY! LISTEN TO ME! I'M IMPORTANT! LINK! HURRY UP! C'MON! TALK TO ME!", with Fi being more like a simple chiming effect that you might not even notice in the heat of heavy battle (assuming you aren't stuck on the controls and simply trying to cheese your way around everything in an attempt to avoid actually learning to play the game), like elevator music, or soothing wind-chimes, it's completely possible to ignore it and continue on, but for whatever reason, these people lack that innate ability to ignore being pestered, and I fear for the day when these same people have children and have to respond to every instance of "DAADDDY" even when they know that it's not going to be anything important enough to turn away from their work for.
Lastly, and this is on a more personal note, I come here to be trolled, Mr. "I hate everything because it's funnier that way" Yahtzee. I enjoy coming here every week and leaving in blind seething rage much like a Stockholm's syndrome kidnappee princess peach enjoys being kidnapped by a fire breathing dragon-turtle on a daily basis, but this time I'm deeply disappointed in you, not for your choice of game or words or even your childish antiques of turning this whole Skyward Sword thing into a huge debate, but because frankly your arguments about the game are lukewarm at best and you end it by saying "this is the worst Zelda I've ever played" complete with graph and chart like you scientifically calculated your hate for this in the scale that computer AI uses in that one horror story which has a long name and involves screaming when one can't. I saw Skyward Sword and was ready to be brought to tears as you thoroughly thrashed what's been one of the best Zelda titles to the date of the franchise, but all I got instead was a severe case of the "That's it?". Any of these arguments can simply be brought down by the fact that you obviously purposely tried NOT to enjoy this game, and right-o you clever wanker, you succeeded. You've successfully forced yourself to play through the entirety of a game you didn't like (or pretended not to like) for the sake of cheap laughs and because you felt you had to for your imaginary friends on the internet. I'd give you a gold medal, but they don't pass those out at the special Olympics.
