Looking Back: Was Twilight Princess a Bad Game? (by Carl B.)

November 14, 2011, by Carl B. - With Skyward Sword releasing this Sunday in North America, it's time to take a look at one of the more polarizing titles in The Legend of Zelda series: Twilight Princess. Despite being critically acclaimed – it holds a 95 average on Metacritic – there's a group of gamers that subscribe to the thought that Twilight Princess is too similar to Ocarina of Time, thus making it a lackluster experience and the lone poor title in the entire series. With the benefit of looking back several years, was Twilight Princess actually a bad game?

Twilight Princess is the darkest and most realistic Zelda game to date, something that most fans – if not all of them – appreciated after the ultra-stylized visuals seen in The Wind Waker. Twilight Princess still utilized some cell-shading, but it wasn't as drastic as The Wind Waker, Skyward Sword, or Okami.


The main complain pundits have with Twilight Princess is that it's too similar to Ocarina of Time, which is weird considering the outcry for another Zelda title similar to the Nintendo 64 masterpiece. Every Zelda game makes use of the theme of three: three pieces to the Triforce, three dungeons before a major plot change, etc. More than any other Zelda game, Twilight Princess was criticized for continuing the tradition. It seems pretty fickle, to be honest, since Twilight Princess does so many other things well – and, conversely, not so well.

A legitimate complaint of Twilight Princess fewer fans make is that the world, while quite large, is empty. Hyrule Field is fun to ride around in while on horseback, but like the Great Sea in The Wind Waker, there aren't many enemies. At least The Wind Waker had islands to explore, while Twilight Princess only had three total inhabited areas, not counting the small areas that the Gorons and Zoras live in.

Increased scope was good and bad for the field, but it was excellent for dungeons – Twilight Princess has some of the largest dungeons in the series, each of which takes more than an hour to complete. With the increased processing power of Wii U, it's going to be interesting to see how Nintendo evolves the large dungeon scope they set forth in Twilight Princess.

A lesser issue with Twilight Princess is that many of the items in the game are useless outside of their original dungeon. One of the coolest items in the entire game is the Spinner, but it becomes mostly useless after completion of Arbiter's Grounds, save for a few Heart Pieces that require the item to reach. Still, the items in Twilight Princess were very creative, especially the Spinner and Double Clawshots.


Nobody can deny the great cinematics in Twilight Princess, something that the Zelda series as a whole hasn't been known for. There are plenty of epic moments in Twilight Princess, ranging from pulling out the Master Sword for the first time to meeting Zelda to the final battle with Ganondorf.

Twilight Princess certainly has its flaws, but it's not a bad game – far from it, in fact. Every issue with the game can be counterpointed with something more influential to the overall experience. The fact that the biggest complaint with the game is that it's "too similar" to Ocarina of Time shows how little Twilight Princess has actually been analyzed by the title's detractors.