15Apr03 (Monthenor): I mentioned last week that I was mostly disappointed. I have since found that I'm not the only negative review of Zelda on the web, but I'll probably be the most coherent. I played it from stem to stern, and I believe I now have a handle on exactly what it is. Barring that, I know exactly what it is not.

It's no Ocarina of Time.

I remember four years ago when Ocarina first came out. I didn't even have an N64 of my own, but I had the game pre-ordered and grabbed it the morning it arrived. The shiny gold box and matte golden cartridge beckoned to me from my classes that day, distracting me from what really needed to get done. Fortunately my schedule was free from Monday morning through to Tuesday night, so come Monday I rented the dorm N64, sat down in front of the dorm big-screen TV, and played. And played. And played. I don't remember if I took a break to sleep or not, but I would guess not.

I beat OOT storywise in two consecutive Tuesdays of solid play. Incidentally, it was during these marathon sessions in the Reed-Johnson lounge that the Monty-Morgion dynamic was first established. It took me a couple more years to wander back into Hyrule and find all the Golden Skulltulas, but those first two Tuesdays of play are burned into my mind as a sleep-deprived haze of joy and challenge. Seeing Ganondorf morph into his final giant form on the big screen was one of the most important moments in my entire 17 year gaming career.

Flash forward four years: I had Wind Waker pre-ordered before I even own my own Gamecube. I picked it up the morning it arrived. I brought it home, hands shaking in glee. From what I'd heard and seen on the Net, this game recaptured the old OOT magic. I fired it up and started to play.

And I was assaulted with problems. Apparently my Gamecube has some sort of horrible wasting disease, as there were minor graphical glitches all over the place. None of them are deal-breakers, but my experience was tainted with small discolored rectangles and lines the entire time. I'm fine with the graphical style...the cel shading may turn off some kids who are still trying to pretend they're mature, but to us adults it's an interesting artistic decision. I don't know about Nintendo's stance that it allows for more emotion, but it works well for the game.

As more and more gameplay revealed itself, it became clear that Wind Waker would never be anything but a pale shadow of OOT. The game does a very good job of simulating an ocean. Unfortunately, an ocean is not very exciting by itself. In Ocarina there was a vast expanse of green fields and hills that were broken up very often by trees and grass. In Wind Waker there's an even vaster expanse of flat blue water that is rarely punctuated with small islands or rafts. Which one sounds like more fun?

In Ocarina you traveled quickly across this green field with your horse. The horse could speed up by feeding it a carrot and jump small fences. It also crushed small grass under its hooves automatically, picking up recovery items. In Wind Waker, you travel across the ocean in a boat. By manipulating the wind, you can put full power behind your sail and travel quite speedily. Unfortunately, even this speed increase can't offset the overall increase in the distances involved.

Also, controlling the horse was active: you had to keep the joystick pressed forward to move. There was no down time on the horse, and you recovered carrots quickly enough to keep travel time to a minimum. In Wind Waker, once your sails are up and the wind is behind you sailing is mind-numbingly passive. Occasionally some rupees pop up or enemies appear, but you could -- and frequently do -- go minutes at a time without having to press a button.

The dungeons are exquisitely crafted, as always. In fact, the dungeons are the highlight of the game. None of them are what I would call "hard" (in fact, none of them are what my sister would call "hard"), but they are tightly constructed and a blast to play. Gameplay hits its glorious peak in the first team dungeon, giving you the most intricate puzzle-solving in the entire adventure.

But if you have a single brain in your head, none of these dungeons will strain you too badly. They may branch off everywhere at once, but they're still made linear by the placement of keys and items. Block-pushing puzzles still exist, but this time the places that blocks need to go are almost always marked on the ground. The hookshot and all-new grappling hook only attach to certain areas, and when you aim at those areas the cursor lights up and makes noises. Bosses are once again completely pattern-based and always involve using the item you just recovered in their dungeon. If you needed any items to get into their dungeon, those will be given a minor role as well. WITHOUT EXCEPTION. Because each battle is based around one or two weapons, bosses cannot actually build upon the difficulty of the last boss. This has the perverse effect that the last dungeon boss is nearly as hard as the first one. With the surplus of life hearts you have by the end, these battles can actually be easier.

Both in the dungeons and above ground, the battles are uniformly simple. Not only does Wind Waker add an uber-parry accessed through one button press, but enemies and bosses do around half a heart damage with every attack. Almost every enemy drops hearts when they're beaten, and dungeons are swarming with pots and grass that cough up three hearts at a time. Once you have about six hearts total you can bulldoze through the great majority of the game.

This game also forces you to collect what I believe is the highest total of rupees ever. You will need, at a bare mathematically provable minimum, 3264 rupees, not counting any bait/bomb/arrow refills. Tack on another 500 to get all the bottles, 960 to get all the Heart Containers, and 1001 for all the Treasure Charts. It's all doable, but really...3264 required rupees? That is a lot of downtime.

Also, in a stunningly stupid move, the enjoyable fishing minigame from OOT is nowhere to be found. Let me explain that a little more slowly: in Wind Waker, where the entire world is covered in water, you cannot fish. Anywhere. In its place we have a Battleship clone, a target shooting game, and Pokemon Snap. Yippee.

One more snide aside. Plot has never been a strong point in the Legend of Zelda series, but never before have I actually been rooting for Ganon to win. When he finishes his Melodramatic Villain Speech at the end, I actually felt more sympathetic for him than for anyone else in the game.

In closing, let me compare Wind Waker to the other major action-RPG of the year, Dark Cloud 2. They are complete polar opposites:

So obviously what is required is some sort of synthesis of the two games. If Dark Cloud 2 had Zelda's well-constructed and difficult dungeons (ideally from OOT), the gaming public would rise up as one and enshrine this game as their Great Messiah, a singular monolith of gaming that would be discussed and revered for decades to come. Instead we have two separate games, one excellent, one mediocre. If you can get a hold of the bonus disk, Wind Waker is worth picking up just for Ocarina. Without the bonus, well...maybe. Rent it first. It makes me sad to say this about a Zelda game, but rent or borrow it first to see if you can stand the flaws.