End Credits -
Toru Minegishi, Asuka Ota (From the 'The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess' Soundtrack)
(^^^this is the best song ever made please listen as you read this if you want.. or not i dont really gaf tbh)
prompt: similar game, similar time
date started: march 12th, 2026
date completed: april 1st, 2026
time played: 40(?)ish hours
(erm i was supposed to do these in order but i started this without realising it was on the list so i guess i broke the seal on that. oopsie!)
"A sword wields no strength unless the hand that holds it has courage."
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is a game that I've been pretty certain I'd enjoy for years now. I wanted to play more Zelda games beforehand so I could fully appreciate it, but it had an achievement set on RetroAchievements.org and that was enough to convince me to just jump into it. I'm really glad I did! It's probably in my top 5 favourite games of all time.
My favorite part of Twilight Princess is easily it's atmosphere. It creates a really unique dream-like feeling by flowing between different states constantly. One moment you'll be strolling along the bay of Lake Hylia, the next you're watching some freaky ass cutscene where Link has no eyes. One moment you're riding through Hyrule Field, then the sun rapidly sets and your environment suddenly has this weird surreal feeling to it (screenshot above). It bounces between being fun and serene to offputting and surreal in a way that lines up quite nicely with the themes of light/dark present in the narrative. It feels quite out of character for a Nintendo product, and I doubt they'll ever make anything like it again. Aside from it's atmosphere, the visuals are amazing throughout the entire thing. I have no idea how this ran on a gamecube but the textures are so good at conveying their properties while being low fidelity that you can hardly ever tell that they're probably 64x64.
Zelda narratives usually have an air of darkness to them, and Twilight Princess is no exception. Hyrule has been consumed by darkness because of Zant, 'The King of Darkness' who hails from The Twilight Realm. It's up to Link to free each region from his control and restore light to the residents. It feels quite unnerving the first time you visit a region within the darkness; residents are hiding in their homes and monsters lurk in the streets. As you slowly begin to restore each locale to it's former state, you gradually gather pieces of 'The Fused Shadow', a powerful helmet for your shadow companion Midna. You then visit dungeons collecting fragments of a mirror so you can enter the Twlight Realm and defeat Zant, which is when you learn that he is only a mere puppet for the true villain of the game, Ganondorf.
Ganon lurks in the background of this game in a really cool way. You know he's probably gonna show up eventually, but he waits until the 11th hour to finally make his appearance. He feels like a spectre lurking in the history books and the memories of Hyrule for most of the game, only to appear again in physical form. The fight with Zant is very cool, but the fight with Ganon is one of my favorite boss fights ever. It has like 4 phases and you ultimately end up clashing swords with him in the middle of Hyrule Field one on one. Link does not falter, and Ganon falls to The Blade of Evil's Bane once again.
Because it's an adventure game (about hitting bugs with a sword mostly) Twilight Princess' narrative takes a backseat to other things for most of the game, but it's really well-told and well-paced. I always enjoyed returning to the narrative thread after spending a while fishing or collecting golden bugs. Your companion, Midna, is the real standout overall. Usually Zelda games (in my opinion) have issues with creating characters that are actually memorable other than Link and Zelda. Midna breaks this trend, and steals the spotlight from the usual two entirely. She goes through an entire arc over the course of the game, her goals and beliefs changing entirely as she accompanies Link through Hyrule. It's really cool to see in a franchise which typically struggles with characters (not that they learnt from it every single character in breath of the wild is the most forgettable boring individual you'll ever meet).
My favorite thing about the gameplay of Zelda games is all the little trinkets and doodads they give you to play with as you progress through (ANOTHER reason to dislike botw... hardly any doodads..). Twilight Princess has the widest variety of tools out of any of the games I've played, and they're all really fun and unique in their own ways. The standouts for me were the spinner (obviously), the dominion rod and the double clawshot. The puzzles they intergrate into the dungeons based on each tool were always enjoyable, especially the later ones which start combining multiple tools. It's present in other titles too but the lite-metroidvania style of backtracking through areas to reach previously inaccessible areas with your new toys was always a nice thing to look forward to after finishing up a dungeon. I kind of wish there was more of it though, I think the open-ended areas could have really benefited from it as they're quite empty.
The combat is pretty fun, admittedly I did not unlock any of the additional abilities from the statues because I couldn't figure out how to do it so I was running with base Link the entire game. The only time that it got annoying was in Hyrule Castle when you're fighting these guys with shields as I assume there's an ability to counter their blocking that I didn't have. Even though I was missing half of the depth, I still enjoyed each enemy encounter. They're never too formidable, but still engaging enough to stray away from tedium. I did NOT like the wolf combat though it was very boring, you just hold down B until all the enemies die.
As I said a moment ago each dungeon is really fun and always intergrates it's associated tool into the puzzles in creative ways. My favorites overall were Snowpeak Ruins, Arbiter's Grounds and the Forest Temple. Snowpeak Ruins especially, and it's probably my favorite Zelda dungeon now. The gradual unlocking of areas is extremely rewarding and the setting feels so unique and fresh in comparison to the typical locations. Each dungeon is able to feel unique in it's own way and it really helped avoid an issue I had with Ocarina of Time. It's very stupid but I never like how Zelda games lay out your goals for you ahead of time, giving you a list of each dungeon you're going to visit in the next 10 hours. I found it quite tedious in Ocarina (my own fault, not the game's) but the dungeons in Twilight Princess felt so unique that I was looking forward to each one.
The optional activities are really fun! I loved going fishing with Hena on her boat, playing rollgoal in her shack and collecting all the golden bugs. They're a really enjoyable optional outlet when you'd like to take a break from progression and exist within the world. They feel like invitations to engage with the people and places of Hyrule on your own accord. I did NOT!! enjoy that stupid star game in Castle Town though. I sucked at that so bad that I kept running out of rupees to retry it. I really like when games invite you to exist within their worlds (try not to mention this in a blog page challenge) and Twilight Princess jumps at various opportunity to do so. The lengthy opening is another example of this; there's about an hour of gameplay where you're just hanging out in Link's hometown.
Twilight Princess is able to draw out the best from Zelda's main tropes while also introducing new concepts and ideas that only bolster its quality. It balances the franchises lighthearted silly tones with a deeper delve into darker themes than these games typically do. I really enjoyed my time with it and could see myself revisiting it multiple times in the future. My horse was called chungus and i really regretted calling it that almost immediately though
