The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Part four of the Skyward Sword coverage! This one took a while; I took my sweet, sweet time going through the revisit to Lanayru Desert. So much to explore there, so much neat backtracking once I get the double Clawshots, I had so much fun navigating the mini-dungeons in the Sand Sea... and, well, there aren't too many new enemies, honestly. The areas and environments and dungeons are really cool, but the new enemies really slowed down in the Sand Sea; and by the time we reach the Eldin Volcano and the barrage of bosses that led to the end, nearly all the new enemies have been repaint enemies. It is kind of disappointing, but at least there's still a whole bunch of bosses before the game ends... which is why this particular article took so long to make.
Skyward Sword's still fun! It's just that near the end I feel like the enemy variance petered out. There are enough variants running around and the game isn't afraid to toss some older bosses like the Moldarach randomly in the middle of overworld exploring. It didn't get as bad as Breath of the Wild did as far as enemy variance went, but... still kinda feel like we could've gotten a mite more.
Dragon: The dragons in Skyward Sword are actually helpful guardians, but what an interesting design! They were clearly going for a 'humanoid dragon' take on the traditional Chinese/Japanese oriental dragon design, but it definitely ends up as something that feels genuinely unique. The very humanoid face on top of a long neck that peters out into a wide body in a kimono? Giant eyebrows that look similar to the giant pair of trailing koi mustaches that the dragons are traditionally drawn with? The one I show here is Faron the water dragon, and we later briefly meet her fire and thunder counterparts, Eldin and Lanayru. A very, very interesting and unique take on dragons, I feel!
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Peahat: The first real 'enemy' we meet is more like a creature that gets an 'enemy info' blurb from Fi, but other than sharing the name of a classic Zelda enemy, the Peahat really doesn't have anything to do with the murderous copter-plants from Ocarina of Time or the 2D games. The Peahat is more of a non-aggressive, passive desert plant that just hangs out in the Lanayru Sand Sea, more of a bizarre part of the environment than an actual foe, to hover into the air and be a convenient anchor for our Clawshots. From what we little we see of it, I do like the fact that we see Peahats hovering with their helicopter flower petals and their massive cactus-like bulb... but also their dormant form, when they're just a flower that is buried in the rocks. Again, it's all just part of the puzzles we need to do to navigate the overworld zone, but it's nice that the Peahat does end up feeling like an actual organism that Link is manipulating instead of a convenient puzzle part.
Metal Shield Moblin: Unfortunately, with the exception of one enemy, all the common enemies are just 'remixes' of old enemies. We've got the Metal Shield Moblin here, who's tougher than the Wooden Shield Moblin. His shield doesn't break, and Link can parkour-vault over it to hit the Moblin in his bum. Neat escalation, at least he looks pretty different. Really surprised we didn't get another tier of Moblins, though.
Red Bokoblin Archer: Archers actually get a significant revamp instead of just putting a different weapon in the Bokoblin's hands! I mean, it's still not that extreme, but I'll take what I can get. Look at those felt hats, the sand-scarf and those fancy archery gloves! The archers become especially prominent in the Sandship, a pirate ship dungeon that gives Link the bow. They're pretty basic enemies, but I did like shooting the fools. (Green Bokoblin Archers show up in some caves later on, but I can't find a good render of it. They don't get the fancy clothes that the Red Archer does.)
Water Spume & Cursed Spume: Two more Spume variants show up. The Water Spumes don't even warrant an enemy explanation, because it's met in a bit of an overworld exploration/minigame segment in the Sand Sea (which I won't spoil; it's probably my favourite enivornment in the game) but it sure is a Spume that hangs out in the water. The Cursed Spume lives in the lava of Eldin Volcano and spits 'curses', an infuriating mechanic they brought back from the Bubbles of the 2D games where you can't use any items while under the effects of the curse. Fi identifies this as some generic 'the evil lingering hatred' or some such.
Dark Keese: At least they did something to make the Dark Keese look visually different! The skeletal wing-bones, tattered ears and wings, and demon-glowing red eyes does make the Dark Keese look so, so much more 'cursed' than the minimal-effort-repaint that's the Cursed Spume. The Dark Keese does exactly the same thing as the Curesd Spume, inflicting the 'curse' status, but look at this badass bat! You actually do feel the curse radiating off of it, don't you? It's an undead skeleton and shit. It's nothing we haven't seen in fantasy before, but it communicates its in-game gimmick so much better than the slightly off-colour Spume.
Dark Lizalfos: I actually feel like the change of colour and the addition of the head crest does make the Dark Lizalfos actually feel so much more threatening than its green-skinned brethren. Did they redraw the eyes to make them look more threatening, too? Anyway, the Dark Lizalfos is a typical 'different colour, slightly stronger' repaint of the regular green Lizalfos, but it also has a key difference -- it breathes curse energy. And unlike the Spumes and Keese, the Lizalfos is a lot more threatening since it can kung-fu lizard-kick you to death!
Moldorm: Oh, hey! These guys! A little gimmick item we get in the Fire Sanctuary are the Mogma Mitts, which allows Link to burrow down the ground and enter little Bomberman-esque mini-areas. The enemies here are the Moldorms, reimagined from their goofy-looking 2D counterparts into these badass hellgrammite-centipede monsters! The fight is pretty straightforward thanks to the simplicity of the burrowing minigame map. The rear of the Moldorms swell up as the obvious weak point (they remind me kind of like honeypot ants) and Link needs to navigate his way through the unconventional map to sneak behind the Moldorm and beat its weak point. A very faithful update to the classic monster!
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LD-002G Scervo: We're going to minibosses and bosses now. The Sandship is a pirate ship stranded in the past ran by robots, and it's a series of concepts that feels bizarre but gels together surprisingly well. Scervo is a robot pirate, but since he's an immortal, tattered being, he also doubles as the trope of a cursed pirate skeleton. He essentially fights like a Stalfos (except he's a robot) but, again, presentation is everything! Look at his tattered pirate regalia, and his gigantic hook arm. Most importantly, we fight Scervo on a long plank that gets shorter and shorter as the battle progresses. We have to fight and fence and push Scervo all the way to the edge of the plank, making the mutinous pirate 'walk the plank', and, again, that presentation and the general visuals of this robot really does make him my favourite miniboss in the game. They could've just tossed two Shield Moblins in a miniboss room and called it a day, but they didn't, and they made this thematic enemy, and that's pretty amazing.
Yeah, I probably would've taken Tentalus a bit more seriously if he didn't look so gosh-darned adorable. Look at those stubby giant tentacles, and that face! That face looks like a friendly buddy from Spore or something. Fi identifies this as an 'abyssal leviathan', a 'tyrant of the ancient seas', but look at this guy. Do you think Tentalus is really capable of being a tyrant? The boss fight itself is pretty fun because Tentalus alternates between hiding underwater and piercing the ship with his giant tentacles, or emerging out in his humanoid form and expose his eyeball to some typical Zelda arrows. Later on, those medusa-hair actually reveal to not be just tentacles, but tentacles with fangs! Not the most impressive boss fight, but arena and the fact that the game plays Tentalus absolutely straight as this ancient aquatic eldritch beast while he looks like a derp makes me really adore him.
Magmanos: This one is technically the miniboss of the Fire Sanctuary, but we fight several Magmanosi in the dungeon? They alll feel like minibosses in a way. I guess I just got spoiled by how well-integrated Scervo is, I suppose. The Magmanos are giant elemental lava hands that burst out of lava pools in the ground, while Link stands on a grated floor -- it's a fun visual that they use a bunch of times in A Link Between Worlds as well. A neat inversion of the Floormaster/Wallmaster enemies common in the franchise, the Magmanos is less sinister than those two, merely being an invulnerable fiery being of death that you need to drop water on so it solidifies. Not my favourite enemy concept, but it is admittedly a breath of fresh air from the Spumes and Bokoblins.
Ghirahim, Part II: We've talked about Ghirahim before, and, truthfully, I did think he would've had more of a presence. He did show up as the final boss in the Fire Sanctuary, one of the last 'mundane' dungeons. His fight is basically a souped-up version of his first fight, except he loses his cape and his arms are now black. Okay, One Piece armament Haki. He does have a bunch of fun spinning floating daggers and the fight is probably the most challenging boss fight in the game, but otherwise I don't really have much to say about him as a monster. He's an entertaining antagonist, for sure!
The Imprisoned, Parts II-III: We get a rematch with the Imprisoned again at this point. He grows hands! I... I don't have anything to say about this one. Ghirahim at least is entertaining and genuinely threatening when he shows up. Imprisoned is just there, for a sealed ancient demon of infinite evil, he's actually pretty bland. The best part about the fight is that our bully-turned-ally Groose actually helps out with lobbing bombs at him.
I'll sneak in the Imprisoned's third fight here too, because, well, it happens basically a short while after we beat the next boss below. It's a bit much, pacing-wise, isn't it? Especially if you've already done most of the side-questing at this point -- but we're not here to talk about game pacing, but about the monsters. Imprisoned's third fight seems to start off similarly to his second fight, but then his final evolution is a giant Evangelion halo that allows the Imprisoned to float straight up and bypassing the whole Link 'fight', which means that you have to do something rather... creative to stop the devastation of all of Hyrule. It's simultaneously pretty cool and awesome, and I'm not going to spoil it here.
Great Spirit of the Sky: Levias: After dealing with the Imprisoned for the second time, Link goes up to the Thunderhead, a giant swirling vortex of storm clouds... and turns out that the storm clouds aren't natural, and it's caused by this guy, Levias! Levias is a gigantic island-sized whale that swims in the skies, and it's a neat little callback to the classic Wind Fish from Link's Awakening. Levias is actually the guardian spirit of the sky, but as you can see in this image, he's actually infected! The actual image of a giant rocky island whale with a beard that resembles a whale's chin markings is very cool as far as a giant fantasy being goes, but I absolutely love the creativity that went into using the barnacles you often see on giant aquatic creatures as whales as... well, as the places where the giant tendrils ending in eyeballs poke up of.
The fight is also relatively unique, with Link having to ride on his faithful Loftwing and ram onto the giant eyeballs. It's a bit hard to show scale here with still images, but Link's merely the size of one of those eyeballs! That's not quite all, though, because as you can see, Levias has a giant flattened surface on its head. Pretty weird feature, until you realize it's a battle arena for the actual boss...
Ocular Parasite: Bilocyte! How cool is this? How cool is the fact that Levias is being puppeteered by a giant mind-control tapeworm, which erupts out of his blowhole? Bilocyte is 'merely' a parasite to the titanic Levias, but it towers over Link. Pretty cool design, I love the giant finger-frill things with eyeballs on the edge. The fight with Bilocyte is simple as long as you use the motion controls well to do the classic ol 'ping pong projectile' boss fight mechanic, but I'm just going to reiterate how cool I found Bilocyte. He's a gigant-ass parasitic worm thing that mind-controls a whale!
...at this point, the game doesn't really have any new monsters, but I have to basically do a grand round of all the other areas to do a fetch quest involving the three reginoal dragons, and then enter the final dungeon, the Sky Keep, and then fight the final boss. All of those actually take up about one-fourth of my total gameplay time, but, well, the monster variety basically peters out into these four:
LD-003D Dreadfuse: A 'remix' of ol' captain Scervo, it's actually a pretty neat-looking variation with a crown and stuff, but it's basically the same thing, if we're being honest. At least they gave him a revamped model instead of using Scervo almost entirely. Dreadfuse is also a pretty cool name.
Ghirahim, Part III: On one hand, I do enjoy Ghirahim immensely as a recurring villain. He's been a nuisance throughout our journey through the game, and we finally fight him in his final form where he's covered his entire body in Armament Haki with a steel-like substance that makes him super-duper tough. This fight is basically a more badass version of his previous two fights, and I do enjoy that he's the final dungeon boss of the game. I just have kind of ran out of things to say about this guy.
Demise: ...and turns out, thanks to some time-travel magic shenanigans, this guy, Demise, is the true final boss! Spoilers for a decade-old game, but turns out like this is the original form of the Imprisoned before he was sealed by the goddess, and also the source of the Zelda franchise's recurring villain, Ganon. You can see that he's holding a big fuck-off sword, and that's actually Ghirahim -- just like how Link's companion throughout the game is also a sword spirit. And... he sure is a big demon-lord guy, and his skin is mottled with the same texture that the Imprisoned has, so there's that continuity, but... but I just really can't get myself super-excited for this guy. It's neat that we get to fight the Ultimate Demon Lord or whatever, but I really feel that there's a bit of a disconnect between the two recurring villains we've been fighting and ol' Demise here? He's an all right final demon-god boss design, I suppose -- a bit different from what we're used to in this franchise, but ultimately still not particularly too memorable in the many, many different Zelda bosses.
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...and that's it for Skyward Sword! This took a bit longer than I thought it would, mostly because it took me longer to play the game than I thought I would. We'll probably be taking a brief break from video game monsters for a while; at least games that I'm playing. I'm currently still going through a bunch of games that don't really have monsters per se -- I still have the first Deus Ex to finish, and I think I need to play through Portal 2 as well. I might do some one-off game monster reviews in the meantime, but over the next year I guess you guys can look forward to 'monster commentary as I play the game' for either Final Fantasy XII or Persona 4, whichever one manages to rope me in more.
I think the biggest problem of the Person of Demise is that he has this cool face, hair, skin texture, build... but then he's barefoot and wearing what looks like a bathrobe loosely tied around his waist and trailing around. It's like you interrupted him having his evil coffee. Fully nude would have at least had some kind of 'basic purified evil cosmic entity being' look, but if you're going to clothe him at all, you have to at least add pants and boots. Even just boots is not enough, look at how weird Darkseid looked going around in a cowl and shorts for all those years. And The Imprisoned scales don't even fully cover his legs. It's just the same kind of poor aesthetic sense that led to the Imprisoned in the first place. a boneless, blobby being that comes off like a giant vicious chuchu more than an ancient primordial dinosaur thing. I get they were going for 'formless' but.. bleh. Also I just noticed Demise's white toenails evoke the bizarre eyeball toes of his degraded form. Man, even if they had simply given him two toes on each foot, it would have done SO much to improve the monstery look, tie him to Ganon a bit more.. get a kind of Marvel's Abomination thing going.
ReplyDeleteWell looks like I'm caught up on your Zelda monster reviews. Good stuff. Hope these continue.
Knowing what the Imprisoned looked before playing the game myself, it's... it's actually kind of interesting that the in-game cutscenes that build up to the Imprisoned being unleashed is actually pretty fucking cool and spooky. Very Cthulhu-esque, especially that one random ominous dream we have of it just swooping down upon us like a giant monstrous whale.
Delete...and then you see the damn sausage-toes which form so much of our encounter with him, plus the weird way that he moves, flopping like a wiggly whale...
But at least the Imprisoned was neat, yeah? They were trying to do something. I agree with everything you said about Demise. Having him be naked or mostly-naked (like Ghirahim's third fight form) would work, or actually try and give him a more bestial look to match Ganon -- or, hell, even a more humanoid look to match Ganondorf or *Link* would make him look a bit neater.
As for Darkseid, well, I guess the fiery pits of the hell-planet of Apokolips is too hot for full pants and he needs some ventilation?
Thanks for reading through, it means a lot for me! I haven't really had the time to sit down and do monster reviews for a while -- I have a draft of Zelda 2, Scarlet Nexus and a couple other games sitting in my blog forever, but I just haven't had the time to cross-reference the wikis and whatnot. I also planned to do FFXII, since I'm playing through it, but it's probably going to have to wait until I finish Legends Arceus.