In terms of the all-new button controls, although they don't quite match up to the feeling of immersion you get from swinging and flicking your Joy-Con as you batter Bokoblins and slice and dice Deku-Babas, they still feel remarkably good and enable Switch Lite and portable players to fully enjoy this experience in handheld mode.

All of these issues are, for the most part, banished here. We were impressed with this game's combat back in 2011, but there was no doubt it could prove hugely frustrating when a thrust or cut failed at some critical moment, when your shield refused to parry an attack or a skyward strike refused to charge. Tight, responsive and absolutely up to the task in the most frantic of mob battles and boss fights, they may not quite manage the flawless 1:1 swordplay that was touted back in the day, but boy do they come close.Įngaging in combat in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD feels fluid, your sword swipes and shield actions responding accurately to your commands and enabling you to properly relax, to feel confident that the inputs you make whilst playing with motion controls will now translate onto the screen. The motion controls here, such a divisive element of the original release of this game, now perform so much closer to the way we dreamed they might back in 2011. Let's start with those technical changes. This HD remaster feels like how we were meant to originally experience this adventure, the connection between the game's world and the player now unimpeded. The raft of tweaks, changes and updates drip-fed to us in the months leading up to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD's release may not have seemed all that exciting on paper - this isn't some ground-up remake and there's no new content or notable changes to how things unfold - but together they give the underlying game here a whole new lease of life. Well, whether or not any of that might have been the case seems quite beside the point now with this HD remaster, Nintendo has taken its gust bellows to a layer of jank that, in hindsight, stood between players and the true promise, the full potential, of this masterpiece.

Surely by now these issues - these rough edges - have been exacerbated, and even added to, by the natural progression of time. It stands to reason, this is an entry in Nintendo's storied franchise that's had its detractors from the get-go, criticised for its sometimes unreliable motion controls, its fractured overworld, intrusive sidekick, pacing and some late-game repetition. Returning to The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword some ten whole years down the line from its original release, you may be expecting, as we certainly were, to be greeted by a core game that's unavoidably, naturally, beginning to show its age in some regards.

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