What's your opinion on Skyward Sword?

I haven't played it at all. I only watched my girlfriend play up through the first dungeon. She really really hated the controls, but I can't really speak from personal experience on that point.

What I can say is that the visual style of the game was ugly, like they were trying to do Wind Waker without cell shading. There were WAYYYY too many cutscenes that interrupted the action. (Which has been a problem since Wind Waker, so that's nothing new), and Zelda, as a character, was just an anime cliche. She's the protagonist's childhood best friend. They both have grown to like each other romantically, but they're not sure how to express their affection for one another. It's a tired cliche, and they didn't even spice it up with any interesting take on the characters or their relationships.

I can't pass judgement on the game, I haven't played the game. But what I've seen makes me feel like I never, ever want to play the game.

I think I am gonna hook my wii up now and play it.

Missed this thread, didn't I?

So torn over SS. Didn't love the art direction, tbh. It grated on me. I prefer realistic styles, like TP. Even like OoT and MM, in that realistic was the intention and the vibe. I could tolerate WW because at least it was easy on the eyes. But SS can't decide if it's realistic or cartoony, and in the end, it just sort of... grates. It's very blare-y. But I got used to it.

ADORE the controls. I dreamed of motion-control sword action since I was a wee waddler. Am I the only kid who swung sticks around pretending to be Link, and prayed for the day a game like SS would come out? Thought so. Ok, it wasn't 100% realistic swordplay, but it was miles ahead of the cheap excuse for swing controls used in TP. And swordplay aside, I didn't have any problems with the controls. Once you accept them and play for a bit, it all becomes natural.

HATE the world. So empty and boring. The islands were even more sparse than WW, and the overworld consisted of nothing more than scaled-up minigames. The hints of an older civilisation in the desert sparked some interest for me (how does that fit into the Zelda chronology??) but it wasn't nearly enough. Where's the villages, towns, sense of history and culture? I get that it's early on the Hyrule scene, but they just didn't do enough. It seemed to leave RPG behind and verge on platform.

Really like the storyline and how it sets up the rest of the series. Since OoT was my first Zelda game, SS has a lovely full circle feeling to it. Liked the sword-guy's character (forget his name), didn't see that reveal coming. And now aLttP's Vaati, TP's Zant, all fits in. Zelda's character was a little nothing, true. But her identity as a reincarnated goddess opens the door to some intriguing questions/theories, like how she starts as a goddess, then becomes Zelda, the human reincarnation of the goddess, then by WW she's a pirate leader who is a reincarnation of the royal Princess Zelda who is herself a reincarnation of the goddess. So the layers of separation between the character and her original divinity multiply over time - is this the weakening/dispersing of the original divinity, or do the layers of identity solidify through the ages and become permanent, like layers of rock hardened over time?

Also quite like the main theme, but it's not the most mindblowing soundtrack.