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The original review I wrote for this game was very strange and that was after I revised it to take out "rough language and crazy theories". This review is based after that original review though much shorter.

My first exposure to The Wind Waker was around the summer 2004 era, which even though I was in middle school, it was the best time to be a fan of video games, and besides, there were still good games to look forward in that time. Yeah, Nintendo wasn't doing so hot in reality (not a lot of GameCube games on the horizon) and the GameCube ended up repeating a lot of the mistakes the N64 did, including being maligned as a "kiddie" console, and The Wind Waker was partly to blame for that. Everyone was looking forward to another Zelda title before a major graphics shift fairly early in development, and even when it was finally released, two dungeons had to be cut and replaced a section of the game where you had to find Triforce Pieces.

In fall 2012 I borrowed the game from my brother but it wasn't until after college (June 18, 2015) when I finally beat it, and it brought back a lot of good memories...and I'm not afraid to give bestow upon it a "Good" rating for this website...but not without some qualifiers. Some people really hated the idea of being out on the ocean so long, but there is a minority, me included, who actually liked it, either sailing on the blue seas or the occasional thunderstorm that comes up. There were memorable dungeons: special note goes to the Earth Temple, where there were some weird sun/moon things with light puzzles going on. (That kinda weirded me out, and probably if I was a whole lot younger, it would've been far more unsettling. But I digress.) There were great items (the Grappling Hook was fun), waifus (Medli the bird/human hybrid), a one-time attempt to make Ganondorf a more nuanced and interesting character, optional sidequests (I did not attempt to take a picture of every character in the game), and all sorts of others.

On the other hand, it's a fairly short and easy game (especially compared to Ocarina of Time, but then again Ocarina of Time is held as the literal gold standard of video games, and nothing really could stack up against it), Tingle is obnoxious (and the Tingle Tuner required you to have a Game Boy Advance and a GBA/GCN link cable), and the actual item (The Wind Waker is a baton) is pretty forgettable. There's several other quibbles I remember but can't recall at this time.

In 2013, a remake for the Wii U was released, titled The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD which added bloom to the graphics and a number of other changes designed to make the game a bit less frustrating...but really, you can have HD graphics on Wind Waker through mods (heck, even natively running on Dolphin has better-looking results than playing it on a TV). I don't have a big interest in playing The Wind Waker again, so I can't really judge on if The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD is "better" or not. (That's really up to you.)

(Speaking of HD, the high resolution screenshot is from this website though the author claims it was from another place. Can you help ID the source?)

FINAL RATING: