I'm at the end of Skyward Sword, having put about 50 hours into it. It's been a journey of highs and lows. The first 2 - 3 hours were quite boring and occasionally miserable (e.g., loftwing race), though I think this was impacted by me trying to make a go of the motion controls. They really didn't work for me, and while the button controls aren't perfect, they are definitely good enough.
The first time through the surface areas was fine. The forest was a little underwhelming but I liked the other two, especially their look and music. Actually, I can't remember if it was when I started having to backtrack through these areas that I fell in love with the game or if it was when I was finishing the desert area for the first time.
But around that time, I had the controls mostly down, I was feeling the Zelda charm 100%, and was really starting to enjoy the puzzles, especially the time stone stuff. Flying feels great, I like the combat a lot (even though it is simple and breaks down when multiple enemies come at you), the characters are charming, and there has been a huge emphasis on puzzles, even if they've mostly been easy. And I actually really liked the backtracking (seems like many do not)! For one, I appreciated the design of the different areas, finding them large and complex enough to require exploration but so easy to navigate and to orient myself that I always felt I knew where I was and where I was going (reminding me why I disliked God of War so much). But also, I like to feel like I've thoroughly explored the different areas in a game, so going back actually helped with this a lot. I ended the game finding everything except 3 heart pieces. Plus the new areas that open up when backtracking can be quite substantial.
There is still some unevenness that surprised me, like a few puzzles whose solution came out of nowhere. I remember one where you had to blow up a crate that blocked a path across a chasm in order to advance. Pretty standard stuff, but this was the first and only time destructible crates appeared. I remember trying to break a few of the crates in the hub town early on and when I couldn't, figured they must all be indestructible, so this solution just felt...unconsidered, I guess, for a Nintendo game. And while I appreciated the dowsing ability for the collectables, I hated having to rely on it to progress the story at certain points. It felt lazy and unfun--very God of War with the arrow pointing toward the objective. If you must collect something, the terrain should guide you in a natural way.
For me, this game went from a 2/10 to a 4/10 and eventually settled at a 9/10. Looking forward to replaying some time in the future.
