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The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword was an odd beast for many reasons. It originally released in 2011 for the Wii, and had a lot of expectations to live up to, both from fans and from Nintendo's financial department. Unfortunately, it met with a sharply divided reception among both, in no small part because Skyward Sword often got in its own way with its design.

Nintendo attempted to show off the Wii's motion-control capabilities when it launched with Twilight Princess. Nintendo was apparently successful at this, as TP went on to sell 8 million units. However, TP was at heart a Gamecube game with motion controls tacked on - the Wii U port of TP proves this, as it holds the original left-right orientation of the GameCube TP that was flipped for the Wii version to accomodate motion controls. It wasn't until Skyward Sword 's release that a "proper" Wii Zelda game became available. As a Wii game, Skyward Sword was fundamentally designed around motion controls, in a way that made a port to the more conventionally-controlled Switch somewhat difficult. The game required the Wii Motion Plus. Many enemies required the player to watch their movements and respond with the appropriate motion of the Wii Remote to swing the sword. Bombs could either be thrown or rolled like bowling balls, which was a nod to the popularity of the bowling game in Wii Sports. Flying required you to really use the Wii remote to navigate your loftwing. Unfortunately, by 2011, motion controls had become somewhat passe. Wii Remote gestures didn't work on a 1:1 basis with the game, and the problem was even more pronounced if you were using the Wii Motion Plus plug-in with a standard Wii remote.  Many of the Wii's later games like Xenoblade Chronicles or The Last Story either barely utilized the motion controls or didn't utilize them at all. 

However, Skyward Sword had design issues that went well beyond gamers not wanting to wrestle with the motion controls.  Many of these problems were a direct result of Nintendo's overall philosophy towards game design on the Wii and DS. Satoru Iwata and Reggie Fils-Aime wanted the Wii to be accessible to traditional non-gamers. In practice, what this meant was that Wii games had long tutorials with excessive hand-holding, and controlled gameplay streamlined to the point of being too easy. The sky-based Overworld felt more like a stage select than a living, breathing overworld. One big grievance was that the game would describe items to you almost every time you picked them up, even crafting ingredients. Nintendo clearly had the "blue ocean" gamers who were not otherwise familiar with the series in mind, but they misread the room. Casual players weren't playing Zelda in huge numbers, and experienced gamers found the hand-holding to be annoying at best and infantilizing at worst, which was a common criticism of Nintendo's Wii and DS games at that time. As a result, Skyward Sword was overlooked by many gamers, and many of the design choices in Breath of the Wild were made in response to the perceived and actual shortcomings of Skyward Sword. 

That said, Skyward Sword has many positives to it which unfortunately got overshadowed by the complaints or were completely overlooked because people didn't play far enough through it. Nintendo hopes that, with many of the things people criticized the original Wii release of Skyward Sword being addressed in this remaster, the positives in Skyward Sword will finally have a chance to shine and it will become a revered classic like its other Zelda siblings. In that respect, I believe they have succeeded. The Switch version of Skyward Sword is excellent.

What changed?

Right off the bat we'll discuss the controls. Whereas Twilight Princess was a port of the Gamecube game where pressing a button to swing your sword was replaced by Wii Remote movements, motion controls are baked into Skyward Sword's basic design, not just for swinging the sword, but for solving puzzles and interacting with the game's world. In order to completely eliminate them, Nintendo would have to rebuild the entire game from the ground up. Motion controls are now handled through the motion-sensing capabilities of the Joycons, using one Joycon in each hand like the Wii Remote/Nunchuk setup. Unfortunately, the game still requires you to periodically recalibrate the controls, but in this game it's as simple as pushing a button. 

For those people who don't want to be bothered with motion controls, Skyward Sword can be played with the Pro Controller. The sword is mapped to the right stick, while the shield is mapped to the left stick. Bombs are handled by using the right stick to select whether to throw or roll them, and the left stick to aim. Flying is much, much easier with the control pad. Some bosses may seem tougher to players more accustomed to motion controls, and one tradeoff is that you have to push the L button to use the camera, otherwise you'll just swing the sword. It's still not as intuitive as other Zelda games, but it's the best that could have been done. 

The complaint of constant handholding was another area that Nintendo addressed. Fi was almost as much of a source of complaints about Skyward Sword as the motion controls were. She is Link's interface assistant companion in Skyward Sword, like Navi, Tatl, or Midna. She is easily the least liked of Link's helpers because in the Wii original, she was very intrusive, interrupting the game or alarming to tell you you were low on hearts regardless of the fact that the "warning tone" was playing and your ability to get more, or even to tell you your batteries were low. She was an embodiment of many of the criticisms of Nintendo during the Wii/DS era in regards to handholding in games. The intent behind her was to make sure the new gamers who had bought the Wii for Wii Sports or Wii Fit wouldn't get lost, but she annoyed experienced gamers. Nintendo clearly took those criticisms to heart. Fi is definitely toned down. She generally doesn't show up unless you ask for her or unless there's an important story point that she is a part of. The text is also speeded up on Switch so things move faster. 

Graphically, Nintendo generally doesn't even try to hide the fact that this game originated on the Wii, a system which didn't go above 480p in 2011. However, the visuals are much sharper and cleaner, and the French Impressionist art style allows the characters to be expressive and somewhat hides what the game lacks in terms of pushing polygons. Best of all, the whole game runs at 60 fps on the Switch compared to 30 fps on the Wii. This makes the game buttery smooth and also facilitates the motion controls somewhat. 

Those are some of the issues Nintendo addressed, so how is the rest of the game? Without the QOL issues present in the original, it's actually pretty excellent.

Skyward Sword had some of the best dungeon design in the entire Zelda series. In addition to the usual forest and lava caves, you'll also visit a water reservoir modeled after Buddhist architecture, a crashed pirate ship, and a high-tech mining facility decaying from centuries of neglect, which you can also see in its heyday. More than other Zelda games, Skyward Sword requires you to really pay attention to your surroundings. One simple door, niche, or other detail missed can stop your progress dead in its tracks. Some of the dungeons are still a little long for me when I'd rather be doing other things, but overall it's hard to beat Skyward Sword for dungeon design. The bosses follow the usual Zelda pattern of having glowing weak points, usually eyes, and being defeated by the item you found in the dungeon. Many enemies, including Bokoblins, Moblins, and Deku Babas, as well as some bosses like Ghirahim, require you to read their body language and react accordingly with the sword.  Skyward Sword was also the first Zelda game with a real physics engine, designed to complement the motion controls, which particularly applied to bombs, projectiles, boulders, and swinging on ropes.

The first game in the series to have an orchestral soundtrack, Skyward Sword has some unique musical pieces that come from a number of inspirations, from European to Asian, and even American influences. The game, naturally, doesn't have voice acting beyond Fi's garbled singling, as voice acting is something Nintendo looks at with a jaundiced eye. 

Skyward Sword is the most story-driven Zelda game, which either necessitated the linear structure, or was a result of it. Chronologically, it is the earliest game so far in the Zelda timeline, and is an "origin story" for Link, Zelda, Ganon, Impa, and even Hyrule itself. Much more care was taken in fleshing out the main characters. NPCs like Zelda's father Gaepora (an obvious nod to a certain character in Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask) and Skyloft's version of Biff Tannen, Groose, are also more fleshed out than normal. Ghirahim, a sadistic harlequin and self-proclaimed Demon Lord, is considered one of the best villains in the Zelda series, having more personality than most incarnations of Ganon. And without constant nagging and babying going on, Fi is a much more likeable character with hidden depth.

The game was criticized for being very linear and having lengthy cut scenes. That was something that was never going away. However, when Skyward Sword released in 2011, sandbox games like Falliout: New Vegas and Skyrim were all the rage. More linear, controlled experiences were derisively referred to as "hallway games." This is similar to how 2D games used to get hammered by critics and gamers during the height of the PS1/N64 and PS2 eras. Gamers seem much more accepting of linear experiences nowadays, and Breath of the Wild got a certain degree of backlash for its sandbox nature from fans more accustomed to Ocarina of Time or Twilight Princess. In this atmosphere, Skyward Sword will hopefully be more appreciated. Skyward Sword is a beast in terms of length: There are 7 dungeons, each of which requires a fair degree of puzzle solving just to access, as well as a number of boss fights and quests outside of the dungeons.

Conclusion

Nintendo clearly took the criticisms for the original release of Skyward Sword to heart and made many QOL improvements to the game. This is not a simple pump-and-dump port. But with Skyward Sword no longer stumbling over its own design, the good things about this game really shine through.If you've played it before and didn't mind the motion controls, you may not find enough to justify a $50-60 purchase unless you're a hardcore collector. But if you didn't finish the original because of frustrations with the motion controls or the handholding, this game is well worth a look, and it's a worthy addition to the Switch library.