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**NOTE: This blog is full of spoilers, if you plan on completing the game and don’t want surprises, I recommend reading this later.

I finished Skyward Sword last night and realized just how memorable the entire experience was. Usually there are negative things to remember, like Ocarina’s Water Temple or Wind Waker’s Triforce charts. Skyward Sword was just positive memory after positive memory. I have never enjoyed a Zelda game as much as Skyward Sword, and I love many past Zelda titles. It was tough to pick the 10 moments that stuck out most in my head, but here they are:

10. Diving off a cliff and calling your bird.

Skyward Sword starts a little slow, but still quicker than most past Zelda titles. Everything you do in the beginning is truly a fully integrated tutorial within the game and feels like a necessary welcome to the world of Skyloft. The game is full of character and light-hearted charms right from the get go. It’s not long before you retrieve your bird and learn to fly. To fly, you jump off a ledge into open air and whistle for your bid to swoop down and catch you. The animation for this is awesome, seemless, and never got old throughout the entire game.

9. First time Zelda sing the theme song.

I absolutely love the theme song of this game, and the first time it’s introduced with Zelda singing along to it is beyond a beautiful moment. Very well crafted song in a well crafted world – it completely set the tone for the rest of the game.

8. Lanayru Mining Facility time mechanics

This dungeon easily wowed me. The dungeon takes place in 2 time periods; a worn down desert in the present and a thriving robot mining facility in the past. You traverse both time periods by hitting switches, which warp through time. Rooms change drastically depending on what era you are in and puzzles revolve around manipulating objects within both time periods. It’s extremely clever and extremely well done.

7. First Ghirahim Fight

The first time you are introduced to Ghirahim is as the boss of the Skyview Temple. He’s cocky, theatrical, and is out to taunt and toy with you. He doesn’t even pull out his sword for the first half of the battle, and instead blocks you and even steals your sword, tossing it back at you in laughter. This sort of helplessness you feel as a player, as well as the malice that Ghirahim displays is very well done. The second half o the battle has you going sword to sword with Ghirahim, figuring out when to block and when to hit, and eventually fighting to a point where he’s had enough and decides to leave you for now. It was an awesome introduction to one on one sword fighting, as well as a great introduction to the game’s new villain.

5. Fighting Tentalus on the Sandship

This was a very cool boss. As you reach the boss room of the Sandship, a monster starts attacking the ship from outside, causing the ship to sway back in forth and start falling apart. You have to make your way outside to find a gigantic squid-like creature destroying the boat. It is then your job to take out it’s tentacles and make your way to it’s eye – it’s main weak point. The boss was huge and extremely fun to play through. It was a nice surprise to fight a boss outside of a “boss” room.

5. Fighting Levias/Bilocyte

This fight is the one boss that takes place while you are on your bird. It’s a giant colossus in the sky that you have to swoop down and attack. After beating it down on your bird you have to aim overtop of the beast, land on it’s back and fight a parasite that lives within it. You fight the parasite by angling your sword swings in order to hit it’s attacks back at it. It’s an extremely engaging fight and fighting on a huge beast that’s soaring through the air is pretty astonishing – especially on the Wii.

4. The Ending

This is my favorite ending of any Zelda theme. The story is still light on content, but I ended up caring for the characters more than ever in this game. Taking down Ghirahim, having him be destroyed by his master, Demise, then taking down Demise in an epic sword battle, followed by saving Zelda, placing the master sword in it’s stone for the first time, saying goodbye to your companion, Fi, then making a new life and new world on the surface. It’s an extremely satisfying ending and wraps up the story of Skyward Sword perfectly. I wouldn’t have changed a thing about the end, and my only sadness is that I didn’t have any more Skyward Sword to play. (Though, you unlock “Hero Mode” after you beat the game, so I guess I do have more to play.)

3. Sky Keep (Final Dungeon)

I really liked all of the dungeons in Skyward Sword, but the final dungeon, Sky Keep, was possibly my favorite in any Zelda game. The temple is setup with 8 rooms – each room stylized and representing puzzles from past dungeons – and each room can actually be shifted from different control panels, meaning you have to actually move around the layout of the dungeon in order to properly traverse through rooms and find the Triforce pieces. The dungeon is a puzzle itself, which features many puzzles within it. It’s an extremely clever and creative idea which I will never forget.

2. Fighting Koloktos in Ancient Cistern

Ancient Cistern was a very cool temple with the one under used item, the whip. Koloktos was my favorite boss to fight, and was a perfect boss for the Ancient Cistern temple. Koloktos emerges as a possessed statue wielding 6 swords. It’s your job to dodge Koloktos, use your whip to disarm Koloktos, then steal one of it’s swords and go to town on it with it’s own weapon. As Koloktos grows weaker in health, it also grows stronger and fiercer physically. This was one of my favorite boss fights of all time and was a ton of fun to play through.

1. Fighting Demise

Demise is the last boss of the game, appearing as an extremely intimidating demon – visually reminiscent of Ganon – who challenges you to come to his lair to fight him. He gives you a long speech of why you can’t stop him, and how even if you kill him it’s useless because he’ll never truly die. He’s a terrifying beast and an awesome final boss. You sword fight him one-on-one in an endless sky, where your sword swings and dodging need to be timed precisely in order to survive. You also infuse lightning into your sword and swing it back at him while he’s trying to do the same. The battle ends with you trying to put the “finishing blow” on him as he keeps dodging it. That moment when you leap in the air and finally stab him in the chest is epic to say the least. Such an awesome moment in gaming and is the way one-to-one sword play should be.