I enjoyed Wind Waker the first time I played it on GameCube, but it didn’t resonate with me the same way some of my other favorite Zeldas in the series had. I really liked Wind Waker’s art style, but I felt the gameplay was too simplistic and the number of actual dungeons was less than I’d hoped for. The Triforce quest was a tedious slog that nearly derailed my quest as it caused me to put it down for a good chunk of time. When I finally came back and finished it, I appreciated the game for its aesthetics, but placed it on a lower tier when it came to my favorite Zelda games.
This all changed when I revisited Wind Waker HD many years later on the Wii U with my daughter. I’d earlier introduced her to the original The Legend of Zelda on the classic Nintendo and she’d caught me playing parts of Tears of the Kingdom. When I wanted to find a Zelda game we could play together this past summer, several people suggested this was one of the best ones to play with family. I’m glad I listened to them.
Revisiting The Great Sea
From the moment I turned on Wind Waker HD and my daughter wandered Outset Island, the expressive animation of the characters and vibrant visuals of the surroundings drew us in. I’ll be honest. Way back when it first came out, I was disappointed. Like many people, Space World 2000’s Nintendo demo showcasing a realistic Link fighting Ganon was so incredible, I was shocked at Wind Waker’s visuals when it was first announced. It grew on me when I played and as mentioned above, I came to appreciate it. But what I’d once deplored as a letdown was now a breath of fresh air, especially when so many contemporary games pursue hyper realism. The HD version is beautiful on a flatscreen and looks like a playable Zelda cartoon, a goal the devs were pursuing.
My daughter insisted on interacting with every NPC, shaving down every blade of grass, and collecting all the rupees she could find. She also collected three pigs for Rose’s new animal pen in exchange for a reward. After rescuing Tetra in the Forest of Fairies, a case of mistaken identity gets Link’s sister, Aryll, kidnapped by the giant bird, the Helmaroc King. My daughter immediately wanted to set out to rescue her.
One aspect that appealed to her was how young Link is. This Link is a random young boy taking part in a local tradition for kids who came of age, forced to get involved to help his sister. He’s not the chosen hero nor someone possessing special powers. He has to use whatever he picks up and faces his adversity with grit and a sense of humor. The cell-shading is gorgeous and Link’s energetic yelps (and brows) add to the dynamic feel.
I was worried that the first main dungeon, the Forsaken Fortress, might be too challenging for my daughter since it was her first 3D Zelda. But after having his barrel launched into the fortress and Link slamming like a pancake cartoon against the wall, she dived right into it. Even though Link loses his sword, he can pick up items, use barrels to hide, and sneak about.
She shut down the searchlights, avoided Bokoblins, snatched an optional heart piece, retrieved her sword, and climbed all the way to the top. Watching her play and intuitively navigate the fortress gave me a deeper appreciation for the designers at Nintendo. The environments are constructed in a way that gives visual hints on where players should be heading between the main courtyard and its peripheral hallways. Enemy animations show players how to respond to them and also have funny reactions that make them seem less ominous. Even when you’re caught, Link doesn’t die, but is sent to a prison cell that’s relatively easy to break out of so that mistakes aren’t too punishing.
There’s an intentionality to the floor layout that ties in with the spotlights, making each space a meaningful puzzle to be figured out. I appreciated the simplicity I’d disliked before as it allowed my daughter to focus on learning Link’s physics and capabilities. This in turn immersed her more into the quest since it made her feel like she was figuring things out on her own, granting her more agency in the process.
After finishing the fortress (or more like being unceremoniously kicked out), the game opens up as Link gains access to the boat called the King of Red Lions. I wanted to get on with the quest, buy a sail, head for Dragon Roost Island to gain one of three pearls, and eventually return to the fortress for a rematch at the fortress.
My daughter had other plans in mind, namely Windfall Island and its NPCs. She undertook the quest for the photographer, Lenzo, to earn the Picto Box. She rescued Tingle and giggled at his silly appearance. She helped Mrs. Marie at the School of Joy by talking to four misbehaving boys and then playing one of her favorite games from real life with them, hide-and-seek. The Sinking Ships mini-game was a confusing diversion that neither of us could quite figure out, but with a little luck, netted her a heart piece. Also, if you provoke the pigs, they’ll attack Link, something I’d never noticed on my solo playthrough. I’m amused at how she’ll repeat things and find so much delight in them, like talking to NPCs repeatedly, walking around the town, staring at the stars at night, and noticing little details about the buildings and animations I’d never seen before. It helps that the art style is so charming.
The pacing of Wind Waker is like a symphony, starting on a memorable, but slow, base melody, then increasing in complexity with each act. By the time we reached Dragon Roost Island, my daughter was ready for some new challenges. We officially gained the Wind Waker, a baton that borrows the power of the gods and wields their power by conducting rhythms in the wind. It allowed Link to change the wind’s direction.
We also got access to bombs for the first time through Bomb Plants on the way to meeting the Rito Tribe. I’d forgotten that they’d first made their appearance here. But I was a little confused about their history in that they’d evolved from the Zora. Wouldn’t the Zora, with their amphibious nature, be better suited for a water world?
There’s plenty of optional things to do here too, like a side quest involving sorting mail for a postal worker. There are also areas of the island with hidden treasure that can be accessed by using a Hyoi Pear to take control of a seagull. Ultimately, Link has to get the pearl from Prince Komali of the Rito Tribe, but the prince won’t part with it until the dragon on top of the mountain, Valoo, has calmed down.
This is also where Link meets Medli, a young Rito apprentice attendant for the dragon who’ll become more important later on. She accompanies you into the first dungeon, even lending a helping wing. But she gets caught and Link has to rescue her. I love the fact that she gives him his first new item, the grappling hook, rather than it being placed in some random treasure chest. It made the connection more personal for my daughter, kind of like two friends helping each other. The grappling hook lets you reach areas you couldn’t before, but it also has a dual use in allowing Link to salvage treasure chests at sea (just like the bombs you’ll officially gain later being usable as a cannon while riding the King of Red Lions).
My daughter was familiar with the game loop of the dungeons as learned in the very first Legend of Zelda and it’s incredible that the classic formula still works so well in cartoony 3D. Find small keys to open up doors, grab the main item, then head for the boss. There’s also the addition of a Boss Key (a concept which would be introduced in Link to the Past which she hasn’t played yet). The grappling hook added a verticality that’s much more pronounced in Wind Waker than any other Zelda game, mainly because the dungeons take place on islands with limited space so that much of the complexity comes from their height.
We headed for the next major area, the Forest Haven, which was home to the Great Deku Tree. There, we met the Koroks, descended from the Kokiri after the Great Flood forced them to evolve into plants. Similar to the grappling hook, the item you gain in the first part here, the Deku Leaf, has multiple uses. Link can blow wind with a strong gust of air, or he can grab both leaf ends and use it to glide across gaps.
The puzzles stack in their difficulty, but the progression feels natural and never overwhelming. Link uses the Deku Leaf as well as the key item, the boomerang, throughout the haven. He also has to use the grappling hook to reach special areas, forcing Link to utilize all his equipment. Fortunately, one of the best updates in the HD port is that the Wii U’s gamepad makes it much easier to swap items with the touch screen. She intuitively equipped what she needed.
I remember being disappointed that the third pearl didn’t have a dungeon associated with it and that sense remained this time around too. I was expecting something similar to Jabu-Jabu’s belly from Ocarina of Time as it was also the third dungeon for young Link. In interviews, it was mentioned Nintendo cut two dungeons as they ran out of time and some have speculated this was probably one of them. Either way, a dialogue between the King of Red Lions and Jabun results in Link gaining the Nayru’s Pearl.
With the three pearls in hand, Link accesses the Tower of the Gods. The Hyrule Castle you find underneath the Tower is almost completely desaturated of color. The Game Cube version was black and white while the Wii U added sepia to it. I liked the original B&W because it not only made it seem like one of those old cartoons, but it was so visually bleak. The sepia also has a stark effect, but it gives off more of an ancient feeling, almost like it’s frozen in time with the accentuated bloom.
Fortunately, the revivification effect when Link grabs the Master Sword is just as powerful in both versions. The whole castle regains its color and awakens. The stained windows also depict the six sages from Ocarina of Time, tying the games together. This led my kid to ask me about who they were and a discussion about how we should play Ocarina of Time soon (excited for the remake!). It also drives in the consequences of what happened in Hyrule’s past.
We returned to the Forsaken Fortress for a rematch. Even though Link prevails against the great bird and rescues his sister (along with some of the other girls who were kidnapped), he’s still no match against Ganon. Worse, by removing the sword, Ganon reveals that Link broke the seal that had limited his powers. Link and Tetra barely escape with their lives.
This is where the boat reveals his true identity as the old king of Hyrule. It seems obvious in retrospect, but I remember being surprised that Tetra was actually Princess Zelda (a fact even my daughter suspected beforehand).
I had forgotten much of the story, but hearing it again from the king, I was startled to hear that the goddesses of Hyrule were the ones who flooded the land in the first place. Though it was done out of desperation to avoid Gannon taking over, their solution seemed just as destructive and damaging as anything Gannon could have done. How many lives were lost, how many cities destroyed in the flooding? “…the gods chose those who would build a new country and commanded them to take refuge on the mountaintops,” the king tells you. “Those people were your ancestors.” But what about those who weren’t chosen? Was there a plan B from Outer Hyrule? If the goddesses had that much power, why didn’t they use it to stop Gannon? If they felt they couldn’t intervene directly (despite sending a great flood), how about just pouring rain into the Gerudo desert?
In the end, the flooding didn’t even work that well as Gannon re-emerged. If it wasn’t for Link stepping up, Gannon would already have succeeded. The more I thought about what they did and the lore behind the game, the more horrified and perplexed I became. But my daughter shrugged it off. “That’s why we’re here. We’ll save everyone.”
Reawakening
The world totally opens up at this point. Traveling the seas with my kiddo became one of my favorite parts of the game. I love the visible wind trails as seagulls accompany you. Weather changes depending on location and the day and night cycle add to the feeling like you’re really at sea. It’s massive and I’m still amazed that, as Luke Plunkett mentioned in his original Wind Waker HD review, there’s no loading screen as you go from one end of the ocean to the other.
The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia mentions that “to make transitions seamless… developers experimented with the sizes of both islands and the sea itself” so that the loading could work naturally. Limitations on the GameCube dictated not only their distance, but the speed at which the boat could sail.
In the original, the boat was not only slow, but every time you wanted to change the direction of the wind, you’d have to play the Wind Requiem. That’s hundreds, maybe thousands of times you’d have to perform the Wind Requiem in a single playthrough. With the additional processing power on the Wii U, the Swift Sail was added and it helps tremendously as it not only speeds up boat movement, but automatically sets the wind direction without having to re-use the Wind Waker.
Getting the actual Swift Sail was more difficult than I’d thought it would be, just because I kept on getting the wrong items for the auction and it took forever to skip through the dialogue and bids. Also, one minor visual issue my daughter pointed out was that when the ship uses the fast sail, the entire hull clips with the water, whereas at normal speed, it doesn’t. But those points are trivial considering how much of a quality of life improvement the Swift Sail brings to sailing.
In the original GameCube version, I recall feeling there wasn’t that much to do at sea despite its size. I think the Swift Sail had the effect of bringing everything closer together and making the ocean feel much more alive. For our playthrough, I actually felt overwhelmed by the volume of things to do.
My daughter loves treasure hunting with her friends. They find all sorts of “gems” in parks and school. So the Great Sea with its numerous islands was just the kind of thing she loved. The sea may seem enormous, but there’s a lot of hidden chests, enemy encounters, or mysterious, but themed, islands to land on. You can always see the silhouette of an island just on the horizon, calling to you. The music while at sea is glorious. As much as I love the original Zelda Overworld theme, the Great Sea theme is the best. Both of us were humming it as we played.
At the Mother and Child Isles, we met the Queen of Fairies. She looks kind of like a ghost child, has a creepy laugh, and holds the puppet of a Great Fairy in her hands as she grants you the fire and ice arrows. I thought it was funny that my daughter referred to the smaller fairies as “baby fairies” because of their size. In Diamond Steppe Island, after using the hookshot to climb up the trees, there’s a mysterious hole that leads to a shipwreck, the lower decks accessible through mystical jars. I’d forgotten all about it so I didn’t even realize this was the way you find the Ghost Ship Chart. My kid also insisted on earning the Deluxe Picto Box, then helped two people (Anton and Linda) to become better friends and snapped a picture of the moon for a man sitting by himself on the stairs. She learned about commerce by trading items with various Gorons. She watched Tott dance in front of a gravestone and learned the Song of Passing. She fought giant Octos at sea, blew up Gyorgs, boomeranged Seahats (which are different from Peahats, a point she expressly mentioned I should include in this piece), got bomb and magic upgrades from fairies, and fought off enemy submarines.
Fishmen help chart out the seas with All-purpose bait from the bait bag and throw hints your way. My daughter was impressed that they could somehow use a paint brush without getting the map sheet wet. She also spoke to every Ho Ho, insisting the ubiquitous old man gave good tips. She frequently visited grandma at Outset Island, not just for the healing soup, but because she was worried about her and wanted to check in (this despite me telling her the dialogue won’t update). She collected twenty joy pendants and earned the Cabana Deed. She was excited about her new pad, mentioning now Link has two homes. She was surprised the door was alive but less impressed with how rude it was. Showing the deed changes its attitude and it even mentions being painfully aware of its existence as a door. Returning to Outset Island again, she was appalled to learn that the family for whom she had brought three pigs had eaten two of them for dinner.
In A Link to the Past, after you rescue the maidens, you don’t find out much about their fate. In Windwaker, one of the most interesting pair of side quests involves the families of two of the rescued girls. Mila belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Windfall, but her father spent every rupee to try and rescue her. He loses all his wealth, even selling the giant mansion where the auctions take place. When you meet him afterwards though, he states how happy he is just that she’s returned. Unfortunately, Mila is very unhappy about her reversal of fortune and one night, you’ll find her lurking in the shadows. If Link follows her, he’ll find out how disappointed she’s been with her life (hilariously, Link also meows like a cat when she turns around to see if anyone’s following her). It leads to a touching epiphany.
Maggie’s family has also had their fortunes reversed. When you first met her dad, he begs you to rescue his daughter. After you rescue her, Maggie received a bunch of skull necklaces from a Moblin named Moe which they sold to make a fortune. They end up taking over the auction house and her dad has become pompous and arrogant due to his newfound wealth. Maggie has fallen in love with the moblin that gave her those necklaces in a scenario that my daughter described amusedly as akin to “Beauty and the Beast.”
Zelda With Friends
I read in an interview how Miyamoto once thought of adding party members to A Link to the Past.
Though that idea was ultimately scrapped, Wind Waker gave us a good taste of what that would be like. Both the Wind and Earth temples require Link to work closely with his companions, Medli and Makar, who will become the future sages. Having Medli ride along on the boat was so cool, it made me want a Zelda game with permanent companions. The puzzles in these two temples are some of the best in the series. Not only do you have to use every item you’ve gained until then, but Medli and Makar add a whole new component to the gameplay.
Medli can fly and use her harp like a mirror shield to reflect light. Makar can hover too, but he also plants seeds to spring new trees that Link can then use to hookshot to inaccessible areas. The Command Melody lets you take control of the two, changing up the gameplay. I did find it interesting that Medli, with her ability to fly, was the companion in the Earth Temple rather than Wind and Makar, with his tree growing abilities, was the Sage of Wind.
Combat in Wind Waker has a lot of variety as you have multiple weapons at your disposal. I love how the grappling hook can snatch items, or the Deku Leaf can confuse foes. You can also pick up some of the enemy weapons when they drop them and use them. The enemies can do that too, like the Floormasters who’ll throw pots at you.
Sometimes, a button prompt will cause Link to parry an enemy, especially against the Darknuts. For the most part, my kid just button mashed her way through and that worked against most regular foes. The one exception are the times you have to deflect projectiles against the Phantom Ganons. I love how the exchanges cause musical beats to ascend after each volley, raising the tension.
The central chamber in Wind Temple is one of the most interesting areas in the game, with the giant fan at the bottom propelling Link up. He has to use the Iron Boots, Hookshot, Deku Leaf, Hero Bow, just to navigate and link together the connecting rooms. In the Earth Temple, there’s a giant chamber in the basement where Link has to reposition all the mirrors to light a path forward. Figuring out how to get the light source from one end to the other using reflections and the mirror shield was a lot of fun, taxing those “little grey cells.”
Music is integral to the themes and gameplay. Mysterious passages are opened with melodies conducted by Link and played by the sage companions. There are many audio motifs that link this game with previous ones, musical notes echoing through the series. When my daughter finally conquered both temples, she was elated until she found out that the two sages did not continue to accompany Link.
But now, we were back at the part I had most disliked on my first playthrough. Link has to gather the eight triforce shards before taking on Ganon one last time.
To my surprise, triforce hunting was my daughter’s favorite part. The Wii U version goes a long way to alleviating the pain of the quest. In the original, you had to find 8 charts, pay Tingle 398 rupees for each one (meaning you had to grind for rupees), and then go salvage them at sea with the grappling hook. As I mentioned before, I hated this part so much, I actually put the game down for a while. It was only my sense that I wanted to beat every Zelda game I had that compelled me to complete the slog. But this time around, my daughter loved the search.
She enjoyed the dive into the Savage Labyrinth, thirty floors of enemies that get more difficult with each level. She liked tracking down three charts to find the treasure. Yes, Gannon was still out there. But the chance to continue voyaging on the seas was what she considered the most fun part about the journey. Finding the pieces wasn’t a boring chore. It was a joy, probably the whole purpose of the game for her. Navigating mysterious charts, finding interesting new characters, and then helping people was what she wanted to do. Considering, also, how much she loves playing in water, Wind Waker was the perfect playground.
When I was her age, I struggled through Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. Unlike her, I played it by myself as most of the adults around me were critical of games and felt it was a waste of time. Of course, having grown up with games and attributing a lot of my professional career to my love for them, I disagree. But I remember not wanting Zelda II to end, despite acknowledging in retrospect how grueling it was. I hoped to uncover mystery after mystery, chop down every tree, and meet even more NPCs, wishing the game would continue forever. I was much older when I played Wind Waker for the first time. Much less patient too as I had a day job and wanted to get through the triforce quest quickly and finish up the game.
I was grateful for my trip through Wind Waker with my kid, not just for the way it let me re-experience the game, but the way it let me relive and reawaken my childhood so I could see games the way I used to. I don’t know how she’ll look back on her time with me playing through Wind Waker when she’s older. But I hope they’ll awaken good memories of sailing, music, and fun.
