Skyward Sword is a great Zelda game. There is no denying or debating that. It is a great game, period. Its innovations and controls paved the way for Zelda moving forward in the way the series has evolved. It introduced durability, collectibles, upgrades, a stamina meter, and more. It also retained the classic Zelda feel and had incredible dungeons, the best story the franchise has ever seen, and great sidequests which actually rewarded you significantly. That being said, no game is perfect. There are a few changes that Skyward Sword HD should make to the original game. These would be improvements that simply streamline the experience a little bit more and will enhance the user experience. This could catapult Skyward Sword HD as the greatest Zelda game.
Faster Text and Fi’s Reminders
One thing about Skyward Sword is that it has notoriously slow text, especially when it comes to Fi speaking. This needs to be sped up, or even better, skipped altogether if need be. It gets incredibly frustrating to not be able to speed up the text and sit there waiting for Fi to speak when you already know what she’s going to say. Also, Fi doesn’t need to remind you every time your batteries get low on your controller or have a reminder to set dowsing each time. These are instinctive. If you change all of this, you get a better user experience.
Quest List
Skyward Sword has some great sidequests, but sometimes these can get lost due to the lack of a quest list in the main menu. This is especially true for the gratitude crystals. Say what you want about Breath of the Wild, but it had an excellent quest list which was pretty organized. Skyward Sword HD needs the same. This will make it easier on the user, and allow them to remember to get back to quests they may have forgotten. I know this has happened to me a number of times. The sidequests are very rewarding in terms of what you get as rewards, unlike Breath of the Wild, so it would be wonderful to have this streamlined. This should be one of the first changes Skyward Sword HD should make.
Don’t Go to Collectible Menu Every Time
This is one of the most frustrating aspects of Skyward Sword. Every time the game is rebooted, and you get a collectible for the first time during that reboot, it gives you a message that you’ve collected said item and goes to the collectible menu to show you how many you currently have. This needs to be eliminated completely. It’s fine to show it the first time you get it, but Skyward Sword HD needs to get rid of this repetitive annoyance once and for all. It’s one of my biggest gripes with the game and this is one of the necessary changes Skyward Sword HD needs to make.
Start With Three Hearts
Skyward Sword is not an easy game; that’s why you start with five hearts. What would be even better though is if you started with the traditional three hearts. Yes, this would make the game more difficult, but everybody loves a challenge, right? It would make the beginning of the game more difficult, yes, but Breath of the Wild started out with three hearts and can be more difficult than Skyward Sword. This would be a great change Skyward Sword HD could make, though it’s probably unlikely.
Add a Dungeon
The dungeons in Skyward Sword are fantastic and sometimes unorthodox, but adding another dungeon would be a great addition to an already excellent collection of dungeons. It could simply be an extra challenging-type dungeon like the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess where you fight enemy after enemy. It would be a wonderful change that would actually incentivize those who are hesitant to pay $59.99 for an HD remake of Skyward Sword (which is a ridiculous position, but we’ll simply leave it at that.) Another traditional Zelda dungeon would be welcome. They could even do something like they did in the Breath of the Wild DLC. Skyward Sword is one of the best Zelda games, and giving it one more dungeon would be a great way to close out a wonderful adventure on the Nintendo Switch.