I've commented before that the major problem with Wind Waker is that it tries to be a Zelda game. Although this is a bit of a simplification, it's a decent place to begin.
As a player, I feel a bit like I'm riding a seesaw. Although they generally are rendered bearable by the game's appealing atmosphere, the game is filled with moments of stark tedium or mild ineptitude which seem bewilderingly out-of-place in as polished and generally well-conceived a game as this, forcing boredom or irritation upon me against my will.
Then, just at the moment when my patience is at its limit, the game throws out a token of inspiration. Just when I think I have had enough of an irritating element of gameplay, I am struck with a sense of revelation. I begin to understand why such-and-such element of the game is designed as it is. Curiosity overwhelms my irritation, the game temporarily redeems itself, and I wonder how else the game might unfold for me.
Where the teeter-totter element comes in is that for every breakthough, the game seems to introduce (or reintroduce) another problem or two.
Take for instance the sailing. Given that the overworld consists mostly of ocean, with a few dozen small islands speckled across its surface, some kind of a ship is an obvious necessity. Indeed, the player is quickly supplied with a small (talking) boat.
Right off, one can anticipate the relatively novel possibilities in a scheme of this sort. At best, the game's focus on seafaring might engender a sense of majesty -- of wonder at the blurry horizon, and what secrets it might hold for the aspiring adventurer.[3] On the other hand, it could lead to an incredibly tedious experience.
The latter is the direction in which Wind Waker initially seems to head. Islands are placed far enough apart on the map that it can (and will) often take several minutes fo sail from one to the next. Worse, the next island will rarely be the player's intended goal -- and given that most of the intermediate islands are tied in to special events later in the game, there's not much to find on them until the right time comes.
The game seems to provide little to do while in transit. Once coordinates are set, the player's boat is essentially in auto-pilot, left up to the wind. All that is left for the player to do is to stare at the horizon; to slowly watch one island after another as it comes into focus, approaches, and presents itself as a playable location.
Given that the boat's sail is inexplicably treated as a standard inventory item (for the player to assign to an action button), playing around with other secondary items is a no-no while the player waits and stares into the distance. Oddly, not even the telescope or camera are functional while the boat is in motion. Given that gawking is about the only activity available, those items would be fairly useful tools.
In what initially seems like a final insult, Wind Waker tends to keep the player on a pretty tight leash during the first several hours of play. Not only are the sea journeys less than inspiring, but -- in what seems both a contrived and a rather patronizing touch (one of many) -- the game will chastise the player in the case that he or she makes any serious attempt to stray far from the scripted path.
While I can think of a number of more effective barriers than "because I said so" (an impenetrable fog, perhaps?), the point begins to approach moot once the player is granted full discretion over navigation. What had been disconcertingly muddy is suddenly rendered clear. It might not be much fun to just sit and wait, but the mechanics take on a completely different quality when they can be bent to the player's whims.
For a time, everything seems to congeal as promised. It still takes forever to travel from one place to another, but the interval between islands becomes filled with observation. The player must watch out not only for the next port, but for a variety of indistinct signs and objects scattered around the ocean surface. It begins to feel like there really are an amazing number of possibilities. A swashbuckling kind of a mystery enters the game's atmosphere. There's no telling what the given world might hold. The mind begins to boggle.
The problem is, this change toward nonlinearity comes at just about the point where Wind Waker is beginning to distinguish itself as a fairly intriguing episodic adventure. Before and until this transition, the game has been unusually gripping (seafaring aside) -- for exactly the reason that it has managed to keep a tight reign on the player's progress. Freedom comes not without a bit of a trade-off.
Furthermore, this newfound freedom gets old quickly. In time it becomes clear that, contrary to what the initial wonder might suggest, there are really only two important features to watch for. Once the awe is removed, the sailing becomes tedious again. It's back to the old camera spinning (one of a scant few actions available which won't interfere with the ship's progress).
Indeed, the overworld is transformed into a collection-based chore in which the player is forced to systematically comb each square of the map in order to talk to the same (or an identical) fish -- about forty-nine times over, in total. In order to talk to the fish, the player must continuously return to the store for more bait. And then there's the sunken treasure -- but that deserves its own conversation.
Then there's the fact that even after the player gains the ability to warp around the overworld at will, it still takes several minutes (across more or less blank terrain) to travel from one location to the next. What insults me a bit is that the game tends to take advantage of this element of its construction. (I'll elaborate later.)
So the overworld needs work. The real trouble with it is that -- the way it's been implemented -- it tends to interfere with the natural flow of the game. With its highly dynamic and energetic nature, Wind Waker is by far at its strongest and most enjoyable within its individual moments: scripted plot events, boss fights, the more clever of its dungeons.[4] Heck, with the battle system as it is, even normal enemy encounters can be thrilling.[5] As far as the game measures progress by stringing these moments together, it mostly succeeds.
Of course, this isn't a description of Zelda as we know it. So before it can get too advanced, it needs to be offset by a dose of nonlinear exploration -- for posterity, if nothing else.
This might not sound all that bad on its own, but again -- be patient. There's a trend which I'm trying to establish here.
[Next: the pieces begin to link]
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