Link is taught two more songs for the Wind Waker; the Earth God’s Lyric and the Wind God’s Aria which enable him to control the sage descendants, and he plays the former to Medli upon returning to Dragon Roost Island. This reveals that Medli is, in fact, the Earth Sage descendant herself, and she travels with Link back to the Earth Temple. Mar 9, 2021 - My first ever shimeji! I hope you like how I drew Link from Legend of Zelda. So please download to see the entire array of poses I drew Link in!

Had a look, didn't you? First of all, let me assure you that what you just witnessed was a very, very high nine. In fact, it's so perilously close to the upper echelons of the top flight that it almost feels stingy not to give the game a ten, but at the end of the day I've been wrestling with the pros and cons of that for over a month and this is the right choice for me. The Wind Waker gets a nine. You're probably wondering why.

Time travel

Historically, Nintendo has been the biggest and best supporter of its own consoles. Quite why it persists in making bones about it, refreshing its claims of massive third party support with each successive hardware launch, is beyond us. Nobody really believes it any more. Not even us. But whatever you make of the European marketing machine that made us wait eight months for the console, pushed Metroid Prime back an entire quarter, and will almost certainly never release Animal Crossing [fools!! – Ed], Nintendo does make some very good games. And The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker is certainly one of them.

It all starts out with babyish charm. Link (this year's model) is a wily scamp barely old enough to attend secondary school, living on a little spec of green in the bottom left corner of the ocean (you'll see) called Outset Island, a verdant, idyllic corner of your friendly neighbourhood fantasy world. However, this world is actually troubled by dark forces, led by the nefarious Ganon no less, which have once again risen up in hope of causing some mischief. The people are obviously rather upset about this.

So, every time a young boy comes of age, he is trussed up in green like old-school Link and watched closely for signs of heroism - that he might live up to the prophecy of a saviour. Somewhat tellingly, our young would-be hero's day of reckoning begins with the kidnap of his sister, snatched by a big bird after its intended cargo - a pointy-eared pirate captain lass called Tetra - wriggled free (with the help of a cannonball) and landed headfirst in the local forbidden forest. So that's not one, but two damsels in distress in the first half an hour. Link's clearly going to be busy.

Dungeon Master

As you will know, The Wind Waker is divided into islands, and you spend a lot of the game sailing between them in your big red boat. That's what all screenshots were on about. There are a number of proper islands, which stand tall out of the ocean and present story elements, new characters and often a dungeon to overcome. As well as these larger landmasses, Link can explore the many corners of uncharted ocean for smaller clumps, which may contain dwellings, people, rupees, treasure, a few blades of grass, or just some of Ganon's minions.

I just finished this little guy (and man is my neck sore).It's a simple conversion of the Asriel shimeji that was so popular a while ago. Interactive desktop sans shimeji.

But the mainstay of the game is of course intricately designed dungeons, of which there are just over a handful of major ones in the game. Each takes several saintly hours to complete, and they're packed with the sort of genius puzzles that you only expect to find in games of the highest calibre, and hidden extras - like treasure maps that lead you to hidden bounty elsewhere in the world. Each dungeon has its own unique setting, with individual environmental effects (like the heat haze and bubbling lava in the Dragon Roost dungeon) and you often have to use the setting intelligently to your advantage - we'd love to tell you how, but that would definitely spoil the immense satisfaction you get from completing them by yourself. Suffice to say that you should think about how hot things react to the sudden presence of cold things, and how whichever item you've just obtained can be used to affect items in the immediate vicinity. And if in doubt, look up! Link gets a grappling hook pretty early on, and it comes in handy pretty regularly.

Along with varied puzzles, we also have differing styles of gameplay, too. The first pseudo-dungeon set in a Fortress is a nod towards the industry-wide invasion of stealth gameplay, as Link creeps around dressed as a Ming vase (Sly Raccoon, anyone?), while the second one is the more traditional 'run, jump and slash' Zelda gameplay. The third and fourth go off on completely different tangents though, and you can always be assured that the next major objective will challenge you in a new way. We honestly couldn't wait to get to the next one, only falling foul of trepidation when we realised how close we were to the very, very end. Aww.

Link to the gamer

The controls and handling of the Link character pay more than a passing tribute to the likes of Metal Gear Solid, too, although much of it simply makes the transition from Ocarina of Time. Automated jumping and all. Of course you can use the left stick to have Link tiptoe, walk or run around, and the C-stick handles camera movements. Swinging it around with your thumb gives you free look, and you can centre it behind Link with a tap of the left shoulder button. Pushing L the whole way down though allows you to crouch and crawl, allowing you to edge through small spaces to hidden chambers full of rupees and other secrets, as do his new sidling abilities (good for nipping along small ledges and leaning round corners).

On the combat side of things, Link relies on L for enemy lock-on, R for shield defence, and the context-sensitive face buttons (which - apart from A - are bound via the inventory system to various items) for anything other than the Master Sword. Helpfully, as an enemy lunges, Link is prompted by a little yelp from the speaker and a hazard icon in the top right - a signal to hit A, which pulls off a neat counter that sees Link scoot round his adversary and measure a blow. Enemy AI may not be that fantastic, but they usually put up a reasonable fight, and this element of the game is more about finding a particular foe's weakness and then learning how best to exploit it, rather than expecting them all to dash for cover and fight like Jet Li.

The whole combat system is just as intuitive as the counters, with horizontal and vertical slices coming like a snap of the fingers; thrust and jump attacks raining down like sulphur; and the ever-useful 360-degree spin attack taking care of all sorts of problems. Tight spaces? Ha. Of course you won't need to plough through the manual for a grounding in all this, because the game teaches you the basics of combat very early on - via an old codger on Outset Island, who will fight you to various degrees. This raises his opinion of your fighting skills, and that's bound to be worth something, right?

Conducted with class

Link's inventory is another revelation. You obviously collect series mainstays like the boomerang, bottles (to fill with various collectible elements) and bombs, and promptly come up against puzzles geared towards their exploitation, but you also come across various new additions, not least of which is The Wind Waker itself. Picked up a few hours into the adventure, this magic wand of sorts can be waved with the C-stick, whilst Link selects the rhythm with the left stick, and it allows you to employ the various tunes (think spells) that you discover during the adventure. After equipping it and hitting the corresponding button, you have to hold the left stick in one direction to pick the rhythm (3/4, 4/4 or 6/4 time) and wiggle the C-stick into the right orientation for each beat of a metronome. The first spell lets you choose wind direction, which is crucial in allowing you to sweep across the high seas, and you'll also pick up spells allowing you to control some of the heavenly automatons parked in various dungeons (yet another opportunity for Miyamoto to show off his team's puzzle-building genius), and so on.

Aside from The Wind Waker, there are many more objects to get to grips with, including the Deku Leaf, which lets Link float around [even on webpages, apparently -Ed] and fan objects for a time - limited by a sort of wind meter. The Deku Leaf comes from the Deku Tree, see, and you need to make sure you have enough Deku juice or else it'l

Wind Waker Link Shimeji