I enjoyed The Wind Waker on GameCube, but it never reached the top tier of my favourite Zelda games. Its cel-shaded presentation eventually won me over, yet I found the combat and puzzles relatively simple, the dungeon count disappointing and the late Triforce hunt painfully tedious. I even stopped playing for a substantial period before returning to finish it.
Years later, I revisited The Wind Waker HD on Wii U with my daughter. I had already introduced her to the original The Legend of Zelda on Nintendo’s classic console, and she had watched me play parts of Tears of the Kingdom. When we wanted a Zelda adventure to share during summer, several people recommended this one. Their advice completely changed how I saw the game.
Seeing the Great Sea Through New Eyes
From the first moments on Outset Island, the HD edition drew us in. Its expressive characters, bright environments and animated reactions felt inviting, particularly beside the hyper-realistic look common in many modern games.
My original disappointment came partly from Nintendo’s Space World 2000 demonstration, which showed a realistic-looking Link fighting Ganon. The stylised visuals announced for The Wind Waker seemed like a letdown at first. This time, however, the same art direction felt fresh. The game looks like a playable cartoon, which was close to what its developers intended, and the presentation remains striking on a flat-screen display.
My daughter wanted to speak with every non-player character, cut through the grass and collect every rupee. She even gathered three pigs for Rose’s new animal pen in exchange for a reward. After Link rescues Tetra in the Forest of Fairies, his sister Aryll is kidnapped by the Helmaroc King, and my daughter immediately wanted to begin the rescue.
She connected with the young Link. He is not introduced as a powerful chosen hero, but as an ordinary boy taking part in a coming-of-age tradition before being forced to act when his sister is taken. He relies on whatever tools he finds, and his energetic expressions, yelps and expressive eyebrows give the adventure plenty of personality.
I wondered whether the Forsaken Fortress would be too difficult for someone playing her first 3D Zelda. Instead, the sight of Link being launched from a barrel and flattened against a wall made her eager to continue. Without his sword, he has to hide in barrels, collect objects and avoid guards.
She disabled searchlights, slipped past Bokoblins, found an optional heart piece, recovered the sword and reached the summit. Watching her work through the fortress made the level design easier to appreciate. The layout provides visual clues between the central courtyard and surrounding passages, while enemy animations communicate how each threat behaves. Being caught is also relatively forgiving: Link is taken to a prison cell rather than killed, and escaping is straightforward.
The fortress turns floors, searchlights and sightlines into a series of readable problems. What I once dismissed as simplicity gave her room to learn Link’s movement and abilities without feeling overwhelmed. Solving those challenges herself made her feel involved in the adventure rather than merely following instructions.
Once the fortress sequence ended, Link gained access to the King of Red Lions and the wider ocean. I was ready to buy a sail, travel to Dragon Roost Island for one of the three pearls and eventually return for a rematch. My daughter preferred to explore Windfall Island.
She completed Lenzo’s photography quest to obtain the Picto Box, rescued Tingle and helped Mrs Marie at the School of Joy deal with four troublesome boys through a game of hide-and-seek. The Sinking Ships minigame confused both of us, although luck eventually delivered a heart piece. She also discovered that provoking the pigs makes them attack Link, something I had missed on my earlier playthrough.
She found delight in repeating conversations, walking around town, watching the stars and examining small details in buildings and character animations. The charming visual style made that curiosity feel worthwhile.
A Gentle Introduction to Adventure
The Wind Waker begins slowly, then adds new systems and complications with each stage. At Dragon Roost Island, Link receives the Wind Waker, a divine baton that changes the wind’s direction. He also encounters bomb plants on the route to the Rito Tribe.
The Rito’s history raised an old question for me: if they evolved from the amphibious Zora, why are they so well suited to a world dominated by water? The island also offers optional activities, including sorting mail and using a Hyoi Pear to control a seagull and reach hidden treasure.
Prince Komali will only surrender the pearl after Valoo, the dragon atop the mountain, is calmed. Link meets Medli, a young Rito apprentice who becomes an important companion. She joins him in the first dungeon, is captured and gives him the grappling hook after he rescues her. That connection made the item feel more meaningful than a random chest reward.
The grappling hook opens previously inaccessible areas and can also retrieve treasure from the sea. Later, bombs serve a second purpose as ammunition for the King of Red Lions. These linked uses encourage experimentation.
My daughter already understood the basic Zelda dungeon structure from the first game: locate small keys, claim the main item and reach the boss. The Wind Waker adds Boss Keys and makes vertical exploration especially important. With dungeons built on compact islands, much of their complexity comes from height rather than sprawling floor plans.
Forest Haven introduces the Great Deku Tree and the Koroks, descendants of the Kokiri who became plant-like after the Great Flood. The Deku Leaf is another versatile tool, allowing Link to create a gust of wind or glide across gaps.
The puzzles become more demanding without making the progression feel abrupt. The Deku Leaf, boomerang and grappling hook all remain useful, and the Wii U GamePad makes switching equipment much easier through its touchscreen. My daughter quickly equipped the right item whenever a puzzle demanded it.
I still felt the absence of a full dungeon connected to the third pearl. I had expected something comparable to Jabu-Jabu’s Belly from Ocarina of Time, particularly because it is also the third dungeon in that game’s young Link storyline. Discussions of the game’s development have noted that two dungeons were cut because of time constraints, although the specific details remain uncertain. In the finished adventure, a conversation between the King of Red Lions and Jabun provides Nayru’s Pearl.
Ancient Hyrule and a Wider World
With all three pearls collected, Link reaches the Tower of the Gods and the Hyrule Castle beneath it. The castle is almost entirely drained of colour. The GameCube version presents it in black and white, while the Wii U edition uses sepia. The monochrome original resembles an old cartoon and feels stark; the sepia treatment suggests an ancient place frozen in time.
When Link retrieves the Master Sword, the castle comes alive and its colour returns. Stained-glass windows depict the six sages from Ocarina of Time, connecting the two stories and prompting my daughter to ask who they were. It also gave us a reason to discuss playing Ocarina of Time together.
Returning to the Forsaken Fortress, Link defeats the Helmaroc King and rescues Aryll along with the other kidnapped girls, but Ganon still overwhelms him. Removing the Master Sword reveals that Link has broken the seal limiting Ganon’s power, forcing Link and Tetra into another narrow escape.
The King of Red Lions then reveals that he is the former king of Hyrule, while Tetra is revealed as Princess Zelda. My daughter had already guessed Tetra’s identity.
The king’s explanation of the Great Flood also feels darker with age. Hyrule’s goddesses flooded the land to prevent Ganon’s conquest and instructed selected people to shelter on mountaintops. That raises uncomfortable questions about those who were not chosen, the cities and lives lost, and why such immense power could not be used directly against Ganon. The flood did not solve the threat permanently, either.
I was troubled by the history. My daughter simply answered, “That’s why we’re here. We’ll save everyone.”
Reawakening the Great Sea
After this point, the world truly opens up. Sailing with my daughter became one of the highlights of the adventure. Wind trails, following seagulls, changing weather and the day-night cycle make the ocean feel like a living place. The game also moves between distant islands without a loading screen. Development work involved adjusting island and ocean sizes so those transitions could happen smoothly within the GameCube’s limitations.
The original sailing system was slow, and changing direction required playing the Wind Requiem repeatedly. The Wii U edition adds the Swift Sail, which increases speed and automatically sets the wind direction. Obtaining it through the auction took longer than expected because I kept receiving the wrong items and had to sit through lengthy bidding dialogue. My daughter also noticed that the hull clips into the water at high speed, although that minor visual issue is insignificant beside the improvement in convenience.
The Swift Sail made the Great Sea feel more active. Instead of being a huge empty space, it became a playground filled with islands, treasure, enemy encounters and strange themed locations. My daughter loves looking for “gems” in parks and at school, so charting a course towards distant silhouettes suited her perfectly. We both hummed along to the excellent Great Sea music.
Our explorations included meeting the Queen of Fairies at Mother and Child Isles, obtaining fire and ice arrows, finding the Ghost Ship Chart through the wreck at Diamond Steppe Island and earning the Deluxe Picto Box. She helped Anton and Linda become friends, photographed the moon for a lonely man, traded with Gorons, watched Tott dance by a gravestone and learned the Song of Passing.
She also battled giant Octos, Gyorgs, Seahats and enemy submarines, while pointing out that Seahats are different from Peahats. Fairies supplied bomb and magic upgrades, and the Fishmen helped chart the ocean when given All-purpose Bait.
Every Ho Ho received a visit because my daughter considered the old man’s advice useful. She returned to Grandma on Outset Island for soup and reassurance, collected twenty Joy Pendants and earned the Cabana Deed. The talking door was amusingly rude until Link showed the deed, after which it acknowledged its own existence. She was less amused to discover that the family who received her three pigs had eaten two of them.
The rescued girls also lead to some of the game’s strongest optional stories. Mila’s wealthy family loses everything while trying to save her, yet her father remains happy that she is home. Mila struggles with her changed circumstances and sneaks out at night, leading to a surprisingly touching resolution. Link even meows when she turns around to check whether she is being followed.
Maggie’s family experiences the opposite reversal. Her father initially begs for her rescue, but Moblin Moe’s skull necklaces make the family rich. They take over the auction house, and her father becomes arrogant. Maggie falls in love with Moe, creating a fairy-tale situation that my daughter compared to Beauty and the Beast.
A Zelda Adventure Shared
I once read an interview about an early party-member idea for A Link to the Past. Although that feature was never included, The Wind Waker offers a convincing glimpse of how Zelda might work with companions.
The Earth and Wind temples require Link to cooperate with Medli and Makar, who become the next sages. Medli can fly and reflect light with her harp, while Makar hovers and plants seeds that grow into trees Link can reach with the hookshot. The Command Melody lets Link control both companions directly, changing the rhythm of the puzzles.
The temples make excellent use of the equipment collected throughout the adventure. The Wind Temple’s central chamber uses a huge fan to propel Link upwards, while the Iron Boots, Hookshot, Deku Leaf and Hero’s Bow connect the surrounding rooms. In the Earth Temple, Link redirects beams through a large set of mirrors to carry light across the basement.
Combat is similarly flexible. The grappling hook can steal objects, the Deku Leaf can disorient enemies and dropped weapons can be picked up by Link or his opponents. Floormasters even throw pots. Button prompts allow Link to parry, particularly against Darknuts, although my daughter could defeat most standard enemies through enthusiastic button mashing. Phantom Ganon’s projectile battles were different, with each successful deflection adding musical tension.
Music is central to the temples and their story. Link and the sages conduct melodies to open passages, while recurring musical ideas connect the game with earlier Zelda adventures. My daughter was delighted to finish both temples, then disappointed that Medli and Makar did not remain with Link afterwards.
Finding Joy in the Triforce Hunt
The final major task was the part I had disliked most: finding eight Triforce shards before confronting Ganon. In the GameCube version, the hunt required eight charts, 398 rupees per chart for Tingle and repeated salvage trips using the grappling hook. The rupee grinding and busywork had stopped my first playthrough.
The Wii U version reduces that frustration, but my daughter enjoyed the hunt for reasons I had overlooked. She loved following charts, visiting unfamiliar islands, helping characters and continuing to sail. She also tackled the thirty-floor Savage Labyrinth, where enemies become tougher on every level.
For her, the ocean was not a gap between major objectives. It was the adventure itself. The mysterious islands, collectibles and water-based exploration gave her the kind of open-ended playground she wanted.
When I was her age, I played Zelda II: The Adventure of Link alone, despite finding it punishing. Even so, I wanted to uncover every mystery, cut down every tree and meet every character. When I first played The Wind Waker, I had less patience, a job and a desire to reach the ending quickly.
Playing The Wind Waker HD with my daughter reminded me that games can reward curiosity as much as efficiency. She helped me notice the music, humour, scenery and small stories I had hurried past. More importantly, we built our own memories of sailing, exploring and solving problems together. I hope the Great Sea stays with her as warmly as it has stayed with me.
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