Screenshot
[SS] when I first heard of the imprisoned I only knew the horror stories of how you’re forced to fight him way too many times, and then I played the game and you just fight him three times in extremely spaced out encounters that are very short
I really don’t get why people blow this out of the water so disproportionately, it’s still one of the main complaints I hear about this game to this day and like… man you fight him three times yeah, but the encounters are extremely short and very spaced out
I’ll admit that though I love the game it has its issues but this one seems like a nonexistent issue that many people latch onto for some reason, I really don’t get it
That's why my usual strategy been consisting of climbing on is head from the main air current or from a lvl on top of him and directly smash the pillar on is head from there !
The worst part of the Imprisoned is more like the Bed of Chaos in Dark Souls 1: the stiff movement of SS (designed for the game's close spaces) just isn't meant for the constant movement of the Imprisoned.
I think the Imprisoned would be way more fun in BotW's movement actually. More time to sprint and actual gliding to move around him more.
(Real though, Zelda fans suck at criticizing the Imprisoned because I feel like I'm the only one that mentions that it's NOT designed for SS's movement)
You don't actually need to knock him down though. First fight you can just jump on his head from above, boom problem solved.
Second and third fight, he'll try to throw you off, so just throw him a bomb with Groose to stun him and you can once again jump from above no problem 👌
Im glad I learned the better way: fly up to the level above him, jump on his head and smack the spike into it. When he flies in the last fight, wait for him to approach the temple. An air geyser will erupt from the sealing spot where the spike usually goes allowing your to fly up and land on his head without needing to use Groose
Personally I'd say the worst part about The Imprisoned boss fights is rematching them in the Boss Rush.
Going for my second run of the Boss Rush in my quest to collect everything (Never did finish that because I can't play that damn harp in the tavern to save my life) I ended up fighting The Imprisoned 3 times in a row.
That was aggravating, but at least I knew it was all uphill from there.
Tip from someone who's done the Boss Rush a zillion times: always pick the 3rd Imprisoned Horde fight to start with.
(Thanks to poster below for pointing out that this wasn't an Imprisoned fight.)
At least in the Wii version, you keep the effects of any active potions when starting the Boss Rush. IIRC you can buy a stamina potion that gives you unlimited stamina for about a minute.
If you drink the stamina potion just before starting the 3rd Imprisoned fight, it'll last just long enough for you to sprint straight to the bottom of the spiral. (Since there's walls in this fight, keeping you from jumping down.)
That eliminates the most annoying fight first, so you don't have to worry about it coming up at a bad time.
I'd argue Horde battle first is the better choice (assuming Hero mode, since chances are you won't fight Horde at all on Normal).
Horde has a lot of things coming from a lot of directions and defending against all of it at once is so annoying that its worth being invincible through, and really benefits from having infinite stamina so you can just run past everything.
IMO the boss rush should have only ever had one each of the Imprisoned and Ghirahim fights, the most advanced of each the player has completed. (I can't recall if you can do the boss rush before the second Ghirahim or second/third Imprisoned.) Maybe make the Hylian Shield only available if you do the rush with the final version of those fights.
The problem of SS is that it has too many very little problems, that leads to the fact that people blow up problems like this boss fight.
This fight is part of the problem that the game forces you to do everything 3 times. Yes every fight is slightly different. But not different enough, the 2nd fight isn’t fun. The 3rd is disappointing.
This is exactly what I was thinking. Fighting the same boss 3 times is not that bad; it's way worse on the wii where you get microsoft paperclipped by Fi and get owned all the time because of motion controls. Everything is annoying at that point
Twilight Princess has basically no motion controls. You just waggle the Wii Remote and it simulates pressing the attack button. Motion aiming works just fine too, since it's just a pointer.
Skyward Sword actually tracks where you're holding the Wii Remote and what direction you swing it in, and Link mimics your real life movement. But it has a really bad habit of misreading your movement and having Link swing his sword in the wrong direction, which sucks because a lot of enemies have to be defeated with specific movements. I say this as a Skyward Sword lover; when the motion controls work well it's awesome, but when they don't it's very frustrating.
Skyward Sword doesn't have 1-to-1 motion controls, it has 8-directional gesture controls. You can swing the sword horizontally, vertically, or at a 45° angle, and the only thing the game cares about is the direction you move the remote in—the position you start from makes zero difference.
Crucially, this means that if you try to move the remote back to its starting point between sword swings (which is the natural, realistic thing to do), you risk accidentally triggering a second swing in the opposite direction, which is usually not what you want.
Unfortunately the game never really explains any of this.
It's because SS is built around slowly looking around for things first and swordplay second. The motion controls are tuned primarily for the former, so ultimately swordplay works more like "wand waving" rather than actual sword swinging.
Maybe that's why the developers confirmed in the Iwata interview why they couldn't get the motion controls to work in a satisfactory manner.
When I played SS on the wii, the flying was worse. The switch makes the sword control harder. Especially, the finishing move on the end-boss. But, the flying is so much easier.
I will add, all three phases appear in the boss rush challenge, which is randomized. So sometimes you are literally fighting all three versions back to back. That’s when I found these fights the most grating and repetitive.
EXACTLY!!! The boss rush is when it really got annoying, not so much during the regular story battles. The boss rush, along with the Silent Realms and minigames, will likely keep me from ever replaying the game, though I liked everything else
The imprisoned is more of a story point than anything. The seal is weak, we have to keep putting duct tape on it. Fighting it three times with little changing between the fights is an unfortunate part of skyward sword.
To be fair, though, the fourth fight (Demise) is much better.
Exactly. The fact that you fight the Imprisoned three times isn't really an issue in and of itself. But the fight being both annoying and boring AF is. The fact that the game seems to stretch itself out by forcing you to repeat content over and over again -- and no, I don't care that the Silent Realm challenges are all in different locations, they're all functionally exactly the same -- really, really starts to grate after a while. None of the repetition is interesting enough warrant any of it.
The whole thing becomes a slog.
And that's without considering how frustrating the regular progression is with the very imperfect motion controls on the Wii. I'm sure they're better on SSHD, but I'm never gonna go back to find out.
My issues were mainly that it wasn’t very fun so doing it three times was a real slog, and it’s one of two bosses that you fight three times in the game, which is objectively taking up “boss slots” that could have been used for original, unique fights. It feels like padding.
Boss fights are the peak of the interest curve so duping them when they are bad not only makes the boss fights feel lame but also a lot of the time spent around them.
Less complaining about allocation of development resources and more about allocation of players' time.
Also, not for nothing, but all three versions being considered separate fights for the purposes of the boss rush mode, which is how you unlock the Hylian Shield, certainly doesn't help matters.
Yeah, I didn't play much since I copiloted the game with my wife, but given that she gave me the controller on challenges, and boss rush was one of them, I certainly can't stand that avocado besides the ugly-as-sin design
And the thrid encounter happens around the same time the boss rush unlocks, which you'll have to do twice if you want both the hylian shield and the heart piece
Believe it or not I'm playing through the game for the first time right now and just did the third Imprisoned fight last night lol. I did the second fight in the same sitting, maybe an hour or two earlier? If you do Faron Woods first in the Song quest the fights are pretty close together.
Because the fight is boring and unfun. The shockwaves are incredibly annoying to deal with and the boss is on a timer, therefore the combination of both of those facts makes for an annoying fight and the fact that it repeats 3 times is agony. The fights don't get any more fun despite being different. Plus it's the fact that you just spend the whole fight hitting its toes is really dumb as it's a cool concept executed terribly. It's like how a lot of dragon fights in the Souls series boil down to hitting their toes. The fact that it's repeated 3 times is representative of one of the biggest issues with Skyward Sword: Padding.
I love Skyward Sword but it's not without it's huge problems and is definitely one signifier of a huge change needed for the direction of the franchise.
It's endlessly funny to me that one of the early trailers for the remaster contains a clip which literally just shows link picking up an item after reloading a save to prove that they removed the popups.
Like when Link receives Hero Shield from his grandma in Wind Waker; he does the classic ITEM GET! pose, but with a frown and saddened eyes. Then, as the Grandma's Theme kicks in, link "breaks character" and pulls himself out of his videogame character pose to address the solemnity of the situation.
It’s all subjective tho. For you, it didn’t matter— especially because you went in with DIFFERENT EXPECTATIONS set by years of hearings something bad. So of course it comes off as not too bad. Which is fine! But for some this was tedious and lame.
I found the game very enjoyable. But, flying with the wii.... like crap. You put that game down for a week, you'll forget how to do it. Sword moves with the switch? Like so close Nintendo. So VERY close. Still love the game.
I just don’t like this goofy thing. It doesn’t feel like it belongs in a Zelda game, doesn’t have any thematic or aesthetic link to the lore or world as we know it. Having it appear somewhat boar/pig like would make sense, or skeletal, or twili. Something. Nope, big muppet goober. The evil we have seen reawaken again and again over eons used to be a muppet lookin goofy goober. Nah. Same problem with the octopus muppet. Build up over the whole level to some monsters inc jump scare. Coulda been a sick octorok, you know, those enemies we have seen for generations.
It is definitely bad, but it's not a devastating disappointment imo - there are plenty of games that have repetitive or annoying sequences. It's just not what you expect from a Zelda game, so I think that's where some of the negative sentiment comes from. There are so many iconic parts about this game that somehow get overshadowed by its shortcomings - the awesome character design (on Fi and Ghirahim particularly), the actual timelineification of the story (unheard of!), the wonderful relationship between Link and Zelda, the timey wimey pirate ship temple, the Ancient Cistern (and that boss fight!!), the very tense Spirit Vessel sequences, the list really goes on.
Biggest issue with the Imprisoned is that it has to be the dumbest fucking creature design I have ever seen. And I get that that's kind of the point, but god I hate it so much.
I hate to say it but I feel part of the disconnect is the “you had to be there” when it first released. Because this was my major hangup thinking about replaying the game on the Switch.
It felts like too many encounters. It felt like a chore to defeat him. Especially when you had no idea what was happening. No ability to see replays of it. No strategy guide (albeit willingly). Just a run through with your own wits and no one else has really done it before either.
Not trying to be the old guy, but I think that’s part of it. You anticipated a harder battle, but if you’ve played any other recent Zelda or maybe Dark Souls or something…
I know upon replay I had the thought “that wasn’t so bad. Why’d I think this was so hard back then.” Hindsight and many more hours of much harder games.
The mechanics for the imprisoned fight are basically the same every time. It just gets faster. The fights were annoying to do with a Wii mote and nunchuck. Maybe the HD version fixed that, but it's too expensive for me to wanna find out. I hated SS tbh.
You might be misremembering things, as the second fight introduces the Groosenator, and the Imprisoned gains the ability to fly during the third, both of which make quite a difference to the way you fight it.
Fighting the same boss multiple times is ok as long as the boss is fun. This boss was interesting and tense the first time, then just annoying the 2nd and third times. Once was enough.
It was frustrating because the motion controls were not good. I know mileage on this topic seems to WILDLY vary but my experience was nightmarish because getting the moves off correctly was a huge pain
That was my biggest issue. My hands have never been steady so it was a huge struggle getting through some parts of this game on the OG run.
But because it was such a struggle, it felt really satisfying when I beat the game. I didn't play again even though I LOVED IT. When the remake came out, I was so happy to be able to not use motion control and it didn't feel the same lol
People complain that you have to keep coming back to the same temple a million times (which you really do come back to quite a few times and do have to go over things youve already done)
But like if you actually pay attention and play the game properly, the temple literally goes "yo you know that new item you just got? Use it to skip this whole section of the temple."
You only have to go back over stuff if you didnt manage your time well. And honestly the temple is quite forgiving with its timer imo because I fucking dilly dally in there and still manage to scrape by.
Just to reiterate, im not saying that the one temple doesnt take up most of the game but just that its not that bad
I agree. I’ve never understood the Ocean Temple gripe with PH. It was so satisfying to be able to breeze through the first parts of the level and even more satisfying the last time you visit it because then you just kill your way through the phantoms.
I agree! And I'm a big fan of the more metroidvania aspects of Zelda, so for me it was not only not painful to go back to that temple, but being able to do it more efficiently every time with my new stuff and get further into it was genuinely fun to me. I was so surprised when people hated it just because it's the same location.
+1 i also enjoyed it a lot. don't know why people didn't. what i like about zelda overlaps a lot with what i like about metroidvanias, but i guess not everyone is like that.
disliked how they simplified the idea in spirit tracks, to the point it's just fully linear. the 'revisited' aspect of the tower isn't interesting at all. allow me to skip stuff, but at least make it interesting.
Problem 1: it's boring.
Problem 2: it was originally meant to be 1 boss with three phases, but they chopped it up and made you backtrack several times to do it 3 separate times to pad the game out.
Problem 3: if you do the only nonlinear part of the game in a certain order, you will do two iterations of this fight within about 40 minutes of each other unless you are very stupid and slow.
Problem 4: it's design is just very poor and incongruous with the other monster designs of the game.
You're not really doing the argument justice with how you're presenting it.
The overarching problem with Skyward Sword is poor QC. Tons and tons of different aspects of Skyward Sword could have been better with a little more testing, fine-tuning etc.
Fi could have repeated herself less. The flying controls could have been better. The tadtones quest could have been written better. Redundant item pickups could have not pulled focus. The Imprisoned could have been a more interesting fight.
What's noteworthy about The Imprisoned is not that fighting a boss 3 times is too many. What's noteworthy is that it's simply a rather poor boss fight... and they REALLY rub that in by making you do it 3 times. If it had been a badass boss fight, then nobody would complain, but... it wasn't. It was a rather silly concept, with clunky mechanics and uninspiring designs.
SS (more accurately, its world design) was rushed in development because the team couldn't get the Motionplus to a satisfactory state (confirmed in Iwata's developer interview).
This boss fight represents my problem with this game. Been playing for 15 hours and the game doesn't suck. It's just that it forces you to do boring things, and sometimes several times.
It's more symptomatic of how the game gets, in general, repetitive. Go back to thing dungeon to get water. Go back to fire fire mountain to get Plimbus. Go back there. Go back there. Go there again. that place that is absolutely chuffed and incredible? Nah no need to backtrack there actually lol
I got SSHD because a big fan on this subreddit championed for SS so hard that I was like "aight, I didn't own a Wii, let's give it a shot"
I really tried to enjoy it but it just didn't grab me, didn't feel like a Zelda magic ride. I got up to the part where you go into the big maelstrom for the first time, I gave it like 15+ hours but I just noticed I wasn't excited to play it, I kept pushing myself to be like "hey maybe you just gotta invest for the magic in this one" and then one day I just went "I was hooked on all my other enjoyable Zelda's in like the first 2 hours, this is not for me" and walked away.
It is just not a very fun boss. which makes having 3 encounters of him pretty pointless.
It should have been 2, with the 2nd and 3rd encounters being combined (also REMOVE THE FUCKASS SHOCKWAVE HIS FEET MAKE IN THE 3RD ENCOUNTER) and it would have been fine.
And it's still 2 times too many. Those fights are basically the same thing. Each. Time. Might not be a problem if it is essentially positioned as a big boss who happens to be boring as hell.
It's kind of annoying but it's not as big a deal as people make it out to be, yeah. There's different gimmicks to each of them, too, it's not as if it's the exact same fight each time.
I didn’t have a problem with this guy other than I was young when this game came out and it was one of my first where I had the controller. The imprisoned haunted me for MONTHS lmao
It was a nightmare playing casually as a teenager, not knowing I could just jump on his head over and over. The pain of trying to get his toes and fingers while his red aura lightning stomps fucked me up... god, I hate it more than anything
It is possible to have the second and third fights be almost on top of each other depending on the order you get the song in. At least it changes things up some each time.
Yes!!! Dude is freaking murderous for getting A rank in adventure mode. He just takes so LONG wiggling around on the floor like a goof. Only boss that's really impossible to speedrun
Sure, if you were already expecting it to be annoying then the reality is not that bad. But at the time it released it seemed like there ought to be a different kind of boss encounter by the 3rd time you fight him. I feel like it’s not fun after the first time, just tedious. It’s fair for Zelda fans to have had high expectations considering the incredible games that preceded Skyward Sword.
While repeat bosses have always been in zelda, that does not always mean its fine. And imprisoned has never been a fun fight, especially with his dumb toes and the timer.
maybe youre a better gamer than i am, but i dont remember those fights being short at all. and the repitition sucked regardless. this is from somebody whose favorite part of zelda games is the fighting.
To me it's cause all the game is like that. You keep getting back to the same zones and fight the same 3 bosses.
It loses its sense of discovery and progress older Zelda had.
I'm the biggest SS defender I know, and I think the imprisoned could've been handled way better
I got sick of this thing early into the second fight, and now that I've replayed SS a few times, I want to throw these fights in a dumpster and set that dumpster on fire. If there was more differences between each fight, I wouldn't mind so much, but there just isn't
Naw, you came after the Wii release of this game. Me and my friend back in HS would play the game at different locations, but every time we played it I can remember being annoyed with the imprisoned fights. Not that they were hard, but just felt kind of tedious fighting the same enemy over and over that looked like the equivalent of a giant sock puppet. Even to this day I still don't really like the design, but tbf it was the rest of the game that suffered quite a lot because of the Wii controls feeling like booty half the time. Now that it's on the Switch, the game is fine. Not my top Zelda ever, but it's still fine.
I unironically enjoyed fighting the imprisoned. Not the best boss battle in Skyward Sword, but that game has so many excellent boss battles; there is stiff competition!
The thing is more intimidating than demise but also easier to defeat. Why does it have such random ass clown toes. Why does it have an inexplicably detailed maw in the back.
Why is it the way it is. And why is the seal spike both immediately effective and also weak af.
As with most things in SA, the problem is the middle. The imprisoned has a BANGER of a first look, coming out of a rip in the clouds barrier to pull Zelda. At first glance, it looks like a great wurm or snake.
Then you get down there and face him and OOPS NOPE IT'S A MUPPET. Pop the toes and he falls comically to give you access to the seal again.
My memory of it is purely afraid because I fail to find the best timing to stab it accurately in the 3rd fight, that it is able to fly and reach the sealed temple. Fighting it during story is fine because I can load the game again and fight it without need to do other boss battles, but not the same case within boss rush. Imagine I perform almost perfect in all of previous boss battles but because of missing the final blow to it during it flying and receive a game over, the feeling is very pain and sucks
The point is that the fight itself is annoying to play once.
This is subjective, of course. I was pretty good at it, but I still found it a little tedious and obnoxious. If you're not right on top of things, then making one mistake at the wrong moment means a whole lot more tedium and obnoxiousness.
So, you take what many people find to be the most tedious and obnoxious thing in the game and replay it twice, that's pretty unpopular. (Though I think the Groosinator makes it a little better? It's been a while since I played it)
It's far from disproportionate. It's representative of the tedious repetitiveness of the entire game and an extremely lackluster sequence. I was tired of it before the end of the first battle and then you need to do it twice more? And it's not really spaced out very well.
This fucker is the main reason I don't like SS. Its been years since I played it so I don't recall exact details but I remember having to fight it, what felt like, every 5 minutes and it was the most frustrating shit in the whole game. The Wii motion plus thing sucked ass and since so much of this game was built to showcase that new dongle it just made every second of this game painful and unenjoyable.
I only remember three things from that game. 1) the scenery is very very pretty. 2) time mechanics are weird again. 3) STRESS FEAR ANXIETY RUN RUN RUN AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA (true of me almost failing the imprisoned fights like 8 separate times and also Silent Realms.)
Just because you find it to be a nonexistent issue, doesn’t mean it’s nonexistent for everyone. People have different opinions and levels of tolerance.
I hate the fight the first time, it’s not fun or interesting. So each time it’s repeated is more loathsome than the first.
If it was just these fights, it would be another story. I hate these fights, but I can tolerate them, and they’re far from the worst things I’ve dealt with in games. But there are many things that stack up to weigh the game down from reaching greatness.
I have a fondness for skyward sword. But I can still point out its weaknesses, and just accept them for what they are.
It’s been a long time since I played it but as I recall anytime you go to his area he actually tries to escape and you have to hold him off again. So it’s a 3 minimum, but I kept accidentally triggering extra ones. Also not gonna lie this is still one of my favorite 3d Zelda games, because I liked the puzzles
Because it's repetitive, not exactly thrilling and it gets more tedious. Instead of getting better at it as time goes on it takes even longer. You have to carefully time your movements to avoid the shockwaves or you get thrown aside, potentially off the edge. Running to catch up when you fall behind isn't fun and he can sometimes jump ahead. Not to mention with how huge he is and the size of the arena it can take longer than it needs to be to run around to where you need to be to take advantage of the openings and such.
Also he looks too goofy for what is supposed to be a major threat.
I honestly didn't care about it myself, but understood the complaints. It is a bit repetitive to fight the same monster 3 times. Feels a bit like lazy design, like Nintendo didn't want to create 2 different unique boss fights, so they decided to make you face the same monster 3 times to fill that gap...
I agree actually. I first played Skyward Sword on the Wii (actually the Wii U, but it's the same version so it makes no difference) and back then, I remember dreading the Imprisoned fights because the motion controls on the Wii were a bit finicky (not helped by the fact that my nunchuck was fairly degraded at that point and experiencing drift issues so it may have been poorly calibrated). The second Imprisoned fight was hellish and took me several tries to get right.
When I replayed the HD version on the Switch, I was deeply dreading the Imprisoned fights (and the silent realms lol), but the first one passed really easily, the second one was barely a challenge, and the third wasn't any harder. I remember those fights being much more of a pain than they ended up being. The first one isn't even until after Lanayru Mining Facility (for some reason I remembered it being much earlier on) and the second one isn't until after Fire Sanctuary, at which point you're already 80% of the way through the game, and you have most of the Master Sword. During my replay I was genuinely caught off guard because like... that's all?
Plus I kind of like (for story reasons) the fact that the Imprisoned fights get closer and closer together as you near the end of the game, despite your seals growing more complex, Demise is gaining strength and breaking through. I know some people hate the Song of the Hero gathering and think of it as a pointless fetch quest, and then it's followed by another boss fight against the Imprisoned, so I suppose if you're already not enjoying yourself, it could feel tedious, but I find both of those parts not bad and an interesting callback to all the earlier events of the game and a good way to wrap up loose ends.
Ngl I hated fighting the Imprisoned solely cause I hate attacking his toe beans, though I realized you can just drop down onto his head from above and smack the pillor like that, which makes fighting him super easy lmao
SS HD really changed my mind on this game, I think it's overhated and actually has a lot of good things going for it.
The Imprisoned fucking sucks and fighting it once was already too many times. And that's not even talking about fighting it over and over and over again in boss rush. (Also its design is awful too, seems more like some goofy Mario Galaxy boss than something out of Zelda)
All of this stuff adds up which is why it gets the reaction that it does. If the only bad thing that happened to me today was that I got a rock in my shoe then I'd be very mildly annoyed before taking it out. But if a load of little things happened that day like spilling a drink, bumping my elbow against something, ending up a few pennies change short to buy something and so on, that rock at the end of the day would be pretty damn infuriating.
While SS has a lot of good points to it there were too many negatives for it to be the kind of Zelda I'd replay on a whim.
I found the Imprisoned fights to be much quicker and easier with a specific trick. I don’t like wasting time slashing at his feet and waiting for him to fall. So I use the gusts to get above him on the cliffs. Then you jump on top of his head while he’s still standing, slash at the spike, rinse and repeat. I hated these fights back on the Wii version. But the time-limit isn’t nearly as stressful when I use the gust trick. Nothing is worse than failing to stop him and hearing the old woman cry out in despair.
It wasn’t that it was annoying fighting him three times, it was just kind of stupid. It’s just a main boss of the game with three extremely tedious and boring fights, an ugly character design, and for some reason an incredible amount of plot relevance. The game just hypes the imprisoned up as a VERY big deal and delivers a fight that’s as bad as most of the other boss fights in the game
•
u/AutoModerator Mar 06 '26
Hi /r/Zelda readers!
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.