The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the first Zelda game created specifically with the Wii in mind. The game makes use of the Wii MotionPlus peripheral for sword fighting, with a revised Wii Remote pointing…

93 18 November 2011

Adventure Puzzle Action Fantasy Historical Open world

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is an adventure developed by Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.3, released 18 November 2011 on Wii U and Wii. The main story takes about 45.7 hrs to finish.

Verified 18 Oct 2026 Sources: IGDB , Wikipedia

What The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is an adventure game developed by Nintendo EAD Software Development Group No.3 and released in 2011. It was published by Nintendo. It is available on Wii U and Wii.

The premise, in the publisher's words

In the floating island community of Skyloft, a young knight-in-training named Link lives above an endless sea of clouds, unaware of the surface world below. When his childhood friend Zelda is swept away by a mysterious dark tornado and pulled beneath the cloud barrier, Link is drawn to a sacred sword hidden within a statue of the goddess. The blade's spirit, Fi, reveals Link is the prophesied hero destined to confront a rising evil. He must descend to the long-abandoned surface lands to find Zelda before the self-proclaimed Demon Lord Ghirahim can use her to revive his imprisoned master, the ancient Demon King Demise, whose return would threaten all existence.

Description from the publisher · source

How it plays

It is played from a third person perspective. Its themes are action, fantasy, historical and open world. It is a single-player game with no multiplayer component.

Where it sits in the The Legend of Zelda series

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword is the 57th of 133 entries we hold in the The Legend of Zelda series. The next entry was The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword - Collector's Edition in 2011. Its critic score of 93 is 7 points above the series average of 86. The highest-rated entry is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past at 100.

See all 133 The Legend of Zelda games in release order →

How it was received

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword holds a critic score of 93 out of 100. That places it above 98% of the 7,527 rated adventure games in our database, which average 72. Games released in 2011 averaged 68, so it scored 25 points above the year average. Players rate it 87, 6 points lower than critics did — a gap worth knowing about before you buy.

How long it takes, and what that costs

The main story runs about 45.7 hrs.

What it launched against

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword launched on 18 November 2011, within three weeks of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Minecraft: Java Edition and Assassin's Creed Revelations. It reviewed better than 3 of the 4.

Released around the same time: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, Minecraft: Java Edition, Assassin's Creed Revelations.

Cheats and codes

We have not confirmed any working cheat codes for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword yet. Rather than reprint a list we have not tested, this section stays empty until one is verified.

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