They reuse a lot in the game, from area's to boss fights and even a dungeon at one point. The game feels... cheap to me or rushed I guess. I mean outside of the imprisioned I actually didn't mind that they reused bosses because the combat was good and fun against them but it doesn't stop it from feeling cheap. They legitimately have the player go back to the same 3 areas 3 times, slightly different or expanded but it's still the same places and it got boring to come back to and look at. What happened? Where'd the budget go? Could we not get at least 2 more places to visit on the surface? Also the only town in the game is Skyloft, the surface only has random NPCs that point you to where you need to go, other then that theirs nothing.
I had this feeling on my newest playthrough, too. Skyward Sword definitely had a more troubled production history than is publicly known. Keep in mind: they wanted to use 1:1 motion controls in the game from the start, but couldn't get them to work satisfyingly,
scrapped the idea, and then only when Wii Sports Resort released in 2009 and the team saw that the 1:1 sword fighting worked very well in that game, they changed their mind and actually started working on implementing them again. This was
2 years before the game released, and with how heavy the game is on the motion controls, I think it's a safe bet to say that
a lot of the content in the game has been changed around and updated to accommodate for the new gameplay. Which ultimately brings up the question: how much of the 3 years of development prior to this change had to be scrapped, started over and changed considerably? I think a lot.
The game, while I love it, is full with these... little, fine details, that one might not even see when not actively paying attention, but when you notice them, they scream of cut corners. Like... remember the robot that you have to summon once in a while to pick up and carry a large object? Notice how there is never an animation for the robot actually picking things up; it
always uses a white blend transition from "Okay, I'll carry that!" to the robot having the object lifted into the air already. This is only one little instance, but a persistent one. Just something that I would think developers and animators would be like "Yeah, we'll concentrate on the quest functioning correctly for now, we'll finetune the animation later" and when they ran out of time, they basically were like "Screw it, just use a transition for all these instances, that'll save us a day of animation".
Or when you are selling insects for example. I think it's really weird and outdated to have the other guy tell you: "Okay, option 1 is insect A, option 2 is insect B, option 3 is insect C, which one do you wanna sell?" and then you get presented the choices basically labeled "Option 1", "Option 2", "Option 3". Like, they saved programming
minutes to set it up like this, probably just so it could easier be copy&pasted into the code of the dude you can sell treasures to, you know what I mean? But it's a very weird way to handle multiple choice prompts, like something you would see from clunkily coded games well before the 2000s, not something from the flagship franchise of a world leading game studio in as late as 2011.
Or other weird instances, like there being no real day-to-night-cycle, you only being able to leave Skyloft in designated spots instead of anywhere, the bird flying minigame when you learn that screwattack not being repeatable for highscores, etc. etc.
I don't wanna sound nitpicky, and as I said, I really love the game, but I feel like all these little things show that production must have been very rushed in a few places and it's obvious that they definitely cut corners in certain, albeit not too important aspects, probably to meet deadlines. I think 1-2 additional years of production cycle would have helped them game tremendously, quality-wise, because that's the timeframe needed to tackle all these little things and really tie everything together in a neat and smooth package. But I understand that they didn't want to take that time, because when SS hit the scene in 2011, the Wii was basically dead at that point already and it really hurt the sales of the game. Also, the Wii U would release in 2012, so realistically, they would have had to update the game for an HD release, and we know that's a jump in production quality that they struggled with for a few more years to come.
All things considered, though, it's kind of baffling that with the HD re-release now, they
didn't take the time to sort this stuff out now and only concentrated on a handful of shortcomings to take care of. It's like because the original release was so long ago, nobody in development still remembered all the little issues und shortcomings and everybody was just like "Yeah, let's only concentrate on the glaring, obvious problems and getting this to work with the new hardware first and foremost".
Shaqazooloo
very solid write up, agree with a lot of your points. I played SS in 2011 and once I finished it I was kind of relieved tbh. It is the worst Zelda game, but it is still fun. Here are my pros and cons
what a bad idea to make a world out of those ) 
misterfpga.org
