“The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD” gives players two control schemes on the Nintendo Switch: motion controls, which will be familiar to players who tried the game on the Wii in 2011, and a more standard handheld controller option. Both have flaws, but the handheld mode’s are particularly glaring.

In “Skyward Sword HD,” players can rotate the camera around Link, the playable protagonist. The original game didn’t allow that, featuring a fixed camera instead. It’s a welcome, modernizing addition, but it bumps up against some of the original game’s mechanics.

I started playing “Skyward Sword HD” in handheld mode, and the shortcomings of adding a flexible camera were immediately apparent. The original game revolved around motion controls: players attacked and parried by swinging their Wii controller. In a handheld configuration, these motion controls don’t work, so swings of the sword are mapped to the right joystick. Wobble the joystick to the right, and Link swings to the right.

The right joystick, then, takes on double duty: It’s used to input attacks, but it also needs to be useful for moving the camera. And so, to move the camera, you have to press the Left Bumper while moving the right joystick. This means that you can’t attack and move the camera at the same time, which can lead to some disorienting fights.

It’s not a fatal flaw, but it can feel like a pebble in your shoe, disrupting the rhythm of play just so. If you want to sprint while crossing one the game’s long, empty spaces, you’ll also have to give up looking around, since sprinting is mapped to the B button, and the right joystick is underneath the XABY button pad. Often, I’d start moving and instinctively touch the right joystick to change my view, which would instead prompt Link to unsheathe his sword. It’s not a huge problem, but adapting to the control scheme can feel like trying to unlearn a habit.

If you choose to play with motion controls, you mostly bypass these issues. When I swapped from handheld to motion controls, I was overjoyed to find that the right joystick worked as I expected: Move it and the camera adjusts accordingly. That said, this configuration isn’t without its own issues. The Joy-Con controllers have a gyroscope that is extremely sensitive to movement. I played on the couch, and any time I entered a screen in which the Joy-Con would manipulate a cursor on screen — in a map or menu, for example — the game would respond to any minor seating adjustments I had made by sending the cursor veering off target. There’s a quick fix: You can reset the gyroscope by hitting the Y button. But every time I did that, I was mentally taken out of the game and reminded that I was fiddling with an imprecise piece of technology.

The controls aren’t really the main draw of a Zelda game. But if you don’t have the patience for finicky, imperfect inputs, maybe sit out “Skyward Sword HD.”

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