DaveNinja -

The game just really starts after you place the 3rd pearl. After that they're less sailing and more dungeons. Really the long sailing times were what, 5 minutes at the most? does everyone have ADD now days? During that sailing you can be looking for the map fish, treasure or just keep jumping the boat.

Actually, I said that I wasn't one for these types of games. If I had ADD, I wouldn't have spent countless hours on my other games. I play games for excitement and fun. If I wanted to have menial tasks as a recreation, I'd stick to real life.

I found Zelda neither exciting nor fun.

As far as "...just keep jumping the boat", if I were one to claim this as "fun", than I wouldn't go around accusing people of ADD.

I am a solid fan of the Zelda series and am about done with the Second Quest (just looking for more figurines). I gave this game a 9 which I had to do with some disappointment. I think I would have given it a 10 if there were just a few differences.

1. I actually really loved the sailing and wouldn't change it for anything - for the first 9/10 of the game. But after you beaten/almost beaten the game, you should be able to find a way to warp to any square you've already explored... Sailing becomes mega-tedious when you are searching for side-quests, even if you have the Ballad.

2. Auto-map the dang islands! Why do I have to buy bait, find the fish, and have him take his sweet time filling out my map! That's 49 tedious times I did that!

3. I was pretty disappointed with the Wind Waker wand itself. It's a pretty unneccessary trinket - they could have found better/faster ways to accomplish the purposes that the wand fulfilled. For example, instead of making you play the command song to switch between you and another character, there could be an item you set to x/y/z that let's you do it at the touch of a button.
The Waker is a gratuitious copy of the Ocarina anyway... and it's not nearly as cool. The Ocarina actually taught real notes and made real songs. Maybe somewhere along the way the Ocarina was melted down and got pounded into this baton?

4. Finally, I just get the feeling that theses tedious things exist to add length to a game where the skimped a bit on the dungeons. Remember the good old days when you were guaranteed eight or more solid dungeons in a Zelda game? That's gone down starting with Majora's Mask. Now if there was a dungeon for ALL of the sages, we would really be talking! Then they could get rid of all the "triumph forks" trawling as well.


All that said, I think the graphics are excellent and funny - I laughed out loud at Link being propelled through the air and impacting various walls, and also at being hit on by a certain supernatural character. The sailing is very cool for the most part, and the plot is my favorite of any in the series.

I actually really liked the brief stealth parts early on and thought it made sense within the game - you can't exactly hack your way through the enemy leader's stronghold right off the bat, can you? And don't forget that similar stealth components have been in OoT (remember sneaking into the palace?), the Oracle series, and probably others that I can't remember off the top of my head.

So, in other words, I think that everything else was polished so well, that it mostly makes up for my above beefs. I have to go with a 9 for it.

Well, I guess I have too much to say on the subject!

I'm at Gannon's Tower now, and my opinions on the game are similar to sraans.

My initial score was a 9 or 9.5, then I bumped it to a ten, now it's looking like it will go back to a 9.

My main reason is I think they got lazy and put a lot of redundant stuff in the game to make it longer rather than having more dungeons.

Examples:

Sailing. It just takes too long. As sraan said, you should eventually be able to warp to any square. Perhaps that should open up when you have your chart completely filled in.

The triforce charts and shards. This got old fast. Go to a square, sail around/run around until you figure out how to get the chart. Then you can't read it so you have to get it deciphered. This costs a decent chunk of change so you have to waste time getting rupees. Then you have to sail the globe to dredge up the shards, which is easy and thus boring.

These are minor gripes though, I would just have greatly prefered another 3 or 4 dungeons to fill this play time rather than running around doing that crap.

I also agree with sraans complaints about the wind waker. It gets old fast having to play the damn song every 5 minutes to change the wind direction. It just should have been equip the item and press the direction you want the wind to go. They also don't need that little cutscene to show the wind changing direction everytime. I also agree with him about the command song, the wind and earth temples were tedious as hell from having to play that damn song a million times.

That aside, the rest of the game is flawless. The dungeons, while too few, are the best in the series IMO. They puzzles are just right. Not so hard that I ever got totally stuck and clueless for very long, but hard enough to make me have to think about for a while. Same goes for the bosses. I hate hard bosses. IMO the challenge for a boss in this type of game should be figuring out how to beat them. They should be easy to beat once you do so, and that's exactly how they are in this game (last boss aside as I haven't got their yet). The control is pretty much spot on. My only grip is it's sometimes near impossible to target the enemy you want. A good example is when you want to shoot one of the wizrobes and there's other guys closer to you. The graphics and sound are great as well, and totally fit the series (this coming from someone that generally hates cel shading).

So I say a 9/10, with the "cheap" ways of making the game longer keeping it from getting a perfect score. Nintendo seems to be falling back on these type of mechanisms all of a sudden, as the shard hunt was very reminiscent of hunting for the artifacts in Metroid Prime.

Yeah, that artifact hunting in Prime seemed like an afterthought, which was odd because I thought that the game was just the right length anyway. I still had to give that game a 10.

Interestingly enough, I was LESS disappointed with Mario Sunshine than this game. I thought Mario delivered exactly what I wanted and had little to no tediousness in it (sorry, I use that word a lot), and even though it was a Mario 64 clone, it was IMHO a nice variation on a theme, with the water pack and all. And it was considered by many to be the most disappointing game of the year.

Zelda (whose series I traditionally enjoy more than Mario, and usually seem t give a 10/10 rating), is less formulaic but not necessarily in a good way. And all the critics seem to be giving it unfettered accolades. And what's really strange to me is the criticisms seem to be for things that I didn't even notice - the camera (the game camera, not the Picto-box) for one thing. I don't think I ever became very frustrated at the camera - at least less so than most other games I've played. But then again I didn't feel it was all that bad in Mario Sunshine (except for a few key areas) either. Maybe I am just a "camera masta"!

Again, it deserves lots of praise because of the number of things it does right, but It's no OoT, LttP, or even original LoZ in my book.

I do have disagree a bit, Josh, and say that it was too easy for my taste. I don't think that there's been another Zelda that was this easy. I would have liked a little more challenge in both the bosses and dungeons.

I'd give this game a low 9 or high 8. It's very good, but it's not anywhere near as good as it should have been.

My main critiques of the game:

- difficulty was much too low
- too many sidequests, none were rewarding like the Biggoron Sword in OoT
- sailing is a great idea with poor execution, should have been able to fight while moving
- the overworld is too large, coupled with sailing makes large sections of the game unnecessarily tedious
- too few dungeons, the fire and ice sections should have been full-fledged dungeons
- the camera was very awkward at times
- shard hunting was horrible

Overall, it was a great game. The gameplay tweaks and new items were welcome and well-done. I loved all the aesthetics and music. The fleshed-out Zelda mythos were excellent as well. Too much padding and not enough substance keep this game from being a classic though.

I'm sure most will disagree with me on that. I play games primarily to relax and unwind from the real world. As such I prefer games like this where the main challenge is just in wandering around and figuring things out. Games that are hard because you have to memorize patterns, be ultra precise in your timeing etc during fights just tend to piss me off and ruin the whole relaxation thing I'm going for.

Others seem to play games to have an intense experience and to be challenged, so obviously games like this aren't going to be liked as much by them.

Yeah, I can understand that. Though even the puzzles in the dungeons seemed to be much easier than in previous titles. I don't like games that are frustrating either, but none of the Zeldas have ever been like that for me. Even Adventure of Link, though I was really in my gaming prime back then. I tried to play that again a couple of years ago and kept getting hosed by the bosses.

Well I beat the game last night and I stand by my 9/10 score above.

I can't give it a ten for the reasons above, as well as the fact that the last battle was lame IMO, especially compared to the bad ass last battle in Ocarina of Time (probably my all time favorite).

Stayed with it and beat it tonight. I give it 7/10. Took me a long time to start enjoying it, but it was a good game. Had fun exploring the ocean, but the dungeons were a mixed bag. Some I really liked and some just seemed too tedious to enjoy.

I totally agree on the last battle. I liked the overall storyline, but the battle was no where near the great final battle in Ocarina. I loved

Yeah, though it took me forever to figure out!

I did the same thing sran. The game gave you no indication that you needed to

And you said the game was easy.

Yeah, but I didn't say I was smart.

If had just said then I probably would have figured it out. But instead just kept as if I was not doing that anyway, thank you very much, and I was yelling this is not working, you moron, and if you don't stop I am going to

I was a bit excited at the time, I think.

I gave this a game a higher rating just for the fact that
spoiler regarding ending:

I was glad about that too. However the cool thing in OOT was after the escape you fight the real last battle. So it wasn't just escape, then ending there.

BTW I though the ending for this game was pretty lame compared to the past couple zelda games (which didn't have spectacular endings either).

My favorite Zelda ending was for the SNES version.
Spoiler just in case people want to go back and play:

I gave it a 10/10 - my only gripe is the camera sometimes goes nuts in closed environments.

I loved the ending - one of the best yet I think. I jsut loved that way Link finished off Gannon, and the way that they left it open for other Link adventures or other heroes (Hero opf time, winds, grass, water, etc . . ) I loved the ending comments by Gannon - heh heh, The Wind . . . It is Blowing . . . , as well as how Gannon doesn't seem that bad when he tells his story, kinda creates some sympathy; (maybe for a twist he'll team up with Link in some future adventure?)
Lastly, I loved how I created a new Pedestal of Time!!

What's entailed in the second quest? I started it to see, and all I have is my camera - what's different???

spainlinx0,

That was exactly why I liked the SNES and N64 Zelda endings better than this one.

But it's still no big deal as an ending will never effect my opinion/rating of a game, but it would have been nice to

Chaos,

besides the fact that you wear your pajamas throughout the whole game, i don't think the second quest is different at all.

That's enough because I love the pajamas. Where can I buy those?

Also you can now understand the Hylian language, so you can understand what Valoo and Jabun are saying, etc. Some of it is mildly interesting.

I thought I'd chime in a say that I'm missing ONE stupid Triforce piece.. I've managed to get 16 hearts and 35 maps so far w/o a guide.. I'm pretty sure the map I'm missing has to do with all the fish saying "Don't come here when the moon is blah blah blah" so I'm going to sweep the map tonight and hunt those down.. I think I'll wait until 2nd quest to try and find "everything"..

A simple yes or no question though.. are there many heart pieces or maps that can't be found with good ol' trial and error? I was able to get them all in ocarina of Time.. Majora's Mask on the other hand..

I'll try to paraphrase the fish clues relevant to the triforce chart you're missing.

At first I was like.. "Don't swipe that man, be strong..".. but I did, and the funny part is that it was exactly the first thing I was going to do when I get home. I noted a few islands in my head with "How the *#$% do I get up there..", now that I have the treasure from the Wind Temple I was trying to remeber those islands..

I will say, while playing w/o a guide is highly satisfying, there are times where I want to kick something.. I remeber I actually solved that stupid slide puzzle in the bachelor pad thinking that would get a triforce map, and AFTER I realized it really was only money did I notice Link's eyes looking at something. Grr..

And Needle Point Island.. I still hate that place. I actually sniped all 4 birds circling the top of the tower thinking it would remove the flame from the chest (which, was NOT an easy task).. only to later utilize my telescope to see what else was around (this time.. the different looking pirate ship).. I'll open the flaming chest there one day..