Either the Legend of Zelda never was a hardcore franchise, or I've played it too many years, and now I don't feel like it is. Outside the original 2D games, that is; those are well-known for being more demanding on the player.
But now that I think about it, the newer titles are beginning to feel much different than the classic 3D Zeldas, from the Nintendo 64 that is. They
do seem to be limiting the choices of the players. Many quests in title beyond Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask were things I didn't want to play through. The Triforce Hunt in Wind Waker serves as a paradigm for certain parts that I essentially dread, because it's too drawn-out.
Zelda is becoming linear. For better or worse, it's altering how I experience the game; Twilight Princess played very differently from Majora's Mask when I jumped into it years later. There were fewer options that I as the player could perform on my own, although I consider TP the larger game. In Majora's Mask you could go about as you pleased and finish tasks on your own time. Even make more time for yourself if the clock was running down. Thus the systems between these two greatly differ from each other. Yet I felt my volition was prohibited far more in Twilight Princess.
Does this linearity mean that the Legend of Zelda is deteriorating? Not at all. I still thoroughly enjoy it. Even if it's not so "hardcore" now (again I doubt it ever was that, subjectively), it continues to amaze me. I continue to replay the games when I can/feel like it a certain amount of times each year. The casual feel of the series doesn't bother me but instead opens itself to more engrossing features.
Casual gamers don't even want to play Zelda, so why bother trying? Casual gamers simply don't like Zelda games, they're perfectly happy playing Mario and Wii party games.
That's not entirely true. I consider myself a casual gamer, and I love playing Zelda, regardless of its level of difficulty, or lack thereof. To me, Zelda is actually casual; it isn't too hard or too easy. It's simply straightforward no matter what the situation's like.
And actually Mario is harder than Zelda. Some levels in the open-world Mario titles were impassable for me. But I suppose they were out of my range, and others are indeed capable of excelling at them.
I don't have a favorable opinion on Wii's self-named titles, except that they are also straightforward, only a little too lax for my liking.
First off, what the hey are you talking about with SS being the ultimate hand-holder? That couldn't be further from the truth. The only times SS held our hands was if we asked for it to. If you think otherwise, you're just plain wrong. I'm sure many people will point to the Shiekah Stone, but, uh, that was an optional source of help. Not forced at all. Same with all the other help in the game.
Skyward Sword was laden with an overabundance of instruction and hand-holding techniques, though. From the very beginning of the game certain characters stopped us from advancing and playing freely, just like Instructor (a very apt name, don't you think) Horwell did when we had to run up that stack of boxes. You can argue that it was necessary since it's a new feature altogether, but I'd say that's exactly my point. We were basically forced to go through the direction of running up those boxes, even after beating the game. The developers made sure there was no way around it, because...
“Japanese players do not like being thrown into an arena in which they are given very little instruction,”
-Hideo Kojima, creator of the popular "Metal Gear Solid"
Nintendo introduced us to a brand new experience and they wanted their fans to have no dilemmas taking it in. However their methods of providing a didactic environment was poorly employed. Everything, from
having to watch entire cutscenes and read whole texts to completing a back-and-forth task in order to move on, was compulsory.
Forced. In this sense we had our hands held through major segments of the game. Even Fi stopped us to fill us in at certain parts, but mark,
where we could have easily deduced what to do.
Another example: At one point we had to involuntarily learn the Loftwing's aerial spin attack by "Instructor" Owlan. But couldn't Zelda have taught us the same thing when we learned how to fly, instead of taking it out on those excessive targets? Link should have been instructed it from the beginning. That way we could practice it with Zelda, and on enemies who in that instance could inhabit the Sky rather than leaving it bare. We'd be ready to face the Bicolyte off in no time then.
In short Nintendo practically catered to their Japanese fans, but also included everyone outside their home into the mix. Not everyone appreciates the "helping hand"; they'd rather learn things on their own. But since we were given all this instruction, that made it much easier to memorize and all the more miserable in second or more playthroughs, as we are compelled to sit through all that again.
This doesn't mean Skyward Sword is atrocious, but Nintendo fell short with providing the most stimulating gameplay that it potentially could have been (excluding the overdose of guidance, that is).
