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Least Favorite Zelda Game

What is your least favorite Zelda game?

  • The Legend of Zelda

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Zelda II

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • A Link to the Past

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Link's Awakening

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Ocarina of Time

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Majora's Mask

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Oracle of Seaons

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Oracle of Ages

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Four Swords

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Wind Waker

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Four Swords Adventures

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Minish Cap

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Twighlight Princess

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Phantom Hourglass

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Spirit Tracks

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Skyward Sword

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Undecided

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .

Kirino

Tatakae
Joined
Jun 19, 2010
Location
USA
1.It turned Zelda into a poorly animated cartoon. I mean just imagine if that game retooled to the OoT graphics style. It would look so great, but we didn't get that; did we? We got the stupidest looking graphics style a home console Zelda title has ever received. I am hopeful that the WWHD graphics will live up to their mission and look much better.

How is WW poorly animated, and what's wrong with a cartoony art style?

2.The sailing is so boring. It's been said a million times, but that sailing is just soooo long. I mean I'd actually set my ship on a course, go make a sanwhich, and come back before I reached my destination. That's simply inexcusable in a game this action-oriented. The sailing just isn't that well-used a mechanic.

WW isn't that action-oriented. Zelda has always focused more on puzzles and exploration/adventure. But other than that, word.
 

Clank

Hmm
Joined
Jan 26, 2013
Location
Veldin
I personally dislike SS because.

1. The graphics simply aren't to my liking.
2. The controls just simply do not work for me mainly because the motion plus is just not accurate enough to work effectively, and because shooting the bow is backwards.
3. I didn't really care for the excessive loading times with the sky/flying.

But that is my opinion, and I am not even done with the game yet.
 
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Now there are a couple Zelda games I really don't like, but the one I absolutely abhor is Phantom Hourglass.
I find the graphics and sound are less than appealing. While many might know me as someone who values gameplay and writing over such aesthetics, I've discovered that games can have visuals and soundtracks that actively disinterest me. Blame the DS's limitations, but I found PH's graphics to be horrible downgrades from WW's awesome cel-shaded look. PH often looked horrendously pixelated, which goes without saying for MOST DS games (just look at the Dragon Quest games), but I still found it ruined the experience for me. While the OST wasn't particularly memorable, the SFX are horrendously haunting and jarring. Link's childish cries with the DS's filter drive me insane, as does Ciela's "Heys" and "Listens". I didn't find them particularly annoying in OoT, which I speculate is again because of the DS's horrendous sound limitations for voice-recordings. But enough about aesthetics, let's get down to the more central problems I had.
The controls are terrible. The use of a stylus to direct slashes seems cool at first, but it eventually gets annoying to do. Mashing buttons may not be very engaging, but that's a whole lot better than the frankly stupid control scheme of having to constantly swipe the stylus. I often found the constant need to batter at my DS with my stylus distracted me from the experience, making me all too conscious of the fact that I was playing a game, rather than immersing me in the fictional world created.
The layout of the game is executed poorly. My biggest complaint about this was the one temple (I believe it was the Ocean King?) in the beginning island. In addition to it consisting of tedious and sometimes frustrating tasks which required the use of the annoying and at times unresponsive touch-screen controls, it was the most revisited. As I recall, it had to be visited every other time you beat a dungeon, which only amplified the tedium of trudging back through it. It also contains an element that, in my opinion, should really only be reserved for minigames; time limits. For a rather stupid and thoughtless reason, Link has to complete his individual slogs through the temple in specific amounts of time (usually ending up as a few or so minutes, making MM look like the patron saint of time limits). Even worse, there were constantly factors that would decrease/increase the amount of time left (most often, I found, it was the former). The other huge problem I had with the game's layout was the sea. For some reason, Nintendo took everything good about the Great Sea in WW and threw it right out. The battles are reduced from exciting and entertaining skirmishes to undesired curb-stomps that roam the seas while you futilely try to escape them. The treasure-hunting is reduced from somewhat of a core gameplay element to a guessing game sprawled out across the whole map (which doesn't work well with the constant ultimatums searching the waters for your head).
People may disagree with my opinion or my reasoning, but no one will ever change my mind about Phantom Hourglass being the biggest abomination in the otherwise awesome Zelda series.

EDIT: Well shoot, I just noticed I went on way longer than I probably need to. Here's the TL;DR version of my thoughts:
I think Phantom Hourglass is the worst Zelda game because it looks, sounds, and plays awful, and it was very poorly designed.
 
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Joined
Aug 25, 2012
Location
Indiana, USA
To keep a medium-sized story shorter, my least favorite is Four Swords (specifically the Anniversary Edition) since it's too lazy to be anything great, although it's still a fair bit of fun to play through. My least favorite "real" Zelda game is The Wind Waker, basically for any reasons JuicieJ has conjured up. It's not that I don't like it, it's just that I don't love it. The overworld wasn't much fun, dungeons weren't much fun...what's left? So much of the game is dull to me. That said, it's a popular choice for "favorite Zelda game," so I can respect that, and more power to you if you love it. But as far as Zelda goes, it didn't really "do it" for me. I voted Four Swords, but if you don't count that, know that The Wind Waker is next up on the list.
 
Joined
Nov 24, 2012
Location
Probably roleplaying
Phantom Hourglass. The sailing was long and tedious, which I really wouldn't mind at all if it wasn't for how little there was to do and how hard it was to change directions. And the cannon--my biggest gripe is somehow the cannon.The aim was horrible, and the curve was uncontrollable. It made it incredibly difficult to aim. The Phantom Sword was only used when it was nearly useless and made things easier than before, when everything was already too easy. Linebeck was detached, and Leaf and Neri were just... there. Ciela also came across as stupid. It just disappointed me. PH was the first Zelda game I was exposed to(although I didn't play it until last summer), but it's my least favorite.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
Most hated: AoL

Most disappointing: tWW

Most overrated: MM.

How is WW poorly animated, and what's wrong with a cartoony art style?

Putting it simply, Wind Waker tried to use cell shading to make a living cartoon while Okami used it to make a living painting. Okami did it right, tWW did it wrong. Not to mention, it had no real motivation for it.

EDIT: Holy crap, there's a Majora's Mask vote....never thought I'd see that....
 
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ihateghirahim

The Fierce Deity
Joined
Jan 16, 2013
Location
Inside the Moon
The MM vote was almost certainly made by someone who can't grasp the dark visuals, complex and deep storylines, and the simple concept of mixing involvement and emotion into a Zelda game.
 

Random Person

Just Some Random Person
Joined
Feb 6, 2010
Location
Wig-Or-Log
Not even close for me. Skyward Sword wins hands down. What follows is imo...

-Previously and currently hyped for wrong reasons
-Not enough attention to details regarding story nor gameplay
-Badly done prequel
-Lacking in innovation
-Lacking in exploration
-Lacking in difficulty
-Way too linear

And more but I'll keep the list short.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
The MM vote was almost certainly made by someone who can't grasp the dark visuals, complex and deep storylines, and the simple concept of mixing involvement and emotion into a Zelda game.

While I don't agree with them, they seem to have understood the game moreso than you. Zelda has no deep and complex storylines, and hasn't seen anything close to deep emotion until tWW and its successors came along, even then the deep emotion being extremely scarce.

Note: The timeline doesn't count as a storyline.

-Previously and currently hyped for wrong reasons

That's the fans fault. Nintendo did very little to hype this up.

-Not enough attention to details regarding story nor gameplay

Story yes, gameplay...eh.

-Badly done prequel

It's a Zelda title. What did you expect from it? But to be fair, this is moreso a flaw of my own opinion, not yours.

-Lacking in innovation

...Well maybe not as much innovation ad MM or tWW, but miles ahead of OoT in TP.

-Lacking in difficulty

This is valid, but to be fair, you're just gonna have to get used to this. LA was the last Zelda title with even remote difficulty. We're gonna have to accept that.

-Way too linear

Ehhh...yes and no. The world was linear, but you could do one part of the quest out of order--it's not much, but since MM, you had to do the main quest in a specific order.
 

JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
Joined
Jan 10, 2011
Location
On the midnight Spirit Train going anywhere
-Previously and currently hyped for wrong reasons
-Not enough attention to details regarding story nor gameplay
-Lacking in innovation
-Lacking in exploration
-Lacking in difficulty
-Way too linear

Sounds more like Twilight Princess to me. #intentionallycynical (TP had innovation, it just executed it poorly)

Edit: I really need to comment on the gameplay and innovation thing, seeing as you've said it quite often. I can't even begin to see where you're coming from with this. Name a Zelda game before that made sword positioning and precision swinging a requirement in combat. Name a Zelda game before that made Skulltulas actually require strategy both while hanging and on the ground. Name a Zelda game before that gave us an item that could fly around and pick up items to drop on our foes at a precise spot to ride their shell across quicksand. Name a Zelda game before that used anything remotely similar to the Timeshift Stones. Name a Zelda game before that made the entire dungeon a puzzle alongside of puzzling rooms (Sky Keep). Name a Zelda game before that limited inventory to invoke thought into what we were going to carry with us along our perilous adventure. Name a Zelda game before that [insert any of the other countless clever and innovative things Skyward Sword did here].

Not to get uppity, but it really irritates me that you say SS lacked innovation when it so clearly didn't. It was easily the most innovative Zelda since Majora's Mask.
 
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JuicieJ

SHOW ME YA MOVES!
Joined
Jan 10, 2011
Location
On the midnight Spirit Train going anywhere
And I see yet another thread falls prey to the SS fanboys who can't allow a bad word about the game to pass by unchallenged. Don't derail another thread guys. Leave people to their opinions and they'll leave you to theirs.

I've seen him say it a number of times. I had to question it at some point, so I figured why not now?

Also, I'm not a fanboy, and I criticize the game quite often. So hush.
 

snakeoiltanker

Wake Up!
Joined
Nov 13, 2012
Location
Ohio
i hated i could only choose one. i wanted to choose ST, and PH, collectively, the whole touchscheen movement and combat, was the worst thing ever implemented into a zelda game. being able to mark positions you could return too when you were ready was amazeing. but all in all, they sucked. they could have been great games but the fact they choose to use the gimmicks of the DS was what hindered the game and unworthy Zelda title!
 

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