I think I started losing interest with Wind Waker.
It wasn't the graphics that threw me off. It was boredom. I never felt compelled to finish the story. The characters seemed lack-luster to me. Essentially, I felt like I was just trying to beat a game instead of enjoy it.
Then came, Twilight Princess. I was like,"Alright, this will be awesome." Then after a few hours, the boredom set in again. This time, instead of sailing for half the damn game, I was on horseback. The characters again seemed dull to me. I enjoyed Link's backstory more than Wind Waker but that was probably me just being biased since it was an adult version of Link. Needless to say, I think I finished or got near finished obtaining the third piece of whatever you were collecting then quit. I watched the ending and all cutscenes leading to the ending from where I quit playing via youtube and was not impressed. I actually saved myself time by doing it that way.
Last, here comes Skyward Sword. I was very tempted to purchase a Wii again just for Skyward Sword. Then I watched a roommate play it for about an hour. It looked like the most boring Zelda game I had ever seen. I watched him collecting some spirit crap or something. While he moved very quickly, it seemed to drag on, even to the point where he was grunting about how long it takes to get through those sequences. I noticed no real overworld again or something. Then he told me he dumped 50 hours into it. Jesus Christ, that is too !@#$% long.
No thanks.
Sad to say, unless the Wii-U Zelda truly impresses, I am afraid the only "new" Zelda game I will enjoy s the 3DS remake of OoT whenever I get around to it.
Ocarina of Time was ironically the first 3d Zelda game but the only one I really enjoyed. Majora's Mask wasn't bad by any means, I just enjoyed OoT so much more. It felt so open that I could do whatever I wanted, sequence break somewhat, and just explore.
Majora's Mask had the damn 1 hour before you had to reset time, where as I remember being a kid and just trying to find all sorts of little things in OoT for as long as I wanted. I didn't feel compelled to have to continue on with the damn game. When I got around to continuing the story, it felt great and never boring.
WW just seemed to have no real draw for me. I tried exploring to find different things but it was boring since I saw was water.
TP made me feel like I HAD to continue questing as the overworld felt too large for it's own good or something. Hard to explain but trust me, it wasn't a good kind of compelling.
SS looks to me from what I have watched others play to be even worse.
In the end, I think a reason I don't enjoy the 3d Zelda games since MM is because they force themselves to be too big. Ocarina of Time seemed like it took long to beat but it really didn't. Now, I can easily fire up the game and blow through it pretty quickly, in one sitting in-fact. In this short time frame, the game is still just as full of story as it was the first time I beat it.
Majora's Mask was similar but I always felt like I was being forced by the 1 hour limit.
Other games have had similar effects to me the more I reflect back:
Resident Evil 2 always seemed like it was a great, long game. Now I breeze through it. Think my fastest time was around 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Always enjoy every play-through of it. Every Resident Evil game before and after I have played, I enjoyed because they all share a similar story-telling pace and don't feel like they forced themselves to become longer games.
Metal Gear Solid was a long game when I first beat it as a teenager. The story was just so awesome and epic. I think my first play-through took me like 5 or 6 hours because of restarts and whatnot. Every other Metal Gear Solid game stuck with the long,movie-esc play-through which is probably why I enjoyed it. Even though the games are very linear, it actually is ENJOYABLE to go from a to b.
Well, if you read to this point, I just hope you understand. I hope Nintendo does some changes to the Zelda franchise or considers making a 2d game again at some point. The only way I think they could keep the super long drawn out play of the recent games would be to add jrpg features such as levels and stats.(probably heresy to some of you). As an example, Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 are pretty long games. There were times even in those awesome story line that the game seemed to drag on. It didn't really bother me as I took this as an opportunity to grind my levels out some...the Zelda franchise has not offered that since Adventure of Link(which is a great game, imo).
The only reason to kill monsters while moving from location a to b to continue the plot in a Zelda game is...well...currency, if that. It's just that, the last time this wasn't a problem was in OoT and MM for the 3d games.
Well, this went alot longer than I thought. I guess I just let my thoughts guide my fingers. Anyway, that is how I feel about the Zelda franchise in regards to the 3d games(haven't really played PH or ST but I won't since the controls are retarded gimmick !@#$%). The 2d games still feel great as they seem long but that is do to very well done game design and story development.
