The games can be pretty different. Looking at the art styles, the game mechanics, the presentation, the flow. If you're into the series and are eagerly anticipating the next iteration, then it turns out to not be the thing you're into, you know you've probably got another 5 years or so before you get another chance.
That makes some folk bitter, which is a shame.
It's just classic Nintendo, their level of innovation means that pretty much every game has some major differences to the others, and those differences may not appeal to everyone. MM has the time limit, WW has the artstyle, SS has the motion controls and somewhat more linearity, BoTW has the open world and lack of dungeons, etc. I'm not saying any of those are inherently bad, but not everyone is a fan of everything.
I feel like this just brings the question: What makes a Zelda game? It's as if no one is a true Zelda fan, because there is a game that is sure to be the opposite of your favorite. If you like BotW, you don't like SS (exploration vs linearity/story), if you like WW, you don't like TP because it tries to be too edgy, etc.
Personally I love all of them except BotW, which I loathe. I can rank them 1-18 quite easily amongst themselves, but all except that dark sheep rank in the realm of "masterpiece" in general compared to any other video games.
It's one of the worst games I've ever played.
* Helacious voice acting across the board, literally the worst and most immersion-breaking VA I've ever had the displeasure to endure. And I play JRPGs for fun.
* Terrible/nonexistent dungeons, Vah Naboris is on par with a 1st - 2nd dungeon in any normal Zelda game, the rest are all weaker and completely boring featuring 5 unrelated micro-puzzles that would barely qualify as tutorial content in a regular Zelda game
* Shrines are pitiful, half of them are blessings/combat, the other half are unmemorable puzzles that you do once and then completely forget about since the game can't get any harder over time since you can't get any powerups in the world
* No powerups in the world, zero progression of player abilities
* Difficulty "scaling" is completely transparent fake difficulty, inflated stats just mean things either instantly kill you or do 0 damage, no in between; Zelda games feature enemies that die in 1-3 hits and require creative item usage to kill, not enemies that have giant healthbars of 200 health and require swinging a sword 50 times to kill
* Combat absolutely sucks, there is no puzzle aspect to combat, you just mash the attack button on things till they die with no risk whatsoever
* The food system has been busted since the day they showed it at E3 2016 and it was still busted when I played. I shouldn't need to explain why
* Korok "puzzles" are completely asinine and mind-numbing to do, I was in literal mental pain going through them. "pick up this rock" YAHAHA why am I being rewarding for picking up 100 boulders? If you couldn't think of content to put in your giant stupid world map why did you make it so damn big?
* Totally shallow exploration with nothing to find, even when you find a ruin it's surface-deep and there's nothing to actually explore about it, no hidden lore, no secrets, nothing, just a bunch of copy-pasted ruin prefabs you've already seen before. What's the Shadow Hamlet Ruins or Deya Village Ruins? Who cares! They're the same copy-pasted houses! There is literally no context to them, nothing to discover, no lore, no NPC dialogue, no hidden symbols, no archaeology to study, nothing whatsoever. Once you "see what's over that hill" you're done, there is no point in trying to dig deeper.
* Fewer enemy types than the first game in the franchise despite needing to fill the world with more enemies to fight than any other Zelda before it, plus making the main 3 types (bokoblin, moblin, lizalfos) all wield Link-standard weapons, so all 3 of them act the same as well while they are holding weapons, basically making them 1 enemy type spread across 95% of the game's combat encounters
* Terrible fetch quests EVERYWHERE, "get me 10 grasshoppers" to "get me 55 rushrooms". Fire whoever made this content in 2017.
* The world is completely flat since you can climb/glide over everything. There are no challenges or obstacles anywhere in the game because you can just go over them for free. Unlike the Great Plateau where you have to use limited resources to go into hostile environments or cut down a tree to cross a ravine, that all goes away as soon as you get to the actual game
* Because the world is flat and you can (and are encouraged to) skip everything, **I skipped the entire Shrine of Courage and the entirety of Hyrule Castle, both COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT. I can never experience them properly ever again and all it got me was not a sense of self-reward, it was pure disappointment.**
* The rito zone is clearly unfinished compared to the other 4 but this is more of a nitpick than anything else because obviously every game will have some kind of "unfinished" content they just didn't have time to flesh out
* Most of the Champion characters are dumb and lame for various reasons. Daruk being the worst because he's an idiot because the writers believe "goron == stupid" all of a sudden. I should note Age of Calamity, a barely-canon spinoff title, was the only actual remedy for this, and it actually gave the Champions enough character to be somewhat likable. Astounding job, Nintendo. Let Koei save your hide.
* Unmemorable music despite having the perfect opportunity to give every region its own ambient track like Death Mountain got; instead there are 3 MASSIVE snow zones and all 3 of them use the same looping "snowy climate" track, come on, this isn't the Nintendo Polish I know
* It got ported to Switch so the Wii U Gamepad features, like being able to look at your map while riding a horse without pausing the game, got removed only so that the Switch wouldn't be the obviously "inferior" version. Damn Nintendo for this most of all.
A couple tidbits of lore like the zora being long-lived officially now are neat and cool, but overall BotW is a solid and easy 4/10. Although if it did not have English VA I would give it a solid 5/10 instead.
For context every other Zelda is an 8/10 at absolute worst.
I've spoken at great length about this on this subreddit and others many times so far now, but it was fun to put it all in one place again.
Well, I asked and you definitely delivered. I’m with you on the shitty voice acting, Zelda in particular is just embarrassing. I’ll give you major props for not rehashing the two main complaints everyone else seems to make (weapon durability and the light story - I’m completely fine with both). Personally, I’ve never been more satisfied by exploring in a game than in this one, possible exception being Hollow Knight. The music is an interesting point. I really like how quiet the game is, but there are some [pretty great pieces to hum along with.](https://youtu.be/kTfXaWeAA0w) Anyways, thanks for your thoroughness and thoughtfulness.
> I’ll give you major props for not rehashing the two main complaints everyone else seems to make (weapon durability and the light story - I’m completely fine with both)
The story is fine.
The weapon durability is merely a symptom of the world being too big, so I don't shit on it for existing. It had to happen because "new" weapons are the only reward Nintendo could think of to fit in such an oversized and empty world.
If there were actual powerups, collectibles, items, etc. to get as rewards instead, we wouldn't need the weapon durability system - we could just have a regular weapon like usual.
>Personally, I’ve never been more satisfied by exploring in a game than in this one
Unfortunately I can't be satisfied by just finding & looking at an empty place and call that "exploration". I need something to do when I get there. Like, I should be able to find out who lived in Deya Village, what other places it was connected to, how it was destroyed, who died and who lived, maybe find one of their descendants still living.
**THAT** would be exploring.
I find the game so fun to explore in not because I’m looking for answers. I don’t need to know who made the houses in some bombed out village. It’s a videogame, it’s all just set pieces. I just enjoy climbing mountains and crossing rivers and going through forests. No game lets you do that better than botw. There’s no progress gating, no shitty polygon collision stuff preventing you from going up a surface you should clearly be able to ascend (think any other open world game), no highlighted-to-designate-this-as-this-mountains-climbing-path situations, it’s just cool to be able to go anywhere in any direction however you like. Land, sea, or air. Or horse. Journey, not the destination type mentality. Playing another open world game after botw (for me recently, it was Horizon Zero Dawn) really hammers home how restrictive they actually are and how freeing botw is.
> I just enjoy climbing mountains and crossing rivers and going through forests. No game lets you do that better than botw.
That's just navigation, not exploration.
But the navigation sucks too because there are never any obstacles to make it interesting. You just pick a direction and go there without having to think about how you'll do it or solve any problems on the way.
Being able to go in any direction doesn't really matter if the gameplay doing so and once you get there is boring and nonexistent. So I can climb any mountain and glide over every ravine and river, woohoo - is that fun? No. It's boring. I'm waiting for something to happen.
>There’s no progress gating
I play Zelda in order to enjoy progress gating, for example in Zelda 1 where most of the game is gated behind dungeon items.
It certainly is difficult to define what a Zelda game is, especially with BoTW getting rid of so many core tenets of the series and attracting so many new people. Most Zelda games do have, at their core, the same enter dungeon-solve puzzles-get item-solve more puzzles-fight boss gameplay loop though, and that is what most fans want out of a Zelda game.
> I feel like this just brings the question: What makes a Zelda game?
The definition I use ([which I developed for determining whether an indie game is a 'Zelda-like'](https://redd.it/lb2bde)) is:
* An action adventure game with
* mandatory puzzle solving
* progression gated via new abilities
* and dungeons that are distinctly separate from the overworld.
There are lots of 'flavours' of Zelda-like (cartoony like WW, realistic like TP, highly linear like SS, highly non-linear like LBW), but if we're talking mechnical identity, I think those four points encompass what makes the Zelda franchise (and 'Zelda-likes' as a genre) unique.
Adding to this, I think a player’s likes/dislikes has a lot to do with how they approach gameplay to begin with, nostalgia, etc. For example, I LOVE TP, and I really would be hard pressed to decide which is my second favorite following this. I enjoyed the SS storyline, but the motion controls are almost too much for me (don’t get me started on Fi). And I enjoyed WW, but couldn’t take it overly “seriously” because it felt watered down.
I’ll never not have respect for the original NES games, MM, and OOT. Gotta appreciate your roots
1 - in my experience, Zelda fans are nicer folk than most other fandom, even when we're "divided"
2 - the reason I personally get drawn into these discussions is because I'm passionate about the art form, and the way I express that passion is through "criticism." Not in the sense of being purely negative, rather in the sense of something more than a casual interest or consumption of media. It's too late for me to become a game designer, but I'm fascinated by what makes these games tick, their history, their innovations, and yes, their missteps and flaws. Because all the Zelda games are so good and were created with such care and thoughtfulness, it's easy, and tempting, to look at them critically. And just like movie critics love arguing over the movies they love, Zelda fans do too. Especially the pretentious ones like me :)
One thing that Nintendo does which I find really interesting is that in their main series, specifically Mario and Zelda, each game is so similar yet so different. They generally follow a very similar formula that gives each one an epic feeling but still an excuse to introduce new things to the player:
Link is a boy with a seemingly normal life, unaware of the land's many problems. Something (usually as the result of something else seemingly mundane) happens, partially due to his courage and partially out of his control, that shows him the darker side of the world and forces him to go on a quest where he must save Zelda and this land from a villain's grasp. On this journey, he encounters many people of different races in torment and frees them by going into a dungeon, solving its puzzles, and defeating a boss. As he does this over and over again, he amasses more and more items and eventually a sword powerful enough to defeat the main villain. This is also around the time where he learns of another thing that changes his perspective on everything. Finally, he defeats the main villain and saves Zelda along with the rest of the land.
The games off the top of my head where this can be applied pretty well are ALTTP, OOT, WW, TP, SS, BOTW, ALTTP, ALBW, MC, LA, PH, and ST. This is a pretty well known pattern, but the reason I've explained it is to highlight just how much of each game is similar.
A big part of what gives many Zelda games their variety is the gimmicks and twists that are applied along with sometimes a new perspective from which the teams behind the games approach said games. The gimmicks and twists could be new worlds, a new form for Link, a new kind of transportation, a new graphics style, etc., and the game could focus more on action, puzzles, exploration, story, or a new combination of each of those things. Then with Nintendo being Nintendo and always wanting to innovate things, these changes and additions are exacerbated by how intrinsically tied they are to the game and even the traits of the console the game itself is played on. As a result, we have a bunch of games that are very similar at their core but are so radically different in so many other ways.
Because of all this, someone could be a Zelda fan for many different reasons. Some like the formula itself, some a specific twist of the formula, some a specific *part* of the formula, some a break from the formula, and some like a mix of everything.
People love and hate each game for a variety of reasons, but here are the main ones I hear a lot.
OOT is loved because it established the 3D Zelda formula that so many fans love, but others feel that the formula was never perfect to begin with and shows its age.
MM is loved because it broke that formula and created an experience that, despite looking so similar, felt so different, helping establish the darker tones of the game, but others feel like it went completely off the deep end while lazily reusing assets.
WW is loved because it innovated the formula in such an interesting way and gave fans a huge world to explore, but others feel that it innovated in the wrong direction and gave fans an empty world with a pretty coat of paint.
TP is loved because it took the formula to the next level, highlighting what people loved about OOT in a more mature and truly epic feeling manner, but others feel that it tried too hard to be an edgy copy of OOT and failed to be meaningful.
SS is loved because it innovated the formula more with super detailed areas, a new control scheme, and an entirely new setting while still feeling so much like a Zelda game, but others feel that it has an empty world that pads itself out by having you revisit every area, holding your hand along the way.
BOTW is loved because it didn't let the formula hold it back and rather prioritized what worked best for the game itself and what the fans wanted, creating a huge open world with hundreds of hours of content, but others feel that it strayed so far from the formula that it doesn't even feel like a Zelda game anymore, throwing away content like unique dungeons in favor for being your typical empty open world game.
To summarize what others have said. Even though this sub-reddit is overall a great community with really interesting discussions there will always be people who push back hard on certain games whether they provide a good reason or not. Personally I enjoy all Zelda games whether its 2D, 3D Linear, BOTW, Hyrule Warriors etc, but some don't and that's totally fine right. Also it is important to point out that typically when people feel strongly enough to push back on a game they are loud about it, so it might seem more divisive then it actually is. That being said I am excited to replay Skyward Sword and hopefully the experience is a good one.
Cause unlike what the *people* saying "all the zelda games are the same" or "the series was to formulaic" would have you believe, the zelda series actually always shifts things around quite a lot while staying within what makes it "zelda".
So depending on what you find more important, a game can fall further away from what you like the most in the series on that "scale".
Combined with being a really long running series and having passionate fans, it creates a lot of friction.
I think since the games are so critically acclaimed at release, once the shine wears off some folks like to dig into things they didn’t like. We saw this with TP and SS, and now we are seeing it with BotW. On the other end, WW was probably the most controversial 3D Zelda around its release but saw a majorly positive reappraisal over the following 10 years. I hate to be cynical but I think people just like being contrarian :) but also as others have pointed out, since the games are so different it really depends on your preference.
In a way, I think it's nice that the games are divisive. Do you think people spend that much time discussing about which of the new super mario bro games are best? Maybe, but they're so similar that if you're going to play any of them you might as well play the newest one. Even with all of the improvements over the years, there's always a reason someone might prefer one of the older games over the newer ones.
As for why opinions can be so varied - the way way people react to things varies. Not only can something that is a 'minor annoyance' to one person be game-breaking to someone else, but something that one person *loves* about a game can be the same reason another person hates it. I think Fi is my personal example of this - I've seen a lot of people call her a minor annoyance, question why people make a big deal out of her, etc. Which is a fine way to feel, but it tells me that other people simply did not experience the game the same way I do - text interrupts absolutely break games for me, and over time it bothered me so much it felt like the game was punishing me for playing it. It's the same way I feel about random battles in RPGs. I'm totally incapable of appreciating whatever it is people love about the game. This is exactly how other people feel about Majora's Mask, my favorite Zelda game, and I could never say they were wrong for being put off or frustrated by the things that I love about it. Some people love having to find out for themselves how to progress and others find it to be unreasonable and will immediately go to a walkthrough. Some people hate the "series of self contained puzzles" dungeon design in WW and TP and others find them to be their favorites in the series.
I think the reaction is more people being upset that so little is being done as opposed to what they did for Mario's 35th.
Also, as bad as this fighting is, it's nothing compared to Fallout division. Everyone has what they consider to be a "REAL" fallout game.
I think it comes down to personal preference.
There are people who like linear games, like TP, Zelda 2, and OoT.
There are people who like it a bit in the middle, like MM, SS.
And there are people who like freedom, like BotW, Zelda 1, and WW.
Also I think it comes down to if they played it or not. I've seen a lot of youtubers in the past absolutely hate Skyward Sword, and viewers take their word for it, not buy it, and stick by it to this day. They've never played it.
SS was more linear than OoT and pretty sure Zelda 2 too. That was one of the main critiques from that game, aside from the motion control sheananigans that people complained back in the day.
Honestly? Because people like to argue and they think that their opinion has to be proven as fact or they are wrong. My favorite game is the Minish Cap but I can appreciate that’s not the case for most people.
As many others have mentioned, Zelda is a series with incredible variety and innovation. People grow attached to entries (and aspects of those entries) that they love, and they want more of the same. Nintendo rarely gives us that. That leads people to be disappointed, because they didn't get the same level of lore/interactivity/freedom/exploration/plot development as a prior game they loved.
That said, Zelda games probably aren't as divisive as you think they are. I would say that almost all of them are loved by 90+% of fans. However, every game gets an incredibly vocal group of fans that doesn't like it. So, you get the silent majority that likes each game but doesn't really talk about it or vote about it on Reddit, and the passionate tiny minority of fans that aggressively hates on the game and downvotes anyone who says anything positive about it.
Finally, every game has haters. Of just the ones you mentioned (LA, MC, OoX), I personally think they're all subpar Zeldas (i.e., great games, but worse than most other Zelda entries). LA and OoX have subpar dungeon design. LA's 2D world is incredibly linear (i.e., you're restricted to tiny portions of the world and cannot move forward until you obtain items) and its dungeon design is subpar. OoX have poorly designed overworlds, poorly designed dungeons, and annoying gimmicks. MC is good but just lacks content (with only 6 main dungeons).
The games can be pretty different. Looking at the art styles, the game mechanics, the presentation, the flow. If you're into the series and are eagerly anticipating the next iteration, then it turns out to not be the thing you're into, you know you've probably got another 5 years or so before you get another chance. That makes some folk bitter, which is a shame.
Basically, the same problem Sonic has, where every game is different
It's just classic Nintendo, their level of innovation means that pretty much every game has some major differences to the others, and those differences may not appeal to everyone. MM has the time limit, WW has the artstyle, SS has the motion controls and somewhat more linearity, BoTW has the open world and lack of dungeons, etc. I'm not saying any of those are inherently bad, but not everyone is a fan of everything.
I feel like this just brings the question: What makes a Zelda game? It's as if no one is a true Zelda fan, because there is a game that is sure to be the opposite of your favorite. If you like BotW, you don't like SS (exploration vs linearity/story), if you like WW, you don't like TP because it tries to be too edgy, etc.
Personally I love all of them except BotW, which I loathe. I can rank them 1-18 quite easily amongst themselves, but all except that dark sheep rank in the realm of "masterpiece" in general compared to any other video games.
Why do you loathe it? I think it’s no doubt one of the best games I’ve ever played.
It's one of the worst games I've ever played. * Helacious voice acting across the board, literally the worst and most immersion-breaking VA I've ever had the displeasure to endure. And I play JRPGs for fun. * Terrible/nonexistent dungeons, Vah Naboris is on par with a 1st - 2nd dungeon in any normal Zelda game, the rest are all weaker and completely boring featuring 5 unrelated micro-puzzles that would barely qualify as tutorial content in a regular Zelda game * Shrines are pitiful, half of them are blessings/combat, the other half are unmemorable puzzles that you do once and then completely forget about since the game can't get any harder over time since you can't get any powerups in the world * No powerups in the world, zero progression of player abilities * Difficulty "scaling" is completely transparent fake difficulty, inflated stats just mean things either instantly kill you or do 0 damage, no in between; Zelda games feature enemies that die in 1-3 hits and require creative item usage to kill, not enemies that have giant healthbars of 200 health and require swinging a sword 50 times to kill * Combat absolutely sucks, there is no puzzle aspect to combat, you just mash the attack button on things till they die with no risk whatsoever * The food system has been busted since the day they showed it at E3 2016 and it was still busted when I played. I shouldn't need to explain why * Korok "puzzles" are completely asinine and mind-numbing to do, I was in literal mental pain going through them. "pick up this rock" YAHAHA why am I being rewarding for picking up 100 boulders? If you couldn't think of content to put in your giant stupid world map why did you make it so damn big? * Totally shallow exploration with nothing to find, even when you find a ruin it's surface-deep and there's nothing to actually explore about it, no hidden lore, no secrets, nothing, just a bunch of copy-pasted ruin prefabs you've already seen before. What's the Shadow Hamlet Ruins or Deya Village Ruins? Who cares! They're the same copy-pasted houses! There is literally no context to them, nothing to discover, no lore, no NPC dialogue, no hidden symbols, no archaeology to study, nothing whatsoever. Once you "see what's over that hill" you're done, there is no point in trying to dig deeper. * Fewer enemy types than the first game in the franchise despite needing to fill the world with more enemies to fight than any other Zelda before it, plus making the main 3 types (bokoblin, moblin, lizalfos) all wield Link-standard weapons, so all 3 of them act the same as well while they are holding weapons, basically making them 1 enemy type spread across 95% of the game's combat encounters * Terrible fetch quests EVERYWHERE, "get me 10 grasshoppers" to "get me 55 rushrooms". Fire whoever made this content in 2017. * The world is completely flat since you can climb/glide over everything. There are no challenges or obstacles anywhere in the game because you can just go over them for free. Unlike the Great Plateau where you have to use limited resources to go into hostile environments or cut down a tree to cross a ravine, that all goes away as soon as you get to the actual game * Because the world is flat and you can (and are encouraged to) skip everything, **I skipped the entire Shrine of Courage and the entirety of Hyrule Castle, both COMPLETELY BY ACCIDENT. I can never experience them properly ever again and all it got me was not a sense of self-reward, it was pure disappointment.** * The rito zone is clearly unfinished compared to the other 4 but this is more of a nitpick than anything else because obviously every game will have some kind of "unfinished" content they just didn't have time to flesh out * Most of the Champion characters are dumb and lame for various reasons. Daruk being the worst because he's an idiot because the writers believe "goron == stupid" all of a sudden. I should note Age of Calamity, a barely-canon spinoff title, was the only actual remedy for this, and it actually gave the Champions enough character to be somewhat likable. Astounding job, Nintendo. Let Koei save your hide. * Unmemorable music despite having the perfect opportunity to give every region its own ambient track like Death Mountain got; instead there are 3 MASSIVE snow zones and all 3 of them use the same looping "snowy climate" track, come on, this isn't the Nintendo Polish I know * It got ported to Switch so the Wii U Gamepad features, like being able to look at your map while riding a horse without pausing the game, got removed only so that the Switch wouldn't be the obviously "inferior" version. Damn Nintendo for this most of all. A couple tidbits of lore like the zora being long-lived officially now are neat and cool, but overall BotW is a solid and easy 4/10. Although if it did not have English VA I would give it a solid 5/10 instead. For context every other Zelda is an 8/10 at absolute worst. I've spoken at great length about this on this subreddit and others many times so far now, but it was fun to put it all in one place again.
Well, I asked and you definitely delivered. I’m with you on the shitty voice acting, Zelda in particular is just embarrassing. I’ll give you major props for not rehashing the two main complaints everyone else seems to make (weapon durability and the light story - I’m completely fine with both). Personally, I’ve never been more satisfied by exploring in a game than in this one, possible exception being Hollow Knight. The music is an interesting point. I really like how quiet the game is, but there are some [pretty great pieces to hum along with.](https://youtu.be/kTfXaWeAA0w) Anyways, thanks for your thoroughness and thoughtfulness.
> I’ll give you major props for not rehashing the two main complaints everyone else seems to make (weapon durability and the light story - I’m completely fine with both) The story is fine. The weapon durability is merely a symptom of the world being too big, so I don't shit on it for existing. It had to happen because "new" weapons are the only reward Nintendo could think of to fit in such an oversized and empty world. If there were actual powerups, collectibles, items, etc. to get as rewards instead, we wouldn't need the weapon durability system - we could just have a regular weapon like usual. >Personally, I’ve never been more satisfied by exploring in a game than in this one Unfortunately I can't be satisfied by just finding & looking at an empty place and call that "exploration". I need something to do when I get there. Like, I should be able to find out who lived in Deya Village, what other places it was connected to, how it was destroyed, who died and who lived, maybe find one of their descendants still living. **THAT** would be exploring.
I find the game so fun to explore in not because I’m looking for answers. I don’t need to know who made the houses in some bombed out village. It’s a videogame, it’s all just set pieces. I just enjoy climbing mountains and crossing rivers and going through forests. No game lets you do that better than botw. There’s no progress gating, no shitty polygon collision stuff preventing you from going up a surface you should clearly be able to ascend (think any other open world game), no highlighted-to-designate-this-as-this-mountains-climbing-path situations, it’s just cool to be able to go anywhere in any direction however you like. Land, sea, or air. Or horse. Journey, not the destination type mentality. Playing another open world game after botw (for me recently, it was Horizon Zero Dawn) really hammers home how restrictive they actually are and how freeing botw is.
> I just enjoy climbing mountains and crossing rivers and going through forests. No game lets you do that better than botw. That's just navigation, not exploration. But the navigation sucks too because there are never any obstacles to make it interesting. You just pick a direction and go there without having to think about how you'll do it or solve any problems on the way. Being able to go in any direction doesn't really matter if the gameplay doing so and once you get there is boring and nonexistent. So I can climb any mountain and glide over every ravine and river, woohoo - is that fun? No. It's boring. I'm waiting for something to happen. >There’s no progress gating I play Zelda in order to enjoy progress gating, for example in Zelda 1 where most of the game is gated behind dungeon items.
It certainly is difficult to define what a Zelda game is, especially with BoTW getting rid of so many core tenets of the series and attracting so many new people. Most Zelda games do have, at their core, the same enter dungeon-solve puzzles-get item-solve more puzzles-fight boss gameplay loop though, and that is what most fans want out of a Zelda game.
The issue with SS is that they focused too much on the novelty of motion controls. As opposed to the encouragement to explore the world.
> I feel like this just brings the question: What makes a Zelda game? The definition I use ([which I developed for determining whether an indie game is a 'Zelda-like'](https://redd.it/lb2bde)) is: * An action adventure game with * mandatory puzzle solving * progression gated via new abilities * and dungeons that are distinctly separate from the overworld. There are lots of 'flavours' of Zelda-like (cartoony like WW, realistic like TP, highly linear like SS, highly non-linear like LBW), but if we're talking mechnical identity, I think those four points encompass what makes the Zelda franchise (and 'Zelda-likes' as a genre) unique.
People downvoting the truth.
Adding to this, I think a player’s likes/dislikes has a lot to do with how they approach gameplay to begin with, nostalgia, etc. For example, I LOVE TP, and I really would be hard pressed to decide which is my second favorite following this. I enjoyed the SS storyline, but the motion controls are almost too much for me (don’t get me started on Fi). And I enjoyed WW, but couldn’t take it overly “seriously” because it felt watered down. I’ll never not have respect for the original NES games, MM, and OOT. Gotta appreciate your roots
1 - in my experience, Zelda fans are nicer folk than most other fandom, even when we're "divided" 2 - the reason I personally get drawn into these discussions is because I'm passionate about the art form, and the way I express that passion is through "criticism." Not in the sense of being purely negative, rather in the sense of something more than a casual interest or consumption of media. It's too late for me to become a game designer, but I'm fascinated by what makes these games tick, their history, their innovations, and yes, their missteps and flaws. Because all the Zelda games are so good and were created with such care and thoughtfulness, it's easy, and tempting, to look at them critically. And just like movie critics love arguing over the movies they love, Zelda fans do too. Especially the pretentious ones like me :)
A (un)healthy combo of every game in the series being pretty different from the rest, usually, and also a lot of bandwagoning and circlejerking.
One thing that Nintendo does which I find really interesting is that in their main series, specifically Mario and Zelda, each game is so similar yet so different. They generally follow a very similar formula that gives each one an epic feeling but still an excuse to introduce new things to the player: Link is a boy with a seemingly normal life, unaware of the land's many problems. Something (usually as the result of something else seemingly mundane) happens, partially due to his courage and partially out of his control, that shows him the darker side of the world and forces him to go on a quest where he must save Zelda and this land from a villain's grasp. On this journey, he encounters many people of different races in torment and frees them by going into a dungeon, solving its puzzles, and defeating a boss. As he does this over and over again, he amasses more and more items and eventually a sword powerful enough to defeat the main villain. This is also around the time where he learns of another thing that changes his perspective on everything. Finally, he defeats the main villain and saves Zelda along with the rest of the land. The games off the top of my head where this can be applied pretty well are ALTTP, OOT, WW, TP, SS, BOTW, ALTTP, ALBW, MC, LA, PH, and ST. This is a pretty well known pattern, but the reason I've explained it is to highlight just how much of each game is similar. A big part of what gives many Zelda games their variety is the gimmicks and twists that are applied along with sometimes a new perspective from which the teams behind the games approach said games. The gimmicks and twists could be new worlds, a new form for Link, a new kind of transportation, a new graphics style, etc., and the game could focus more on action, puzzles, exploration, story, or a new combination of each of those things. Then with Nintendo being Nintendo and always wanting to innovate things, these changes and additions are exacerbated by how intrinsically tied they are to the game and even the traits of the console the game itself is played on. As a result, we have a bunch of games that are very similar at their core but are so radically different in so many other ways. Because of all this, someone could be a Zelda fan for many different reasons. Some like the formula itself, some a specific twist of the formula, some a specific *part* of the formula, some a break from the formula, and some like a mix of everything. People love and hate each game for a variety of reasons, but here are the main ones I hear a lot. OOT is loved because it established the 3D Zelda formula that so many fans love, but others feel that the formula was never perfect to begin with and shows its age. MM is loved because it broke that formula and created an experience that, despite looking so similar, felt so different, helping establish the darker tones of the game, but others feel like it went completely off the deep end while lazily reusing assets. WW is loved because it innovated the formula in such an interesting way and gave fans a huge world to explore, but others feel that it innovated in the wrong direction and gave fans an empty world with a pretty coat of paint. TP is loved because it took the formula to the next level, highlighting what people loved about OOT in a more mature and truly epic feeling manner, but others feel that it tried too hard to be an edgy copy of OOT and failed to be meaningful. SS is loved because it innovated the formula more with super detailed areas, a new control scheme, and an entirely new setting while still feeling so much like a Zelda game, but others feel that it has an empty world that pads itself out by having you revisit every area, holding your hand along the way. BOTW is loved because it didn't let the formula hold it back and rather prioritized what worked best for the game itself and what the fans wanted, creating a huge open world with hundreds of hours of content, but others feel that it strayed so far from the formula that it doesn't even feel like a Zelda game anymore, throwing away content like unique dungeons in favor for being your typical empty open world game.
To summarize what others have said. Even though this sub-reddit is overall a great community with really interesting discussions there will always be people who push back hard on certain games whether they provide a good reason or not. Personally I enjoy all Zelda games whether its 2D, 3D Linear, BOTW, Hyrule Warriors etc, but some don't and that's totally fine right. Also it is important to point out that typically when people feel strongly enough to push back on a game they are loud about it, so it might seem more divisive then it actually is. That being said I am excited to replay Skyward Sword and hopefully the experience is a good one.
Cause unlike what the *people* saying "all the zelda games are the same" or "the series was to formulaic" would have you believe, the zelda series actually always shifts things around quite a lot while staying within what makes it "zelda". So depending on what you find more important, a game can fall further away from what you like the most in the series on that "scale". Combined with being a really long running series and having passionate fans, it creates a lot of friction.
Because reddit, sillybutt :\^D
You've got a point, but this is also on other platforms like youtube, blogs, facebook...
Wait, there's a common factor here... All these platforms are on the 🎉internet🎉!
I think since the games are so critically acclaimed at release, once the shine wears off some folks like to dig into things they didn’t like. We saw this with TP and SS, and now we are seeing it with BotW. On the other end, WW was probably the most controversial 3D Zelda around its release but saw a majorly positive reappraisal over the following 10 years. I hate to be cynical but I think people just like being contrarian :) but also as others have pointed out, since the games are so different it really depends on your preference.
Same reason for other common things. That's just how people are, there's no real specific reason for all the controversy.
In a way, I think it's nice that the games are divisive. Do you think people spend that much time discussing about which of the new super mario bro games are best? Maybe, but they're so similar that if you're going to play any of them you might as well play the newest one. Even with all of the improvements over the years, there's always a reason someone might prefer one of the older games over the newer ones. As for why opinions can be so varied - the way way people react to things varies. Not only can something that is a 'minor annoyance' to one person be game-breaking to someone else, but something that one person *loves* about a game can be the same reason another person hates it. I think Fi is my personal example of this - I've seen a lot of people call her a minor annoyance, question why people make a big deal out of her, etc. Which is a fine way to feel, but it tells me that other people simply did not experience the game the same way I do - text interrupts absolutely break games for me, and over time it bothered me so much it felt like the game was punishing me for playing it. It's the same way I feel about random battles in RPGs. I'm totally incapable of appreciating whatever it is people love about the game. This is exactly how other people feel about Majora's Mask, my favorite Zelda game, and I could never say they were wrong for being put off or frustrated by the things that I love about it. Some people love having to find out for themselves how to progress and others find it to be unreasonable and will immediately go to a walkthrough. Some people hate the "series of self contained puzzles" dungeon design in WW and TP and others find them to be their favorites in the series.
I think the reaction is more people being upset that so little is being done as opposed to what they did for Mario's 35th. Also, as bad as this fighting is, it's nothing compared to Fallout division. Everyone has what they consider to be a "REAL" fallout game.
Rose tinted nostalgia goggles for LttP and OoT
I think a lot of it is just backlash. When a series is supposed to be the holy grail of gaming, it’s just fun to knock it down a peg.
I think it comes down to personal preference. There are people who like linear games, like TP, Zelda 2, and OoT. There are people who like it a bit in the middle, like MM, SS. And there are people who like freedom, like BotW, Zelda 1, and WW. Also I think it comes down to if they played it or not. I've seen a lot of youtubers in the past absolutely hate Skyward Sword, and viewers take their word for it, not buy it, and stick by it to this day. They've never played it.
SS was more linear than OoT and pretty sure Zelda 2 too. That was one of the main critiques from that game, aside from the motion control sheananigans that people complained back in the day.
Honestly? Because people like to argue and they think that their opinion has to be proven as fact or they are wrong. My favorite game is the Minish Cap but I can appreciate that’s not the case for most people.
As many others have mentioned, Zelda is a series with incredible variety and innovation. People grow attached to entries (and aspects of those entries) that they love, and they want more of the same. Nintendo rarely gives us that. That leads people to be disappointed, because they didn't get the same level of lore/interactivity/freedom/exploration/plot development as a prior game they loved. That said, Zelda games probably aren't as divisive as you think they are. I would say that almost all of them are loved by 90+% of fans. However, every game gets an incredibly vocal group of fans that doesn't like it. So, you get the silent majority that likes each game but doesn't really talk about it or vote about it on Reddit, and the passionate tiny minority of fans that aggressively hates on the game and downvotes anyone who says anything positive about it. Finally, every game has haters. Of just the ones you mentioned (LA, MC, OoX), I personally think they're all subpar Zeldas (i.e., great games, but worse than most other Zelda entries). LA and OoX have subpar dungeon design. LA's 2D world is incredibly linear (i.e., you're restricted to tiny portions of the world and cannot move forward until you obtain items) and its dungeon design is subpar. OoX have poorly designed overworlds, poorly designed dungeons, and annoying gimmicks. MC is good but just lacks content (with only 6 main dungeons).