Topic: Wind Waker is Overrated

Disagree with me if you want but please be mature and polite about it. Everyone has a right to their opinion~

Give me something to disagree (or agree) with. Simply stating that it's overrated isn't really going to start a constructive discussion....

While i agree with you, you should probably state why you think that unless you're instigate a fanboy fight or something...

I disagree.

WELL I THINK IT's UNDERRATED, DISCUSS

Wrong.

Its short, its not as great as other installments but gets more praise then most. Majora's Mask was short but still had more content, story driven plot, depth and fresh new gameplay mechanics to feel new. Also its really shallow. Like there isnt any symbolism or complex story elements in the plot. The dungeons are really really easy and the graphics are meh (gamecube wise). So yeah I like the game but dont see why everyone and their mother loves it to death.

I'd say it's great. Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are both near perfection, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are both amazing. Wind Waker is the worst of this bunch. It gets too much praise, but it still deserves praise.

1. Discuss why you don't like it

2. It's actually underrated, it's the third worst selling console Zelda game, and a lot of people hate it, because of it's art style.

3. I actually think it's the best Zelda game that I've played so far. CAMERA CONTROL!!! Exploring is feels fun here, whereas in other games it's tedious, most of the dungeons are really fun (the only one I don't like is the Earth Dungeon) Sailing the seas is fun, unlike Skyward Sword, where flying was a pain in the butt. Replay value, with Skyward Sword, the game was so tedious, I never felt like playing it again, I can play Wind Waker all the time.

On a random note I like your youtube channel KK. Subscribed and hope you do more Paper Mario LP's. :3

My completed file is about 30 hours. As much as Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask

its not as great as other installments but gets more praise then most.

I disagree with your personal opinion

Majora's Mask was short but still had more content

It really did not actually

story driven plot, depth and fresh new gameplay mechanics to feel new.

The plot isn't really story driven. Most of the story comes from outside the plot.

Also its really shallow. Like there isnt any symbolism or complex story elements in the plot.

I suppose I can't argue with this statement

The dungeons are really really easy and the graphics are meh (gamecube wise). So yeah I like the game but dont see why everyone and their mother loves it to death.

Probably because of reasons you didn't mention here

I should own TTYD again. Or a way to record games off a tv that actually works for more than 2 months...

but anyway, I actually find most of your points to be fair or at least defendable. I mean, if you take away all the sailing (and not just the stuff you do while sailing, just the sailing alone) it could possibly be the shortest 3D Zelda depending on how you play. But graphics...um...isn't Wind Waker considered even from a technical perspective to be one of the best looking GCN games? Like it really took the cel shaded approached to a new level I had not seen before and tbh it's the last 3D Zelda that felt advanced and new graphically

I like the HD remakes artstyle. I love the soundtrack. The bosses are cool. The wind waker is cool. Wish Link still played an instrument in his games... Also the game is fun. Some Zelda games cant even feel fun.

We have a thread for unpopular opinions, so does this really need to be it's own thread?

sure

I have opinions let's talk about them

Wind Waker is hardly my favorite Zelda title - in fact, it's one of the last ones I would've wanted for an HD remake (though it's more that I feel its graphics aged fine). But overrated? I hear more hate for this entry than love; don't get me wrong, Wind Waker has a notable fanbase, but the popular opinion I hear tends to lean towards the negative. I can name a number of flaws I feel it has, but I can do that with my favorite entry, Majora's Mask. No games are perfect, per se. Overrated? Nope, it's underrated. It's not amazing but it's not horrible.

It's definitely receiving too much praise currently. It's a fun game at times, but I found the pacing to be all over the place. The few dungeons in the game, at least in my memory, were fantastic, but that dungeon would be followed by sailing. I get Nintendo was trying to show off the Gamecube's capabilities but sailing was a pain. I haven't played WWHD, so I don't know how much the faster sailing option helps, but constantly adjusting the wind and sailing across the same blue ocean to the same music was just tedious. I recall reading complaints about how empty Hyrule Field was in TP, but WW had the same issue, to an even lager degree. For the people who can look past the sailing, it's a great game. I'd say makes some of the best use of three dimensions in the Zelda series.

TL;DR "Too much water 7.8/10"

Note: In this post I can only reference the HD remake, as it's the only version I've played.

I love Wind Waker! But yeah, it's overrated. It's a great game, it has a great art direction, great characters, amazing music, fun dungeons, tugs at your heartstrings and is a satisfying play. Sailing over the vast Great Sea feels epic and a really unique way of travelling from place to face and a really effective mechanic to make the game's world feel huge.

But in this huge world the narrative always directs you with linearity to where you need to go next. It's almost impossible to stumble upon sidequests in the way you were forced to find them in Ocarina of Time, where all the locations were close together and you were dumped outside dungeons after completing them with little instruction about what to do next. For the most part in Wind Waker, unless you pick a location on the map you haven't explored and directly sail straight there and hope there's something to do, it's just not easy enough to find activities other than progressing through the main dungeons. It's easy to feel disconnected from such a huge world when its locations are so disparate.

The Triforce Shard quest is repetitive, unimaginative and slightly tedious. In A Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds and Ocarina of TIme we had to beat seven dungeons to save the sages, but in Wind Waker we just had to open the map, maybe pay Tingle to decipher a chart (pointless padding) and then... sail to it. And pick it up. Yeah, okay, sometimes we had to go through combat or something to get it, but if this was the premise of the whole game and there were seven shards in seven dungeons, it would have made for a much more effectively paced gameplay experience.

Also, besides plunging the Master Sword directly in between his eyes (somewhat out of place in a generally family friendly game) in a cool throwback to beating him in Ocarina, fighting Ganondorf was anti-climactic.