The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

There's quite a bit of value in the title. Tons of subquests, and a second quest after you complete it, but the main run-through is just not as satisfactory as Ocarina's was.

As close to perfection as one can get. Wind Waker features some of the greatest graphics to date, an easy and intuitive control scheme, a truly epic storyline and a brilliant score to top it off.

10 / 10 / 10/ 10 - 40 platinum

The animation is also top-notch. When you watch Link engage in a sword duel, the fluidity of it is remarkable, and unparalleled. There are just so many times where it blew me away.

There are literally no flaws and everything is constructed and delivered with beauty and grace.

The worst aspect though is the story telling, it is watered down to such an extent that I half expected it to start teaching me my a-b-c's.

An entertaining, albeit unoriginal Zelda title that fails to be revolutionary yet still has the classic gameplay elements that make the series so great.

Charming artstyle, COOL vibes and atmosphere. Such a simplistic game, but I still think back on it time after time again. I'm 100% sure that this is an evergreen game, and I'll definitely replay it in the future.

Pros: - Beautiful visual style, still holds to this day. - Great story, lore, and characters. - Good music, although the volume is too low at times. - Good puzzles, and dungeon designs. - Good boss designs, and cinematic moments. Cons: - Tedious sailing mechanics, repetitive content, and mostly easy combat. - Repetitive slow dialogs. - Forced linear start. - The ghost ship chart hunt is too confusing to figure out. - Partly clunky controls. - Some hints and explanations are unnecessary.

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The whole "everything is on an island" idea quite literally gets in the way of the game. It doesn't do anything except waste time. You have to change the wind direction every time you want to go somewhere, because hurr durr you're in a boat. Gets old fast, they should have just made it something in the menu you select quickly, or better yet, eff the wind and the sail works in any direction you want. The whole part with the triforce SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN IN THE GAME AT ALL. You have to find a MAP that lets you find OTHER MAPS that FINALLY have a location of the piece of the triforce, and you need like 15 of them. Every step of the way it costs 500 rupees to have a map translated, so you need to collect 5,000+ rupees to beat the game. If you didn't know that you have a problem by the time the end of the game comes with the map business, have fun grinding for a few days before you can move further. You're "supposed" to treat it as a side-quest that you do bits and pieces of here and there throughout the game, but it's just SO boring that most players put it off, hoping there will be something at the end of the game that does it for them, but that doesn't happen. They screwed up the spin attack. HOW could you do that? You have to unlock it which is the first problem, but it makes you think it's good. It takes too long to charge up so most of the time you will get hit and not be able to use it. If you manage to charge it up, you spin for 10 seconds while Link screams, which is stupid but most importantly HE THEN STOPS AND IS DIZZY. Oh my god how could you screw that up? That would be like putting his pogo move in the game but making it damage you or something. The sneaking part of the game is forced and stupid, but at least it doesn't last long. It's at the beginning of the game before you have any items. The hookshot is not in the game, they use a stupid rope and claw thing. It's so bad because you can only use it in "approved" places, ie where there is a pole sticking out to latch onto. The hookshot was so good in OOT because it made you think about what was wood or vines or not and what you could or could not hook into. Also with the claw rope you have to swing across and time it, which just wastes time. That should have been automatic. The guy on the boat who baits you in to grind and get his bracelets or whatever is a complete waste of time, all he does at the end is says thank you. So you wasted your time. WHY IS THIS IN THE GAME! The cartoon style is fine, that doesn't really make a big difference. A lot of characters look stupid with their gorilla style arms, but it's fine overall it's a stylistic choice. It's dumb but it doesn't ruin the game. It's definitely trying to be a Zelda game and the main part of the game is great. The dungeons are great and the story is great. Nintendo at least learned from their mistakes, but they were definitely mistakes, because when they made an HD remaster of this game, several of the problems I've mentioned were removed. The only things they really kept from Wind Waker was the leaf item, where you use it as a little parachute to float across gaps, and also this was the first game where they started a huge deep dungeon that is very challenging and just a fun slaughterfest. Nobody plays this game after their first time for a reason. It's not a completely terrible game but for being a Zelda... nobody remembers this or pines to play for it after their first time. You don't see people being nostalgic for it but you do for Zelda games both before and after. Things in other Zelda games were kept for the next one but this is definitely the dark horse of the series because it's all just a bunch of experiments that didn't work. Gamecube games exploded in value and it looks like the HD remake are both expensive. Both of them are a waste of money but if for some stupid reason you think you want to play this, the HD version on the Wii U is cheaper and also better in every way because they removed a lot of completely pointless things that are in the game. If this was your first Zelda game, you probably liked it but I feel really bad for you.

While the game has interesting visuals, everything else quickly falls apart. The mechanics are far more tedious than in any other entry in the series, especially at sea and in dungeons that rely on the awfully slow character-switching song. The seemingly open-world is massive but also quite empty, full of invisible walls and required equipment that deter the player from exploring until the very end of the game.