Liquid Wind posted...
I really WANT to say SS is one of the best games in the series for everything it does well, but it's such a flawed game at the same time.
Same. Like, the things it does well are so great. I absolutely love the bow and its legitimate viability as a weapon, Link's movement, how they chose to do upgrades and buying potions and being able to keep a set of items on you. Puzzles are fantastic. The combat is AMAZING. It's by far the best story and cast in the series. Ghirahim's probably my favorite villain in the series; he achieved a more defined and unique personality in one game than Ganondorf and Vaati could dream of in all their titles. There are a ton of places where there's absolutely brilliant game design and you can really just tell someone like Miyamoto was watching over someone's shoulder and saw something and was like, "Oh, if we do this, then the player can see that and that can be a hint for how to use that item in that next puzzle!" They designed nearly all the "big" gameplay elements to perfection. But then the flaws.... they're not the biggest flaws but they're just inexcusable and so numerous that they legitimately get in the way of my enjoyment of the game. They were just so blatantly obvious and present throughout the whole game that it it's inexcusable. I mean sure, Wind Waker has its faults but even when I'm playing through now, outside of the needlessly repetitive and long instrument usage, the faults aren't huge enough to really scream at me and find myself being reminded of their presence constantly. ...until the tri-force.
Really, SS does so many more things better than any other game in the series does them... but then inexplicably fails at really basic things and does them far worse than any other game in the series. On one end, the pros are amazing and the gameplay stretches where I'm dealing with nothing but combat and puzzle solving and all are the defacto best Zelda experience I've ever had; maybe some of the best designed gaming I've ever experienced, but the lows are present so often and just take away from the experience to such a huge extent. My opinion on where it goes on my ranking heirarchy for now really all depends on what part I've just played and it's inclined to shoot high on my rankings as I just took on the final boss and watched the credits sequence... but at the same time I know I could never give the game higher than an 8/10 and that if I had just decided to take a break at the whole Tadtones bit or anywhere during the lead-up to the Ancient Cistern (which is another thing-seriously? Making us go all the way to the back of the dungeon for water with a half-hearted attempt to make it more than just running straight to the end of the dungeon)... it'd probably be struggling at the bottom of my top 5.
OKAY FINALLY DONE WITH THIS GOING TO BED
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