Have mostly left the wiki, as I have gone on to bigger and better things, no offense or anything. May come back once in a while to check things out, but the wiki seems to have quieted down since I left. I really should finish my Seasons walkthrough sometime...
Clipboard O' Convenience ("Borrowed" from Triforce 14) Edit
This was a great game, as nearly all Zeldas are. I loved the fact that you could travel all over the Light World very early in the game, and get a lot of neat stuff and Pieces of Heart by doing so. The dungeons weren't as hard as I would have liked, though. You know that the dungeons are too easy when you can beat the fourth, fifth, and sixth dungeons out of eleven in an hour. I also didn't like the fact that there was very little to do once you got to the point where you were going to face Ganon. But the feeling that you were all alone, without an ally in the entire world that would help you without asking for money, was a great touch that I don't think has been replicated in any Zelda title since. Heck, even the villagers tried to kill you by reporting you to the soldiers!
I LOVED these games. I liked Seasons better than Ages for a couple reasons. Number one, fully controllable Magic Boomerang. Number two, better final boss. Veran was WAY too easy, even though she had three forms as opposed to Onox's two. The dungeons were also less mind-blowingly frustrating (I did NOT like the Ancient Tomb dungeon, with the four wheels or so which switched back and forth between clockwise and counter-clockwise movement... those of you who have played it know what I mean.) Seasons also never had an item whose sole purpose was to solve puzzles. Even the Magnetic Gloves could be used to kill certain enemies. But the Cane of Somaria only made my life more difficult, especially considering the part it played in the EVIL floor-tile puzzle in Hero's Cave if you played the games in tandem, Seasons first. I will concede that Ages had a better plot, but that doesn't really save it, in my opinion.
Moving on to the good things about the games as a duo: the Magical Rings game mechanic was a stroke of genius. They were not essential in any way, and you didn't really feel any pressure to collect them all, as that feat was nearly impossible to accomplish without playing the games several times in order to get the Victory Ring and such. But they did make your life a whole lot easier in some circumstances, like using the Toss Ring at the Mighty Tokay mini-game in Ages. All in all, a worthy addition to the Zelda saga.
This was a pretty good game too in some areas, but decidedly LACKING in others. The myriad sword techniques, the clever alternate ways of killing enemies... you could spend hours just screwing around to see what crazy stuff you could do that would work. Unfortunately, one of the things that you COULDN'T spend hours doing was working your way through the dungeons. They were all over too quickly, and while they were fun, the fact that you only had six dungeons and one mini-dungeon to go through was epically disappointing, especially considering that Nintendo managed to fit the entirety of ALttP and Four Swords into one Game Pak, but they couldn't give us a few more dungeons for Minish Cap, and instead gave us those impossible-to-get-all-of Kinstone fusions and Carlov's figurines, which you couldn't skip if you wanted to get all of the Heart Pieces. The final boss was also very annoying, as were all things involving the whole "split yourself into extremely fragile duplicates" mechanic. It was okay overall, but there were many flaws that needed to be resolved.
I used to be of the opinion that OoT was miles better than Majora's Mask, but since I started playing it, I can't tell which is the better game. It's definitely much easier to get around Termina than Hyrule without the use of Epona. The Stray Fairy game mechanic is terrific, and I no longer hate the three-day system, although it does get annoying that on the Third Day, the entire world shakes a bit occasionally. Great addition to the sense of impending doom, but it doesn't help my shooting skills when the world's vibrating. The Goron Races made me angry after the fiftieth try. If it cost Rupees, I would have given up after about five tries. (To be finished later) MM is fun, but I would have to say that OoT still leaves me more sentimental, if only for the music of Hyrule.
I'm replaying this game right now, and I find myself enjoying it much more than I did the first time. Why? Well, the first time, I just went through the game trying to do the main quest and a few sidequests just to get enough Heart Containers to get by. On second playthrough, though, I have been doing the main quest in order to get enough items so that I can just pillage, raid, burn, and generally be a piratey rogue. Once I got past the cartoony art style, I was able to see that Wind Waker is a really good game. The camera controls are the best in the series, the wallet is big enough to hold all the Rupees that you get from doing stuff, the swordplay is over-the-top, but just more fun because of it, and the world is expansive and filled with stuff to do. The sailing still get on my nerves a little bit, but not so much because now, I'm fishing for every sunken treasure chest, and particularly, raiding every lookout tower. The things I've done to the poor souls aboard those towers... I just found out today that if a Bokoblin catches onto the edge of the tower to keep from falling to his doom, you can actually stab his hands to force him off. How awesome is that? The swordplay is much more important in this game than in the N64 games (not bashing them or anything, just pointing this out), and the items make combat ridiculously fun no matter how easy it gets later in the game. The story is much darker in this game than you would expect from the cartoony artwork, and the ending battle is preceded by one of the most dramatic scenes in Zelda history, including one of my all-time favorite lines: "YOUR GODS DESTROYED YOU!". All in all, the cartoony graphics should not turn people off of this game, because it's just ridiculous fun in and of itself, and of course, it lets you be a piratey rogue if you want to be.
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