The dungeons are the meat of a Zelda game. In most of my play throughs, over have the time is spent inside them. I do play some the more rewarding and fun side quests/mini games, especially most of Majora's Mask since that's the one game that dramatically reverses the dungeon/side quest ratio. The mini games and side quests are many times pointless or annoying, unless you either are trying them out for the first time or are going for 100%. (The last 50 Gold Skultulas are the most obvious example. Why spend even more time finding the harder to find gilded arachnids just to get free money at the point where money is worthless? If you need to buy a blue potion or two, you can kill some skull kids for 50 or 100(I forgot which) rupees each or run around collecting money for far less time than it takes to find just a few of the creepy-crawlies.) I only play Twilight Princess's STAR game a second time because I'll pass by it anyway, it's surprisingly easy, and Link gets squeeing fangirls afterwards. I rarely use the extra arrows gained from it.
The overworlds give you a big area to explore and adds life to the game, but the dungeons add the majority of the variety to the game. You spend just enough time in them in the dungeons to absorb the mood they wanted to give off and move to the next area before it gets old. (Well, it might get old if you get stuck.) The overworlds just have 3 or 4 distinct looks to it and they will get old fast without a clear goal for you since more was time spent on details in the dungeons than overworlds. Wind Waker jumps around with this. The Great Sea is big and boring alone, but if you're willing to sail to whatever you see on the horizon, you'll find a smorgasbord of small islands, caves, outposts, and submarines that add some more variety to the endless waves.
madwarper said:
Yes, I do like the dungeons of Legend of Zelda. If I wanted to play a Metroid-like game, I'd play a Metroid.
And, I do, but that's no reason to try to turn the Legend of Zelda into a Metroid-like game.
This right here was the problem with Skyward Sword (besides crappy motion controls fighting you most of the way.) In order to make the overworld more dungeon-like, they had 3 major areas with a bland hub world in the sky connecting them. Even worse, they recycled themes for both dungeon sets that already had aspects from the overworld areas.(Ancient Cistern at least was a prettier water filled temple decorated with lush plants and a contrasting hellscape theme in the basement, compared to Skyview Temple's flooded ruins with overgrowth inside. It got more obvious when the Sandship used the timeshift mechanic and techno-desert motif from the region and Lanaru Mining Facility. Earth Temple and Fire Sanctuary were the worst, being nearly identical. Both are lave filled ruins that could have been one huge complex. The only key difference was you rode a ball lumberjack style in one and rode frozen chunks of lava across the flows in the other. And to put the cherry on top, there was one more mini dungeon that combined them all into 8 rooms, ugh.) They also had to pad out the main quest with stealth, escort, and fetch quest sections in those areas, thanks the the lack of variety.
Having a small number of visually distinct areas works for the Metroid games because a lot of detail is put into them, it adds the overall series' feeling of isolation and the player will usually come back to previously explored rooms with newer abilities to check out those details they couldn't reach before. Skyward Sword tried that but fought with the series' past and failed to have fully utilized Links arsenal, instead opting for those story mandated annoying sections I mentioned. They could have made it work great but, by the end of development, they would have just made a Metroid game with a fantasy theme and an elf in the lead.
On the other side of the fence, one thing that I didn't like about Metroid Prime 2 and 3 (and a little bit of Fusion now that I think about going to each sector one by one) was the repetitive, once an episode structures that most Metroidvanias lack. You go explore a new area, maybe jump back to an old one once you hit a roadblock, if you are not just beginning the game, then work to unlock the boss area (Dark Temples/ Leviathans), fight the boss and get another upgrade immediately afterwards, and then go the next new area that upgrade unlocks. Then at the endgame in all three Primes you had to collect some macguffins to unlosk the final area. (Yes, Prime 3 eased up on it, and a vet could get many off them before they are supposed to start looking.) They basically became Zelda games, just with more death rays and you know where the ancient technology comes from. That didn't make them bad games, but did kinda upset my inner Metroid fan because I had a generally good idea where I'd be going soon when I've never played the game before or seen a guide.
TL;DR: Big N is confusing its franchises' key characteristics again.(Also: Sorry, madwarper, for replying with a wall of text. You just sparked some things in the back of my mind.)