I loved the Zelda series in the past,but the way the series is turning the last years is not of my liking.Yatzhee is doing well criticizing the series and I'm not a hater for saying that,actually I'm a Zelda fan that thinks that Nintendo should hear some nasty words from a popular publication in case they start caring for player's feedback more.
I got in to the series playing Ocarina of Time at its time in Nintendo 64,and after that I played Majora's Mask.
Ocarina of Time was a phenomenal game for its age ecxelling in all departments like graphics,music,gameplay and story.But Ocarina of Time spoiled me.I thought that innovations like that where a usual thing for the series,but I was wrong.
When the next game of the series,Majora's Mask came out I was even more impressed with the series and I liked the turn the series where getting at.
Majora's mask too had pretty decent graphics for its age,very good soundtrack,and gameplay-wise it had lots of rpg elements.The number and quality of the sidequests where greately improved,and the AI for the npcs was outstanding for its era.Npcs had had routines and did different things in different times of the day as we see in Skyrim.
The tone of these 2 N64 games was very dark I say.
In Ocarina of Time we watched persons dying,villages getting burned,and there was even a zombie attack at Hyrule's Castle Town!
In Majora's Mask we see people dying too,being cursed,and of course there is always this moon above you that is about to fall of,and you have that feel that the lives of the people in this world are actually depended on you.
In a frame of 3-4 years I only played these 2 Zelda games and I have come to expect similar experiences and standards from these series in the later games..
But Nintendo seemed to kept the things I wasn't really interested for,and dropped what made these games special for me.
Zelda games after the two N64 games changed much:
*The stories of the newer games doesn't follow the events of the two N64 games.
They aren't sequels,they just have the same looks and names for the characters and some of the same game mechanics.So the Link I play as in Wind Waker or Twilight Princess has nothing to do with the Link I play as in OoT and MM.That's bad.Because I loved Link from the N64 games,and he is my favourite Link ever.
*The series gradually lost their more mature and dark tone.
I feel that newer Zelda games are more "kid friendly" than past ones and this is for a variety of reasons.The art direction and color pallete is more cartoony/anime than ever,and curses and death is being wiped out of the series.It feels more like kid's game than a teen's game.
*Nintendo stopped careing about graphics.
Yeah gameplay might be more important than graphics,but still graphics are an important factor than can make as enjoy games more or less. Super Nintendo was able to render better graphics than Sega Mega Drive,N64 could render better graphics than Playstation,and Gamecube could render better graphics than PS2,but Wii broke the tradition and its graphics aren't acceptable by today's standards.Harsh but true.
*Gameplay was dumbed.
Yeah,I know that some Zelda fans will tell me "It was the n64 games that broke Zelda gameplay and became more complex!Link's Awakening was as simple as Skyward's Sword and it was fine!".But dear fan let me inform you that Link's Awakening was simplier at a time that games in general where much simplier than that.Ocarina of Time brought a variety of brand new mechanics and some of them have been kept until today as they where,others where simplified,and some others completely vanished from the series.None of them was improved.
*Less side-quests,nerfed A.I.,less secrets,less unique items,and less easter eggs.
When I talk about the number and quality of side-quests in Majora's Mask,or the A.I. interactions of the npcs,the usual reply I have come to expect from Zelda fanboys is that "Zelda is not an RPG!It doesn't need AI for its npcs or Side-Quests!"
Well my dear friend you are only partly right.Zeldas are being described as "action adventure" games by Nintendo currently,but back in older days there was a time when Zelda was described as an action rpg game by many players AND magazines.Actually there where huge arguments on wether Zelda is a pure RPG series,or an Action Adventure series with considerable amounts of RPG features.The only things that Zelda was missing to be called "RPG" by everybody was that the player wouldn't gain XP points from monsters and that combat wasn't turn-based.Everything else that RPGs had was there: An open explorable world,npcs who do things in the world and give quests,gradual item discovery,gradual empowerment of the character's abilities,dungeons,monsters, swords, magic, caves.. You need to learn that ZELDA was the game that actually FOUNDED the term "Action RPG".
Before Zelda all RPG games where turn-based and most of them linear. If you can play Skyrim today and go wherever you want and have real-time combat it's because of Zelda.
So give a rest to the argument "Zelda doesn't need side quests or AI for its npcs" or I will eat you!
So after this small history lesson let's go back to the topic: Majora's Mask had a big (for its time) number of side-quests.I loved that.And I was actually expecting an imrpovement in both number and quality of side-quests in the next games.
But gradually their number was lessened,and their importance was minimized.Twilight Princess had less side-quests than the fingers of my arms,and where completely unimportant.
Along with that the actual content was minimized too.Less items,less easter eggs,less things to discover in general,which leads to less hours of gameplay.
These points considerably changed how I view the series.
Modern Zelda games lack the darkness,the maturity,the depth,the graphics,and the gameplay I loved and had come to expect.Don't wander if you find that most Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask fans, when they are not playing Ocarina of Time 3D they play games like Skyrim over Skyward Sword.Zelda was the first series to do some great things but in the course of history the franchise abandoned some of the things that made it special and only kept some known story events that by now are cliche and dull.While Zelda was leaving what invented behind (Action RPG Legacy) other series that started much later than Zelda,have taken Zelda's legacy and advanced it in a state that it surpasses the orignal series who founded the legacy.
From the first week of Skyrim's release a mod that allowes you to play as Link came out,and modders are working on bringing all kind of Zelda elements and items in... Skyrim.
The master sword,the hero's shield,Majora's Moon,even Gorons and Zoras are imported to Skyrim.
Let this be a lesson to Nintendo that ignoring their hardcore fans and abandoning winner gameplay formulas they invented themselves is a bad thing.
