They did a pretty decent job establishing Link and Zelda's relationship despite their limited time on screen together.
They established Link and Zelda are close early on, but giving you no reason to actually care. Where they separated you from Aryll who you don't necessarily build a rapport with, you have characters like Tetra and the pirates introduced to build a relationship with, and as your adventure progresses these extended relationships become important.
Again what you're failing to respond with his how much did you actually connect and care? How much immersion was there as opposed to just "oh I'm here playing this vidjagam". No really consider that.
Why would all of that fall under one province of the game? You have quests to do in all three regions, all of them different, and again that doesn't count things like the Levias battle.
Let me try and recall these quests. Okay. God the fact that I'm having to think about this is really sort of a serious problem.
Faron: Dowse and dowse some more. When you're done dowsing, get to the temple. Round 2, douse then some tadtones and stuff cool time for temple.
Eldin: Go through some caves and dowse. Get item. Go to Volcano.
R2: Lose all your items, get them back, get to temple.
I mean again I'm not opposed to more playtime but really it's just like oh more of this and no engagement whatsoever. It's all just thrown in in a way that obviously just demands you to spend more time, rather than to purposely add any sense of gravity, context or genuine care for the adventure, mission, and the world in it.
This is something which older Zeldas often managed.
Three completely different quests between later dungeons with three completely different types of gameplay.
And can you please spell these out for me because I have a feeling I might just have forgotten because I really don't remember all the much exciting variety.
I don't really care what you do or don't do with the game. It just seems to me like somewhere along the way you resolved to view the game with as cynical an eye as possible and went from there, is all.
Actually quite the opposite, I was really excited and gave it ample opportunities to impress me. How is it that I can call some parts of the game stellar and just gripe about other stuff? I can because it's true. Trust me, the intense cynicism and scathing is reserved for Twilight Princess.
One hour of what is a 15-20 hour main quest? Percentage-wise, that's not really a lot, no.
Words cannot express how much is wrong with this sentiment. One hour of forced, unnecessary, boring, borderline frustrating game time is not an issue? ONLY 5-7% of
total time? I mean this isn't counting all the times Fi butts in to say "hey Link *the bloody obvious goes here*". Again if all of this could be skipped then we're all cool here, but no, it's imposed, and a minimum of 5% total gameplay time being imposed tutorial sequences is unacceptable.
They used the art style they did for two reasons:
1) It makes it easier to see enemies' attacks and act accordingly
2) A bit more subliminal, but WW's art style, where the world went to crap and was flooded, is cel-shaded. Twilight Princess, where everything went to be normal after OoT, is a bit more moody. OoT, Majora's Mask, Skyward Sword, they all come before either of these two timelines and had none of either. Skyward Sword, being released after Wind Waker and TP, is a combination. People speculated that the styles split up accordingly with the timelines.
1) It does? Is it something to do with the colour contrast or something?
2) Pretty sure that's not really what it is. I'm sorry but the whole timeline hoo hah wasn't actually bothered about until fanboys starting their relentless crusade on the concept with the advent of the internet. Obviously they had the structure of some kind, but timeline stuff really wasn't the cornerstone until it started becoming the thing fans obsessed over (literally the worst thing to obsess over because the ambiguity allowed for freshness). But I mean, if the art style was specifically chosen to facilitate the advanced combat, then that answers my question I guess, since that actually does make sense.