Most disappointing video games (for me): Zelda: The Wind Waker

I expect to get some grief for this because there are a lot of people out there that rank all the Zelda games from worst to best or vice-versa and many people rank The Wind Waker near the top of the list. This is a notion that I suppose I can understand because after playing all the way through the game it is a pretty epic and innovative game, which isn't easy to do when you have a franchise that is as beloved at Zelda is.

I just want you to try to put yourself into the shoes of a person that was alive and at prime gaming age when the first Zelda game came out and other than 2, the games progressively got a lot better.

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When the next gen systems were coming out I was fully on board with the GameCube because of the fact that I was a huge Nintendo fanboi at the time in particular because of Zelda. You could say that this was the primary reasoning that I had behind deciding to buy this system over the Xbox or PS that was also available at the same time.

When it was announced that there definitely was going to be Mario, Metroid, and Zelda games released for the GameCube I was already sold, even though none of them actually yet existed when I made my console purchase. In fact, they hadn't even released any alpha/beta content or even images of Zelda at that point. It didn't matter to me because I had played a series of games in the Zelda franchise up to that point that were so epic that I thought there was no way that I would be let down.

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On the N64 Ocarina of Time was an absolutely captivating experience. It was considered at the time to be the best game that had ever been made and if you look at meta lists today it is still near the top of those lists despite the fact that it is over 20 years old. Majora's Mask didn't appeal to me nearly as much as OOT did but it was still a pretty magical experience and it had very dark overtones to it. It almost seemed like Nintendo was starting to stray from their rated G or PG Zelda storylines and moving towards something considerably more gruesome.

They also seemed to keep getting better and better at 3D and since the GameCube was immenesly more powerful than the N64, I thought I was going to be in for a gaming experience of a lifetime. Then in the first few minutes of the game I get exposed to this.

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While I would later grow to appreciate the unique almost Paper Mario look of the game this was such a huge letdown right out of the gate to the point where it made me physically angry. I had been hoping for a graphical experience the likes of which we had never experienced in Zelda history and instead we have snot boy.

They generate a story as to why it is that you need to leave your island in order to go off on adventure and this leads you to your first fortress that you have to infiltrate for some reason that I don't remember but this is where my frustration with the game grew even more so.

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Rather than put you in a dungeon where you fight enemies and progress, probably in a relatively easy manner like you would expect on the first dungeon in most games, they put you into a stealth type situation where you have to avoid spotlights and hide under barrels in order to get through to the end.

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You have to stay hidden in order to avoid the guards but if you make a tiny mistake, they throw you back into the prison cell that you started out in and you have to do the entire thing again. This was extremely boring and there was no other way to do it. It also doesn't make any sense that the guards would repeatedly throw you back in the same jail cell that you clearly can easily break out of, but that is exactly what they do.

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_{no chance he is going to crawl through the massive hole in the wall again boss}

This was a different time so unlike today we couldn't just rage quit and download another game. Believe it or not there was a time when you physically had to go to a store and buy an actual physical copy of a game so I forced myself to trudge on through.

Thankfully, once you get out of this first fortress - which takes entirely too long - the game opens up a bit more and becomes more of what you expect out of Zelda games. The game was somewhat open world and if you went to an area that you were not high enough level to be in yet, it was fairly evident pretty quickly when you get whalloped by the first enemies you encounter.

So then the game got a bit better, I guess. This doesn't change the fact that myself and many other people in the gaming world were initially very upset at the art style and gameplay that this game offered. It almost felt like a downgrade from previous games and it would be 4 years later before we got Twilight Princess and I'm sad to say that I have never actually played this game because the GameCube was already in my rear-view mirror at that point in time. I have heard it was a great game and that I should definitely play it. Nintendo went back to what the fans really wanted by improving on Ocarina of Time's style and having a darker theme to it instead of trying to reinvent the wheel with a totally different type of game.

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_{This is what we wanted in the first place!}

Wind Waker was well-received by critics (big surprise there!) but the change in art style resulted in extremely poor sales compared to previous games. Many long-time Zelda fans completely shunned the game and this resulted in Nintendo returning to previous styles instead of cell-shading.

If it isn't broken don't fix it!

Regardless of what it is that people think about Wind Waker nowadays it was a huge disappointment for me at the time of its release and kind of forever tarnished what I thought about Nintendo. I have only made one Nintendo purchase since the GameCube and that was just because the 3DS got discounted immensely once the Switch was released.

How did you feel about this game when it was released? Did you feel differently than me? If so I would love to hear why that is