Over rated / Under rated Games

I really liked Spirit Tracks, but it's not top-tier Zelda by any means. Although its final boss music was pretty bangin' for a fight against a train.

Another game I thought was overrated: Assassin's Creed II. Maybe it was just because I was shit at it, but I found it frustrating trying to get to the next objective, only to get noticed, run away, and end up further away from the objective than you were when you started. I get that the whole point is not to be noticed and work out the best ways to get from A to B all stealthy likes, but I guess I just never clicked with it. I would always manage to do it after a couple of tries but it's one of those games that I'd only come back to because I felt like I should keep going, rather than actually feeling any desire to. (In comparison, I had bought Arkham Asylum at around the same time and beat that in about three sittings because it was so much more fun.)

Oh I liked Zelda: ST as whole just fine but that train was too restrictive for a game that usually encourages exploring.

I dunno, I liked the puzzley aspect of it, trying to work out how to get somewhere without crashing into something else and collecting stuff on the way. It felt very different to other Zelda games and I welcome that after reading the recurring gamer bile about how Zelda doesn't change enough.

Train > temple, but more importantly, train > boat.  The draw-to-sail controls were far too stop-start for more liking.  Neither was ideal, but I'll take slightly reduced exploration over having to pause every few moments to redraw your course any day.

I don't think that ST has necessarily been underrated by the forum, mind you.  Despite its ream of dishonourables, it did get second place in the adventure week.  I just feel that PH was massively overrated, like Rum.

Balladeer wrote:

I just feel that PH was massively overrated, like Rum.

I'm not massively overrated

No way, the train was the worst thing in the world. Not only did you have to stick to a naff set path you find yourself running into invincible instakill trains! Ridiculous! Combine that with sub par dungeons and you have a game that's much worse than PH. The second worst Zelda behind the fantastically terrible MM.

I thought you might comment on this sooner or later.  

andyman949 wrote:

No way, the train was the worst thing in the world. Not only did you have to stick to a naff set path you find yourself running into invincible instakill trains! Ridiculous! Combine that with sub par dungeons and you have a game that's much worse than PH.

I didn't mind the train. The controls were the worst part of those two games. I don't think I even finished Spirit Tracks. I got to the final boss which felt more like a fight with the controls rather than an enemy. I could never get the spin to register accurately, so I died. I tried a few times then gave up.

Now, to try again I would have to sit through a long cutscene then do the train section before the boss. Which I could never be bothered with.

Balladeer wrote:

Train > temple, but more importantly, train > boat.  The draw-to-sail controls were far too stop-start for more liking.  Neither was ideal, but I'll take slightly reduced exploration over having to pause every few moments to redraw your course any day.

I don't think that ST has necessarily been underrated by the forum, mind you.  Despite its ream of dishonourables, it did get second place in the adventure week.  I just feel that PH was massively overrated, like Rum.

Those bolded words should never happen to a Zelda game in my opinion, the train pretty much just made it about getting from point A to B.

The_Jaster wrote:

Those bolded words should never happen to a Zelda game in my opinion, the train pretty much just made it about getting from point A to B.

It's still better than Skyward Sword's "no exploration, linear path"?

The controls were fine for me. Never even crossed my mind after about 5 minutes of usage. I didn't feel too cramped by SS myself, the forest in particular had a fair area to explore if I remember correctly.

I had problems with SS too, although I don't object too much to linearity - I just didn't like the massive separation of the sky and the three discrete chunks of land.  ST felt more "continuous" somehow, despite still separating out its overworld.

I'm worried that I'm being made out as some defender of ST.  I'm not: I just thought it was better than PH.  Both were mediocre, and neither did the franchise name justice. Surprisingly, I didn't mind the controls too much. They just got most other things wrong.

On a non-Zelda note I'd say valkyrie profile 2 is pretty under rated, such is the price for coming in the days when the ps2 had made way to the ps3 I guess.

On a zelda note I'm going to be highly controversial here and say the wii and ds were dark days for the zelda franchise in general.

PH > ST, for me. The novelty of the controls and the presence of Linebeck outweighed that ruddy temple in PH, whereas ST had lots of good ideas and failed to make the most of them. At least the boat gave you a bit of freedom...

The "novel controls" surely doesn't have any bearing now, though, when neither game is new any more and neither has the novelty benefit?

As I remember it Phantom Hourglass didn't even give you an especially large world to explore. Nothing compared to most Zeldas, anyway. It was just four quadrants, wasn't it?

Edit: I should clarify my defence of ST - I find it really annoying when people complain about a game for what it isn't or complain that it isn't what they wanted/expected it to be, rather than appreciating what it is. I know that Zeldas are often about exploration but ST tried something novel and I personally liked the difference. I prefer story over exploration, to be honest - I'll do a couple of sidequests or maybe explore a little bit but I prefer to follow the main quest, so the lack of exploration meant nothing to me. It's like when I got annoyed reading reviews of Metroid Fusion that criticised it for a lack of exploration rather than praising its exceptionally tight narrative.

To paraphrase what Balla said: both PH and ST were pretty good. But PH's temple was lame as balls.

Cube wrote:

The_Jaster wrote:

Those bolded words should never happen to a Zelda game in my opinion, the train pretty much just made it about getting from point A to B.

It's still better than Skyward Sword's "no exploration, linear path"?

I thought flying was better at giving off that sense of freedom it's only mistake was not allowing you to fly to whatever location you wanted to.

Rum Rapture wrote:

Edit: I should clarify my defence of ST - I find it really annoying when people complain about a game for what it isn't or complain that it isn't what they wanted/expected it to be, rather than appreciating what it is. I know that Zeldas are often about exploration but ST tried something novel and I personally liked the difference. I prefer story over exploration, to be honest - I'll do a couple of sidequests or maybe explore a little bit but I prefer to follow the main quest, so the lack of exploration meant nothing to me. It's like when I got annoyed reading reviews of Metroid Fusion that criticised it for a lack of exploration rather than praising its exceptionally tight narrative.

To paraphrase what Balla said: both PH and ST were pretty good. But PH's temple was lame as balls.

I'm very similar to you, in that I appreciate focus with distractions rather than being left to wander. (Oddly Metroid Prime is one of my favourite games ever, but I did play through it with a guide.) But that's not quite an accurate paraphrase of me: it should be, "both PH and ST were pretty mediocre. But PH's temple was lame as balls."

While we're on the subject of Zelda's, I'm going to actually mention one I think is rather over rated.  That would be twilight princess.  I don't know whether it was because I bought in to the hype before playing it or what, but the more I played that game the less I was impressed.  Oh it was swell on the first play through, but when I replayed it it went from being a game I viewed very favourably to a game I could barely keep interest in.  The whys are fairly simple, the graphics due to the art style going for a ghastly "realistic" style were already showing their age, the wolf segments were like being forced to use a mask from majoras that was far less functional than any of masked Link's abilities, and the game was dreadfully easy.  There was also how they set zant up to be this awesome new villain before the "plot twist", because heaven forbid we should have a credible menacing villain who's not related to ganondorf in any way.

The topping on the cake that left a sour taste in my mouth was that any exploration undertaken almost always led to the same reward: money and health.  Which is all well and good except the game was already incredibly easy and extra health wasn't anything to care about, same for money due to the lack of interesting things to spend it on.  In the previous zelda games you were often rewarded with special powers for your time spent exploring the world, from the biggoron sword and ice arrows in ocarina to the various masks in majoras to... I forget what in wind waker because it's been so long.  But the point is twilight princess didn't give me any sort of satisfying payoff for the time spent exploring, the previous ones did.


Now don't get me wrong, I'm not calling twilight princess a bad game in any way shape or form, but it wasn't the quality I had come to expect from my Zelda games.  All of the above combined with how it felt like ocarina 2.0 just left me underwhelmed on the replay.  I can honestly say it's because of twilight princess along with it being followed by the two ds games that is the reason I never even really stuck with skyward sword, nor feel any compulsion to look in to A Link Between Worlds despite the massive praise it seems to have garnered.

Balladeer wrote:

But that's not quite an accurate paraphrase of me: it should be, "both PH and ST were pretty mediocre. But PH's temple was lame as balls."

The joke was that the phrase "lame as balls" wouldn't have come from you. I did read what you said about it.

But you thought Luigi's Mansion 2 was one of the best games the 3DS has to offer, so...

Yes I did.  And I also still think that TP's the best Zelda ever.  ALBW's nothing like it, though: much more like LttP, surprisingly enough.

Surprisingly, though, I can't refute many of Athrun's points, apart from the wolf thing (scent, digging, warping with Midna - it had plenty of uses). They just didn't mar the experience that much for me, apart from the graphics. Take the exploration thing, for instance: I was quite happy to hoover up all the Heart Pieces and Poes just because I loved the world and the feel of the game so much. That was the payoff for me. And while the game was easy, I didn't find it any more so than WW (apart from the latter's opening stealth section, but that's not a point in its favour), while the epic scale was more than enough to tip it back in the game's favour.

Ganondorf being involved was a disappointing reveal, I'll admit: but then you had an epic multi-stage fight against him, so it was okay.

Balladeer wrote:

The "novel controls" surely doesn't have any bearing now, though, when neither game is new any more and neither has the novelty benefit?

At the time they did, for me. Looking back on them from 2014 and trying to separate that feeling out, they're obviously closer but PH still wins.

~~~

I've not made it to the end of Twilight Princess. 

Going to have to agree a bit with Athrun888 about the DS & Wii era not being that great for ZELDA.

Both DS games never did anything for me and Twilight I do like it but is a GameCube game. So leaves Skyward Sword which I do think is a very very good game but in the Zelda series there is better.

Also I've got a Underrated game to add

Binary Domain

If we class TP as a GC game (as it should be), I'll agree that last generation was sub-par for Zelda.  The GC generation was great, on the other hand: WW, TP, Minish Cap, and another underrated game: Four Swords Adventures.  Great fun in multiplayer, it was still a hoot on one's own, so long as you're not expecting oodles of exploration. ( at Tingle, stealing my Force Gems.)

The Cube like I said in the system vote is a Zelda fans dream as with the GBA player and the collectors disc, you can play pretty much every Zelda.

Also if you look at the Wii vote is a bit bad as well that TP can do so well being a GC & a launch title.