These criticisms are very lacking in perspective. The stuff the fanbase complains about during the so-called Zelda Cycle discussions only matter when explaining why you rank a game over another in the series. Those complaints don’t really translate into review scores or overall critical reception, at best they do but only for decimals. Like if OOT is a 10 but TP and SS aren’t as good, they are still worthy of being around 9,5s because there are simply not other games like them.
That’s why I always say that people are spoiled and take a lot of things for granted when discussing Zelda. Now I haven’t played every game that tries to scratch the same itch but it’s pretty fair to say that none have really came close. I only played Okami until the first dungeon but it’s safe to say that even TP’s infamous intro blows it out of the water, I don’t expect the rest of the game to be even close, nice art though. Not only the dungeon was more of a “series of rooms with simple puzzles” than anything in WW, but the fact that battles are basically in a separate screen because every Kamiya game needs to rate your battles like DMC pretty much disqualifies it from scratching the Zelda itch. Speaking of WW, the apparently unfinished game because it has less dungeons than OOT, what are its comparables in the action-adventure genre? Well you had Starfox Adventures which was literally unfinished, and Beyond Good and Evil which had like two dungeons. Now there’s an argument for Prince of Persia in terms of quality but they aren’t on the same scale at all as they are much shorter and linear games. Speaking of Ubisoft, which were very active in the action-adventure genre during the 7th Gen, what were their games like, what was Assassin’s Creed 2, the best one, was like? Well it has way less player agency than any of the games mentioned, it completely trivializes PoP’s core gameplay concepts (combat is extremely simple and mashy when you have better equipment, platforming is mostly done with the parkour button). The “new items” don’t do much beyond enabling certain set pieces, the tombs were okay but still not even close to PoP/TR levels or a Zelda dungeon, the side content was very repetitive and the game has a whole bunch of very explicit handholding and stuff like fail states for going off the beaten path, if Zelda ever implemented what AAA games do routinely you would never hear the end of it.
That’s why I think it’s super annoying and disingenuous to blow these Zelda criticisms out of proportion. It’s also very innacurate to call Zelda a “jack of all trades, master of none”. It’s like some of the people who “don’t care about Nintendo games because I have no nostalgia, they get review bias btw” don’t want to admit they have been missing out so they approach the series with the shallowest lens possible. “The game is easy, it has worse combat than stylish action games, it has more simple puzzles than dedicated puzzle games, they don’t have the stats/scale of RPGs, therefore they suck”. Again I can easily refute all of this as there are simply very few games that even try to strike Zelda’s balance. How many videogame levels are as memorable and evocative as Zelda dungeons? To me dungeon design peaked with SS’ Sky Keep and sadly I’m not seeing anything that scratches the same itch, hopefully TOTK drops shrines and has better dungeons
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wont comment an all points you make (since i agree with many). (in the end i rambled on...)
Rankings: i don't care, and review scores where inflated for a while during that generation.
SS sales where abysmal, and the remaster is more in line with general discourse.
TP was still rather linear and handholding (not to the extend stuff like GoW is), and i wont argue about who peaked at the maximum, SS was clearly over the line in handholding for most people (general reception outside of reviews, sales, legacy). Is GoW worse? probably. But if a meal is to burnt to be salvageable, then why should i care if the other one is 5% more burned.
Zelda style games are not easy, lets clarify that. You don't work on a core formula and then build a game around it, every piece of content needs to be handcrafted and designed around new mechanics and their implications. With that sad, it often is easy to see where those games could have gone further, explored more, etc. ALTTP MM and TP (even if i don't really like TP that much) seem like the most fleshed out variants of their variations/interpretations. But there are countless variants people could conceptually think of, and since those games are so hard to make good, you can only do so many of those variations/ideas.
Here we come to the problem: fleshing the concept out so that it is "feature complete" takes time (or in majoras case lightning in a bottle). Risking to much by trying more out there styles, mechanics, changes can go really wrong (in -> not enough mass appeal to sell enough)
Zelda (and to a degree Pokemon) are series where the core concept just by itself inspires endless ideas. Compared to what it "could be" is always a problem with those.
And since im rambling ... yeah, sometimes they did rush those games, the ideas they tried did not work out, or they where to save. there still are not many comparative games. BotW is one of my favorite games ... i could write a book of things not that great, some bad, some that could have expanded massively, and some new directions it could take. But implementing all of that? yeah, that is a different story. With many other major games i just ... could not think of many things.
Jack of all trades master of none: well, yeah, kinda. it cant be the master, since then the game would have to be build around those aspects, and it would reduce its appeal. I don't see that as a bad thing. Sophistication in an area means exponentially increasing time investment for marginal improvements, and zelda games have the Appeal of being diverse, in Gameplay, in presentation, in atmospheres.
You could call it a master of merging those other trades (i see BotW as a solid base in that), and with that game i would say its a master of World design.
Talking about memorability of zelda dungeons...theming or mechanically? many games have really memorable places. TP is lauded for its dungeons, but they are...fine as dungeons, while having great Thening. MM? All of its dungeon are almost universally better then TP dungeons. Mechanically there are not many puzzle dungeons in gaming that come close. I would mention some of the Golden Sun dungeons (depends on who you ask). But the dungeons sure are a strong point of the series.
Do general RPG dungeons count? then there would be a ton for me that comes close or goes further by theming.
With all that sad: Zelda games are great, more studios should try their take since the formula can be broadened so much, when they take away puzzle solving or player agency they can get really tedious since they aren't mechanically deep (neither combat nor build), and that's what broke SSs neck for many (and yeah, it does not spell many puzzles out, but overall every time when its not contained to a place it almost immediately guides you where and how to find the right place. They are only not universally praised because there is so much more potential there then they even can deliver.
(And SSs dungeons are good to great, but the bosses and weak and Gameplay outside of the dungeons feels worse then chores…but its the majority of the time investment)
