The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess

Ocarina of Time with boring wolf gameplay.

The Legend of Zelda is a long-established franchise with a lot of fans, which makes it ripe for picking when its games turn out to be below-par.  Twilight Princess garnered universal critical acclaim, only GameSpot among the gaming journalism giants daring to say it was less than AAA-worthy.  My God, even GameSpot was egregiously generous.  

Hyrule Town is loaded with NPCs that wander around mindlessly.

One of the first things you'll notice is that the over-world is an empty, ugly mess, and that's putting it lightly.  The first time you leave the forest and Ordon Village, your jaw might drop at the massive field in front of you.  After riding around a bit and realizing there is literally nothing to do in that field, you'll feel the first in a long line of disappointments.  I know a lot of Twilight Princess fans argue that it contained slightly more things to do in its over-world than Ocarina of Time, which is exactly the problem.  With an over-world that is several times larger than that of Ocarina of Time, it should have SEVERAL times as much stuff to do, not just "slightly" more.  But even if we ignore the empty fields of Hyrule (why aren't there more towns??), I still have to question some of the decisions in crafting that hideous world.  The rolling hills of Ocarina of Time are replaced by ugly mountains and bottomless pits, and Hyrule in general is a convoluted piece of turd.  You can't even access the vast majority of it at will until the very end of the game.  You often have to blow up blockages with items you don't have until later, and Lake Hylia is a pain in the ass to get to as you have find tiny passages that lead all the way down (why the hell it can't be on similar elevation to Hyrule Town is beyond me, I guess they needed a reason to build that bridge over it for the horseback battle).

 Coro is the first non-evil black character in Zelda. He is referred to as "lazy" and "worthless."

And then we get to the gameplay, loaded with many boring fetch quests that ruin the wolf segments of the game.  I would say that being a wolf just isn't as epic as being a swordsman, but it turned out all right for Okami.  I guess it was just the fetch quests that screwed it up (why the Zelda developers continue to insist on putting so many of those in the games, I don't know).  Maybe it's also because the wolf combat just isn't well developed here.  There's also the matter of learning new moves as regular Link.  It's funny because I remember using the vast majority of these techniques as kid toon Link in The Wind Waker without training.  Are you telling me a cartoon ten-year-old with a giant head naturally knows how to wield his sword to its fullest potential, but a seventeen-year-old with chain-mail armor needs to learn step by step?  What kind of pussy is he?  Having to manually use your moves in Twilight Princess also makes the combat a lot choppier by comparison.  Not that it matters, because you'd seriously have to try to die to ever see the game over screen, and even then you'd probably still handily defeat any of the bosses.  Another argument from the Twilight Princess faithful: the bosses are among the best in the series because they're HUGE.  Yeah, well, I can start a fight against any of those bosses, go take a diarrhea dump, and still have enough life to win easily by the time I got back.

Be sure to say hi to Zelda. Seriously, you only see her like three times.

Let's move on to the story.  Parts of it were pretty good, most of it sucked.  Not to be cliché, but it had no heart.  You start off as a farm boy, completely original in the world of Fantasy.  You have a childhood sweetheart named Ilia, like a combination of Saria and Malon from Ocarina of Time, but she doesn't play a crucial role in the story despite being set up to do so.  She bitches Link out at the beginning over Epona, then you have to get her memory back, and then she's gone.  Zelda barely appears as well, and her encounter with Link at the final battle is actually their first meeting when both are in human form (did Nintendo even think that through?).  She's also still called "Princess" Zelda despite clearly holding the throne.  How stupid is that?  Midna is a great character, but benefits from being the best of a bad situation.  Zant was awesome as well, then he goes all Charles Manson on our asses.  How they managed to ruin such a great character, I'll never truly comprehend.  Also gotta love the location of the final battle.  A Link to the Past's is in the golden pyramid of the Dark World, Ocarina of Time's is on the ruins of Ganon's castle, The Wind Waker's is in sunken Hyrule with the oceans of the world pouring on all sides.  Twilight Princess's occurs in a field.

7/10