We were close to figuring out 3D Zelda with this one, but the pieces didn't quite come together.
Somewhere between the aimless sandboxes of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and Majora's Mask's rigid linearity is a Zelda game that justifies having an overworld between dungeons. This does already exist in the 2D games, but we never got closer to this execution in 3D than we did with Wind Waker.
Wind Waker came out swinging with a huge world. Unlike BotW and TotK though, it filled this world with meaningful content instead of disposable garbage. The 7x7 grid this world is laid out on hosts an island on each grid. These islands all serve a purpose. Some are home to dungeons, some to new equipment, some to upgrades, some to macguffins, and some to charts to help you find stuff.
Although you can visit the majority of these islands after completing the first dungeon, you'll find yourself without the charts needed to find the sunken treasures near them, without the equipment to meaningfully explore them, and, oftentimes, without the equipment needed to even get on these islands. In this way of having access to most of the map but needing equipment to get the most out of each location, Wind Waker, more than any other 3D Zelda, is a dead ringer for translating the gameplay of the 1986 original into 3D. The set-dressing is different now, exploring an ocean by boat instead of a landmass by foot, but they've got the most genetic material in common as 2D/3D cousins. How tedious this world is to explore is a different question though. With the wind at your back, it takes about a minute to get between islands, which is not an insignificant amount of time. Sure, there are light rings where you can tediously haul up some rupees and the odd sea-battle, but they do nothing to alleviate from the slog of travel. Or, maybe they do. This is going to depend on you and how you're feeling. Personally, I was always fine with getting the minute/s to think about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. Warping helps, but you'll have to change the direction of the wind at some point. Watching encore performances drain seconds is grueling, but we can't all be Okami where you change the wind's direction by drawing a swoosh with an analog stick.
Exploration is the meat of the game, which can be confusing to anyone who came from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask looking for a focus on dungeons. This isn't it, and the game will force you to engage with this exploration with the end-game Triforce fetch-quest. If you've been diligently exploring, following your charts to treasure (or sometimes more charts), checking out all the islands, getting all the upgrades; the Triforce quest will be an engaging side-project to all of your other side-quests. You'll have a 5,000 rupee wallet that's nearly always full, and all the pieces of the game will slide into place. If that's not you, this quest will bring your entire file to a screeching halt. It's some of the most severe punishment I've seen for playing a game 'wrong'. Sending a player, who may not have even gotten a wallet upgrade and ignored the sea charts the entire game and ignored rupees, to collect 3,000 rupees for a tedious fetch-quest is fair justification to stop playing. I didn't personally suffer this fate, but my heart goes out to those who have.
So, how's the rest of the game then? Combat is further dumbed down from Majora's Mask (Ocarina of Time, surprisingly, has the most in-depth combat of the 3D games as far as enemy-behavior/interaction go) due to the way enemies have been worked and the new options available to you. You have a context-sensitive counter-attack that can severely trivialize most encounters. It's a one-button solution to disarming and disrobing enemies, and does high damage besides. There have also been some throwaway stealth-mechanics included. 3D Zelda isn't meant to get the heart racing of people who like action-games, the combat is just here. The most clever innovation over previous 3D titles is making Link heavy with the iron boots so that the hookshot pulls items to him. They also added a leaf that can trivialize platforming by giving you a glide. If you played Ocarina or Majora, nothing here's going to surprise you.
I spent a lot of this review going over WW's open-world and its handling of it. I think it works, and I don't dock games for being cryptic. If it weren't for the aggregate tedium of WW's unskippable slowness spread across encore-performances, constantly changing the direction of the wind, terrible treasure-hauling speeds, waiting for the water to lower/rise in the 3rd dungeon, cutscenes explaining the progress you've made, unskippable cutscenes in general, NPCs droning on about nothing, grinding for spoils for various sidequests, etc, etc, etc, I'd give this a 3/5. Deducting half a star for the time-wasting.
2.5/5
Somewhere between the aimless sandboxes of Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom and Majora's Mask's rigid linearity is a Zelda game that justifies having an overworld between dungeons. This does already exist in the 2D games, but we never got closer to this execution in 3D than we did with Wind Waker.
Wind Waker came out swinging with a huge world. Unlike BotW and TotK though, it filled this world with meaningful content instead of disposable garbage. The 7x7 grid this world is laid out on hosts an island on each grid. These islands all serve a purpose. Some are home to dungeons, some to new equipment, some to upgrades, some to macguffins, and some to charts to help you find stuff.
Although you can visit the majority of these islands after completing the first dungeon, you'll find yourself without the charts needed to find the sunken treasures near them, without the equipment to meaningfully explore them, and, oftentimes, without the equipment needed to even get on these islands. In this way of having access to most of the map but needing equipment to get the most out of each location, Wind Waker, more than any other 3D Zelda, is a dead ringer for translating the gameplay of the 1986 original into 3D. The set-dressing is different now, exploring an ocean by boat instead of a landmass by foot, but they've got the most genetic material in common as 2D/3D cousins. How tedious this world is to explore is a different question though. With the wind at your back, it takes about a minute to get between islands, which is not an insignificant amount of time. Sure, there are light rings where you can tediously haul up some rupees and the odd sea-battle, but they do nothing to alleviate from the slog of travel. Or, maybe they do. This is going to depend on you and how you're feeling. Personally, I was always fine with getting the minute/s to think about where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do. Warping helps, but you'll have to change the direction of the wind at some point. Watching encore performances drain seconds is grueling, but we can't all be Okami where you change the wind's direction by drawing a swoosh with an analog stick.
Exploration is the meat of the game, which can be confusing to anyone who came from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask looking for a focus on dungeons. This isn't it, and the game will force you to engage with this exploration with the end-game Triforce fetch-quest. If you've been diligently exploring, following your charts to treasure (or sometimes more charts), checking out all the islands, getting all the upgrades; the Triforce quest will be an engaging side-project to all of your other side-quests. You'll have a 5,000 rupee wallet that's nearly always full, and all the pieces of the game will slide into place. If that's not you, this quest will bring your entire file to a screeching halt. It's some of the most severe punishment I've seen for playing a game 'wrong'. Sending a player, who may not have even gotten a wallet upgrade and ignored the sea charts the entire game and ignored rupees, to collect 3,000 rupees for a tedious fetch-quest is fair justification to stop playing. I didn't personally suffer this fate, but my heart goes out to those who have.
So, how's the rest of the game then? Combat is further dumbed down from Majora's Mask (Ocarina of Time, surprisingly, has the most in-depth combat of the 3D games as far as enemy-behavior/interaction go) due to the way enemies have been worked and the new options available to you. You have a context-sensitive counter-attack that can severely trivialize most encounters. It's a one-button solution to disarming and disrobing enemies, and does high damage besides. There have also been some throwaway stealth-mechanics included. 3D Zelda isn't meant to get the heart racing of people who like action-games, the combat is just here. The most clever innovation over previous 3D titles is making Link heavy with the iron boots so that the hookshot pulls items to him. They also added a leaf that can trivialize platforming by giving you a glide. If you played Ocarina or Majora, nothing here's going to surprise you.
I spent a lot of this review going over WW's open-world and its handling of it. I think it works, and I don't dock games for being cryptic. If it weren't for the aggregate tedium of WW's unskippable slowness spread across encore-performances, constantly changing the direction of the wind, terrible treasure-hauling speeds, waiting for the water to lower/rise in the 3rd dungeon, cutscenes explaining the progress you've made, unskippable cutscenes in general, NPCs droning on about nothing, grinding for spoils for various sidequests, etc, etc, etc, I'd give this a 3/5. Deducting half a star for the time-wasting.
2.5/5