Wow, criticize Zelda and people really start to come out of the woodwork ;-D
I thought the sailing part of the game was a brilliant concept, but it was lacklustre in execution. My reasons:
- sailing is cool for a while, but at the end of the game when you're just trying to clean things up (e.g. get all the treasure chests, go to the same islands over and over to complete side quests, etc.) it's an inconvenience.
- the enemies out on the open ocean were annoying. How is fighting the sharks "fun"? It was a pain in the ass because all I wanted to do was have my boat go to the next island unimpeded.
- beyond killing Big Octos (and the occasional submarine/cannon tower), there really wasn't anything constructive to do on the open water; hence the 3-minute sail-a-thons from island to island. In other Zelda games there was always something to do while travelling, such as getting more gems (not just those dumb floating barrel games), killing monsters, burning bushes, etc.
- am I the only that thought that fighting anything with the cannonball was irritating? When it pops out of your boat it always points in the same direction, so you have to reposition it if the enemy isn't over there, then you fire...aaugh. Such a pain.
I really could have done with less open water and bigger islands. Or maybe faster sailing...anything to get rid of the "dead time" created by sailing around the map.
I thought that the dungeons and bosses were really well-done. They were easy, but I don't really look to the Zelda series for a high level of difficulty anyways (there hasn't been any level of challenge to the series since it went 3-D...as me and my friends like to say, all you have to do now with Zelda games is "put your time in" to beat them). I'm more there for the adventure and gameplay experience.
silks