The Legend Of Zelda: Wind Waker had huge mixed reactions both by critics and players themselfs.
For example, when it was announced, many people loved and hated the art style. People found it innovative and amazing, others found it unrealistic and bad. Biggest part was the cel-shading graphic style which was introduced. For some reason, the cel-shaded versions kinda got split-up into a sub series as seen on the DS. Nintendo sees the cel-shaded and realistic link as two whole different versions, and even made them seperate characters in SSBB.
I particularly enjoyed it when I first bought it. I loved exploring all the islands scattered across the high seas. Many people were arguing travelling by sea was tedious and boring, and just was way too slow until you got the (Slight spoiler alert)wind teleport skills from the red sea frog.(Slight spoiler alert)
I mostly liked the style of dungeon crawling. More than Twilight Princess, although less than Link DX. The fighting style perfectly fit with the items you found around. I also liked how I could just jump on my boat and sail to new islands and get a 100% map completion.
Speaking of 100% completion, there wasn't much to do really next to the main quest. And I mean BARELY anything at all. The only things to do were small minigames which included cannon aiming, luck guessing and small useless items (like a camera, enemy detail mask, etc.)
Even though the story wasn't much of a deal, it still made some big twists, especially in the timeline of the zelda games. Most people brought this in discussion(spoiler alert)since ganon made hyrule sink to the bottom of the seas, and thought it would be gamebreaking for the timeline.(/spoiler alert) I have to agree the last boss fight was extremely dissapointing. I don't know about you people, but I was expecting WAY more of a fight. The combat felt a bit awkward in my opinion. Although I like the abstract effects when you hit enemies and how the music reacts to each hit, the sword felt a bit weak, and enemies tend to fly around a lot.
But the main thing which bothered me, was the game wasn't actually completely finished when it neared it's release date. That's right, it was actually supposed to become a way larger (and longer) game including more dungeons, more influence of the weather and more to do on the waters. This hugely dissapointed me because the game actually does feel kinda unfinished if you look at it. It just kind of felt empty.
Tell me what you think of this game.