That's basically how I feel about it. I see BotW as a survival/sandbox game with Zelda characters, otherwise its structure barely resembles a Zelda game to me. I also agree completely with your second point, and it's something that I was going to make a thread about the other day but ultimately decided not to. 3D Zelda games have a very specific gameplay structure and there's no other franchise that's equivalent to it. Sure, games like Beyond Good and Evil/Okami/Darksiders came close, but it's just not the same.

Final Fantasy

Assassin's Creed I guess. The series just began to burn me out after Brotherhood, and then Assassin's Creed III happened, and it was utterly average. Haven't care for the series since.

Mario Party since the DS version and Pokemon. Pokemon Ranger and Mystery Dungeon due to their lack of quality in their recent entries (though I would love to see a new Ranger and Mystery Dungeon on the Switch) and I lost intrest in the major Pokemon games since X/Y because it doesn't feel that fluid anymore, I guess.

I'm the opposite on Zelda. Breath of the Wild is the first one since Majora's Mask that I've enjoyed, and the first monumental release since Ocarina of Time. Twilight Princess was a big game, but it didn't seem like a huge cornerstone gamechanging game like Ocarina or Breadth of the Wild.

In terms of franchises. Final Fantasy, FF9 seemed too generic and not sci-fi enough for the franchise. The characters were very un-Final Fantasy like, they were more generic JRPG-fare. I liked FFX, but it seemed to simplify gameplay further by limiting the world to a big linear path, forgivable because of the decent battle system. I think the game that solidified my new dislike for FF was FF12, which was atrociously designed, it was a big desolate world with nothing fun to do in it. Plus they started sticking online games in the main franchise. FF13 was another bust, much better than 12, but still not good enough. I had no interest to play 14 or 15.

Another is Mario. While I loved all the 2D games up to SMW, I wasn't a big fan of 64. SM64 was alright, but it felt smaller and more repetitive than world. I despised Super Mario Sunshine, that game was boring, full of gimmickry, and repetitive as all hell.  Though Nintendo seemed to back to form with SMG1 and 2, at the time, arguably the two best games Nintendo had ever released. Then it was all NSMB and SM3D Land and World, which were alright, but WAY below the Galaxy bar. Now with Super Mario Odyssey they are saying it is like Super Mario Sunshine when what they SHOULD be doing is making the successor to Super Mario Galaxy with tons of variety and excellent rich level design instead of the shallow and repetitive level design of Sunshine. I hope Nintendo is not serious with this, and rather this is just a case of bad product messaging by some dumbass in the PR department. We need another 9.7 Mario game like Galaxy, not a 7.9 game like Sunshine.

Sure. Soul Edge/Calibur. Was a huge fan up until SCIII, which was still an alright game, but it made no sense to be PS2 exclusive after SCII had been so successful as a multi-console release. The franchise totally lost me with SCIV, pointlessly stuffing Star Wars characters into an arcane sword fighter, just to try and sell more copies.

I used to also be a big fan of the Need for Speed games, all the way up through Hot Pursuit II. Shortly after that they went "street racer", copying the Fast and Furious craze, and at that point most of the releases thereafter just kind of turned me off.

Likewise, while not AS into it as I was NFS, I used to be into the Ridge Racer series, at least up through RR4, but I bought RR7 upon first getting a PS3, and it honestly kind of sucked. I got rid of my copy.

Tekken I have a love/hate relationship with. Tekken 1-3 were great, 4 was hot garbage, 5 (especially the PS2 release) was brilliant. Tekken 6 was one of the main reasons I got a PS3 in the first place, and it was a massive let-down. I was so disappointed with it, in fact, that I traded it back into Gamestop a week after getting it, towards a pre-order for NSMB Wii (a much more worthwhile purchase). My roommate recently got Tekken 7, and so I've been checking it out a bit. Better than 6, though I miss a lot of the older characters. Utlimately, I'd say it's solid, but unspectacular. The series really kind of peaked with 5.

Final Fantasy is another major culprit. FF1 on NES was one of the first RPGs I ever played as a kid, and I actually beat it even though it was hard as nails. FF Mystic Quest, while not part of the main series, was one of my first new games after I finally got a SNES. FFII (IV), borrowed from a friend, quickly became my fav. RPG of all time, and FFIII (VI) was likewise pretty amazing. Upon later playing FFV on PS1, I liked that one as well, though not as much as IV and VI. But honestly, the series started losing me with the Playstation releases. FFVII, with it's anime aesthetics and setting, really didn't appeal. FFVIII moreso. FFIX was an okay attempt at "old school", and I appreciated what they were going for, but I never got super into it. FFX just completely lost me, and none of them since have held any appeal, which sucks, because I really loved the old school games.

It pains me to say so, but technically I have to also include Star Fox. I love Star Fox 64, it's one of my favorite games of all time, and I've been waiting for a PROPER follow up ever since. And all I've gotten, time after time, are releases ruined by ill-conceived gimmicks. At this point, I've kind of given up hope of ever getting a true successor to SF64, in THAT style, gimmick-free.

It's kind of a moot point, but Mega Man also lost me somewhere along the way. MM2 is in my Top 3 all time, and I like all of the classic NES MM games (and V on GB). The first few MMX games are also pretty solid, though I prefer the classic series. But I never cared for MM7 and 8, as I didn't care for the cutesy direction they took the series in. It was almost as if they wanted to differentiate it from the "darker" X series, so they went hard in the opposite direction. Either way, even though MM9 and 10 were a neat throwback, with all of the myriad of spin-off series before the franchise finally shit itself to death, I just lost complete interest.

The same could somewhat be said for Castlevania. Super CV4 and Symphony of the Night are two of my top favorites of all time. I like most of the classic CV games, including the Game Boy entries. I even appreciated what they tried to do with the N64 games, even though they played like clunky pieces of trash. I was also eager for the release of the cancelled Dreamcast game that was to star Sonia Belmont, I was actually going to get a DC mainly for that game. That's how into CV I was at one point in life. The handheld releases mostly held up through the early 2000s at least. But the 3D series lost me with Lament of Innocence. I really liked the idea of Sonia Belmont as the first in the family line, and then "IGA" had to go and decide that she wasn't canon, and that this tool-box he came up with, Leon, was instead. That game was crap, mainly because of the story. And the 3D games just kind of died for me after that. Lords of Shadow is barely worth mentioning, because it's not Castlevania. But yeah, another classic series that is now basically RIP for good reason.




I didn't care for the generic, nameless, no-Adventure-Mode having Wii U Smash Bros. game, but I'm willing to see what the next iteration might be before turning my back on the franchise. Same with Pikmin, with 3 being a colossal disappointment to me. I'll see what they do with 4, if it actually happens, but I have a bad feeling they'll likely continue the same bad elements from 3. There are probably others, but those mentioned above are the major examples for me.

I agree that basic gameplay has improve, although I don't think it's a significant improvement. At its core, it's still about mashing two different hit buttons. Sure, now there's multiple weapons with elements, some special attacks, and some co-op attacks with your bodyguard/another player, but it's still largely the same. I guess how big of an improvement it feels like is subjective though. Personally I always felt the tactical side of the series was one of its biggest hooks though, so the battle system would have to become excellent instead of slightly better for me to forget the loss of tactical elements.

I sure hope there's going to be more tactical elements with all the open world stuff! I'm still worried it's going to introduce even more grinding, but at the same time, open world has an insane amount of potential for tactical elements. One thing I'm really sad about is the loss of split-screen co-op, because that's also been one of the biggest points of the series for me. Even in the last year, I've played dozens of hours of DW8 with my girlfriend.

At the first half of May (can't remember the exact date), when some details about the game were actually released. To be precise, there's going to be no multiplayer, online or offline, co-op or otherwise. I think open world was cited as the reason: Would be difficult to pull off multiplayer while working on the team's first open world game, which itself should be a pretty big challenge.

Metroid. Prime 2 damaged it. Prime 3 destroyed it.

BOTW is the best game I've played in a very long time. So I'll have to disagree with u on that one.

Easy. Fire Emblem.

Radiant Dawn is one of my favorite games of all time, Path of Radiance is really high too. I preordered Awakening and bought the 3DS (limited edition) only for this game. Biggest disappointment ever, the casual/dating sim turn the series took killed it for me. It barely even deserves the "TRPG" name now, and let's not talk about the economical model...