I wouldn't go that far, as it still got a lot of things right, I just feel it didn't quite live up to the first game.

Xenoblade easily

Earthbound was good :) Perhaps Wind Waker

While i'm a big fan of Metroid and Zelda they were never story heavy. Miyamoto stopped story games in their tracks lol

I second this. If Skyward did something right, it was the story. It was interesting, charming, full of mystery and had a great development. I'd say Majora's was pretty good as well for its uniqueness.

Skyward Sword had a great story and characters, and it really served as a motivation to keep playing. It's still my favorite Zelda game, with BOTW being #2.  The fact that there are other Nintendo games which I think have even better stories is just a testament to the fact that Nintendo and its development teams can make some really good stories when they want to.

Damn. I didn't expect this much of a response. I've really missed out on some great years of Nintendo. Hopefully they will update the Nintendo virtual library so I can catch up. Kudos everyone! This has been an interesting read.

What was your last Nintendo system, which ones have you missed?

We'll help you out and put this comment in the "it never happened" territory.

It has to be Fire Emblem Blazing Sword/Binding Blade. These are some of the best stories of any game ever.

On Xenoblade, while I liked much of the game, I didn't find the plot was particularly strong, especially compared to Xenosaga and Xenogears. My biggest beef with Xenoblade was the rigid and drawn out feeling of a lot of the plot, it wasn't very smoothed out, and it was way too chopped up at parts. This was especially evident on my second play through which I did immediately after playing XCX. To be honest, I liked XCX's story more; while there was lots of subplot, I found it WAY more interesting than the majority of XC's story - particularly the stuff from the opening segments to the Fallen Arm; although the Fallen Arm segment is my favourite bit in any Xenogame since XS3. I suppose my issue is that XCX's story felt more enjoyable most of the time, but XC had the best bit.

Mother 3: There are so many sad moments, and yet there is a sense that the world can be made better.