I've enjoyed my time with both games but I would still rate SotN above Guacamelee, especially when played on PSP / Vita, which makes both game look absolutely gorgeous, even in this day and age.
However, despite the lackluster story and crappy dialogue, SotN did exploration like nobody's business.
You wanna pass through spikes? Well, you can't. But maybe there's a solution somewhere so you can. Not gonna hint at it, not gonna show you where, not even gonna be gracious enough to let you know it even exists.
Can't beat the huge ass lightning boss? Well, too bad. Have fun trying over and over and over again. Unless you get that ring. What ring? There's no such thing. Maybe if you run around the castle as a wolf you'll find something, but I doubt it.
And so on, and so on, and so on. It's an insanely fun game to play WITHOUT a strategy guide for the most part and it's always so nice to just run into new things to do, new items with weird names and properties and even some extremely rare drops that you didn't even know were there.
Guacamelee, with a few exceptions, felt really linear to me. It's not that it was, or that it was bad in any way - I rate the orb levels as some of the most fun things I've ever done in a 2D game -, but it just didn't feel like it was offering you the same freedoms as SotN.
