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.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
