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Jaicee on 28 September 2023
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The_Liquid_Laser said:

Jumpin said:

I see Super Mario Bros 3 as a bit of a blend of adventure and 2D platforming. Particularly when considering how games were in the 1980s where adventure elements weren’t as pronounced as they became during the 16-bit or the 32/64-bit generations. For me, it was the fact that Super Mario Bros 3 felt like such a huge adventure that really attracted me to the game.

Although, where Metroid and Zelda appealed to me was their open worldness—basically, the freedom of how to progress. At first, building on these games always felt like a trade off against that freedom, and I found it peaked with Link to the Past… until Breath of the Wild blew that theory out of the water.

For me, NES Zelda and Metroid are the peak of these two franchises because I love the amount of freedom/autonomy they have to offer.  However, I realize that is a preference and most other people are willing to trade a little freedom to improve other aspects like graphics, game size, and QoL features.  Breath of the Wild is my second favorite Zelda because it returns to freedom/autonomy heavy gameplay.  It actually does have more freedom than Zelda 1, but I prefer the combat, challenge and items more in Zelda 1.

Personally, I'm definitely in the Super Metroid and Metroid Prime camp when it comes to my favorite entries in that franchise. Guess I'm not too creative that way. When it comes to The Legend of Zelda franchise, I kind of have three favorite mainline entries that I have a tough time choosing between: Breath of the Wild, The Wind Waker, and (nowadays) Majora's Mask, all for different reasons.

And no, fweedom is not the only thing that makes Breath of the Wild an excellent game, IMO. Freedom does not by itself make a game great to me. Everyone is doing that today. What makes Breath of the Wild stand out to me in AAA landscape wherein the transition of every franchise not belonging to one of the oldest two genres in gaming (sports sims and shooting games, which literally go back to Tennis for Two and Spacewar respectively and are still consistently among the best-selling games today, every year) into open-world adventures is the most predictable fate that I can imagine at this point is that the experience feels uniquely life-like to me. You have to eat and sleep (or at least if you want to be practical you do anyway) and your weapons can break and stuff and there aren't sci-fi arrows on the ground telling you where to go to fulfill your next major objective (although, you know, close enough sometimes). Breath of the Wild adds a layer of responsibility to the enhanced player freedom that it gives you that makes it somehow feel like an all-around maturation of the Legend of Zelda experience.

(I don't entirely get that same feeling with Tears of the Kingdom, incidentally. Something about the game's core gimmick, the landscape-manipulation abilities offered by Ultrahand, throws that formulation a bit out of balance to my mind in a way that makes the overall experience feel a bit more convenient and less convincing, less fully real and immersive. To me. I guess, as Agent Smith has put it, a certain amount of hardship is part of my definition of realism, lol. Not that I don't enjoy the sheer creativity Ultrahand affords, but if I'm having to choose between entries I mean, there's a believability threshold difference somewhere even in high-fantasy adventures like this; I mean if immersion is a factor they're aiming for. I think that's a dif that a few of us have sensed and maybe found difficult to put into words.)

The Wind Waker and Majora's Mask are entries I love primarily for their atmosphere and their particular, endearing little driving narratives in the background that have managed to reach my heart. Like I said, different reasons.