Or that made ALBW their GOTY 2013.

Face it: this is a big waste of time that nobody asked for and reviews are confirming.

If most of the complaints and lower score is due to the single player experience I'm fine with it.
I'm going to be playing it with two of my friends anyway so that's great.

It might not deserve a 5 on a general scale (which is what the meta score represents), but it getting a 5 from an individual in earnest wouldn't be particularly remarkable. It's the primary reason people should use metacritic as a reference point rather than a personal quality indicator. Even among critically acclaimed games we still tend to see a decent amount of variance.

I feel like those 9/10 reviews and such really should have taken into account the fact that the single player experience is lacking and a huge waste of time. I mean, sure, the game is multiplayer focused, but the single player is still a significant portion of the available modes of play. I appreciate that it is meant to be multiplayer focused, but including lacking content should affect the overall package rather than just kind of being glossed over in the final review score.

I feel like some sites are just rating it high because Zelda is attached to the title, while other sites are overreacting and giving it horribly low scores. From what I've read about the game, from the (honestly kind of dumb) story to the somewhat lacking dungeon design, I think a seven sounds about right. It may be a fun multiplayer experience if you have friends to play with, but if you don't know people to play with or simply plan on going it alone, you should pass on the title.

Either way I don't expect the game to sell all that well. It will still be passable, I'm sure, but that's about it.

Up to 75, is on green now, hopefully it will reach Hyrule Warriors score, that was a a very nice spin off and this looks the same. For what i played i think the game deserves t be on the low 80s, but the actual score is not that bad.

Not even Gamespot agrees with that review. All the other reviewers there disagree with it. Gamespot is generally spot on with their scores.

I can tell you're a Zelda fan by the fact that you're complaining about the newest game in the series. 

Whether YOU wanted it or not, I've seen requests for years by the Four Swords series' fans for a third multiplayer game. Nobody really asked for it to be one or three players only (seriously, a two player option would have been nice), but let's not let your clear bias affect people who might like the game. I'm sure it's about as enjoyable as FS/FSA, which means very for some and not at all for others. So, the same as pretty much every Zelda game!

Better score than I expected

There is something similar, you can actually play with only one friend, and then the third one is an online stranger.

Also is nice the fact that one or two friends can play with you without having the game, and everything except the colosseum (that is not a big deal) is unlocked to play, so finding 1 or 2 friends with a 3ds to play the whole game is not very hard, certainly not as hard as finding 4 friends with a GBA to play in your GC to Four Swords. And I actually had a great time playing alone with random users, sometimes it can be a pain in the ass (some people is pretty bad) but overall it was fun.

I wasn't really expecting a terribly high score on this to begin with, but I knew it wasn't a bad game either early on. I had hands-on experience with it back in June and it was much better than I thought.