Monster Hunter on PS Family again.

Quite possibly the line in the game I remember the best

Sonic: Making it consistently good

Final Fantasy 9.

Give it the card game out of FF8 + Give it the limit break system out of FF7 = near perfect game.

That would be a miracle :)

They weren't in the original Zelda, which set the blue print for the entire series. I'm not going to get into whether they're fun or not (they're almost always not), but they clash with the adventure setting. Walking around an open world solving gimmick puzzles doesn't make thematic sense and is pace-breaking, even after you suspend your disbelief.

The original two Zeldas' dungeon design of labrinthine, scary, difficult, puzzle-less dungeons made far more thematic sense. I hate to beat a dead horse, but the areas in Dark Souls more closely match the spirit of dungeon design intented for the zelda series, far moreso than the puzzle focused dungeons that started since ALttP and really went overboard starting with OoT.

I mean besides muh graphics, I guess I would take a game like Pokemon and make it open world. If I was a developer that's the first thing I would do because I think it would generate a lot of money. As far as a game I would like to play, Destiny...I wanted Destiny to be so different than how it is now.

Imagine Destiny had like four locations on earth. Three locations were each devoted to a single storyline related to one of the three major factions in Destiny. You would work with characters in the faction on purpose or by accident meetings and join them as they fight off darkness and their unique situation would help shape their view and allow you to see their perspective. The fourth location would be Old Russia like in the main game, but about 5-10 the size. Then there would be the moon. The other planets I would save for DLC entirely although the vault of glass is my favorite part of the game I would even make that more complex with a bigger gorgon section. 

Burning a bush is not a puzzle. By definition, it is not a puzzle. Pushing a block one tile to open a secret door is not a puzzle, either. Again, by the definition of what a puzzle. A puzzle is a problem where all of the elements needed to solve the problem are presented to the participent in tandem with a clear set of rules, and the only missing element is the participent's mental ability to figure it out how to execute it. Think of a jigsaw puzzle. What makes it a puzzle is that you have all the peices. The puzzle comes from figuring where the peices go. In a crossword puzzle, you have all of the words in front of you. The puzzle is in finding all of the words.

Nothing in Zelda 1 is a "bad puzzle," because they are catagorically all not puzzles. When you see a wall in Zelda 1 and you can bomb it to reveal a secret room, that isn't a puzzle. You weren't presented with enough information, aka clear rules, and the challenge wasn't in executing or figuring out how to execute it. Burning bushes in Zelda 1 isn't a puzzle either. It's just a secret. You may have legitimate greivances over how obtuse those secrets are, a deliberate design decision because the game is a timepiece meant to be played with a guide like Nintendo Power, but those greivances don't make those elements any more of a puzzle, or anymore relevant to what I was talking about.

The same is true for the cryptic hints you're given. They aren't puzzles. "Eastmost penninsula is the secret" isn't a puzzle, it's a hint. "Grumble Grumble" isn't a puzzle, it's a hint. The Lost Woods aren't a puzzle, either. Not in Zelda 1, anyway. In Zelda 1, a shop keeper gives you the directions explicitely. There is no way to figure out the directions otherwise. Not a puzzle. In OoT, you figure out the Lost Woods by listening to the music by the openings, something you can figure out intuitively. That's a puzzle. In BotW, you follow the direction of the flames. That's a puzzle.

Zelda is an action adventure game. That's its genre. It's incredibly easy to define its genre. Variety for variety's sake alone, which is exactly what puzzles in adventure games are, is destracting and incoherent. You can be a clone in an established genre. Zelda is as unique in its genre as many other games are in their own. Assassin's Creed has clones and it's an open world adventure game. Devil May Cry has clones and God of War has different clones, but they're both hack-n-slash action games. Zelda is no more unique than other popular series.

Also, side note - Zelda has like no riddles. A riddle is a question or statement intentionally phrased in a way that requires inginuity in finding its answer or meaning - typically presented as a game or challenge. Zelda doesn't do that, like ever. Certainly not enough to be considered a staple of the series. I guess "Grumble Grumble" or the the way you get the Song of Storms in OoT are riddles, but I think it's pretty obvious that the former is an example of technical limitations limiting character limits on text, rather than an intentional riddle. The latter is pretty explicitely a riddle, but like I said, neither the game nor the franchise has a wealth of problems like that.

Zelda has enough distinct about it to not need puzzles to be unique. This might seem crazy, but Zelda having an overworld-dungeon structure at all is unique by itself. Most open worlds, and by most I really mean virtually all of them, don't have complex dungeons at all. And to be clear, when I say dungeon, I mean any interior area where the the challenge presented is getting from point A to point B. Open world games rarely do that. Zelda does, consistently. It's paced in a way that modern games simply aren't as a result. It doesn't need puzzles to accomplish or enhance that. Puzzles, in contrast, works actively against that pacing. Avoiding traps in a dungeon makes thematic sense. Getting lost in the labyinthine structure of a dungeon makes thematic sense. Overcoming difficult obstacles in a dungeon makes thematic sense.

I won't even argue that certain puzzles, like the one in OoT's Water Temple, can't make thematic sense when their sole purpose is in enhancing one of these very specific elements. With the Water Temple, that core dungeon puzzle of changing the water levels is necessary for that temple's labrinthine nature to function and be interesting, so its existence is fine and even encouraged. It's not superfluous and it makes thematic sense. 99% of puzzles in Zelda games do not funtion under this design philosophy though, meaning 99% of puzzles in these games are superfluous and alien to the experience. They feel shoehorned in because they literally are. They completely break your forward momentum to solve a stupid little problem that has nothing to do with your goals or setting outside of set dressing just to fill some unecessary "puzzle" quota because game designers are too aftaid that their game isn't fun enough to stay interesting without those distractions.

...My definition is the definition. Solving puzzles feels nothing like finding secrets. Riddles are rare in Zelda games, but even if they weren't, they are still different. Puzzles are, in most scenarios, pace breaking busywork in an adventure game where the point is to do everything else. Secrets are the point of adventure games. When you see a cracked wall and you bomb it and you find a valuable item, that's the entire point of going on an adventure. To discover shit. Two completely different experiences. If a riddle is being used to help you discover a secret that you find in the world, give me a million riddles. If riddles are the key to traversing through an intruicate, puzzle-less dungeon laced with traps, difficult combat challenges, a labrinthine level design that's easy to get lost in, and some tention, give me a billion riddles. If a riddle is the key to solving yet another context-less puzzle in a Zelda game, leave it at the door where the puzzles should have been.

ALttP is not the first Zelda to be considered a timeless masterpiece - Zelda 1 is. You don't like it? Cool. It's still widely regarded as on of the greatest games of all time. It's not a Metroid - Super Metroid situation. It's a Super Mario Bros. - Super Mario World situation. Again, it was designed to be played with a guide. If you have a detailed map, the game is a simple game to get through and has aged just as well as ALttP. If you don't want to play it the way it was designed to be played, that's your fault.

I love puzzles. Just not in Zelda games. What they are is an intrusion on a series that wasn't designed with them and never needed them. I didn't say they were going anywhere, so pointing that out doesn't win you any debate point. I said they should, because that's what this thread is about. Naming a series you like and then saying a big thing that you would change. I would change the fact that there are an abundance of puzzles in every single major Zelda game since ALttP, because there shouldn't be.

I never said anything about the quality of puzzles in Zelda games. A few are bad, most are mediocre, but many are good. That doesn't mean they belong. My problem isn't that the puzzles aren't enjoyable in isolation. My problem is that they aren't being solved in isolation. They're being solved within the context of an action adventure and are at odds with that. In Zelda, they don't belong for the reasons I already explained in great detail.

If Zelda put all of its puzzle chops into a "The Witness-style" spin off series starring Zelda herself or something where the point isn't to explore a vast and dangerous world engaging in difficult combat, but to solve a ton of puzzles because her wisdom is being tested by the goddesses of Hyrule or something, I'd be totally down because that makes thematic sense and wouldn't be clashing with itself. The puzzles would probably be better too, because they wouldn't have to justify their existence in a setting where they clearly don't make sense by forcing context, environmental gimmicks, or complex combat challenges.

The Zelda series has had some of the best and most varied combat in any action game that isn't a hack-n-slash/souls game, but I'm not going to expect that someone who defines something by how it feels rather than what it is would appreciate the nuances of real time combat - Zelda or otherwise.