Playing it again only reaffirmed its position as my favorite Final Fantasy. I didn't 100% it, which bummed me out a little bit, but I did manage to do more in the side quest department than I've ever done before (namely the Chocobo and Mognet stuff). The ATB system is still as robust as it originally was, even with the battles being much slower than in VII and VIII. The narrative is one of my favorites ever in a video game, and I found myself appreciating it more now than I had in previous playthroughs.

WARNING: MINOR GAMEPLAY SPOILERS

The original Twilight Princess was the first Zelda game I played, and having finally beaten this version of it, I can still say it's one of my favorites in the series. Its combat is the tightest of all the 3D games (yes, even more so than Breath of the Wild's IMO), the dungeons are all solid, and Midna is probably my favorite Zelda character of all time. Exploration is also really fun, although I do wish the overworld had more content to interact with. What is there is good anyway, though.

While this remaster is undoubtedly the best overall version of the game, it has a few shortcomings that make it clear that it was the most rushed Zelda rerelease. The most egregious is probably that the game's dated visuals weren't improved upon. Nintendo did have Tantalus draw new environmental textures, which do look fine by themselves, but the character models and lighting largely seem unchanged from how they originally were and don't mesh too well with the updated textures.

There are also a couple of gameplay flaws that weren't changed. I'm not crazy about how Twilight Princess handles its item system. All the items you get are cool, sure, but they're only really useful in the dungeons you get them in before becoming obsolete for the rest of the game with few exceptions. Save for the bow, bombs, bottles, and the hookshot, you won't often find yourself reusing most of your inventory, which isn't a very rewarding feeling. I would have liked some of these items (like the spinner, ball-and-chain, and Dominion Rod), to at least have new puzzles/areas dedicated to them.

The game's magic armor was always poorly designed; instead of only draining rupees whenever the player took damage, it would gradually drain them regardless of damage and drain even more when Link got hurt, and the remaster doesn't change this for whatever reason. Considering that Nintendo previously fixed Wind Waker's magic armor in its remaster by having it drain rupees only when Link is hit, it's really weird how such an innovation didn't come through for this release.

Don't even get me started on the Miiverse stamps, which are obviously an off-shoot of the bottle things from Wind Waker HD, except more annoying since they're scattered throughout the map in the same chests that carry normal in-game items you might actually NEED. And since Miiverse doesn't exist anymore, they're now nothing but a pointless hinderance on the experience, albeit a minor one.

As nice as it would have been for these problems to be fixed (or in the case of the stamps, not being added), I'm someone who enjoys the core game enough to tolerate them. If you haven't played the game before, this is the version I'd recommend playing (if you still have a Wii U, that is), but just prepare yourself for some of these shortcomings ahead of time.