For being one of the most ambitious Zelda games in terms of story-telling and presentation, I cannot, in good conscience, rate this higher than what I've rated it. It sucks, because I do think this is one of the most interesting Zelda titles for how dark it is and how the three-day cycle is an interesting concept in game theory. BUT, this is one of those instances where a concept sounds better in theory than in practicality. This game requires you to redo some things (whether it be dungeons or parts of side-quests) over and over again to obtain different items and/or catapult certain outcomes. Again, in theory this sounds great. But when you're playing it, it becomes tedious having to do the same thing at first multiple times.
This hurts the most with the dungeons' bosses (which the game forces you to rematch multiple times for a 100% completion). The first two bosses are all fairly easy and are fun matches to replay more than once for how simple they are. But the other two bosses require precise methods for defeating them, which are not easy, and are thus annoying to have to rematch them if you want to continue certain side quests.
The one thing that really aggravates the most, however, is the dungeons. And by dungeons, I mean the fact that in-game time plays normally while you're inside a dungeon. Zelda games are renown for having complex dungeons in which players spend hours navigating throughout and searching through every nook and cranny. Because the three-day cycle puts a time limit on the dungeons' completion, a casual player might be forced to replay a dungeon's entire section twice, maybe even thrice, as was the case for me.
I looked up all the differences that the 3DS version brought over the original version, with most of them being fine to me. One thing in particular that the 3DS version has over the original is that you can get the stone mask at the pirates' hideout right when you need it as opposed to getting it at a late-game area when it doesn't even matter at that point.
Still, the three-day cycle's tendency of forcing the player to repeat various tasks is such a massive problem to the overall game that it makes any version of the game a chore. I think this could have easily been solved by implementing a "easy mode" of sorts where the IGT runs slower than usual inside dungeons. It's not like this is too much to ask for, since there are parts of the game like inside the clock tower where this already happens. Literally, having an easy mode like this would immediately bump up the rating all the way to like four stars.
In the end, it's not a terrible game since even a bad Zelda game is still a good game, but this is for sure the most irritating one to me. Even something like Skyward Sword didn't piss me off the way this game did.
This hurts the most with the dungeons' bosses (which the game forces you to rematch multiple times for a 100% completion). The first two bosses are all fairly easy and are fun matches to replay more than once for how simple they are. But the other two bosses require precise methods for defeating them, which are not easy, and are thus annoying to have to rematch them if you want to continue certain side quests.
The one thing that really aggravates the most, however, is the dungeons. And by dungeons, I mean the fact that in-game time plays normally while you're inside a dungeon. Zelda games are renown for having complex dungeons in which players spend hours navigating throughout and searching through every nook and cranny. Because the three-day cycle puts a time limit on the dungeons' completion, a casual player might be forced to replay a dungeon's entire section twice, maybe even thrice, as was the case for me.
I looked up all the differences that the 3DS version brought over the original version, with most of them being fine to me. One thing in particular that the 3DS version has over the original is that you can get the stone mask at the pirates' hideout right when you need it as opposed to getting it at a late-game area when it doesn't even matter at that point.
Still, the three-day cycle's tendency of forcing the player to repeat various tasks is such a massive problem to the overall game that it makes any version of the game a chore. I think this could have easily been solved by implementing a "easy mode" of sorts where the IGT runs slower than usual inside dungeons. It's not like this is too much to ask for, since there are parts of the game like inside the clock tower where this already happens. Literally, having an easy mode like this would immediately bump up the rating all the way to like four stars.
In the end, it's not a terrible game since even a bad Zelda game is still a good game, but this is for sure the most irritating one to me. Even something like Skyward Sword didn't piss me off the way this game did.