So everyone who ever played this game knows/dreads the Triforce quest. This game has so much going for it but then there is this point where the game comes to a halt really apruptly.
Taking aside that the game was rushed and could have used a few more dungeons, this is the thing people complain about the most, by far.
Now what if I told you that I never really had a problem with it?
Here's where the design flaw comes in: Wind Waker was Nintendo's first attempt to create an open world game, the problem is that they did this while sticking to the classic dungeon/story progression. After you come to Dragonroost Island and aquire the baton the game opens up, but not without telling you where the next story related Island is. This goes on until you beat the last two dungeons.
After that the Triforce quest "starts". If you progressed through the story normally you are now hit with a brick wall of giant proportions. All that rupee-farming and sailing.
If you instead went for filling out the map and explore the Islands/do sidequests you end up with lots of the Triforce related maps and more rupees to decipher them naturally. By the time the quest "started" I had 3 pieces to get left, and it didn't take me longer than half an hour.
Obviously it was designed to pad the lenght of the game, but it also was so you explore more of the map before finishing the game. The problem is that they didn't design a way to guide the player when to do that and that you, if you play it like you played every previous Zelda game, would end up with a badly paced game.
That's also why I think BOTW handles it's general progression in an open world way better, even though the dungeons suffered from it. They are alright, but it's OK to miss them because they are not an integral part of the experience like in previous games, and I'm not sure how Nintendo coul've circumvented the issue of a normal Zelda gameplay loop and an open world like in Wind Waker.
Taking aside that the game was rushed and could have used a few more dungeons, this is the thing people complain about the most, by far.
Now what if I told you that I never really had a problem with it?
Here's where the design flaw comes in: Wind Waker was Nintendo's first attempt to create an open world game, the problem is that they did this while sticking to the classic dungeon/story progression. After you come to Dragonroost Island and aquire the baton the game opens up, but not without telling you where the next story related Island is. This goes on until you beat the last two dungeons.
After that the Triforce quest "starts". If you progressed through the story normally you are now hit with a brick wall of giant proportions. All that rupee-farming and sailing.
If you instead went for filling out the map and explore the Islands/do sidequests you end up with lots of the Triforce related maps and more rupees to decipher them naturally. By the time the quest "started" I had 3 pieces to get left, and it didn't take me longer than half an hour.
Obviously it was designed to pad the lenght of the game, but it also was so you explore more of the map before finishing the game. The problem is that they didn't design a way to guide the player when to do that and that you, if you play it like you played every previous Zelda game, would end up with a badly paced game.
That's also why I think BOTW handles it's general progression in an open world way better, even though the dungeons suffered from it. They are alright, but it's OK to miss them because they are not an integral part of the experience like in previous games, and I'm not sure how Nintendo coul've circumvented the issue of a normal Zelda gameplay loop and an open world like in Wind Waker.