Wind Waker Revisited (possible spoilers within)

[Dark Jaguar]

Actually, they do have quarter hearts in LA and LTTP, and even in Hyrule Fantasy. They just aren't apparent. When you get to a certain defense strength in those older games, when you take a hit sometimes your health meter doesn't change, but get a second hit of the same damage amount and boom, you loose half a heart. It does keep track of quarter heart damage, you just can't see it.

Hours played mean nothing to me. I tend to leave my games paused for hours at a time (doing other tasks around the house), so that timer doesn't really tell me how long I've spent playing the game. Anyway, as I've said, I LOVE sailing blindly for no reason (that's not sarcasm, that's actually self degrading humor, because I actually DO love doing that). However, most of my time was spent doing that and I'll assume it was the same with you. That in mind, how much time did you spend just getting the triforce pieces, and then how much actual decent gameplay was actually involved in doing that as opposed to just pausing, checking the chart, moving 3 inches closer, pausing checking the chart, and moving closer again, and finally dipping that hook into the water? Nope, not enough game length. Few dungeons is fine, Majora's Mask only had 4 proper dungeons. However, they were massive, and there were many mini-dungeons.

I'm not going to debate this though. I'll just say that while I loved the game, it's yet another example of how embarresingly short games are getting these days. Yes, I spent 40 hours in Xenosaga (which is average RPG length), but that was still an amazingly short game. Why is it that timers seem to reflect same length as other games when you just KNOW and can FEEL that the game was just plain short? Well, perhaps it's due to tasks that really don't mean anything that you must do for hours on end to artificially boost play time. Maybe the timers are fast. I know that FF6's timer at least is twice as fast as a real clock. Regardless, this game just felt short. As a result, even though I enjoyed it, I still have to say this isn't my favorite. OOT or maybe MM is my fave 3D Zelda.