JuicieJ
SHOW ME YA MOVES!
I never questioned the legitimacy of Skyward Sword's quests. In your original post, you singled out the Gratitude Crystal side-quest claiming that discovering them were difficult and completing them took actual thought. This statement is wrong, as the population of Skyward Sword is relatively small compared to other games (meaning it won't take that long to talk to everyone, and consequently find all the side-quests) and the dowsing capabilities renders thought useless.
No, it's not wrong. Finding people in Skyloft is not, say, the toughest thing imaginable, but finding the correct people and figuring out the proper solutions requires a fair bit of thought to do. Dowsing doesn't change this. All that does is point you in the right direction. It doesn't tell you exactly where what you're looking for is. The fact that dowsing is also completely optional renders that argument useless.
There's no incentive to roam around because all of the secrets in this game are shoved down your throat as you progress through the game. Sure, you could roam around and explore Eldin Volcano all you want, but you won't find anything different until the story permits you to progress further up the volcano. This is different from previous games (i.e. The Wind Waker or Ocarina of Time) where you could explore a completely different area at whim and discover a cool secret.
I didn't mean there was absolutely no sense of adventure, but it was drastically decreased compared to other installments.
Compared to the classic installments, most definitely, but compared to almost all of the recent titles? Absolutely not. The Minish Cap is the only modern title to have more exploration than Skyward Sword. Honestly, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask don't have an incredible amount more of exploration in their areas. The only difference is the second half of OoT is somewhat non-linear and you can sequence break in MM (which does not equate to non-linearity).
Stuff is also not forced down your throat. It's well-hidden, and even when it's in plain sight, it's often out of reach and a challenge to get to. There are things literally along the way, yes, but every Zelda title has these things. People heavily overexaggerate how easy it is to find the secrets in this game. It's going to be easy for a long-time veteran, yes, but for a newcomer, it's not going to be that easy. I'm not saying Skyward Sword has an incredible amount of exploration. It doesn't. I'm a bit disappointed that there wasn't more. But the fact of the matter is there is most definitely more exploration in it than in all other modern titles bar TMC. It really irritates me that people constantly ignore this.
You're arguing that difficulty is largely subjective, yet you called out Random Person on "ignoring the overall step-up in difficulty in, well, everything." Perhaps Random Person didn't find Skyward Sword all-to-difficult, I know I certainly didn't.
Difficulty as a whole is subjective, but there are games that are just plain harder than others. Skyward Sword definitely fits this bill compared to nearly every other recent title. With the exception of Spirit Tracks, Zelda has been pathetically easy as of late. (Although The Minish Cap had a pretty decent difficulty level.) It's almost as if Nintendo wasn't trying anymore. SS bumped the difficulty back up. Not everyone is going to find it to have the exact same level of difficulty, but I honestly cannot comprehend how someone could not see how much easier other recent installments are compared to SS.
I immediately recognized the length and detail of your post. I think posts like that deserve respect and a response so I decided to reply to yours. My girlfriend is over (she doesn't like me on the computer when she's over :\) so I didn't have time to respond to multiple people. I guess I'll think twice before responding to you again?
It's not that you shouldn't respond to me. It just seemed kind of odd that I was the only one you called out.