5 unpopular opinions about Nintendo and hot takes
Posted on July 25, 2026 by Ethan in Features, Switch, Switch 2
This is definitely going to go over well! Everyone has their opinions on Nintendo games, of course, but if you’re active within the Nintendo community, you often see takes and opinions that are widely regarded as “correct”. Things like Super Mario Galaxy being the best 3D Mario game, Ultimate being the best Smash Bros., and Sticker Star being the worst Paper Mario – there’s no such thing as an objectively correct opinion, of course, and not everyone agrees with these takes by any means – but within online spaces, they seem to be the most common opinions. Or at least the loudest ones!
Likewise, I personally have a whole bunch of game opinions that the majority of Nintendo fans might not agree with, so I’ve decided to list them all out here to see what everyone thinks. I’m fully aware that I’m not on the right side of history with some of these takes, but if you have any rare opinions of your own regarding Nintendo or any of its games, feel free to leave them below while you’re here. And if you happen to agree with any of mine, I’d be curious to know as well! There are spoilers for Tears of the Kingdom and Mario & Luigi: Brothership here, by the way, so keep that in mind in case you’re trying to avoid them.
Tears of the Kingdom is “good”, not “great”
One of my opinions that many don’t seem to agree with is that Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is a good game, but not a great one. As we all know, Breath of the Wild revolutionized gaming for years to come. That iconic moment where Link exits the Shrine of Resurrection and looks at the Great Plateau can’t be beat – and many games afterward tried to capture that exact same feeling. We’ve even seen this within Nintendo itself, with Pokemon Legends: Arceus having a very similar vibe especially in the Obsidian Fieldlands.
It makes sense, then, that the Zelda developers would want to follow up on Breath of the Wild with an adventure of an even greater scale. And in many ways, Tears of the Kingdom lives up to that standard. Its greatest strength is its versatility: Ultrahand, Fuse, Ascend, and Rewind completely change the game, and open up so many ways to solve puzzles, defeat enemies, and traverse the land. It can’t be understated how technically impressive these abilities are, especially for being on the Nintendo Switch with its fairly limited processing power compared to its competition. But at the same time, it feels like Tears of the Kingdom could have done more.
For me, my main gripes with the game are its story and how little Hyrule has changed compared to Breath of the Wild. This part isn’t a hot take at all, but the sky islands and the depths were both kind of disappointing. Sky islands were heavily advertised in the game’s marketing trailers, and many players (myself included) thought they would play a bigger role in the final game. What we wound up with were islands that eventually start blending together, as a majority of them have very similar features, biomes, and enemies. The depths weren’t advertised in pre-release marketing at all, but they’re another huge, expansive layer to explore… with not much to do. Sure, there are enemies and Zonaite deposits, plus hidden armor chests and such, but they’re spread far and few between. It makes perfect sense as to why the depths are dark, but eventually exploring that darkness for 100% completion grows tiresome.
That’s exactly my issue with Tears of the Kingdom – it just grows tiresome, despite having series highlights like the Colgera fight and the final battle. I feel like Breath of the Wild’s world was more fun to explore, both because it was all-new at the time and because of the Master Cycle Zero later on, which is absent from Tears of the Kingdom. You can just make Zonai devices to explore instead, but they’re slower, use more re
Then there’s the story, which is my biggest issue with the game. I do think the existence of Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment makes Tears of the Kingdom’s story better, but Tears of the Kingdom in a vacuum has so many problems. The memories can be viewed out of order, for one, and once again all of the game’s interesting story beats happened in the past and you don’t get to play through them yourself. I think many of us also thought Zelda was going to play a more active role in the story, and she technically does, but not in a way where she’s playable or even physically present for most of the plot.
Then you have all sorts of hand-waves: Zelda transforms from a dragon back into a human because it’s convenient for the plot and happened out of some unclear miracle, the Divine Beasts disappeared into thin air because it was convenient for the plot, and so on. If Zelda remained a dragon at the end of the game, it’d be extremely bittersweet, and I’m not saying Link and Zelda don’t deserve a happily ever after. But when all of the game’s consequences are just conveniently reversed, it winds up feeling cheap. Why were those consequences there in the first place, then?
To be clear, I still think Tears of the Kingdom is a good game. It’s got plenty of great moments, but I think it’s got much more apparent flaws than its predecessor. Breath of the Wild’s story wasn’t particularly spectacular either, but it did make perfect sense and the consequences the characters faced (the Champions) did remain permanent. And although Tears of the Kingdom does a lot new with its abilities, it doesn’t really do anything new with its world.
For the next Zelda game, I’m hoping that Link will adventure somewhere other than Hyrule. As someone who’s 100 percent completed Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom (Koroks and all), I think it’s time for a change of scenery!
Mario & Luigi: Brothership has many weaknesses
Mario & Luigi: Brothership’s release in 2024 was a great moment for the Mario & Luigi series. After AlphaDream went bankrupt in 2019, many fans thought that the franchise was done for good. Fortunately, Acquire developed Mario & Luigi: Brothership and released it in 2024 as the first truly 3D entry in the franchise. This game was a good start for Acquire, considering they hadn’t developed a Mario & Luigi game before. But in many ways, I think it’s deeply flawed in a way that patches can’t fix.
I wrote more about this previously, so you can check that out hereif you’re interested. To summarize, though, Brothership’s pacing is about as flawed as it can possibly be. Progress moves extremely slowly, there’s tons of dialogue and cutscenes to sit through, and the game is stuffed full of padding and ultimately feels repetitive and sometimes even boring. It takes forever to get hammers and Bros. Attacks, the side quests are numerous and of little substance, and the game’s performance is shockingly poor on a standard Nintendo Switch especially in the endgame. I’ve 100 percent completed the game myself, and I can confidently say that I most likely will never revisit this game at any point in the future.
That doesn’t mean Brothership is all bad, though. I absolutely love its art style, for one. Mario and Luigi are extremely expressive and well-animated, and the characters and environments are striking and colorful. Most of all, though, I really like the game’s true final boss and the story arc around him. In-game, this section is full of padding and backtracking that really ruins several key moments, but I think Brothership had a ton of potential that went unfulfilled in many ways. Still, it’s a good first start for Acquire, and I’m looking forward to seeing what they do next with this series.
The Wind Waker loves to waste the player’s time
I’m very aware that most people disagree with me here, but I’ll do my best to explain myself. I promise I’m not being a hater for no reason!
I replayed the GameCube version of The Wind Waker on Nintendo Switch Online a little while back, and fully finished it – yes, even the figurines. That might be part of why my opinion on this game has soured, and I think for those playing The Wind Waker casually (and completely ignoring completion percent), this would be a much better experience.
In many ways, The Wind Waker on GameCube is very content to waste the player’s time. When you really look at the way the world is designed, a lot of it is explicitly designed to waste time – sailing in particular. The GameCube version doesn’t have a Swift Sail, which in and of itself makes traveling between islands take much, much longer. Not to mention, your boat only reaches its max speed if the wind is blowing against the sail. If it’s not, you have to stop and play a Wind Waker song to change the wind’s direction. You’ll be playing this song hundreds of times if you’re going for 100 percent completion, and the boat is generally extremely finicky, especially when it comes to pulling up treasure chests from underwater. In The Wind Waker HD, the Swift Sail not only increases your boat’s speed, but it also ensures the wind is always in your favor without having to play the song.
To add to this, there are very few unique landmasses in the game. You have Windfall Island, Outset Island, Dragon Roost Island, and the Forest Haven, and that’s about it in terms of major areas. The other islands are small and don’t take very long to explore, so you’ll be spending more time sailing than actually exploring on land.
If you look closely, you can tell The Wind Waker was very possibly rushed to meet a release deadline – the Triforce Quest in particular is especially egregious in the GameCube version, but that specific opinion isn’t a hot take. This feeling of being rushed extends to more than just the Triforce quest, though. As I wrote in my review of the game on Nintendo Switch Online, you receive the Din’s Pearl and Farore’s Pearl after completing their two respective dungeons. But you’re given the Nayru’s Pearl for free, and there’s no water dungeon associated with it. Maybe there was supposed to be one, and it was cut from the final game, but who knows.
I should mention, The Wind Waker’s combat and especially its art style have actually aged extremely well. When I say its gameplay hasn’t aged well, I mostly mean the way it treats the player and wastes their time hasn’t aged well. The combat is still very impressive by Zelda standards, so the raw gameplay is good – it’s just the way that everything is designed to take a long time. And none of this is even mentioning the side content, which has many problems of its own. Still, there’s a lot to love about The Wind Waker, and I don’t think it’s a bad game in the slightest. I just think people who defend its every flaw maybe haven’t played it recently. Or maybe I’m just not nostalgic to it. Who knows! Everyone has the right to their own opinion either way.
Kirby does have bad games
I’m one of the biggest Kirby fans there is, and I love almost every single game in the Kirby series. But there’s a perception online that Kirby has no bad games, and I don’t think that’s quite true. Two of them come to mind: Kirby Battle Royale and Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble.
Kirby Battle Royale is the first kind-of 3D game in the series, in that it’s the first one sold at full retail price. But it’s not a main series game – it’s a multiplayer-focused one. I gave this one a fair shot, but it honestly barely held my attention – which is saying something, considering I’ve 100 percent completed almost every Kirby game I’ve played.
I also played through Kirby Tilt ‘n’ Tumble on Nintendo Switch Online, and while it’s got a neat gimmick, it grows old very quickly. The game is actually quite difficult, and precision platforming is really tough with the tilt controls. Additionally, there are a bunch of reused bosses.
These are the only two Kirby games that I’d truly consider “bad”, and even then, they’re nowhere close to the worst games ever or anything like that. I see some fans say Kirby’s Toy Box is the worst Kirby game, but I haven’t played that one due to how obscure it is. It’s only on the Satellaview!
Paper Mario: Color Splash isn’t that bad
Moving on to more positive takes, I actually feel like this might be the most contested opinion on this list. Now, I’m not saying Paper Mario: Color Splash is the best Paper Mario – it’s nowhere close. But the public perception around it is quite warped. This is actually one of my favorite Wii U games that’s still exclusive to the console. That said, there are only like five first-party original Wii U games that weren’t ported to Nintendo Switch, so maybe that’s not saying much.
It’s true: there’s no character variety, the levels are still connected via a world map, and the card system is crummy and needlessly complicated. That battle system is probably why Color Splash is never leaving the Wii U – it was made for the console’s dual-screen layout. Color Splash is one of the worst-performing Mario games of all time, as it sold fewer than one million copies on Wii U for various reasons. As a result, most people who don’t like the game have probably never even played it.
In my opinion, Color Splash has some of the best writing in the series – that doesn’t mean it has a good story, because it doesn’t, but the actual NPC dialogue is always silly and interesting to read without being over the top – the game doesn’t take itself too seriously and almost every single line has some kind of joke in it. And many of them actually do land – they’re told in a meta-awareness manner, but not in a way that didn’t age well around ten years later. This game is completely carried by its writing – if all the characters spoke in dry, expressionless sentences, there really wouldn’t be much left. If you’ve never played Color Splash, give it a shot – it’s not a good Paper Mario game, but in some ways it’s still a good game.
That concludes my list of Nintendo hot takes. Again, I don’t want to present any of these as “definitive” or “correct” opinions – I’m aware most will disagree with these, and that’s totally fine.
What are some of your hottest Nintendo takes? Feel free to leave them down in the comments below.
