I have found you’ve always gotta give a game a fair go. Initially a lot of games are kinda meh…till you start getting your bearings and getting into the vibe.
Wind Waker was totally meh for me when I started. I hate toon shade as well. Reason why I didn’t play it right away when it came out. But it ended up being my fave Zelda game. Freakin ground breaking.
Another BIG example for me was this game called The Sphinx and the Mummy. That game is SHIT at the start. The art is pretty bad and the animations are not too good. BUT…at the time, we had bad weather, I had no games, so I played it. It was freakin amazing. Really cool puzzles, loads of fun. They just failed at the tutorial portion of the game.
Had kind of the same experience with Majora’s Mask. It wasn’t Wind Waker. So I was disappointed. After playing for a while…i found that game amazing.
So with that, I give every game I play a chance, till you get to the core gameplay part of the game before I make any judgement. Forget the look, nostalgia, comparing with other games…it’s all about mechanics and design. A good game is just a good game.