What Zelda games are your favorite/least favorite?

First of all, I've never played a Zelda game newer than MM, simply because I don't own a Gamecube, Wii etc. and I don't really care for "4D DirectX 12 graphics" which require a 15GHz quadcore to play (maybe I'm too old for that) so that I'm totally satisfied with the gfx in OoT and MM.

But enough ranted about the "new age" 😉, my all-time favorite is LttP, simply because it was my first Zelda game (grew up with it), it was not too easy and not too hard. Gfx, overworld and dungeon design, storyline, music... just perfect! Personally, I found the N64 games much harder than LttP (e.g. stone tower in MM).

So my list would be

1. LttP
2. MM
3. OoT
4. LoZ
5. AoL

The thing I didn't like about AoL was the "jump and run" design in dungeons and towns, IMO that doesn't fit to Zelda . But all in all I still liked it.

I've only played those five games, so I don't know about releases for portables such as GB or DS. If I remember corrcetly, I started playing a GB version (don't know which) once but didn't like it that much (I think it was too limited).

Link to the Past is my favorite and unless they actually spice up the Zelda games somehow I don't think that will change. I didn't played any of the game boy ones besides awakening which I never really got into. My least favorite has to be Twilight Princess it just felt like every other Zelda game and not worth the hype or money.

Tobias_Daboi wrote:Why PH sucks so much ass:

• The dialogue, and humor is aimed at 10-year-olds

How old were you the first time you played Zelda?

Well, here is my rankings of the games, but it might be a bit messy, because it's the second time I wrote them up because I closed my browser by accident...

1) Link to the Past is at the top of my list, and has been since I played it the first time. It has great music, and graphics, and I personally love the overall feel of the game. Storyline it top notch, and the entire aspect of it as a whole is great.

2) Link's Awakening/Oracle of Ages. I couldn't decide which one I like better. LA had a good storyline, and I enjoyed the game as a whole. Good overworld, good dungeons, enjoyable music. Good classic Zelda game. OoA is also great. 2 awesome overworlds, and an awesome plot. Once again, good music, good clean Zelda.

3) Oracle of Seasons was quite good actually. I didn't like it quite as much as LA or OoA, but it was still a pretty good game. 1 1/2 overworlds to explore, and a very interesting storyline.

4) The Legend of Zelda is in fourth place. It's the pioneer of Zelda. It was revolutionary for the NES, and for that it had some pretty dang cool dungeons, and a very unique overworld system. I like it because it's a classic. Not too much of a challenge anymore though.

5) Ocarina of Time. First 3D Zelda game. Good long game with an interesting gameplay style. Although, I feel as though the storyline was a moderate modified LttP storyline (3 dungeons for 3 pendants in the first world, 7 crystals/medallions in the second world) Even with that, it was a very good game, and had pretty good cutscenes.

6) Twilight Princess/Wind Waker. These both hit number 6 here. I liked both gameplay styles and graphics on both of them. TP had some damn good graphics, and I loved the music. Quite epic I must say. It had an alright storyline, but it was way too linear. Couldn't explore too much on your own. Wind Waker had a very unique style. The graphics fit the game pretty good, as I don't think a OoT/TP style would have fit too well. I loved the music, especially Dragon Roost Island. It had some good dungeons, but could have used more then just the Earth Temple, and Wind Temple. Possible 3 more would have been good.

7) Majora's Mask was good. It had some good music, and very good dungeons. The time limitations kinda sucked. I hate those types of limitations. The overall concept of the game was pretty neat though. The mask system was quite a dare, but it was pulled off very well. Might good game.

8) Zelda II was pretty good. I do have to say, I am thankful Nintendo didn't take Zelda down this route. I'm glad they went back to the old style with LttP. Good long game, and ok music for it's time. Didn't much care for the overall style of it, but I still passed it, because it was an interesting game. It could have used a few more extra lives, or at least have them return after you die.

9) Four Swords Adventure was pretty good. I loved that they used LttP graphics, and music updated. I think the game was pretty good though, but it could have used a better, longer, more in depth single player storyline instead of using the same exact one as the multiplayer. I mean, they used LttP sound and graphics, they could have even made a game half the size of LttP, with the same style as it's sound and graphics donator, but alas, they didn't. Still pretty good though.

10) Minish Cap was decent, but in my opinion, way too short. It was a good game, but only having a few dungeons kind of sucked. The story was a little under the standard of other Zelda games. Here is when they started getting lax on their games...

11) Phantom Hourglass was an ok game. The graphics could have been cleaner, and made a lot better. The music was boring. Dungeons were alright, but the Temple of the Ocean King did it in for me. I refused to play through it again, as it was just boring as hell... Plus the only way to play was with the stylus and touchscreen... That should have been an option, instead of forcing us to play it like that...

12) Four Swords, didn't play much of it, but I wasn't too fond of it. I don't really have too much to go on here, but I'll give it credit though.

On another note, I think Nintendo is trying to hard to replicate the popularity of OoT. Maybe they should just give up on that, and just put their effort into making a new clean crisp Zelda that isn't meant to beat OoT. Maybe with that, they could actually pull it off.

1) A Link to the Past - Sure, this game is challenging, but that's what made it so enjoyable. It was fun, and not exceedingly hard.
2) Link's Awakening - Still play it and hack into it with GG codes once in a while

3) The Legend of Zelda - Fun and challenging when my NES isn't bugging out

Other games I've played:
The Minish Cap - Really the weakest entry I've played. Way too easy.

BS Zelda - This was good challenge to try, still need to play it.

BS Zelda/Stone Tablets - Played week 1 back when the dungeons were just fixed. Still need to get the updated versions.

Adventure of Link - I've played a little bit of it, so no comment really :shrug:

I don't really have a least favorite game, but I think I'll avoid PH.

2d: LttP
3d: Majora's Mask

Majora's Mask > Ocarina of Time.

11) Phantom Hourglass was an ok game. The graphics could have been cleaner, and made a lot better. The music was boring. Dungeons were alright, but the Temple of the Ocean King did it in for me. I refused to play through it again, as it was just boring as hell... Plus the only way to play was with the stylus and touchscreen... That should have been an option, instead of forcing us to play it like that...

Dude, I have a 3-pack of styli. You should, like, drive to Pittsburgh and get them. (even though that would be more effort than going to the store and buying them)

ShadowTiger wrote:There's a hack for the Pro Action Replay where you can use the D-Pad and the X button to do most things.

I suddenly have both a reason to get a PAR and a motivation to play Phantom Hourglass.

Adventure of Link: Nintendo did their best to cover their tracks though. Did you notice that none of the spells, newly incorporated items, or enemies were used in the later series? The only things that were kept were the Triforce of Courage, and Shadow Link

You forgot to mention the magic meter, a glove as an item, Volvagia (yes that is Barba's japanese name properly translated), Daira, (Alligator enemy in armor), Iron Knuckle (no Tartnucs. Only Irunuku.), and of COURSE the names of nearly every town in the game. And as Anthus said, the hammer. Funny thing about games... you don't really know what's in them until you've explored it all out. If you don't play through, you don't know what's in it. Unless you bother to look at Gamefaqs, maybe.

It seems parts of the plot have been rehashed as well. And I'm not talking about waking up Zelda.

Alttp > Oot > Tloz > MM > others

Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass were both too easy boring. I haven't played WW, but I expect I won't like it either.

A link to the Past in terms of 2D - It was everything I loved from the original zelda increased 10 fold and more.

Majora's Mask In terms of 3D - It was everything I loved about ocarina of time only fleshed out a lot more. I sometimes feel like OOT was the test and MM was the real game.

Also up there is Zelda 2 for me, I always am surprised when people complain about the difficulty of this game, the only annoyance to me is that it sends you back to the beginning each time you die but I mean... I've been beating this game since I was 5. I find it way easier than most Megaman games. Difficulty should not be a complaint, this is why most modern day games are for pussies. It should be if the ends justify the means. Most NES era games grew from arcade games and so brought over alot of the difficulty. I see no reason to play a game unless it is challenging me in some way.

Mostly I love the style of the world in this game though. I would love to see a new Zelda that took place in the world that Zelda 1 and 2 were situated in. I miss the weird meld of Roman and medieval architecture.

MM > OoT, OoT is a good game, but it is completely linear (unless you use glitch's and bugs to sequence break)

Ocarina of Time is still my fav. I never really got into the 2D titles, they were before my time. And, sadly, my house was a Genesis one. The N64 was my first Nintendo console, and OoT was my first Zelda title. You never really top your first Zelda game, do you?

To me, the worst in the series are the original two NES titles (which are hideously dated no matter what the die-hards say and, for me, almost unplayable as a result) and Majora's Mask, which would have been fine is not for the 3 day thing. You have an open world you want us to explore? Fine - just don't restrict us with some arbitrary time limit! Everything else was great, but when you're constantly under pressure to keep going, it takes an awful lot of the fun out of things.

LoZ and aLTtP are my favorite 'standard' Zelda games. LoZ holds a special place in my heart because it was literally the first video game I ever played, and still the only one with a built-in Master Quest.

My all-time favorite was AoL. I know most people hated it, but I thought the combination top-view RPG/side scrolling was ingenious, and the story totally original. I absolutely loved it. And to those who say it's too hard, learn some tactics. It has nothing to do with insane button-mashing. You have to time your attacks and jumps perfectly, just like any challenging Zelda game.
Majora's Mask comes in a close second to AoL, simply for the originality and dark atmosphere. It was totally Zelda, but didn't have to hold onto the old formula to make an excellent game.

The WindWaker sucked. Too much sailing. Minish Cap pissed me off, it was way too easy and the storyline was written for a four year old.

Darth Marsden wrote:Majora's Mask, which would have been fine is not for the 3 day thing. You have an open world you want us to explore? Fine - just don't restrict us with some arbitrary time limit! Everything else was great, but when you're constantly under pressure to keep going, it takes an awful lot of the fun out of things.

The whole point of the game was that you couldn't possibly complete everything within 3 days (just too many damn things going on at once). There was no arbitrary time limit. Hence the time travel.

In Majora's Mask, if you start out a new three-day cycle by playing the Inverted Song of Time, and then having some small sense of a plan for where you want to go and what you want to do, you have plenty of time to explore, or complete a dungeon, or talk to people and play games, or whatever, but you just can't do it all at once. This, to me, gives it more of a mission-based feel, where you have to say to yourself, "okay, I just want to go see what's going on in Snowhead right now, and then if I have time, I'll check out that curious spot at the swamp." Majora's Mask remains my favorite 3-D Zelda, with Wind Waker very close behind. And I certainly don't think that Twilight Princess sucked, like a lot of people claim; I just don't like it as much as some of the other titles in the series. In fact, I still like it more than Ocarina.

Seriously, though, I can't think of a time in Majora's Mask where I ran out of time to do something. You can manipulate time easily enough - slow it down, speed it up (to the next 12 hour interval), or restart it. Perhaps the most annoying part was having to recollect bombs and arrows every time you restarted time.

Pineconn wrote:Perhaps the most annoying part was having to recollect bombs and arrows every time you restarted time.

That's what money's for. After all, you collect a shit-ton of it, and this game actually gives you a reason to spend the damn stuff. One of the problems with Ocarina, Wind Waker and Twilight Princess is that you're constantly finding way more money than you ever need, since there's nothing you really need to buy. The greatest disappointments are when that chest I worked my ass off to find (or the reward for finding every single fucking skulltula) ends up being just some fucking money. Money I usually can't carry anyway. So at least in Majora's Mask you have a good reason to buy shit, and even if you don't feel like spending your hard-earned money on supplies every time you start out again, well, there's at least 300 rupees hidden around Clock Town that you can grab real quick before you make your store run.

(Plus, Majora's Mask has a mask you can wear that lets you make your face explode! <3 <3 <3)

Modus Ponens wrote:(Plus, Majora's Mask has a mask you can wear that lets you make your face explode! <3 <3 <3)

Love it. <3

And don't forget to hold up your shield and you'll take no damage.

Darth Marsden wrote:

To me, the worst in the series are the original two NES titles (which are hideously dated no matter what the die-hards say and, for me, almost unplayable as a result)

BLASPHEMY

The first Zelda game was amazing for its time, but you have to remember: You were 10 when you first played it, and it was probably your first experience of anything like it. For the younger gamers who probably played LoZ at around the same time (most often shortly after) as they played say, TP or OoT, they'd have an entirely different experience.

Because it was released in an age where the hardware simply wasn't capable of anything complicated, it's not entirely fair to judge it by the same standards as we judge modern games, but it happens anyway because that's just how we work as human beings: We base your expectations on prior events. When compared to modern titles, however, LoZ is VERY rough around the edges. Allow me to elaborate:

It's way, way too easy to get lost on the overworld. There's little to no variation in the appearance of things, so everything looks the same. You can't really navigate effectively until you basically have the entire map memorized. The "Map" is really just a solid gray square, so unless you can draw a grid of pixels in your head (Also a skill learned by many long, tedious hours) it doesn't really help, and even then it doesn't help much since it leaves you no information of where you've been or where you're going unless you have the map memorized.

You die too easily. I know video games are supposed to be "Challenging", but the problem is that you're left with absolutely nothing to do but explore, and when you die, you start right on the same place on the map! So for your first few hours of playing (Unless you have prior experience in dealing with these sort of games) you won't be doing much more than running around in those few screens surrounding the overworld, dying over and over. You finally get somewhere you haven't been before, only to be slaughtered by enemies moments later. You can't really make any progress until after you've already beaten the game several times and memorized where everything is or use a guide to "Cheat" your way through.

Again, back in those days this was pretty much all you could do, but that's not the point. Unless you were 7 getting your first Nintendo for Christmas, just staring at the screen in wonder, when you play LoZ you just sit there, wishing your console/PC would blow up and kill you just to end the misery. The game doesn't start being fun until after many, many cruel, boring hours of experience.

A post I made on another forum, regarding the original Zelda:

"I still play it from time to time&#8212;much more than I play any other Zelda game. And it has nothing to do with nostalgic value, seeing as the first time I played it was on the Gamecube collector's disk in 2003."

So yeah&#8230; I played most of the series before I played the first Zelda, and I still love it.

So basically you're a big pussy who gets lost all the time. Got it.

Revfan9 wrote:The game doesn't start being fun until after many, many cruel, boring hours of experience.

Bullshit. LoZ rocks, even today. I wouldn't mind seeing a new wiiware LoZ game based on the NES.

Modus Ponens wrote:In Majora's Mask, if you start out a new three-day cycle by playing the Inverted Song of Time, and then having some small sense of a plan for where you want to go and what you want to do, you have plenty of time to explore, or complete a dungeon, or talk to people and play games, or whatever, but you just can't do it all at once. This, to me, gives it more of a mission-based feel, where you have to say to yourself, "okay, I just want to go see what's going on in Snowhead right now, and then if I have time, I'll check out that curious spot at the swamp." Majora's Mask remains my favorite 3-D Zelda, with Wind Waker very close behind. And I certainly don't think that Twilight Princess sucked, like a lot of people claim; I just don't like it as much as some of the other titles in the series. In fact, I still like it more than Ocarina.

Yeah, MM was awesome. I haven't tried to do it, but I read that it is possible to beat MM in two 3 day cycles. The first cycle where you rid yourself of your Deku form is mandatory, but after that you can beat all 4 dungeons in only 3 days if you plan correctly. The Zelda Collector's edition player's guide has a page that tells you all the items you absolutely need to beat the game, and I think it is a very handy reference to attempting such a task. After thinking about it, I think getting the eggs in the Great Bay might be troublesome. (I think that would take a while)

Twilight Princess was good, but like you, I don't like it as much as the other 3D Zeldas. I will say, without Midna, the game would have sucked.

Beldaran wrote:BLASPHEMY

Beldaran&quot wrote:
BLASPHEMY

Yep.

This thread inspired me to go back and replay LoZ.
It was a little easier than I remembered it, but still one of the funnest games I've played.

The 2nd quest in LoZ is ok, but the 1st quest is just boring except maybe dungeon 8 and 9...

firebug wrote:Bullshit. LoZ rocks, even today. I wouldn't mind seeing a new wiiware LoZ game based on the NES.

You seem to have missed my entire point. LoZ does rock, but only after your "initiation", which isn't fun at all. (Note: The "Initiation" can come from playing other games which use relatively archaic gameplay mechanics. Basically any NES/Atari/Arcade game back then.)

I say "Archaic" because it is. In what decent game today do you find items by blowing up every part of the screen (and your bombs are limited!) or by pushing every last grave in the cemetery, because that's the only way? What other decent game today requires that you tediously trek across the map over and over again?

Revfan9 wrote:You seem to have missed my entire point. LoZ does rock, but only after your "initiation", which isn't fun at all. (Note: The "Initiation" can come from playing other games which use relatively archaic gameplay mechanics. Basically any NES/Atari/Arcade game back then.)

I say "Archaic" because it is. In what decent game today do you find items by blowing up every part of the screen (and your bombs are limited!) or by pushing every last grave in the cemetery, because that's the only way? What other decent game today requires that you tediously trek across the map over and over again?

Personally, I miss that kind exploration. Games nowadays (particularly the new Zelda games) don't make me earn anything. :shrug:

The new Zelda games often literally tell you how to get everything.

There are no secrets anymore... there is no earning anything... hell, they might as well have directions written the wall of each room telling you what you have to do in that room =/

That's bad too, yes...

Optimally, the game should "baby" you at the beginning with the first few areas, if for no other reason than to let you get used to everything. THEN open up and become more difficult later on.