Rank the LOZ Series
Posted: Tue Sep 18, 2012 3:36 am
There are like ten thousand Zelda games. WE MUST PUT THEM IN ORDER. So tell me what order they should be in, or at least list your top five.
For me, they go:
Link's Awakening is a beautiful game. It feels like a dream long before you ever realize the true nature of Koholint Island. It's evocative and emotional. And, hands down, it's got the best music of the series.
ALttP is the grand opus. It's visually rich and full of grand sound. It established much of the expanded mythos of the game, as well as many of the recurring characters and themes. As an early SNES game, it was a showcase for the capabilities of the console, so all the stops were out.
Wind Waker was the most explicit about the reincarnative struggles of the Triforce bearers, if a little ham-handed in that respect. It really bothered me that the big reveal of Zelda's identity turned her from a smirking swashbuckler into a hand-clasping inanimate object with a heavy dose of eyeshadow. But Link's childlike heroism appealed to me, and characters like Medli made the whole thing worthwhile. Others disliked sailing, but I found it enjoyable for the most part, and spending half the game on a vast ocean made the plot very visceral as it unfolded. I enjoyed the smoothness and intuitiveness of the controls, and the puzzles felt genuinely satisfying. The final battle was the best epic three-part Ganon clash of the series, and that last blow.
Twilight Princess was in many ways an apology for Ocarina of Time (more on that in a minute). It makes no great breakthroughs visually or musically, and it has few new mechanics to offer, but it has the most finely balanced pacing of the series. The descent of twilight felt like an actual hardship being endured by the tertiary characters. Its slow roll over Hyrule gave the game a sense of slowly-building urgency. There are plenty of high-tension overworld moments to break things up, such as the cart chase and the two jousts with King Bulblin. And, above all else, there's Midna, the single best character in the entire series.
Okay, this is gonna get me banned, but:
I hate Ocarina of Time.
I hated the gameplay, the plot, the environments, the character designs, and the writing. I hated Link's yelpy voice. I hated the big empty spaces. I hated that it broke the timeline and that it was intended to replace A Link to the Past. The controls were clunky. It felt to me that the developers had written tomes' worth of background notes and plot, but, satisfied with the fact that they had finished writing it, failed to let the rest of us in on their work, leaving us with a game full of unexplored characters and undeveloped conflicts. The problems plaguing Hyrule after Ganon's rise seemed to mainly be confined to bad weather and "don't hang out near the fountain in Castle Town". I ground my way through it because it was a Zelda game and therefore was required. By the end - in a crazy reversal of everyone else's reality - the only thing I really liked was Navi. Maybe because I was interpreting her character through the lens of Epheremelda from the Nintendo Power comics.
I tried, I really tried, to play Majora's Mask. It made me physically ill. I can't give it a proper rating because I haven't played more than an hour's worth of the game (most of which, it seemed, was the opening cutscene sequence).
For me, they go:
- Link's Awakening
- A Link to the Past
- Twilight Princess
- The Wind Waker
- The Legend of Zelda
- The Adventure of Link
- Phantom Hourglass
- Ocarina of Time
- Majora's Mask
Link's Awakening is a beautiful game. It feels like a dream long before you ever realize the true nature of Koholint Island. It's evocative and emotional. And, hands down, it's got the best music of the series.
ALttP is the grand opus. It's visually rich and full of grand sound. It established much of the expanded mythos of the game, as well as many of the recurring characters and themes. As an early SNES game, it was a showcase for the capabilities of the console, so all the stops were out.
Wind Waker was the most explicit about the reincarnative struggles of the Triforce bearers, if a little ham-handed in that respect. It really bothered me that the big reveal of Zelda's identity turned her from a smirking swashbuckler into a hand-clasping inanimate object with a heavy dose of eyeshadow. But Link's childlike heroism appealed to me, and characters like Medli made the whole thing worthwhile. Others disliked sailing, but I found it enjoyable for the most part, and spending half the game on a vast ocean made the plot very visceral as it unfolded. I enjoyed the smoothness and intuitiveness of the controls, and the puzzles felt genuinely satisfying. The final battle was the best epic three-part Ganon clash of the series, and that last blow.
Twilight Princess was in many ways an apology for Ocarina of Time (more on that in a minute). It makes no great breakthroughs visually or musically, and it has few new mechanics to offer, but it has the most finely balanced pacing of the series. The descent of twilight felt like an actual hardship being endured by the tertiary characters. Its slow roll over Hyrule gave the game a sense of slowly-building urgency. There are plenty of high-tension overworld moments to break things up, such as the cart chase and the two jousts with King Bulblin. And, above all else, there's Midna, the single best character in the entire series.
Okay, this is gonna get me banned, but:
I hate Ocarina of Time.
I hated the gameplay, the plot, the environments, the character designs, and the writing. I hated Link's yelpy voice. I hated the big empty spaces. I hated that it broke the timeline and that it was intended to replace A Link to the Past. The controls were clunky. It felt to me that the developers had written tomes' worth of background notes and plot, but, satisfied with the fact that they had finished writing it, failed to let the rest of us in on their work, leaving us with a game full of unexplored characters and undeveloped conflicts. The problems plaguing Hyrule after Ganon's rise seemed to mainly be confined to bad weather and "don't hang out near the fountain in Castle Town". I ground my way through it because it was a Zelda game and therefore was required. By the end - in a crazy reversal of everyone else's reality - the only thing I really liked was Navi. Maybe because I was interpreting her character through the lens of Epheremelda from the Nintendo Power comics.
I tried, I really tried, to play Majora's Mask. It made me physically ill. I can't give it a proper rating because I haven't played more than an hour's worth of the game (most of which, it seemed, was the opening cutscene sequence).
