Best Zelda

[Johnny Textface]

I just landed on earth and was wondering what the best Zelda was you reckon?

[Cold Meat Platter]

Ocarina
LTTP
Majora's mask

cheers

[Johnny Textface]

Ocarina
LTTP
Majora's mask

cheers

Nostalgia or some other rating?

[Cold Meat Platter]

Nostalgia or some other rating?

Anus dilation

[Cold Meat Platter]

The idea of representing a culture or scene within the boundaries of a Nintendo game is gone thankfully. Strange idea tbh

[Crenners]

I just landed on earth and was wondering what the best Zelda was you reckon?

Breath of the Wild is in many ways a mirror to the soul of everyone who plays it.

[Pink Gregory]

Link's Awakening

In terms of being a diluted experience of what LoZ is at it'a core, but also being odd enough to be an outlier.

[Dickie_Anders]

A Link to the Past probably. Takes the basic formula of the original and improves on it, and virtually does everything you can do with said formula

Maybe Breath of the Wild for the 3D games. It's one of those where you can play it to death but discover stuff you can do/find later on YouTube and you just think fucking hell, the level of thought the developers put into it is absurd

[Timothy]

Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask.

[Magnum Valentino]

Wind Waker til fuck, Jesus Christ, where's Kelvin?!

[Pink Gregory]

It's a bit harder to judge the ones that stray further from the formula (Majora's Mask, BOTW, Wind Waker), but I feel they always end up being the special ones.

[Bently Sheds]

Link to the Past
Ocarina of Time
I have a very soft spot for Link's Awakening as it was my first Zelda game.
Breath of the Wild was ok, but didn't feel like proper Zelda to me, so I struggled to get into it:- also played it on a Switch with horrendous joycon drift, so that may have soured me against it.

Worst: Skyward Sword.

[bgmnts]

Ocarina for me because i'm a basic bitch. I think it's the only one I've played but Jesus it was so good. Back on the N64, half the soundtrack stuck in my head.

[earl_sleek]

Link To The Past is the best 2D Zelda.

Ocarina is the best "traditional" 3D Zelda, though I think I prefer Majora's Mask slightly. But Ocarina feels more magical.

Breath Of The Wild is awesome and the the only game that's ever made me feel the way Ocarina did the first time I played it as a kid, but it's quite different in some key ways from most other 3D Zeldas, most obviously the open world and lack of dungeons.

[Crenners]

^ I'd have to agree with that.

I can totally understand why WW is some people's favourite, I just didn't get on with the sailing, really. Everything else is wonderful.

MM is one I've honestly not played through. I don't enjoy time loop/time limit type stuff at all but I've read and seen enough to see why and how it could be someone's favourite.

I actually really enjoyed SS and was buzzing off the Switch remake but I hit a wall in terms of motivation. The main hub area feels like a bit of a chore to traverse and the flying is laborious.

I hammered TP on the Wii and loved it, I think it's got an amazing atmosphere and music but there's too much boring stuff in there on a replay.

The 2D ones are all well designed but combat and puzzles are restricted and repetitive, or overly obtuse.

[oggyraiding]

Oracle Of Seasons is my favourite. Link's Awakening and Oracle of Ages close runner ups. LttP is more polished than the Game Boy Zeldas, but maybe because I've beaten it dozens of times I'm sick of it now.
I played WW at launch, and it stuck in my memory as the best Zelda. Then when I replayed it on Wii U it felt unfinished, not enough dungeons, too much fetch questing. I still think it is the most beautiful and charming Zelda, but I would hesitate to replay it again any time soon.
I hated BotW. Beat it twice, doing a lot of the side stuff, and it just didn't feel like Zelda. No cool items like hookshots or spinning tops or flutes to summon a boxing kangaroo.

[Pink Gregory]

The only thing that lets down Seasons/Ages for me is the music.  I know it's only on the Game Boy Colour, but compared to Link's Awakening there aren't any memorable tunes and they just feel brash and grating at worst.

[ImmaculateClump]

The first one is still the best, then the gameboy games and the snes game.
Wind waker is alright if you want to play a 3d one.

[Dickie_Anders]

Zelda 2 is actually a great game. Loads of people slag it off and I have no idea why

[ImmaculateClump]

I dunno, it was a bit too hard and those random fights going off every couple of seconds began to grate.

I enjoyed my time with it, and I'm glad that nintendo are brave enough to try new things like that, but sometimes it doesn't pay off, and I think zelda works much better as a top down game.

I can totally understand the cult appeal it has now though, great atmosphere in that game.

Would be very interesting if they tried it again.

[Ron Maels Moustache]

I played WW at launch, and it stuck in my memory as the best Zelda. Then when I replayed it on Wii U it felt unfinished, not enough dungeons, too much fetch questing. I still think it is the most beautiful and charming Zelda, but I would hesitate to replay it again any time soon.

I think it was unfinished, they had to a cut whole dungeon due to time pressure to get the game out, and the endgame part feels very rushed and thrown together as well. Including where you have to grind for rupees for fucking ages to pay Tingle.

Very disappointing, as it's nearly a great game rather than just a good one, but it clearly needed more time to be properly finished.

[Pink Gregory]

I have a soft spot for Twilight Princess; I'm very much in the minority in that I liked the Wiimote as a control scheme, but I will say that I've not really had any desire to replay it, but the same is the case with Ocarina.

Whereas Link's Awakening and Wind Waker I've finished 2-3 times over 20 years or so.  I didn't have a Nintendo 64 at the time, so I was never that jazzed by the great leap forward of Ocarina of Time, in fact I got it on a gamecube disc with Wind Waker, and it seemed a clunky and drab game by comparison when I was 14 or whatever.

I was very pleased that Breath of the Wild sort of canonised the Rito and the Koroks   into the series as well, rather than just leaving them in Wind Waker

[madhair60]

Awakening. I don't really like any of the others. Not for me. Awakening though, oof. Perfectly formed diamond.

[madhair60]

Link's Awakening

In terms of being a diluted experience of what LoZ is at it'a core, but also being odd enough to be an outlier.

Diluted? Naw, it's concentrated.

[Crenners]

This is why you upset the gamers mate.

[Pink Gregory]

Diluted? Naw, it's concentrated.

Aw, I feel dumb now.  That's what I meant.

[colacentral]

Link's Awakening is compromised for the system it's on. The overworld map can't be as big and varied as LttP, so it's designed in such a way as to make it appear larger by making it difficult to navigate, with dead ends and holes blocking your path, forcing you to go the one correct route to get around.

There can't be as many side quests as LttP, so there's essentially only that one long trading quest, and each stage of it is closed off until a certain dungeon has been completed in order to draw it out through the whole game. Combined with the annoying to navigate map, having to go find the person to trade with each time you need to get on to the next dungeon is tedious beyond belief.

Those two aspects rob the game of the essential appeal of the series to begin with: exploration. Exploration in Link's Awakening is not fun, the polar opposite of the best games in the series.

It's not a coincidence that this is a common complaint with Skyward Sword too, and why the designers went totally the opposite direction with Breath of the Wild.

[fit bird]

Best 3D is Majora's Mask and best 2D is Link's Awakening.
Lovely mad characters/dialogue in those games, their weirdness really shows up just how bland the rest of the series is.

Breath of the Wild disqualified from rankings because it's just an empty field with the same 3 puzzles over and over again. Oh great I can use a magnet to put a ball in a tree stump. Wicked. Fucking wicked. Ah great another little tree man came out for the hundredth time. That is fucking quality. I wonder what's over that hill? Oh it's the same thing but now the field is brown instead of green. Love it. Brill.

[MojoJojo]

I clicked on this thread because on the front page of forum it said "Best Zelda by fit bird" so I wanted to look at sexy video game characters and tut.

[beanheadmcginty]

Robin Williams' daughter.