FAKE RONJAN!!GotY Follow Up #2: Ranking Zelda
A few weeks ago, I named Super Mario Odyssey my 2017 game of the year. I followed that up by tiering the mainline Super Mario platformers to contextualize Super Mario Odyssey, ultimately placing this newest entry alongside Super Mario World and Super Mario Galaxy in "Tier 7: All Time Classics", the best the seres has to offer.
Today, I'm going to perform a similar exercise for The Legend of Zelda series! But before I can start ranking, I do need to offer up a confession.
Despite being a bona fide Zelda fan for roughly 30 years, I have only finished one game in the series. In addition to this, while I have played many of the games in the series, I have not tried them all, skipping or barely playing several notable entries, including Majora's Mask (played for less than an hour) and Skyward Sword (never touched).
This doesn't mean that I haven't gotten a lot out of the games that I have played: with most of these games, I've completed multiple dungeons and explored the overworld for dozens of hours. I just eventually lost focus or interest in nearly all of them for one reason or another - whether it's getting to a dungeon I simply can't beat (like level 6 in the original game in the series), hitting a sequence I'm not interested in (like the Triforce hunt in Wind Waker), or feeling like I've had fun but having no narrative drive to continue (as in Breath of the Wild).
I'd consider the criteria for this list to be how much I personally enjoyed being in that game's version of Hyrule, with key aspects being how quickly I can begin the game in earnest, how much the game values and delivers on exploration, the story beats, and character and avatar progression. Your mileage will vary. As with the Mario list, if a game doesn't appear, I haven't played it.
Now, let's start ranking!
The Legend of Zelda: RJ's Rankings
#8: Twilight Princess (2006 - GameCube and Wii, 2016 - Wii U remaster)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has one of the best introductions I've ever played. You wake up as Nathan Drake, unconscious on a train, and realize that it's actually teetering off of a cliff. The climb out is incredibly engaging and the perfect way for a player to become acquainted with the game's mechanics and controls. It gets your blood pumping and sets the stage for an incredible action romp.
Twilight Princess has one of the worst introductions I've ever played. I have tried starting this game several times, and I've never gotten past the first temple. It's an exercise in mundanity - catch a fish, feed a cat, herd goats, run errands around town. It's simply not why I play Zelda.
I remember watching the game's incredible reveal at E3 in 2004:
I wish that were the game I played. As it is, Twilight Princess put up walls that I never got over. It's the most disappointed I've ever been with a game in my life, and I doubt I'll give it another chance.
#7: The Minish Cap (2004 - Game Boy Advance)
I'm not gonna lie - I don't remember much about this game. I played a few dungeons and remembered enjoying it, but I didn't get particularly far and don't have any major desire to pick it up again. It gets the nod over Twilight Princess for the sheer fact that I remember actually liking it.
#6: Ocarina of Time (1998 - N64, 2011 - 3DS remaster)
There's a big jump in quality here, as this is a game I have played several times. I played it on the N64 when it came out, I played it on the GameCube Wind Waker preorder disc, I played it on the Wii Virtual Console, and I played the re-release on the 3DS.
That said, while this is a game that I enjoy and respect, it's not one that I love. In 1998, a packed year for video games, I preferred Banjo-Kazooie. And while I've tried it several times since and reached the Adult Link section every time, I've never once continued past the Forest Temple.
I can appreciate what this game did to bring 2D mechanics into 3D, but similar to Mario 64, I felt that its formula would become more refined in a couple of later in entries in the game. Additionally, I found the vast emptiness of Hyrule Field to pale in comparison to the density of the overworlds of many of the other games on this list.
#5: Breath of the Wild (2017 - Switch)
The first day I played this game, I posted on Facebook:
"I'm only a few hours in but this game is already amazing. Nintendo knows how to nail moments like this one, your view mere seconds into playing.#zelda"
I still feel that way about the game, so Breath of the Wild being #5 on this list isn't an indictment. This is strictly "classics" territory.
Breath of the Wild delivers the best exploration in the series' history, presenting a vast and inviting world to get lost in. As I said in my 2017 Game of the Year article, "I spent most of my 30+ hours with the game running across the map, climbing towers, and seeing what cool sights I could find."
The main reasons I place this game relatively low on my list simply come down to story and dungeon design. Other games in the series did those better.
#4: The Legend of Zelda (1987 - NES)
Choosing between the original and the newest game in the series was very difficult. They both offer incredible exploration without limits, best captured by Mark Brown in his Game Maker's Toolkit series:
I played a bunch of The Legend of Zelda on my NES Classic in 2016 to prepare for Breath of the Wild's release, and I am still stunned by how much of that game I remembered from my childhood in the late 1980s. I was even able to find the Power Bracelet on sheer muscle memory nearly 30 years after the last time I found it!
Ultimately The Legend of Zelda gets the slightest of nods over Breath of the Wild because it's been part of my life for several additional decades. It's proven its staying power.
#3: The Wind Waker (2002 - GameCube, 2013 - Wii U remaster)
I have a lot of gripes about this game. Sailing across the map takes too long, even with the Swift Sail in the Wii U version. The Triforce quest is tedious and I've never completed it. It's clear the game was rushed and content was cut. But this game nails two things better than any other Zelda: it's unbelievably charming and it has an engaging story.
On the charm front, I was one of those Zelda fans who was absolutely enamored by the cel-shaded graphics during the game's original reveal. I was never interested in Zelda becoming edgy or dark, and I loved how expressive and adorable both Link and Tetra / Zelda were. I still do:
As far as the story goes, while this isn't Shakespeare, I thought it had some of the most poignant moments in the series' history. Ultimately, the Hero of Wind is needed because the Hero of Time from Ocarina of Time didn't come, and the original Hyrule from that era is buried at the bottom of the sea. That's a bold step for a series that's often rehashed the same Ganon storyline in previous iterations.
These two qualities - charm and narrative - boost an otherwise inferior Zelda experience above #6, #5, and #4 on this list. Congratulations, Wind Waker, on the bronze!
#2: A Link to the Past (1991 - SNES)
I love everything about this game, but perhaps nothing more than its sense of avatar progression. The more you play and explore the world, the more powerful Link gets. As Egoraptor articulates in his Zelda Sequelitis video, it feels like "you have this arsenal that you've been collecting, using it whenever it may be useful, and it may be useful at any time".
Most other games in the series fall into the trap of singular solutions to problems - use the bow in the bow puzzle in the bow dungeon, the boomerang in the boomerang puzzle in the boomerang dungeon, and so on. A Link to the Past is the best in the series in driving the serendipity of what's possible.
I love the game, end to end, and would have it at #1 if I'd ever made it past Turtle Rock. Luckily, the #1 game on this list also has a Turtle Rock dungeon that I did complete!
#1: A Link Between Worlds (2013 - 3DS)
This is one of my favorite games ever made, despite it being the epitome of "use the bow in the bow puzzle in the bow dungeon" design that I just criticized above. It transcends this criticism by taking a familiar Zelda world - Hyrule from A Link to the Past - but completely revamping the series' dungeon sequencing and item acquisition aspects.
It's the first Zelda game since the original in which you have freedom to explore the world and take on the dungeons in whatever order you like - a pacing approach that Breath of the Wild would take even further. And the item rental shop allowed you to rent every item in the game from the start if you wanted - which I did. That freedom to run around the world fully stocked up from the start is something I respect the game giving me the opportunity to do. It made exploring Hyrule and Lorule fun right from the start!
It also had an incredible soundtrack with three (main overworld theme) incredible (Hyrule Castle theme) tracks (Lorule Castle theme), a surprisingly engaging story involving a parallel world with its own princess (Hilda) and hero (Ravio), and the only endgame in the series that I've actually beaten. #hangsheadinshame
A Link Between Worlds managed to beat out a crowded field of Ni No Kuni, Rayman Legends, and The Last of Us to become my favorite game of 2013. And at least for now, it's my favorite game in the Zelda series as well.
-rj