Phantom Hourglass was my first but Spirit Tracks is my favorite. I actually really like the stylus DS controls (and it’s not even that bad using a mouse on an emulator either) but the main thing I like is the music and story. Music and story I would say are both better in Spirit Tracks than any other game in the series. It also is one of the few games in the series that you can really call a legend of Zelda. She’s there the whole time and the main story focuses on her character arc.
Just overall an amazing experience with some really dramatic moments, if I had to summarize what I like about it more than the other games in the series I’d say it’s the most “cinematic & dramatic”
Honestly, I think the original. I know its inferior to most of the other games in most ways, but I’ve found a lot of the modern Zelda games feel pretty shallow and formulaec. Not to say they’re bad, but none of them really feel like they stand out to me either - they’re just good games. The original on the other hand, feels very different from a lot of the games since then. The world is kept a lot more foreign and hostile both in terms of aggressive enemies and in terms of tutorialization. Its makes the exploration so much more rewarding, and when you do find a new item, that much more special.
I love Links Awakening due to nostalgia, but Oracle of Ages is still the longest game I’ve played (since I’ve yet to beat it). Seasons is fine but not my cup of tea, and minish cap is a bit too shaort
Honestly, I think Wind Waker is and I didn’t like it when it came out. The art style has grown on me over the years, the combat is satisfying without being to complicated, and the exploration is fun and unique for a Zelda game.
I’ve sunk more time into TotK than any of the others. I have nostalgia for OoT, TWW and TP, but their gameplay don’t hold up to BotW or TotK if you take off the nostalgia glasses.
Marvel Midnight Suns. Disregarded it on announcement and launch because I wasn’t interested in the core card-based system. Played a little bit of Slay the Spire, which didn’t catch with me but did suggest I might actually be able to enjoy a card-based system with enough narrative context to keep me interested.
So far, so good. I just completed Act 1 (which prompted me to exclaim “that was only act 1??”) and I’m a little worried that I’m going to tire of the side missions soon and lose steam overall, but it hasn’t happened yet. The characters are fine enough, although they definitely give off MCU fanfic vibes (it’s jarring to me having a Peter Parker voiced by Yuri Lowenthal who is such a little remora sidekick in his characterization). The loop is pretty satisfying, if not a little clunky, and I wish the balance between doing battles and running around the abbey grounds leaned a little less on the abbey stuff.
But it’s a lot of fun and very addictive. I’m saddened that it performed poorly but I bear my part of the responsibility willingly.
which didn’t catch with me but did suggest I might actually be able to enjoy a card-based system with enough narrative context to keep me interested.
FYI, you can learn bits and pieces about Slay’s lore through the various events that come up. A pretty large chunk of lore comes up upon one particular respawn/new run.
That’s cool. I do enjoy lore, but more in an “explain it to me on YouTube” kind of way than an “uncover it organically through gameplay” way. I need characters, acts, and arcs to be immediately engaged.
I’m guessing maybe you don’t like detective games in which you have to uncover the plot yourself. I suppose it’s all about the method of presentation for me.
The most recent detective game I played (if it qualifies as such for you) was Paradise Killer, which surprisingly I enjoyed quite a bit. Again though, the lore has close ties to the interpersonal relationships of all the characters on the island.
When I was a kid I was on holiday with my parents in Spain. Since Mortal Kombat was verboten in Germany I went to every shop that might have SNES games to find it. I think I was finally able to find Mortal Kombat 3 in Andorra. And it was glorious!
Probably a Link to the Past. Although I’ve only played the games in the series up to Link’s Awakening so that might change although the game would have to be pretty damn good
Zelda is one of those things I somehow missed growing up. The only one that I ever sunk any significant time into was Phantom Hourglass. It was pretty good. I’ve tried some of the other ones but I get the sense that they are hard to enjoy if you don’t have nostalgia goggles on.
I tried BOTW. The story felt very uninteresting. Like nothing that was happening felt justified. And the gameplay just felt like Just Cause but without all the cool stuff to interact with.
Oof. Yeah, if you’ve only played Phantom “go back to the same temple for the tenth time” Hourglass and Breath Of The Wild with it’s almost non-existent story, I can absolutely understand the disappointment.
Phantom Hourglass was pretty disliked even by fans at the time. The touchscreen control focus and the damn ocean temple re-runs were quite contreversial.
Breath of the Wild was the series’s first attempt at open world, non-linear gameplay and is incredibly different from other games in the series. Very light on story and characters. Unfortunately they’ve confirmed open world is the planned standard going forward.
The real “core” 3D games are Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess. For 2D, A Link To The Past and Link’s Awakening.
Twilight Princess is probably the most accessible for someone not super familiar with the franchise, and the least burdened by old school design decisions. It’s what I would consider the pinnacle of classic 3D Zelda. Took all the good stuff from the two N64 games (what most people seem to think are the best) and polished the hell out of it.
Actually I did enjoy what little of Windwaker that I played. But I played it on an emulator and had to wipe the machine it was on so I never got past the beginning.
BotW ruined the series. Open world, despite the promise of freedom, is a crippling set of shackles on world design. No upgrade can meaningfully interact with the world because every area has to be a potential first area. There’s no mystery of “what’s past this obstacle?” because everything has to be passable as soon as you see it. Worst of all, your reward for thoroughly exploring and completing all the optional quests? Butchering the final boss, which at full power is a highlight of the game, into the worst anticlimax of the series by removing multiple entire phases and drastically nerfing the HP of the phases that remain. The only intact phase literally can’t hit you if you just run in circles around it.
All of this wouldn’t be too bad if it was a one off, but Aonuma confirmed it’s the template for the series going forward. We’ll never see another proper Zelda game.
Breath of the Wild removed pretty much everything that made the series great. It leaves behind a meh game with some of the lore Nintendo knows will sell units.
It’s cool to hear someone say their favorite is TP. I always felt like it was OOT on steroids. Which in my opinion is a good thing. I wish TP had gotten more than an HD port of the original. Would love to see that get a facelift for the Switch with higher polygon count and his res textures.
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