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  • The Wind Waker for me. At the time, the open world and sea felt so massive, and the colorful cell-shaded graphics made me feel like I was immersed in a cartoon. I played other Zelda games before, but it was the first one to hold my attention all the way to the end. To me, it’s one of those games I wish I could experience again for the first time.

    • Windwaker would've been an easy #1 for me if it weren't so stretched out. The ocean really didn't need to be that big, I remember many times where I was just holding forward on the boat and browsing my phone for 5 minutes.

      • What got me was the Triforce hunt. Nearly no guidance/signposting, constant trips back to tingle, then back to a warp point, then sail around, rinse repeat. Ugh.

      • I actually really enjoyed the size of the ocean it made me feel like I was really on a journey

  • 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.

  • Majora's Mask is the best Zelda game. However, Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game. The setting, art style, and musical score all combined perfectly to make a game that was both really fun and relaxing. No Zelda game since has ever matched the feeling of sailing to the Great Sea soundtrack.

  • Nostalgia-wise it'd be Phantom Hourglass, it's super underrated, super fun game! But otherwise it'd be the Switch duology, they're incredible games

    • Phantom Hourglass was a lot of fun, it really took advantage of what the DS can do.

      My wife hated having to return to the temple repeatedly, but I enjoyed revisiting the same area and seeing the shortcuts I can take with my new items.

      Also, freely drawing notes on the map was awesome.

  • My top three:

    1. A Link to the Past. Basically gave the Legend of Zelda its identity, so many staple mechanics, so much lore, comes from this game. First appearance of the Master Sword, the idea of Ganondorf as a king of thieves/sorcerer before becoming a pig monster, Kakariko village. The creation myth with the three golden goddesses came from here. In fact, there's a passage in the manual that basically reads like the design document for the next 30 years in the series, look it up. Gameplay is polished to a mirror shine, and it's amazing how it has lasted with the randomizer community.
    2. Ocarina of Time. A sequel which referred to previous entries and expanded on the lore without shitting on it. Imagine that! It's amazing how right they got it as basically the first attempt of a game like this in 3D, even if controller technology had some evolving to do.
    3. Breath of the Wild. While it does get a bit samey since there's only so many enemies to encounter, and exploring the world will result in finding shrines or koroks, the openness with which it approaches puzzles aka "just get to the goal, we don't care how." I find very refreshing compared to the previous "you're in a room with a lock and a key. Bet you can't find the only existing solution to this puzzle" dynamic the games increasingly had.

    My bottom three:

    1. Skyward Sword. The artwork is charming, the soundtrack has a few gems in it but is mostly short repetitive and annoying loops, a lot of the gameplay elements are just blatantly recycled from Twilight Princess. The mysterious floating girl who flies back a distance when Link approaches to lead him somewhere would have been more effective if the Zora Queen's shade hadn't done it a few years earlier, and I fully expected Fi to explain the collect the light fruit games by saying "Yes Master, 'this shit again'." Combine that with the frankly terrible motion controls crammed in as much as possible and the "Master, I have detected a 97.3333% chance that the man you just talked to said that he lives here in town" nature of it all...fuck this game.
    2. Adventure of Link. Nintendo Hard via outright unfairness, not much story, not much lore, and rather meh graphics.
    3. Tears of the Kingdom. Never before has a game been this much mile wide and inch deep. The story barely exists, there is more content in the Hudson & Rhondson's daughter storyline than in the main story quest. There are two different crafting mechanics added to the game, plus the one from Breath of the Wild, but none are really explored because there's no room, there's no time. In addition to the original map, there's the entire sky and the entire underground, both full of basically nothing. They could have gotten two games out of the concepts found in this one and explored the individual mechanics a lot more, but no. This game is a mile wide and an inch deep.

  • I love them all. But Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time will always live in my heart. As well as the original, I beat that one yearly.

  • Link to the Past is how I discovered Zelda.

    Never got to play it through as a kid, but then we got OOT when N64 came out. There's never gonna be a game I'll have better memories from.

  • Ouff, this is difficult.

    To me it's a very close call between:

    • Majora's Mask (atmosphere, inventiveness with the loop, boss battles)
    • Link's Awakening (first self-owned game, lots of memories, also that nerve-wrecking final battle with forms after forms after forms)
    • Tears of the Kingdom (the way they hid the third world until release, the grand atmosphere, the whole thing around the Master Sword)

    Majora's Mask probably wins. But it's a really close call.

  • Link's Awakening was my first game on my Gameboy, so will always have a special place in my heart! Ocarina was my first N64 game too, and it blew my mind! Nostalgia plays some part in how I feel about those games, but both are still solid games to this day.

    BoTW and ToTK both managed to push the boundaries of gaming, and the sheer joy of discovery in both games makes them stand out. I do also love ALttP though, and in its own time it was just as revolutionary I reckon. I didn't play it until the 2000s though.

  • 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"

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