The Legend of Zelda Topic 2019

Been awhile since we discussed Zelda around here. We have a sequel to Breath of the Wild in the works, a remake of Link's Awakening coming up, and Cadence of Hyrule just came out, so I feel now is a good time to discuss this famous series.

Do you still play Zelda? Did you get bored and moved on? Which entry is your favorite? What about your least favorite? What do you hope to see in future installments? Do you like the eternal triangle of conflict between the series three central figures, or do you feel the series needs to finally move on from it? Favorite dungeon? What's your favorite boss fight?

"Still" might be a stretch for me considering I've skipped most Zelda titles. Played the original, loved it. Played a bit of Link's Adventure, hated it and never got far. Played link to the Past, loved it. Didn't play any more Zelda games for awhile until I got Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask on a refurbished Gamecube. Hated Ocarina and didn't bother much with Majora. Played Link Between World, which I liked, probably because it was very much based on Link to the Past. Then played BotW, which I loved. Probably more accurate to say I'm playing Zelda games again. I won't be bothering with Cadence though.

Favorite: BotW or LttP
Least Favorite: Link's Adventure, but least favorite that I finished is Ocarina.
Favorite Dungeon: I really don't know. Maybe Turtle Rock.
Favorite boss fight: Probably Turtle Rock boss.
Eternal triangle: It's fine. I'm not overly enamored with it, but nor do I expect much in terms of narrative in this series. Honestly, the tried and true is probably better than moving onto other things for this series. There's never enough narrative depth to justify a need to move on storywise and changing things up too much will just make it not feel like Zelda anymore.
Future installments: The damn blade beam at full health. BotW thankfully had this IF you knew how to do it, but they didn't exactly advertise the ability and it would have been better if it auto-executed on sword swing like in the early games.

I really enjoyed playing Link's Awakening DX on the Gameboy Color, but other than that the big titles in the series haven't really grabbed me much. So far Breath of the Wild is OK, but not amazing for me, and Twilight Princess was interesting enough on Wii but I didn't get too far. I have a lot of the other titles but have yet to dive into them. I played a bit of Mimish Cap but dropped it, and Link to the Past has never really grabbed me despite starting it many times.

The best Zelda is and always will be Link to the Past.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wolf Kanno

Cadence of Hyrule just came out

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I was really hyped for it and came away a little disappointed. I guess it was a wee bit too short for my liking and more forgiving than the original Crypt of the Necrodancer. I can see why they'd tone down the roguelike repetition difficulty for a Zelda game though. It's charming and fun while it lasts though.

I played Breath of the Wild. It was awesome. Hard to compare to the older Zelda games since it's very different, but up there with my favorite games. A Link to the Past is probably still my favorite but I pretty much love them all. I think I've played them all except maybe Four Swords, one of the Oracle games (Seasons I think) and some of the spinoffs. Link's Awakening was fun and I may play the remake but there's too many new games to try and not that much time, so I may not devote as much time to a remake of something I've played on Game Boy about 10 times.

The core conflict and story for Zelda doesn't need to change, it never has and it worked fine. I did like in Ocarina of Time when they added the time travel aspect to it and they've done other twists too but never strayed from the core. That's fine with me since the world exploration, dungeon puzzles, collecting powers and hearts, is always where it's at with Zelda. For the future, I hope they continue to build upon the open world design of BotW but continue to make new games in the older format like what they did with Link Between Worlds.

I would definitely say I'm a Zelda fanboy and I've played through a decent chunk of the franchise. I also honestly like most of the games, even the ones I bitch about like OoT. I've considered buying a used Wii U just to play BotW because I feel I need this game in my life, but the Switch has more options and other games I'm looking forward to so I have to bring myself to pick one up even though I don't really game as hardcore as I used to.

Link to the Past will probably forever be my favorite. Either Four Swords (the one that came with the Link to the Past GBA port) is my least favorite though Phantom Hourglass is my least favorite of the more "traditional style" entries. I'm honestly fine with the basic trio and have always been amused by the subtle changes over time. With that said, I am not opposed to Zelda getting more action and being playable.