A Green Mushroom

With my Zelda series lite playthrough done and my rankings locked in I just wanted to take a bit to reflect on how I feel after sampling the series in order.  Once again, here's how the rankings shook out for me personally: A Link Between Worlds (2013) A Link to the Past (1991)   The Wind Waker (2002) Oracle of Seasons (2001) Oracle of Ages (2001) Majora's Mask (2000) Ocarina of Time (1998) The Legend of Zelda (1987) Tri Force Heroes (2015) Twilight Princess (2006) Link's Awakening (1993) The Minish Cap (2004) Skyward Sword (2011) Spirit Tracks (2009) Phantom Hourglass (2007) Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1988) The most surprising thing for me is how poorly the 3D Zelda games held up.  I enjoyed most of them a lot the first time I played them but going back to them in the greater context of the whole series made them feel clunky, slow, and just generally not as compelling.  Their 2D counterparts held up much better than I remembered and A L...

Before starting this chronological series sampling, Tri Force Heroes is the Zelda game I had played most recently.  It only came out last year and I played it right when it released.  I didn't think my opinions of it would have changed much, but I was interested to see how it held up in the context of the rest of the series.  Mostly, I was curious where it would rank. I actually just picked up my old save file for this one since the game is designed to be replayed.  You unlock different costumes and levels as time goes on so I figured I would start with the full game unlocked this time. I was quickly reminded that hell is other people.  Well... sometimes.  When you get grouped with random people online it's always a grab bag.  You never quite know what you'll get.  Maybe someone will disconnect.  Maybe someone will just not understand the puzzle even if you walk them through the entire thing with emotes.  Maybe they'll just stand...

A Link Between Worlds is my favorite Zelda game.  If I wasn't so close to the end of my playthrough of the series I wouldn't be confident enough to say that, but now I am. It takes everything I love about all the 2D Zelda games before it and includes those elements... then improves upon them in many ways.  Plus, it renders them in a cool 3Dish way on the 3DS.  A Link Between Worlds is also a huge homage to Link to the Past, which has been sitting at my number one spot in the rankings up to this point. And it really shows.  Everything from the overworld to the dungeons pays tribute to Link to the Past.  It's not a one to one copy or direct rip off but there's no question that this is supposed to be the same world and deal with the same themes.  It was a brave choice since it could have made this game feel like a retread instead of something new.  Instead, it feels amazing. I love the open and non-linear style of Link Between Worlds.  ...

Skyward Sword, more than anything else, has just made me realize how much I hate motion controls.  They were a gimmick I didn't like in the first place and they've aged horribly. Out of all the games in my playthrough this is the only one I hadn't tried at least once.  I was coming to this game completely fresh and it immediately put me off with the motion controls.  And these are even the "improved" motion controls with the Wii Remote Plus.  It tries to be 1 to 1 with Link's hand but it isn't... instead it just makes him look dumb when he's running with his sword out. I tried to get into this game, I really did.  I played something like five hours of it before finally throwing in the towel.  The structure and the content of the game seemed fine.  The story and world were perfectly serviceable.  I probably would have played the whole thing if it weren't for the motion controls. Now I'm glad I skipped this game when it came out and nev...

The Minish Cap is one of the few Zelda games I've never beaten and going back to revisit it quickly showed me why.  My gripes started mounting almost immediately and I had enough of the game by the time I hit the end of the first dungeon. First of all, the controls just don't feel responsive or tight.  Link to the Past and the Oracle games both control so much better than Minish Cap and I don't know why.  They've already had great controls in the past, why did they mess them up this time around?  Not to mention that a bunch of interactions that are on the A button in every other Zelda game are mapped to the right trigger in this one.  It just feels like I'm constantly fighting the controls when I play. And then once you hit the overworld it feels small yet boring at the same time.  The content density that is in most Zelda games is severely lacking.  Traversing from point A to the point B always feels boring. Although the environments look pr...

The Wind Waker has been my favorite 3D Zelda game for a long time.  If asked off the cuff what my absolute favorite Zelda game is I would often put this one forward.  It's really good. Revisiting it shows that it still holds up.  I love the open ocean, the exploration, the controls, the music, the art style.  There are so many unique things about this game and it feels like they finally hit their stride with 3D Zelda games at this point in the series.  This incarnation of Zelda as Tetra the Pirate always makes me happy too! While it originally came out for Gamecube the last two times I've played it were the remaster on Wii U.  It's extra gorgeous plus it has some nice modern features in it.  The Wii U gamepad holds the map and inventory which is super useful.  Not to mention the "swift sail" in the remaster.  It basically lets you travel at 2x speed and always have the wind at your back without having to reposition the wind through so...

This is probably the easiest part of my Zelda series playthrough because I secretly played both Oracle of Seasons and Oracles of Ages earlier this year... and loved them. I played these games a bit as a kid but never beat them then.  Earlier this year they were on sale together on Virtual Console for 3DS so I picked them up on a whim not remembering much about them. The Oracles games are basically taking everything they learned from Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Ocarina of Time, and Majora's Mask and using that to make the best Game Boy Color game they could make.  It controls wonderfully, has amazing design, never feels frustrating with progression, and the two games feed into one another.  If you beat one you can import your save into the other and after finishing that... you unlock a true final boss and secret ending to the game! I can't believe how much I love these.  With all that said, they're still a little bit limited by the Game Boy Color har...

Continuing with the lite Zelda project brings us to Majora's Mask.  It's an odd one out for the series but I love some of the things it's doing. If you've never played it, Majora's Mask is much more non-linear than any other Zelda game.  It's all about exploration and discovery.  You repeat the same three days that lead to a moon crashing into the planet and in doing so you slowly gain powers, items, and masks that will help you on the way.  You also learn songs on the ocarina that perform all sorts of tasks and change how you interact with the flow of time. I beat this one a few times as a kid and once even did a 100% run of the game while getting the Fierce Diety Mask at the end.  That was a good time.  This time around I booted it up the remaster on my 3DS and played through the first half of the game or so. It's still really fun... if you're in the right mood.  Unless you're following a guide you'll find yourself repeating a lot of ...

Ocarina of Time is a very important game, not only to the Zelda franchise but also to gaming in general.  It was one of the first big 3D action/exploration/adventure games and it helped define the genres.  It's also obviously what all the later 3D Zelda games were based on. First I should say that I loved this game as a kid.  I've beaten it many times and for years I would consider it a 10/10 game.  I still think it's a 10/10 game for the time when it came out.  It will always have a special place in my heart and my gaming nostalgia. With that said, it honestly hasn't aged well.  I went back and played hours of it and found a lot of frustration.  The controls, camera, and some of the 3D spacial thinking are just old.  And I was even playing the remastered HD version on 3DS where they fixed a lot of things.  So, while this game is important and I still love it when looking at it via nostalgia I just don't want to play it again right no...

After wrapping up A Link to the Past I fired up Link's Awakening on my 3DS Virtual Console almost immediately.  I was really excited to get into the next game, especially one that I hadn't played since the Game Boy Color days. And wow, it has not aged well.  I know I beat this game on Game Boy Color when I was a kid but it just doesn't hold up anymore.  The screen sizes are too small for anything super interesting to happen on any one screen.  I know that's a conceit to the Game Boy and Game Boy Color but even later GBC games like the Zelda Oracle games feel better than this. Not to mention the player messaging.  If it were just the screen size and graphics that make the game feel aged I could deal with it but the killer thing for me is the horrible player messaging.  It's super difficult to know where to go next or what to do next.  It completely killed my momentum and generally made me want to be playing anything else. So, I'm going to set ...

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the first game in my "Zelda lite" playthrough of the series that I dug in deep with.  I had forgotten just how good this game is. I fired it up on Wii U Virtual Console and after getting past the intro for the first time in years and years... I was just amazed.  This game is still really good.  Even by modern standards.  Yeah, some modern conveniences are missing but nothing that truly hurts the enjoyment of the game (especially with built in save states on Virtual Console). This is the first Zelda game that feels fully formed.  It's the core of the series realized fully.  Exploring the overworld, uncovering secrets, slowly figuring out what to do in dungeons, getting more skillful at combat, finding new items to get around the world... it's all here. Not to mention the structure.  It's almost identical to the structure of Ocarina of Time.  A Link to the Past finds you needing to collec...

Ugh, ok... so this is the game that made me hold off on doing this series playthrough for a long time.  This is the main game that made me make this a "lite" version of a series playthrough and made me give myself permission to not actually finish all the games. I do not like this game. I know it has it's fans and I know it's technically a main Zelda game... but it's just not.  It doesn't feel like a Zelda game should.  This is mostly a side-scrolling beat-em-up with Zelda trappings.  It doesn't have the freedom and open exploration of the original and it definitely doesn't feel like any other Zelda game out there. I wish I liked this game enough to actually finish it once.  But, I don't.  This is one of the few Zelda games that I've never finished.  At this point I've come to the realization that I never will and I'm ok with that. So please forgive how much I'm glossing over this one.  If you're a fan of it let me k...

This is where the series starts and where my sampling of the series begins.  The Legend of Zelda is a game I played and loved as a kid.  I've beaten it many time, but none of them recently.  But hey, when you're a kid and don't have many games on hand you beat all the ones you own multiple times.  A few years ago, my brother and I took a day on Virtual Console to see how far we could actually get in the game.  We made it through five-ish dungeons before giving up.  This game is really hard. I can't believe how much I must have mastered it as a kid to be able to beat it on more than one occasion.  Sitting down and playing it yesterday was an exercise in frustration.  Yes, the core of the series we love is here... but it's still gameplay from the 80s.  It's difficult to make progress and even using the save states on Virtual Console it's still full of frustratingly tough section. I played through the first few dungeons last night just...

I've been kicking this around in my head for awhile and I think it's finally time to pull the trigger.  I'm going to work my way through the Legend of Zelda series and write up posts as I go. This is obviously based on my Final Fantasy project where I played every mainline game all the way through and wrote up impressions and reviews along the way. I'm not doing anything that in-depth this time.  There are some Zelda games I've barely touched and some I've beaten many times and just don't feel like going through the motions again.  There are also a few entries in the series that I just flat-out don't like.  So this is a lite version of what I did for Final Fantasy. I'm at least going to sample each game and play it for awhile.  I already know there are a few that I will bounce off of pretty quick.  But, there are also some that I never truly gave enough time to and I hope that some of those end up hooking me to the point where I play them t...

The Legend of Zelda The Legend of Zelda is one of Nintendo’s flagship series, but surprisingly, it’s one of the few that actually does a lot better in the West than it does in Japan. Many may not realize the series was created by Miyamoto, the same genius who created Mario, though Aonuma has been in charge of the series since his major success with Ocarina of Time in 1998. Generally, we’ve played them all. Beej has only missed 3 of them, and they’re on purpose. Void has just completed a lite playthrough of the whole series, in which he ranked them all for current playability, rather than nostalgia. Do you guys remember the animated series? Beej sure does! We discuss the difference in 2D and 3D Zelda games, which kind of feel like two separate series of games, but with the same base mechanics. Zelda games! We don’t go in-depth for every one (because some just aren’t worth the time, honestly), but we do discuss our favorites, our memories, and just why some of them stand up fo...