Well, my friends, I’ve done it. Throughout the course of 2021, I played every “core” Legend of Zelda video game (and one spin-off). It was a fun “project”, and I finally played\/finished the few titles that I’d never gotten around to before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What everyone is dying to know, I’m sure, is where Breath of the Wild<\/strong> is going to fit on my ranking list. And I’m finding it incredibly difficult to place it! Honestly, BotW is such a radical departure from the typical Zelda formula that it feels like comparing a papaya to oranges. So I think that finding a place for it will require me to stop and really consider why I’ve placed each game as I have.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n But because I’m not big on sitting down and really thinking about anything, I decided the best way to figure this out would be to re-evaluate every game. This time, rather than sorting them by gut feeing, I came up with three general categories and gave each game an arbitrary score from 1 to 5 in each. Then I sorted it by totals, and voila! Answers! My three categories are as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gameplay<\/strong> : Duh. How fun the game is. But it also takes into consideration things like controls, how successfully gimmicks are used, and how much content-padding exists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aesthetics<\/strong> : Visual design, music, story, and general vibe. I say “visual design” because I’m comparing games across every generation, and comparing objective graphical quality would likely result in a linear increase in score from the oldest title to the newest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fuzzies<\/strong> : How thinking about each game makes me feel, and how many pleasant memoires of it I have. This is more or less the same as my “gut feeling” as mentioned before, but now with numbers! Also factors in how likely I am to replay any given game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Due to the lack of granularity in my rankings, there were a number of games that ended up with the same total score. So I added a secondary sorting criteria to the table, and the highest “fuzzies” scores get top billing. Because obviously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I could be here all day explaining my rationale for each individual score assigned, but I’d rather not. Here are some highlights!<\/p>\n\n\n\n Link’s Awakening<\/strong> is no doubt at the top spot. Nice to see the “science” agrees with my original assessment. Note that the scoring is based on the Switch remake. If I was ranking the Game Boy original, I’d have given a 4 for gameplay and a five for aesthetics, so nothing changes. As it is, I only took off the aesthetic point because I don’t really care for the edge blurring effect, and the slowdown is really distracting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There we have it, folks. Breath of the Wild<\/strong> is my second-favourite Zelda game! It gets the honours of being one of only two games that get the full-five fuzzies rank. And it’s well-deserved, because BotW is the only Zelda game that I can just melt into and be lost in for hours at a time. I took off a gameplay point because the rain is endlessly frustrating, there are a few shrines that I genuinely dislike, and the final boss is kinda meh. A point off of aesthetics because the story wants to be epic but doesn’t stick the landing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wind Waker<\/strong> retains its place at number three, because it’s my favourite Zelda to look at, and it’s the world I just like being in<\/em> the most. Also, have you heard the soundtrack!? I absolutely want more Wind Waker, but not in the way that the DS sequels delivered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Somehow A Link Between Worlds<\/strong> and Majora’s Mask<\/strong> score exactly the same. It’s not a robust scale, though, so I guess it’s not actually that unlikely. The fact of the matter is, I think they’re both excellent sequels that improved on their predecessors in pretty much every aspect. Majora’s Mask introduced a delightful horror theme and the transformation masks added a ton to the general gameplay, while A Link Between Worlds removed a lot of the traditional Zelda linearity and added the brilliant wall-merge mechanic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Twilight Princess<\/strong> and Minish Cap<\/strong> tie at 12 point each. While TP gives me more warm fuzzies, I think that Minish Cap is objectively the better game of the two. It got a 5 in gameplay, after all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Interesting that Skyward Sword<\/strong>, the most divisive Zelda game, sits right in between Ocarina of Time<\/strong> and A Link to the Past<\/strong>, the two most widely-beloved. I have few memories more vivid than those of playing through OoT for the first time, because it was easily the most mind-blowing generational shift. It still fills me with all the good nostalgia feels, whereas I really don’t have all that many for LttP. I only played bits and pieces of it growing up, and by the time I learned about emulation, it was more of a bucket list item than something I was truly excited to experience. As for SS? It’s fine. I like the game pretty well in general, but it suffers from way too much content padding that doesn’t add anything but time to the experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Legend of Zelda<\/strong> is a classic, and I respect it. But it’s also hard as heck, which is not what I’m looking for in a Zelda game. I also lament that while the music is really good, there are like five songs total. Every dungeon uses the same tiles, but in a different colour. I’d really like to see a remake of this one with just a few aesthetic tweaks. Spruce up the dungeons with some unique visual themes, add a couple new music tracks, and remove the blue wizzrobes. Bam! Perfect remake. You can have that one for free, Nintendo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think it says a lot about the five games than ranked lower than Four Swords Adventures<\/strong>, that they got ranked lower than Four Swords Adventures. I would rather replay a four-player game alone than revisit any of them. Ouch. Of special note is that both Oracle games got a rock-bottom score on fuzzies, since I have exactly zero nostalgia for them, and those playthroughs didn’t do a lot to inspire me to appreciate them more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that about wraps it up! If you want in-depth thoughts on every aspect of every game, I have an ongoing video series<\/a> on YouTube specifically for that. As of this writing, it’s a little more than halfway through Skyward Sword and updates twice a week. So at that rate, the series should come to a close… I don’t know. Probably before the sequel to Breath of the Wild is released, anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<\/td> Gameplay<\/td> Aesthetic<\/td> Fuzzies<\/td> Score<\/td><\/tr> Link’s Awakening<\/td> 5<\/td> 4<\/td> 5<\/td> 14<\/td><\/tr> Breath of the Wild<\/td> 4<\/td> 4<\/td> 5<\/td> 13<\/td><\/tr> Wind Waker<\/td> 4<\/td> 5<\/td> 4<\/td> 13<\/td><\/tr> A Link Between Worlds<\/td> 5<\/td> 4<\/td> 4<\/td> 13<\/td><\/tr> Majora’s Mask<\/td> 5<\/td> 4<\/td> 4<\/td> 13<\/td><\/tr> Twilight Princess<\/td> 4<\/td> 4<\/td> 4<\/td> 12<\/td><\/tr> The Minish Cap<\/td> 5<\/td> 4<\/td> 3<\/td> 12<\/td><\/tr> Ocarina of Time<\/td> 4<\/td> 3<\/td> 4<\/td> 11<\/td><\/tr> Skyward Sword<\/td> 3<\/td> 5<\/td> 3<\/td> 11<\/td><\/tr> A Link to the Past<\/td> 5<\/td> 4<\/td> 2<\/td> 11<\/td><\/tr> The Legend of Zelda<\/td> 3<\/td> 2<\/td> 4<\/td> 9<\/td><\/tr> Four Swords Adventures<\/td> 3<\/td> 3<\/td> 3<\/td> 9<\/td><\/tr> Spirit Tracks<\/td> 2<\/td> 3<\/td> 2<\/td> 7<\/td><\/tr> Oracle of Seasons<\/td> 3<\/td> 3<\/td> 1<\/td> 7<\/td><\/tr> Oracle of Ages<\/td> 3<\/td> 3<\/td> 1<\/td> 7<\/td><\/tr> Zelda II: The Adventure of Link<\/td> 2<\/td> 2<\/td> 2<\/td> 6<\/td><\/tr> Phantom Hourglass<\/td> 2<\/td> 2<\/td> 2<\/td> 6<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n