General Zelda Rank-Order The 3D Games

[Beauts]

1. Ocarina of Time. Of course there's a nostalgia factor here, there always is in relation to this game. But I think it's the best because it changed everything in the gaming world. Yes, the story might seem cliche now, but this game and it's story almost invented those cliches. It's original, the puzzles were a decent difficulty... not boringly easy and not ridiculously difficult. Although, on that point, the Water Temple is renowned for being tricky, which is also a credit to the game. Yes in modern day, the graphics and features might not stand up but if you take the game just at face value I'd say it has to rank high.

2. Majora's Mask I think that in a lot of ways this game would top OoT except for the fact that for a lot of people, this was too difficult. I certainly had a lot of trouble with it growing up and still find it hard to this day. It introduced a time limit in a way that'd never been done before, it was creepy and sinister, and it had a great storyline. I rank this second because of course it borrowed a lot of features from OoT. I know it was only made as a kind of side-project when they got tired of working on Ura Zelda but still, it could have been better if more had been invested in it. That being said it was a huge game and even given that it's not up to modern standards in some ways, I think it still tops most of the newer titles.

3. Skyward Sword Unpopular opinion but I really like this game. Yeah it's hand-holdy, but I enjoyed it. It had a good story, I liked the features the Wii Motion Plus made possible and I like the art style. It was different in the sense that Link had more characterisation than usual and it had really clever references to other titles, yet it still stood alone in my opinion. The puzzles were the perfect level of difficulty for me, as I'm not the most patient person, but it wasn't as easy as I found Twilight Princess, which I will go on to look at in a minute. I think this one does well simply on a fun-factor level, which is really what games are meant to be about.

4. The Wind Waker Ugh... yeah, I know this is going to be an unpopular placement, but the toon style put me off big time. It's a good game but I didn't like the plot... I don't like this whole part of the timeline to be honest. There's feature overuse such as sailing, and I think that massively detracts from an otherwise good game with excellent puzzles.

5. Twilight Princess I know this gets bashed a lot, but I honestly don't think TP was that good. It was okay. I mean, if you look at what it is in a raw sense it had potential to be great-amazing graphics, good items, interesting features and a good story. But in practice? Meh. It tries too hard to be dark and deep, and focuses too much on this aesthetically rather than creating any actual atmosphere. I think they could've taken a massive hint from MM. The items weren't the most original, though the clawshot item was the best thing to be introduced to Zelda in a long time. Other than that, it'd pretty much all been done before in it's mirror image in game... Ocarina of Time. Yeah, I wish they would stop trying to outdo that game and focus on making newer games the best they can be. That's what made OoT great... they were concentrating on making it good within itself. The story was good but the way they executed it was in my opinion a bit too obvious and try-hard. Plus I'm sorry but I hate Midna.

 

[the8thark]

2. Majora's Mask I think that in a lot of ways this game would top OoT except for the fact that for a lot of people, this was too difficult.

I agree with you here. I think MM is at a crossroads. People around in the NES and SNES days found the difficulty refreshing as they were used to the (overall) harder games in the 8 and 16 bit days. But the people who grew up in the 3D zelda days found MM a little too hard as elements of it are very tough. All the other 3D Zelda games had a super tough Mini game or two (Horseback Archery in Ocarina, Mine-cart riding in SS etc etc) but their main quests were relatively easy. MM's main quest/dungeons were harder and many of the mini games (required to do to get any kind of heart total) were on average pretty tough.

 

[Mask-Salesman]

I agree with you here. I think MM is at a crossroads. People around in the NES and SNES days found the difficulty refreshing as they were used to the (overall) harder games in the 8 and 16 bit days. But the people who grew up in the 3D zelda days found MM a little too hard as elements of it are very tough. All the other 3D Zelda games had a super tough Mini game or two (Horseback Archery in Ocarina, Mine-cart riding in SS etc etc) but their main quests were relatively easy. MM's main quest/dungeons were harder and many of the mini games (required to do to get any kind of heart total) were on average pretty tough.

I don't get how so many people find the dungeons in MM so hard? Could be just me, but I found the Fire and Spirit temple in OoT pretty challenging as well and then I'm not even bringing up that %^&$ Water temple. Forest and Shadow temple gave me huge creeps as a little kid so that certainly added to the time I needed to finish them. True, Majora's Mask had hard dungeons, but I don't see that much of a difference. Great Bay Temple and Stone Tower temple were hard, but never unlogical.

 

[the8thark]

I don't get how so many people find the dungeons in MM so hard? Could be just me, but I found the Fire and Spirit temple in OoT pretty challenging as well and then I'm not even bringing up that %^&$ Water temple. Forest and Shadow temple gave me huge creeps as a little kid so that certainly added to the time I needed to finish them. True, Majora's Mask had hard dungeons, but I don't see that much of a difference. Great Bay Temple and Stone Tower temple were hard, but never unlogical.

I don't get why people found the Water Temple in Ocarina so hard. Made me think a few times but that was it really. I think what some people call unlogical, others call "requiring thought to pass". I think the main reason for those Ocarina dungeons is the backtracking. The game didn't tell when you had to backtrack to progress.
- To kill all 4 poes on the Forest Temple
- To reach the top of the mountain (so to speak) in the fire Temple
- To activate the water level changing switches to progress to the end of the instance.
- Activating a switch in one room to open a door in another room in Jabu Jabu Belly
- The Spirit Temple had that huge statue in the middle where that Gerudo woman was being held and you had to do a lot in the dungeon to open it up and get inside.

I noticed this issue massively in Zelda SS and for the most part in Zelda WW. Each dungeon room required thought. But to progress past a room, almost nothing was required outside that one room to pass it. No whole dungeon thinking like in Ocarina. Just pass each room and don't ever really think about it again. To me this is one of the strong points of Ocarina. Ocarina made players think about the whole dungeon as a whole unlike WW and SS where to pass a room, other rooms meant nothing.

The MM dungeons weren't as whole dungeon encompassing as the Ocarina ones were. But they were tough cause lots of monsters, a huge size, and the time factor. Sure easily beatable within time, but it's still on your mind.