General Zelda Which Installment Could the Series Do Without?

[Justac00lguy]

The Legend of Zelda Series has spanned around 27 years and 16 games, it's probably one of the most infamous series in gaming and is still relevant to do this day and probably for many years to come.

We all have strong opinions on each individual game and their standpoint in the series, however put aside favourites and such and focus on each individual installment and how they were significant to the series in the grand scheme... Which Installment could the series generally do without? essentially which Installment was the least significant in the grand scheme? Try and avoid the cliché choices like Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures, as I know the majority will vote for either one of these two, so separating these two installments what would be your choice and why?

 

[DarkestLink]

Adventure of Link...now it offered the origin story of Zelda herself...except Nintendo never used it. So it's pointless.

 

[bunny]

Link's Awakening. I loved LA, but honestly... It doesn't contribute much to the series as a whole. The entire game is just a dream that Link is having. I know there's the Wind Fish and all that, but yeah... If Nintendo didn't release LA, I don't think it would have affected the Zelda series hardly at all. Most of the content in the game didn't even actually happen to Link, so how could it?

 

[Salem]

Link's Awakening. I loved LA, but honestly... It doesn't contribute much to the series as a whole. The entire game is just a dream that Link is having. I know there's the Wind Fish and all that, but yeah... If Nintendo didn't release LA, I don't think it would have affected the Zelda series hardly at all. Most of the content in the game didn't even actually happen to Link, so how could it?

Wrong, according to developers, LA influenced Oot alot, if it never existed, oot would have been a very different game.

Adventures of Link is not pointless

 

[Mellow Ezlo]

Actually, every game in the main series so far has contributed important story elements thus far, meaning they are pretty much all very important members of the franchise
Really, there are only two installments I can think of that would not change the series had they not been made: Spirit Tracks, and Skyward Sword.

No, I know skyward Sword is a prequel, but it is also the latest game in the franchise, and thus has had not games build elements off of it. If we did not have Skyward Sword, nothing in the series would change.

In Spirit Tracks' case, it is the newest game in a trilogy, and thus does not have any games building off of it either. It is the last story in the Adult Timeline chronologically, so it is certainly a game the series does not need.

I have heard people say that the Four Swords trilogy serves no purpose as well. That is not entirely true. The presence of Ganon n Four Swords Adventures makes this game seem more canonical than people may make it seem.

 

[Curmudgeon]

Adventure of Link...now it offered the origin story of Zelda herself...except Nintendo never used it. So it's pointless.

This... AoL's main contribution was creating a testbed for game concepts that we're probably not going to see much of again. I've said before that you could exchange the sprites in the game with non-zelda themes and it wouldn't be recognizable as an installment to the franchise.

 

[Ventus]

Skyward Sword is probably one of the least effective games in the series...at least as of now it appears to be. It introduced a lot of new things that were either useless or appear to be useless; Zelda's being Hylia in another lifetime is useless information; motion controls appear to be dying as soon as they came to power; the origin story for the Master Sword and the Hero of Time were largely lackluster...etc.

Series could go without SS as it was a very self-contained title, hardly involving the rest of the series except to serve as a major retcon.

 

[JuicieJ]

Probably Four Swords Adventures. Miyamoto upending the tea table on its story being the Imprisoning War ultimately led to even more confusion in the timeline and almost certainly led to that stupid second split.

 

[Zorth]

Four Sword Adventures takes the prize, just a boring and unfitting title in the series. Zelda should never become a party game or co-op game, the only positive thing about FSA was the creative 4-Link puzzles but other than that the game was complete garbage.

 

[Skittles]

I will not say SS, mainly because it is the newest game in the series (yes for the same reason many of you said that it doesn't really belong...) I think that many of the elements will be used later on and may help to build up the series as a whole. Sadly, we won't really see this until the WiiU game comes out, but I think that it might be surprising how important the game ends up being later on...even though it's not that popular right now...

The Oracle games have always seemed least important. There stories (or lack there of) don't really connect with the other games and they were set in a land other than Hyrule. They're barely connected to the main series beyond Link being the protagonist and a few other elements. At least both SS and AL have more elements that connect them to the series, despite that these are pretty good games, they aren't really necessary games...*shrug* Even the Four Sword games have more in common than these games do...

 

[CynicalSquid]

Four Swords and Four Sword Adventures.

I highly doubt that those games are anyone's favorites so I doubt they would be missed.

 

[DarkestLink]

I disagree. AoL invented many elements that were kept in ALTTP.

All it offered was was the magic meter, which has been a cancer the series suffered from until they finally removed it.

 

[DKMac]

This... AoL's main contribution was creating a testbed for game concepts that we're probably not going to see much of again. I've said before that you could exchange the sprites in the game with non-zelda themes and it wouldn't be recognizable as an installment to the franchise.

I agree with this. Although this game is probably the reason I enjoyed ALTTP so much. It was such a breath of fresh air after AoL.

 

[Musicfan]

Id have to say TP it was. It was just to bland and life less. The story was OoT even the final battle is the same with just a sword fight that was in WW. The only thing that it relly added was the horse battle. It did not relly do anything diffrent.

All it offered was was the magic meter, which has been a cancer the series suffered from until they finally removed it.

What is the problem with the magic meter? Its a way to make you think about how you use ablitys and magic items. You had to think about the fire and ice arrow puzzles. You could not spam dins fire to defeat enemys. The medals in ALtP gave you amazing offensive Abilities and mixs it up a lot.

 

[DarkestLink]

What is the problem with the magic meter? Its a way to make you think about how you use ablitys and magic items. You had to think about the fire and ice arrow puzzles. You could not spam dins fire to defeat enemys. The medals in ALtP gave you amazing offensive Abilities and mixs it up a lot.

Well...the magic meter gave us 2 things.

1) Overpowered abilities that weren't fun to use and were just...overpowered. Better to just take them out entirely rather than limit them.

2) Unneeded limits to abilities that didn't need limits. And because we needed the magic for puzzles, we were encouraged to never use these EXCEPT in the puzzles.

And while you could argue that these items could lead to more puzzles, the puzzles they offered were incredibly easy, repetitive, and required no thinking whatsoever.