Why A Link to the Past is the Worst Zelda

I can hear the shouting and pitchfork rattling already, and this editorial hasn’t even yet begun. I can also already hear some of the more reasonable ones saying: “Wait a minute, didn’t you say A Link to the Past was your favorite?” Why, yes, I did. And while I thought I’d made this crystal clear in the inaugural post as well as in the beginning of the previous one, it would seem I need to reiterate the thesis of this editorial series: these are not reviews of the games; these are written to point at something that often goes unsaid in all fandoms, including the Zelda one: there’s no such thing as “the worst”, just as there’s no such thing as “the best”. This is because what for you might be the best Zelda game can also be someone else’s “worst” Zelda game; there’s no consensus. This was reaffirmed for me while skimming the comments to the previous entry in this editorial series wherein I explained why it could be that someone whose favorite Zelda was A Link to the Past would consider The Minish Cap their least favorite–plenty of people showed up to say: “I prefer The Minish Cap” or “A Link to the Past is my least favorite” or even “The Minish Cap is the best, and A Link to the Past is the worst!” Thank you for proving my point: there is no consensus, we each can have polar opposite opinions, and those are usually clouded by nostalgia–the order in which we played the games.

This time I’d like to examine this phenomenon from the exact opposite as last week, this week we’ll look at it from the vantage point of someone who ranks A Link to the Past as one of the worst Zelda games and why.

Jump inside for more!

We can look at this from three very different angles: those whose first Zelda game was the original, those whose first Zelda game was one of the 3D ones, and those whose first overheard perspective Zelda game was anything released after A Link to the Past. Let’s begin with the former.
 
 

From the perspective of playing the original Legend of Zelda first

The original Legend of Zelda–being one of the earliest action-adventure games–created the blueprint for the genre. But because it was so early in the art form of home console video gaming, it was extremely basic. It’s story was a bit more detailed than the average video game, but not by much. There were no NPCs to speak of (apart from the nameless merchants and old men/women and such). It was a fairly basic dungeon crawling affair. So when The Adventure of Link hit the shelves with its much more detailed story and backstory, its named NPCs who also in some instances had backstories, its named locations… it felt like a decidedly huge step forward from the rather basic original game. It was a direct continuation of the story from the first game, but Ganon was long-dead and while the treat of his return was immanent, he never actually did return unless you got a game over; no, the actual villain of the game was… no one, really–you were simply out to collect a long lost piece of the Triforce. There was no big baddie trying to take over the world. The new story was very different from the first game, and that was a refreshing change. The combat was completely overhauled from overhead perspective to side-scrolling, and this added a whole new dimension to battle because now instead of just attacking forwards, there was a crouching attack, a down thrust attack (basically jumping on the enemies and stabbing them) and an upper thrust attack (jumping up and stabbing flying enemies). The new game added eight extremely different (and very useful) magic spells which Link learned over the course of his adventure, and it also added a very RPG-like experience building system: every enemy that you defeated would eventually make you stronger.

So when A Link to the Past came out and stripped all of that away, it was certainly very disappointing for some. Gone was the side-scrolling battle system and along with it the much more involved combat: we were back to square one again with the simple “attack in front of you” method–no more crouching attacks or jumping attacks. Also gone were the spells–sort of. A Link to the Past had Link finding three medallions which preformed some interesting attack magic… but even so, three instead of eight was definitely a bit of a let down. Even the palette of the game was decidedly different than the first two, who featured a much darker color scheme–everything in A Link to the Past was a bit more bright and happy and colorful (at least in the Light World). The story was basically a much more detailed version of that in the first game. Instead of the unique there-is-no-villain story of the second game, A Link to the Past returned to the source and focused on Ganon once again. Where was the innovation of The Adventure of Link? At least Ocarina of Time, after it, once again reinvented the combat system and took another step forward. A Link to the Past just felt like a step backwards.
 
 

From the perspective of playing 3D Zelda first

When comparing 3D Zelda with overhead perceptive-styled Zelda, it’s a bit like comparing apples to oranges… or, rather: a drawing of an apple with a 3D rendering of an apple. By this point there have been many more 3D Zelda games than overhead perspective games and by that same token: many more people who started out playing 3D Zelda as their first game. Be it Ocarina of Time, Majora’s Mask, The Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, or even Skyward Sword… 3D Zelda plops you down into a detailed 3D world, surrounding you on all sides and below and above with secrets and puzzles and new creatures to meet. By the sheer virtue of being newer, they are often packed to the brim with side-quests, mini-games, named NPCs with stories, unique locales. At least much more so than anything in A Link to the Past. No matter how you cut it, A Link to the Past comes off as bland in comparison.
 
 

From the perspective of playing a later overhead-styled game first

What if you came to 2D Zelda first by way of The Minish Cap or the Oracle games, or even Link’s Awakening? When taking any of these games and comparing them to A Link to the Past, they each come off a bit better. While Link’s Awakening and the Oracle games might not be as colorful and detailed as A Link to the Past, they certainly feature very unique stories. Heck, they don’t even take place in Hyrule, and Zelda and Ganon, and the Triforce are basically completely ancillary to the plot. A Link to the Past definitely feels like it’s retreading old walkways when standing next to these highly unique games story-wise. Or The Minish Cap, again subverting the “Triforce Saga” and focusing instead on a newer villain and his backstory feels like a breath of fresh air. That combined with its much more detailed graphics which look like they’ve stepped right off the page of a book of fairytales… it might be difficult to go back to A Link to the Past with its much more primary color palette and its much more primitive and block-y 16-bit era graphics. Or even the Oracle games and Link’s Awakening, while still might be graphically inferior to A Link to the Past, if one has started out with those and their quirky sense of humor and slightly more involved stories and larger quantity of side-quests and mini-games, it might be a bit of a let down to then go to the much more straight-forward Link to the Past.

 
 
Summary

Truth be told, I’ve almost never heard anyone coming from the perspective of the original game being their favorite rank A Link to the Past as one of the “worst.” In the rare instances I’ve come across such a sentiment on forums or whatever, I couldn’t help feeling the person was trolling to make a false point. However, those who have played a newer overhead perspective Zelda game before playing A Link the Past generally seem to rank it higher than A Link to the Past because they are now used to the things those games offer: better graphics, more detailed stories, trade-quests, more mini-games, more innovation in general. Whether more is better is debatable, but the point is that the “mold” has been set for them: Zelda games should have these things. So when they go to play A Link to the Past and there is so little of this stuff, they tend to rank it lower than other Zelda games. Really truly it seems to come down to the mold that has been set.

Did you start out with one of the more recent top-down Zelda games and then found A Link to the Past a bit lacking? Or did you like it better? Let us know in the comments!