Twilight Princess

[A Black Falcon]

My Zelda list, if you forget:

1. Ocarina of Time
2. Link's Awakening
3. Twilight Princess

I really love Twilight Princess, it's a truly amazing game with the best art design ever in the Zelda series and some of the best gameplay, too. I will say I've never played the Wii version, but the better GC version is amazing, as is the HD port on the Wii U -definitely get that version, it's great! As with WW HD, the Gamepad inventory is quite handy as well. It's one of Nintendo's all-time great games and I don't really agree with almost any criticism of it other than that the story is somewhat disappointing and it is easier than OoT or most of the classic 2d Zeldas.

Of course, I usually dislike open worlds, randomly generated levels in games, and dynamic difficulty scaling. There are cases where all three of those things might have a place in some games, but for me such cases are rare.

The first is that cohesive "this is a massive world to explore" part, much like Metroid. It's not done in stages, it's done as a massive single piece where you explore from one area to the next using items and such in new areas. At the most basic level I think just about everyone understands that, and even Zelda 2 sticks with that idea. This is what necessitates a focus on puzzles I think. To explore means to get stuck and that involves mental as well as physical barriers.

Sure you need a world, but it doesn't need to be all open right at the start. LA's staged-reveal world is my favorite in the franchise. Nostalgia is part of that I know, but I quite disagree on this point. Sure, I do think that TP gets better once the full overworld opens up, it's not done quite on LA's level, but the core concept is fine, and I think I more disliked the part of TP before you get to the full open world the first time I played it than when I have gone back more recently.

Also Four Swords Adventures and Triforce Heroes, while not "traditional" Zelda games, are in fact good. Maybe even great.

I don't know what it is, exactly, but something feels a little... off about it. It's not a bad game, it just doesn't exactly feel like Zelda. Almost like it's an X-Box knock-off. Strangely, I didn't get the same feeling with Wind Waker, which might be more of a drastic change to the Zelda formula (in both aesthetic and gameplay mechanics). I just beat Death Mountain and am at Lake Hylia, about to meet the light goddess.

TP is Nintendo's only attempt to make a stylistic sequel to Ocarina. It's what fans claimed they wanted -- a "darker", more serious sequel to Ocarina, with more "mature" art styles and the same core gameplay and world design concepts as that game. MM and WW have a lot in common with OoT and TP, but they are much more distinct in gameplay, while TP is built around the OoT framework. And while I like OoT more overall, some of that is just because OoT did it first and was so incredibly amazing at the time of its release; TP really does have a better world, better combat, and more. It's the better sequel to OoT that Wind Waker in part didn't try to be (sailing, the art style, and such) and in part failed to be (the pathetically easy difficulty level, only four dungeons, etc.).

I know, in recent years it's cooler to like WW than TP for whatever reason, but I have, ever since I got to the full open world in TP, preferred the game, and the margin by which I prefer TP over WW has only grown over time.


As for SS, I've said before that I really like its gameplay, but yeah, I never finished it either. I didn't come even remotely close, in fact. It's a game I mean to get back to sometime for sure...