Games

Link to the Past. Partially the nostalgia hit, but even going back and playing it today just feels good IMO.

Zelda: Majora's Mask. The characters were more real in that game than any other Zelda. So much emotion and good music.

Link’s Awakening. I played the shit out of that on GameBoy. If you knew the screen skip glitch you could break that game wide open.

The Wind Waker for me. At the time, the open world and sea felt so massive, and the colorful cell-shaded graphics made me feel like I was immersed in a cartoon. I played other Zelda games before, but it was the first one to hold my attention all the way to the end. To me, it’s one of those games I wish I could experience again for the first time.

Old guy who has played every Zelda game there is. Breath of the Wild wins.

Honestly, I think Wind Waker is and I didn't like it when it came out. The art style has grown on me over the years, the combat is satisfying without being to complicated, and the exploration is fun and unique for a Zelda game.

I really liked Spirit Tracks.

Train gameplay was actually enjoyable for me (especially the way it got used in one of the end game fights was so cool). It was also nice that Zelda was an actual part of the game and helped solve puzzles instead of some princess locked away in a castle.

I played Phantom Hourglass much later and Spirit Tracks honestly just felt much more polished and fun.

Majora's Mask is the best Zelda game. However, Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game. The setting, art style, and musical score all combined perfectly to make a game that was both really fun and relaxing. No Zelda game since has ever matched the feeling of sailing to the Great Sea soundtrack.

Twilight Princess. I loved the characters and the vibe, the MUSIC was something else too. On par with OOT. The snowy mountain theme was chilling.

It was not revolutionary like OOT, experimental like MM, or transformative as WW, but I feel like it was the most polished, quintessential Zelda game we got.

Now that BOTW and its squeakwal are just cash cows though, it’s sad to think we’ll never get a good old fashioned Zelda game again.

Game Boy Zelda is best Zelda.

I love Links Awakening due to nostalgia, but Oracle of Ages is still the longest game I’ve played (since I’ve yet to beat it). Seasons is fine but not my cup of tea, and minish cap is a bit too shaort

Probably a Link to the Past. Although I’ve only played the games in the series up to Link’s Awakening so that might change although the game would have to be pretty damn good

Nostalgia-wise it'd be Phantom Hourglass, it's super underrated, super fun game! But otherwise it'd be the Switch duology, they're incredible games

Ocarina of Time, for sure

I've only ever played the two Oracle games on gameboy color, they were excellent. Never dinished Ages though, too damn difficult. Something about this format (topdown, block-based...) works really well with my brain

Probably OoT followed by MM. At least those are the ones I spent the most time on.

But I also really enjoyed all the NES and GBC games. Especially Oracle of Ages/Seasons were amazing.

Haven't played anything newer I'm afraid.

My top three:

1. A Link to the Past. Basically gave the Legend of Zelda its identity, so many staple mechanics, so much lore, comes from this game. First appearance of the Master Sword, the idea of Ganondorf as a king of thieves/sorcerer before becoming a pig monster, Kakariko village. The creation myth with the three golden goddesses came from here. In fact, there's a passage in the manual that basically reads like the design document for the next 30 years in the series, look it up. Gameplay is polished to a mirror shine, and it's amazing how it has lasted with the randomizer community.

2. Ocarina of Time. A sequel which referred to previous entries and expanded on the lore without shitting on it. Imagine that! It's amazing how right they got it as basically the first attempt of a game like this in 3D, even if controller technology had some evolving to do.

3. Breath of the Wild. While it does get a bit samey since there's only so many enemies to encounter, and exploring the world will result in finding shrines or koroks, the openness with which it approaches puzzles aka "just get to the goal, we don't care how." I find very refreshing compared to the previous "you're in a room with a lock and a key. Bet you can't find the only existing solution to this puzzle" dynamic the games increasingly had.

My bottom three:

1. Skyward Sword. The artwork is charming, the soundtrack has a few gems in it but is mostly short repetitive and annoying loops, a lot of the gameplay elements are just blatantly recycled from Twilight Princess. The mysterious floating girl who flies back a distance when Link approaches to lead him somewhere would have been more effective if the Zora Queen's shade hadn't done it a few years earlier, and I fully expected Fi to explain the collect the light fruit games by saying "Yes Master, 'this shit again'." Combine that with the frankly terrible motion controls crammed in as much as possible and the "Master, I have detected a 97.3333% chance that the man you just talked to said that he lives here in town" nature of it all...fuck this game.

2. Adventure of Link. Nintendo Hard via outright unfairness, not much story, not much lore, and rather meh graphics.

3. Tears of the Kingdom. Never before has a game been this much mile wide and inch deep. The story barely exists, there is more content in the Hudson & Rhondson's daughter storyline than in the main story quest. There are two different crafting mechanics added to the game, plus the one from Breath of the Wild, but none are really explored because there's no room, there's no time. In addition to the original map, there's the entire sky and the entire underground, both full of basically nothing. They could have gotten two games out of the concepts found in this one and explored the individual mechanics a lot more, but no. This game is a mile wide and an inch deep.

I've played them all over the years. My favorite for a long time was Wind Waker, because of the feeling of freedom it gave me, so it'll surprise no one that Breath of the Wild beats it.

Breath of the Wild is my new fave. I gotta say that the story of Tears of the Kingdom really did it for me (just absolutely sobbing at points) but since it feels like it wouldn't have had that impact if it wasn't for Breath of the Wild, I give it to Breath of the Wild.

(Special shout out to Link Between Worlds. Really feel like that game was fun as hell.)

Edit: Gotta be real. I don't remember which one I played first? I think it was Link to the Past.

Maybe I'm getting to be an old head but it's OoT for sure

My favourite is Link's awakening, but there are a lot of great games in the franchise.

I'm currently going through every (mainline) Zelda game and replaying them. Took a bit of a break at Links Awakening, but I'd have to say my favourite 2D Zelda are Seasons/Ages, and my favourite 3D is Majora's Mask.

Something about the worlds in those games that really draws me in.

A link to the past for sure, it's one of the greatest games of all time. My favorite modern Zelda is skyward sword, the dungeons in that game were so well crafted it's insane the amount of effort and detail they contain. Least favorite has got to be breath of the wild, it's a wonderful open world game, but an absolutely horrible Zelda game.

OoT for me. ALttP and Link’s Awakening were already my favorite games at the time, but OoT came out at that perfect time in my life when consoles were being made for kids my age and 3D was this mysterious, exciting new thing. To this day, I usually end up replaying it about once a year, and I suspect I’ll continue doing that until I pass on.

Link to the Past for being my first. Twilight Princess for the modern era.

Gotta be Breath of the Wild, for me. Taken together with Tears of the Kingdom, the series' storytelling and immersion has never been better, I think, and as a game, Breath of the Wild was the tighter, more-satisfying experience, overall.

Wind Waker is a veeerrrrrrry close second. I think it's the most-polished entry in the whole series, in both categories. I'm really not sure what I would change, if given the chance.

Used to be Link to the Past but now the title is held by Tears of the Kingdom.

I've been playing the series since LttP. Twilight Princess is my top, for presentation and storytelling.

I feel like Skyward Sword tried to repeat that, but the dungeons and style / atmosphere of the world of TP still come out on top (even though I'm not very much into gothic style and furries). I think SS is way too cartoonish and happy-go-lucky for a world where the surface has been abandoned to the demons and yet everyone who lives there is cool (gorons, kiwis, moles, proto-Zora), that's a massive tonal dissonance between the narration and the actual environment and it just takes me out.

The next ones on my top list are Minish Cap and Link Between Worlds.

Twilight Princess is the perfect LOZ game

Honestly, I think the original. I know its inferior to most of the other games in most ways, but I've found a lot of the modern Zelda games feel pretty shallow and formulaec. Not to say they're bad, but none of them really feel like they stand out to me either - they're just good games. The original on the other hand, feels very different from a lot of the games since then. The world is kept a lot more foreign and hostile both in terms of aggressive enemies and in terms of tutorialization. Its makes the exploration so much more rewarding, and when you do find a new item, that much more special.

Until Breath of the Wild it was Ocarina of Time (I'm so original, I know /s), then BotW, and now Tears of the Kingdom improved on BotW in just about every conceivable way. I'm not much of a big completion type of gamer, despite really enjoying BotW I didn't go for every shrine, but I definitely made the time and effort to do that in TotK. The only aspect of it I didn't care for was that I didn't really like going into the Depths and largely stayed above ground as much as I could (and screw Gloom Hands). Makes me excited to see where the series will go next.

I love them all. But Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time will always live in my heart. As well as the original, I beat that one yearly.

Zelda is one of those things I somehow missed growing up. The only one that I ever sunk any significant time into was Phantom Hourglass. It was pretty good. I've tried some of the other ones but I get the sense that they are hard to enjoy if you don't have nostalgia goggles on.