My favorite zelda game is orcania of time.

Now we can go on about a debate of Link to the past and orcania of time, but the only reason why I love this game so dang much, is cause of childhood nostalgia.

I played that game when i was little and never could beat it, then when i grew up i got to do it again. I was all time epic as hell.

Whats your favorite?

Well, first I want to say that I draw a line between the 2D and 3D games in the series because I don't thing they're really comparable. It would be like comparing Smash TV to Medal of Honor.

Among the 3D games I've either finished or come close to finishing, I would list them from favorites to least favorites as Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker.

I don't expect them to make a better Zelda game than Twilight Princess. All of the dungeons are excellently designed and the art style made for a great atmosphere. The gameplay in wolf form was also interesting.

Ocarina of Time place second because it redefined the series in a good way. No, it hasn't aged particularly well, but considering it a product of its time and the fact that it was their very first attempt at a 3D game, I'd say they knocked it out of the park.

Wind Waker had a whole lot of promise at the beginning of the game but quickly lost its charm after Dragon Roost Island. Every other dungeon except the Earth Temple was totally unsatisfying, the Triforce hunt is absolutely ridiculous and the amount of time you spend sailing from one place to another, even after you learn to fast travel, is also ridiculous. If I wanted to be in the middle of an ocean with nothing around me for ages, I'd join the Navy. At least there was great scenery and a whole lot of secrets and collectibles in Breath of the Wild

Other games worth mentioning in no particular order would be Breath of the Wild, which I think is an absolutely fantastic game. The relatively massive overworld is beautifully crafted and surprisingly not empty. Collecting the Korok seeds to expand your inventory and searching out and completing shrines to increase your health and stamina will take a huge amount of your gameplay time but won't feel like a grind at all. The only reason I didn't list it above was because I don't really consider it to be a proper Zelda game. It's far too different from the rest of the series to compare them and I'd come closer to saying it's more like a much less stat and skill tree focused Elder Scrolls game than anything in the Zelda franchise.

I have played a little of Skyward Sword and, while the swordplay is great, I can't say I'm a fan of either the art style or the area design. I didn't list it because I'm still very early in the game and it may change my mind later on, but I don't expect to be terribly impressed.

I also haven't played Majora's Mask yet, so that's on the "to play" list. I might update my rankings if I decide it ranks higher than any of the others here.


For the 2D category, I haven't played very far in most of them but I've beat or come close to beating a couple. I'll only rank the ones I've gotten far enough in to really judge. From most to least favorite: Oracle of Seasons, Oracle of Ages, Phantom Hourglass (technically 2.5D but most of the game plays more 2D than 3D. The only parts that really feel like you're playing a 3D game are when you're sailing.)

Oracle of Seasons has a really, really interesting feature where you have to manipulate the seasons to change the landscape and get where you need to go. It really brings a lot of depth to the game in my opinion. I preferred it to the time travel feature in Oracle of Ages, but that's pretty cool in its own right. Furthermore, I really thought the world and dungeon designs were great. I never actually managed to beat it but I'm definitely going to go back and finish at some point.

Oracle of Ages ranks behind Oracle of Seasons for me pretty much just because I liked the season manipulation more. All else considered, they're pretty equal and more like different sides of the same coin, but not enough that it feels like you're replaying the same game. They're both worth your time and, as the titles suggest, they're really part of a set. Also I feel like This game is much more difficult than the other because I got stuck at the fourth dungeon and kept dying, but that's probably just me being bad.

Phantom Hourglass isn't bad but it's not great, either. I give it a pass because they were largely working with a control gimmick and on less than impressive hardware to boot. It suffers somewhat from the same things that hold Wind Waker back, like large, very empty oceans (I can't remember if there's a way to fast travel or not) and the like, but the dungeons are much better and the controls and combat are surprisingly good considering they're centered around the touch screen. A good example of a gimmick that actually works.


Other 2D games I've played in the series but haven't played enough to really rate are the first game, which I won't say is bad but is definitely on a higher level when it comes to difficulty. Good luck finding your way through the game without asking someone or relying on a guide. This game doesn't tell you anything.

I wanna say that Zelda II is really underrated but I don't feel I can really say that without qualifying it with enough progress or play time. I never made it through the third dungeon. They took a slightly different approach to this game in that it's a sidescroller and more adventure RPG oriented with experience points and levels. A good concept even if it may not fit within the Zelda franchise and I'd be really interested in a fan project to rebuild it as a 16-bit style game.

I enjoyed what I played of A Link to the Past but that's not saying much as I never managed to get the second pendant, let alone getting into Dark World. I'll have to revisit this one some time and see if I can get any farther.

I think that's all of them. I might've missed a couple but they're not coming to me.

There is a reason Zelda: A Link to the Past is not only one of the highest selling games of all time, it still ranked the 2nd best SNES game all-time in 2012 from Nintendo Power, when the SNES was retired.

It has staying power.  It has a beautiful atmosphere, intriguing game play, fun but challenging events and bosses, and it's a hook that won't let go.

Like original poster said, there's some nostalgia there for me too because it was one of the first SNES games I ever played and it was incredible.  I'm a kid from the late-80s/90s, and there's nothing like those original games, be they Final Fantasy IV and VI, Zelda: A link to the past, Street Fighter II, and so on.

It was also the first SNES game with 8 MB of storage space, when all the other games only used 4 MB.  That meant it was MASSIVE compared to other games.  It was awesome and the greatest Zelda game of all time, no debate.

I've beaten Link's Awakening DX a number of times, still enjoying it, especially Marin's character.

But my favorite Zelda game is Skyward Sword. It has a rousing soundtrack, great motion controls, one of the most inspirational plots of the series. I think it doesn't get a fair shake. For one, I've seen complaints about the motion controls. The motion controls had a learning curve and may *seem* unwieldy, but I found them to be flawless after I got used to them. I was able to do what I wanted to do nearly 100% of the time, with the only bar to success being my skill level. Now that doesn't mean that the controls function as expected. The bar to success means changing any false expectations of the controls and being willing to work around them, rather than through them.

Another complaint is the linearity. I found this to be refreshing, actually. It puts the focus on the controls rather than complex exploration (like that in BOTW), and makes the narrative shine. I felt Breath of the Wild was so focused on giving certain players what they wanted that they didn't give players what they needed. Now Breath of the Wild is a landmark title for many reasons. But the plot is bare-bones and doesn't shine like Skyward Sword's does. Skyward Sword gives a greater feeling of hope and destiny whereas Breath of the Wild is pretty much a playground with story bits. There's a place for that. But it didn't make me feel very much like a hero. In fact, sometimes I downright felt like a terrorist, like I was the bad guy instead of those Bokoblins and Moblins I'm hunting. I didn't have time to feel that way with Skyward Sword. It was so well-focused that I didn't lose myself to one particular part of the game: Instead the entire game enveloped me.

No other Zelda game has given me the same feeling. Some have come close (I'm looking at you, Wind Waker HD), but haven't quite met expectations.

Twilight Princess.
I've only played a handful of Zelda games, but this is by far the best imo. OoT I came across late (a few years ago), so maybe my disappointment was because I was comparing it to modern games, and maybe it was because of all of the hype surrounding it. Either way, it wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't great either. Decent maybe. I got that same happy feel that Wind Waker gave off at it's start, and that was charming for sure, but I just didn't find the game to be a masterpiece. Bear in mind that I only played until I got the mask that the guy in the first village wanted, and did something at a grave that I can't really recall in any detail before I quit because my controller's wires broke. :/


My second pick goes to an odd choice, odd based on how I've never really heard any Zelda fans speak of it when it comes to exceptionally good or bad entries: Minish Cap. I actually really liked that game. Unfortunately I never got to finish it either (lost it).


Wind Waker disappointed me right out of the box. It was my first 3D Zelda and I expected a serious tone to match the story and feeling that the first 2D Zelda I remembered much of (more on that shortly) invoked. Instead I got cute toons. I'm not some graphics nerd, but visual aesthetic goes a long way in making a game immersive, and it took me a while to get used to this one's visuals. However I eventually came to terms with it, and by the time I got to my first real dungeon I was loving it.
Then things went slowly downhill. The sailing went from exciting exploration to travelling through vast emptiness and just plain tedium. The triforce part did me in. I couldn't make myself care after the first couple of pieces. This remains the biggest disappointment on my list of Zelda games that I've played.


My favorite 2D was a homebrew made for old school flip phones. I originally thought it was the first Zelda (I played that as a kid, but remembered next to nothing), but upon trying the first again after this one, I was sorely disappointed. The original wasn't bad by any means, but this homebrew was incredible.




m0ssb3rg935 : I've obviously never played Breath of the Wild before, but I was extremely interested in it after I saw it at E3. I later watched some gameplay of it, and for the first twenty minutes had actually considered getting it at some point. After the first twenty or so minutes however, I became increasingly bored with it. The dungeons (or whatever they're called in that one) didn't feel like unique dungeons, but rather more like a bland selection of puzzles to test out abilities in very mundane ways. I was also quite disappointed in the new gameplay mechanisms outside of climbing and some environmental interactions. The new items and abilities as a whole were rather unsatisfying to me.

And The overworld and graphics are often lauded, but I find them very unattractive, and dare say... a little ugly. The colors are from this odd washed out water color pallete, and it makes the environment look subpar and characters look strange. I'd have gone for either TP or even WW graphics over this any day. No offense, this is just my opinion on it.

And the world wasn't empty in the sense of having literally nothing, but it felt like they made this big space and then just placed random enemy encampments and items along the way to make sure it was thoroughly populated. I've always said that it felt like they made the world big for the sake of making it big, which is a trend in modern gaming as a whole that I really dislike. Another game that did this was Uncharted 4, though obviously not to this extent since it wasn't open world. As a general rule I don't like open worlds, as they feel like space for the sake of space, and that is just meh. In the end I felt like BoTW sacrificed focus for size, and focus was what made me enjoy the previous Zelda games.

I know this sounds like a fanboy of another company just trying to pick apart a big game for someone else, but I genuinely just didn't see anything that good about this Zelda game. I hope they go back to the older formula, or at least find a better way to make this formula feel satisfying and focused, but I doubt they do the former. The latter? Time will tell.