Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Legend of Zelda In Review - Every Zelda Reviewed and Ranked

Episode Date: March 7, 2020

After playing 11 major Zelda games over the past year, Barrett sits down to review and rank the Zelda franchise. Timecodes: 00:00:00 - Intro 00:04:17 - Skyward Sword 00:24:48 - Ocarina of Time 00:41:34 - Link to the Past 00:56:11 - Link’s Awakening 01:21:40 - Link Between Worlds 01:35:48 - The Legend of Zelda 01:49:35 - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link 02:03:41 - Wind Waker 02:23:39 - Majora’s Mask 02:47:17 - Twilight Princess 03:12:10 - Breath of the Wild 03:41:34 - Awards! 03:45:49 - Viewer Questions 03:57:09 - The End All music by Nintendo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody. Welcome to The Legend of Zelda in Review, a Kind of Funny games in review special, where I, Barrett Courtney, will be reviewing and ranking the major Zelda game releases in the franchise. If you're unfamiliar with me, I'm the social content coordinator here at Kind of Funny, where you can also hear me yell off camera about Batman, Harry Potter, or something else that I'm stupidly passionate about. So back in June 2019, I had a hankering to play as many Zelda games as I could, slightly due to the lack of games that I was personally invested in in 2019, and slightly due to the fact that I really like to play old video games because it helps with my depression and makes me feel very comfortable when I feel lost. Was that too real?

So originally I was going to go on this journey for myself, on my own, to play the major Zelda games in timeline order rather than release order like a normal person would do it. Because the world of Zelda and the bullshit ways every game connects together and lore really fascinates me. So I wanted to experience the story of Zelda in a more unique way on my own time. But after a couple of games in, we hear it kind of funny thought it would be cool to collect my thoughts on the franchise as I went deeper and deeper in. And that is why we are here today. These are my collective thoughts on each game that I played, recorded shortly after I beat each one of them, and my ranking of the series. Now, you might be asking, what do you mean by major Zelda releases? I'll be up front. I did not play every game in the Zelda franchise.

This play-through was originally a personal project for me, so I wanted to stick to what I thought of as the major Zelda releases, the must-plays of the franchise. So unfortunately, I did not get to games like Oracle of Ages last seasons, Minish Cap, etc. But that's not to say I won't try to go back to those games one day. I just only have so much time and energy. And if that bums you out, I'm sorry,

but I did play 11 Zelda games over the course of seven months and then reviewed and ranked each one of them. I am very, very tired. So the games that I'm going to talk about in this very long in-review special, which will have time codes below if you need to skip around or take a break or whatever, are as follows. The Legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time, a Link to the Past,

Link's Awakening, Link between Worlds, the Legend of Zelda, Zelda 2, The Adventure of Link, Wind Waker, Majores Mask, Twilight Princess, and Breath of the Wild. Now again, I played these games in the complicated timeline order rather than release order like we would usually do on an interview. To have a unique consumption of the series, I know the timeline is scary and confusing, but I will explain things as best as I can along the way. And before we get into it, I just want to shout out everybody here kind of funny,

who has been super supportive of letting me deep dive into this crazy passion project of mine. and to everyone who supported us on patreon.com slash kind of funny games and patreon.com slash kind of funny in the month of January when we were fundraising for the year of 2020. This project was made possible by everybody who helped us across the 17.5K mark back in January, and it was really touching to see how many people were excited about this project. I really do hope you and enjoy it. With all of the highs and lows I had throughout the series, I was always having a fun time making this project.

It's been a fun retrospective on the franchise and a cool project that helps me relearn how to be on camera and talk about video games in a deeper sense than just, I don't know, it's cool. Also, if you're wondering about the very distracting blue bandage I have around my arm, I actually just got my Master's Sword tattoo on my arm a couple of hours ago because spending this much time with this series and working on this project for so long, I felt like I needed to do something to commemorate my time with it all. So, yeah, I did get a Master Sword tattoo, and I'm very excited about it. It looks really, really dope. So anyways, enough of this introamo-jumbo that I'm kind of bad at doing. Let's talk about the legend of Zelda and the legend that started at all, which is the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. Now, to give some history on this game, Skyward Sword originally released on November 20th, 2011 for the Wii in North America. I know some of the other regions have slightly different dates.

The game was directed by, and I'm sorry if I messed this name up, Hidomero Fujibayashi and produced by IG Anuma. Both of them would return for their same roles a few years later for Breath of the Wild. And even though this is Fuji Bayashi's first mainline Zelda game that he's directed, beforehand he directed a bunch of the handheld Zelda games in the 2000s. And while this is the first major Zelda release that Anuma produced, he was the director of several mainline Zelda games before this, starting with Ocarina of Time and ending his role as director with Twilight Princess

and then moving on as producer for this game. So obviously, he's been around the block a couple of times with these Zelda games. So my original thoughts on Skyward's Sword were not great when it originally came out. I borrowed a friend's Wii for like a week or two to play a bunch of games that I had missed out on. And it wasn't soon after Skyward Sword had come out. So naturally, that was one of the games I wanted to play. And before playing through the game on this playthrough, my memory, served that I had played like halfway through the game before giving up on it and feeling crazy

because I didn't love it and actually like looking up review scores. It was like one of the first times I actually like wanted to look up review scores to see what everybody else thought about it. And of course, much to my surprise on the internet where, you know, IGN's giving it a 10 out of 10 people are calling it a masterpiece and stuff. Like I thought I was the crazy one. Like I really thought I was out of touch with video games and whatnot. And I was like, well, I guess I just don't get it and I put it down and then and that initial feeling definitely festered over the years into resentment until I played it for the first time since then earlier this year. But now let's talk about my overall impressions of the game after playing it before I get into the story and whatnot.

I'm glad I gave it a fair shake this time around and I stuck with it. It was actually fun to like explore the world not in the physical sense but like the world like the kind of world that Nintendo was building with this Zelda game in the kind of lore of Zelda. And it was cool, especially with how important this story is for the Zelda timeline. I was actually talking to Tim while I was playing Skyward Sword, and he was telling me, like, if this game didn't exist, there'd pretty much be no timeline because of the events that happened in the story. If they never told the story, there would never be like this weird connection between all of

these games. So let's move on to the story of the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. Of course, this is the first game in the timeline that sets up the story for the entire Zelda franchise. So there's a lot of important stuff that we're setting up in this game story-wise. So I'm actually going to read the Wikipedia synopsis as fast as I can because there's a lot of details in here that I want to get through. According to legend, three ancient goddesses bestowed a great wish-granting power, the Triforce. The Demon King Demise sought the Triforce and laid waste to much of the land in his quest for it. The goddess Healia gathered the survivors and sent them into the sky,

allowing her to launch a full-scale offensive against demise. She was victorious, but the land was severely damaged. Uncounted years later, the land Healia sent to the sky is known as Skyloft, and its people believe the surface below the clouds is a myth. In the present, Knight in Training Link passes his final exam despite the attempted interference of his class rival, Gruse, who considers himself a romantic rival for Link's childhood friend Zelda. After passing the exam and on a celebratory flight together, Zelda is whisked away below the clouds by a dark tornado.

After recovering back on Skyloft, Link is led to the island statue of Helia by Phi Phi. I'm going to say Fee. I don't know. I've looked up how to say her name and no one can agree on how to say her name. The spirit of the goddess sword residing within the statue. Link draws the sword, sewing himself to be the prophesized hero who will finally destroy demise. Opening away to the surface, Link is guided by Fee to the sealed temple, where he meets the sword. an old woman who tells him to track Zelda. This leads Link across the region to Farren Woods, Eldon Volcano, and the Lenehru Desert. While he catches up with Zelda, he's prevented from returning her to Skyloft by Impa, a young woman guarding and guiding Zelda.

Link is also confronted by Giraim, a self-proclaimed demon lord working towards freeing demise. At the Temple of Time in the Laneru Desert, Link defends Zelda and Impa from Giraeim, giving the two time to depart through a time gate into the past, which Impa destroys as they pass through. Returning to the temple of Heilia, Link is followed by Grooes and the two end up on the surface together. Link then has to defeat the imprisoned, a monstrous form of demise, attempting to reach the sealed temple after the old woman shows Link a second dormant time gate.

Link sets out to strengthen the goddess sword by passing trials set by the ancient goddesses and using their gifts to find sacred flames to purify and strengthen the blade so the time gate can be awakened. Returning to find the imprisoned attempting to break free, Link reseals it with help from gruce. Activating the time gate and traveling to the past, he finds Zelda and learns that she is the mortal reincarnation of Hylia. Hylia cannot kill Demise and was too weakened from their battle to fend him off again. So she created the goddess sword and reincarnated as a mortal to find someone who would fulfill her duty by using the Triforce to wish Demise's destruction,

as only mortals can use the Triforce. Zelda then steals herself inside a crystal to strengthen Demise's seal, granting her power to the goddess sword and upgrading it to the Master Sword. Link locates the Tri-Force on Skyloft and uses it to destroy Demise. With Demise dead, Zelda is freed, but Girahim arrives and kidnaps Zelda. Though Demise is dead in the present, Giraim intends to use Zelda as a sacrifice to resurrect him in the past. Link pursues Giraim into the past and fights through his army. He then defeats Gereheme, who turns out to be the spirit of Demise's sword, but is

unable to prevent Zelda from being used to reincarnate Demise's humanoid form. Grus guards Zelda's body while Link challenges Demise, Link triumphs, and absorbs Demise's essence into the sword, but demise curses Link and Zelda's descendants to be haunted by his reincarnated rage. To complete the sword seal, Link drives it into the pedestal in the sealed temple, with feet accepting eternal slumber as a result. Groo's Link and Zelda returned to their time while Impa remains behind and destroys the time gate, as she is a person of that time period and must watch over the Master Sword. In the present, the old woman greets them one last time before she dies and vanishes,

revealing that she was Impa. The game ends with Zelda deciding to remain on the surface to watch over the TriForce. She and Link together establish the kingdom of Hyrule. So obviously there's a lot of lore and story here that is actually pretty cool and sets up a lot of little things that connects all of these games together. So my thoughts on the story this time around, now that I gave it a fair chance and played it all the way through, the story is actually really charming and I love a lot of the characters. And I love how they kind of built the story around this like core cast of characters, obviously with Link and Zelda, and then Girahim, but then also the

supporting characters like Cruz and Impa slash the old lady and your friends at Skyloft and like the opening hours of the game. Like, I actually really enjoyed a lot of the aspects of the story that it told. I really enjoyed the world that they build specifically with Skyloft. And when we find Link in this game, he is a night in training at a Knight Academy, even though I do wish like that played more into the story. Like, everybody's talking about fucking fire emblem, three houses or whatever right now. And it just seems fun to play a game where, like, school is involved. And I would have loved to see that in a legend of Zelda game. And the relationship that Lincoln Zelda have in this game, I think is honestly one of the most interesting relationships that they share throughout the entire

series. You get to see them just like be friends and living their normal lives before they even, like, go on this journey. And like, you get to see the cute little, like, flirting moments and whatnot between Link and Zelda and then like the way they set up, uh, Grus is kind of like the, the dumb bully and whatnot. Like, I love that we kind of got establishing time to see the normal lives of these characters before we go on this epic quest where we're fulfilling the prophecy of gods and fighting demons and all of this stuff. Now, the one character I want to shout out is my boy, Bruce, who might easily be one of

my favorite characters now in the entire Zelda franchise, because they set them up so well of, Oh, he's a big bully. He's going to screw over links so he can't pass his test and hang out with Zelda and stuff. He's secretly trying to plan to have a lone time with Zelda and whatnot. And then after Zelda gets captured, you see, like, if you go to his bedroom, you see that he is, like, kind of depressed and doesn't know what to do with himself. And then it was actually surprising to me that he kind of joins the main story, like, so many hours into the game where he comes down to the surface with you

and is experiencing the surface for the first time. And because he's not the hero of the game, he's like, freaking out. I was like, oh, what's that creature? What's going on over there? And when he learns about the whole prophecy and the hero and all the stuff, he, of course, thinks it's him. And then he slowly has to accept that it's not him. But then he tries to find a new sense of, like, self-purpose.

And it might be one of the best character arts in the entire Zelda franchise. And I just love him so much. I love that, like, by the end of the game, when you're fighting the imprisons, he's helping you out. And I'm, like, cheering for Groo's while he's cheering on Link and all this stuff. a time. There was just little story things like that throughout this game that I absolutely loved. And then the other kind of like main side character, Impa slash the old lady, I really enjoyed kind of the story that they were setting up there. I think I guessed it like halfway through my

play through this time of like, I think they're the same person because a lot of their clothes look similar and they also have got like the really long blonde hair. And so it felt a little played out and a little drawn out of like the reveal of them being the same person. but it still was such a touching moment at the end when Lincoln Groo's don't quite get it, but Zelda's the one who figures it out when they go back to their current time. And she's like, thank you, old friend, for everything you've done. And then Impa dies and it's really sad. And Link and Grus are like, what just happened?

And Zelda's like, I've let my friend go. And it's a really touching moment. And even though, again, I was able to kind of see it from miles away, I still really enjoyed that moment. And then my final thoughts on the story before I get into the gameplay, I'd just say the way the story is told and how it sets up the Zelda timeline is super cool. It's one of those things that might not be obvious to everybody. And because it's kind of like a throwaway line of demise giving you this curse, so it's really only there for like the true like Zelda nerds to like want to find connection between

all these games. So it like doesn't really matter. It's just like one of those moments for Zelda fans like, holy shit, this is how it all connects together. It's like when you watch Fast 6 and at the end, you realize that Tokyo Drift actually took place after Fast 4, 5, and 6. And it's like kind of dumb the way they explain it, the way they tie it all together. But it's just like that get hype of like, oh my God, I can't believe they did this kind of thing. And yes, I did just compare the Legend of Zelda to Fast and Furious.

Fucking Sumi. So let's get into the gameplay. Obviously, since this was the Zelda game for the Wii, the main focus of this game, was the motion controls. This was one of the things that mainly drove me away from the game when it originally came out. Making the combat focus on actual physical strategy in this game is like a cool idea on paper.

But with the technology available at the time with the Wii motion, I just never really felt what I think they were trying to go for. Throughout most of the game, there was a lot of mental disconnect for me when it came to the combat controls because the way like the enemies are designed, to block you. Like, some of them worked and some of them were cool, but then, you know, most of the

enemies that you're fighting are Bacoblins, and there's even a segment dedicated to just fighting Bacoblins, and it's irritating when, you know, you make him defend this way, and then you quickly go to their left, and then they immediately block it, and it just feels like, okay, I mean, this strategy works two Bacoblins ago. Why doesn't it work now? And why is it not going to work from the next five Bacoblins that I fight? There's just something that just didn't click for me there. And although generally the combat didn't click for me, there were a few key, like, enemies and bosses that I really enjoyed fighting. Like, I really enjoyed the Girahim boss battles because it was designed kind of like the Bacoblins of, like, making them defend this way, and then quickly going and striking in another way. And I think it was just better implemented with Gerehim, and especially his third boss fight, not only the combat, but just the music that's playing and you're on these platforms and you're knocking him down and all this stuff.

Like, those were the moments that I definitely felt what they were trying to go for with the combat. So, although I had incredibly low lows with the combat this time around, there were some great highs that I did really love. And then the other boss fights I want to shout out really quick. I do really like the demise of boss fight, even though I got frustrated because throughout the entire game, whenever I needed to do a skyward strike, which you have to like kind of tilt up the Wii moat in a specific angle. And then light comes down and you can do like a swoosh thing. I never had a problem with it throughout the entire game,

but for some reason, during this demise boss fight, the game just could not register that I was pointing it up. I know I was only supposed to do it when the lightning strikes, but I was doing that, but the game would be like, I don't think you're pointing the sword up correctly, and it's like, I am. Huh. But even though my frustration's there, I loved that battle for the same reasons I love the Final

Geerheim battle, just because of the scale of it and the, like, epicness you feel because of the swelling music, and the tension that you're feeling and all of that good stuff. I really liked the Coloktoist boss fight because it's a classic. All right, you find this item in the dungeon. You're going to use that item to fight the boss. And then it took me like kind of a minute to realize what I had to do with like the weird like whip thing. And once I figured it out, I was like, oh my God.

It clicks. And it became a really fun experience for me. And the last boss fight I want to shout out is the mini boss fight for the pirate ship where you're just kind of like on like one rail. And you're going like back and forth between this like mechanical like skeletal. like skeleton pirate looking dude. I think they really focus on what makes combat fun there of like, all right, I'm blocking this way. So obviously you need to swipe this way.

And it's a little obvious and whatnot, but it still felt fun to do and satisfying when you would push him back. And you're like, oh my God, I'm about to push him off this ship and whatnot. So shout out to those boss fights. And so moving on from the controls related to combat and boss fights, the other big thing that controls focus on this time around is traversal. Specifically when you're flying around on your big red loft wing boy over here, and swimming and stuff like that.

And while weird at first, I actually did start to enjoy like flying around, even though I definitely did not understand it for the first couple hours. I did eventually get kind of excited when I would call my lost wing and it would come and the music would swell up. I'm like, all right, I'm flying around.

Let's go. There's not much to do when I'm flying around, but it's still cool. And even weirder enough, even though it was pretty much the same control scheme while flying, swimming in this game, just a big no, a hard, big no.

And the last thing, like, specifically gameplay-wise that I want to shout out is the harp, which is, like, your musical instrument throughout this game, which you have to do to, like, open up, like, certain dungeons or whatnot, or someone like the weird, like, dark world that you had to go into a couple of times. It felt kind of pointless. I don't know, just, like, doing this. Slowly moving your Wii moat back and forth felt just, like, very mundane. Like, I don't know.

Make me hold down, like, a couple buttons to make me feel like I'm playing keys or something. I don't know. It just felt a little less involved than other musical instruments that you use, like an Ocarena of Time and Wind Waker. I felt like they just put it in the game because like, oh, we're known for having like kind of like musical instruments throughout a bunch of these games. Let's tack this one on. Yeah, whatever. So let's get into the design of the game. I've taken a lot of time already talking about the story and the gameplay. So I'm trying to, I'm going to try to get through the design of the game overall as fast as I can.

First, unfortunately, because of the focus on combat in this game, I felt. like the actual design of the overworld and some of the dungeons took a big hit. Obviously, one of the big things known about the overworld, specifically when you're flying around on your loft wing, is it's kind of empty and the only point to like go through it is to pick up

the goddess cube chests and whatnot. And I don't know, it just felt kind of pointless. And because of the combat focus in a lot of the dungeons, a lot of the dungeons didn't really seem to stick out to me just because there was nothing really ever interesting about their puzzles,

or their layout or their theme or whatever. The next thing, there are ideas in this game, of course, that we would see better implemented in Breath of the Wild, like the Stamina Wheel, using items found in the world to upgrade equipment and whatnot. They were definitely testing things out here of, let's try to make Link have a stamina bar and all of this stuff. The ideas were interesting, especially for the time,

but they just weren't quite there yet. And obviously, these were ideas that the team believed in so much that they still tried to implement them into the next game. And they did learn a lot because I felt like, Those aspects fit way better in Breath of the Wild because of the design of Breath of the Wild and what the core gameplay is about rather than Skyward Sword.

But to go back to Dungeons really quick, I did really like a couple of dungeons and those were the ones that dealt with time. The Linnae reminds in the Pirateship both had a simple mechanic of warping time in certain areas and built off of that to make some cool overall puzzles that made you think about the order

in which you are doing things. I just really liked both of those because there's kind of an overall thinking with both of those dungeons. like I have the solution and I have the places I need to go to. What is the correct order in to do these things so I can get to the end of these dungeons? And that is just some classic Zelda dungeon design right there that I really appreciate. And that's why these two dungeons were like the ones that stood out to me the most.

And my last two notes really quick for the design of Skyward Sword, making me go on three separate fetch quests right before getting to the climax of the game. It was super lame. And then returning to each three areas of the. the woods, the volcano, and the desert over and over again to get to different dungeons, made the game feel way slower than it should have. Because each time you go back to these areas, there's some new fetch quest you have to do before getting into the dungeon itself.

I was so goddamn sick of going up and down that stupid volcano. Like an example for the volcano, the first time you go into that area, you got to like go around the entire map to collect pieces of a key to get into the dungeon. And then you got to like go all over that map again later on to collect the spirit orb things or whatever. I forget why that's related to the game, but whatever. And then there's the time where you lose all your equipment, and then you've got to go through most of the map again, and it just feels like, oh, I'm so bored of going through this map, like three or four times.

So the constant reuse of certain areas just made the game's pace come to a crawl, and that was a main frustration of mine for the game. Anyway, let's wrap up with some of my final thoughts on the Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword. Like I said at the beginning of this, I'm honestly glad I went back to it and gave it a fair chance. And I'm glad that this was the first Zelda game that I played. I was making the joke when I first played it. I was like, ah, I got to get the worst one out of the way and stuff.

And while probably at the end of this, I will still kind of agree with that sentiment, I'm glad I played this one first because I felt like I was comparing it less to the rest of the series and just taking it in for what it is and still having what I think are fair criticisms of the game, but being able to now appreciate things about the game that I didn't see before. I still find a lot of the design and gameplay choices frustrating. And it's interesting because when you take the motion controls out of that formula,

I actually don't think this game varies that much from a lot of other 3D Zelda games. So I'm going to be interested to see how I feel about a lot of these 3D Zelda games, since they have such a big focus on combat, but without really innovating it at all until Breath of the Wild. So to wrap up my thoughts, I really did enjoy Skyward's Sword since I actually played it all the way through and got to experience the great story that they built in this game and fall in love with characters, like my boy, Gruse. So since this is the first game,

there's no ranking yet, so Skyward's Sword is just kind of in the ether somewhere. But let's move on to our next game. The Legend of Zelda, Acherina of Time. Now, just some quick facts for you on this game.

Ocarina of Time originally released on November 23rd, 1998, on the Nintendo 64 in the United States. Again, all of these different regions have different dates, but this is when it released

in North America. And a quick note, I just want to say that I played the 3DS remade. of the game and not the original version on the Nintendo 64. So I did that obviously because it's the most accessible, because it's on 2DS, 3DS, and whatnot.

And there are some updates in this remake that I think make the experience of playing Ocarina of Time today a little better than going back to the original. And the other facts I have for you today that this game was directed by, I'm going to screw up a couple of these names, I'm sure, so I'm sorry, Yoshi Yamada, Iji Onuma, and Yoshiaki Kozumi,

and the game was produced by Shigero Miyamoto. Now, my main memory of this game growing up as a kid, I remember playing it for the first time. And it was the first game that, like, showed me just how big of a scale video games can have. And it was definitely like a galaxy brain moment for young bear to be like, oh my God, this is what video games can be. And I'm sure like many other people, it was such an important game for my childhood. And fun tidbit here before I get into the story of the game, I actually played Ocarina of Time back in February before I had this whole idea. of playing through all of the Zelda games. And it was mainly because of a video that Tim had shared,

I think on internet explorers and slacks me the link to a video called Ocarina of Time, a masterclass and subtext from the YouTube channel Good Blood. And it's basically a long-form video essay and a thesis about why Ocarina of Time is low-key, the saddest Zelda game. You should absolutely check it out because now playing Ocarina of Time twice

since I've seen that video, I've been able to see and interpret new things about the game in its story, even 21 years after its release, which is totally a testament to how great the game still is to this day. So let's get into the story of Ocureen of Time. It's the second game in the timeline, which picks up several hundred years after the events of Skyward Sword. So if you remember, at the end of Skyward Sword, Zelda and Link decide to stay on the surface world to help build Hyrule Kingdom. And this is the same kingdom that these two characters built to several hundred years later. The Ferry Navi awakens

Link from a nightmare in which he witnesses a man in black armor pursuing a young girl on horseback. Navi brings Link to the Great Decu Tree who is cursed in near death. The decutree tells Link a wicked man of the desert cursed him and seeks to conquer the world and that Link must stop him. Before dying, the Great Decu Tree gives Link the spiritual stone of the forest and sends him to Hyrol Castle to speak with Hyrule's princess. At the Hyrule Castle Garden, Link meets Princess Zelda, who believes Ganindoroth the Garudo King is seeking the Triforce, a holy relic that gives its holder godlike power. asks Link to obtain the three spiritual stones so he can enter the sacred realm and claim the tri-force before Ganendorf reaches it. Link collects the other two stones, the first from Durunia,

the leader of the Gorons, and the second from Rudo, Princess of the Zoras. Link returns to Hyro Castle where he sees Ganendorf chase Zelda and her caretaker Impa on horseback, like in his nightmare, and unsuccessfully attempts to stop him. Inside the Temple of Time, he uses the Akharina of Time, a gift from Zelda, and the three spiritual stones to open the door to the sacred realm. There he finds the Master Sword, but as he pulls it from its pedestal, Ganendorf, having snuck into the temple after Link, appears and claims the Triforce. Seven years later, an older Link awakened in the Sacred Realm and is met by Rauru, one of the seven sages who protects the entrance to the Sacred Realm.

Raru explains that Link's spirit was sealed for seven years until he was old enough to wield the master's sword and defeat Ganendorf, who is now taken over Hyrule. The seven sages can imprison Ganendorf in the sacred realm, but five are unaware of their identities as sages. Link has returned to the Temple of Time, who meets the mysterious sheikh, who guides him to free five temples from Ganedorf's control and allow each temple's sage to awaken. Link befriended all five stages as a child. His childhood friend Saria, the sage of the forest temple, Durunia, the sage of the fire temple, Rudo, the sage of the water temple, Impa, the sage of

the shadow temple, and Naburu, the leader of the Gerudo's in Gannadorf's absence, the sage of the spirit temple. After the five stages awakened, Sheik reveals herself to be Zelda in disguise, and the seventh sage. She tells Link that Gannendorf's heart was unbalanced, causing the tri-force to split into three pieces. Gannendorf acquired only the triforce of power, while Zelda received the tri-force of wisdom and Link the triforce of courage. Gannendorf appears and kidnapsed Zelda, imprisoning her in his castle. The other six sages help Link infiltrate the stronghold.

Link frees Zelda after defeating Gannendorff, who destroys the castle in an attempt to kill Link and Zelda. After they escape the collapsing castle, Gannendorf emerges from the rubble and transforms into a boar-like monster named Gannon using the triforce of power. Gannon knocks the master sword from Link's hand. With Zelda's aid, Link retrieves the master's sword and defeats Ganon. The seven stages seal Gannendendorf in the Dark Realm. Still holding the Triforce of Power, he vows to take revenge on their descendants.

Zelda uses the Ocarina of Time to send Link back to his childhood. Navi departs and Young Link meets Zelda in the Castle Garden once more, where he retains knowledge of Hyrule's fate, starting with Hyrule's decline. And that is the story of Ocarina of Time. Now, two little facts that I want you to remember from this story that will play later on as we get further into the games, is I want you to remember when Gannendorf turns into Gannon, the game labels him as just Gannon. Most of the boss fights throughout this game and even in other games are given like a little subtitle descriptor of who they are and whatnot. But remember that this is just Gannon.

No subtitle, no description, he's just Gannon. Now, the other thing I want you to remember really quick for the end of this Ocarina of Time segment, when Link is sent back in time, he still has all of his memories about Hyrule's decline and whatnot when he sees Zelda in the Castle Garden once again. remember that as well. Now, there's not much really to say about the overall story of this game because it's one of the most classic Zelda stories. So again, it's interesting playing it now after I've watched the video from Goodblood and a bunch of like Zelda theory videos from like Zeltic and whatnot, diving into the subtle stories and themed that are sprinkled throughout the main overall story. And since I talk so much about like character development, especially with my boy

Groo's and Skyward Sword, I do want to like make the quick note because this was like kind of the first Zelda to really dive in and focus on story and lore and world building and all that stuff. There's not a lot really done with like character development or growth or whatnot, but it still has a lot of cool reveals and moments between characters and whatnot. Like the reveal of Zelda being chic in future Hyrule is still one of the coolest video game reveals of all time. Now, unfortunately, this game came out when I was at such a young age that that reveal has always been kind of fact for me.

Like, I never got to experience that. genuinely or anything. So I imagine for people who were much older than me who played the game when it first came out, that reveal must have been like when you learn that Schwarzenegger is actually a good guy in Terminator 2, which is actually something I did genuinely experience when I was a kid because I did not know that that was going to happen. And it was one of these like mind-blowing moments. So I imagine it would have been kind of a similar situation experiencing that for the first time. And it is cool and interesting that this is actually my second playthrough of Ocarina of Time this year because I did get to dive deeper into themes and smaller stories.

Like one of the first examples, I was kind of breezing through the game because at this point it was all just muscle memory since I played it earlier this year. I actually went and did the Big Gongo's sword quest. And in that quest, there's kind of a really sad story in the middle of it of the punk from Kakariko Village, who's like the son of like the worker dude. And you find him in the middle of the Lost Woods and he's part of the fetch quest stuff. And there's this really sad moment where you kind of connect with him because he hates the world. And I forget, like, what you have, but it convinces him of like, oh, you must be like a good

person in this world. Like, you kind of give me hope that, you know, not everything is lost here. But unfortunately, when you go back to him later, he's missing. And one of the Kokiri children tells you that Heilians who go into the Lost Woods don't actually belong there. And because they don't belong there, a curse is put on them where they turn into stalfos. So you realize that these enemies that you fought throughout most of the game are actually Hylians. And it's kind of tragic and sad and it was just one of those moments that I was able to appreciate more this time around. And to move on to one of the more major things that I actually picked out in this play-through, it's interesting playing this game as an adult now.

Because as a kid, I would spend so much time just hanging out in Kokiri Forest or the town square just because of how joyous the world was. And then growing up and looking back at this game from my childhood and realizing just how dark it actually is. And funny enough, this kind of story of me taking off my roast tinted glasses and seeing this game for what it truly is, I believe there's a subtle commentary on this exact experience of growing up and seeing the world for what it is. When Link is a kid, he experiences this bright and beautiful and lively world, and when he's turned into an adult, he has to face real-life adult experiences

that probably change his worldview. So when he goes back in time after the Forest Temple, which is his first experience as an adult in this world that he's truly seeing for the first time, he has to go into the well in Kakariko Village, where he finds that the town, is basically built on top of a dark history of Hyrule. Even though Hyrule is ultimately on the good side in this story, it still has skeletons in its closet, or in this case, a dead hand, one of the most terrifying enemies in any Zelda game. And after you see Hyrule partially for what it truly is, you get an item that literally is called the Lens of Truth. I might be reading into it, but I honestly think

there might be commentary here in this game about growing up and seeing the world for what it truly is. And so those are specific things that I found. in the story this time around that made me absolutely love this game even more. So to pull myself out of the nitty-gritty of subtle themes and subtext and all this stuff, my general thoughts on the story is that it's awesome. I still love it. It's still one of the best Zelda stories of all time. Nowadays, it might be considered a little basic since this was the first Zelda, the game,

they're really trying to push in a story, but it's still great. But I've chewed your ear off enough about the story. I love it. It's great. Let's move on. Let's talk about the gameplay, and as far as that goes, there's nothing really special to me for this one, but it's never like downright bad or anything. This was the first game in the series where they also put more focus on the combat because it was the first 3D Zelda game. I think

it was definitely revolutionary for the time, but definitely going back to it, it feels just kind of basic. It's there. There's nothing bad about it. It's not really a complaint I have. It's just kind of an observation I had this time around. Like fighting basic enemies in this game isn't really interesting or engaging whatsoever. But with that being said, there are some fights throughout the game, like with the Iron Knuckles and for me, even the Garuda Thieves are some of my favorite like gameplay moments in the Zelda franchise. They just feel so epic, especially the Iron Knuckles just feels so scary to face at the time, except when you get the Biggongo Sword and then you like hit them a couple of times and then

they're just kind of done. But still, the Iron Knuckles and the Garudo Thieves, I feel like were the obvious standouts when it came to combat. And man, I forgot how much I love, I think almost all of the boss fights in this game. Like if I was ranking these games purely based. off of just boss fights, this might be my overall number one at the end of the day. Like the first boss fight in the Great Decu Tree, Bongo Bongo, who I think is the boss fight for the Shadow Temple. Phantom Gannon, who's the boss fight for the Forest Temple, which is presented

in such a cool, interesting way. And I actually think the basis of that boss fight might have inspired some of the design choices for Link Between Worlds, just because of like the whole painting design and whatnot, but I might be reading too much into that. And then Gannon Dorf himself, or you're walking up the final tower and then you walk in and the music swells because he's playing the piano and it's this epic music and he does the ho ho which is like a laughed rival the laugh from final fantasy 10 but i digress and it just feels so epic they bring back a boss fight element from phantom gannon where you're hitting back and forth the the light ball and stuff which is a final boss fight thing from previous Zelda games there's just such a like epicness to this boss fight that i

still love today. It's just all so cool. And even though like the gameplay mechanics themselves, I don't find super interesting or anything, they still build on top of it to have these really cool gameplay moments. Now let's get into the design of Ocarena of time. That kind of rhymed. Let's get these thoughts out of my mind. I'm sorry about that. Now similar to Skyward Sword, there weren't a lot of temples in this game that actually stood out to me as super interesting. Like I still love the great Decu Tree and Adongos Cavern and stuff purely based off nostalgia. But again, like Skyward Sword, since there's so much more focus on the combat, I feel like the puzzles and dungeons themselves and how they're designed are less interesting.

But since the gameplay itself is much simpler and easier to control than Skyward Sword, none of them were like head bang against while frustrating. I didn't hate any of them, just none of them pulled me in like I wanted them to. And a point that I might bring up a lot throughout this interview for 3D Zelda games specifically. I think why I feel like they're slow and not super interesting to explore is because of the 3D format. If you screw up a puzzle or find out that you're in a room that you shouldn't be in yet, backtracking feels like a chore and takes forever because of how intricate some of the rooms are, how slowly you run in these games, which is why we constantly do the dodge roll in this game.

You know why we do it, where I think the 2D Zelda games lend themselves better to things like backtracking if you fuck something up because it doesn't feel as much of a chore to redo something. It's just an interesting observation I have for myself, and we'll see if I feel the same way when I get further to the series. And really quick, I didn't really talk about art design for Skyward's just because I don't feel like any of it really stood out to me. But I wanted to bring it up for Ocarina because I think one of the reasons why this game is so beloved is because of the unique and powerful character designs. From simple enemies like Skoltulltullas that were super creepy and helped set the tone for some of the creepier areas that you get into to cool bosses

like Bongo. It's just how like threatening Gendorf looks just every time you see him, which is isn't really much throughout the game. So I feel like one of the reasons why this design of Gannendorf is upheld so much, it's just because of how good of a character design it is. But anyway, that's enough about design. Let's get into my final thoughts and ranking for Ocarina of Time. I mean, what left is there to say? This is considered one of the greatest games of all time, still to this day for a reason.

The story is a classic in the video game world, and 20 plus years later, we can still pick it and pull it apart to find even more underneath. And even though there are some aspects of the game, I don't think truly hold up even in the remake. They're not bad. They're just not as good as we remember it being from back then. But that's actually kind of impressive for a 3D game coming from that era because there are so many games from that era that we can go back to today,

and they do not age well at all whatsoever. And specifically, my thought on the 3DS remake, I think it's really the best and only way to play Ocarena of Time now. It fixes dumb camera choices and enemy placements here and there that just make it a better experience overall. And with that being said, those are all of my thoughts on Ocarina of Time. I know there are so many. I'm sorry. This is just such a big game.

It's impossible to shorten it all down without going on rant and tangents about almost every aspect of it. So now to rank the game so far, so far I have played Skyward Sword and that's about it. So obviously, Ocarina of Time goes above Skyward's Sword as the number one game so far in the series. Now remember when I talked about Link being sent into the past and remembering all the bad stuff that was about to happen to Hyrule and all this stuff, the events at the end of this game is what causes the existence of the three timelines going forward. I mentioned them earlier, but just a recap, the three timelines are the adult timeline, the child timeline, and the fallen hero timeline. And let's just explain each of those just really quick. The adult timeline is the Hyrule that exists without Link because Zelda sent Link into the past. So this timeline follows Hyrule after the events of the boss fight with Gannon

and seeing what that high rule becomes after all of that happens. The Child Timeline is the timeline that follows Link when he's sent back to the past, knows all of the events that are about to happen for Hyrule, actually warns Zelda in the Castle Garden about everything that's about to happen and pretty much prevents all of the events that happened in the Ocarina of Time in this new timeline. And then the final timeline, which is the first timeline that we're going to get into, is the Fallen Hero Timeline. There's no real implication of this timeline from the game itself,

but pretty much this timeline exists if Link failed to defeat Ganon at the end of the game. But even though Link is killed, the Seven Stages are still able to use their power to send Ganon, and then Hyrule kind of lives in peace for a little bit after that. So the first game up in the Fallen Hero timeline is, The Legend of Zelda A Link to the Past. The Legend of Zelda, A Link to the Past, was originally released in North America on April 13th, 1992 for the Super Nintendo, and I believe it was released in Japan, like five or six months before that. And just as a note, I played this on the Super Nintendo Mini.

I don't really know if there's, like, a huge difference, because I'm not really familiar with, like, ROMs and ports, especially with all these mini consoles that have been coming out for the last couple of years. So let me know in the comments below if there's any, like, major differences. But as far as I could tell, this was pretty much the real deal. A link to the past was directed by Takasi Tizuka and produced by Sigero Miyamoto. And I do want to mention, I did forget to bring up the last time I mentioned Miyamoto is that he actually is credited as one of the two main creators of the Legend of Zelda along with Tizuka. And Miyamoto is involved in a director-producer capacity for the entire Legend of Zelda franchise.

Before getting into the story of a link to the past, my kind of initial impressions right after playing this game is like, man, it is so refreshing to play a 2D Zelda after playing two 3D Zelda games in a row. I'll probably get into it a little more later on, but I think there's just something about in the typical Zelda structure and designs that I think work better in 2D Zeldas rather than 3D Zeldas. And as far as my relationship goes with this game before this playthrough, like I remember playing it a couple of times. I remember definitely beating it once as a kid. Like I think the last time I played this was probably 14, 15 years ago. But funny enough, my actual main connection to this game is the link to the past graphic novel that originally release in Nintendo Power Magazine. I read that thing so much as a kid, and it's just such a weird piece of Nintendo and

Zelda history. Link actually talks in it and has kind of this like careless, whatever attitude and whatnot, and they add like more of like a core cast of characters. And it was just one of those pieces of Zelda content that I think was definitely geared more towards kids because there was more story and more interaction with characters and whatnot that I, I was just so fascinated by. and I actually still have the same copy that I did as a kid. And I recently reread it.

And man, it's just so weird. There's a part where they mentioned Gannendorf, but of course this came out before they created the Garudo race. So they referenced Gandonorf as just kind of this like doofy looking dude. And it is just fascinating. I highly recommend checking it out, especially if you have a Zelda collection that you're trying to build. Again,

it's just like a weird slash cool slice of history from Nintendo and Zelda. I also didn't realize at the time when I picked this image, but my boy, Link's got some kind of like thick legs going on here. Good for him, you know. But anyway, let's talk about the story of a Link to the past. It's the first story under the Fallen Hero timeline where Link was killed in Ocarina and the Seven Sages imprisoned Gannon in the Sacred Realm. But with the power of the TriForce, he turns the sacred realm into the dark realm, but is still trapped there for a couple hundred years. At the beginning of the game, Link, the last descendant of the Knights of Hyrule is awakened by a telepathic message from Princess Zelda, who says that she has been locked in Hyrule Castle's dungeon. As the message closes,

Link finds his uncle ready to rescue Zelda, telling Link to remain in bed. After his uncle leaves, however, Link ignores his command and follows him through the rainy night to the dungeons under Hyrule Castle. When he arrives, he finds his uncle mortally wounded and is told to rescue Princess Zelda, receiving his sword and shield before dying soon after. Link navigates the castle and rescues Zelda from her cell, and the two escape through a secret passage into the sewers that lead to a sanctuary. Link is told by the priests in the sanctuary that a Ganum, a The wizard who has usurped the throne and bewitched the king's soldiers, is planning to break a seal made hundreds of years ago by the seven sages to imprison the dark wizard Gannon in the dark world, which was known as the sacred realm before Gannon, then known as Gannendorf, invaded it, obtained the tri-force and used its power to engulf the realm in darkness. Agonim intends to break the seal by sending the descendants of the seven sages into the dark world.

The only thing that can defeat Agonim is the master sword, a sword forged to fight evil that can only be wielded by the chosen hero. To prove that he is worthy to wield it, link needs three. magic pendants representing the virtues of courage, wisdom, and power. Hidden in dungeons guarded by mythical defenders. On his way to retrieve the first, he meets an elder. I'm going to fuck up this name because I've never actually heard this name spoken out loud, so just bear it with me if I mess it up and make you cringe. Sahashrullah, who becomes his mentor.

After retrieving the pendants, Link takes them to the resting place of the master's sword. As Link draws the sword from its pedestal, Zelda telepathically calls him to the sanctuary, informing him that the soldiers of Hyrule Castle have arrived. Link arrives at the sanctuary moments after the soldiers have vacated, where he learns from the dying sanctuary keeper that Zelda has been taken to Hyrule Castle. Link goes to rescue her, but arrives too late. Agonim sends Zelda to the Dark World. Link then faces Agonim in battle and defeats him, but he manages to use the last of his power to send Link to the Dark World as well. To save Hyrule, Link must rescue the descendants of the Seven Sages from the dungeons scattered across the Dark World, each guarded by one of Ganon's minions.

Once the seven maidens are freed, they use their power to break the barrier around Ganon's tower, where, Link faces a reincarnated Agonym, who creates two ghostly specters, each as powerful as he is. After Link defeats Agonim, for the second time, Gannon rises from his body, turns into a bat and flies away. Ling chases Gannon and confronts him inside the pyramid of power at the center of the dark world. After a battle resulting in Gannon's demise, Link touches the Triforce and restores the dark world and Hyrule to the previous state, brings his uncle and the sanctuary keeper back to life and restores Zelda's father, the true king.

Now, going back to this story today, There's not a whole lot story-wise that really goes on here. It's a very basic Zelda structure since this was an era of games where there was way more focus on gameplay rather than story. But to give credit where credit is due, this is the Zelda story that started a bunch of tropes and laid out the foundation of Zelda games moving forward, not only in design and music, but in character and story beats. Like, this is the game that started the existence of a Kakarika village, but this also kind of

started like the trope that before you even fight Gannon or Gannondorf, there's usually like an underling that is helping him and whatnot. Even though this Zelda story is a little basic now, it is so important for all of the Zelda games that came after it. So you have to respect it for that. I can't really focus on like character arcs or like relationships between characters because there's not really any of that. But one of the biggest moments that stood out to me related to lore and story is when you release one of the seven maidens and she just kind of name drops Gannon, And for those of you who don't know, he is like not a character at all in this game. He just like is kind of mentioned as like that's who he was before he turned into Gannon.

And so even without the Zelda timeline, you can kind of connect the dots of like, oh, the kind of history lesson they give us before the game starts kind of relates to what the entire story of Ocarina of Time is. So when Nintendo was making Ocourine of Time, they must have like known that they were making the prequel story about Gannendorf, especially because they name drop the dude. and then he becomes the main villain in the next game. It's just one of the many examples throughout this franchise that makes subtle connections between each game.

And that's pretty much all I need. I don't need, like, plot twist relating to other games to further the story in future games and whatnot. I just love the little nods here and there for the fans that care about this kind of stuff of like, hey, maybe this is all connected, but it's, you know, it's up to your interpretation and whatnot. Now, in the previous two games,

I kind of talked about gameplay and design like in their own separate segments. I'm not going to do that from here on out just because I think it makes these recording sessions way longer than they need to be. So I'm going to squish them into one segment, gameplay and design of a link to the past. And as I think I said before, this game is such a breath of fresh air after playing a couple of 3D Zeldas. Like, this is the first time I think I've played a 2D Zelda in a very long time, probably since I last played Link Between Worlds. And I know Link Between Worlds doesn't have like 2D art. It's like 2.5D and whatnot. But you get what I'm saying.

But again, going back to my thoughts. on dungeon structure for the first two Zelda games that I've played, there's just something that I think the 2D Zelda lend themselves better to when it comes to the kind of basic Zelda puzzle and dungeon design. Like if I ever felt like I was screwing up a puzzle or was going throughout the dungeon in the wrong order, I never felt like, oh, I got to go backtrack and do this again and stuff, because it was all going to take like maybe a minute, maybe two minutes or whatnot. So if we're just talking about dungeons here, I think this might be my favorite Zelda so far, just because the dungeons are less structured around combat and more centered around exploring the dungeons and figuring out these puzzles

and laying it all out for you and you just kind of having to figure out what the order of operations is. And as far as combat goes, like this is, of course, the most basic of the three that I've played so far just because, you know, it's press B to swipe your sword. But I think the relationship between the combat and exploring the dungeons and figuring out the puzzles is the best in this one because they mix so well together. There was never a point where I thought to myself, oh, I got to stop exploring the dungeon because I have to fight this one enemy. Or, hey, I got to put this puzzle on hold because the weird hand that drops from the ceiling is following me around.

So I got to face that for a second. The three of them flowed so well with each other. And it sucks because I think the relationship between those three aspects of the Zelda games get lost over time as we get further into the series. But going back to dungeons, of course, there was a couple of dungeons that I was not a huge fan of in this game. but it was less because of how the dungeons were structured and more about what the gimmick for the dungeons were. First shout out, Swamp Palace. Didn't really have a problem with the dungeon itself.

Just the fucking enemies in that palace suck. What's up with the weird little water bubble that pops up from the water and just like sprays itself everywhere? Why can't I beat that thing up? I should be able to pop the bubble and make it stop. Why can't I do it? It's bullshit. And the little guys kind of floating around the water and stuff. Their movements were so weird and annoying that was hard for me to fight.

And I know that's just me sucking at video games. But whatever. But if we're talking about dungeons themselves, fuck the skull woods. God damn. I forgot how confusing it was to like go back and forth out of the dungeon to like figure out, oh, what entrance do I need to go into next to get the boss key or to get this item or this treasure chest or solve this puzzle? God, it was so frustrating. So I guess that one was definitely more on structure and less of a gimmick.

But the last dungeon I'll bring up and this is definitely more just about the gimmick is the ice palace. I hate ice levels. We're slipping and sliding cross ice. I get that that's how physics work. But it's never fun. And it's just really frustrating. And, okay, yeah, I will say that I straight up hated the Ice Palace in this game. But to move on, another main point I have for the gameplay and design is the boss fights.

Holy shit. They were also challenging and fun, save for, like, I think one of the bosses, but I think that was just because I was in a weird state where I didn't have enough hearts. And every time I died, I came back with, like, not as many hearts as I needed to. But anyway, there's just a certain amount of difficulty that almost all of them had. That made them not just feel like boss fights, but kind of puzzles within themselves. because yeah, you can help take down some of them

with the item that you got in that dungeon. But then there's like the three-headed turtle dragon thing that you have to have the ice rod and the fire rod. I think you get the fire rod in a dungeon, but you think of the ice rod like totally not in a dungeon. And there's just this certain amount of like tension when fighting each of them. And it was probably because of the music

and kind of how intimidating they are when they move around. Like even the verse boss fight, which I think is like all of the statues and whatnot, like when you get to the last one, that last like statue like comes for you and whatnot. And it's just like, Oh, this is scary. And I love that you face some of them again in Gannon's castle in the dark world.

And they just changed them up just a little bit to like make you sweat. And then going to face Agonim for a second time and totally messing him up because you're way more powerful this time around. Leading into Gannon's boss fight, which sidebar, by the way, I think as far as like end game like Zelda moments go, this is the most powerful I've felt as Link going into the final boss. Because throughout the game, you're upgrading your weapons. Like you get the master sword. Yeah, but then you can. upgrade the Master Sword into the Tempered Sword and into the Golden Sword, that might be what it's called, I forget.

And like, upgrading to the Silver Bone Arrow and getting the more powerful shield that can, like, reflect beams and whatnot. Like, you feel like a badass going into that final boss. And then you are when you go in and take Gannon down. It's such a fun mix of a boss fight, but also kind of a puzzle of like what works against him, what takes out more damage, what's effective against him, what isn't. Oh, the lights are going out. I got to light these two lamps and whatnot. And then he'll pop out. Like that final boss fight heightens every aspects of the boss fights that you've had before it.

And it's just so goddamn good. But my last thought about gameplay and design and whatnot is, you know, I was talking about the upgrading the Master Sword and like the bone arrow and getting the more powerful shields. And even doubling your magic meter. I can't imagine what it must have been like to play this game when it first came out. There are so many secrets that you kind of have to find to even have a chance or hope of beating the game. Like, I'm sure there must have been official guides or whatever soon after the game came out. But I can't even imagine them of, like, the conversations people must have have had of like,

yo, have you found out how to upgrade to the silver bone arrow? You kind of need it, bro, to even defeat Gannon. Or, yo, you know that three-headed monster that has fire and ice for heads, and you might have the fire rod to defeat the ice head, but you don't have the ice rod. That's because you have to find it in a completely different place in the game that's not even presented and handed to you. There's just so many things in this game that I've already kind of taken as fact and never really needed to learn. myself because I grew up after the fact, so I would see babysitters and other friends of mine play this game, and I would kind of know these secrets already, but it must have been so cool

to have to, like, figure it out on your own. But anyway, those are my thoughts on the gameplay and design of The Legend of Zelda, a link to the past. Let's get into my final thoughts and the ranking. Again, as far as the story goes, since this is the game that started the formula for most modern Zelda stories, it feels a little simple to go back to, but it laid out so much of the groundwork that is important in Zelda games today. And to summarize my thoughts on gameplay and design, I think this game so far has the best relationship between gameplay level design and puzzles. So that pretty much sums up my thoughts on a link to the past. So let's get to the ranking. So far, my ranking is as follows. Number one, Ocureen of Time. Number two, Skyward

Sword. So where to put a link to the past? I think because of how nerded out I got in this review, I think there's no other place to put this. But at number one, so my ranking now is, Number one, a link to the past. Number two, Ocarina of Time, and number three, Skyward Sword. So now I think I'm about to get into the longest break in between Zelda games, because I'm waiting for the next game to be re-released on the Nintendo Switch. So it's going to be kind of weird not playing a Zelda game for a month and a half, but it's only going to feel like moments to you.

So let's get into it. But before we get to that, let me tell you about our sponsors. Just kidding. Who the fuck would sponsor this? It's just me, semi-future Barrett, just giving you a quick heads up in this part of the recording and production process. You might remember back in September of last year that our soundboard died, and our audio situation was a little funky for about a month. And because of that, unfortunately, the audio for the next two segments, Links Awakening and Link Between Worlds, took a little bit of a hit audio quality-wise.

So I do apologize about that. I fixed them as much as I could, and I do think there's still fun segments to watch or listen to. I just wanted to let you know before you go into these next two segments that, no, you're not crazy. The audio is slightly different. But the audio will return to normal after Link Between Worlds. Anyways, let's move on with Zelda in review with The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening. Now, to give some history of Hyrule for this game, it was originally released in North America in August 1993 on the Game Boy. And to give some context, I played the Switch remake version, which came out this year, 2019. The original was directed by Takasi Tzuca and produced by Shigero Miyamoto.

The remake was directed by Mikiharu Oyoa and produced by IG Anuma. Now, I did some research, and I believe this is Miki Haru's first time directing a Zelda games. So it's actually exciting that we're getting a new name, new blood into this series, like we've seen throughout the series before through remakes and spinoffs and whatnot, that they're bringing up new people to get their hands into the Zelda universe. Now, for overall impressions, this is my first time playing. Link's Awakening. And while it wasn't the original, from what I've read and heard from a lot of people, this was pretty much a like shot for shot remake of the original, except for the art style, obviously.

So I know there are some people who are like, ah, you should play the original, but I feel like I got a pretty good taste of what the original was for better or for worse. So the impression I got talking to people who like really love this game is that it's one of the most like different and unique Zelda's in like the mainline like Zelda franchise. But besides the plot, I didn't really feel that. Like the overall structure of the game and dungeon design, it feels pretty much same on par with a lot of other 2D Zelda games. Like to me, there are only like two big differences in gameplay and design this time around. And one of them was like the overworld quest the have to do of trading random items to a bunch of different characters, which I have a love,

hate relationship with and then the bosses I actually did really like because there were some like unique designs there that really stood out to me so yeah the biggest thing that stood out to me for this game was the story which is great and of course for the remake the beautiful art style it has which is greatly juxtaposed to how existential and messed up the story really is when you think about it so speaking of story let's get into the plot really quick on a quick note before I get into the plot this is the first point in the timeline that we've seen so far in this playthrough where we have the same link from a previous game. And this is the same link from a link to the past. But really quick,

if we're thinking about this for a second, right? The link from wing to the past is very popular for his beautiful, luscious pink hair. And now this time, this link goes back to the normal yellow hair. So I'm trying to think, does he, like, was he going through a phasering link to the past where he's going through and dying his hair and stuff, and now he's giving that up after he goes through the atrocities that Gannon laid before him. What's going on there? There's just little things that it made me think about,

like in a weird head cannon kind of way of like, what's he doing? Is he dying his hair or like, what happened there? But anyway, enough of my ramblings about Link's off-screen journey with hair product. Let's get into the plot of Link's awakening. After the events of a link to the past, the Hero Link travels by ship to other countries to train for further threats. A storm destroys his boat at sea and he washes ashore on Koholent Island, where he is

taken to the house of Taron by his daughter, Marin. She is fascinated by Link and the outside world and tells Link wishfully that if she were a seagull, she would leave and travel across the sea. After Link recovers his sword, a mysterious owl tells him that he must wake the windfish, Koholent's guardian, in order to return home. The windfish lies dreaming in a giant egg on top of Mount Tamarant and can only be awakened by the eight instruments of the sirens. Link proceeds to explore a series of dungeons in order to recover the eight instruments. During his search for the sixth instrument, Link goes to the ancient ruins. There he finds a mural that details the reality of the island, that it is merely a dream world created by the windfish. After this revelation,

the owl tells Link that this is only a rumor, and only the windfish knows for certain whether it is true. Throughout Cajolin Island, nightmare creatures attempt to obstruct Link's quest for the instruments, as they wish to rule the windfish's dream world. After collecting all eight instruments from the eight dungeons across Koholent Island, Link climbs to the top of Mount Tamarange and plays the ballad of the windfish. This breaks open the egg in which the windfish sleeps. Link enters and confronts the last evil being, a nightmare that takes form of Gannon and other enemies from Link's past. Its final transformation is Dethel, a cyclopian dual tentacled shadow. After Link defeats Dethel, the owl reveals itself to be the windfish's spirit,

and the windfish confirms that Caholent is all his dream. When Link plays the ballad of the windfish again he and the windfish awakened Caholin Island and all of its inhabitants slowly disappear link finds himself lying on driftwood in the middle of the ocean with the windfish flying overhead if the player did not lose any lives during the game Marin is shown flying after the ending credits finish which I did the capture for for this segment of the video and I cannot get that scene because I was not good enough to not die at all throughout this game now before I get to the biggest parts of the story here the one thing that I want to shout out is the

overworld trading quest that you have to do to get to the final boss fight. It is basically a quest that leads you at the end to a book that gives you the directions on how to go through the maze in the windfish's egg. So you kind of have to do it because from what I've learned like every play-through that you do, the maze is different. So it was one of those things. Like, all right, all right, I got to do this. And so to give my thoughts on that, like I definitely have a love, hate relationship with the trading quest that you have to do. I really loved it on the one hand because it really forced you to talk to everybody on the island to figure out what to do next.

And when you do that, you got these like characters with like funny quirks or interesting little side stories that like really made you feel engaged with them, which made the ending of this game that much harder, which I really feel like was the point of this slow buildup and getting like little moments with every little character. to make the island feel like a real living place. And like there are so many like little funny moments. Like the one standout is like you run into the, this goat lady in Animal Village or Animal Town.

I forget what it is specifically called. And she wants you to give like her letter to Mr. Wright and whatnot. And then you deliver it to him. He opens it. And it's just like a picture of Princess Peach. And it's like, what, oh, what's going on here? Is she pretending to be Peach? or like is this like does he collect pictures of princess peace like what is happening like what

what's the backstory here this is like little moments like that throughout that that i really really loved there's just like these little details where you you really feel like all of these weird cast of characters like know each other and live with each other i imagine it works just as well in the original and i can't believe they pulled something like that off back in the early 90s because after just playing lynx awakening or not link to the past you know like a link to the past You know, like I really liked some of the people that you met, but you didn't really feel like there was like a connected like world that you were like living in. So and naturally that's fine because it's the early 90s. They're still figuring out how to like make games as immersive as they can.

And so I just think that's really impressive for a game to do something like that, that early on in like the life of video games. So to go to the main story like it hurts, man. Like that ending really gave me a gut punch. Like even though like I knew it was going to happen because. I think I've known the story of this game for a while, but that did not lessen the blow at all. Like, I couldn't help but feel like a complete monster, which is why, like, have the love, hate relationship with the quest stuff, because it really makes you feel like you're destroying this world, which I can only imagine, like, what Link feels, even though at the end of the

game, he's, like, all happy and smiling and stuff. It's like, dude, I know it's, like, kind of fake and whatnot, but still, like, you destroyed life in a weird way. It's a weird, like, inception kind of thing. Even though it might not be reality, like, do you still have to treasure it? I don't know. It's just so fascinating. There's a lot to unpack there in the emotional weight of the end of the story.

Even the later bosses in the game, each time that you're destroying them, like, they're like, hey, like, if you do this, we're all gone. Like, everybody here is gone. And even though they're, like, the villains and they were actually, like, trying to use their power to take over the windfish's dream and whatnot. And they did have, like, evil motives. It did feel like they were still trying to. to protect their way of life in a way. And again, it just felt like, oh, wow, there's a lot to

impact here when it comes to this decision that Link has to make. This is, like, the first, like, true deviation as far as Zelda stories go. Like, there's no Zelda in this. There's no kind of, like, big ending of world plot here. It's just like, hey, like, you get caught in this magical, celestial beings dream and whatnot. You just have to, like, kind of deal with it. And I really loved it. And, like, you know, you get introduced to so many weird characters. And there's, like, references to Mario's with, like, the chain chumps and gumbas and shy guys and whatnot, even though I think they call them different things in this game. And, like, Marin, who kind of is, like, a new love interest for Link, they definitely tease that well.

And it brought me back to Skyward Sword, where they played a lot with Link's and Zelda's relationship. It wasn't as extensive as that, but they're still, like, the little teases near the end of the game where Marin's like, like I want to tell you something and then they get insurped by a Taryn and you get this sense of companionship between them and again that's why it makes the ending of the game so much harder and I do love if you know this game really well you can beat it without dying and there's kind of this sense of Marin gets to live on and whatnot and it's like oh that hurts but it's sweet and god damn it so overall I did really enjoy the story here and it made me understand why there's so many people who are major fans of this game and probably have it high on their list of their own, like, personal

Zelda rankings. Yeah, going through it, I was like, all right, I get it because, again, the ending moment and seeing the entire island vanish. You know, like, the kids, like, throw in the ball and whatnot, you're like, oh, no, and like, oh, no, and then, like, Manic Village, and you're like, oh, no, and then, like, Marin at the end, you're like, oh, goddammit. Why did we do this? Why do we just stay here and grow old and let the windfish just dream forever? I don't know. It was, like, when it comes to the story, like, yeah, I get why a lot of people really love this game. When it comes to gameplay and design, however, I don't really know what the, like, not uproar. There's another word that I'm thinking of.

So many people really love this game. And when it comes to, like, gameplay, I'm like, ah, it's, it's another Zelda game. Like, the design, the kind of overall structure of going into eight dungeons, getting eight items. Like, yeah, it's not, you know, like the pieces of the Triforce or whatever. But it's still, like, structurally not that different. But really quick, before I get into the, like, kind of overall stuff, I want to go back to, the trading quest stuff because I said I love, hate relationship, didn't really explain the hate.

Now, the reason I hated this is because this quest slash puzzle of going around, getting an item, not really knowing what to do with it, like does require you to talk to everybody and figure out what the next step is. And it feels like a point and click adventure game, if that makes any sense.

It's like if Nintendo hit up Tim Schaefer and they're like, yo, make like a puzzle design for the overall part of our game. And he's like, on it, got you. And that kind of puzzle of random item and let's figure out through hours of just like kind of wandering around clicking everything and just hoping it works never really vibes with me the one exception is grim fandango but i think that's more of like a nostalgic thing rather than actually liking that kind of genre of puzzles and games like it's not bad and it's not something that i'm like

ah this game is bad now or like the design is trash because of this i just don't personally vibe with it and to be fair not the entire questless like that like you talk to the go lady and she tells you directly, hey, like, I want you to deliver this to this guy. And you're like, all right, on it. Like, I've conveniently gone to Mr. Wright's house. I know where he is. Let me warp over, walk over, and give him his picture of Princess Peach or whatever. But then on the other side, it's like, oh, here's a hook.

You don't know what to do with it. And so your solution is like, oh, I met a fisherman in the village. Maybe I should go give it to him. You know, fish hook. Maybe there's a connection there. No, that's not the solution. Instead, I've got to swim around forever looking maybe somewhere. Or like maybe I can use the hook or something.

I gotta look up the solution. The solution is swimming to an obscure part of the map and under like a bridge or something and then you come to this like secret little side screen thing. Like that's the solution? Ah, it just, it's frustrated me a lot. Since we're on like kind of like major frustrations, like the only other like major one I had

is little items that you can pick up throughout the map and throughout the game that help you like, oh, if you pick up this like little triangle of power thing, you'll become more powerful and your hits will do more damage for like a certain amount of time. Or like you pick up the acorn

and it gives you a defense for a little bit. And that stuff is fine, but then every time you pick it up, it would tell you what it is. Six hours into the game when you're like, yes, I've picked this item up a million times. I know what it is. Stop it.

We like, we reverted back to Skyward's sword principles of every time you picked it on item. It's like, oh, you got the shadow drop thing. And it's like, yeah, I know. I'm playing this game for a while. I know what it is. And so it just turned into a point where I didn't want to deal with it.

And so I just, like, avoided those items at all costs throughout, like, the second half of the game. Yeah, I know what it is. And I know it's only two seconds of him doing, like, do-d-d-do, do, and he looks at it for a second, but still, if I had collected those throughout the rest of the game, I feel like the collected amount of time of picking up those items would have been, like an hour. We got to stop doing things like that. Now, to go to things that frustrated me definitely less in the game, like, dungeons. I think they're okay. Like, none of them have really stood out to me.

And I know that's a recurring theme, except for Link to the Past, from like, like, ah, the Dungeons didn't really stick out to me. But I think I've figured out why I didn't really like this one. And I think it's because they feel watered down a little bit. And it might have been because the game was originally on Game Boy, so they might have wanted dungeon designs to be a little more, like, straightforward and basic, which I definitely get. Like, knowing that platform and growing up with that platform

or the later iterations of that platform, like I get of why they might have wanted to be like, all right, let's not overcomplicate things. Let's just make puzzle solutions just like, ah, blow up this wall over here. Ah, there's an obvious switch to go step on it and whatnot. I get why decisions were probably made when the game originally came out. All right.

To get less heated, one of the biggest standouts in this game for gameplay to me was the side-scrolling bits, which was super weird at first and jarring because, like, I've never seen that in a Zelda game before, but after a while, it did feel like it kind of fit in a way. Like, it was cool to see elements like that and the chame choms and the gumbas that were obviously inspired by Mario games. And why, I don't think it, like, added, like, oh, this whole new level of whatever in gameplay. It was, like, silly, and you could see that the developers, probably, like, the first time around, like, we're just having fun and figuring out ideas to get this kind of game on this platform.

And they just had fun with it. And, like, I was on that ride with them, especially when unexpected to me, like, one of the boss fights was a side scroll. And that boss fight itself was whatever. but it was still like, oh man, like this is unexpected, and I really enjoyed that aspect. Now, speaking of boss fights, the biggest standout to me in this game are actually the boss fights. Like, most of them were simple, but really fun. I think it had to do it with a combination of, like, the cute art style and some of their, like, goofy, like, actual, like, character designs also mixed with, like, some of the creative ways you have to figure out how to beat them.

While they weren't super challenging, it was always so fun to go into a new boss and, like, figure out the, mechanic, which is basic Zelda boss design, but it works a lot for me this time around. We've got to figure out, like, the weakness of the boss, whether it's a body part, or using the jump of mechanic, which is very, very rare for a Zelda game, or, like, using a different weapon other than your sword. Like, it was all just, like, basic boss design for Zelda, but I think just, like, the different combinations of things that I said earlier, like, it really clicks for me this time around.

The biggest stand-ups to me were facade and Jeannie, who were both so unique to this game. Like, I don't think you could really see them in another Zelda game, even though I think facade actually comes up again in another game. But for this game, I think this was the first one where both of them are introduced. And, like, you really feel like, oh, man, like, these feel unique to this game in a way that helps it stand out even more. I don't know, there's just every time I faced a boss this time around, it felt refreshing and new. And it reminded me a lot of the first time I played Link Between Worlds, where they're, like, simple and structure, but they're just nude and varied enough to me. I was like, oh man, it's fun to kind of relearn new mechanics and old mechanics together to figure out, like, how to take this guy down. It was the first time I felt that since then, and that's been a while.

So I think that's why the bosses in this game, like, really stood out to me. And, of course, they bring back a bunch of them in the Turtle Rock dungeon, which, as you guys know at this point, like, is one of my favorite, like, kind of tropes in Zelda games now where they bring back elements from all the other dungeons and put them in the last dungeon. You've got to figure out combos of puzzle solving and mechanics that were, key in certain dungeons and put them all together. I just love design elements like that. It feels like a payoff gameplay and mechanic-wise. And speaking of Turtle Rock, I think one of my favorite gameplay moments in this entire game

was one of the most unexpected boss fights, which was a boss fight to just get into the dungeon itself. Like you have to fight the statue guy, which is not a turt. Can we be honest? That thing was not a turtle. Like, if anything, it looks like a dragon a little bit. Like maybe we should call it Dragon Rock. I don't know why we're calling a Turtle Rock.

people on this island ever seen a turtle before. I'm sure maybe in the original art style and the Game Boy probably looked a little closer to a turtle, but this time I was like, come on, we're stretching here. But yeah, that moment shook up the formula in a significant way for me where it's like, oh, man, I was not expecting this. All right, figure out the mechanics of this guy and like, oh, what's working here? I think I had to use the magic rod at one point. I was cycling through a bunch of my equipment figuring out, like, how, what do I need to shake this guy? And it was just so rad to be caught off guard in that aspect. And I wish I had experienced more things like that so far in my Zelda play-through. Now granted, two of the other games that I've played so far are

games that I've played a number of times at this point. But yeah, I just wish that there was something where I was like, whoa, I was not expecting this. And I'm sure for Ocarina and Link to the past, I did have those experiences when I first played them, but it's been so long, like, I don't really remember that. So again, it was just like a breath of like, oh man, like, holy crap, like this is really cool. And hopefully once we get more into the games that I'm less familiar with, like I get to have those experiences again. Okay, at this point, we're far enough in this review process where you guys know that I like to call out at least one dungeon in a game

of just like why I hate it and why it annoys me. And this time it's Eagle's Tower. This time it's more of a personal thing. Like, I think I've had fair criticisms of past dungeons I don't really like. Like ice levels and whatnot. But this one, like, the whole thing was like it had a lot of floors and levels. And if you get knocked into a hole, you fall down. a level and whatnot and that's definitely something we've seen before but this is the game i felt

most frustrated by it because it also came with the major mechanic of a lot of barriers from turning them on and off and whatnot so if you got knocked down by an enemy in one hole and you landed somewhere you didn't want to be and you had to like turn off the switch to get where you had to go back but then have to figure out okay how do i turn this what's the order of operations to flip that switch back So when I go to the room that I was in before I got knocked back, how do I figure that all out? It was just a lot of complicated backtracking. I know that's kind of like part of the challenge. Hey, you don't want to like get knocked down here or you're going to have to deal with a lot of complicated order of operations things to get back to where you were.

And so like I get it and I won't say this dungeon as bad. It was just personally frustrating for me. So just shout out to Eagle's Tower for being frustrating. And I guess there's actually two side-scrolling boss fights now that I think of it. because the boss fight for this guy is like the little, like, eagle dude. So I guess shout out to that boss fight, which was fun and cute. And as I said before, I played the remake of Link's Awakening. So the biggest appeal of the game was the art style,

which I got to say, I think might be my favorite in the games that I've played so far. Like, Ocarina of Time and Link's of the Past are classics when it comes to the atmosphere that they give off with the music and the character designs and the world that they build. But I just really loved the toy aesthetic that they went for the remake. They could have just rehashed the art style from Link Between Worlds, but they decided to do something a little more unique, which I think reflects the game as a whole, like really, really well. Now, of course, the biggest change for the remake is they redo a lot of the music,

but even though they re-recorded a lot of things, it still gave me kind of like that early 90s Game Boy vibe. Although I've never played this game before, like I grew up. playing Pokemon and whatnot and it kind of made me nostalgic for that experience like you get a good mixture of orchestrals and kind of that basic digital game boy music style and they just found a way to make it mix so well with each other and I like that because this is an offshoot and this is not like a like a main story this isn't part of like the grand scheme of canon Zelda and link they knew that and they also reflected in the music where you get a little bit of like the kind of

of a main Zelda theme, but it's changed just a little bit and whatnot. And there are a lot of, like, other subtle hints to other games. Like, I just watched a Zeltics video on, like, references. And one of the dungeons, like, the first half of it does, like, a remix to, like, the dark world in Link to the Past. And this is the same dungeon where, like, you find booze at one point. And then the second half of the dungeon has, like, a remix of, like, the haunted houses with booze in them and whatnot in, like, Super Mario World, I think. And it was just, like, little things like that. like, oh man, like they got really creative and weird. And like, again, that's what a lot of this game is.

And I like that they went as far as to do that with the music as well. And that's why I really enjoyed the music in this one. So anyway, let's get to my kind of wrap-up thoughts and ranking for The Legend of Zelda Link's Awakening. I now understand why a lot of people love this game. Because the things that are actually different about it are really cool. But I think I just built it up too much in my own head before playing it, talking to so many people who love the game. Like, I thought this was a big shakeup for Zelda games and just wasn't that.

And that's not bad. I think I just had, like, the wrong expectation going in. And while some designs with gameplay felt, like, watered down and basic, there were still, like, enough there that kept me going because, yeah, it was, like, a buy-the-books as Zelda's structured game. And then there are also, like, little tweaks to mechanics and whatnot of, like, the jump button. And, like, all of it felt so good that I was like, yeah, like, I still want to play it. Because at the end of the day, it's still really, really fun. But yeah, the things that really stood out to me at the end of the day were the story and the art style. And that decision that Link makes at the end of the game is such an emotional punch and still has me thinking, like I beat the game, I think four days ago

at this point, it still has me thinking how hard this version of Link has had it so far throughout his life. Although it's definitely not my favorite overall so far. And I'll be interested to see where this ends up at the end of the day in the ranking of all of this. I did really enjoy my time with it, and I'm really glad that I finally got a chance to experience it. So anyway, the ranking so far goes as follows. Number one, link to the past, number two, Ocarina of Time, and number three, Skyward Sword. I love this game, and to me, it doesn't really reach, like, the highest highs that the classics do to me. I think it almost gets there, and I think now with this remake, it has kind of like its own voice.

And for that, I have to absolutely give it props. And so it'll be interesting because this is still so early in the ranking business where this will end up. But I think right now, what I'm feeling is putting Links Awakening above Skyward Sword and below Ocarina of Time. So the new ranking is as follows. Number one, Link to the Past. Number two, Ocarina of Time.

Number three, Links Awakening and Number Four, Skyward Sword. I'm glad to be back again, like I said in the last segment, it was just going to the longest gap of me playing Zelda games because I was waiting for the remake to come out for Link's Awakening. So now I can finally get the ball rolling again because the rest of the games are already out. So without further ado, I'm so excited to get to this next game. Let's go into the Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds. Now to give some history of Hyrule for you, it was originally released in North America on November 22nd, 2013 for the 3DS, and it was directed by Hiromasha Shikata and produced by IG Anuma. So to give my overall impressions before we get into this story,

of a link between worlds. I actually have played this game before back when it launched in 2013. So when I first played the game back in 2013, I was so relieved that there was finally a Zelda game that I was really excited for and really into for the first time since I think Wind Waker. At this point in the franchise, I thought I had moved on because I wasn't really into the previous releases. But the idea of a Zelda game that was kind of a new game and kind of a remake of a link to the past was just so exciting and it was even more exciting when I played it and I actually really loved it. Although it is a slight remake of a link to the past, when I played it when it first came out, I hadn't played a link to the past in like six or seven years. So it was a kind of good mixture

of nostalgia and novelty that made me binge through the game, I think, in like a weekend. So not having played the game since then because I sold my 3DS shortly after that to save up for a PS4, I think my feelings on the game now are a little more complicated since I'm playing all of these games back to back. So a link to the past is way more fresh in my mind than it was when I originally played it. Like, I don't think it relies too much on the link to the past formula. But playing it now, I think it takes a little longer than it should to find its own voice and really differentiate itself from a link to the past. But as a whole, it still says an excellent game because it adds tweaks here and there to make things still interesting.

And the new wall merging mechanic completely changes the way you can look at puzzles in a 2D Zelda game. So anyway, let's get into the story of a link between worlds. This takes place about six generations after the events of Link's Awakening. So remember, we're still in the Fallen Hero timeline, but it's no longer the same link as we saw in A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening. Although there is a theory that the link from A Link to the Past is actually in this game, and I absolutely love it.

I recently watched a theory video from Zeltic about it, and you should absolutely check it out. And by the way, I'm not sponsored by Zaltik, I swear. He just has a lot of great theory and explanation videos that help me connect the dots between all of these games even further. Anyways, let's get into the actual plot of a link between worlds. Link, the apprentice of a blacksmith, goes to deliver a sword to a captain at Hyrule castle, only to encounter a mysterious figure named Yuga. who transformed a descendant of one of the seven sages,

Ceres, into a painting. After being knocked out during the fight, a merchant named Ravio finds Link and gives him a bracelet in exchange for him being allowed to stay in his home. He tells Link to report what had happened to Princess Zelda. After going to Hyrule Castle, Zelda gives Link the pendant of courage and instructs him to seek out the pendants of power and wisdom

to gain the power of the Master Sword. Along the way, Link encounters Yuga again and is turned into a painting. But Ravio's bracelet protects Link from Yuga's spell and gives him the ability to merge with walls and move around as a painting. After finding the other pendants in obtaining the Master Sword, Link returns to Hyrule Castle where he witnesses Yuga transforms Zelda into a painting. Link pursues Yuga through a dimensional crack, arriving in the twisted Decade Kingdom of Lowrull. There, Yuga uses Zelda and the descendants of the seven sages who he had trapped inside

paintings to revive and fuse with Gannon, obtaining the Triforce of Power in the process. Just then, Link is assisted by Lowrull's ruler Princess Hilda, who traps Yulah. in magic bonds. Hilda instructs Link to find it and rescue the seven stages who have been scattered across Lowruhe to gain the Triforce of courage. With help from Ravio, Link accomplishes this and returns to Lowruc Castle, where he discovers Hilda taking the Triforce of Wisdom from Zelda. Hilda reveals that Low Rule fell into ruin after her ancestors destroyed their Triforce. Deciding that she needed Hyrule's Triforce to restore her kingdom to its former glory, she arranged the events of the game so Link would bring it to her. Hilda attempts to use Yuga to obtain the Trifor's

of courage from Link, but Yuga betrays her and turns her into a painting, stealing the Triforce of Wisdom for himself. With Zelda's help, Link defeats Yuga and restore Zelda and Hilda from their paintings. As Hilda feels bitter over her loss, Ravio, revealed to be Link's counterpart, convinces her that stealing Hyrule's triforce isn't the right way to save Low Rule, having secretly sought out Link to help her see the light. After Link and Zelda returned to Hyrule, they used their Triforce to restore Lowrules' Triforce and bring Lowroll back to its full glory. With his quest completed, Link returns the Master's Sword to its resting place once more. Now at the end of the day, I think this story is fine because it's a kind of remake of a

link to the past, the major story beats are pretty much one to one with that game. So it feels kind of forgettable. However, I do like that it's an alternate reality that we go to in this game because then we get mirrored characters for Link and Zelda. And I think that idea is really, really cool. Like Link's Mirror Ravio is kind of obvious because he's a coward and Link's all courageous and stuff, but to be fair, Ravio does find courage at the end of the story. And sidebar, I do like the detail that he becomes a salesman, because a lot of shop owners we meet throughout all of the Zelda games are rather uninterested in adventure, and that's links kind of entire thing.

But I also love the mirroring between Zelda and Hilda way more, because they will both do whatever it takes to protect their world. But the main difference is that Zelda typically puts that burden on her own shoulders, and links to be fair, whereas Hilda goes to someone slash somewhere else at their own expense to protect low rule. It's an interesting inward outward foil that they have that I really appreciated this time around.

I also did really like at the end when Zelda and Link go to their Triforce and they use their wish to obviously restore all of the stuff that happened in Hyrule, but also to restore low rule. Of course, they were going to do it, but it still put it like a fuzzy feeling in my heart. Like, oh, that's really sweet.

In one minor detail that I loved at the end of the credits, because the main logo for this game is the Triforce, and then the low-rule Triforce, but the low-rule Triforce is grayed-out. At the end of the credits, I believe, you see that same symbol, but then the grayed-out TriForce turns to gold representing like, oh, the rule's back, and they're going to be okay and stuff. Again, it put a little warm, fuzzy feeling in my heart. I was like, yeah, all right. Now that I'm thinking about it, I think this story is more than fine. Yes, there's a lot of rehashing other things, but the story beats that we get at the story. the end of the game were finally different enough that I thought to myself, all right, like, this is something different enough and it's enjoyable enough that I gotta give

it credit where credit is due. But besides that, everything else was kind of forgettable. Yuga, I think, is a very math villain. And then the characters that were chosen as Sages were kind of just, oh, I've met you for two seconds and I guess you're a stage, I guess I should care about that for some reason, but I just didn't. There's just not a whole lot that was new or stood out to me, but that's okay. because I think the gameplay and design are way more important for this game,

and that's where I really found my enjoyment with it. So speaking of gameplay and design, let's get into the gameplay and design portion of a link between worlds. So as I said, I think the game has a good mixture of old and new mechanics, but playing it now so shortly after a link to the past, I just think it takes a little too long for the wall merging mechanic, which is the big shakeup in this game, to really shine. Of course you don't have it in the first dungeon because the first dungeon is just there to reteach you basic Zelda mechanics and then you get it after the first boss.

And I know that the next two dungeons where you get the pendants before getting the Master Sword are supposed to be simple enough so you get enough time to wrap your head around the wall merging mechanic. So when you get some more complicated dungeons in the game, you at least have an understanding of how to use it to the best of your ability. I don't know, I guess just playing this game so soon after a link to the past made the buildup to the Master's Sword and getting to Low Rule so slow for me. But then on the other hand, when we finally get to Low Rule, the structure of the game really picked up for me, especially if you don't know. You can play every dungeon in any order that you want. So none of them feel super easy. There's no rise in difficulty the further you get into the game. And they were probably developed that way with equally challenging puzzles, layouts,

and fights because you can do them in any order. Which also added the feeling that this adventure was your own and it was you who were discovering what to do next. Rather than being told what to do next, which a lot of the Zelda games are guilty of. Like yeah, they tell you where the dungeons are, but you still get to pick where to go and you have to figure out how to get into the dungeons

and it just feels much more personal that way. And another main reason they pulled that off really well was Rabio's store where you could just buy or rent all of the items that you needed to, solve and get into these dungeons, which at first I didn't feel strongly one way or another about the whole buying item system. But now that I'm kind of realizing how much it feeds into the overall structure for the game, it was actually a really smart idea for them to do that, and I really appreciated it way more the second time around playing it. But to bring it back to

gameplay, the puzzles, the layouts of the dungeons and the boss fights were so fucking fun when they were connected to the new mechanics. Because like linked to the the past, they flowed and connected really well together, even with the added layers. So to get more specific, the boss fights this time around were kind of like the dungeons. They took a bit to get the ball rolling for me. There weren't as many for me that did anything new or interesting, but the ones that did work for me, I really, really loved. Like, Knucklemaster, Sawblind, Yuga-Gannon, all implemented mechanics and items that

you knew how to use, but were designed in a way that made you think for a minute on how to how to get to their weak spot. Those specifically were the boss fights that I was thinking about when I was talking about the Link's Awakening boss fights. So replaying it now, I guess I'm just surprised that there weren't more bosses that weren't just, hey, hit it with the sword a couple of times. So now that I'm thinking about it, I think overall boss fights were okay, but the ones that stood out were really, really great. Now really quick before I move on from bosses, I do really want to shout out the Yuga-Gannon boss fight because I think that might be the hardest boss I have fought so far throughout this playthrough. And I'm talking about just from an intended

design standpoint here. This isn't including that one boss fight from a link to the past, or it was definitely on me and I didn't have enough hearts and I was just too stubborn to go and collect more heart pieces. I only died twice in this playthrough, and I forget what the first time was, but the second time was with Yuga-Gannon, which when I died from him, it brought back memories of when I played the game for the first time, and he kept handing my ass to me. Because when you think you've beaten the game, you have to go another round with him

without having any time to collect hearts or anything. It's an immediate round two, and it's kind of relentless for that, but I do respect it for that. And to be fair, there's a secret room with fairies in it that you can go to after you've died the first time. So when you try to fight him a second time, you can go in way more prepped than you did the first time.

And just really quick, before we move on to my final thoughts and ranking, In a surprising turn of events, there wasn't a dungeon that I hated in this game. I think they all have a good balance of being puzzling enough to make you rack your brain for a bit, but not too much that it becomes a chore and that you just want to give up. They're all tough but fair, except for the beginning dungeons, because I think they retread way too much of a link to the past. So anyway, let's get to my final thought and ranking for The Legend of Zelda, a link between worlds.

It's going to be difficult ranking this game in a minute, because I still really love this game for a lot of deserved reasons, but there are some glares I saw this time around that I can't really see past. And I know that's because it's a different situation that I'm playing this game in, because I played a link to the past a month ago. There's just things that I picked up this time around that I probably wouldn't have if I had just played it on its own. So it's hard. Do I knock off points for that, or do I let it go?

I don't know. But again, to summarize my thoughts, I think, although the story beats retread a lot of familiar ground, I think the end makes the build up to it worth it because it's a very Zelda-like heart-warm and sweet fuzzy story at the end of the day, and I just love that kind of thing. And in a similar fashion, I think that the gameplay and dungeons really take a bit longer than they should to get to the really, really cool moments.

So anyway, those were my thoughts on The Legend of Zelda, a link between worlds. Let's get to the ranking so far. The ranking is as follows. Number one, a link to the past. Number two, Ocarina of Time. Number three, Link's Awakening and number four, Skyward Sword. Where to put this one?

Where to put it? I even had to talk to Tim and Andy today and asked them, yo, gut reaction, would you put a link between worlds above Ocarina of Time? And they both said, nah. And then I asked them, would you put it above Link's awakening? And Tim said, nah. And Andy was like, yeah, I can see it. I went to them because I've really been thinking about this for the last couple of days.

I think what my gut is telling me now is to put it below Ocarina of Time, but above Link's Awakening. And I think that's my final word. So the ranking is now, number one, a link to the past. Number two, ocarina of time. Number three, a link between worlds. Number four, links awakening, and number five, Skyward Sword. Oh, hey, it's semi-future Barrett again,

who, in the middle of editing Zelda in review, realized he never recorded an outro for this segment. So those were my thoughts on a link between worlds. And to give some semi-future insight here, a lot of people have asked me, Barrett, did you ever feel fatigue at all while playing? all of these Zelda games, and I think it's right here where I felt the most fatigue after playing what, three 2D Zelda games in a row, and then knowing I still had two more to go. So, like,

it was really right here where I felt it the most, but again, I was still enjoying my time with it. So anyway, ladies and gentlemen, we are so close with being done with the 2D Zelda games, being done with the Fallen Hero timeline, and we continue on the Fallen Hero timeline with the Legend of Zelda. Now, just to get some history in Hyrule for y'all real quick, it was originally released in North America on July 14th, 1987 for the NES. And it was directed by Shigero Miyamoto and Takasi Tazuka and produced by Shigero Miyamoto, the one

that started it all. Now this was my first time playing the original legend of Zelda and holy shit it was hard and definitely not my type of game. But the more that I think about it, the more I think I appreciate it because obviously the franchise wouldn't be here without this one. So you got to give it credit where credit is due. Now to reiterate on how hard this game was for me and how obtuse I think some of the design choices were, I did pretty much have a guide by my side the entire way through. I don't know

if it was just because I was not raised around the original games when I was a kid, but I just could not wrap my mind around this game. When it came to items I needed to randomly find in the world, how to get into certain dungeons, et cetera. But even though I needed a lot of help the entire way, I did learn to appreciate the relationship between the player and exploring. And I'll elaborate a little bit more on that when I get to gameplay and design. So those are pretty much my overall kind of impressions before I get into the story. And speaking of story, let's get into the story of the Legend of Zelda. So of course, it's the first game, so there's not a whole lot story in the game itself.

So we're going to have to gather a lot of context clues and the relationship it has with the other. games in the timeline so just bear with me on the story for this one so this takes place generations after a link between worlds where hirul is now in a terrible state of decline citizens have taken to living in caves the tri forces split again it's all just falling apart now for the video version of zelda and review i usually have b-roll when i go into the plot breakdown provided by wikipedia but uh this story is so loose within the game itself we'll see if i have b-roll or not so just uh bear with me here a small kingdom in the land of Hyrule is engulfed by chaos when an army led by Gannon, the Prince of Darkness,

invaded and stole the Triforce of power, one part of a magical artifact which alone bestows great strength. In an attempt to prevent him from acquiring the Triforce of wisdom, another of the three pieces, Princess Zelda splits it into eight fragments and hides them in secret underground dungeons. Before eventually being kidnapped by Gannon, she commands her nursemaid Impa to find someone courageous enough to save the kingdom. While wandering the land, the old woman is surrounded by Gannon's henchmen, when a young boy named Link appears and rescues her. hearing impa's plea, he resolves to save Zelda and sets out to reassemble the scattered fragments

of the Triforce of Wisdom, with which Ganon can then be defeated. During the course of the tale, Link locates and braves the eight underworld labyrinths, and beyond their defeated guardian monsters, retrieves each fragment. With the completed Triforce of Wisdom, he is able to infiltrate Ganon's hideout in Death Mountain, confronting the Prince of Darkness and destroying him with the silver arrow. Obtaining the Triforce of Power from Ganon to Ashes, Link returns it and the restored tri-force of wisdom to the rescued Princess Zelda and peace can return to Hyrule. So I ultimately don't have an opinion about the story because within the context of just playing the game, it doesn't really matter and it doesn't really exist.

But stick with me. If we're following the narrative of what's gone on and the fallen hero timeline so far, it's kind of sad to see what Hyrule has fallen to, especially since where we last left off with the link between worlds and it seemed like Hyrule was on the up and up, you know? I know it's all loosely connected and it's all kind of bold. But since we've gotten so far into the weeds at this point, it is sad to think about. But I guess it's always just kind of sad because at the end of the day, Hyrol just never gets a break.

And the last thing I really have to say about story, because again, there's hardly anything here to discuss. I just find it interesting that for the first Legend of Zelda game, it wasn't about you collecting the full Triforce, but rather eight pieces of one part of the Triforce. And in this game, they only introduced the Triforce of power and wisdom, so they didn't even have courage yet. And at this point that I'm recording this, I've already played through Zelda 1 and 2, so I know how that connects to Zelda 2. I don't want to spoil too much of that before we get into it.

Knowing what I know from Zelda 2, did they already have a plan when they made this first one of, all right, we're going to introduce two parts of the Triforce in this one, and then we kind of have an idea going for the next game where we introduce the third Triforce, and it's going to be really cool. There's just so many questions I have about it, and I haven't done a lot of research, and I probably should have done more research before going into this, but I'm sure they must have talked about at one point. I'm just so fascinated of what the history behind building the TriForce and the core lore of that. Uh, this game just had me thinking about that a lot. Again, when it comes to the story itself, it's whatever, fine. This game just got me thinking a lot about the regular tropes and

story beats that we know from Zelda. So anyway, I think that might be the shortest story segment I have for any of these Zelda games. So let's get into gameplay and design. Now going back to why I think this game is so bullshit hard. One of the two main reasons were most of the enemies, but specifically the ones that were random and unpredictable. The Dark Nuts and the Wizrobes in this game are designed to be the most annoying fucking Zelda enemies in any Zelda game throughout the franchise, and I hate it. Especially the Dark Nuts, the way they just kind of randomly move around and change directions was just so infuriating, Like one wrong decision from you and a million wrong turns from them turns into a one-sided fight.

What's the strategy? There is none. You find their weakness. You know how to get to their weakness. But they're just going to fucking do their thing and be random. So there's just no balance in those fights. It doesn't matter how much you plan an attack from the side or behind. They just know how to ruin all of that.

And that's why I think that they might be one of the worst enemies in the franchise, specifically in this game. Like, I will be so bold to say at this. point I think I had more fun fighting moblins and Skyward's sword. And that's how much this game fucking frustrated me, specifically those motherfucking dark nuts. And even though the wizrobes are also random in movement, which they are known for, their attacks were at least consistent so I could plan quickly how to move around a room and just learn to be patient with them.

But fuck, the dark nuts, it doesn't matter if you're patient, if you're charged in the mounds, anything. They will fuck you up no matter what. And they were really the only normal enemy throughout the entire game where it no longer feels like skill, but luck. How did Nintendo decide later on in the franchise that Lionels were going to be the toughest thing to face? In this game, they're so easy to kill.

But then it takes me like an hour to beat one in Breath of the Wild, because I'm bad at video games. But then after this game, Dark Nuts are kind of just like a basic enemy, sometimes a minibosh. What? Man, I think this might be the first time I've been so heated about an enemy type in any game ever, maybe. I'm sorry that that really got away from me. My anger really got away from me in the last couple minutes, but we'll move on. Now, my other main frustration with the game, and I think this is less to do with the quality of the game, but more about me just not being raised around the earlier Legend of Zelda's when I was a kid, is that I just wasn't used to a lot of the

puzzles and language that you kind of have to learn in the overworld. Again, this is why I needed a guy to help shepherd me along. Like, how is I supposed to know? I needed to burn a random bush to get into the seventh dungeon. There's a million bushes in this game. I know this game specifically is a lot about exploring and discovering and learning from what you've found in the world. But to me, there wasn't really a gameplay language that the game was teaching you to figure some of these things out. Like, how did people figure that shit out back in the late 80s? I know there was a total of five games you could play on the system.

Did you really spend that much time to figure out that you could put a bomb on a random rock and that's how you get into the last dungeon how did you figure that out and on the topic of bombable walls how did people even know those existed there's no indication that a random wall is bombable so how i just i don't know how people figured that shit out so those were the two frustrations one i think is a valid criticism of the dark nuts because fuck those dudes and then the second one being more of a time and place thing for me because i just wasn't raised with these specific games so to me it just kind of makes me feel like a dumb kid, which is fair.

But even though the Legend of Zelda frustrated the shit out of me, I really respect this game a lot now because I finally understand what people meant when they said that Breath of the Wild was the spiritual successor to this first game. At their core, they are both truly about exploration, discovery, getting lost while trying to find the next step of your adventure, and less about the staples that we think of when we think of Zelda games, like dungeons and boss fights and all that stuff. Now do I think Breath of the Wild pulled it off way better and modernized the hell out of that concept to make it bearable? Yes, because at least that game vaguely points you in the direction of where to go, while also saying, do what you want.

But to be fair, I don't think that takes away the importance of this game and what it did for video games as a whole. So now finally playing this game and seeing the true roots of the Zelda franchise, it makes me even more confused with Breath of the Wild haters. It's not Zelda. Yo, if you were looking at the first game as the foundation of this franchise, Breath of the Wild might be the most legend of Zelda games since this one. All right, enough of using this game as an excuse to talk about my love for Breath of the Wild. We'll get there soon. All right, to get back to the gameplay and design of this game,

besides the relentlessness of the overworld, the dungeons themselves are pretty tough, but not in the way that I was expecting. I was really surprised how simple the dungeons were when it came to puzzles. like the extent of a puzzle was, hey, push one of these two blocks in this room to reveal a staircase. Which, I don't feel like is really a puzzle.

It's just an obscure solution to a problem you didn't know was there. I guess it still could be a puzzle, even though you don't know that the puzzle itself existed. I don't know. It's just a very weird relationship this game has with that concept of dungeon design. Yeah, it was really interesting how the difficulty of dungeons were mainly based on the enemies.

I find it interesting. I guess because I had a problem with it when Skyward Sword was more focused on combat rather than puzzles themselves. And that kind of annoyed me there, but it didn't so much for this one. I guess that's because I don't have a Wii moat that I have to use to attack things. But anyway, I've shit enough on Skyward Sword. I'm sorry. I don't know. I guess I'm just surprised at how combat focused these early games were when it came to dungeons.

It definitely aggravated the shit out of me for this game, but it was kind of cool and was an interesting change of pace, I guess. Now the last thing I have to say about gameplay and design before I get into my final thoughts, the boss fights were interesting. I don't know, they were just kind of just walking around and they throw fireballs at you, and they're mainly just dragons. I don't know, I guess at this point in the history of video games, a lot of developers might not have figured out what makes an interesting boss fight. It was weird, but again, to go back to why I appreciate this game kind of overall,

is that the boss fights weren't the main focus of the game. They weren't the main appeal. So I think it's fine that they kind of just get away with dragons and reusing those dragons like three times. But really quick to come back full circle to my dark nut frustration, the Gannon boss fight is complete horseshit. Why does he get to be invisible the entire time?

And I just kind of have to run around and hope that I strike him every once in a while and I get really nervous when it comes to something like that. It just goes back to the feeling that the fight feels random and is more based on luck than skill, and I think that is a very silly way to end your game. Now, to get to my final thoughts and ranking on The Legend of Zelda, while it's not my favorite in the series, and it definitely to me has a lot of very, very dated decisions, I respect it so much for being the first in the series, especially in a time where developers,

We're still trying to figure out what at-home video game experiences should be. You can't not give it credit for that, even though Gannon and the Dark Nuts are the bane of my existence in this game. Anyway, the ranking so far is as follows. Number one, a link to the past. Number two, Ocarina of Time. Number three, link between worlds. Number four, links awakening, and number five, Skyward Sword. And I think

I might get hate for this. I might. But I think right now my thought is to put this at the bottom at number six. And I know, I know I gave a lot, a lot of shit to Skyward Sword and I still have a lot of frustrations

with that game. And I do have a lot of frustrations with this game as well. And while I do respect a lot of what this game does, there are qualities in Skyward Sword that I just appreciate more as someone who plays video games. So I apologize to the people

who are probably really upset right now at my decision. But again, these are how I feel about the Zelda games. It's not a definitive. These are the best. This is just my takes. So, you know, take it or leave it. So anyway, the ranking now is, number one, a link to the past. Number two, Ocarina of Time.

Number three, a link between worlds. Number four, links awakening. Number five, Skyward's Sword. And number six, the Legend of Zelda. So that, ladies and gentlemen, are my thoughts on the legend of Zelda. Now let's get to the game. that will finally wrap up the Fallen Hero timeline, finally. And that game is, the Legend of Zelda 2, The Adventure of Link.

Now, to give some history of Hyrule on this game, it was originally a release in North America on December 1st, 1988 for the NES. And it was directed by Tadashi Shugiyama and Yashu Hisa Yamamura, and produced by Shigero Miyamoto. Now, I've talked about this in the past Zelda games that I've played so far, but I like that even so early on in the franchise, We were already seeing Miyamoto and Tizuka bring in new blood to take the franchise in new and interesting ways and create ideas that could push the boundaries of what they think Zelda games could be. Now, for overall impressions, this was my first time even touching the adventure of Link.

And from the conversations I had had with people about it, this was the game I was dreading the most. So, like the original game, I did use a guide a lot. but more for the overworld nonsense and less for dungeons and whatnot. Now, for me, I believe without a doubt that this is the hardest game in the franchise. But instead of being super obtuse like the first game, which it still kind of is, but at least this time around, I think the design of the overworld gives you a guiding hand if you look around for just a minute or two. It's more about the moment-to-moment combat gameplay.

That makes it way more complicated than any other 2D Zelda, and that kind of makes it stand out. I hated it, but at the same time, I was fascinated by it and respected it because I think it was so important for the development of Zelda games when they moved over to 3D. So for those of you who don't know, when you go into dungeons, it's no longer the top-down regular 2D Zelda combat. It turns into a side-scroller where you can block high and low and you can attack high and low and up and down. And while it didn't really work for me, I think Nintendo was really forward thinking about what ways they could. could push combat in video games. So overall, there's a lot of cool ideas in this game that I think were really important for the development of later Zelda games, but they just didn't fully come together in this one

for me. Anyways, let's get into the story of the final Zelda game in the Fallen Hero timeline. Several years after the events of the Legend of Zelda, the now 16-year-old link notices a strange mark on the back of his left hand, exactly like the crest of Hyrule. He seeks out Impa, who takes him to the North Castle. where a door has been magically sealed for generations. Impa places the back of Link's left hand on the door, and it opens, revealing a sleeping maiden.

Impet tells Link that the maiden is Zelda, not the Zelda from the first game, the Princess of Hiraul from long ago, and the origin of the legend of Zelda. Zelda's brother tried to force her into telling the recently deceased father's secrets concerning the Triforce. Princess Zelda refused to reveal its location, and the Princess wizard friend, in anger, tried to strike her down with a spell. Zelda fell under a powerful sleeping spell,

but the wizard was unable to control the wildly arcing magic and was killed by it. The prince, filled with remorse and unable to reverse the spell, had his sister place in the castle tower, hoping she would one day be awakened. He decreed that the princesses born to the royal family from that point on would be named Zelda in remembrance of this tragedy. Impa says that the mark on Ling's hand means that he is the hero chosen to awaken Zelda. She gives Link a chess containing six crystals and ancient writings that only a great future king of Hyrule can read. Link finds that he can read the document even though he has never seen the language before. It indicates that the crystals must be sent into statues within six palaces scattered all over Hyrule.

This will open the way to the great palace, which contains the triforce of courage. Only the power of the combined triforces can awaken Zelda. Taking the crystals, Link sets out to restore them to their palaces. Meanwhile, Gannon's followers seek to kill Link as sprinkling his blood on Gannon's ashes will bring Gannon back to life. Ultimately, Link restores the crystals to the six palaces and enters the Great Palace. After venturing deep inside, Link battles a flying creature known as Thunderbird, followed by his shadowy doppelganger, Dark Link. Link then claims the Triforce and returns to Zelda. The three triangles unite into the collective Triforce, and Link's wish awakens Zelda.

The game ends as they presumably kiss under a falling curtain. Again, there's very little to pull from the story itself, but there's something about this being the last. game in the Fallen Hero timeline that makes me fascinated with the kind of end of high rule in this timeline and because it's the last game it's kind of cool to see it and on a little bit of a high note high rule seems okay and that's nice to finally see when you think about how many times they've had to face off with Gannon and I know there's the whole thing Nintendo talked about about all three timelines converting into one that leads to Breath of the Wild but we'll talk about that and my theory

on that when we get to the Breath of the Wild but it doesn't matter right now The last thought I have about the story of this game, just to make more connections between the stories of each games, are the names of the towns. You got towns named Rudo, Raru, Sariah, Darunia, Naboru. And I know in the context of when these games came out, when they were making Ocarina of time, they probably just went back to Zelda too. And they're like, oh, we could name these characters that we've made just off of these towns. But it's cool in the context of the story that now that Hyrule has kind of built itself back up from the event, of the first game. These names have kind of been passed on through generations from the legends of the Hero of Time and the Seven Sages. And I love that those sages get some sort of legacy, you know? That's

really cool world building, in my opinion. But no love for my boy, Link, though. Link always gets forgotten. It's really, really sad. Anyway, that's enough of my thoughts on the very loose story that happens in The Legend of Zelda 2. Let's move on to the gameplay and design. So when I started playing this, A lot of people are telling me to think about it and play it like a true RPG, like Final Fantasy. And I totally understand that comparison because it feels like such an important decision to level your attack, magic, or health at the end of every dungeon. And I think that was kind of cool because it feels like you get more agency, which I think is kind of rare for a Zelda game in that aspect.

And of course, the overall world has a very old-school JRP kind of vibe to it. You run around the overall world. and when you run into enemies in the overworld, they take you into a subscreen side-scroller thing where you have to go in and fight them. So I get the RPG Final Fantasy like comparison, but the moment-to-moment gameplay of going through dungeons reminded me way more of Castlevania or Ghost and Goblins.

Obviously, because they're all side-scrollers, but also there are enemy types that feel directly ripped from those games, and the level of difficulty that those enemies are set at really reminded me of those games. specifically and while I respect the hell out of it that level of difficulty in games is this not something I'm ever looking for similar to the first game I think I would have enjoyed it more if the enemies actually felt strategy-based specifically the ones with the shields it reminded me a lot of fighting

the cobblins in Skyward sword you kind of just have to get lucky on whether your hit is gonna get blocked or not and then six hours into the game you realize oh if I do the kind of jump attack they are terrible at defending that so all right cool, whatever. Maybe I'm the dumb one. I don't know. And then with some of the more straightforward enemies, like the statues heads or the dog heads that shoot stuff at you, are dumped on you by the dozen, so no matter what situation you are in with them, you feel overwhelmed and it's almost impossible to get away without more than half of your health being depleted. So again, when it comes to combat, there are some really cool ideas that paved the way forward for other Zelda

games, but they're also mixed with just really weird ideas that I don't think mix well on. in Zelda games. Now for dungeons overall, I don't have a huge opinion about them. Like, I could take it or leave it. It's a lot like Link's Awakening and the first game where it's less puzzly and it's more just, hey, here's a room, fight all the dudes, get the key, go to the next room.

It all felt pretty straightforward with some exceptions here and there. But yeah, I felt more focused on throwing a bunch of enemies in your face rather than making you think on where you're going next. I didn't hate it, I didn't love it, it was just kind of there. The one negative side is just how difficult some of those

enemies are. But with the idea itself, it's fine. Although there was one specific dungeon, I forget which one, where you have to walk through an invisible passage in a wall to just get to the next part of the dungeon. And it was just like, how am I supposed, how is anybody supposed to figure that out? Now to move on, bosses were a little more interesting in this game. I felt like I could always find a cheese to take them down really easily, but it always felt really satisfying. I don't know why. Maybe it was because you could see their life bar. Maybe it was the sound and lighting effect when you would hit them. Or a combination of those things and the upped difficulty in combat.

I don't know. I just had a lot of fun with the bosses this time around. Except the second to last boss, the Thunderbird or whatever. That thing starts to spit fireballs everywhere at one point in the fight. And it reverts back to my frustration with certain enemies. It starts to feel just like kind of luck and less skill. And it just feels bullshit. But then shout out to the last boss, Shadowlink, which I love thematically because the most courageous thing that you could do is face yourself.

And I think that's kind of a cool thing that they're going for in the story. That totally works with me. And I think he works way more in the context of this game than Ocarina of Time. But honestly, I didn't think he was that hard. He reminded me of some of the, I believe, dark nuts that you face in this game where you kind of just have to push them against the wall or put yourself against a wall and just kind of spin. And that's what I did for Shadowlink. And I was, I beat him in like a couple of minutes. And I think I beat him in one try.

Whereas with Thunderbird, I think I tried to beat that thing five or six times. Now, the last thought I have, and this is kind of a mix of story and design in general, is just the fact that villages are introduced in this game. It makes sense for the story because Hyrule is becoming a habitable place again, and people can start making towns. But you could tell it was a slight design choice as well. to make the world feel like a living place. Going into towns, talking to everybody

to figure out where to get the next spell, or figure out what to do next, to me helped with the stakes of the story. You feel more motivated when a game says, hey, save the world when there are actual people in the world to save. I know it's just a little thing, but it's an observation that I made

halfway through the game that I really enjoyed. Now to get to my final thoughts and ranking on The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, I really appreciate the ideas Nintendo experimented with in this one that would influence the rest of the series moving forward. I know this is the black sheep of the Zelda franchise, which a lot of the Nintendo sequel games back then were the black sheep's of their franchise. But honestly, if we didn't get this game, I think games like Aquarina of Time and Link to the Pass would have been way, way different if they didn't poke and prod the formula here and there in this game.

In the sense of overall exploration and finding out what to do next, I think I like this game more than the original, only because I feel there is a slighter linearity that makes things not more complicated than they should be. But something I can't rule out is the combat, which is 98% of the game. While I think it importantly paved the way for 3D Zela combat of balancing offense and defense and strategizing and using different weapons, I think, I think it just came out of the oven a little too early. And because of that, it made for overly frustrating enemies that didn't feel like they fit the difficulty of some of the areas that I was in. Stupid dogheads that were obviously ripped from Castlevania.

I'm looking at you. But yeah, anyway, it's hard to decide where I want to put this. Right now, the ranking is as follows. Number one, a link to the past. Number two, Ocarina of Time. Number three, a link between worlds. Number four, links awakening. number five, Skyward's Sword, and number six, the Legend of Zelda.

Hmm. I honestly wish I had a voting committee here because I think I could go either way of this being number six or seven. Because even though I struggled with both games, at this point, I think they're kind of both equally important for what the franchise turned into. I think on principle, and I think just based off of the gameplay that I personally like, I got to put this at the bottom. So now the ranking is as follows.

Number one, a link to the past. Number two, Ocarina of Time. Number three, a link between worlds. Number four, links awakening. Number five, Skyward Sword. Number six, the Legend of Zelda. And number seven, the Legend of Zelda, two, the Adventure of Link. So that is it.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are done with the fallen hero timeline. I am done with playing a million 2D Zelda games in a row. shit. When I first started this journey, someone did give me the advice of, hey, maybe you should bounce back and forth between timelines, because playing those 2D Zelda games all in a row can get really tiresome. And I thought to myself, nah, I'll be okay. And just now I'm here, and I feel fallen and defeated like I truly belong in the fallen hero timeline. But again, this is the end for the fallen hero timeline. We've wrapped up this story. So before we get into the next game, which I'm very excited about, let's go back to the story in Ocarena of Time.

The two timelines left that we have that were created at the end of O'Conrina of Time were the Adult Timeline and the Child Timeline. Now the next timeline that we are going down is the Adult Timeline, which follows the high rule that no longer really exists with a link because Zelda sent him back into the past into that new weird timeline. So this is the high rule that exists after all of the events of Ocarina of Time, and it exists no longer with the Hero of Time. And there's only one mainline game in this timeline to really tell the story. of the adult timeline. So let's get into it, The Legend of Zelda, the Wintwaker. Some history of Hyrule for you. The game was originally released on March 24th, 2003 in North America on the GameCube. And just for reference, I played the HD remaster on Wii U, and we'll get into

the differences later on. It was also directed by IG Anuma and produced by Shigero Miyamoto and Takasi Tazuka. So for overall impressions, I honestly forgot how much I loved this game. I know when it originally came out, it got a lot of hate because it was a drastically different art style from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, and it was more appealing to kids. Which honestly works because 2003 Barrett wanted it the second that he saw. He didn't get to play it until a couple years later, but that art style really, really appealed to me as a kid. So yeah, the last time I played this game all the way through was back in 2006, I believe. And that's so long ago that I cannot tell you the intricacies of my sixth grade mind when I first experienced it.

I don't really remember the first time playing this game, but it left such a great impression on me that I've remembered it so fondly still to this day. I've played the opening hours a couple of times here and there, and every time I go back to it, I just fall in love with it all over again. But those times I went back to it, I think it might have just been a wrong place, wrong time, because I never felt compelled really to continue and play through the entire game again. I just don't know why I never did that until now because I do really love it. So going back to it now was just a magical experience, the story, the gameplay, the art style, sailing around on this magical boat

and just taking the scenery in. I just love this game so much, and I'm glad that over the years, people got over the art style, which was always fantastic and is the one 3D Zelda game art style that still holds up to this day. But anyway, let's get into the story

of the Wind Waker. So just a quick refresher, we are now in a new timeline that is not related to the Fallen Hero timeline. So let me break it down for you, the events of Hyrule after Ocarina of Time in this new timeline. The game follows the Adult Link timeline, after Link the hero of time defeats Ganon, and time travels back to his childhood. A crisis emerged when Ganon returns, but Link does not. Centuries later, the people live on islands in the Great Sea. They preserve Link's story as a legend, but his kingdom's fate is unknown. The main character, a young boy, also named Link, lives on outset island, where boys dress in green like the hero of time when they come of age

to pay their respects to the hero of time. So yeah, I just want us to remember this for later on when I get more into my thoughts that there were repercussions this timeline had since Zelda put Link into his own timeline, so this timeline kind of existed for a very long time without the hero of the story, and I think that's a really cool way for them to kind of set up the story that's happening in the Wind Waker. So without further ado, let's get into the actual story.

While Link is celebrating his coming of age, a gigantic bird drops pirate captain Tetra into outset Island's forest. Link rescues Tetra from monsters, but the bird carries off Link's sister Errol. Tetra agrees to help Link find his sister, and they sail to the forsaken fortress, where the bird, the Helmerach King,

has been taking girls with long ears. Link finds Errol and other kidnapped girls, but the Helmrock king captures him and takes him to a man in black who orders Link thrown into the sea. Link is rescued at Windfall Island by a talking boat, the king of Red Lions, who explains that the bird's master is a returned Gannon. To defeat him, Link must find the hero of time's power, which requires the three pearls of the goddesses. Link finds Dyn's Pearl on Dragon Ruse Island, home of the Avian Rito and the Dragon Valu. Ferroar's Pearl and Forest Haven, home of the Great Decutree and the plant-like Korox, and Nehru's pearl with the water spirit Jaboon on outset island.

The king of Red Lions then takes Link to the Tower of the Gods, where he faces trials before descending beneath the ocean to a castle suspended in time. Here Link finds the hero of time's weapon, the Master Sword. Link returns to the forsaken fortress, and Tetra's crew arrives and rescues the girls. Link defeats the Halmarach King and goes to face off against Ganon, but Ganon easily overpowers Link and Tetra, noting that the Master Sword has lost its power. Gannon recognizes Tetra's Triforce necklace and realizes she is the incarnation of Princess Zelda he is steaking. Link's Rito allies and Valu save Link and Tetra from Gannon.

The King of Red Lions brings the two back to the underwater realm, explaining it is the legendary kingdom of Hireul, which the goddesses submerged long ago to contain Gannonon, while the people fled to the mountaintops. The King of Red Lions reveals himself to be Daphne's Nohanson-Rul, the last king of Hyrule, and Tetra is his heir, Zelda, keeper of the Tri-Force of Wisdom. them. Tetra remains in the castle while Linkin, the king, journey to the two sages who provided the Master's sword's power. They discover Ganon's forces murdered them both, so Link must awaken new stages, the Redo Medley, and the Korok Makar. The sages restore the Master Sword, but the King learns that Ganon has abandoned the forsaken fortress and fears an attack. They then tracked down the eight shards of the missing Triforce of Courage, once kept by the Hero of Time, and the gods recognized Link as the Hero of Wins. Link and the King returned to Hyrule to discover

that Gannon has captured Tetra. Link follows them to Gannon's tower, defeating Gannon's minions before Gannon overcomes him. Gannon joins Link's in Tetra's triforce pieces with his own triforce, forming the complete triforce, which will grant his wish to rule the world. But before he can act, the King of Hirao appears and wishes that the goddesses washed Gannon and Hirul away. The king then grants Link and Tetra hope for their own future. Link and Tetra battle Gannon with the Master Sword and magical arrows as water pours around them, with the final blow the master sword turns Gannon to stone. Link and Tatsra rise to the surface as the king and Hyrule are submerged.

And they are reunited with their friends. A post-credit scene shows the hero's sailing off to find a new land. So I honestly forgot how much this game really shakes up the Zelda story formula. The first half of this game is happening purely because Link just wants to save his sister. And it's not until after that where he accepts that he has to go on this major quest, to save the world. And that buildup to saving Errol is so cool, because when you go there the first time you think,

like, oh, I'm immediately going to save her, and then the rest of the game is going to be about the typical Zelda quest that we know, but it's not, of course, the first time we go there we're not going to save her, because we just learned how to pick up a sword. Like, the Halmarocaine, of course, is going to clown us out.

Like, that's just such a cool way to frame the story. So it's just a great storytelling moment in a video game where you go back to the Forsaken Fortress with the Master Sword, save Errol, take on the Halmerach King, and actually beat him, and it feels so satisfying because it's personal this time. This thing took your sister and then totally messed you up the first time you went, and it's just so satisfying. I'm kind of getting ahead of myself, so let's circle back to the overall pacing of the story. But just to go back really quick again, just the few story changes they made this time around of the first half of the game really being about this rescue mission,

and then also making the world that you're in not just Hyrule again, but have the story still connect to high-run. Hyrule in a way makes the story feel so fresh and not like we're retreading the same story beats over and over again. And another main reason this story doesn't feel like a retread is the main cast of characters. While I do enjoy the characters in games that were released before Wind Waker, I think there is just something Nintendo finally had technology-wise on the GameCube to really sell how alive these characters are and how much personality that they have. I felt the childness of Link, the rogueness of Tetra.

the importance of the King of Red Lions every time he comes into a scene. And I think they just pop off the screen way more just because of their character quirks and reactions during scenes. Previous games kind of feel stiff now in comparison and it's impressive that this was able to hold up 16 years later, of course, with some HD remastering help, but not a lot. Now, going back to the characters, they're the core reason of why this story works so well. The way the game sells us on how upset Link is when Errol is taken away does so much to make us invested in not just the grand saving high rule quests, but also makes us invested in Link as a character and what he cares about. Man, I was even invested with the characters that you have to babysit during some of the dungeons that you have to explore because we got to meet them earlier on in the game and then see their journey into becoming sages.

It actually feels like there's some emotional weight to it. and seeing their journey into becoming sages and building up the Master Sword was great. And also making Zelda into a badass pirate has made me more invested in her character than I've ever been. I don't know what it is about pirates, but man, they're just fucking cool. But the two characters that stand out the most in this game by far are Gannondorf and my boy, Daphne's Nohansen, Hyrule. You're telling me, this is the first and last game where the king of Hyrule is your companion? It was so good! How come we haven't done that again?

Seriously, though, making the king your companion who turned himself into a boat and has this wise presence around him, and you know he has the respect of ancient creatures like Jaboon or, like, the weird fish who paint your maps, was just a smart, smart choice. He just has this presence that makes him the highlight of every scene that he is in.

And man, at the end of the game where Hyrule is drowning, and Daphnees decides to stay behind because he realizes he can't let go of Hyrule, and Link reaches out for him because that's been his best pal for the last week or so, and he really cares about him, and Daphnees puts out his hand, but then puts it down.

It's just so sad. Seriously, we say goodbye to every companion at the end of every 3D Zelda game, but this one cuts the deepest because that little moment of reaching out just shows you how much Link really cared for him. And honestly, hell yeah, let's make the king one of the main.

main characters finally. We've heard stories and legends about him before, but he always felt like this lifeless throne just out of sight from the camera. Making him part of the main cast and letting him have some of these important moments at the end of the story, which just such a great idea that would have felt weaker if it was, I don't know, a lifeless spirit of a sword. And of course, last but not least is the big old Gannendorf. I'm going to be real. I think this might be the best iteration of him to this day. He's honestly not in a lot of the game, but I think that still says a lot

of how much of an impression he gives. It's like Vader in the very first Star Wars movie. Not in much, but when he's there, you are paying attention. His character design makes him feel way more menacing, just in his Garudo form. And everything that he was in at the very end of the game made him really interesting and almost sympathetic.

His whole monologue at the end, where he's talking about the wind in Garudo, Valley versus the wind in Hyrule and how that was something he wish he had. You get this kind of jealousy that Gannendorf has of Link. Being able to master the wind, and it's a very vulnerable moment for Gannendorf that we barely ever get to see. He's more poetic this time around, and that slight change in character makes him way more compelling than just, I'm a pig.

Now, the last thought I have on story is I forgot how much this game is really a sequel to Ocurena of Time. In my head, Majores Mask is more of the true sequel to O'Carena of Time because it's the same Link. But I forgot how much this game references the hero of time and how he never returned, which caused Tyrol to be flooded. Also, sidebar. I like that they referenced that Link didn't return in that great calamity because, of course, Zelda sent him back, so he no longer existed in this timeline. Which ended up being a poor call on Zelda's part, but everything kind of worked out in the end, right? I don't know. I just really, in that we really felt the consequence of a decision made from a previous game. That was just a really cool idea.

But anyway, I just really enjoyed how much this game felt like a sequel. Not all of the games feel like that, even though they're all connected together. Now, let's move on to the gameplay and design. Holy crap, do you remember earlier on in the Zelda in review where I said I wasn't sure if any of the 3D Zelda games were going to hold up in the course of gameplay and design? Holy fuck, this game slaps me with a glove, called me a bitch, and then threw me out on the street because it is still so goddamn fun to play. The combat makes every encounter feel so important. Not every encounter is hard, but I think the fact that when you go to the Forsaken Fortress for the first time, unarmed, it makes those foes feel so threatening. Another sidebar.

I know I talked shit about the Dark Nuts in the original Legend of Zelda segment, and I talked about how they were never a tough foe after that. I forgot that these enemies were also called dark nuts, so I am sorry. But at least these dark nuts are taken down with actual skill and strategy and not just dumb fucking luck. Anyways, you know this game has impressive dungeons when I don't feel the need to talk shit about any of them. They all have fun puzzles that integrate new and old items and really make you think what the order of operations should be for the entire thing. This one really embodies the classic Zelda puzzle design that we all think, I have all the pieces of the puzzle.

Now it's just a matter of me not being an idiot to put them all together. The one thing about the dungeons, though, and this might have just been because I played through it all in a week, is that they all just kind of blended together. When it comes to the art design of each dungeon, besides the forsaken fortress, I don't feel like any of them really stand out. But their actual design of mechanics, puzzles, and combat really make up for that. And really quick, I just want to shout out the Earth and Wind Temples, where you have to chaperone a character throughout the entire thing.

much like Rudo and Jabu Jabu's belly, but they made it way less annoying and actually integrated the characters into the mechanics of puzzles, so it felt way less like a chore. Good job, Nintendo. Another thing that I found interesting is how fast the game feels because of how well spread the dungeons are.

There's only seven of them, which is the same amount as Skyward Sword, but it feels like you go through them so much faster than Skyward Sword, probably because there isn't a dumb quest every single time just to get into the dungeon. But also you do three of them before getting the Master Sword, Master Sword, then you go save Arrell, and then you're pretty much halfway through the story.

You do two more dungeons after that before going to Ganon's Castle, and when you hit that spot, you're like, damn, that went pretty fast. I think there was this really smart placement of when the dungeons came up that made my like 25, 26 hour playthrough feel like 12. Now, to counter that, we still have the Triforce Quest, which essentially turns the entire map into a dungeon where you have to find the eight pieces of the Triforce of Courage before going to Gannon's Castle. Like many interesting design choices Zelda games have, I have a love-hate relationship with this one. On one hand, going off and exploring to find these eight pieces of the Triforce gives a good excuse to explore the world and feel more connected to it. Talking to weird and fun

characters, discovering a weird battle dungeon underneath outset island, and so on, just adds this cool relationship to the world that I don't think we would have naturally gotten if this quest wasn't in the game. On the other hand, it does feel a lot like traveling back and forth to do the right things in the right order so we can collect these pieces. Granted, it is mainly fixed in the HD remaster, but if you don't know, in the original game, you would have to find these Triforce charts, which you could not read, and then you'd have to go to Tingle every single time to get them deciphered, and then you could go collect the Triforce pieces. And you had to do that eight times on top of whatever special thing you had to do for the Triforce piece. Like go through

this underground maze on the private island or figure out where the ghost ship is according to the shape of the moon. Again, Nintendo did a lot in the HD remaster to fix it where there's only three pieces this time around where you have to find the chart first. And the rest you find just by opening the chess that originally had the charts in the original version. So it cuts off almost half of that experience. It does help with the pacing of the game if you don't naturally go and collect them throughout the rest of the story. But doing it for the first time in a long time definitely brought up some flashbacks of playing it for the first time and being so bored because it's all I did for hours.

Okay, I've kept you long enough in this segment already, but the last thing I want to shout out is the music. It's whimsical, it's dark, it's epic, and the way they play with themes from previous Zelda games are some of the purest get hype moments in any video game. Like, how do you expect me to not get hype when my best? Boy Daphne's reveals to Tetra that she is Zelda, and when he puts together her Tri-Force piece, it plays the opening theme to link to the past,

and the crescendo hits when she turns around and reveals that she is Zelda. Like, holy shit, that is such a good moment. And just the way they incorporated the music along with the combat, with every strike that you give, and the theme for every island felt so unique. And it just fit the vibe of what they were trying to hit overall with this game. The music in this game is just so, goddam special. Okay, this is the actual last note. I didn't really talk about a lot, but I do

want to say the boss fights are really fun in this game. Especially the final Gannendorf boss fight where you and Tetra work together to take him down. It's really cool. Also, I really enjoy that you fight Puppet Gannon first and then Gannendorf second. It's a subtle change that keeps the final encounter interesting, and I know there's probably like a story thing there that we could really dig deep into, but there's just not enough time. It's all really cool. All right, it's finally time for my final thoughts and the ranking of the Wind Waker. I'ma be real. Wind Waker is actually the game that people should be thinking of when it comes to a successful 3D Zelda game that still holds up today.

Not Ocarina of Time. Not to disrespect Ocarina where it doesn't deserve it because it did do a lot to further the franchise. But there are just a lot of aspects of that game that don't hold up super well because they were not only at the time figuring out what makes a good 3D Zelda game. they were still trying to figure out what makes a good 3D game. Wind Waker came out at a time where everybody was pretty confident at that point of how 3D games worked. So it had the advantage of when it came out and because of that, I think it's the 3D Zelda game. Pretty wee because I'm not too sure about Twilight Princess yet. That holds up the best when it comes to every aspect of the game.

Music, gameplay, story, dungeons, bosses. They all tie together so well that it makes this game one of the most, if not the most, standout Zelda games to the this day. Now let's get to the ranking. The ranking so far is number one, link to the past, number two, Ocarina of Time, number three, link between worlds, number four, Link's Awakening, number five, Skyward Sword, number six, the Legend of Zelda, and number seven, the Adventure of Link. I think we all know it's pretty obvious how much I've been gushing about this game for this entire segment. This is my new number one, and I think it does have the advantage of me not really remembering the first time that I ever played it. So it really stood out to me playing it

again of how much it still holds up to this day. So to me, this is the obvious number one so far. Anyways, that is the end of the adult timeline that went by way faster than the fallen hero timeline. Very exciting. So the next timeline that we're going down is the child timeline that follows the link that was sent back to the past and prevented all of the events that happened in Ocarina of Time in this new timeline. I'm very interested to get into this next game because now that I'm thinking about it. I don't know if I've ever actually beaten it myself, but let's talk about the Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask. Now, to give you some history of

Hyrule for you, the game originally released on October 26, 2000 in North America, I think it released earlier in the year for Japan, but shout out to the late October release for Majora's Mask, because I think it's the perfect Halloween vibe for it, and it released on the N64, but to give some context, I played the 3DS remaster of the game. It was directed by IG Anuma and Yoshaki Koizumi and produced by Shigero Miyamoto. And I haven't really thrown in developer tidbits for all of the games,

but I knew about this one that I'm about to talk about, and I thought it would be a cool one to throw in here. Following the release of Link's Awakening in 1993, fans waited five years for Ocarina of Time, the active development of which took four years. By reusing the game engine and graphics from Ocarena of Time, a smaller team required only one year to finish Majora's mask. According to Director Iegeanuma,

they were, quote, faced with the very difficult question of just what kind of game could follow Akrona of time and its worldwide sales of 7 million units, unquote. And as a solution, came up with the three-day system to, quote, make the game data more compact while still providing deep gameplay, unquote. Sigero Miyamoto and Yoshiaki Koizumi came up with the story that served as the basis for the script written by Mitsuhito-Takano. The idea of the three-day system came from Miyamoto and Koizumi.

I just think it's really cool and interesting that they have. these challenges and wanted to do a follow-up to Ocarena of time so soon and had all of these little tricks and developer shortcuts to do that and I think that was just like a really cool like little story that I wanted to share. Anyway let's get into my overall impressions on Majora's Mask. So for the longest time I thought I had actually played through all of Majora's Mask but the more that I thought about it I think the way it actually happened is that I played through the opening of Majora's Mask when I was a kid and and then watch like a family member or a friend, like play the final boss.

And that was kind of confirmed for me when I was playing through it now and remembered almost none of it. But I swear I do have the memory of at least watching someone beat it because I remember watching the final Majora fight, and you don't forget that fight once you see it. That thing is creepy as hell. And definitely freaks me out a little bit when I was a kid. So now that I finally played it,

I kind of have conflicting thoughts on it. Not because I think it's bad or anything, but I definitely started it at a very weird time. For those of you who don't know, I get really, really stressed out on plane rides. And I flew to L.A. recently at the time of recording this. And to try to distract myself from being on a plane, I booted it up and played the intro.

I was like, all right, cool, this is really nice. And then it started the three-day system. And immediately, I was like, oh, this is stressful. And I feel like I need to do a certain amount of things before we get to the first end of the three-day cycle. I just need to turn this off because this is a lot to emotionally handle for me right now. So yeah, just starting it for the first time in that environment made me way too stressed out at the very, very beginning,

which was on me. I shouldn't have started it there. And that's why I think I feel very conflicted about Majoris Mass. This game is so fun and has some really, really cool design elements and awfully dreadful story and premise. But the main mechanic of the three-day system, and choosing what main quests you need to do or all the side quests you need to do before that reset is just such a stressful thing.

And there are definitely some close calls that I had that were definitely on me and how I chose to barrel through some things, but I still hated it. And I get that it's the point, but I just wasn't in the right headspace for most of it because I just didn't want to be stressed out. Like, the game has no chill,

and that's really cool in concept, but it also aged me 100 years. But anyway, let's get into the story. of Majora's Mask. So as I said before, this is the first game in the child timeline. After the event of Ocreen of Time, where Link gets sent back to the past, before Gannendorf took over to warn Hyrule of the coming event, and in doing so, prevents the story of Ocaryne of Time

from even happening in this new timeline, since Gannendorf was stopped before he could do any damage to the kingdom. And if you remember when Link is sent back, Navi, who is kind of this representation of Link's childhood, kind of leaves him at the very end of Ocarina of Time. But let's get into the actual story of what Majora Mask tells. A few months after the events of Ocarina of Time, Link is searching for his departed fairy, Nabi.

While riding through a force in Hyrule on his horse Apona, Link is ambushed by the masked Skull Kid and his fairy friends Tattle and Tail, who steal both Apona and the Ocarina of Time. Link follows them down a dark cave and confronts the Skull Kid, who taunts him and casts a curse, transforming him into a decou scrub. Tattle prevents Link from pursuing the Skull Kid as the ladder escapes with tail through a door, but is then separated from them when the door closes behind them. Realizing she needs Link's help to find them, Tattle insists that they work together.

Link follows the Skull Kid through the cave into the inside of the clock tower in the land of Termina. There he meets the happy mask salesman who seemed to have been following him. The salesman offers to help Link heal his curse in exchange for retrieving Majora's mask from the Skull Kid and tells him he also must obtain his special item, the Aquarina of Time, from him As well. From a gate inside Clock Tower, Link and Tattle enter Clock Town while its population prepares for the town's annual Carnival of Time, which will take place in three days. Together they learn that the Skull Kid is waiting at the top of the tower, which is only

accessible during the eve of the carnival. As the two interact with the residents of Clock Town, they learn of the havoc that Skull Kid is wrought prior to their arrival. At midnight on the third day, the Clock Tower opens, which Link and Tattle assent. Upon arriving at the top of Clock Tower, Lincoln Tattle again confronts Skull Kid, and Tattle implores Skull Kid to return the mask. Skull Kid ignores the request and proceeds to use the mask power to expedite the moon's collision with Termina, while Tail hurriedly speaks a riddle to them. Swamp, Mountain, Ocean, Canyon. Hurry. The four who are there, bring them here. Link is unable to fight the

Skull Kid and cannot take the mask from him, but manages to retrieve the Ocarina of Time. After playing the Song of Time on the Ocarina, Link and Tattle are brought backwards through time three days earlier, with the ocarina still in his possession, and with both him and Tattle having complete memory of all that happened. Meeting with the Happy Mask salesman again, he sees that Link has retrieved his ocarina and teaches him the Song of Healing, which returns Link to his human form

and seals his decou curse into a mask, which can turn him back into a decou scrub if needed. After he finds out Link did not bring back Majora's mask, he panics and explains that the mask conceals an evil, apocalyptic power that was once used by an ancient tribe in hexing rituals. The troubles caused by the mass were so great that the ancient ones sealed the mask in shadow forever to prevent it from being misused.

Link must then travel between the four cardinal regions of Termina, woodfall, snowhead, the Great Bay, and Icona Canyon. For each region, conceals one of the four giants who can halt the moon's crashing once reunited. At the same time, the Skull Kid has struck each region with a terrible curse which plagues its inhabitants and seals away its giant. To lift the curse and free the giants,

Link must enter a dungeon in each region and defeat its boss After doing so, obtaining the power to summon the giant he has set free. Link prevents a wrongful execution and purifies the water in the south, puts an end to the perpetual winter in the north, cleanses the water, and retrieves Lulu's kidnapped babies in the west, and helps heal the tribes of the East who remain at war with each other, despite having died centuries ago. With all four curses lifted, Link climbs on top of the clock tower at midnight

on the third day to confront the skull kit again. As the citizens of Termina prepare to die, link summons the four giants who halt the moon's descent. Seeing the Skull Kid as a useless puppet, Majora's Mask drops his grip on him and flies up to possess the moon instead. With Tattle at his side, Link follows Majora's Mask to the inside of the moon, which appears to Link as an idyllic meadow or five masked children play. Traveling deeper into the Moon, Link encounters Majora in its bestial form and defeats it

once and for all, returning the moon to its proper place in the sky. The four giants return to their sleep. Tattle and Tail reunite with the newly liberated Skull Kid. The Happy Mask salesman takes Majora's Mask, claiming it has been purified of the sky. of its evil power. Link rides away on Apona while the people of Termina celebrate the carnival of time and the dawn of a new day. The game ends with a post-credit scene depicting Link and Apona back in the forest as they

ride off towards a mysterious light breaking through the trees. A drawing on a tree stump of Link, Tattle, Tail, the Skull Kid, and the Four Giants is shown after. So the more I think about this game and the story, the more I fall in love with these subtexts and the themes it explores. I think the core of this game is really about isolation and specifically isolation from your friends and friendship in general, and how we choose to deal with that. Link just got done saving Hyrule, and since no one in this timeline really knows everything

that he had to go through to do that, you can only imagine how lonely he feels, especially with Navi deserting him. But despite the fact that he is forgotten and alone, he sacrifices even more of himself to save the world once again. And instead of giving up or lashing out, he's just searching for the one friend who actually remembers him so he can no longer feel alone. And on the flip side, you have Skull Kid, who seemed to have had a prior relationship with the giants that you summon throughout the game.

And because he felt abandoned by them, he kind of lashes out and lets this evil mask seduce him to bring about the end of the world. And at the end, the Skull Kid realizes the mistakes that he is made and is kind of given closure when the giants tell him, like, hey, we never forgot about you. and has this emotional breakdown because he realizes he should have never been upset with them. He was just like Link at the beginning of this game, lost and alone, and looking for any way possible to not feel like that. But is kind of reminded at the end that even though friendships might fade away,

true friends will never forget you. And the end of this game is such a strong closure for this iteration of Link because he was looking for the same exact thing as Skull Kid to no longer feel alone. And it's just one little moment at the end of the game, but when Skull Kid recognizes Lincoln tells him, like, oh, hey, you were the kid that taught me the song of the forest, Link kind of gets what he was looking for in Navi, just some reassurance that someone will remember him. And it's such a beautiful ending for that character and exciting to see him kind of ride off in the distance at the end and let go of this feeling of isolation and to just find something new. Also, real quick, just the drawing that Skull Kid has at the very end of the game made me tear up a little bit,

because it reinforces the idea that these two characters were just looking for friendship and recognition. And that drawing shows that they truly got that. Also, no future spoilers. I just know that Twilight Princess takes place later in this timeline, and I haven't fully played it yet, but it would be really cool if we found that drawing somewhere in Twilight Princess. I know it's probably not going to be a thing, but I think that would be like a cool, like, callback. But anyway, no future spoilers, because I haven't fully played that game yet. Anyways, that was the core of what this game was about to me, at least.

But the interesting thing is, Majoras Mask, I think, is more better known for the kind of existential crisis that it gives off of kind of people dealing with the end of the world. People dealing with the end of the world is not really something new for Zelda, but I think the way that they focus on it in this game is just done so damn well. The sad acceptance for the older sister at Romani Rantz, the denial from the worker boss in Clocktown, and so many more little moments that you can experience really show a very human side of being faced with something like this. Also, shout out to Tattle, who I think is way less annoying than Navi, and has a really powerful moment when she says goodbye to Link. We kind of always get the moment in the 3D Zelda games where you say goodbye to the companion, but it was cool to see Tattle and Tail be kind of the antagonist at the very beginning of this game

and then quickly realizing that they were in the wrong and are trying their best to fix that. And so when you leave Tattle, it does feel like emotional moment for that character. I don't think I have anything more really to add to the story, but I think it was just interesting that the core of what the narrative was about was actually way different than what I've always perceived Majora's, mask being. Like yeah, it still has the existential stuff, but there's something more personal in the middle of all that that I thought was really cool and unexpected. So that's enough on story. Let's get into the gameplay and design of Majora's Mask. So I know I said before that the whole time mechanics

stresses me out, and it does, but it is one of the coolest premises for a system mechanic, and I really enjoyed the way it kind of tied to the world in the story. I know if I had to reset the three-day cycle in the middle of a quest, it wouldn't have been the end of the world. Get it, because it is the end of the world. But the thought of having to redo certain things over again just did not sound like a fun or ideal situation. Especially when I was in the middle of a dungeon or trying to complete the quest to just get to the dungeon.

But again, I really enjoyed it, and I liked that it gave the game this existential Groundhogs Day vibe, and how every choice and action you made really felt like it mattered, Especially when you finally get to the next dungeon or get a mask or a bottle or just some random item that you know will transfer over to the next three days. It felt satisfying. Putting the game in that specific frame made everything feel more significant and I really dug that. Also, it's a really weird but greatly satisfying feeling when you realize you're on your last three day cycle.

Like the way I experienced it was I finished the kind of quest you have to do to get to the final dungeon. I reset the three days, went back, did the final dungeon. and then I beat it like halfway through the second day, and I realized, oh, I can just go and beat the game now. I don't have to restart or anything. This is it. And it's kind of a really refreshing and powerful moment when you realize that.

I know it's kind of the point of the game after you finish the final dungeon to do even more three-day cycles, collect all the masks so you can get the deity link mask and make the final boss way easier. But it was kind of in that moment where I felt like, no, I'm ready to face this head on. Also, quick shout out to the side quest tracking in this game.

I don't know if it was in the original. Please tell me in the comments below. But in the 3DS version, at least, they show you kind of a timeline of when all of these side quests happen, and it makes it very organized and helps you figure out, like, okay, when do I need to do this? Where do I need to do it to help me get to the next mask or bottle or whatever to help my experience the rest of the way? I thought that was really, really cool and helps me at least organize all of these events

kind of happening all at the same time to figure out, all right, this is my new three-day cycle, what am I doing this time around? And it was just really easy, and I really liked that. Now, when it comes to dungeons, it's interesting. Like, there are only four main dungeons in this game, and I think because of that, they were able to focus a lot on the puzzles and how they kind of all interconnect with the overall dungeon itself. And I really liked that throughout the game. Like, the major standout to me was the final dungeon stone tower, and it kind of felt like a divine beast in Breath of the Wild. Halfway through the temple, you can get the light arrows, which lets you manipulate the dungeon

and flip it upside down or the other side. And that simple change to how you look at a dungeon is just really, really cool because of the way that you can manipulate it. I know this kind of level design isn't the first time we've seen it in video games. Like, I wouldn't be surprised if the developers for this game listed Castlevania Symphony of Night as like a great inspiration for. this idea, but it's really cool to see it, in my mind, the first time in the Zelda series, and to see how they kind of thought of that and let that idea grow into something like

Breath of the Wild and the Divine Beasts. But to go back to Dungeons as a whole, I really like them this time around because of how well they utilize all of the items in this game and built on top of those items. Like, yeah, we have the usual suspects, like the Lent of Truth, the Bone Arrow, the Hookshot. But we also have these masks that change. links, appearance, and abilities. Like, he can turn into a Decu Sprout, a Zora, a Goron, or disguise himself, at least, as other different things to help him get through side quests and whatnot. And these different characters that you turn into are so fun because of the amount of

different abilities that they add. Like the Goron Roll or the Zora Defense Shield or just like other cool random abilities that you get from these characters gave the developers the opportunity to build puzzles specifically designed around those things. and I really, really dug that this time. It gave a new level of creativity in this specific era of the 3D Zelda games in the late 90s and early 2000s that I think hold up more today than Ocarina

because I think Ocarina kind of pigeon held itself to the more straightforward 2D Zelda dungeon design. And not to take anything away from Ocarina, I think they successfully translated 2D Zelda dungeon designs to a 3D space, some dungeons more than others. They were still learning how to make 3D games, but I think Maja has the leg up because they had the experience

and knew what 3D Zelda dungeons could be. Also, shout out to the mini dungeon where you have to trade a bunch of items with the Reded to get through it. It's such a funny and unique concept for a mini dungeon in Zelda, and I just like the idea of just hanging out with Reded, and they just want weird things like bugs and milk and shit. I just enjoyed it. But man, let's move on to the boss fights where I think they are so cool and different, but in a good way, except for

Giorg. Like props for them trying to make the main mechanic of a boss fight all about swimming, but 99% of the time swimming mechanics are real bad. So maybe don't try that. It was a cool concept, but it just did not work in execution. But the other boss fights were so cool. Like, I really liked the battlefield for Got, Goat, I don't know how to say it, where it's essentially just a racetrack.

And you have to use the Goron role to just take them out. And then the first major boss fight, I think, it felt a little more under the typical Zelda boss fight design, but the character design for it was so out there and cool that it still stood out to me. And then you have twin mold, the boss for the last dungeon, which was frustrating to me at first, and I think that's because I was focusing way too much on the blue guy

rather than the red guy, because I had to be dodging the red guy while I attacked the blue guy. And that was more on me. But once I finally understood that, There's a moment in that boss fight, and I think it's different in the original game than the 3DS remake. But in the 3DS version, you take down the blue guy, and then they just give you a mask in the middle of that fight. And it's a giant monster match, so you put it on, and then just little boy link turns into big boy link, and you have this giant fight with this big red worm-looking thing.

It's so cool. It reminds me, funny enough, of the K-rule boss fight at the end of Donkey Kong 64, where you're Chunky Kong, and you get really big, and you box K-rule. It's just super goofy and fun when you're playing as a character, just that big in scale. And it's something I didn't expect for a Zelda game, but I absolutely adored it. And of course, the final fight with Majora is the absolute highlight of this game for me.

The creepiness of every form it takes makes it one of the most standout boss fights in a Zelda game. And I think the different ways that you could try to kind of take it down with different master items was really cool and kind of, let you figure out how you wanted to take it down. I really liked that. Now, before we wrap up the segment, I want to quickly shout out the music for Majora's Mask. Ocarina, I think, had a really good balance of epic, whimsical, intent, and creepy music, whereas Majora's Mask really focused on the latter two. The game was at the same kind of tone and vibe that the Four Simple had in Ocarina of Time,

but it was the entire game, and I just really dug that. But anyways, let's move on to my final thoughts and the ranking, for the Legend of Zelda, Majora's Mask. The more I think about it, the more I really like this game, guys. Like, yeah, it didn't motivate me to go collect all the masks once I was done with it. But I really loved the story, the designs of the dungeons, and the overall creepy vibe that it had going for it.

But now I'm at an emotional struggle here. So the current ranking of the Zelda games I have so far are number one, Wind Waker, number two, linked to the past, Number three, Ocarina of Time. Number four, Link Between Worlds, number five, Link's Awakening, number six, Skyward Sword, number seven, the Legend of Zelda,

and number eight, the Adventure of Link. Now, halfway through this game, I thought to myself, like, it's a safe bet that I'll probably put this below Link Between Worlds. But the more I think about it, even with Link Between Worlds awesome dungeons, and, you know, I went on a whole rant about how much I loved the dungeon system in that game,

I definitely want to put this game above, link between worlds, but now I'm wondering, does it go above Ocarina of time? Like, Ocarina did so much for the franchise and you can't take that away from it, and I have a fuck ton of a nostalgia for it. But Majora's Mask is a tighter experience, I think, and just holds up in a lot of more aspects than I think Ocarina did. Like, I've been so conflicted. I even put up a poll the other day, just randomly asking y'all, like, what do you think,

Ocarena and Majores Mask? And the results actually surprised me. I thought it was going to be a tight race, but it was like, Majora. of people think Ocarina is better. And I had to talk my thoughts out kind of with Tim and Andy and a couple other people. Like, I just, I don't know. There's two options here. I'd be mild boy Barrett and I just, I keep it safe and I put it below Ocarina of Time.

Or I be spicy boy Barrett and put it above Ocarina of Time. This is just the situation on any random day if you ask me to choose, depending on how I fell, it would be one or over the other. But now I actually have to choose. And I'm trying to figure out what kind of mood I'm in. Am I in the mild mood or the spicy mood? Yeah, I'm feeling spicy. I want to put this above Ocarina of Time.

There you guys have it. So the new ranking of the Zelda games that I've played so far is number one, the Wind Waker, number two, links of the past, number three, Majora's Mask, number four, Ocarina of Time, number five, a link between worlds, number six links awakening, number seven, Skyward Sword, number eight, the legend of Zelda, and number nine, the Adventure of Link. I know I'm going to get comments from Andy and whoever. it's like it's a hot topic fucking opinion to have and a hot topic kind of ranking to put this above

Ocarena of time. But it's just, again, on any given day, I think, it would be one over the other for different reasons. And this is just how I'm feeling right now. I'm just, I'm very high on the game. But anyway, those were my thoughts on Majora's Mask. And it's time to kind of already wrap up the child timeline, because once the child timeline is done, according to Nintendo, all three timelines converge to go into Breath of the Wild, but I'll give my thoughts on that when I get to there. So anyway, we're going to wrap up the child timeline already with the Legend of Zelda, Twilight Princess. Now, to give some history of high rule for you, the game was originally released in North America on November 19th, 2006 on the Wii, and shortly after on December 11th, 2006

on the GameCube. And I think that's kind of interesting that there is a month gap in between the release of the Wii version and the GameCube version. I would have thought that they would want to put both versions out at the same time, but I guess they probably were trying to push more Wii sales, so they're like, hey, this is going to be an exclusive for a month, so pick up a Wii. So I guess that kind of makes sense. And to give some context, I played the HD remaster on the Wii U for Twilight Princess. And the game was directed by IG Anuma and produced by Shigero miamoto, and this would be the last game that IG Enuma would be as a director role from here on out after the release of Twilight Princess, he moved up to the producer role that we've known

him for for Skyward Sword and Breath of the Wild and a bunch of the handheld games and a supervisor role for a couple other different games. So very interesting that this is IG and Numa's kind of like farewell as a director for the Zelda games. So to give overall impressions and impressions of the game before I even played it, this one was much like Majora's Mask and Skyward Sword where I played the first couple hours and then just kind of dropped off. And from what I remember I fell off of this game for the same reason I did for Skyward Sword originally. It was just that the opening hours fell a little too long and slow. Like, I don't even remember if I made it to the first dungeon in this game when I originally played it.

I don't think I outwardly hated it like I did with my first try on Skyward Sword. I think I just tried it out and quickly lost interest. And this was in the era where I was kind of losing interest with video games in general. So I think that was just kind of a period in my time. I was just like, yeah, okay, yeah, it's a video game. So going into the game now with all that, I've learned about it and what I've been told throughout the years, I was really, really excited to get into it. A lot of people were telling me it was the spiritual successor to Ocarina of

time after so many people hated Windwaker when it originally came out, which we can all now admit that you guys were in the wrong on that one. People told me it had the best dungeons, cool art design, great music, great story, and after playing it, I definitely agree with some of that sentiment. Now let's get into the story of Twilight Princess, and as a reminder, this is in the child timeline, so this is a couple of generations. after Majora's Mask and as a follow-up, because I know in the Majores Masked I mean, I'd be like, oh, it would be so cool if they had the reference of the log at the end of Majora's Mask in this game, I didn't find it. So that was, that bumped me out a little

bit, I guess, but whatever, it's fine. But anyway, let's actually read the story of Twilight Princess. The game begins with a youth named Link, who works as a ranch hand in Ordone Village. One day, the village is attacked by Bulblins, who carry off the village's children with Link in pursuit before he encounters a wall of Twilight. A shadow beast pulls him beyond the wall into the twilight shrouded forest, where he is transformed into a wolf and imprisoned. Link is soon freed by a twilight creature named Midna, who offers to help him if he obeys her unconditionally. She guides him to Princess Zelda, who explains that Zant, the king of the twilight, invaded Hyrule Castle, and forced her to surrender. The kingdom became enveloped

in Twilight, rendering all its inhabitants besides Link and Zelda spirits. To save Hyrule, Link must first revive the light spirits by entering the twilight covered regions, and recovering the spirit's light from the twilight beings that had stolen. Once revitalized, each spirit returns Link to his highly informed. During this time, the ghost of a departed swordsman also appears to provide swordsmanship training that he had failed to pass on before he had died, as well as information regarding Link's destiny in Hyrule. Link also helps Midna acquire the fused shadows, fragments of a powerful dark relic.

In return, she aids Link, and during his journey, he finds the Ordon village's children and assists the monkeys of Farin, the Gorons of Elden, and the Zoras of Laneru. After restoring the light spirits in obtaining the fused shadows, Link and Minna are ambushed by Zant, who takes the fragments. Minda calls him out for abusing his tribe's magic, but Zant reveals his power comes from another source, and uses it to revert Link to his wolf state. Failing to seduce Midna into joining forces with him,

Zant leaves her to die by exposing her to the light. Bringing a dying Midna to Zelda, Link learns from her that he needs the Master Sword to lift Zan's curse, and she proceeds to sacrifice herself to heal Minna, vanishing mysteriously. Moved by Zelda's selflessness, Minna begins to care more about Link and the fate of the light world. After gaining the master sword, Link is clenched of the curse that kept him in wolf form and gains the ability to switch in between his human and wolf form.

Deep within the Garudo Desert, Link and Minna search for the Mirror of Twilight, the only known gateway between Hyrule and the Twilight realm. But discover it is broken. The sages there explain that Zant tried to destroy it, but merely managed to shatter it into fragments. Only the true ruler of the twilight can completely destroy the mirror of Twilight. They also relate that they once used it to banish Gannendor, the Garudor leader who attempted to steal the Triforce, to the Twilight Realm, when executing him failed. Link and Minna set out to retrieve the mission charge of the Mirror. Once the mirror has been fully restored, the sages revealed to Link that Minna is actually the true ruler of the Twilight, usurped and cursed into her current

form by Zan. Confronting Zant, Link and Minna learned that he forced a pack with Gannendorff, who asked for his assistance in subjugating Hirae. After Link defeats Zand, Midna recovers the fuse shadows and destroys Zant after learning only Gannendorff can release her from her curse. Returning to Hyrule, Link and Midna find Gannendorf in Hyrule Castle with a lifeless Zelda suspended above his head. Gannendorf fights Link by possessing Zelda and then transforming into a massive boar-like beast, but Link defeats him and the power Midna received from Zelda is able to resuscitate her.

Ganendorf then revives, and Minna teleports Link and Zelda outside the castle so she can hold him off with the fused shadows. However, as Hyrol Castle collapses, it is revealed that Ganedorf was victorious as he appears before them and crush his Minda's helmet. Ganedorf engages Link on horseback. Assisted by Zelda and the Light Spirits, Link eventually knocked Ganendorf off his horse and duels him on foot before plunging the master's sword into his chest. With Gannendorf dead, the light spirits revive Midna and restore her to her true form.

After bidding farewell to Link and Zeldah, Minna returns home and destroys the mirror of Twilight with a tear. As Hyrule Castle is rebuilt, Link leaves Ordon Village, heading to parts unknown. So when it comes to the story as a whole, I did really enjoy it. There were so many highs on like a grand scale and even a personal scale for me. And I know I'm jumping ahead to the end here a little bit, but I did really really enjoy how little this game felt like it was about Zelda or Ganendorf, which really made the story about their other world counterparts, Midna and Zand. We've seen other world counterparts

in Zelda before, like in Link Between Worlds, but Twilight Princess does such a good job on really focusing on those counterparts, so it feels like a fresh story and not just a rehash of another Zelda story. Like, yeah, we kind of end up at the same place right at the end, it's all about Zelda and Gannendorf again, but the journey there was such a fun ride. Mindna was a really fun character to have on this journey because she has so much personality, and because of that, you become invested in her so quickly, and it's cool to see her personal motivations change throughout the story, and I think that was just a really fun dynamic for a 3D Zelda companion character to have.

Like at first she was just about restoring power in the Twilight realm and getting rid of Zant, but then when Zelda sacrifices herself for Minna, you see the changed in Mindna and see her give a shit about Link and Hyrule and not just her own personal shit and that really clicks with me. It's very similar to what they did with the counterpart in Link Between Worlds where she's very selfish and trying to save her own world. But at the end, that character kind of fell flat for me, especially because you don't really get to hang out with her. But since you get to be with Midna the entire game, you get the kind of full baggage that Minna is going through and seeing her develop and change throughout the story was really, really cool.

And while I was sold on her and Link being friends throughout the game, especially when Link is trying to save her life and you, the player, are invested in saving her life because she's an interesting character. Like if this was maybe Navi or fee, maybe we wouldn't be as invested in saving her. But then at the end, where she's saying goodbye to Link, and it seems like she's about to say, I love you, I wasn't super sold on that. Like, count me in for Link having a love interest. that isn't Zelda, because honestly, I don't think they should be love interest, but the way they built up to that moment didn't have me at the edge of my seat saying, just say it, just say it. Like I was for Marin in the middle of Link's awakening.

But when Midna shatters the mirror of Twilight, I was really sad because I felt like she, Zelda, and Link could have all been friends that see each other for every once in a while, and just now they can't, and it's really sad. But I get it because maybe she didn't want to become too attached to the light realm and probably she's guarding her own realm from being invaded by a Gannendorf again, so I get it. Overall, Midna, good character and companion. Maybe not as good as my boy Daphne's No Hanson-Hirul, but she's definitely a top two, 3D Zelda companion, for sure. Now, I don't have much to say about Zant, except that his design is creepy as fuck,

but I did like that we learned throughout the game that he was kind of just this sad loser from the Twilight Realm who got rejected from his own people to be their ruler and just kind of happened upon the power of Ganendorf. Like I thought it was kind of cool that we get that cutscene of him running away and he's crying. He's just like, uh, uh, uh, uh, and Gandendorff is like, yo, you want to be fucking powerful of shit? And he's like, yes, please. Like, there's just not a lot of moments in Zelda games where you feel the villain being vulnerable. And I liked that we got a little of development there for Zand. Now, the next couple of things that I want to talk about, Of course, are cool lore and story moments that we get in this game that might connect to other Zelda games.

Now, the first one really quick is the Uca, these weird bird chicken motherfuckers. Now, my theory before doing some research was that the Uca were an evolution of the people who decided to stay in the sky in Skyward Sword and not go on the surface with Link and Zelda. Because, come on, that would have been a cool connection. And honestly, I could see this guy from Skyward Sword evolving into some weird chicken man. But it turns out that the Yucca existed before the Highland gods created people, so I guess that theory is out. Lame. Now, the next cool connection I want to talk about, and unfortunately this has been spoiled for me a million times before I play this game, is the ghost swordsman who teaches Link all of these secret combat techniques.

And I believe it is confirmed by Nintendo in some official book or something else that this is the ghost of the Link that we've known from Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. I would have liked to put that together on my own, it still was really cool to experience first and especially right after playing the game that we last saw him in Majora's Mask. And knowing that all he wanted after his horrific journey being the hero of time was just to be remembered, it was kind of a great epilogue that we got for him, where he gets to pass on his legacy and knowledge to the new future hero. And I really loved how that was played with. I know it's a lot of reading in between the lines, but that's, you know, that's most of

Zelda stories, so I dig it. Now, the last dumb connection that this game has to anything else that stood out to me was the scene of Gannendorf being executed by the seven stages. But because the Triforce of Power arose in him, they couldn't. I know he's being punished for the vague crime of trying to steal the Triforce, which is his MO. But when you put it into the context of taking place after Ocarina, I like that we get to see him face the consequences in a way that we haven't before that isn't just Link killing him,

but actually like, all right, I'm being strapped to this thing and I'm about to be executed. Like, I thought that was a cool kind of aftermath to the Ocarina of Time story. Again, I know it's kind of this generic expositional scene just to learn how Gannendorf got into the Twilight Realm. But in the context of the timeline, I really enjoyed experiencing that. Okay, I've got four quick story notes before we move on. I just want to roll through them before we move on just because I know I'm taking a little longer in story than I usually do. So one, it's a very small moment, but when you fight King Bolblin for a second, second time in the last dungeon. Instead of killing you, he just kind of gives up and gives you the

key to get into Hyrule Castle because he respects people who are stronger than him and that's where his loyalties lie. I just really enjoyed the concept of Bacoblins slash Bulblins having their own motivations and not just being tied to the villain of the game. I thought that was just like a really funny moment. Two, I really liked the relationship that they set up with Ilya and Link in the beginning of the game, but then it kind of went nowhere after Ilya regains her memories. Again, as you know, I really like the idea of Link having a love interest that isn't Zelda, so I thought they're setting that up really well, and then it just kind of went nowhere. Three, the moment where you knock King Bulblen off of the bridge, and you get that epic shot of Link on a Pona,

and there's kind of like fire, whatever, in the background. It's a top five Zelda moment, absolutely. And finally, four, I really loved the aftermath of that fight with King Bulblin, where you go talk to Colin, the kid from your village, and he learns what courage truly means and wants to fall on Link's footsteps. And I just thought that was a really sweet character art for him, especially because his dad was kind of a mentor to Link,

and now Link is kind of a mentor to Colin. It was just a really sweet little story packed in there that I really loved. But before we move on to gameplay and design, I just want to talk about Colin, this motherfucker over here. We have plenty of unique names in the Zelda universe, especially in Twilight Princess, you know? You got the ones that we all know and love. Lank, Zelda, Gannendorf.

You got new ones like Zant, Midna, names that we've heard before, but they were kind of remixed for this game. Like Impa is now Impahs, or whatever, whatever her dumb name was. But then this kid, it's just named Colin? What happened there? Was Nintendo about to, like, ship the game? And then they realized, oh, fuck, we forgot to name this kid. I'll just put Colin there.

That's the first name that's gonna pop in our head. You have all these cool and weird, unique names, and you just got fucking Colin. All right, cool, whatever. But anyway, let's move on to gameplay and design for Twilight Princess. Now, this is where I feel the true push and pull of this game. Story? Yeah, it's a solid Zelda story.

But the thing I struggled with most was designed for this game, and not gameplay-wise really, and not, like, dungeon design or anything. But the few things that I picked up that kind of annoyed me or I wasn't really into really stood out to me. The first type of design that I want to bring up is the art design. I know I haven't done a really deep dive for art design for a lot of these games. Like, I only really give them a quick shout out if I think it looks good or not. But this one stood out to me so much for good and bad reasons.

The good reasons would be that the art design lent itself really well to really cool and creepy character designs. Like the Dark Nuts, Shadow Beast, Chill Fos, the Death Sword Mini Boss, Zant, like I said before. They all stood out to me, and I think they fit really well into this kind of mid-2000s emo, Ocarina Time remix vibe that the game was going for. But then on the other side, every other enemy type kind of felt generic for a Zelda game. Hell, even one of my favorite boss fights because of how epic it feels, Argarok, feels just kind of like a bland dragon that you would just see in any other fantasy game that wasn't Zelda.

And I don't have that problem just with enemy types. Like even ally characters and people you find throughout the world all kind of look like their generic background characters in like Final Fantasy. and when it comes to the world of Hyrule this time around, nothing really stood out to me, art-wise, outside of the dungeons themselves, it all just kind of felt like a bland Final Fantasy world that was way too big with not too much to do.

I know that might have been what they were going for, but it just didn't really vibe with me. I guess that was really just my main problem with the game. It's just like the art and what everything looked like and felt like, I don't know, I just wasn't super into it. And that's unfortunate because the things I'm about to talk about, really, really do love. Now I did mention dungeons, so let's move on to the best part about Twilight Princess. It's the dungeons. In a very fitting fashion, because they're both in the same

timeline, Twilight Princess does remind me a lot of Majora's mask in the sense of its dungeon design. The dungeons really make you think about how everything is connected together and what puzzles you have to do first and the order of operations of things. And man, they're just fucking fun dungeons. They have a good balance of being very puzzly, but not so much so that you want to bang your head against the wall. Like even the water dungeon this time around was super fun because if you want to get everything, you have to figure out which way to flow the water, to which side of the dungeon, and that way of thinking about the dungeon as a whole is just really cool and made this game stand out so much. There are just so many great moments like that throughout

the dungeons that felt like true experimentation rather than just going to from room to room, lighting a lamp or hitting a diamond, and moving on. My only frustration with the dungeons is how long the game takes its time in between each dungeon. Like some of it was to take time for the story, and I'm always down for that. Like, before you get to the second dungeon, it's that whole sequence where you have to fight King Bulbulin on the bridge. Like, I'm so down for that. But then a lot of it felt like filler chores that weren't that interesting to do.

Again, there were some exceptions, like the bridge battle, saving Midna, getting help from Impas to restore Ilias memories. But then there's just a bunch of parts where you're just looking for things throughout the world. And it's not super interesting because the game shows you on the map where the Spirit's Light tiers are or where these weird statues are that you gotta move around and stuff. I'm not too sure if the originals were different, if you actually had to go out and explore the world. But on the HD remasters, it's like, oh yeah, here, go to these locations and that's how you do it. So it just feels like a very guided side quest rather than actually going off and exploring this world. And there's just a lack of feeling that you're the one discovering these items in the world and

because of that the game's pace overall just kind of fell off to me. Now to move on, the other standout for Twilight Princess for me were the boss fights. God damn. People told me the dungeons were gonna be dope, but no one told me how hard Nintendo went in on the boss fights. They all feel so epic and fun. Like Morfiel and Argarok, the bosses from Lakebed Temple and and the city in the sky, felt like they were pulled straight from Shadow of the Colossus.

Like, of course, the mechanics aren't one to one, but they both have you climb on top of them while they're swimming or flying around and you have to stab their weak point, and it felt as epic and tense as getting on a Colossi and, like, stabbing it in the head. Those moments were so great, and dude, even the mini bosses in this gamer dough, like Death Sword, who's the mini boss in Arbiter's Grounds, is like a top three moment in this, game. He's super creepy. The way you have to go back and forth between Human Link and Wolf Link was really fun and honestly I would have liked to see that more in boss fights throughout this game. And I don't know, he just felt like a main boss and I honestly thought he was for a

second and I remembered I hadn't gotten the boss key yet. And then it finished and I was like, oh yeah, there's still more dungeon to do. The only two moments I didn't really like with bosses is Skull Kid who's kind of considered a mini boss just because it felt way too long to go around and chase him and suit him with your arrow. don't have as weird creations, come and fight you. And you have to do that twice in the game. Also, really quick, there's no proof of this, and it probably makes no sense. But in my head cannon, this is the same Skull Kid we saw in Mitorra's mask.

And then the only other boss moment that I not only didn't like, but just straight up hated, was Gannonor's fight when you have to ride around on a pona and have Zelda shoot light arrows at him. The rest of Gannador's boss fight was absolutely great. Like, I love that he possesses Zelda. So you have to fight her at the beginning. Dark Beast, Gannon was cool. But then this fucking horse riding, my dudes, awful. Just straight up awful.

It feels so weird and clunky, and a Pona just gets stuck on every bit of geometry. It had me pulling hairs. Like maybe Nintendo had to put more focus on how it felt to control Wolfling since you're doing way more stuff as Wolflink than you are riding on Apona. So yeah, for most of the game, I was just running around as Wolflink and kind of ignored Apona. but man, when the game makes you right around on her to take down Gannendorf.

Holy shit. Big old oof. Man, I got so caught up. I'm sorry. I didn't even talk about Zan's boss fight, which was really cool and really fun because he transports you in himself around to boss areas from earlier on in the game and mixes his own mechanics into the mechanics of earlier boss fights. And I just really loved that concept.

And I think Nintendo pulled it off really well. I just really liked it. I really enjoyed that boss fight. And then really quick to wrap up my thoughts on gameplay and design was the music. I just wanted to give it a quick moment because a friend of mine hit me up because he really loves the music from Twilight Princess. And I thought that was interesting because it didn't really stand out to me too much. Like yeah, there are great moments that feed into the scene of what you're doing or what's going on in a cutscene. And I do think for some scenes, Twilight Princess pulls off of bringing all of the element of a scene and bringing it together and making it feel epic or sad or tense.

I want to give it a thumbs up just before that. But the music in the world and some of the music in the dungeons, I don't know, it just didn't really stand out to me as like, holy shit, this is something new. It kind of reminded me a little too much of Ocarina of Time, but not in the same way that Maja Masque did were Maja's Masked did in a kind of new and creepy way. I don't know. I'm kind of at another push and pull with the music. There are moments I enjoy, but overall it just didn't really stand out to me.

So let's finally move on to my final thoughts and the ranking for Twilight Princess. So the highs of this game are really high for me, and there's a lot. The dungeons, the boss fights, the epic moments, how the music plays into those moments. But to me, the highs were battled so much by the overall look and feel of its world. Nothing in this game was outright bad to me, maybe except for the horse riding. Oh, and also the way Link's lips look. Have you ever looked at that man's lips in this game? They're fucking weird.

But Twilight Princess just didn't pull me in and make me feel like I was transported to a world in the Zelda universe like all of the other games do. Like I said before, from what I understand, this game was Nintendo saying, Hey, we're doing the true spiritual successor to Akkina of Time after everybody hated Wind Waker. And while that is a cool idea on paper and I think worked for a good chunk of Twilight Princess, it also made me feel like it lost its own voice and tone throughout the game. But if we were just ranking these games based solely on dungeons alone, this and Link Between Worlds would be up there,

like number one, number two for me, because they are so fucking good. But there's other factors to bring in here. So I guess now let's look at what the ranking is so far before we put in Twilight Princess and how you have to finally make a decision. So the ranking is as follows, number one, the Wind Waker. Number two, Link to the Pass. Number three, Majora's Mask. Number four, Ocarina of Time.

Number five, Link Between Worlds. Number six, Link's awakening. Number seven, Skyward Sword, number eight, the Legend of Zelda, and number nine, the Adventure of Link. Man, this is similar to Majora's Mask, where halfway through Majora's Mass, I was like, oh, it would be easy to, like,

put it in the list, and then it wasn't. Like, in the middle of playing this game, I was thinking, like, oh, yeah, I'll probably put it below Link between Worlds, but now I think I want to put it above, because there were so many cool story elements that I did really, really like, and it's funny that those two games

are linked in a way to each other where there's this different world, and there's counterparts for Zelda and Gandondorf, and I think this game did so much more to further those character stories. So I think what I'm going to do, I think it's safe to say, because then also I really like the story

a little more than I like Ocreena of Time, but I think Ocaryna of Time as a whole kind of nails what it's trying to do better than Twilight Princess did. Yeah, I think that's where I want to put. I'm going to put it in between Ocaryne of Time and a link between World. so it's the new number five.

So the new ranking is as follows. Number one, Wind Waker, number two, link to the past. Number three, Maduras Mass. Number four, Ocarina of Time. Number five, Twilight Princess. Number six, link between worlds. Number seven, Link's Awakening. Number eight, Skyward Sword, number nine,

the Legend of Zelda, and number 10, the Adventure of Link. Now, that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes the child timeline for the weird, complicated Zelda timeline. And it's crazy to think that we only have, one more game left. And this is the point in the timeline, apparently that Nintendo says all three of the timelines converge into one, and this one timeline goes into this next game, which I think is bullshit, and I'll talk about my theory about that in a little bit, because the next game is the Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. Now, to give the final history of Hyrule, it was originally

released on March 3, 2017, three years ago, for the Nintendo Switch and the Wii U, and after doing a little bit of research, I believe this is the very first Zelda game that launch everywhere worldwide on the same day. It's not an important fact, but I thought it was interesting. Like, each time I would research these games, there's always like, all right, it released in Japan on this day, and the U.S. on this day, and this was the first game that released everywhere in the same day. I thought that was really interesting.

And the game was directed by Hidomaro Fujibayashi and produced by IG Anuma. Another reason I really liked playing these games in such a weird order is that we have come full circle on this in-review. We started out with this duo and their first big game together. Skyward Sword, and now we're ending it on their follow-up to that game with Breath of the Wild. I just think that's a cool little wrap-around that we have in this project. Now, a quick development tidbit I have for you here, I believe I pulled this from Wikipedia. Development of Breath of the Wild lasted five years.

Wanting to reinvent the series, Nintendo introduced elements such as a detailed physics engine, high-definition visuals, and voice acting. Monolith Soft, known for their work in the open-world Xenoblade Chronicle series, assisted in designing landscapes and topography. The game was planned for release in 2015, as a Wii U exclusive, but was delayed twice due to problems with the physics engine. Breath of the Wild was a launch game for the Switch

and the final game published by Nintendo for the Wii U. Now I just wanted to bring this up because of the amount of work that Nintendo really wanted to put into this game and I just wanted to shout that out. But then also bring up the interesting question of this was supposed to be the Wii U Zelda game that a bunch of us Wii U owners were waiting for every year.

Like when is this Zelda game coming to us? But then it got delayed, honestly probably for the betterment of the project overall, but the question I want to ask and like throw out there in the universe of, would this game be as big as it was if it was just a Wii you title? Like if it did not launch on the switch, like it ended up doing, would this have been the monster that it was when it released where everybody is getting it? Everybody's talking about it. Whereas not a lot of people owned a Wii U, right? So I just wonder if Breath of the Wild came out just for the Wii U, fully packaged like we've played it today, but just for that, would it have been

as explosive as it was? I think it still would have reviewed amazingly, but I don't know if it would have been this, I don't want to say global phenomenon, but definitely like video game industry phenomenon. I don't know. It's an interesting question. Now, for my overall impressions, I want to bring up a quick tidbit that I pulled from the Breath of the Wild. I don't know what the core of the game is really about, and I think I also pulled this from Wikipedia. Similar to the original legend of Zelda, players are given little instruction and can explore the open world freely. Tasks include collecting multipurpose items to aid in objectives or solving puzzles and side quests for rewards. The world is designed to reward experimentation and the story can be completed in a non-linear

fashion. To me, this game is the true spiritual successor to the original Legend of Zelda game because of how open it is and how the developers decided to give you all of the tools that you need for this game at the very beginning of it and say, go. I think it was such a great idea for them to go back to the original ethos of the original game and just adapt it for the modern age. And man, the most exciting thing about this game when it originally came out was like the mystery behind it all. What is this world who inhabits it? What enemy lies around the corner? What treasure am I going to find at the top of this mountain that I'm climbing? Oh shit, is that a horse stable? And the song that plays around it is like a cool kind of remix to Pona's

song? I believe that no matter how any of us feel about this game as a whole at the end of the day, I think our first time experiencing it was like nothing else, at least for the Zelda franchise. It felt mysterious for the first time in years and broke all of the normal Zelda conventions that I felt like my generation especially grew up on, and because of that, Zelda was kind of exciting again. Now, I will say this is my fourth time playing this game in the last three years, and because of that, I think the magic around it has died, and I think that's absolutely on me because of myself oversaturation with it. And while I don't think that tarnishes my overall experience with the game now,

it definitely paints my view of it differently, with some new observations here and there because the excitement has faded. I'll leave it there for overall impressions, because there is so much to talk about this game without being vague as fuck. So let's move on to the story of Breath of the Wild, and as a quick refresher, this game apparently takes so far ahead in the future that it somehow exists in all three timelines, which I think is dumb and confusing and weird, and I'll talk about that a little later. But anyway, let's get into the story of The Breath of the Wild.

10,000 years before the beginning of the game, the evil Calamney Gannon threatens Hiraul, but he is defeated by a princess with the blood of the goddess and with the help of her appointed knight. Hirae matured into an advanced civilization, protected by four divine beasts, enormous animalistic machines, and an army of guardians, autonomous weapons. Upon Gannon's return, four great warriors were given the title of champion, and each piloted one of the divine beasts to weaken Gannon while the princes and knight fought him so she could seal him away. 9,900 years later, the kingdom of Hirae had developed to a mid-evil state. Reading their ancestors' prophecies, the Hylians recognized the signs of Gannon's return and excavated the divine beasts and guardians. During this time, Zelda trained vigorously to awaken the ceiling magic needed to defeat Gannon. The champions of Hyrule's races, Daruk Warrior of the Mountainous Goron, Mifa, Princess of the Aquatic Zora,

Rivali, archer of the bird-like Rito, and Urbosa, chief of the desert-dwelling Garudo, assembled to pilot the Divine Beasts, while the current Zelda and Link battled Gannon. However, Gannon possessed the guardians and divine beasts, turning them against Hireul. King Rome and the champions were killed, the castle town was destroyed, and Link was gravely wounded. Zelda sent Link to the shrine of resurrection to be healed over the course of a hundred years hid the Master Sword and used her magic to trap Gannon in Hyrule Castle 100 years after that an amnesiac Link awakens in Hyrule he meets an old man who reveals himself as the Spirit of King Rome. Rome explains that Gannon sealed in Hyrule Castle has grown strong

he pleads for Link to defeat Ganon before he breaks free and destroys the world Link travels across Hyrule returning to locations from his past and regaining his memories With the help of the Hyrulean races, he boards the four divine beasts and purges them of Gannon's monsters, releasing the spirits of Hiral's former champions and allowing them to pilot the divine beasts once again. After obtaining the Master Sword from the Lost Woods, Link enters Hiral Castle and defeats Gannon with the help of the Divine Beast and Zelda's bow of light. Zelda steals Gannon away, restoring peace, and allowing the spirits of King Rome and the champions to depart. Sensing their presence, Link and Zelda smile fondly. If players fulfill certain conditions, freeing all four divine beasts, retrieving the Master Sword,

and finding all memories, they unlock a secret ending in which Zelda realizes that Hyrule must be rebuilt and that she and Link must begin the process themselves. As Link and Zelda survey Hyrule and embarks to rebuild their world, the princess confides that she may no longer possess any supernatural power, yet she is still happy. So I do really like this story. I know it was kind of a major complaint from a lot of people when it came out, that it kind of felt lackluster. And I think there was definitely a marketing mistake because it felt like every single cutscene in the game were all in the story trailers before it came out, meaning there weren't a whole lot of cutscene story beats happening in the game. And while I agree, I think the story

overall made us want more rather than feeling satisfied by the end of it, I took what I could get because I think the way that this game integrates lore and story into itself is just really, really cool. Zelda is such a fascinating character when the developers decide to explore her character outside of just her divine duty. We got so much of that here. Her frustrations with King Rome and Link, who are kind of these representations of a system and prophecy trying to define her while she's just trying to learn how to define herself and learn who she wants to be built up this really interesting character to learn about. And it kind of made like a cool coming of age story in a very, very, very very, very, very, very subtle way.

The only disappointment I had with the ending of Zelda's story in this game is that I'd wish that she had figured it all out and taken Gannon down in the way that she originally wanted to rather than just taking on the role that her father wanted her to. I think that would have been a much more powerful moment for her to feel so defeated after doing so much research into taking down Gannon with all of this technology and at the very end, all of the coming together and she figured it out. I thought that would have been a really, really cool way to end her story in this game. But it didn't really work out that way.

But there's a sequel, so who fucking knows. And to move on from Zelda, again, I know it's not that much, but I really do like what we get out of Link in this game. He's truly the embodiment of courage. He doesn't know who the fuck he is, and he wakes up, sees the Hyrol Castle and thinks to himself, yeah, that weird, fucked up-up looking castle over there, I want to go over there and fix it. I really enjoy finding his memories and seeing this journey that Zelda and him go on, and seeing Zelda kind of resent him at first, but then slowly both of them become friends

and open up to each other. There's a journal that you can find in Hyrule Castle, that's Zelda's diary, and she's talking about her and Link opening up to each other, and she asks him, why doesn't he talk that much? And he explains that because of this duty bestowed upon him, because of who he is and the way he thinks, he feels like he has to silently bear any burden and stay strong,

and I love that we got this kind of bullshit explanation of why this size, Silent protagonist is a silent protagonist. It's fucking awesome. And again, even though there's not a lot of story or character development with him, he's just got so much personality every time you make a dish, or every time he remembers a memory and you become surprised. There's just so much, like, reaction that we got out of him

that reminded me a lot of Link from Wind Waker, and I just really, really loves that. I also love that everybody in this game is fucking horny as shit for Link, all on different levels. There are some people who just casually flirt with you in Kakariko. There's Perra who has this huge crush on you. And then there's Mifa who is just madly in love with you. I love her and I ship her and Link and I understand that she's a fish person.

But they're just so nice and sweet and they deserve happiness. And it's just not fair that she is dead. All of Link's friends are dead. But I guess he makes some new ones, so that's cool, I guess. But speaking of Link's dead friends, I wanted to give the four champions a shout-up because I love the team dynamic that is kind of teased throughout the story. Mifah being the super sweet one who's in love with Link, Duruke and Urbosa kind of being the older brother and sister of the group,

Ravali being the I'm too good for this group, I should be the chosen one, asshole, and Zelda and Link just being in the center of all of them. The champions are some of my favorite characters in any Zelda game. It just sucks because I don't feel like we got nearly enough time with them. Also, quick shout out to Sidon, Mifa's little brother, who I think is also secretly in love with Link, but it's just too polite to say so. Now, I know I usually like to point out how each game subtly connects to the other ones when it comes to story,

but with this game, it literally references every game in the Zelda franchise, so there are way too many to talk about. And all of them are dope, so I'll just talk about the most important reference, I think, that is in the game, because this reference directly feeds into my theory of where Breath of the Wild takes place timeline-wise. At one point Zelda says at some weird ceremony, whether skyward bound, adrift in time, or steeped in the glowing embers of twilight, the sacred blade is forever bound to the soul of the hero. Now, because of this and one other clue that we got in the Breath of the Wild 2 trailer, I believe Breath of the Wild takes place in the Child timeline, which is why I played the child timeline last to build up to Breath of the Wild. Now, there's three references in this line. There's Skyward Sword, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess.

Now I know the events of Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time take place before all of the weird timeline shit, but then Twilight Princess's reference and the events of that game only happen in that timeline. So how would they have known about that if they were in the adult timeline or the Fallen Hero timeline? I don't buy it that it's in all the three timelines. It's in the child timeline. Like I know there's references to other games in locations and names and shit, but just because this game takes place in one timeline doesn't mean that, you know, it doesn't still have locations that were shared in the other timelines, you know?

I don't know if that makes sense, but it makes sense in my head, so I'm going to move on. Now, the other main reason, I believe, Breath of the Wilde takes place in the child timeline is the Breath of Wild 2 trailer, where we get this reveal of Gannendorf kind of returning in some way, shape, or form. And you can say, well, Gannendorf exists in all three timelines. I understand that, but the design that we got to use with this Gannendorf is the Gannendorf that we kind of saw in Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess, specifically because of the headdress. In the adult timeline, Gannon Dorf is this really beefy-looking dude. In the Fallen Hero timeline, he's always Pig Boy Gannon.

But in the trailer, we see Mummy Gannon wearing the headdress that we've really only seen in Ocarina and then in Twilight Princess. So that's what I think. I know it doesn't really matter, and I know it's weird to bring up in my review of things, but I've just been thinking about theories, Breath of the Wild for so long. This shit is really, really cool. And again, that's why I do really love the kind of story and lore. and world building that Breath of the Wild does

because of all of the hint in weirdness that it has. Okay, remember all the way back, all the way back to the Ocarina of Time segment, where I asked you to remember, the final boss fight in that game is just labeled as Gannon. No subtitle or subheadline or whatever. It was just Gannon. But in this game, and I know in other Zelda games before it,

when you fight Gannon, there's always kind of a subheadline, right? There's Calamity Gannon, and then there's Dark Beast Gannon, which we've seen that subheadline before with Twilight Princess. Now, I know it isn't a new theory, and I'm sorry the story segment is all about theory shit. This definitely came from one of the many Zelda YouTubers out there, but I like the idea that the versions of Gannon we fought in this game

weren't the true final forms of Gannon. But more like copies of Gannon like we've seen with Phantom Gannon and Wind Waker and Ocarino of Time. The theory, again, I don't know who talks about in the Breath of the Wild 2 trailer, that you see like the malice pouring out of Gannon Dorse body, and the theory is that what if all of the enemies, including the forms of Gannon that we fight, are just made up of this malice and aren't like the true final forms of Gannon, but more of like these weird imprint, like, ghost forms of Gannon.

I don't know. It's a weird theory, but I really dig it. And going into the game this time around, I really dug that idea of like, man, these guys are powerful, but they're not even the true final form. Who knows? Again, there are better theory videos about this. Go look them up. They're really, really cool and really get into the nitty-gritty.

but I got to move on to my last story a bit, which is the Triforce. It's interesting because besides side stories like Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening, I feel like this is the only, like, major Zelda game that barely talks about the Triforce. We kind of see it used at the end of it, or I assume Zelda's using the Trifers of Wisdom to seal Gannon away. And I assume Gannon has some connection to the Triforce of Power in this game, even though we don't really see that at all. And we get kind of representations of those two pieces of the Triforce in the world with like the Shika technology that kind of represents wisdom in a weird way. And then the malice that represents kind of like anger and evil, which is always kind of associated with the Triforce of power.

But then we get no real representation of the Triforce of Courage in this game at all. I know Link kind of represents courage, but there's no like world element in the game that represents any hint of the Triforce of Courage. So because of this, I'm kind of into Breath of the Wild mirroring the original Legend of Zelda games in this other new way. Because in the original Legend of Zelda game, we only knew about the Triforce of Power and then the Triforce of Wisdom. And it wasn't until Zelda 2 where we learned about the Triforce of Courage and collected it. If the Breath of the Wild series continues down this path of mirroring the original Legend of Zelda games, I would love if the story in the second one dealt with some representation of the Trifeld. tri-force of courage, whether we actually collect it or if there's some world element that

represents courage. I don't know. I think that could be like a really cool, subtle story thing that they bring into the sequel. I know I spent a lot of my story time talking about theories rather than what I think about the actual story. But again, I think that's what makes the story special. Like, yes, it makes us wanting more, sometimes in a slightly bad way where I wanted more out of the characters from the memories and stuff like that. But then kind of in a good way where it's like still mysterious and like how did the sanctuary from Skyward Sword end up here in this part of the area? Like how did they unearth that shit? I don't know. That's honestly what I love about the story is the world building that it does and the story it tells through the areas that you explore.

So anyway, let's finally move on to gameplay and design of Breath of the Wild. Now truly what makes this game special to me is the new physics engine that Nintendo made for this game and it made the delays absolutely worth it. I know I've talked to shit about the overworld and exploring it outside of dungeons in other Zelda games, but that's because I think Breath of the Wild's physics engine makes exploring constantly engaging where a lot of the other games don't have that. And I don't mean don't have that in the way of like, oh, they don't have the cool physics engine. I mean that not all of the other games have a good structure to constantly feel engaged by exploring anywhere outside of the dungeons. And man, making everything

physics base and bringing back the stamina wheel from Skyward Sword, which did not fit in that game, but totally belongs in this, makes the simplest tasks so challenging. And it's super fun to figure out, like, all right, I see that really big mountain. I definitely don't have enough stamina to get up there. How can I cheese it? And the combat in this game is without a doubt the best in the series. The stamina wheel, the items that you have all at your disposal with the Shika slate, and the amount of different weapons that you get.

Not to mention how the environment can change in the snap of a finger with rain and lightning and how fire can be set on grass and you can use that to get an updraft so you can float a little bit and get a high ground on your enemies. Like there's so many little elements that tie so fucking great together that makes the combat so fun. Like Zelda Combat finally feels new and interesting where it's just the rest of the series is just,

bloop bloop bloop bloop bloop and yeah there's strategy in those other games but not to the extent of this game honestly i don't think i can say much about the gameplay here that hasn't already been said but the one thing i do want to shout out that i don't think it's enough love is the weapon degradation which was another thing people were frustrated about when this game came out i really enjoy it i know it can be frustrating at times but i think it really helps make you explore and take out enemy camps and take on tests of strength so you can get the next cool weapon so you can experiment around with what works for you. I think if we didn't have the weapon decoration in this game,

the gameplay loop would have felt a little broken in a lot of ways. Like even with the Master Sword, it runs out of energy and stuff, and that's like the one constant weapon you have once you get it. And I like that it runs out of power or whatnot because I think if you constantly got to use it, a lot of the game would have felt really different and weird and not as satisfying. Now, the other thing I really love about, love about this game with gameplay and overall design is that you can truly experience it

in any way you want and the way this game pulls that off is truly breathtaking. If you remember, the reason I really liked link between worlds is that you can play a majority of those dungeons in any order that you want, so there's this feeling of agency that makes it feel like it's your adventure. And Breath of the Wild does that fucking tenfold. You can do the story path and take down each divine beast. in the way the game kind of pushes you to do it, or you can take down the Divine Beast in any order that you want.

Quick side note, I played the Divine Beast for the very first time in reverse order, and that made the entire game very challenging, even though I've played it four times at this point. Hell, you can do none of the Divine Beast if you want to. Do you want to find 900 Korox seats? Fuck it, do that! Breath of the Wild really embodied a lot of the RPG mechanics

and systems that we've grown to love from games like Fallout and Skyrim, and gave it its own Zelda voice. And I think Nintendo introduces this entire idea so well with the Great Plateau, which is the tutorial area. They subtly teach you the language of how to traverse the terrain, how to deal with temperature, cooking food. And then they immediately give you all of the tools

that you really need to beat the game with the Shika Slate, where you can stop time, you can grow ice tower things, you have bombs, you can have a magnet, and shit. And those simple decisions smartly sets up the mindset that you should have for the rest of this game, is that any situation can be taken

on in a million different ways. Again, this game takes a lot of the core elements of the original legend of Zelda and smartly modernizes them to make a Zelda still relevant 34 fucking years later. Now, to move on from that

very passionate moment of mine, one thing I want to bring up really quick before I into the usual things I bring up with gameplay and design is Terrytown, Tarrytown. I like to say Terry Town, I've never heard it said out loud before. I love in this game where Hyrule and the different races of Hyrule have been beaten down and split apart. There is a side quest where you help build a town and help bring people of different cultures and background together to live in harmony.

And in a way bringing Hyrule itself back together in a very, very small step. That shit is so tight and I want to see see more of those side quests in the next game, or hopefully maybe just the towns expanded upon where you see more of the different races living in harmony together. I think that stuff is really, really cool. Now let's talk about one of the more unique elements of Breath of the Wild, and it's going to be kind of hard to compare to other games, and that is the dungeons. Because while this game has dungeons in the Divine Beast, I think the more equivalent and more prominent dungeon in this game are the shrines, which I adore so much. They are bite-sized. They are bite-sized,

in a way that fix a lot of my frustrations with a lot of other 3D Zeldas, where if you fucked something up, there's no frustratingly long backtracking that comes with that. The experiment is always in front of you, and it's just on you to figure it out in your own way. Yeah, some early shrines are very specific on how you need to solve them, but again, that's the game trying to teach you of the different ways you can think about solving a puzzle. Now, on the other side, there are the Divine Beasts, which are fine. It's weird because before I got to this game, during this play-through, I was convinced that the Divine Beasts were some of the best dungeons throughout the series.

But now that I've gone through every other game and have re-experienced link between worlds and have finally experienced games like Twilight Princess, they're just okay. Their structure and art design feel kind of bland, especially because the art design for each beast is the same exact thing. And for each puzzle that you have to solve, there's typically really only one way to solve it, which felt like a step backward from how creative the shrines felt. They aren't bad, they just never really reach the highs that some of the other games do. Now, on the flip side, I love the boss fights in this game.

I know they all look kind of mad because they're all just different iterations of Calamity Gannon, but the fight with each of them is so fucking intense. And again, they can be dealt with in a number of different ways. Like, I usually get the Master Sword after one, maybe two Divine Beasts, which when you're in an area really controlled by Gannon, the Master Sword kind of powers up and does more damage against, and Scanan-related enemies. So it makes those fights feel way, way easier.

But this time around, I didn't get the Master Sword until I was done with each Divine Beast, and it made each boss fight feel so fresh and fun to figure out. And a really quick shout-out to Master Koga, which mechanics-wise isn't that great of a boss fight. He's just a really fun boss because he's a very outgoing and weird character, so shout-out to Master Koga. I know this goes back to Story really quick,

but also a quick shout-out to the Yiga clan, because I like that there's kind of this anti-Sheka group that split off from the Shika. I think that's really, really cool, again, with lore stuff. This game is really cool with lore. And then the last boss, Gannon, I feel kind of conflicted about. The first half of his boss fight, Calamity Gannon, is so, so cool. Because it brings together elements from all of the other boss fights and keeps you on your toes.

And I love that if you didn't go to any of the Divine Beasts and just go straight to Hyrule Castle, you actually have to fight the boss of each Divine Beast before you even get to Calamity Ganon. I've never experienced that on my own. I just think that's a really cool idea to have. I'm too much of a scared baby to try that. But then the second half of the Gannon boss fight, which is Dark Beast Ganon, feels kind of bland, not only as a boss fight, but as just like a fight in general.

Like the scale of it is great, and the music that ramps up ties it all together really well. The presentation is awesome, but just like riding around on your horse and shooting these light arrows at these glowing orbs on Gannon's body just doesn't feel very personal enough, if that makes any sense. Every combat encounter before this feels so personal because you are the one who has to make the decisions on how to take this enemy down. And here it just feels very by the numbers.

Hey, here's this one thing we want you to do. And it felt like a very lackluster way to end your game gameplay wise. And really quick, I brought up riding around on a horse, which always in my case is named Zach Ryan. And I'm putting out a new decree, a new law that I'm putting in place that everybody has to now abide to. Whether you've played the game before or you haven't yet, the next horse that you get in the Legend of Zelda Breath of the Wild, you have to name Zach Ryan. And when you do, please tweet them at me at Sad Boy Barrett and at Zacharias D. It's the law. I don't create the laws.

Well, I created this law, but, you know, got to follow the rules. Now, let's move on to my final thoughts and ranking for Breath of the Wild. I mean, three years after launch, there's still so much to dissect with this game. I have too many thoughts on Breath of the Wild, and I don't think any of them do the game justice. whatsoever. It feels not only like a celebration of the series, but a celebration of video games overall, because of how much the developers looked at other games that have furthered the gaming industry over the last 34 years and smartly applied what was needed to make this game. I absolutely adore this game, even with the slight self-over saturation I felt this time around.

And that's totally fun, because we already know that there's a sequel and that feeling of excitement and mystery will be back upon us soon. So anyway, let's get into the final ranking for now for the Legend of Zelda in review. The rankings so far is as follows. Number one, the Wind Waker. Number two, the Link to the Past. Number three, Majors Mask. Number four, Aquarina of Time. Number five, Twilight Princess. Number six, Link between worlds. Number seven, Link's Awakening. Number eight, Skyward Sword. Number nine, the Legend of Zelda. And number ten, the Adventure of Link. Breath of the Wild is number one with a silver bullet. I know for some fans, that's definitely not the case.

And this is just my, again, my own ranking, my own thoughts, how I feel about each game. But this game is such a celebration of the entire series, and I think transcends what we've thought the Legend of Zelda to be. And you can't just turn a blind eye to that. It's a fucking amazing game. So the final ranking for now, for the Legend of Zelda in review, is as follows.

Number one, Breath of the Wild, number two, the Wind Waker, number three, Link to the Past, number four, Majora's Mask, number five, Ocarina of Time, number six, Twilight Princess, number seven, Link Between Worlds, number eight, Link's Awakening, number nine, Skyward Sword, number 10, the Legend of Zelda, and number 11, the Adventure of Link. But again, those were just my thoughts and rankings. Please give your rankings in the comments below, because I'm at the point where I don't think any ranking of this series is wrong. even though I don't absolutely love Zelda to the Adventure of Link, I could see it being someone's number one or number two or whatever, or even Skyward Sword for that matter, because of the great lore and storytelling that it does.

Legit any kind of ranking, like, I would understand and wouldn't be angry about, you know? Like, the Legend of Zelda series is such a special one, and each game, I think, holds a very special place in time, and I totally get why people would feel strongly of one game over another, you know? Like, I absolutely get it. And it's kind of a reason why I liked doing this again was to experience the series and finally experience why it is so important in the video game world. Now, while those were all of my thoughts on the series and the ranking overall and stuff, I wanted to give out some special awards to some games. Just because I wanted to highlight some of them, even though they might not have been high

on my ranking or anything, I wanted to highlight some of the games and what they do very special. So I have six special awards to give out. The first award is best bosses, which goes to Akorina of Time. It's a little nostalgic base for me, but I honestly do think that the art design for each of the bosses in Ocarina of Time and how fun they all are and how challenging some of them can be combined. I think all of those elements together. I think O'Corena of Times bosses are the most standout of the entire series. The second award that I have to give, is Best Dungeons. It's Twilight Princess. Do I have to, like, I'm not even going to pretend like it's anything else. Twilight Princess, holy shit. I want to remind you guys all the way back to the beginning where I was like, man, 3D Zelda games don't know how to do dungeons well.

And then again, Wind Waker proved me wrong. And then Twilight Princess was like, hey, you're an idiot. And I was. But now I know. Twilight Princess, real good dungeons. The third award that I have to give is Best Music, which to me is Windwaker by a Silver Fucking Bullet. It's so great at combining these two elements of having its own vibe and soundtrack of its own, but paying great homage in very subtle ways and not so subtle ways to the games that came before it that make for very epic and goosebumps-inducing moments, but then have subtle themes that are remixes of town music from other games and stuff. Like the way Wind Waker combines

its own voice with the series as a whole, I think is without a doubt the best in the series. Now, the fourth award I have to give is Best Art Style, and this one was kind of hard for me, because there's a lot of great art styles out there. I love Wind Waker, I love Link's Awakening. But to me, the classic style of Link to the Past cannot be beat. There's just something with that pixel 32, I don't know, I don't pretend to know 16 bit, 32 bit, whatever, but that style of the Super Nintendo of Zelda is just, I don't think anything can top it. And I know I've gushed more about other games, but I think at the end of the day, length of the past takes it for me by a mile. Now, the fifth award and second to last award I have to give is the best cast of characters.

Ladies and gentlemen, this goes to none other than Skyward Sword. I can't believe I'm giving an award to Skyward Sword. But guys, I know it's a small cast of characters. I know it's just pretty much just Link and Zelda and Gruz and Impa. And there's some like a fun little side characters here and there. But I think what Skyward Sword does best is build those characters and makes us feel like we're going on that journey with them and feel their character growth and feel their relationships between each other. the small ensemble cast that we get with Skyward Sword is the best in the entire series.

It would have been Breath of the Wild, but I don't think we get enough of Breath of the Wild's kind of ensemble cast together to really have that go out on top. I think Skyward Sword definitely has the best cast of characters in the series. Now, the final award that I have to give for The Legend of Zelda in review is best companion. And really, this is just an excuse to talk about my boy, Daphne's, No Hansen, High Rule. He is the best person in any video game ever. He has such a sad story.

That's still one at the saddest moment when he reaches his hand up to Link's hand. He was reaching down to him. He's just the bestest boy, even though he's like an old man, but he's still a good boy. And I just love him so much. Anyway, those were just some fun little awards that I wanted to. I wanted to just highlight some games and what some of the games did their best at. And, you know, I love this series overall. Again, like I said earlier, I can understand why you would put Zelda 2 or even the original

of Zelda, like up high on your list. I don't think there's any wrong takes about this series other than, ah, the Legend of Zelda is bad because they're not bad. Anyway, to finally wrap up the Legend of Zelda in review, I actually reached out on Twitter.com slash Sad Boy Barrett for your questions for me to answer. I have been in this very, very tiny echo chamber for the last 8.5. month with no one to bounce off questions or ideas to, so it's nice to finally get some other people involved and answer some questions from you guys over on Twitter. The first question

comes from none other than Tom Marks at Tom R. Marks on Twitter who works at IGN and asks best and or worst item you get from a dungeon that was never brought back in another Zelda game, example, Wind Wakers Decu Leaf, Skyward Sword to Beetle, link to the past medallions, etc. I would make the argument that the deck of the leaf kind of returns in Breath of the Wild, but I know it's not like an item that you like earn or anything, but it does kind of come back. I don't know if I can come up with like a best item that's not repeated. Maybe the cool whip from Skyward Store,

because I think they had a lot of fun and intricate design thoughts around the whip thing, and I had just a lot of fun playing around with it. Or maybe like the fun little tracker thing from Twilight Princess, where I'm like the little spinny guy, and it takes you around like the, rooms in the dungeons and you use it to fight against bosses that was really cool and i think the worst one is definitely skyward swords beetle that thing was like infuriating to control our very own imron con at imron zomg asked this very very good question which is which link should be with which zelda

like i've said before i'm in the kind of train of thought that i don't think link and zelda should really be love interest they don't really sell that to me in a lot of the games but the one game they do sell it to me as skyward sword so i just think the skyward sword link should be with the Skyward Sword Zelda. I don't know, Skyward Sword, I think, was the only one that really earned my thoughts of them as, like, love interest to each other. Shield Boy at Happy Warthog asks, just overall, would you say you enjoyed your time with the series? Was there more ups than downs, and would you suggest someone play through it all like you did? Thanks for doing this. Well, thank you for supporting. I would say I absolutely enjoyed

my overall time with the series, even though there were a lot of downs, especially when I had to play all of the 2D games essentially in a row. Pretty much because Link to the Pass, a little bit of Link's Awakening, and Link Between Worlds are pretty much all kind of the same game in several different ways. I just felt like, oh, man, I don't know if I can do this. And I got a little more interesting

when I played the original 2D Zelda games is because I feel like they're so different from those other three. But definitely getting out of the 2D Zelda's was like a breath of fresh air. I was like, oh, thank God. I'm out. I'm out.

recommend someone play through the series like I did? Um, maybe if you paint it out a little better than myself, uh, like, I'm just so tired, guys. I, like, I don't know if you should play at least 11 games, uh, over the course of like seven or eight months. It is, it is exhausting. Like, like 11 games in the same series where there's a lot of overlap in like design choices and stuff. I would say the last eight months, 95% of the games that I played have been the Zelda the games and it was tiring for a while so it was nice to take breaks every once in a while and play Star Wars or go back to Borderlands 3 and stuff like that so I don't know if I can recommend it the exact way I did but I do recommend trying out all of the games at some point the nanobiologist

at the nanobiologist on Twitter asks if you could change the main mechanic of one game which one and how would you change it I think the obvious answer is Skyward's sword because I hate the motion control stuff. And I don't know how I would change that, though, because the entire game is designed around that. And I think that's probably the main reason why Nintendo hasn't remastered that game, because there'd be no way to port it over to the switch without having to use the motion controls for the joycon separate from the switch. There'd be no way to play it handheld, no way to play it on a pro controller. Like, you'd have to have it docked or at least a joycon detach. You'd can play through it. And I just, I don't know if they really would want to do that again.

So that's the one game that really comes to mind, but I don't know how you change it. Anthony Ruggucci at underscore the Gooch. As for someone who never played Zelda, is there a way to play it all in one place? Unfortunately, no. Like I've been saying throughout the series of like which system I'm playing each game on, I think the system that has the most of them is probably the Wii U, maybe the 3DS. It is unfortunate. I would, love all of the games to come to Switch eventually. There's just, there isn't an easy way to have it all in one system right now, but overall, I played the games on what, the Switch, the Wii U, the 3DS,

and then the Super Nintendo Classic, and like, it's just four different consoles, I guess, which isn't terrible when you think about it of 11 games over the span of 34 years being on just four consoles. It would be cool to have it all in one place. Hopefully they do it one day. I hope to God they do it. Frankfurter at Frankfurter underscore asks, was it worth it? And do you have any regrets?

Yes. And yes. I'm going to mess up this name. Shucks Oge at Joss underscore Laborde. Asked, if you have one, what's your Zelda series hot take? I mean, I feel like a hot take was putting Mitoris mask over over Ocarina of Time, but if there's another hot take that I could have, I think of the games I played, I don't think any of them are bad

I think some of them are frustrating to me personally but overall if we're thinking about this like an IGN scale right like I don't think any of them go below like a seven you know and like yeah the original games like I really did not vibe with me but I still really loved what they did and the ideas that they have thinking back to

where games were at that long ago like I still really appreciated them so I think my I guess my hot take is like I don't think any of the Zelda games are bad. Ryan Johnson at QWinter 364, I don't know how to quinter maybe, I don't know, as after defeating Gannon so many times, do you think the series needs a new antagonist? If so, what branch of the world would you want it to come from? This is an interesting one. I don't know if the franchise as a whole needs like a new over antagonist because I love the

three staples of Zelda, Link, and Gannon being the continuing thing throughout the entire series. I guess the closest answer I could give, like I gave a quick shout out to the Yiga clan, I would like to see them, at least in future installments, become more prominent in like what they're doing with Hyrule and like what they're doing inside instead of like just randomly encountering them every once in a while. Like I would love to see the Yiga clan expanded on more and see them do other nefarious things other than just try to kill you. Lucifer at XX Lucifer 666x. As after playing these games, do you believe the hype for the series is deserved? Yes. Now, the last series of questions that I have for today comes from none other than Jonathan Dornbush,

aka my best man, at J.M. Dornbush, who asks, if you could play one Zelda again for the first time, which would it be? Breath of the Wild, for sure. Again, the first time we all played it, I think it was very mysterious and exciting, and we didn't know what was around the corner, and I would love to have that experience again. I'd never, even the first time playing a lot of these games, whether it was my first time with this play-through or in the past, like I never felt that excitement until Breath of the Wild. His second question, what's your favorite form of Gannon slash Gannendorf? I would have to say Wind Waker Gannendorf.

I really love his art design and the little bits of character moments that we have with him at the end of that game, make him such a fascinating villain. I really love them. The third question, if you had to do this for three other game series, which would they be? Holy fuck. So some of you may know I've already started. doing this with Assassin's Creed. I'm not doing an Assassin's Creed in-review project. I need a break from this kind of thing for a very, very long time. But I have started to get addicted to like,

let's go back to some series and just like play them for my leisure, you know? So I've already started Assassin's Creed. I'm not going to do an interview for it, but I think that would be a fun series to do it for. I think Grand Theft Auto would be a really interesting series to do it for because of how much that series has changed over time. And I think the stories in those games are so unique to that franchise. And the third one, honestly, probably Halo. Like, I, like, I, I, I, I don't know if I would have much to say about, like, game mechanics or anything like that, but I really loved the original Halo trilogy. I really loved Halo Reach. So I think it would be fun to, like, go back throughout that series and, uh, do a kind of projects like this, uh, for that series.

I know, like, I didn't answer the Batman Arkham series, because I think that's too easy of an answer. And I don't think that would be as interesting of an in-review series for myself. at least just because I play those games every year. I know what my ranking is. Those games are always so fresh in my mind. I think for an in-review project like this, I think it would be much more fascinating for anybody, not even just me, for anybody to go down a series that they kind of know.

They haven't played everything. Like, I think that is a much more interesting setup to have for a video game in review series rather than a series that you already love and know so well and stuff like that. So that's why, like, for the, like, a lot of people have been asked, like, Batman Arkham in review. and I think that's better off for me to stream those games every once in a while. Like we did the 10-year anniversary for Arkham Asylum. I would love the stream the rest of that series at one point.

Maybe leading up to the new game, hopefully that's announced by the time this video is coming out. I fucking hope to God. And then Jonathan Dornbush's last question. And the last question for The Legend of Zelda in review is, how much sleep do you need to catch up on now? So fucking much. Anyways, thank you guys so much for joining me

on The Legend of Zelda in review. If you've gotten to this point, you know it's been quite a journey. Thank you so much for getting to this point with me. Even at the time of recording this, I don't know exactly how long it was going to be. Three and a half hours, four hours, who knows? I'm excited to find out. But again, thank you guys for supporting me on this dumb journey that I've made myself do. And, you know, supporting us is kind of funny as a whole to let us make content as dumb and as passionate as this.

I love that about us, that we can take time to make. silly projects like this. And please give me your feedback on this kind of interview. It's a very unique project, I think, for kind of funny. And if I were to do it again, I would love your feedback, how I should do it differently. Maybe we should break up the segments. I don't know. But I would love to hear your takes in the comments.

Tweet them at me at Sad Boy Barrett. Again, I've just been making this by myself for so long. I would love to hear any comment or deserved criticisms that I can take in the future if I decide to make myself do something as dumb as this. this ever again. But guys, thank you so much deeply from the bottom of my heart for joining me for The Legend of Zelda in review. I've been Barrett Courtney, and until next time, it has been my pleasure to serve you.