Through the looking glass? Let's Play The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past!

I like it about as much as Ocarina, to be honest. The former is a bit denser with secrets and the latter has more satisfying combat, and other than that, they're basically the same game in 2D and 3D.

But it's moot, of course, since Majora's Mask is still the best game in the series.

The thing this run has been teaching me is that my childhood self was an idiot for not using those sweet-ass medallions in more situations.

Edit: not to go off topic, but quick question: I know you can play this game easily these days by getting the Four Swords GBA game, which includes it. My question is, is there anything you can do with Four Swords *other* than play an exact port of LttP if you don't have any GBA link capabilities? Any new single-player bonus material other than the dungeon that can only be unlocked by completing multi-player? And you can't actually play the Four Swords side at all single-player, can you?

There's a few small differences here and there.

Link screams when he swings his sword and Trinexx drops decanters when you're fighting him, if you run out of magic.

Other then that, there's nothing that I'm aware of.

The title screen logo was redrawn so the Master Sword looks like it was made from foam rubber, and the witch's assistant inside the medicine shop was replaced by Maple from the Oracle games. And some other stuff.

I guess quite a bit had been changed, but very little of it is very significant.

Too bad. I loved the "goopy" sound Link made while walking through the SNES' Misery Mire. That ain't water, boy.

The voice is pretty annoying, and it covers up the sword swishes, which I liked, and I liked the Misery Mire footsteps too! gloosh gloosh gloosh gloosh...

But most of the changes made that game easier and more convenient. I am wondering how they changed the Ice Palace so you can't solve it with the Cane of Somaria.

I'm not sure if I agree with this, but I know I want to.

Ditto. I don't know if I can say it's the best but it's definitely something different in a series where almost every game plays the same way, and that is not a bad thing at all.

I want to agree too, but fixing dire problems and then going back to Day One and seeing them all reset was kind of depressing and sapped my will to finish the game. And these issues weren't exactly about Terminians crying over a broken nail; there was poisoned water, Gorons freezing to death, and of course that big bloody moon in the centre of it all.

I tried again with the GameCube re-issue, but my copy had a tendency to crash at the drop of a hat. Nobody wants their games to crash at random, but it's an exceptionally bad thing to happen with a game that progresses depending on when you save.

I want to agree, and I also do agree.

Ocarina is great, but there are weird kinks and it feels like they're still working out the formula. For example, clearly no one thought hard enough about just how damn long it takes to walk across Hyrule field. I think it took something like 2 and a half years to get from the fairy village area to Hyrule castle.

Twilight Princess is also great and incredibly polished, but it feels derivative, like a revision of Ocarina with really fun wolf sequences tacked on for kicks. This is not a complaint, because that means it's an awesome game--just not a particularly inventive one.

Major's Mask has worked out the major kinks in the 3D Zelda formula while also introducing a unique play style and a tone that strikes just the right note between kiddy and MoUnTaIn DeW XTREME. It's not as polished as TP (see: the battle system), but in a way that seems to give it more soul.

To be clear, these are all A+ games. I'm not saying any of these suck, just that Majora's Mask is clearly the best. Not too rough, not too polished, perfect tone, unique premise.

Majora was my first Zelda, so my view is kind of skewed there. For one thing, I have more fond memories of MM than OoT (furthermore the entire plot of OoT was spoiled already). For another, the masks were cool. Granted, there were fewer dungeons, but it was interesting going back and forth, as depressing as it was that everything reset (or, even worse, that nothing really happened after the fourth dungeon).

But both were better than TP. The wolf thing felt restricted after playing Okami. The items were awesome, and some of the dungeons were too, even if many of the bosses sucked. Too bad the story was barely there...

Eh. I want to say Majora's the best too, but I think I'm too biased to say for sure.

I, for one, found The Adventure of Link much more depressing than Majora's Mask, for both similar and disparate reasons.

Additionally, Ganon's shadow on the game over screen scared the bejeezus out of me. That's one I'd love to see in a Let's Play - I never beat the final dungeon, and frankly, am not likely to try.

I always had a hard time getting into Majora's Mask, don't know why. It just never rubbed me the right way.

LttP and Twilight are the best of the best, in my book. TP may have been derivitive of Ocarina, but it improved on Ocarina in every way, and had much more enjoyable combat.

Wind Waker would be up there too, but the small number of dungeons and generally low difficulty kind of hurt it.

If I had to pick favourites, MM and WW had the most involving stories, TP had the best combat and items, and LttP topped the rest in terms of boss battles (I can't pick a favourite for the puzzles though). Not to say that the rest aren't good in the other areas as well, but more that each had their own specific strengths?

Honestly, I don't think I could pick a favourite favourite from this bunch, since they all do their own thing so well. It's like comparing apples to oranges in a way; I guess it could be taken as a symbol of how much the series has evolved over the years.

On another note, some of those LttP changes made me cry. Seriously, sword screams? And Misery Mire will always be GLOOP GLOOP GLOOP GLOOP to me. Some of the weapon utility changes weren't have bad though, I have to admit.

Majora's Mask is an outstanding game. A lot of games out there have done the whole "npcs have a schedule and daily lives" thing, but MM really got it right. The game was filled with tons of quirky humor and something close to an actual story for once. It had some fantastic puzzles (the upside-down dungeon comes to mind), great graphics for the time, great music...I think the best thing about the game was the way the limited amount of time created a constant sense of urgency and dread. Zelda games have always been good at building atmosphere, but MM was one of the best titles at doing this.

OoT is still my favorite, but it's close. I think the only Zelda that isn't particularly great is Twilight Princess. I'd wanted a "mature" Zelda since before I can even remember. And then I bought a Wii just so I could play it...and it was OoT1.5. It was a blast, but it wasn't innovative in any way, shape, or form (grafting Wii controls onto it doesn't really amount to much since the game at it's core is a GC game).

As far as LttP being a point they can never go back to, I don't think that's true. The handheld Zeldas have kept the spirit of LttP and LA alive and well. Phantom Hourglass strayed from this a bit, but the Oracle games and Minish Cap kept the spirit alive. The console Zeldas are likely to be tied to OoT's legacy for all time. There was a rumor a while back that Aonuma wanted to make the next Wii Zelda a top down affair that controls similarly to Phantom Hourglass...but unless if that happens, then expect more Z-targeting and waggle.

The drama of Ganon's shadow was destroyed for me when I took the game to a friend's house one day. My friend's sister (let's call her "O") was watching us play and asking annoying questions. When I died and the shadow mocked me, my friend said, in a completely monotone voice, "Hey look, it's O."

Because it got only a passing acronym mention by Reel a few posts up and that's it so far, and also just for sake of being contentious: I like Wind Waker. Love the art style (more than Ocarina), enjoyed the sailing and making a hand-drawn map so I knew where the islands were, liked the battles, the bosses, the stained glass art motif... and a lot of this is, "This game hit all the right notes for me," but it's my favourite of the series. I wouldn't go and say it is the best game evarrr.. because what other Zelda games people enjoy is not so important to me. =p

Honestly, at this point, I am tired of saving Zelda. TIRED OF IT. I think the only way I'd play another game in the series (didn't finish Twilight, played Hourglass at a demo station and had no desire to buy it) is if you actually controlled Zelda in it, just for change of pace/name congruance.

Oddly enough, I found the combat in OoT to be less satisfying than that in LttP. I'm pretty sure it's because the enemies in the later game cannot kill you unless you actively try to be killed, and even then have a rather hard time of it. Even when I did a minimalist run, (and in Ocarina, that means only three hearts,) the only enemy I had the slightest bit of difficulty with was Volvagia, and that's because he's the first enemy in the game that can do more than one heart of damage in a single hit. The other two are Iron Knuckle and Ganon, and I just didn't get hit by either of them.

Coupled with its lack of an interesting overworld, lack of good puzzles and secrets, and lacking narrative, this all makes it for me the bottom of the barrel in terms of Zelda games.

The whole problem with modern Zelda games is that there are no enemies to fight.

Seriously, the most you'll find in a room is 3, and even then, only one of them will engage you while the other two hang back and watch. (the 50-level caves in WW and TP are godsends).

Zelda used to be about fighting hordes of monsters.

I'd go for Majora's Mask and Link's Awakening. Both made me care about their worlds in a way I never felt about Hyrule.
I think the reason Majora's Mask does this so effectively for me is that the world carries on without you - you never get the feeling that someone is standing in one spot all day just to tell you about some plot point. It makes Termina feel more real and makes Ocarina's Hyrule feel more artificial as a result.
I also thought Link's Awakening benefited from the smaller map - the game was more focussed as a result compared to A Link to the Past. Each to their own, I guess.

I want zelda to save link. or the story to continue past saving zelda. Like, Link and Zelda settle down, and suddenly link loses control of the triforce, and becomes the mad dictator that Ganon always dreamed of being. or something

This is the perfect setup to haul Shadow Link out of mothballs.

Someone already toyed with this idea, and it made Impa very sad.

Personally, I like stories like this. The original Mega Man Zero cast X as a dictator who'd gone to extremes to protect humans from Mavericks, and it was an interesting twist.

It would be jarring for Link to suddenly have a personality beyond "silent, compliant hero type," though.

yeah, but maybe the series needs a little bit of jarring.

The Valiant Legend of Zelda comics had Link getting ahold of the Triforce of Power and basically turning into Ganon.

Speaking of Impa, when I was a child I swore up and down that the Old Woman you can turn into a fairy in LttP is supposed to be Impa.

As I said in some other thread, the Zelda games may be formulaic, but so's Megaman and Castlevania, but I'm not complaining.

I've been replaying Link's Awakening, and while it's still a fantastic game, the limits of the platform really hold it back from being one of my favorites in the series. the setting and the sense of self-aware humor are obviously top-notch, though.

I love Majora's Mask and Wind Waker (and OoT, to a lesser extent) so much because they inherited that bizarre sense of humor, and in the case of Majora's Mask, turned it completely dark and twisted and awesome. I had a lot of fun playing Twilight Princess, but damn it all, I want my twisted comical freaks back. :<

But that wasn't really X.

I'm a bit confused here. Are you talking about the fat fairy that becomes a beautiful one?