MY BRAIN HAD A THINK ABOUT A GAM3

Yeah Wand is rather funny

I'll do my list as well, which hopefully is a bit less mad but which I'm sure will still irk people (as these things usually do!).  Again, grouping them into three sections: top 25 of all time material, other good-to-great games, and games that I probably wouldn't have stuck with if they weren't Zelda games.  Games marked with * are ones where I've played the remake and am grouping that in.

1. Breath of the Wild
2. Twilight Princess
3. Ocarina of Time*
4. A Link Between Worlds
5. Minish Cap
6. Wind Waker*

7. Four Swords Adventures
8. Majora's Mask
9. Skyward Sword
10. Link's Awakening* (remake only)

11. Spirit Tracks
12. Phantom Hourglass
13. A Link to the Past* (GBA remake only)
14. The original

Not counted: Oracle of Seasons which I played about thirty minutes of.

Wind Waker 6th now that is madness, what about Tri Force and Zelda II?

Zelda games would make for a brilliant Simply The Best conversation.

https://www.gnamer.com/t1152-simply-the-best

I'm not gonna do a list until I finish replaying them. Mine will be definitive and factual, though, so it won't annoy anyone.

Like Nintendo Life's where they used Maths

I think it doesn't make sense to rank all Zelda games together because of the different genres they straddle. I have unarguably separated them out into Zelda genre groupings to make a better ranking like so:

2D

1. Link's Awakening
2. Minish Cap
3. Oracle of Ages/Seasons
4. A Link to the Past
5. Spirit Tracks

3D

1. Ocarina of Time
2. Majora's Mask
3. Wind Waker
4. Twilight Princess

Open world

1. Breath of the Wild
2. A Link Between Worlds
3. The Legend of Zelda

Action-adventure

1. Skyward Sword

Multiplayer

1. Four Swords Adventures
2. Phantom Hourglass
3. Four Swords
4. Triforce Heroes

Trash

1. Zelda II

Here is mine.

1. BotW
2. Majora's Mask

That's it, those are all the Zelda games that I have played.

I've not played enough of them to rank properly, but of what I've played:

1. Twilight Princess
2. Ocarina of Time
3. A Link to the Past
4. Wind Waker
5. Breath of the Wild

I like what OR has done - I'm a fan of the 3D dungeon-to-dungeon Zeldas and BotW is only low because I bounced off of it. It's clearly a great game.

@The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Zelda games would make for a brilliant Simply The Best conversation.

https://www.gnamer.com/t1152-simply-the-best

That's a good point, and if anybody wants to move it over to that thread then I'll tag along... but there have been a few more posts since mine and I don't feel it's worth the shift now personally.

@OrangeRakoon wrote:

I think it doesn't make sense to rank all Zelda games together because of the different genres they straddle.

I've got a list of my Top 25 Switch games that compares BotW with Murder by Numbers.

@OrangeRakoon wrote:

I have unarguably separated them out into Zelda genre groupings to make a better ranking like so:

2D

1. Link's Awakening
2. Minish Cap...

Aaaaand immediately it's not unarguable.

@OrangeRakoon wrote:

Multiplayer

2. Phantom Hourglass

Wait... did PH have multiplayer?

@masofdas wrote:

...what about Tri Force and Zelda II?

Not even tried 'em.

I'm really quite surprised that there are any ex-NGamer fans who have played as few Zeldas as Muss and GJones have!  I'm guessing you didn't have any of the handhelds GJones?  Otherwise I'm presuming you'd have got on Link Between Worlds already as a fan of LttP (which I've never seen the charm of myself, coming to it in a post-Ocarina world as I did).

@Balladeer wrote:

I'm really quite surprised that there are any ex-NGamer fans who have played as few Zeldas as Muss and GJones have!  I'm guessing you didn't have any of the handhelds GJones?  Otherwise I'm presuming you'd have got on Link Between Worlds already as a fan of LttP (which I've never seen the charm of myself, coming to it in a post-Ocarina world as I did).

I owned Link's Awakening on GameBoy and Minish Cap on GBA, but I only put like 30 minutes into them at the time, so I left them out. I've played a few hours of Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, Link to the Past and Skyward Sword (which I oddly forgot) and they are all games I admire and want to fall in love with, but I "did a Metroid Prime on them". Which is to say I played the first few hours then never felt the urge to return to them. Ocarina and Twilight I must have sunk 80+ hours into each and Twilight is the only one I've finished. They both grabbed me but the Zelda series has always been one where I get stuck on something and then the solution would often be something I'd never think of (or completely forgot about) so while I like the games in general, a 3D Mario excites me more.

That's a good point you raise though Balla. Of the "big 3" (Mario, Zelda, Metroid), I've always had most fun with "the other stuff" on Nintendo platforms. It might be a psychological issue, as I'm also not arsed about Metal Gear on PlayStation or Halo on Xbox. Maybe I'm not gaming correctly

@Balladeer wrote:

Wait... did PH have multiplayer?

1v1 competitive, wireless and online! Alternate between attacking as Link trying to collect force gems and defending with phantoms to block Link and protect your own gems. It's brilliant too B)

@masofdas wrote:

Yeah Wand is rather funny

So is Breath of the Wild, did you not read the Seal conversations?

@Buskalilly wrote:

I'm not gonna do a list until I finish replaying them. Mine will be definitive and factual, though, so it won't annoy anyone.

Same here, some I need to play again like Skyward Sword and some I've never finished like A Link to the Past.

@OrangeRakoon wrote:

@Balladeer wrote:

Wait... did PH have multiplayer?

1v1 competitive, wireless and online! Alternate between attacking as Link trying to collect force gems and defending with phantoms to block Link and protect your own gems. It's brilliant too B)

Oh I remember this now, it was great, multiplayer Zelda is something that hasn't been explored anywhere near enough.

Nah would mean playing it longer than I had to

I've liked the idea of replaying or playing a series for the first time, I was keen to do Castlevania but never got around to it.

@gjones wrote:

There is a really good article on the Guardian ranking them there Zelda games: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/19/the-legend-of-zelda-games-ranked

Keza MacDonald is probably my spirit animal - that's pretty much my order there. I think I'd still put Ocarina of Time above Majora's Mask, and Zelda II a little bit higher because of nostalgia, but otherwise, that.

@gjones wrote:

I owned Link's Awakening on GameBoy and Minish Cap on GBA, but I only put like 30 minutes into them at the time, so I left them out. I've played a few hours of Wind Waker, Breath of the Wild, Link to the Past and Skyward Sword (which I oddly forgot) and they are all games I admire and want to fall in love with, but I "did a Metroid Prime on them". Which is to say I played the first few hours then never felt the urge to return to them. Ocarina and Twilight I must have sunk 80+ hours into each and Twilight is the only one I've finished. They both grabbed me but the Zelda series has always been one where I get stuck on something and then the solution would often be something I'd never think of (or completely forgot about) so while I like the games in general, a 3D Mario excites me more.

That's a good point you raise though Balla. Of the "big 3" (Mario, Zelda, Metroid), I've always had most fun with "the other stuff" on Nintendo platforms. It might be a psychological issue, as I'm also not arsed about Metal Gear on PlayStation or Halo on Xbox. Maybe I'm not gaming correctly

Funnily enough I can actually relate to 'doing a Metroid Prime', which is something I even did with Metroid Prime! That said, with games like Metroid Prime I did force myself to return to them because I thought it'd most likely be worth it, and I was usually right. I'm surprised to read about the puzzles though, they've never seemed like the stickiest bits of most modern Zeldas (the older ones can be tortuous though).

You're probably also just not gaming correctly though.

@Treesmurf wrote:

...multiplayer Zelda is something that hasn't been explored anywhere near enough.

I'd get behind this wholeheartedly, only I'm aware what my thoughts of multiplayer 3D Mario were after wanting it for ages.