Some heartless jackass makes a fake Majora's Mask HD trailer because he hates me, specifically

[Ninety-Three]

I've played all the 2D ones, I meant to ask for 3D recommendations, yes.

[Merus]

This seems to have become the general "Talking about Zelda" thread, and it's related, so I'll ask my question here.

 

I grew up on the 2D Zeldas, didn't have an N64 so I missed out on that era. The first 3D Zelda I got was Twilight Princess, and boy, I just didn't like anything about that game. It soured me on 3D Zeldas as a whole (so much of what I didn't like felt like it would've been better if it were on a Gameboy), and I pretty much gave up on the franchise.

 

Since then, I've been told repeatedly that TP is the weakest 3D Zelda, so I'm thinking about giving the series another try. I have a 3DS, where do you recommend I start as a fan of the 2D ones?

 

Twilight Princess is fairly weak but some of its dungeons are the best in the series. Not sure how far you got, though.

 

Anyway, I guess Ocarina and A Link Between Worlds are probably the best places to start - Link Between Worlds is basically a 2D Zelda, and a direct sequel to Link to the Past. Its dungeons aren't amazing but there's few terrible ones there either. Ocarina is a classic for a reason.

 

I'd avoid Skyward Sword if you didn't care for Twilight Princess - it's even chattier, the writing's worse, and there's even more backtracking and reuse of environments. Its sole high point is a dungeon based on a Buddhist folk tale that's pretty neat.

 

I liked Phantom Hourglass - some people found the repeating dungeon tedious, but I enjoyed it as a distillation of the increase in capabilities that most Zelda games rest on. Spirit Tracks is definitely the lesser game - I did find it tedious towards the end, and I remember I soured on it after I finished it.

[Griddlelol]

I've played all the 2D ones, I meant to ask for 3D recommendations, yes.

 

Wind Waker, because it's the best Zelda game made so far. If you have a WiiU play that version, rather than the original GCN. 

 

Ocarina of time is pretty good too, and really the game that got me into Zelda (I'm the opposite of you, I dislike the 2D games, but love the 3d ones) so it's worth a try. Again, play the remake. The original is pretty hard on the eyes, with gross old polygons and a terrible 20 fps.

 

I've still yet to finish TP and play SS, but they're on my list of to play. I'd like to finish all the 3d Zeldas before the new one comes out. 

[dartmonkey]

 I have a 3DS, where do you recommend I start as a fan of the 2D ones?

I'd go straight for Ocarina 3D. If you don't like that, you're not going to like 3D Zelda. Wind Waker is really lovely, but I'd go to the (remade) source, especially if Wind Waker would mean buying another system.

[Sno]

Wind Waker and Majora are definitely the two 3D Zeldas i would most want to recommend, they are terrific games.

I understand the revelatory impact Ocarina had, and it has a well-earned place in the history of video games, but i think if the series is taken holistically and the game is looked at in the same context as Majora and Wind Waker, it feels incredibly stale next to the latter games' vivid creativity.

I think Twilight Princess is a terrible game, i think it feels rudderless, like it's Nintendo actually doing the thing people always try to accuse them of doing with the series, playing it safe with a repeated design. I mean, and people give Skyward Sword shit for its controls, but people are definitely forgetting how much leash they gave Twilight Princess for being a Wii launch game. I went back to play it after playing Skyward Sword and literally could not believe how much worse the control was, i was stunned that Nintendo conned everybody with such miserably implemented motion control. (Still, with that all said, i also think it probably has some of the best characters in the entire series, and i sort of wish they were in a better game.)

Now i'm going to say that I think Skyward Sword is actually kind of super underrated, that it has some terrific "dungeon" design and that it probably has the best 1 to 1 motion control Nintendo is ever going to wrangle out of the wii remote. (Which is to say that it's kind of still broken, but intermittently brilliant.) Their impressionistic distance blur is incredibly gorgeous too, i love that aesthetic and i hope Nintendo plays with it more in other products. Skyward Sword is, however, unfortunately the absolute height of Nintendo hand-holding, and additionally has an incredibly drab and lifeless overworld area. (The sky, specifically. The ground areas are, for all intents and purposes, dungeons.)

[Merus]

I played Twilight Princess a couple of months ago, and I think there's some value there. Like I said, I think it's got some great dungeons - Twilight Princess' Water Temple is a great callback to Ocarina while being its own thing, the Arbiter's Grounds takes a mediocre item and really wrings all it can out of it, with one of the series' most memorable boss fights, the Snowpeak Ruins have actually difficult puzzles in a really striking location (although camera issues make it less impressive than it should be) and the City in the Sky feels like unexplored territory for Zelda. Twilight Princess really stretches to find ways to do the staples in a fresh way, which isn't that common for Zelda games - most of the games have a volcano dungeon, for instance, but the Goron Mines rapidly become about more than just lava rooms.

 

Everything else I'm happy to concede - Midna might have been great at the time, but it's clear going back to it that she's mostly propped up by novelty. A character that you have an uneasy alliance with at first? What a shocker.

[Griddlelol]

The couple of hours I played of TP involved learning some secret moves from an unkown entity. I thought that was a pretty cool concept for a Zelda game, kinda like finding new items, but rather than being necessary to beat certain enemies, it just made it easier/more stylish. It'd never been done before in Zelda, so it seemed neat to me.

[Udvarnoky]

Twilight Princess is pretty good despite what its unappealing art style and obnoxious overuse of fog tries to convince you.

[Griddlelol]

I don't hate the art style. It's got nothing on WW though.

 

I also remember a section where you storm a Moblin fortress/camp. I remember thinking that was extremely un-Zelda-like. It felt like a 3rd person military shooter/action game. I remember really liking it and being kinda disappointed in myself for liking it so much. 

 

I'll reserve my judgements until I'm done with it, but I think it's a bit unfair to say Nintendo played it safe with TP. There's some fairly new (for Zelda) and interesting (for Zelda) stuff in that game. I just wish there was a way to skip the tutorial, that's what's stopping me from picking it up again to complete it. 

[Ninety-Three]

I did not get far enough to see anything that's being praised here. I don't remember how far exactly, but I definitely only completed one dungeon. I think the single thing I disliked most was the stupid magnet boots. They were so slow! Why did they have to be slow? And they were a pretty uninspired item for Zelda, I've found that the best items are the ones with broad applications (Roc's feather, pegasus boots, boomerang, etc), while the worst are essentially keys for specific gates and puzzles (magnet gloves from oracle of seasons, the level 2 power bracelet). Every series has at least one gate-opening item, but  I can't remember it ever being the first dungeon's item before.

[Merus]

Sounds like you reached the Goron Mines, which is the second dungeon. You get a wind boomerang in the first dungeon. Twilight Princess' big thing was that returning items all supposedly had a new use, so the boomerang made tornados and the iron boots were magnetic.

 

Iron Boots have several applications, actually; their big thing is they send you to the bottom of water bodies to get what's on the bottom, but they're also used to make you heavier in situations where being heavy or having a strong stance is important. The key/lock item in Twilight Princess is the Spinner, which is in the Arbiter's Grounds and lets you ride on grooves in certain walls and over sand and that's about it. The dungeon it appears in uses it the best, and it's a glorified key after that. I guess the Command Rod also counts, except that dungeon also sucks.

 

It's interesting how Zelda keeps butting up against the problem where the games feel very similar while Metroid, which has a structure a lot like Zelda, feels really different from game to game.

[Ninety-Three]

I played it ages ago so my memory's a little hazy, evidently I completely forgot about the boomerang. Now that you tell me the boots were in the second dungeon, I remember the specific point at which I quit. I turned the game off partway through that dungeon, and when I came back the next day, it had set me back to the dungeon entrance (like it does). I started running back to where I'd been to continue the dungeon, and I got to a section of magnetic wall I had to sloooowly clank across. I declared that nope, I'm done, there's no reason for the boots to be that slow.

[Griddlelol]

I don't really get the same feeling. The style of each game is different enough, and the time between each game makes me not notice any similarities, and see them as completely different, self contained games.

I'm not a LoZ mega fan. I never buy the games on release date, I've not played or finished every game but I still feel like each 3d Zelda is, well ...good. 

 

 

I declared that nope, I'm done, there's no reason for the boots to be that slow.

 

Kinda sounds like you'd resigned to not liking it, which is fine.

 

I think the slowness of the boots adds to the atmosphere and it'd be weird if they let you walk normal speed, or close to that. Similarly, the hover boots in OoT act like you're walking on ice - slippy, slow start and a skid to stop. Unnecessary from a mechanical perspective, but really add to the feel of the item.

[Twig]

TP is actually a good game, despite what the internet will tell you. It's just got the worst, longest, most boring tutorial outside of Skyward Sword.

[N1njaSquirrel]

My memory might be hazy, but I feel that TP was more of a reaction to the outcry of fans after WW. From what I can remember, Nintendo showed an awesome video of adult link beating up some moblins to show off the power of the gamecube, and then released WW when people wanted adult link stuff.

 

In general though there isn't a bad Zelda game, bar 2 and the CDO games. I feel that the 3D ones are always trying to be different in some ways, just that some are more successful than others.

 

I've been playing MM pretty obsessively since I got it on Wednesday, and now I'm stuck. I realised that I actually never completed the game on the N64! I've gotten the Zora's mask, and now I'm trying to work out how to get to the Pirate's bay, which my memory does not recall. I might have an idea though. I think this is where I got to before I gave up when I was a kid. I know what to do, just not how to do it. Any tips?

[Griddlelol]

I turned the game off partway through that dungeon, and when I came back the next day, it had set me back to the dungeon entrance (like it does).

 

I actually really fucking hate this about Zelda games. I want to resume where I stopped, because I'm not a child, and I can't always play for an hour or 2 hours. 

The weirdest thing, is that ALBW had a teleporter which took you to around the mid point of the (fairly short) dungeons, accessible from the entrance. However, it was also on 3DS, so you could just suspend->resume if you wanted to stop. Perfect. 

[Udvarnoky]

In general though there isn't a bad Zelda game, bar 2 and the CDO games.

 

And you're even wrong about Zelda II, so it's a remarkably consistent series. 

[Twig]

In general though there isn't a bad Zelda game, bar 2

???

 

2 is great.

[dium]

TP is actually a good game, despite what the internet will tell you. It's just got the worst, longest, most boring tutorial outside of Skyward Sword.

 

This is true, but the effect of the slow-as-frozen-pitch intro and tutorial can't be understated. I have fond memories of TP but I can't replay it, it bores me so fast.

 

As they are now, Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword are my two least favorite Zeldas (that I've played). But I don't know if they'd rank so low if you could enter the first dungeon as quickly as you could in OoT.

[Twig]

Yeah the overlong tutorial thing is awfulllllllllllll.

[syntheticgerbil]

My memory might be hazy, but I feel that TP was more of a reaction to the outcry of fans after WW. From what I can remember, Nintendo showed an awesome video of adult link beating up some moblins to show off the power of the gamecube, and then released WW when people wanted adult link stuff.

 

In general though there isn't a bad Zelda game, bar 2 and the CDO games. I feel that the 3D ones are always trying to be different in some ways, just that some are more successful than others.

Haha, I like you you merged 3DO and CDi together. I don't feel like they couldn't though.

 

2 has a lot of good points about it though, I don't feel like it's necessarily a bad game or bad Zelda game, it's just very unforgiving and has some awkwardness from so much deviation. It could certainly use a Majora's Mask treatment.

[Udvarnoky]

Zelda II is basically an RPG, and a well-made one.  Its only sin is falling very much outside of the Zelda template (both in design and difficulty), but that's not really its fault because there was no template yet.

[Merus]

Let's be fair, it's not just the intro to Twilight Princess that's slow. The first dungeon keeps pumping the brakes, and then there's a mound of bullshit to get through before you can go to the Goron Mines.

[miffy495]

Which is a real bummer, because the later dungeons in TP are actually REALLY good. I replayed most of it in September (getting sidetracked by the fact that I got a job that took my time away from it), stopping at the Sky Temple, and some of those dungeons are awesome. Still don't dig the art style, but a few of my favourite dungeon moments are in that game. That whole Yeti mansion is amazing.

[Twig]

All I said was TP is really good. I never said it was perfect!