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Discussion Fami favorite 3d Zelda game (post TOTK edition)

What's your favorite 3D Zelda?

  • Ocarina of Time

  • Majora's Mask

  • Wind Waker

  • Twilight Princess

  • Skyward Sword

  • Breath of the Wild

  • Tears of the Kingdom

Results are only viewable after voting.
balgajo

balgajo

Koopa
So fami, now that the dust has settled and most had enough time to reflect on Totk, what is your favorite 3d Zelda?

Also, if possible, share with us your 3d Zelda ranking and thoughts.

Mine would be:
  1. Oot
  2. MM
  3. TP
  4. WW
  5. SS
  6. BOTW
  7. TOTK
There's a good gap between MM to TP and WW to SS.
I think my love for the 3D series is at its lowest right now. Though I'm glad I played Wind Waker for the first time between SS and BOTW (Wii U release) so there's a small flame inside me....XD.
 
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Majoras Mask is still my top and I doubt it will ever be topped. The atmosphere and story of that game is just on another level
 
  1. Breath of the Wild
  2. Twilight Princess
  3. Tears of the Kingdom
  4. Majora’s Mask
  5. Ocarina of Time
  6. Skyward Sword
  7. The Wind Waker
Could maybe swap TotK and MM or SS and WW, I suppose.
 
I voted for Wind Waker

I don't actually think it's the "best" one from any sort of objective viewpoint but it came out when I was 12 so I have the most connection with it emotionally
 
1.TOTK
2. Wind Waker
3. Ocarina of Time
4. Majora’s Mask
5. Skyward Sword
6. BOTW

Haven’t played twilight princess yet.
 
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1. OoT - magical
2. WW - delightful
3. TP - epic
4. TotK - awesome
5. BotW - remarkable
6. SS - half good, half bad
7. MM - never finished it...

As you can see, I definitely prefer the older style 3D Zeldas. They're so charming. I love BotW and TotK, but I really missed the music and dungeons of the older games. OoT is darn near perfection, imo. I love it to pieces, and I'm not sure any Zelda game will surpass it in my eyes.
 
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1. MM
2. OoT
3. TotK
4. BotW
5. WW
6. Skyward Sword
7. TP (never finished, but would love to be able to on Switch)

I don't think MM and OOT will ever be topped in my subjective view, since N64 was my first console and the memories, atmosphere, and challenge they provided me with as a 5 or 6-year-old was unforgettable.

Tears of the Kingdom is seriously one of the greatest games I've ever played and an uncontested triumph in game design, though. Made me genuinely emotional at a couple of key moments. The next Zelda, on new hardware, in presumably a new Hyrule or other world, will destroy all of us in 5 years or so.

Skyward Sword and Wind Waker are constantly fighting for last place out of the ones I've finished. Mid/poor exploration and outstanding dungeons vs. great exploration and mid/poor dungeons. I think WW ekes it out because of its art style, OST, final gauntlet, and (slightly) less padding, but I heavily weigh dungeons in Zelda. They're both underwhelming in key areas.
 
My ranking always changes, and my favourite always swaps between Twilight Princess, Majora's Mask and BOTW/TOTK.
But right now it's Twilight Princess, while I love the newest Zeldas, boy did it make me crave the long, winding dungeons of TP with their interesting themes and layouts. I love no other LOZ character like I love Midna. It also has the best Link!

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  1. Breath of the Wild
  2. Tears of the Kingdom
  3. The Wind Waker
  4. Ocarina of Time
  5. Twilight Princess
  6. Majora’s Mask
  7. Literally anything else in existence
  8. Skyward Sword
 
TOTK unseated MM for me after about 15 years. I didn't even rate BOTW super high in comparison but TOTK is one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had.

1. TOTK
2. MM
3. OOT
4. BOTW
5. TP
6. SS
-massive gap-
7. WW

MM and OOT are still very special games to me, some of my all time favorites, the N64 era of Zelda was like nothing else.
 
TOTK
WW
MM/OOT
TTP


I loved BOTW but going back to it feels too redundant for me to list even though my first 100 hrs with it were sublime. It's too similar to TOTK from a systems standpoint (but lacking a lot of it) to maintain a position on my list.
 
1. Ocarina of Time
2. Twilight Princess
3. Majora's Mask
4. Tears of the Kingdom
5. Breath of the Wild
6. Wind Waker
7. Skyward Sword

Edit:

I've went back and forth on TP and OOT for number one but settled on Ocarina of Time (despite voting TP in the poll).

Overall, it comes down to how impactful Ocarina of Time was to me as a kid and how I continue to find new things to appreciate about it to this day. In many ways, I still have yet to play a game that feels as amazing as Ocarina of Time did in the late 90s and early 00s. Very few works, games or otherwise, have impacted me in the way Ocarina of Time did growing up. If I had anything that brings it down in my mind now, it would be that it being so canonized in gaming (and in my life) does hurt it a bit with a lot of it's iconography and ideas seeming very basic now despite lighting my imagination ablaze when it was new.

TP is a weird one as it's a game I feel a little more conflicted on now but at the end of the day, it was so impactful to me in it's time that it feels wrong to not have it in near the top. Things like the overreliance on a thin plot with weakly defined characters, very 00's-YA tone (though this can also be part of it's charm) and weird creative decisions like the wolf transformation and bug hunts complicate my feelings on the game, but the amazing dungeons, strong art direction and world design, excellent set pieces, memorable music, unique atmosphere and epic tone hit me so hard that I can easily ignore the things I find weaker about it.

Majora is also a weird one too as it's honestly one that I kind of dislike moment to moment as the majority of the game is just talking to NPCs in a set order. A lot of the game just feels like doing tasks - especially on replays. However, as a creative work it has so much more going on and I think it's unique atmosphere, character based side quests, transformation mechanics and dungeons do elevate it far beyond it's faults and have stuck with me hard the past 23 years.

TOTK and BOTW are intrinsically linked to me so it was kind of hard for me to rank. BOTW, I think is the better game artistically and felt so fresh and revolutionary at launch. As an experience, it ranks very high for me and was more memorable. However, it also feels more flawed than TOTK and it's loop wore thin on me a bit faster. TOTK is much less creatively satisfying as it is so reliant on what BOTW built (to thenpoint of being a little underwhelming early on) but what it adds and tweaks makes it a much more fun game moment to moment. It also has a lot more setpieces and moments that stick in your head and feel more indebted to games like TP or OOT. Likewise, it's scope and breadth of ways you can interact with the world through it's mechanics is incredibly impressive and sets such a high bench mark for the industry as a whole. As such I Input TOTK higher but they are actually about equal to me. (Also - I think they are probably the best games in the series. It's just hard to rank them at the top when I consider the personal impact my top 3 had on me in childhood (OOT, MM) and my teenage years (TP,) and how much I've revisited them/ memories I've made alongside them to this day).

Wind Waker is a game that meant a lot to me as a kid but I've soured on it through replays. Every time I've revisited the game, I've liked it a little less. It just feels very underdeveloped and doesn't really have any sections I would call a highlight. Exploration of the overworld is very tedious and the great sea, while impressive for it's time, doesn't really hold much interesting content. The dungeons are very simple and the more complex dungeons innthe back half are bogged down by the partner mechanics. It's still a game I love a lot and have a lot of great memories attached to but I do think it's probably the most flawed game in the series outside of Skyward Sword.

Skyward Sword is just a game I can not get behind from a creative perspective. It's faults are well documented so I won't belabor it but suffice to say it's easily the worst 3D Zelda to me and I'm so glad the series moved away from the trajectory and tone it was pursuing with this and the DS games.
 
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I think my favorite is still wind waker. I love the visuals, music, and atmosphere so much.

So,

1.) Wind Waker
2.) Twilight Princess
3.) Tears of the Kingdom
4.) Majoras Mask
5.) Breath of the wild
6.) Skyward Sword
7.) Ocarina of time

I’ll just say it I can’t stand ocarina of time. Ive still never beaten it to this day.
 
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1. Tears
2. Breath
3. Majora
4. Wind Waker
GAP
5. Skyward Sword
6. Twilight Princess
7. OoT

Majora and Wind Waker could swap sometimes, but I love both and they’re definitely my favorites of the traditional style easily.

Breath I almost want to put below both because Tears eclipses it in many ways and makes it almost redundant in many ways, and it’d feel like a more even top 3 if I moved it to fourth. But before we got Tears, BotW was definitely #1 so it would feel dishonest to move it even if Tears makes it way less likely for me to go back to it.

I need a replay of the bottom two to see how they truly rank against eachother, but I’m pretty confident they’d still remain the bottom 2 if I replayed, with maybe TP eclipsing SS. I think the art style will hit better for me now than when I first played it and it was a turn off.
 
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1. Skyward Sword
2. Majora's Mask
3. Twilight Princess
4. Ocarina of Time
5. Wind Waker
6. Tears of the Kingdom
7. Breath of the Wild

At least I got Skyward Sword HD. Otherwise I probably won't be particularly happy with 3D Zelda for a long time.
 
outside of Majora's mask being #1 you can ask me this question every 5 minutes and it will change everytime
 
I'm honestly not really sure. I didn't become a megafan till a few years ago, so I need to go back and replay/beat Majora's Mask, Breath of the Wild, and Wind Waker. The former I love but have gotten frustrated in before, the latter two I dropped near the end. I also think being a new megafan might have made me over inflate my enjoyment of Twilight Princess and Ocarina a bit. I loved playing those games for the most part, the first ~10 so hours of Twilight Princess aside.

All I can really say with confidence is Ocarina of Time > Twilight Princess > Skyward Sword, and that the N64 and Switch duologies probably would rank above Wind Waker for me.
 
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1. Tears of the Kingdom
2. Breath of the Wild
3. The other 3D Zeldas
Unranked: MM, which I haven’t finished, and SS, which I have no intention of playing

I’ve said it before, BotW and TotK are the only 3D Zeldas I unequivocally like and love. The others have fantastic dungeons, but frankly middling in everything else.
 
It feels absolutely impossible for me to compare these games to one another because what makes one great may not even be a part of another. Thus pure personal bias would say:

1. Wind Waker
2. OOT
3. BOTW
4. TP
5. SS
6. ToTK
7. MM

But it's worth noting I pretty chill with all of these games even if I complain about any of them I still consider them all phenomenal.
 
MM > TP > WW > OOT > BOTW >>>>>> TOTK >>>>>>>>>>SS

MM gets huge points for being the most unique and complex gameplay wise.
TP is the quintessential traditional entry, the best iteration of that formula.
WW has an awesome and enjoyable atmosphere and artstyle, the best in the series, alongside solid gameplay.
OOT is a great translation of the formula into 3D and gets points for innovating so much.
BOTW is a much needed shakeup after SS, huge points for originality and being totally committed to its vision of exploration and freedom.

TOTK I dislike. It's, in essence, the same game as BOTW. It's not original enough, doesn't fix enough of BOTW's problems (weak dungeons/story, gliding trivializing exploration, tedious menu navigation) and honestly feels like DLC
SS is the worst 3D Zelda. It's formulaic, the handholding is atrocious, the sky overworld is barren and a complete downgrade compared to WW, and repeating the ground areas THREE TIMES is inexcusable.
 
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Breath of the Wild for me. It supplanted a Link to the Past as both my favorite Zelda and second favorite game of all time.

Only The Wind Waker is close-ish (or A Link Between World if we count it) which makes it sound like I’m dunking on the series. However, for me, it says more about how good Breath of the Wild is.

Full disclosure: I bought Tears of the Kingdom but it’s still shrinkwrapped.
 
meatbag said:
1. Tears of the Kingdom
2. Breath of the Wild
3. The other 3D Zeldas
Unranked: MM, which I haven’t finished, and SS, which I have no intention of playing

I’ve said it before, BotW and TotK are the only 3D Zeldas I unequivocally like and love. The others have fantastic dungeons, but frankly middling in everything else.
Click to expand...
Botw and Totk stories beat other 3d zeldas?
 
MrBones said:
I'd say MM, WW, and TP have better stories. MM at the very least.
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WW falls apart for me as soon as tetra is reveled to be Zelda and TP has a major filler problem after you get the master sword and how shoehorned Ganondorf was

MM is still the best story though
 
SpaceGodzilla said:
WW falls apart for me as soon as tetra is reveled to be Zelda and TP has a major filler problem after you get the master sword and how shoehorned Ganondorf was

MM is still the best story though
Click to expand...

meatbag said:
Haven't finished MM but I do like the vibes from what I've played. But hell naw on WW and TP. They have plodding stories that weigh the experience down.
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I agree with the criticisms but I wouldn't call BOTW or TOTK's stories any better. Maybe BOTW sits above since it's pretty well executed, but TOTK has some weird/inconsistent shit in it
 
The only good Zelda story is Link’s Awakening because it’s weird and dark yet vague in a way that you can blame its shortcomings on maintaining the mystery.

The rest range from actively bad to… fine. The story exists to frame the gameplay and the iteration of the world we run around in which is okay.
 
MrBones said:
I agree with the criticisms but I wouldn't call BOTW or TOTK's stories any better. Maybe BOTW sits above since it's pretty well executed, but TOTK has some weird/inconsistent shit in it
Click to expand...
sure but there not padded to shit so I still say there a tier above WW or TP
 
  1. Majora's Mask (the GOAT)
  2. Breath of the Wild (Faith restored!)
  3. Ocarina of Time (the other GOAT)
  4. Tears of the Kingdom (haven't completely finished it yet, but this spot feels right)
  5. The Wind Waker (underrated and at its time overhated, just wish it were meatier, introduced bad habits)
  6. Twilight Princess (bland characters, far too focussed on an equally bland story, little to do. Faith shaken)
  7. Skyward Sword (sweet baby Hylia, why.)

(also this is a a ranking taking into account story, gameplay, side activities, dungeons and characters)
 
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1. Ocarina of Time
2. Breath of the Wild
3. Majora's Mask
4. Tears of the Kingdom
5. Twilight Princess
6. Skyward Sword
7. Wind Waker

If we can get a open world Zelda in the future with traditional dungeons — ideally ones placed organically in the world with varying difficulties that we can play in any order and that we can just walk into without a 20 hour long intro sequence with some specific character connected to that dungeon — than that would easily be the GOAT and probably replace OoT as my favorite 3d Zelda. For now though, I don't really see anything topping it.
 
Breath of the Wild
Ocarina of Time
Majora's Mask
Tears of the Kingdom
The Wind Waker
Twilight Princess
Skyward Sword

If Tears had any of the following

  • Open-world dungeons
  • More bosses
  • More interesting landmarks in the depths
  • At least 1 other big sky continent

it'd probably be #1.
 
1. TOTK
2. OOT
3. MM
4. BOTW

5. WW
6. TP

7. SS

I had BOTW above MM prior to TOTK but i don't think i'll ever play BOTW again now that TOTK is a thing.
I think the old 3D zelda formula peaked with the first game and only got worse and worse with each subsequent entry, i'm happy it's over. This franchise was in dire need of something completely different.
 
It's either Totk or Botw, but It's very tough to choose. Totk is amazing, and in a lot of ways just better than Botw. But it also relies too much on Botw, and where it does differ gameplay-wise, I'm pretty mixed on.

Specifically: I don't care for building, which is the core aspect of the game. The ultrahand is novel and cool at first, but the mechanic isn't as deep as first appears, it's just really wide. You can achieve the same results with countless combinations. Where Botw had comparably fewer solutions to most puzzles, players have more limits to overcome, they have to think more creatively. Yet I feel like I heard "I never even thought about doing that" far more often for Botw. Totk has far more ways of solving the same few obstacles, and most of them don't feel as rewarding to overcome.

So if you just really want to build weird machines, then it's great. But I get really tired of building the same things over and over instead of being encouraged to actually think outside of the box. All in all, it's a very technically impressive mechanic, but I just don't feel that the time spent on it was worth it.

And in that way, I think botw is just so much more elegant. It was just as open and free, and achieved it with far fewer and more deliberate systems. But yet there's so much more content built on top of Botw, it's hard to want to go back to Botw.

Rest of list:
  1. BOTW/TOTK
  2. TP
  3. Oot
  4. WW
  5. MM
  6. SS
 
1. OOT (literally the goat)
2. WW (Edges out MM because it has a better balance between the main and side content imo. All-around great game that is more than the sum of its parts)
3. MM (Goat, what else to say. Literal proof that the series was never really shackled to a template, they just didn’t bother to make another game that changes things in the same way than MM)
4. SS (Best dungeons)
5. TP (If this is mid then 99% of games are trash. Game is basic but still very fun and epic)
6. TOTK (better than BOTW, including 2d games it would be 10th, not bad but still too grindy)
7. BOTW (if the whole game was as good as certain moments it would have been fourth overall)
 
Basically what this means is that even on this very site of enthusiasts open air Zelda is preffered by the majority while a somewhat vocal minority like the older formula.

This is why TOTK and BOTW's sales are so good. The mainstream love open worlds and they make up the lion's share of the sales.
 
Kreese said:
Basically what this means is that even on this very site of enthusiasts open air Zelda is preffered by the majority while a somewhat vocal minority like the older formula.

This is why TOTK and BOTW's sales are so good. The mainstream love open worlds and they make up the lion's share of the sales.
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Considering that, for now, non open air is more than half, why are you calling the vocal forum minority?
 
It's either BotW or TotK depending on how I feel at the moment.

TotK is better mechanically but BotW came in like a storm and took me away when it released. I will never forget that period..
Voted TotK for now, but it could be BotW any other day.

Zelda has never been better than it is right now.
 
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