Ranking the 2D Zelda Games

Ranking the 2D Zelda Games

Welcome to the Zelda Countdown Talk! In this talk, I will rank all of the 2D Zelda games, excluding Link Between Worlds, Four Swords, and Four Sword Adventures, since I have never played those games. Thank you.

The Games
The Legend of Zelda
The Adventure of Link
A Link to the Past
Link's Awakening
Oracle of Ages/Seasons
Minish Cap
Phantom Hourglass
Spirit Tracks

Day Planning
Day 1: Number 8/7
Day 2: Number 6/5
Day 3: Number 4
Day 4: Number 3
Day 5: Number 2/1 First Half
Final Day: Number 2/1 Second Half

Out of all of the games listed, I honestly think Minish Cap is the worst. It's good of course, I mean it is a Zelda game, but I enjoyed the others more.

So long Phantom Hourglass since I think it's not as good.

Day 1

Which game will get kicked first?
The Legend of Zelda [ 0 ]
The Adventure of Link [ 0 ]
A Link to the Past [ 0 ]
Link's Awakening [ 0 ]
Oracle of Ages/Seasons [ 1 ]
Minish Cap [ 1 ]
Phantom Hourglass [ 1 ]
Spirit Tracks [ 0 ]

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Hi everybody. It's time for Day 1, and we will reveal the 8th and the 7th Place today. Let's start.


#8: The Adventure of Link

The Adventure of Link was not a bad game. But it has three problems that make it the worst 2D Zelda game of all time.

#1. The Grinding. Really, I would understand the whole grinding in an RPG game. But Grinding and Action doesn't fit at all. Really, you are supposed to beat up different kinds of enemies in different areas in an action game, instead of fighting the same enemies again and again. Some people might appreciate this game for trying something new, but the grinding in this game was even more tedious than early RPGs like Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy 1.

#2. The Difficulty. Anybody who played The Adventure of Link would know that this game is VERY hard. There are many areas that require strict attacking/platforming, to not get damaged and die. The Death Mountain is the hardest and the most unfair part of all. Combine horrendous layout design, with a giant maze which is a pain to go through.

#3. The Cryptic Puzzles. Some of the palaces in this game make you fall down the bottomless pit to even progress. Sometimes, you needed to look up and talk in order to do something. This game would require a lot of trial and error, if you don't have a guide.

While this game tried many fresh ideas (which some would get featured in future games), I would rather play other NES games like Megaman 1, Super Mario Bros. 2, or Metroid, which are much better games than this. The Adventure of Link had to deserve the dead last place.

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#7: Phantom Hourglass

The Nintendo DS had an amazing feature- the touch screen. Thousands of games tried to adapt this feature to make their games better. Of course, Zelda also got this opportunity to prove that Zelda is still strong on the touch screen.

And indeed, the controls of Phantom Hourglass is great. Using the stylus was very fun to utilize. The special weapons were also fun to play with the stylus, and puzzles involving the stylus was great as well.

However, Phantom Hourglass had its bad points on a completely different way. My first complaint is The Temple of the Ocean King. During your adventure, you had to go through this temple multiple times. The problem is that you had to go through all the previous floors again on a subsequent try. I found this very tedious. While some special weapons could make you pass the previous floors with releative ease, it was still tedious.

And while the touch screen in the main game was perfect, the touch screen in the minigames weren't utilized well in my opinion. In the main game, you could just hit and slash your enemies slowly one-by-one, so it wasn't much a problem. The minigames have a strict time limit, which you need to keep in order to get a Heart Container! And when you try to make your actions quickly, you might slash or use your special item on an entirely different area. And that one mistake could make you fail the whole minigame..

I usually don't comment on music on these talks. However, the music in Phantom Hourglass got pretty repetitive for a while, since all dungeons/towns in this game use the same music. Even the original had a seperate music for the final dungeon! It was lazy for the music composers to do that..

This game was overall good. But like The Adventure of Link, there were many better Touch-Screen DS games, like Kirby: Canvas Curse or Elite Beat Agents. There is no reason to play this if you got better DS games.

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Now six games are left. We are covering the 6th and the 5th place tomorrow. Thank you.

Day 1 Over.

Hm, I have a feeling Spirit Tracks might be next. :/ It's probably my third favorite Zelda game, so that kind of sucks. Minish Cap is my least favorite of the 2D games.

I also think Spirit Tracks and Minish Cap are gone next since there really different games and they don't stack up to the other games on the list.

Day 2

Pick your LEAST favorite game.
The Legend of Zelda [ 0 ]
A Link to the Past [ 0 ]
Link's Awakening [ 0 ]
Oracle of Ages/Seasons [ 0 ]
Minish Cap [ 1 ]
Spirit Tracks [ 2 ]

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#6: The Minish Cap

"Mom, thank you for buying this new Zelda game! Can I play it?"
"Sure, honey. You may."

"This game is amazing! The gameplay is nice, the items are really creative, and the graphics are nice as well. Thank you for buying it!"
"It looks like I made the right choice, didn't I?"

"Mom, I'm already halfway through the game! My gaming skills surely have improved since I played Link to the Past!"
"That's nice, honey. You're already halfway? You indeed have some great gaming skills!"

"Honey, you've played this game for over hours! You need to take a break for a while!"
"But I have to collect the Kinstone I missed! That Kinstone is needed to do more extra things, but I can't find it! I have to find the person who would fusion Kinstones with me, but I can't find him!"
"You didn't spend that long of a time when you played Link to the Past.."

"Yay, now that's done and I am in Dark Hyrule Castle! Wait, what? Already?"

"Mom.."
"Why, Honey?"
"Can you please buy me a new game? I already finished The Minish Cap.."
"What?"

And that's that. One of the big problems of Minish Cap is that it was too short. It is just too sad when the gameplay/controls of this game was great, and the game wasn't long enough to make those into use. Also, I didn't like the Kinstone fusions that it took quite a time to find those, and finding the fusioning people could be tedious at sometimes. I like the minish idea, but still, Minish Cap was a missed opportunity.

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#5: The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda for the NES is one of the finest classics ever. Sure, it might look outdated by now, but it was amazing back then. You've got a huge world to explore with lots of secrets to find, which was rare for the games back then!

Zelda 1 had surprisingly great controls for the first game of the series. The dungeons were pretty nice, there was a second quest mode for the replay value, and not everything was easy, making this a masterpiece back then.

While Zelda 1 is still good, I kinda prefer the later games, since I think Zelda 1 had some trial and error puzzles. Sure, it isn't cryptic as Zelda 2's stupid puzzles, but I think you had to do too much trial and error for some extras and secrets. But that problem wasn't too bad, since the game came up with a manual which could guide you. Still, the later games were better, so Zelda 1 remains at the fifth place.

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Half is gone, half is left. We are only eliminating one game tomorrow. Thank you.

Day 2 Over.

Lol, I can imagine myself being in that same situation with the Minish Cap when I was younger. (thing is, I never played it when I was a kid, still, that would totally be me )

I have a feeling the Oracle games are next to go, but it could definitely be Spirit Tracks too. (even though I love that game to death and you shouldn't vote it out Nessness XD)

I don't really know at this point anymore but, I think Link's Awakening might be out next.

Day 3

Pick your LEAST favorite game.
Link to the Past [ 0 ]
Awakening [ 0 ]
Oracles [ 0 ]
Spirit Tracks [ 1 ]

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#4: Spirit Tracks

While the game itself is very simmilar to Phantom Hourglass, Spirit Tracks was a massive improvement from dissapointing Phantom Hourglass.

The dungeons slightly used the items better, the Train was more fun to control than the boat, Controlling Zelda as a Phantom was very fun, the special items were more interesting, you now don't have to traverse every floor of the master dungeon every time, and overall, Phantom Hourglass seems nothing compared to Spirit Tracks.

Even on its own regard, Spirit Tracks is amazing. It is nice to see Link and Zelda adventuring together, and the game itself has some humor to make the story interesting. The gameplay is pretty solid now, so now it is one of the best games which uses the touch screen. But one flaw really brings the game down, as always.

Phantom Hourglass wrote:And while the touch screen in the main game was perfect, the touch screen in the minigames weren't utilized well in my opinion. In the main game, you could just hit and slash your enemies slowly one-by-one, so it wasn't much a problem. The minigames have a strict time limit, which you need to keep in order to get a Heart Container! And when you try to make your actions quickly, you might slash or use your special item on an entirely different area. And that one mistake could make you fail the whole minigame...

Sadly, Spirit Tracks didn't fix this. Since this game just gives out full Heart Containers instead of Pieces of Hearts, you must now go through minigames to get them. But still, it has a strict time limit/health bar, and you might still get hasty that you might miss the whole minigame. If this was fixed, this would be the third place, so it is pretty sad.

Now only three games our left. Stay tuned.

Day 3 Over

At least you said Spirit Tracks is amazing, because it really is. Although I'd put it at #2 out of the 8 Zelda games you're listing.

A Link to the Past is the one I wanted to win but, I feel like it's the next one out.

I'm thinking it's the Oracle games myself.

Day 4

Choose your LEAST favorite game.
A Link to the Past [ 1 ]
Awakening [ 0 ]
Oracles [ 2 ]

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#3: Oracle of Ages/Oracle of Seasons
The third/second/first places were very hard to decide, because they were all masterpieces. But I made up my mind, and the Oracle Games are in third place.

The gameplay is solid. While it has perfect gameplay of a 2D Zelda games, it has the diversity and the added quantity of the 3D Zelda games. The fact that you can change the time and the season makes adventuring even more fun to do. But the best thing is that you could link up those two games. I hated how some games which was released in pairs were pretty much made to sell more copies of that game. But the Oracle Games aren't like that. You could actually buy both of them and link these games, so you could play these two games as a full-fledged adventure. It could possibily be the longest Zelda game yet.

But the version split also hurt the game, sadly. Ages was more based on puzzles, and Seasons was more based on combat. But due to this, these games lost their balance slightly. Seasons didn't really have fun puzzles to do with, and Ages has some notorious dungeons with puzzles, like Jabu-Jabu's Valley. (It's quite the 2D Version of Water Temple, sadly.) I also didn't like how some of the music were just recycled from Link's Awakening.

But I still consider the Oracle Games as masterpieces, for having solid gameplay and having a large amount of replay value. It's just too bad that it was released at the end of GBC's lifespan. If it was released on Game Boy Advance, perhaps I might raised it one rank higher. Still, play those games. They are amazing.

Day 4 Over.