LoZ is one of my favorite series. They made a fairly unique hero, left handed? sure it's a basic sotry, ganon's pissed, zelda's in trouble, link gets a sword, link bets on ganon, link wins, zelda is safe.

However, the games have appeal idk know what it really is, idk, i love them, and idk know why, or how to defend them. However they have a strong fan base which is odd for me, most games that have that I dont really like.

One thing irrelivent to the argument but I must mention is, in TP link is left handed in the gamecube version but not the wii version. Nintendo fucked up. yes I know that all the visual data was just flipped to make it easier on people, but damnit nintendo link uses his left hand, you fucked it up before in Link to the past I believe when ever he fased left he was suddenly right handed. Fix this nintendo, next zelda title you release make damn sure he is left handed, I dont care if it's "hard" on the player, we will deal with it, one way or another.

LV Solace:
LoZ is one of my favorite series. They made a fairly unique hero, left handed? sure it's a basic sotry, ganon's pissed, zelda's in trouble, link gets a sword, link bets on ganon, link wins, zelda is safe.

However, the games have appeal idk know what it really is, idk, i love them, and idk know why, or how to defend them. However they have a strong fan base which is odd for me, most games that have that I dont really like.

One thing irrelivent to the argument but I must mention is, in TP link is left handed in the gamecube version but not the wii version. Nintendo fucked up. yes I know that all the visual data was just flipped to make it easier on people, but damnit nintendo link uses his left hand, you fucked it up before in Link to the past I believe when ever he fased left he was suddenly right handed. Fix this nintendo, next zelda title you release make damn sure he is left handed, I dont care if it's "hard" on the player, we will deal with it, one way or another.

The whole reason for the flip was to make Link right handed, because the majority of people are right handed and Nintendo thought it would be disorienting to swing his sword with the Wii remote if Link were left handed.

Aries_Split:
Alright. First of all, along with Mario 64, it was the first to do a 3D game RIGHT. Much of the praise also comes for it's excellent Game-play. The Sword combat was top notch, as was aiming in First Person view. The fact that I can go back and play OOT, and it controls better than most modern games is a pretty big thing. The Graphics are beautiful, as is the soundtrack. I stand by the fact that OOT had the strongest soundtrack of any game, ever. And this is all technical. The game had a very cinematic presentation, and the story, while not very original, was good. The boss fights were all clever, and there were very few, if any, fights you could win by hammering the attack button.

All in all, OOT was revolutionary 10 years ago, and has withstood the test of time to remain one of the greatest games of all time.

I remember playing Descent and Quake, both full 3d games (Ocarina used a big 2d texturemap for the world in some parts of the game) which predate Ocarina by a combined five years. They both had tight, intuitive controls while I thought Ocarina's were horribly clunky and awkward (this coming from a guy who finished Tomb Raider). The graphics were absolutely hideous from the perspective of a PC gamer of the era (We had these fancy things called Voodoo Graphics). The music was merely above average and I can name several games offhand that totally smack it down in that department.

Bottom line is, if you weren't relatively new to video games in general (and the LoZ series in particular) and were there when it was released, you really didn't think it was such hot shit. I have similar feelings toward one of my first games, Starcontrol 2, even though I can recognize that the game has a few serious flaws. Ocarina worshipers don't even acknowledge that it has any.

@ Graustein I know why nintendo did it, I'm just saying they fucked up. I've tried playing LoZ:Tp left handed, it's harder, yes but I also use my hand for the grand total of holding that really hard bread at restaurants while my right hand with a knife cuts it. That and typing about a thid of the letters.

My point being that I think it would have been a more realistic game, if they had just kept link left handed. Even doing so mucha s jut keeping the controls the same, but having link be left handed doing left handed thing to our right handed imputs. It just bothers me how they tooka character with a unique defnging aspect and broke it off to make it more user freindly. Yes it was likely a financialy decision, but it still bothers me.

ANother thing ont hat is.. well Linkis not human, he is Hylian. The transforming bit always bothered me. for the same reasons as above.

EDIT: not realistic, more historically acurate to the games canon.

OOT by far has a good soundtrack, but the best sound tracks ever have been from squaresoft. Mainly FF7 and FF8. Even if square puts out a smoldering pile of crap as a game it usually has a great soundtrack. Well that is atleast if Nobuo Uematsu is doing the soundtrack composition.

OOT was a great game and it had its flaws. The flute playing was annoying. I agree with most of what your saying. but it's not the greatist game ever. My favs of the series were deff OOT and A link to the past.

I was just having a coffee and it suddenly occurred me why I can't accept the OoT best game EvAr hype.

Okay so OoT (and all the other Zelda games I guess) is fun. Really fun. But it could be the most fun game in whole damn universe and I still wouldn't call it the greatest, because when we get down to it, it's shallow.

Yeah I know it's a classic hero tale and as one it's well executed but shouldn't the pinnacle of the gaming art be more then that? What exactly does Zelda communicate about the human condition that isn't a massive cliche? The (hypothetical) greatest game ever would be a fun emotional journey (which OoT is) but also shouldn't it make you look at things in a different light? Change the way you think about the world and about yourself.

When so many other games have tried to really say something important (Planescape Torment, Bioshock) it feels wrong to hold up something as childish and simple as OoT as the shining light of brilliance.

i really like the series and think most are really fun. but i can see where it can grind a lot of people's gears. i sometimes can't stand gameplay where everything seems spelled out, it's almost condescending.

Ah big love for OoT from me I've probably completed it more times then any other game, I even have it installed on my PC (Project64, OoT high res-texture pak, Xbox360 controller FTW!!)
In fact I can't think of a single complaint at no point during the game did anything strike me as negative IMO of course not everyone is going to feel the same way.
Loved the music and the combat and how you really did feel more powerfull when you became an adult especially loved stealthing in to Gerudo fortress and the training grounds for the Ice arrows there was just some much side stuff in the game and the fact you could jump over the gate in Gerudo vally and get all the way to the spirit temple as a kid and the game wouldn't fuck up.
It even handled first and third person perfectly.

Digitaldreamer7:
OOT by far has a good soundtrack, but the best sound tracks ever have been from squaresoft. Mainly FF7 and FF8.

OOT was a great game and it had its flaws. The flute playing was annoying. I agree with most of what your saying. but it's not the greatist game ever. My favs of the series were deff OOT and A link to the past.

I think the flute playing was part of the problem. Not a fan of FF7 but 8,9,and 10 were awesome, and the soundtracks were equally imaginative, where, although Zelda is very different to those games, I found very little imagination in the plot, as it was a kind of extension to the mario game standard plot, and the soundtrack was average at best.

tobyornottoby:

That fish endboss of the water temple ;_; I couldn't figure how to kill him with Fierce Deity

whilst on the platform, look for bubbles on the surface of the water to locate him, shoot it with an arrow to stun it then change into a zora. jump into the water, swim over to him and use the electric shield to hurt him. get back on the platform and change back to human. keep doing it till he dies (should take about 4 hits)

There's reallyno need to play them all because they all have the exact same format: Going through a tutorial dungeon, then heading through eight more dungeons to collect items, tools,weapons and whatever treasure the bosses happen to have in their pockets at the time. The fighting is even worse, because you can mash the attack button all you want, but there will still be someone who is either unkillable or manages to sneak up on you at the last minute. Also, restarting from the beginning with all the monsters respawned when you die is a pain in the ass as well.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xngAfKhaTIg#
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DF9BRi2EZdY&feature=related
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=25wN7W6scdM&feature=related

The music is amazing

Edit: how could i forget this
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ZPpGdt1xQ&feature=related

personally I don't like it. I find the repetition irritating, the 'flute' motif of the title theme is underdeveloped and the underlying theme serves no purpose.
the piano sounds are weak and dull, and i just hated the forest theme.

What the heck are people talking about with a flute? I dont remember any flute. There was an Ocarina. As in the Title. Id hardly call it a flute thou.

For me, OoT was the very first game i ever played, so im kinda biased towards the series. I can say, however, That it is, in my opinion the best Zelda game ive played. and yes, i have played almost every one, with the exception of Link to the past, which i cant find anywhere.

There were a few reasons i still love this game. First off, as previously mentioned, the controls were great, especially while sword fighting in focus mode. (Z targeting) Second, The levels got progressively harder. (WATER TEMPLE FTL) Third, They hid some of the secrets ridiculously well. A trait that most modern day games fail at very badly. Fourth, They required you to go back to places you had been in order to see certain things that were important to the story. (The "under the well" mini dungeon) Also, they made it exceedingly easy to get around, Giving you songs that warped you just about anywhere you needed to be, And you only had to do these things once to get the songs, + if you just wanted to run around, you had Epona. Fifth, Every boss had some trick to beating it, and almost every one required the use of the dungeons item, making no object obsolete. (Boss of water temple, Boss of Shadow temple, Boss of Desert temple, Boss of Fire temple, Boss of Forest temple, Etc, Etc.)

I could go on, but from here on it would be repeating and they would be a stretch.

As for the other games. I only played LoZ: links awakening once, and the copy i have doesnt hold saves anymore. But i liked it when i played it. The only game i really didnt like was Majoras mask, cause i didnt like feeling like i was rushing the whole time. Phantom hourglass was overly repetative, but it was fun at times. thats about it.

OoT's level design won me over. Absolutely flawless throughout. Excellent gameplay as has been previously mentioned was also a winner, so I can't see how it's "repetitive and annoying".
But that's my opinion.
Also, the fishing minigame was AMAZINGLY addictive.

Cyberionius:
What the heck are people talking about with a flute? I dont remember any flute. There was an Ocarina. As in the Title. Id hardly call it a flute tho

granted i forgot the ocarina thing in my listening of the youtube video, but considering that it is not an ocarina either,merely a midi sound and i play the flute so i at least know what that sounds like. tho it probably doesn't sound much like an ocarina either.

galletea:

Cyberionius:
What the heck are people talking about with a flute? I dont remember any flute. There was an Ocarina. As in the Title. Id hardly call it a flute tho

granted i forgot the ocarina thing in my listening of the youtube video, but considering that it is not an ocarina either,merely a midi sound and i play the flute so i at least know what that sounds like. tho it probably doesn't sound much like an ocarina either.

Hated Wind Waker (good game, just COULD NOT get past the art), loved Twilight Princess and Ocarina of Time. I generally like the Zelda series (wife LOVES it), but I can see how for some it wouldn't appeal to them. I think some of the criticism thrown the series' way (especially OoT's stupid water temple) is deserved, but no less or more than any other popular series (God of War, Pokemon, Halo are also revered but flawed, in some way or another)

galletea:

Aries_Split:
Ocarina of Time is the greatest game ever made.

/thread.

Care to elaborate?

I just watch the ZP from last week and you will get the jist of it.

galletea:
I found it repetitive and annoying. I didn't like the repetitive music and I couldn't relate to the characters or the story. I found Twilight Princess to be an improvement but still couldn't get into it.

Dude, it was N64. Relating to characters was a hard thing to do on that console. What Ocarina had, was a f**king FANTASTIC story for its time. And, at the time, it was huge, immersive (probably one of the most open ended games of the 90s), the sound was brilliant (you played a damn instrument!), and you traveled through time... which was awesome!

Granted, if there were voice overs or something you might have had a change of heart on the character relations and stuff.

I hated the water temple though.

I'm a fan of the earlier Zelda titles like A Link to the Past which is my favorite in the series, Ocarina of Time did a fantastic job for taking the series into the 3D era, and Majora's Mask took the series into a new unique direction and done a great job at it. Most of the later Zelda titles that have been previously released seem to rehash the formula alot and just add a new coat of paint with new gameplay mechanics. Wind Waker had a really nice cel-shaded art direction with the same old solid Zelda gameplay and offered sailing for exploration which I enjoyed, but the game was still not much different from its predesscors. Twilight Princess went back into the series Ocarina of Time roots, the game had a bit more of a darker theme and offered the ability to turn Link into a Wolf with Midna riding above you, while the gameplay was still good and the new ability to turn into a Wolf was well executed the game still rehashed the same formula with little to no improvements. Hell, the game world seemed emptier, you spent to much time chasing farm animals, the game had no voice overs, and the music was still composed with midi chip file and synthesizers. I think the Zelda series needs an overhaul as the game series is getting stale. There was my opinion on the games.

BTW, there's no big deal or problem with not liking a huge and acclaimed franchise as its natural for one to have a different opinion from the majority of other gamers.

mg66368:
the game had no voice overs,

Many gamers, myself included, think voice acting would be bad for Zelda games. I think Nintendo is following that ideal. Metroid Prime 3 managed to pull it off somehow. Maybe because Samus never talks. Yet if you did the same thing to a Zelda game(Link NEVER talks to begin with, even with no voice acting), I dont know. I cant picture it working well. Something I cant put my finger on.

The thing that really caught me with LoZ, as was mentioned in one of the earlier posts, was the 'hero' aspect. The first of the series I'd played was Link to the Past, which I personally hold as the pinnacle of the series. Starting as a kid racing to protect his uncle, ending as a kid battling through the light world as well as the dark, it plays right into any rise of the hero fantasies you could ever have.

Unfortunately, not all of the series had this same feeling. Ocarina of Time felt canny to me, sort of like a game thrown together for the sake of getting a game together. The heroic feeling felt like it was being forced down your throat instead of experienced.

Windwaker was pretty fun. It felt a little mechanical until about the end when, ah, events and places of the past started to become shown to you. Twilight Princess was fun, and had many truly epic and heroic feeling moments, but the game play was extremely annoying with the wolf mechanic. Having to watch that little cut scene over, and over...

Probably just a little rose colored glass in my vision, but Link to the Past is hard to beat.

ReepNeep:

Aries_Split:
Alright. First of all, along with Mario 64, it was the first to do a 3D game RIGHT. Much of the praise also comes for it's excellent Game-play. The Sword combat was top notch, as was aiming in First Person view. The fact that I can go back and play OOT, and it controls better than most modern games is a pretty big thing. The Graphics are beautiful, as is the soundtrack. I stand by the fact that OOT had the strongest soundtrack of any game, ever. And this is all technical. The game had a very cinematic presentation, and the story, while not very original, was good. The boss fights were all clever, and there were very few, if any, fights you could win by hammering the attack button.

All in all, OOT was revolutionary 10 years ago, and has withstood the test of time to remain one of the greatest games of all time.

I remember playing Descent and Quake, both full 3d games (Ocarina used a big 2d texturemap for the world in some parts of the game) which predate Ocarina by a combined five years. They both had tight, intuitive controls while I thought Ocarina's were horribly clunky and awkward (this coming from a guy who finished Tomb Raider). The graphics were absolutely hideous from the perspective of a PC gamer of the era (We had these fancy things called Voodoo Graphics). The music was merely above average and I can name several games offhand that totally smack it down in that department.

Bottom line is, if you weren't relatively new to video games in general (and the LoZ series in particular) and were there when it was released, you really didn't think it was such hot shit. I have similar feelings toward one of my first games, Starcontrol 2, even though I can recognize that the game has a few serious flaws. Ocarina worshipers don't even acknowledge that it has any.

With there being so many OoT worshippers, that might be the answer; No other game could pull people into gaming like that ;)

I only played a few Zelda games. I enjoyed Ocarina, but I am certainly not one of those people who are going to get all pissed at you for not liking it.

I like the series, but the later games have disappointed me(Windwaker, Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass etc.) Mostly due to the fact that they stayed on the cartoony feel of gameplay and visuals.

@aries_split

thanks for that

Think the midi sounds more like a high pitched flute tho. But that might just be me.

Gamer137:

mg66368:
the game had no voice overs,

Many gamers, myself included, think voice acting would be bad for Zelda games. I think Nintendo is following that ideal. Metroid Prime 3 managed to pull it off somehow. Maybe because Samus never talks. Yet if you did the same thing to a Zelda game(Link NEVER talks to begin with, even with no voice acting), I dont know. I cant picture it working well. Something I cant put my finger on.

I konw the reason that Link has no voice in order to project the player's personality into Link but I'm talking about the other characters and NPCs. There's just no excuse for that at all.

I am a fan of the series and i love all the games (excluding the handheld especially Phourglass) i find them intellegent and fun plus the original Zelda game on the NES was the first game I played and beat (plus it got me into games) so at the risk of sounding like a huge nerd the Zelda series holds a special place in my heart. And I don't care if you don't like the Zelda series it's your opinion.

Dictaternutz:
I tend to ignore Majora's Mask because I found it to be severly stupid

I'm not even going to say it.

As for why Zelda is so popular, it's pretty much because most of the games revolve around you being essentially a chosen holy knight, going around fighting demon-like bad guys with both magic powers and skillful physical attacks, usually to do good deeds or rescue maidens. It's a stereotypical medieval hero fantasy, much like stuff in fantasy novels like LOTR, but in the form of a game. A generally very well-executed one, as it turns out.

Games like Majora's Mask (and Wind Waker to some extent) that don't really fit this system are, unsurprisingly, not as popular. I think the ones that break the stereotype are a lot more interesting...but I can't claim the others aren't fun.

guyy:

Dictaternutz:
I tend to ignore Majora's Mask because I found it to be severly stupid

I'm not even going to say it.

As for why Zelda is so popular, it's pretty much because most of the games revolve around you being essentially a chosen holy knight, going around fighting demon-like bad guys with both magic powers and skillful physical attacks, usually to do good deeds or rescue maidens. It's a stereotypical medieval hero fantasy, much like stuff in fantasy novels like LOTR, but in the form of a game. A generally very well-executed one, as it turns out.

Games like Majora's Mask (and Wind Waker to some extent) that don't really fit this system are, unsurprisingly, not as popular. I think the ones that break the stereotype are a lot more interesting...but I can't claim the others aren't fun.

Majora's Mask is my 3rd favorite Zelda game. My first is OoT, my second is Wind Waker (Great game, I think many were turned off by it's art style, but I fucking LOVED it. Twilight Princess is good. Not great, but quite good.