"Some people think that the Zelda series has started to decline with the most recent titles, Twilight Princess and Phantom Hourglass, but I disagree. The Legend of Zelda started going downhill way before that! I actually have a rather unique perspective on the Zelda series and that stems from one simple fact. You see, my favorite Zelda game and the one that I think is actually the best one in the series is in fact The Legend of Zelda."
"A lot of you wonder why I feel such love and adoration for such an old and seemingly obsolete game. It's a fair question and to be honest I'm not sure I can express it in words. The game was a revelation at the time it came out. There had been adventure games before, but nothing like this. It was the enormous world, the special weapons, the idea that a player had a choice of where to go and what to do that made this game a cut above all others. A friend and I played it together, making our own maps, tag-teaming the dungeons, going on my crazy hunches -- which my friend was always skeptical of (like finding the Red Ring in a room invisible on the map; he didn't want to waste the bomb). It was an enthralling experience, and that probably lends to my warm feelings for it. Perhaps you just had to be there. Still, there is no questioning the quality of the game. The level design, graphics, superb musical score, everything about the game exudes class and style. It was unprecedented at the time and, as I would come to learn, something that would never be repeated."As he goes on to say, it was with the following interation that Zelda immediately broke the mold of what made the original so great. The exploration was greatly reduced, things were much more linear, and some concepts the original had are long gone. Take the lasers shooting from the sword: Last time we even saw this ability was in The Adventure of Link, and even then it was limited as you could no longer shoot it all the way across the screen. Wait a second, isn't OoT the pinnacle of the Zelda franchise?
"There has been a lot of talk on the site recently about whether or not
the venerable Ocarina of Time is in fact overrated. One might think
that I'm inclined to agree that it is, but I actually don't. I think
Ocarina of Time is a true masterpiece and deserves every ounce of
respect and acclaim it gets. But how can that be when I have already
asserted that I still believe the original Legend of Zelda game to be
superior to all others? It's simple really. Ocarina of Time is not
overrated, but other Zelda games are underrated, especially the first
one. Ocarina is an amazing game. At the time, translating a franchise
to 3-D successfully was a big achievement, and it wasn't always done
well (still isn't in some cases). Ocarina captured every bit of the
feel and spirit of Zelda and ushered it into a new age. When all is
said and done, however, I'd still rather play the original for all the
reasons I've already mentioned. That and the music is better (I've
never been much of a fan of the redone Hyrule themes when compared to
the original). So, in all respect due to my colleagues and readers,
Ocarina deserves its high place in history, but other Zelda games
deserve a place above even that."
As for my thoughts? Zelda is on a decline, but I am not so sure it started after the original release. While he makes a lot of valid points, and there really are a lot of things from the original game I want to see make a return (such as the truly open world), there are some things that I think happened that would make a title such as A Link to the Past much more reasonable for the start of the decline. In either case, I applaud Brian for his thoughts and am glad to see a perspective that doesn't seem to be looked at too often. Truly, The Legend of Zelda was a masterpiece beyond comprehension.
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aLttP is pretty much the best game ever. How anyone can say it's a "decline" from the original is beyond me.
I totally disagree with the decline. I think each game has their own great moments and feelings.
My top Zelda games:
Hyrule Fantasy
A Link to the Past
Ocarina of Time
Majora's Mask (I think this game was underrated)
The wind waker (A big twist in a Zelda environment but it is still great)
Minish cap
Twilight Princess (This one I believe captured the essence and feeling the best of what a Zelda game should be)
Erimgard, the big word you can throw up here is "linear". Alttp is truely a great game, as is OOT, and obviously in my eyes, MM. However, LOZ is the last game that is truly "open world". There are very limited maps, and the game doesn't tell you what to do or where to go. Such as getting the red ring in an invisible room that doesn't appear on the map. You will never see something like that again. The enemies provided just the right balance of difficulty and strategy. The shooting sword was brilliant, something we will never see again.
Alttp is a great game in it's own regard, but it also normalized the entire series. Every game is a rehash of Alttp. Until then, each game had it's own unique feel, all somewhat tied to what the original LOZ gave us. Then Alttp came and made an entirely new mold. Great game as it is, it forced everything into three hits and it dies, completely linear where it tells you pretty much everything you need to know to beat the game, instead of letting us figure it out.
Alttp is a great game, so is OOT, but there is a reason my top two favorite games are Majora's Mask and The Legend of Zelda: They both encourage exploration.
Not every battle has to be a revolution
There's nothing wrong with promoting evolution.
(Not including handhelds or fourswords, not enough space :P. There's still stuff worth talking about them, though.)
LoZ: opened up our imaginations and brought the series to life.
Zelda2: opened up the gates to innovation, successfully encouraging an evolved combat system.
Lttp: the correct subtle details were added, so that the player could be distracted by things they didn't realize were fun, like hurting chickens and cutting grass.
OoT: showed how to give this fantasy a living body. I mistook footage of this game, as a child, as a beautiful fairytale movie. It was that good.
MM: gave the body a soul and emotion. This game defines how true narrative video game immersion is done; not visually a la metroid prime, but with intriguing characters and a unique progression method.
TWW: the gates of creatively opened to flood in an awe-inspiring, vibrant art style which made the fantasy clean and beautiful. The size and the sea one had to traverse augmented the Epic with a grand scope and godly draw distances.
TP: 40 hours of a pure, epic quest which never truly got dull. Some slow sections only existed to keep the game's pacing through the 40 hours steady and seemless. Showcased what could be done with Zelda's main quest: pure awesome, and lots of it.
In the future: (hopefully) pure awesome quest with side quests similar to majora, so to add some properly immersive, non-linearity to the series, for those who miss the restraintless original. Let's just wait till E3. If they don't say anything there, at least we have an excuse to get an answer out of Reggie :)
It is useless to compare the greatness of the games to each other as wholes. Nothing can be learned from the games this way.
But it's still okay for one person to have preference for one title above the others. Humans do that.
I'm in the camp that believes it declined with TP.
The first 6 (canon) games are, as far as I'm concerned, the best in the series, with LA and MM topping the list. Zelda II only receives hate for the same reason FFII, CVII and SMB2 received hate, they were different.
Wind Waker made up for my slight disappointment of the Oracle games, and FSA and Minish Cap are also pretty good...
But Twilight Princess was so easy it was boring, and so tiring I didn't have the will to play it until I was at the final bosses. The controls, I felt, were mapped relatively poorly to the Wii remote, and I'm going to buy the GCN version as soon as I get the opportunity to do so.
Phantom Hourglass was also a disappointment for pretty much the same reasons, so easy it's boring, making it dull, however the controls for the game were mapped better to the DS than TP's were to the Wii, and I soon adapted to the touch screen controls.
Nate, I agree that LoZ was the least linear of the games, but to say that every game is just a rehash on aLttP wouldn't imply that aLttP is a delcination from LoZ...just that the decline began after aLttP, which I can, to an extent, agree with.
Yes, aLttP was more linear than LoZ, but it still provided some free roaming. The Dark World dungeons could be beaten out of "order" with ease, for the most part. A few items were necessary to continue, but by no means were you required to defeat the bosses in a certain order, and some temples could even be played without getting the previous temple's item.
A Link to the Past receives hate for the same reason Twilight Princess does; it's just a prettier package for the same-old, same-old. Aside from the Light/Dark World idea, is there really anything from that game that stands out from the original LoZ from a gameplay perspective? Doesn't help that there was pretty much no difficult puzzle-solving. (Which, coming from someone who started with the N64 era, is a massive, massive flaw.)
That's why games such as LA, OoT, and MM get the praise they get- they took a formula and added something new:
LA added REAL puzzles
OoT put the classic gameplay in a more realistic, 3D world
MM I shouldn't have to expand on
In addition, TWW was a massive experiment in the art direction for the series, even though in terms of gameplay it wasn't all that different from OoT and it didn't improve on any of the steps taken by MM (although it did provide a similar level of character interaction).
People rate Zelda games in terms of what they do for the franchise. That's why they don't like AoL (they didn't like the direction it went in), MM (they don't like the timer mechanics or how few dungeons it has), TWW (they want their realistic graphics), TP (it wasn't all that exciting, despite the hype).
I'm not so sure it's any of that... I think it has more to do with the fact that we've stopped getting shocked. And when we do, we react badly, like with Wind Waker. An amazingly graphic and complex game that's usually brushed aside as being childish and not true to the Zelda theme. But the thing was, it was supposed to be a great change, just like OoT and the original LoZ.
When LoZ came out, people were shocked, amazed and delighted at the ingenuity expressed, the depth of the storyline compared to other games, and the innovation applied post Mario. OoT was the same way. It was a breakthrough into 3D, took loved aspects of the game and created more key points that made people positively giddy.
Wind Waker was supposed to be the next step. And people were too set in their views. Cartoonish, immature, scattered, confusing, what happened to Link being the bearer of Courage... I've heard all of those and more applied to WW. I think people should have, instead, been looking at the complex, far future storyline, new takes on old items (people didn't mind it in OoT), beautiful art that's a step beyond 3d. And most of all, the smoothness of the design - compare it to OoT, everything practically glides - the bright, new color spectrum that was supposed to be key to it being a tale of a younger Link in a threatened world as opposed to the dark Hyrule that all previous Link's fought in; like... Wind Waker has the pure love and determination in Link throughout, while in OoT, Link kind of has it but he's already burdened, and the world becomes consumed by the time you open the door to the Master Sword.
But fans across the world didn't see it like that. Didn't want to see it like that. I think we have become so picky that we look for flaws rather than taking delight in the bright, new toys. The disdain was repeated in Twilight Princess. People loved the details and graphics - until they learn of the new, horrible Twili realm, and that oh, Link turns into a wolf! Totally NOT Zelda! There's a new bad guy whose is not Ganon! Oh, the dismay that ran through people's minds when Midna spat out the name "Zant." Didn't matter that he was a marionette to Ganondorf's will - and oh, that word, doesn't it bring images of past Zelda's to mind, where Ganon's plot is all about pulling strings, or better yet, himself? You have to look for the unadultured parts, things that you love, not complain because you're all selfish.
The only Zelda I had a complaint about that I secretly didn't mind was Oracle of Ages for GB, and that had nothing to do with the series and everything to do with the fact that I couldn't beat it.
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Zelda games'll start to decline when the true, classic gaming style and feel of the storyline etc get changed. I doubt they ever will but I can't help but think they're starting to because of the consoles and new controls. I've mentioned to all innocent ears that have passed my way that I refuse to let Link become right-handed.
True most people think OoT is over-rated, and TP too easy. These are my favourite two games and I'm drawn into them because of the storyline and characters. Brian is right, OoT is a masterpiece, and TP - admitadly, was easy in some areas - but was a challenge and beautiful by means of music and detail.