EVERY Zelda Game Ranked from Worst to Best

this video is sponsored by keeps more on them later zelda the legend of sure has been going on for a while and it's a testament to the talent at nintendo and their flexibility that this franchise has put out some truly incredible games over the last 36 years or so if you're worried that nintendo's recent move to push one of these games out into the world roughly every year is gonna be a problem then you're in for a treat since i've decided to rank every single zelda game from worst to best and as it turns out there's more than 30 of them discounting remakes so the argument that a zelda game every year will affect the overall quality of the franchise something that's happened for more than three decades it just doesn't hold water and yeah that is every zelda game all the spin-offs all the bad ones all the non-canon crap that has link or other characters doing strange things in pursuit of entertainment everything except for japanese exclusives because that goes down a rabbit hole that i'm not willing to do right now we're gonna go fast because i don't wanna spend eight hours talking about zelda games i'm just not built like that now i'm a little more fragile and being a man who much like two out of three guys before the age of 35 will experience some form of male pattern baldness i need to take care of myself sometimes luckily this video has the perfect answer to that and thanks to this video sponsors keeps your head and mind have never been in safer hands these guys are very clever when it comes to preventing hair loss with their fda approved treatment that comes with years of experience and loads of successful cases under their belts in fact they're so smart that they know that hair loss is different from one guy to the next which is why their treatment comes in three different variants depending on what kind of hair loss you're experiencing plus you can get everything shipped directly to your door so you don't have to wait for the world to not be so terrible before you can fix your hair keeps this treatment packages are already cheaper than their competitors but with the deal they're running with me you can save even more money for a limited time offer you can go to keeps.com rabbit or click the link in the description to receive 50 off your first order stop hair loss now before it's too late anyway we've got a lot of zelda to get through obviously we've got to start with the cdi games because there's nothing else that comes close to propping up the deepest depths of this franchise this is just one of the perks of talking about all of the zelda games at once since i don't have to think too hard with these ones i do need to split them up for this ranking though and doing that does require a bit more thought basically zelda's adventure hasn't got the same meme cutscenes that the other two do and is roughly the same level of terrible albeit from a top-down perspective and so if it hasn't even got the one tiny redeeming feature that makes the experience of playing these games somewhat bearable then it's an easy decision and now you should hopefully appreciate how hard it is to split the two remaining cdi games wand of gamalon and faces of evil are pretty much equally bad at being zelda games and are missing so much of the quality and polish that philips aren't able to replicate from nintendo honestly they're both so bad that i don't really care which one goes above the other but i think i just like the cutscenes more in wand of gamelon yeah we're getting petty but i'm splitting hairs here and faces of evil isn't quite as funny so yeah 30th it is leaving wand of gamelon as the winner of the hotly contested cdi showdown which is partly so to celebrate but i can at least appreciate how this game lets you play zelda and yeah i know that it shares this with zelda's adventure obviously but you need to know that these are fiercely surface level positives and the best thing that being zelda gives you is some extra sass in the cutscenes you've killed me [Music] good that's some cool where next after the cdi games how about the zelda watch made by now sonic which is yeah it's a watch that plays a zelda game from the late 80s bizarre to think that it precedes the vast majority of what we know this franchise to be and would be the first zelda on a handheld device if it came out a few months earlier issue is that the screen is too small to do anything substantial and it's like a really basic version of zelda one and so coming in fractionally above the zelda timepiece is the actual first zelda handheld where they decided to put 100 more game into their watch and created the zelda game and watch not to be confused with the thing they put out last year which is just a funky retro way of playing three previously released zelda games i'm talking about the zelda version of typical game and watch gameplay kind of self-explanatory at that point it's the same idea as the game and watch games just with more zelda ain't more complicated than that which only serves to remind me of other times that zelda games have been something so clearly not legend of zelda but with art and asset taken from zelda games and do you remember the twilight princess picross game i love picross that's maybe why it's as high as sixth bottom but again a hard game to discuss in too much detail because the components of the gameplay all the pick crossing you do isn't unique to this game they didn't invent it you feel squares in and make zelda characters it's hardly rocket science what is rocket science is giving tingle a game that will one day propel him to the top of the zelda standings always felt weird seeing one of these games come out as if tingle was the number one candidate in all of zelda for a spin-off game and yet tingle's balloon fight is just a version of balloon fight except tingles in it some inventive uses of the ds's touchscreen aside that's pretty much it surprisingly tame as far as tingle was concerned like i know he uses those balloons to fly but from the title i want to see him punch a balloon cast your mind back far enough until you reach 2015 and nintendo were doing so badly for themselves that they decided to fill the zelda void that was rapidly growing with triforce heroes a creative light-hearted adventure that is strangely obsessed with all things fashion that trips over a problem that i've got of a few zelda games out there it's focus on multiplayer i suppose it's a nice shaker but unless you've got two friends who are willing to join you every step of the way you're playing a compromised video game since it doesn't really work as well with single player the other links are replaced by mannequins with empty eyes and not gonna lie i kinda hate that and the more i think about the best tingle game the more i hate what i'm looking at freshly picked tingles rosie ruperland is at least its own creature that does take inspiration from traditional zelda games but mostly digs down on the whole tingle is a greedy angle that wind waker goes with where there's money gods and tingle with boobs all right look it's a weird game and i don't really know how to feel about it but i suppose it could be stranger and we should be grateful that it isn't hey do you remember when the wii had hollow peripherals that didn't fundamentally change how games were played like the steering wheel and the zapper yeah funny time i know but nintendo had to convince someone that these lumps of plastic were worth buying and so link's crossbow training was created so that you can train link to use a crossbow for a conflict that never really comes or at least nothing that uses a crossbow for there's actually quite a lot to this game and it's surprisingly fleshed out for what it is the game is having you do but it's still roughly 90 minutes of link of a crossbow and if there's one thing you can say about zelda 2 it'll be that you won't be able to complete it quickly right away this game can be brutally hard at times in a way that basically no zelda game has done before or since and that doesn't really vibe with me all that well i do appreciate that there's a mainline zelda game out there that is completely different to anything else in the franchise down to earning experience points to invest in abilities and spells but i've never truly enjoyed playing zelda 2. it's too unforgiving for me to love it for a long time i had a very similar opinion of the original legend of zelda albeit for a different reason zelda 1 isn't a hard game but it is an open world game created about the need to reward players for exploring the whole world it does feel like an adventure i'll give it that but one that lacks a directional focus and can be hilariously overwhelming for new players more of a victim of its time where word of mouth and magazine articles would have made life easier but now it's just kind of exhausting iconic as though can't say it isn't 2d zelda has ebbed and flowed a lot with quality over the years as the franchise has played around with concepts and ideas that just about warrant their own game and when a link to the past was remade for the gba they also decided to bundle in the first four swords game as the first multiplayer zelda experience it is okay and not as skewed away from single player as trifles heroes but it is a tad basic as far as a zelda game goes like they thought of the multiplayer idea and then slept walk through the rest of the development and damn this game needed more to do in it when was the last time you thought about the ds zelda games definitely a fun experiment with new hardware but as we're gonna come to games that put their control scheme in the spotlight kind of don't put as much thought into everything else phantom hourglass picks up after wind waker and shares a lot of the same beats with a few funky new ones mixed in for good measure it suffers from being the first zelda game to be controlled like this but there's a lot of creativity in those puzzles and they sure did do a lot more with the great sea it's teeming with to do for a while i believe the same to be true of hyrule warriors age of calamity as a non-canonical sequel to breath of the wild that would have as many engaging threads as either one of those games and while it certainly kept me going for a decent while and offered a very entertaining story i think i got too caught up with it being a continuation of what breath of the wild is less from gameplay which is fine but suffers from diminishing returns but narratively it kind of veers into fan fiction and parallel universes and time portals and i just can't with this never expected breath of the wild to be a sort of trilogy although if you remember the oracle games which were originally built as a trilogy that should be no surprise to anyone i played these games as a kid where i started with ages before moving on to seasons and i can tell you now that they're both pretty good and kind of similar maybe we'll put ages below seasons because there's a few fun items in the latter that aren't in the former and seasons is more combat focused whereas aegis likes its puzzles but they're both super solid games that only slightly trip up with the number of invincibility frames you don't have when you get hit damage tends to rack up a bit few games out there have ever rocked my soul as much as cadence of hyrule it's incredible that this game exists since zelda has never really been a franchise to embrace indie developers and yet we've got this crypt of the necrodancer spin-off that celebrates so many wonderful features from zelda games the music slaps so hard that i find myself dragged into the rhythm of whatever level i need to beat next and it's this kind of creativity that i absolutely love seeing with nintendo franchises like we've never seen this with zelda before and i love it give zelda to edmund mcmillan so he can make a roguelike zelda dungeon crawler with lots of violence and religious extremism forceholds adventure is pretty much the only multiplayer zelda experience to be fully realized and even then realizing it in this world we call reality where in order to get the most out of it you need each player to have a game boy advance and a cable to connect it to the gamecube that's kind of a challenge despite the complications though it's a really fun experience playing a zelda game that got everything right for multiplayer and still has a viable play style for single player it's hard to get everybody together with all the right hardware and cables but once you do it's pretty magnificent i don't think you could ask for much more it's been 11 years and i still don't really know how to feel about skyward sword i don't think i hate much of what this game does even if the story can spin in place for long enough to drive you crazy but the parts i like are some real franchise highlights a lot has been said about the controls in the past and while i think they can be distracting and overly manufactured at times i never had the kinds of problems that other people were complaining about feels like a stop gap at times before breath of the wild but one that sticks for landing for the most part meanwhile the glow up from phantom hourglass to spirit tracks is seriously impressive i know a lot of people don't like traveling by train and how literally railroaded it is but i can appreciate some creative liberties taken to fit the narrative everything is that little bit sharper and more creative and having princess zelda accompany you throughout your entire journey is such a treat you did the repeating level thing again but it works really well this time and zelda ends up possessing a phantom and oh it's so good ain't no breaks on this ride hyrule warriors has absolutely no business being as fun as it is the definitive edition released for the switch draws from so many different corners of zelda history that it is genuinely awe-inspiring seeing ravio from a link between world's kicking ass and marion from link's awakening using a big off bell it's a celebration of all things zelda that manages to keep the warriors gameplay loop engaging with additions of its own and just so much stuff to do one hundred percenting will take several lifetimes speaking of link's awakening what a hell of a game that was i used to have this game much higher on my personal ranking i think because i would always get caught up in how dramatic the story gets before the end and while there's plenty of zelda games that did it better i love how quirky link's awakening is the conflict is stranger the world around you is ethereal and dreamlike and this is the perfect foundation for some damn fine zelda gaming that took the best ideas from a link to the past and put them on the game boy basically a match made in heaven and you could say the same about zelda and just about anything scary so it was inevitable that a game like twilight princess would be made that angled itself towards a slightly more mature audience and i gotta say i appreciate that this game exists not all of it works flawlessly for me but i love how little it tries to hide its creepier moments and just kind of rolls of it all throughout link's journey also just a general thought twilight princess is some of the best dungeons that the series has ever had and i need more zelda games where the dungeon is just some guy's house someone to think about moving forward capcom picked up on what people liked about the oracle games and came back swinging with the minish cap it's like a complete reinvention of 2d zelda that has a lot of similarities but is also a lot more vibrant and polished than most of what preceded it capcom were able to take link's playful personality that was on full display in wind waker and channel it pretty damn effectively into a 2d format with buttery smooth gameplay in combat minish cap has surprisingly fleshed out combat and i am here for it i feel very dirty putting ocarina of time this far off the top but perhaps we as a society can accept that the last 24 years have been pretty useful for improving the quality of the games in this franchise still though the work the ocarina of time put in for 3d zelda in particular has to be commended and you are in for a stellar time if you booted this up today for a cartridge that could only hold up to 64 megabytes there's so much packed into this game and all of it is done exceptionally well and the dirtying likely continues with a link to the past which for a 31 year old game is astonishingly good actually blows my mind a bit just how much this game got right at such an early stage in zelda's history and had the confidence to create two worlds to flip between when required it's a knockout for this franchise and one of the best snes games ever made perfectly capitalizing on early momentum within the zelda franchise and launching it so much further with all that being said you need to understand just how serious i'm being when i say that i like link between worlds just that tad bit more sounds blasphemous to suggest that but this game builds on everything that works in a link to the past and lays on layers of new ideas like being able to go to any dungeon in any order and renting weapons out as required seriously experimental but a wonderful breath of fresh air and just so so good by contrast it almost feels wrong to refer to majora's mask as experimental it's less of an experiment and more of a developmental trial by fire as a sequel to ocarina of time was commissioned to be made inside two years and oh my god we got so much more than that it's able to consistently draw from unsettling concepts and imagery to create a deeply memorable experience and one that is still as airtight as ocarina of time honestly a miracle of a video game whereas wind waker is like a perfect distillation of my childhood in a video game the sense of exploration you get sailing the great sea the stylish way that link flips around in combat the satisfaction you get seeing link grow as a hero and overcome obstacles that stopped him before it was a bold new world for zelda before but i struggle to find another game in the series that holds the core values of zelda so close hardly flawless or anything but such a fun adventure and easily more than the sum of its parts which leads us all the way to number one and comparatively breath of the wild is a big departure as a zelda game and likely wouldn't be instantly recognizable as one but i've never played a game of any type that encapsulates the spirit of adventure so well it draws inspiration from the original game from 1986 but is able to fill the world of flora and fauna to help you survive and a physics engine that lets your creativity run wild it's a game that transcends the zelda franchise and puts it back on the map with the general public and the fact there's a sequel due out next year things could get even better so yeah that was a lot of zelda games let me know what your favorite zelda game is down below in the comments and if you enjoyed this video make sure to leave a like and subscribe for more and hit that bell for notifications thank you to my top level patreons like sarah malion the green scorpion and scott riker thank you all for watching and i'll see you in the next one [Music]

Channel: rabbidluigi

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Keywords: RabbidLuigi Top Ten, Rabbidluigi Let's Plays, RabbidLuigi Review, rabbidluigi top five, rabbidluigi top 10, rabbidluigi top 5, rabbidluigi gaming, rabbidluigi video games, top 5 video games, rabbidluigi zelda, rabbidluigi the legend of zelda, zelda games worst to best, best zelda games, worst zelda games, top 5 zelda games, rabbidluigi zelda games

Id: -23Zch_mPkY

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 10 2022