Best Gameplay
Okay, I'm not very old. I have played OOT on Nintendo 64, but I was so gorram old I barely remember it. The controls for this will therefore be outsourced to the gamecube. But since these ARE games, then gameplay is an important feature.
Coming in at the bottom we have Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. The gameplay is nearly identical, save some little features. They did use the features of the DS spectacularly (one puzzle requires you to close the DS for a moment, and one guy mentions blowing into the mic is indistinguishable from shouting) but it seemed slightly restricted. When you're sailing, you have to draw your path and must stick to it. When you're riding the trains, you have to follow these paths despite the fact I can see exactly where I want to go. I can walk. I've done so before. And so often have I drawn the path for a spin attack only for him to slash a bit because it only noticed half the circle. Just not as immersive as other gameplay styles.
Next we have OOT. It was a brilliant entry gameplay style for 3D games, but there were a few kinks in the system, which is to be expected. I can vividly remember having to wait for the option for push to become climb, the arrow marker being a little unreliable, and long conversations that were almost designed for you to skip through them and get annoyed. Nothing too far wrong with it, but I think of the other gameplay styles as better.
Skyward Sword comes next for the specific reason of how they used the gameplay. The gameplay is definitely fun, but the fact that almost every aspect of it is based off of a new mechanic, it loses its appeal. WiiMotion plus was cool. Having opponents you had to target in specific ways was fun. Boss rush was hella fun. Timeshift stones made it really interesting when I gave my enemies technical deaths. But the fact that combat, flight, menu selection and certain puzzle solving areas all required one feature, it lost its appeal. Also, you had to be quite precise to do a lot of actions, so lazy gamers who hold their hand up half way get annoyed.
Next, we have Twilight Princess. Which makes sense. It's less precise than Skyward Sword, but menu selection was the good old targeting while combat was motion controls. Boar riding was always interesting, the western scene was so good I created its own separate save file to play it again, and while certain specific combat techniques were rarely, if ever, used, when you do use them, you feel badass. Basically, most of the good things about SS without forcing it.
Finally, at the top of the pile, Wind Waker. Right from the outset (island), I considered the controls to be, and this is my honest opinion, "like Ocarina of Time, but better". I found the c buttons, designed for use of camera work and then named "C" because of the "C" in "Camera", much more sensible than each button being an item or Navi. Having A act as the reaction button made more sense, and the R button being crouching/crawling/grabbing saved approximately 5 hours of climbing/pushing gameplay. Plus, you lose your sword and enter a stealth mission. Rarely could that work in an action adventure! The reaction attacks worked delightfully, making you feel badass for either doing epic feats or correctly guiding those epic feats to disarmour a Dark Nut.
And one final thing to note is that you're fighting a tower built to test you. You have to use a bow to kill the end boss. If you run out of arrows in fighting him, he gives you more so you're accurately tested.
Best Story
Every epic quest needs a story, does it not? So, the better story reflects well on the game, right? Yes.
Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass come here again. Spirit Tracks comes slightly ahead for the whole Byrne storyline (why was his name changed over here?) but they're both a lot less substantial than any of the others. Less dungeons, a smaller sense of things going on behind you, and while certain characters shine through, they're not enough to carry the entire world.
Then comes Ocarina. It was a pretty original game in its time, so you can remember it as being good in its day. And it was. Shiek is Zelda hiding from Ganondorf, Ganondorf tracks your every action and waits for you to accidentally help him, and Link has a booty call over in that there desert. It also split the timeline while being meant as a prequel to the original games (Wind Waker forced them into a third). But overall, the plot is quite subdued. It's just a fact.
Then comes Twilight Princess. Midna is a highly developed character, who has suffered heavy loss, distrust to everything and slowly begins to respect and care for you as the game progresses and you get slapped by a Goron. Colin is a small child who cowers at everything who has a turning point of courage, sacrificing himself as a victim to protect a friend with courage learned from idolising Link. But aside from these people, the storylines are small and forgettable. And even these themselves could have gotten more limelight.
Following is Skyward Sword. Ghirahim was a good driving villain, Zelda's master plan was quite interesting to discover, Grooses development, Ghirahim's back-up plan, Pipit's knight training and romance with Karane... There was so much going on that every character you meet is developed and the world seems a lot more full for that. The triforce defeating Demise seemed a little bit like a cop-out, and the third time you have trials means you just have to question things.
Then comes Majora's Mask. The whole thing is a metaphor built with graphics from Ocarina. The different regions represent the stages of grief, the quest happens because Link goes searching for his childhood fairy, and every side story has some aspect of growing up and reaching maturity. Heck, you can trade every mask you get from the side stories for a mask that makes you, for all intents and purposes, an adult. This is the coming of age story for a boy who was forced into the body of a man without ever growing up.
Finally? Well, what's the only other game I've been mentioning here? Wind Waker. The core story follows just four main characters as they learn to move on from the ways of the old and create a new world or drown in the old one. Link isn't a hero of legend that comes to the rescue from out of the blue (the intro even says how bad that actually was), but a child who pursues the creature kidnapping his sister. He's not proving he is a hero, he's earning the right to be called a hero. Every character has some hidden depth to them, so they're more than just background with an action and some dialogue.
Best Game
This is subjective, and I won't be rating them all for laziness sake.
My favourite of all the Zelda games? Wind Waker. It just works. You can sail in a huge environment, fight some pretty darn fun enemies in some darn fun situations, engage with all the right people, develop otherwise undeveloped stories, force Link into wearing pyjamas and really feel for this world, with some nice and comic moments along the way. And there's an actual person with a position of power shown.
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That's it. Go away now.
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