IGN they often take it upon themselves to come up with top ten lists, which can sometimes be controversial, but what’s a good list without some form of controversy? This time, the team revealed their top ten games in the acclaimed The Legend of Zelda series. You’re unlikely to be shocked by their #1 pick for the best Zelda game of all time. So without further ado, here are IGN’s top ten games in The Legend of Zelda series.
- The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
- The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
- The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
- The Legend of Zelda
- The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages/The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
- The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
On The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild being the #1 Zelda game:
“The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild reinvented the 30-year-old series in a way we rarely see. After Skyward Sword offered a slightly more linear story-driven campaign than most fans were used to, Breath of the Wild took a dramatic turn in the opposite direction. Suddenly you could go anywhere and climb anything in any order you wanted, and there was a lot to choose from for goodness sake.
There are a lot of honest reviews of Breath of the Wild, the lack of traditional Zelda dungeons and items being common. But what’s really impressive is how well it kept the heart of a Zelda game even though it changed almost every system around it. To an extent, Zelda has always been about exploration and choices, and Breath of the Wild simply leans back and enables those aspects of itself above all else, making the world a place that will also react to those choices. There is so much to see, so many people to meet and secrets to find hidden in this long-ruined version of Hyrule.
But while the options available to you are vast, there’s also a subtle restraint here, with Nintendo refraining from cramming your mini-map with landmarks and waypoints like so many other games do. Indeed, Breath of the Wild didn’t just reinvent Zelda in this way, it shook up the entire open-world adventure genre by empowering you to make your own moments rather than giving you an exhaustive checklist to methodically work your way down. No one is telling you to climb that one particular hill in the distance, but if you want to do it, you better believe that Korok will be waiting there to reward you for your efforts.
There’s always been a distinction between 2D and 3D Zelda games, but Breath of the Wild and its successors could define a third category for the series moving forward. Whether or not you like the more structured nature of the main games before it, the impact Breath of the Wild has had on both Zelda itself and the industry as a whole is undeniable – and the endless array of magical, natural discoveries it provides make it easy to see why. “
