Top 5 Legend of Zelda Games: #2

2. Wind Waker

I don’t even think I have words for how much I love Wind Waker.
From the title screen onwards the game just radiates pure joy, overflowing with charm and character.
The great sea remains to me the biggest, most free feeling Zelda world yet by a long way. I’ve spent countless hours sailing on that ocean over the years and for me it really never gets old, I always notice something I missed before.
The score as always is of the absolute highest standard, I still get chills any time the ocean music plays. A neat little feature of this game I enjoyed a lot was the addition of musical notes playing each time you strike an enemy. I don’t know why but the fact a little melody plays that’s controlled by you whacking the shit out of bokoblins tickled me.

You’ve no doubt noticed the picture I’ve included is from the sort-of recent Wii U HD re-release of the game and that’s intentional. Whether you’ve played it before or not I strongly recommend you pick that version of the game up.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the many people I’ve heard saying the original game still looks great and that it’s aged remarkably gracefully, I don’t think it by any means renders the re-release superfluous. Being scaled up to HD with an increased draw distance and upgraded lighting makes a massive difference, taking an already pretty game and making it utterly beautiful.
Lots of little improvements add up to one large overall one, for instance the fast sail not only gives you the option to sail at twice the speed, it also automatically changes the wind to face the direction your boat is facing, cutting down on a lot of time spent changing the wind manually with the Wind Waker. This, along with the added ability to shift items and look over your maps without ever having to pause add towards what in the end is a significantly streamlined, enhanced version of the game.

The most common criticism people have made against Wind Waker has historically always been because of its use of cell-shaded graphics and a cartoony art style, a sentiment I’ve personally always strongly disagreed with.
However, I can sympathise with those people’s point of view if only for the fact that this was a time before Nintendo had set a precedent of showing footage of Zelda games at E3 for the birth of each new console generation; games that have never existed and will never exist. It was also the first major change to the series aesthetic since it made the jump to 3D so people who weren’t keen on Zelda’s cartoon-like new direction had no reason to think the change wasn’t permanent, meaning they’d never get the more realistic take on the series they were looking for.

When all is said and done though what you’re left with is one of the most creative and unique aesthetic overhauls I’ve ever seen grace a franchise, and that’s always going to end up being divisive. The fact that the art style has pigeon-holed the game in the minds of some as being ‘just for kids’ and not worth playing, based on its look alone is a notion I find beyond silly.
To those people, the ones who normally love Zelda games and haven’t tried Wind Waker yet for that reason I say this: Give it a couple of hours. Give the game a couple of hours, get out onto the open ocean and if it hasn’t won your heart by then perhaps it never will.

OOOOH! THANK YOUUUUU!/10