I agree...I love the original NES Zelda, but I love it in the sense that it is neat to see where the series got it's start. It's definitely not the best game to start with as a newcomer. I don't think I would have enjoyed it as much if I hadn't previously developed a love for all things Zelda. I just started Phantom Hourglass on the DS, and even though I haven't played much, I can tell it will be an immersive and dangerous time sucker. Which I guess is good in a way, since I want to beat it before I buy Spirit Tracks. (Though bad in the way that it will suck out all my free time, and I will be able to spend money on ST that much sooner).

+1 for what? Having an opinion? Not to mention she contradicts herself: "There are no sidequests, I don't know where you got that from. Collecting bugs? The 1 carnival game? The cucoo game? And the river game, and the flying game, and the cave of ordeals. And fishing." Right, that's 7 side quests. And it's not even all of them. Finding all the heart pieces? Rebuilding the broken bridge? Opening up the Goron's spring water shop? Opening up the Castle Town Malo Mart? Killing all the Poe's and collecting their souls? Finding all the cats in the lost villiage? Learning all the advanced sword techniques? There's eight more right there. If you don't like Twilight Princess, fine. I can understand that. But don't go around spreading lies. And if you can beat the cave of ordeals in less than an hour (without cheating, mind you) then I'm quite impressed.

I wont get into the which is better, Ocarina or Twilight Princess, as it's a pointless argument, but Kid A is right, Twilight Princess is just as full of sidequests as any other Zelda game. The poster who said it wasn't then went on to list them!

And as Kid A points out, there were more that were not listed.

The poster then claimed that all of these side quests took 'about an hour', which is, quite simply, not true.

You will not collect all heart pieces, all poes, all insects, etc, etc, etc, in an hour, or anything like an hour.

The rest of the post consisted of the argument that apart from the sidequests you spent a lot of time in dungeons... as you do in all the other Zelda games, Ocarina included.

So as Kid A says, +1 for what? Pretty much every point in that post is obviously incorrect when you examine it.

Twilight Princess is certainly not a bad game to start with either. The benefit of starting with OoT or aLttP would be you wouldn't have to pay retail price to see if you like the series. If you like it, then you can spend more money to play the newer games.

+pi

I finally finished LTTP yesterday (...what do you mean I'm late to the party). Although I absolutely loved it from start to finish, I can't recommend it as the first Zelda game. It's brain-buggeringly hard. In my opinion, at least. Maybe I'm just really sucky though. I'd say something like Minish Cap or Wind Waker. Or Ocarina. Ocarina is always a good choice.

Okay, I've now had this game (A Link to the Past) for a couple of days, and so far so good. The game seems really thought-through and well designed. But it is not easy though! Just getting that Zelda princess out of the castle took some wandering around looking for doors and some dying too. Still not to the point where it gets frustrating.

While I don't mind looking at "Twillight Princess" at some time in the future, I just feel more like playing good old classic Virtual Console games at the moment. Even though I buy real wii games, I allways end spending more time on the downloaded ones. The whole thing with swinging around with your controllers is fun in multiplayer games, but when I just want to play alone for a couple of hours, I just want to hit buttons

I might get Ocerina at some point too, but at first I just wanted to see if I liked the Zelda concept

An hour if you don't feel like being bored out of your mind collecting heart pieces and bugs. Ocarina really was the last dungeon-heavy Zelda we had. Majora's Mask wasn't dungeon heavy, nor was Wind Waker.

And of course, the cave of ordeals took more than an hour because I had to do it twice. I didn't realize you had to come fully stocked with arrows/bombs/etc. But once I had enough ammo, it was very boring and very easy.
I flipped on TP after beating it to do the Cave of Ordeals. Then I haven't played it since. Wee I squeaked out an extra hour of replay value.
I could see collecting heart pieces as a valid side quest - if the game wasn't so incredibly easy. You don't need to collect any heart pieces, so why would you bother? You don't need to hold more rupees, so why would you collect bugs?

Some of the other things were nice, I thought Malo Mart was funny (and of course useful for the Magic Armor).
Anyway, I digress. There's been enough TP wars on this board already.

@OP: I think you're going to have a lot of fun with LttP once you get past your initial dying phase. I can understand how this game would be confusing to someone that's never played a Zelda game before. But once you get into the rhythm of the game you'll be a master Zelda puzzle-solver in no time!

The reason I would personally start you with Twilight Princess as your first 3-D Zelda game is because it seems to be bashed for, mainly, being too easy and not different enough from the other 3-D Zeldas. But if this is your first Zelda game it'll be harder for you (since you won't be as familiar with some of the old Zelda tricks) and you won't feel that it's overly familiar.

Ocarina is easily the best Zelda game over all (Although Zelda: Wind Waker will always be my personal favorite game of all time) but I think it'd be worth trying TP first. Like I said earlier it's the ultimate Zelda experience.

Wrong again. Twilight Princess is the last dungeon-heavy Zelda we have--it's getting increasingly clear to me that you simply didn't take the time to fully explore Hyrule field. I felt the same way as you for awhile, but play the game again and take the time to really explore all that it has to offer and you'll come away feeling much better about it. Hyrule is packed with little puzzles and secret caves and, yes, even secret mini-dungeons. You just didn't take the time to find them.

This isn't a valid point. Collecting heart pieces in Twilight Princess is exactly the same, and therefore no more or less boring, as in every other Zelda. I don't see why it suddenly becomes boring in Twilight Princess. And again, even without the heart pieces and bugs, you will not even collect all the poes in an hour.

Ocarina really was the last dungeon-heavy Zelda we had. Majora's Mask wasn't dungeon heavy, nor was Wind Waker.

If it was ok for Ocarina why is it a bad thing for Twilight Princess? If you don't like playing dungeons, Zelda probably isn't the game for you.

And of course, the cave of ordeals took more than an hour because I had to do it twice. I didn't realize you had to come fully stocked with arrows/bombs/etc. But once I had enough ammo, it was very boring and very easy.

Again, this isn't really any different to any Zelda. They are all quite easy once you know what to do and are properly equipped. I fail to see why this suddenly becomes a problem in Twilight Princess.

You don't need to collect any heart pieces, so why would you bother? You don't need to hold more rupees, so why would you collect bugs?

You are making less sense as you go along. You would, for the enjoyment of doing it, that's sort of why you play Zelda... and games in general. You don't need to buy the game and play it in the first place... so why would you? (Because you wan to is the answer)

Some of the other things were nice, I thought Malo Mart was funny (and of course useful for the Magic Armor).
Anyway, I digress. There's been enough TP wars on this board already.

I'm new and haven't seen any of these wars, but my main view on your post is that you are marking Twilight Princess down for doing pretty much exactly the same as all the other Zelda games. Suddenly the heart piece collecting is boring... like you didn't do exactly the same thing in all the other Zelda games.

I meant besides TP. Ocarina was dungeon-heavy and so was Twilight Princess.
In Majora's Mask and Wind Waker, even in the first go-through, there were far more non-dungeon parts than dungeon parts.
What I really would've liked to see out of that game were more interesting uses of the spinner and double clawshot. Those were both awesome items that were barely used outside of their respective dungeons

Also, while Twilight Princess didn't live up to my expectations, I think that if a newcomer started at Twilight Princess, they might feel underwhelmed by the other games.

I'm almost through my retro replays (just played through Faxanadu, Zelda II, half of Battle of Olympus, most of Crystalis, Mega Man II, and now I'm playing Guardian Legend), so I might give TP another playthrough soon. But I also want to replay Majora's Mask, and I have 5 new games as well (Boy and his Blob, RE4 Wii, Muramasa, Klonoa, GTA IV) so I'm not sure when I'll fit TP in there. I want to play Super Mario Galaxy again as well.
Argh so many games, so little time. I've easily got enough games to play right now to last me until the next Nintendo console.

Again, you're wrong. If you actually take time to explore Hyrule you'd find that there's actually a lot of places to use the spinner and clawshot. And I still don't understand: are you upset about the dungeon heavy gameplay or not? And if not--isn't that an argument in TP's favor?

"Also, while Twilight Princess didn't live up to my expectations, I think that if a newcomer started at Twilight Princess, they might feel underwhelmed by the other games."
So you basically just admitted that TP is so awesome that it makes all the other games look underwhelming?

It's just too similar to all the other games, but with more linearity. In TP, the game always let me know where to go next, while in the earlier Zeldas you had to explore around until you found something that looked right.

Anyway that's a lot of rambling, I'd replace it with a final point but I already wasted too much time on it.
This is the question that needs answering:
What makes Twilight Princess unique or special when compared to the other Zelda games?

Link: The Faces of Evil.

Yes I did. Twilight Princess is an excellent game, I just don't think it added much to the series.
A lot of people find Twilight Princess underwhelming after playing through all the others. But I think someone that started with Twilight Princess would find a lot of the other ones underwhelming.
The game is basically "Mega-Zelda: Everything you've ever seen before, but with better graphics!"

imo.

One good point made in all of this is that, for all it's faults, Twilight Princess takes the shine off the other Zelda games, perhaps with the exception of the Wind Waker.

Play Twilight Princess, and then Ocarina, and Ocarina seems clunky, Hyrule Field very small and almost featureless, etc, etc. Ocarina is certainly a harder game, but it's not bigger, better looking, etc.

Without rose-tinted glasses on, you'll just see a game showing it's age.

My own opinion is that the Wind Waker is the best 3D Zelda, A Link TO The Past is the best 2D, and Twilight Princess and Ocarina both have a lot to offer, depending on if you want old-school difficulty and temples, or pretty graphics and a vast world, but your hand held all the way through,

Twilight Princess is simply Ocarina in the 21st century.

I still like Majora's Mask's overworld the best. I like its play style the best too.
I still think in order to get the most out of each individual game its best to start from the beginning (saving Zelda II until the end because it's so different). You get to sample exactly how the series progressed over the years.
Unfortunately for Twilight Princess, I think it's the only game that didn't radically change from its predecessors. When it boils down to it, I guess all my other real nitpicks come to just that - I didn't want to explore the whole game because I felt like I'd explored it before.

Edit: We NEED a 2.5D (sidescrolling) Zelda. Now is the time, Nintendo!

I saw any of the 3D ones. Your never going to get a 2D one again, so I don't see the point in getting to like them.

Erm... why not?

We had Mario 64, Mario Sunshine, Mario Galaxy... and now we will soon have New Super Mario Bros Wii, the first console 2D Mario game since Super Mario World on the SNES, released in 90-92, depending on where you are.

If Nintendo can go back to Mario in 2D on a console after all that time, they can do the same for Zelda, although I think people would be more excited for a new top-down Zelda, akin to A Link To The Past than they would be for another Zelda II style game.

Your other point is bizarre. Because a new 2D Zelda isn't likely to happen, you shouldn't try to enjoy the ones that are already out? I just can't see why that is.

Please explain.