Latest Reviews
Review The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening - A Magical Remastering Of A Series Highlight
Re-awakening
Originally released way back in 1993 for the good old Game Boy, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening has always been a little bit of a curio in the history of the long-running Zelda franchise. Originally planned as a straight-up port of the Super Nintendo’s monstrously successful A Link To The Past, this very first portable Zelda...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Link's latest adventure in its natural home
We've been playing a lot of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, mostly on Nintendo Switch. Yet not everyone is buying into Nintendo's latest hardware yet, and there have been plenty of fair questions around how this game shapes up on its original home - the Wii U. After all, this title was announced...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
A breathless experience
The Legend of Zelda has always been a franchise that best typifies Nintendo's desire to create memorable, substantial adventures. If Mario is all about precise mechanics and pure enjoyment, Zelda is a series that focuses on storytelling, world-building and classical tropes of good against evil, Hero against returning villain...
Review The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
A gem from the past
With A Link Between Worlds, 3D versions of the Nintendo 64 games and a number of other titles available via the Virtual Console and backwards compatibility, 3DS owners are not exactly short of main series Zelda games to play on their machine. For those with one of the New Nintendo 3DS models The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the...
Review Hyrule Warriors Legends
A Link in your pocket
The original Hyrule Warriors was a solid if slightly forgettable attempt at fusing the worlds Zelda and Koei Tecmo's Musou series, and despite its occasionally repetitive gameplay managed to alleviate fears that it would be little more than a shameless cash-in. Now, with the 3DS badly in need of top-drawer software as it...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD
I have come to play!
It's been the generation of remakes for The Legend of Zelda. The main entries from the N64 and GameCube have now all been given the remaster treatment, though many will think of this title as a Wii game. A decade on from its original waggle-heavy release, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD gives a second chance to one of...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
Choo-choo-choose the original format
No doubt partly driven by necessity as much as strategy, Nintendo's Virtual Console efforts on Wii U have been notable for including not only Game Boy Advance titles, but also various releases from the DS library. With the latter only possible courtesy of the Wii U GamePad questions of practicality are fairly...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
An epic sail
When thinking about the best games from the Legend of Zelda series, many automatically jump straight in at the deep end with the big, home console releases; games such as Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker always seem to make it to the top of peoples' lists. Games often overlooked are those that have appeared on Nintendo's portable...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes
Tri-al and error
The Legend of Zelda: Tri Force Heroes is a remarkably segmented and potentially divisive game from Nintendo. It attempts a similar trick to Four Swords Adventures but, with its totem mechanic and implementation, doesn't accommodate both solo and group players in canny ways; as a result this is a multiplayer game with single player...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D
You’ve had a terrible wait, haven’t you?
The wait for The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D has felt a lot longer than it has, in reality, been. Although it was only officially announced for the first time during last November's Nintendo Direct presentation, it needed little time to build up a considerable buzz ahead of its release. Of course,...
Warriors, come out to play
There's a very good reason why Hyrule Warriors is the first major Zelda release not to have the "Z" word in its title. As we've suspected since that surprising reveal in December of last year, this is much more a Warriors (or Musou, if you prefer) outing than it is a Zelda one, and that news will trigger mixed feelings for...
Review The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
A link to perfection
It's no accident that when Nintendo decided to do a direct sequel to a Zelda title — well, as close to a direct sequel as the series is ever going to get — it chose The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as its reference point. A Link Between Worlds is set some years after the events of the 1991 SNES classic, but it uses a...
Review The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
A classic series gets a fresh new coat of paint
Much like everyone's favourite green-garbed hero Link, Eiji Aonuma, current producer of The Legend of Zelda series, is also on a quest of his own. However, Aonuma-san isn't tasked with saving Hyrule, nor is he desperately searching for the sacred Triforce; in fact, his personal mission isn't nearly as...
Review The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD
Putting the wind back into the sails of The Legend of Zelda
From the moment Nintendo first announced The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker HD for Wii U, it has consistently reminded us that the project is about more than just bringing HD graphics to a classic game. In fact, this remake arguably serves a much greater purpose than any Legend of Zelda...
Review Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Zelda II, have you any tough dungeons? Yes sir, yes sir...
Back in the early days of several franchises the second game in a series tended to be radically different from the first, as developers had not quite pinned down what they wanted the series to become — take a look at Castlevania II or the western Super Mario Bros. 2, for example. Zelda II:...
A Link from the past
When The Legend of Zelda was released in 1986, it was at least as much an eye-opening experience for gamers as Super Mario Bros. had been. Whereas that game expanded and solidified the left-to-right nature of platformers for generations to come, The Legend of Zelda opened sprawling worlds before us, and allowed us to go wherever...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
Battle seasoned
The central combat mechanics of The Legend of Zelda series has seen several iterations over the decades. The classic top-down gameplay of the original was morphed into a faster, action heavy side-scroller in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, only to be abandoned itself for a return to form in A Link to the Past. While the promise of...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
A song for the ages
Ever since The Legend of Zelda released on the NES, Nintendo has played the franchise relatively close to its chest. Series creator Shigeru Miyamoto has had a hand in almost every release to date, and before the new millennium, Nintendo EAD handled development of each and every Zelda title. But when Nintendo wanted an all-new...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
A legend redefined
In a way The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has very little riding on it: the Wii has already enjoyed huge success, with a library of critically acclaimed Nintendo games selling millions around the world. Its motion controls — dubbed a 'revolution' back in 2005 — have arguably inspired competitor formats to adopt their own...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks
On the right track or running out of steam?
Link's last outing, 2007's Phantom Hourglass, was a piece of portable paradise, showcasing all the DS's features with some wildly imaginative puzzles and unforgettable moments, and still remains one of the console's best titles. The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks takes all that was good about Phantom...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
There's no just masking how great it still is
Ocarina of Time proved that the Zelda series was even more captivating in 3D than it was in 2D. It is still regarded as one of the greatest games ever made, but despite this, at the very end of the N64's life, it got a sequel that quite a few people missed out on – Majora's Mask. Not counting the...
Review The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass
Join Link on his first DS adventure
No doubt many of you have already seen the many positive reviews for The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass dotted all over the Internet. We realize we're a bit late with our own critique of this highly anticipated videogame, but with a series like Zelda you simply have to take your time. It wouldn't be wise to...
Review The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
A Link to a Classic
To put it simply, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the finest RPGs in existence. Everything is perfect - the bold lines and subtle pastel-tones of the graphics, the triumphant rendition of the Zelda theme, the excellent yet simple combat system, the brilliantly conceived logic puzzles. Nintendo left nothing to...
