Topic: Zelda - Where do I start?

Ahh the age old question ... i'm glad i grew up in the 80s.

I'd have to agree with ALttP. Although i want to say "play the original first!" -- i've been a Zelda fan since first seeing that insane commercial with the guy in the black turtleneck -- i do understand that it's not everyone's cuppa. Part of me still wants to reccomend the original first, as it establishes the majority of things -- items, monsters, type of puzzles, style of dungeon gameplay, etc. But its sparse (in comparison) nature and near-complete lack of "what do i do now?" moments may make it more of a chore to play for a newcomer.

So go for ALttP. Ocarina would also be a decent starting point, but i have to say start with a 2D iteration.

A Link to the Past. Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask

I'd say Twilight Princess. That was the Zelda game I first started on and made me love the Zelda series. Also there are a lot of dungeons to keep you going.

Double post again Lawyer.

A Link To The Past was my first Zelda game and is still my favourite game of all time! Try that as long as you don't mind a bit of a challenge - some of the later bosses are a bit tough if you're a novice!

Awww not again.

Hmm... pretty much every Zelda game has been mentioned except for Oracle of Ages/Seasons. What the heck?

Anyway, if you're an 8-bit fanatic, take the route:
Zelda -> LttP -> OoT -> MM -> TP -> WW
If you're not,
LttP -> OoT -> MM -> TP -> WW -> Zelda

Zelda II is one of my personal favorites but it's so different than the rest that I can't put it in the above progression. Just play it when you feel like playing a difficult side-scrolling action-platformer-RPG.
Oracle of Ages is also fantastic, if you have a GBA.

I'd start and finish with Ocarina of Time, personally.

My Zelda history was the GB one first (Links Awakening, which I loved), followed by Link to the Past (which bored me), and then Ocarina of Time (which blew me away completely).

Since then I've yet to enjoy a single Zelda game - all are pale imitations of OoT, as far as I'm concerned. Predictable, formulaic and samey. I did download the original nes one, which I found fun, but only from a nostalgic perspective. It's terrible now if you didn't grow up in those days.

You think so? I personally like the orignal NES version, it was the first one I played, but that was in 2005 or something. I started enjoying Zelda only in the past few years and I think it holds up quite well.

I only ever played through the first level when I was a kid, so I don't think I can really blame nostalgia either. The NES ones are my favorites, though Link to the Past isn't that far behind.

I started with WW also, and I loved it. Unfortunately I played ALttP right after it and it was WAY too difficult and boring for me. I need a walkthrough if I ever want to beat it. Another mistake I made was playing TP BEFORE playing OoT. And I absolutely loved it. I still appreciated OoT towards the end, but I didn't love the beginning as much as I could have.

So, I'd have to agree with everybody else (even though I'm going against what I believe in saying this), IF you are new to Zelda games, do yourself a favor and start with ALttP. If you like the 2D gameplay, try out the simpler-yet-better Link's Awakening if you have a Gameboy or GBA that works. If ALttP proves to be too boring or difficult as I found it, try out OoT. Once you beat it, get MM if you felt OoT had the right difficulty for you. If OoT proves to be too hard or if you don't appreciate it in any way, then once again try Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. After trying OoT or WW or TP or all of them, then by all means try the entire series. They're all great games. But just don't let yourself do what I did and play the 3D games BEFORE the 2D ones, or you won't appreciate it. And don't play TP before OoT. Please.

FYI, here's my ranking of the Zelda games on how good they are, though keep in mind that the order I recommend playing it in greatly differs.
(Favorite) WW -> OoT -> TP -> ST -> LA -> MM -> PH -> MC -> ALttP (Least Favorite).
(Needless to say, I haven't played all of them.)

A Link to the Past is a good place to start.

Whoa, I've got to say, I'm surprised to see someone with a Mega Man avatar say that A Link to the Past is too hard, haha. Mega Man is so well known for its difficulty while LttP was the easiest Zelda yet. I for one thought Link's Awakening was more difficult, even. And I actually had trouble on the final boss in LA while I breezed through the final battle in LttP (not that that stopped it from being really cool).

On a different note, I find it odd that so many believe the order they've played the games in affected their appreciation. I don't know how we could know one way or the other since no one can go back and time to play a different game first as a test, and I know of so many exceptions that I think it's more likely that those who don't like the 2D or 3D part of the series are just unsure of what they don't like about one game or are unsure what to expect.

I would say that Ocarina did not improve upon Link to the Past but completely changed it, and so comparing the two series is for the most part futile. If you like adventure games based more around solving puzzles, start with Ocarina and play the rest of the 3D games first. If you prefer adventure games based more around combat and exploration, start with Link to the Past and play the rest of the 2D games first. That's what I'd advise, anyway.

@Adam- Well I just very recently got into the Mega Man series and I've only completed MM2. I started playing ALttP when I was like 8 years old or something on the GBA. I used to hate it because it was too hard for me back then, and I thought Link looked REALLY weird in that game (Pink hair? Dark skin? WTF?) Recently I have come back to the game, and though I like it a lot better than I did so many years ago, I still consider it a lot harder than other Zelda titles because, as you said, it focuses a lot more on combat than puzzle solving. Because of this, it is my least favorite of the Zelda games, though I definitely don't deny that it's a great game.

Any. You can't go right or wrong with any of them. Even weird ones like Majora's Mask can be a good place to start since they all have the same format: you do some overworld stuff, you go to a dungeon, you get an item, you use said item to kill the boss, rinse and repeat. Sure, it's methodic, but it works. There's little to any overarching story you need to worry about. Just pick one - any one you can get your hands on - and play it. Love it or hate it, you won't regret it.

Well, Mega Man focuses a lot more on fighting, too, haha. I still can't beat a single NES Mega Man. Even 9 (which I consider NES since it practically is), which was made so much easier with that shop, was too hard for me to beat Wily, and that's the farthest I've gotten in any of them. I haven't play 4-6 in a long time, and I hear they're easy, so I hope they come out on VC.

And even though Zelda and Mega Man require completely different skill sets, I still find it interesting that someone could beat Mega Man 2 and have trouble with Link to the Past. I beat the latter when I was 7 or 8, and some 15+ years later I still find it difficult to even imagine beating one of the first three Mega Man games. Kudos to you, good sir.

Oh, and it's funny, I never really even gave Link's pink hair a second thought until this forum. I must have noticed it. There's no way I didn't. But it seemed perfectly normal at the time, and I still think it looks cool for some reason. Perhaps this is one instance in which I truly am blinded by nostalgia.

A Link to the Past is like, the second hardest game in the series, IMO. The combat can be rough, and once you get to the dark world, you never get a break in the overworld. Granted, I loved the game, but it's way harder than Mega Man, IMO. Mega Man's all about simple pattern memorization and hand/eye coordination. Zelda has tough puzzles and hectic combat, often with many different enemies that require different strategies all coming at you at once. It can get pretty frustrating, honestly. Granted, I do much better in Zelda than I do in Mega Man(I suck at pattern memorization), I still have to admit it's a pretty tough cookie, man.

@Adam- Thank you sir. Truthfully, I'm surprised that you haven't beat any of the Mega Man titles, though I'll admit beating MM2 was no easy task for me. I think I beat it because fighting in a sidescrolling game is a whole lot more easier and manageable than fighting in a limited top-down space. I dunno. That's just my opinion. Kudos to you for beating ALttP at the same age that I hated it and could barely get past the first dungeon.

Haha, well, I don't know anyone personally who's beaten the old Mega Man games, and everyone I know seems to have played through A Link to the Past, so I have to wonder if you two are exceptions to the rule or if maybe there is some sort of gene that determines whether someone is better at Zelda or Mega Man and my family and friends all got the Zelda gene, hahaha.

Also, Mickey, do you honestly think it is harder than both NES Zeldas, or are you excluding Zelda II for being too different? Because Zelda 1 is pretty much universally regarded as the hardest traditional Zelda, and Zelda II may not be that hard initially, but that last stretch and final palace are killer.

While I do think the average game play of LttP is easier than the first two Zeldas and first three Mega Mans, what really pushes the game into easy territory for me is this: You can pretty easily attain four bottles, and there is a fairy location right by Link's house, so once you get all four, you essentially have five lives. The NES Zeldas and Mega Mans are not nearly that forgiving, though granted this is assuming you are good enough to beat the first three dungeons of LttP since I don't think you can get but one bottle until after you get to the dark world... I forget.

True in the sense that the stories tend to be self contained, more or less. Occasionally they do make sequels, but they do it in such a way that you don't necessarily have to have played the previous game first. You can't entirely dismiss the notion of a timeline though. There are parts of the timeline discussion that have to be stretched a bit, but at the very least you have to acknowledge the split timeline. This much of it at least:

OoT -> TWW & PH -> ST
beginning of OoT & MM & alternate history defeat of Ganon (briefly referenced in TP) -> TP

At any rate, the clues are there for those who care to get involved in the discussion. But like I said, they do it in such a way that you don't have to be familiar with any of the others to enjoy it. Most story elements that can be used to work out the timeline come from sources like the intro text in the manuals and backstories told in cutscenes, and beyond that we also rely on quotes from developer interviews. And the backstories that get told are always just what's relevant to the current quest anyway. You won't find someone just teaching random events from Hyrule's history.

The thing with the bottles, in each of the games that has them, is that there's usually one or two that they just give to you or they place it somewhere where you're sure to come across it, and then the rest are hidden away in the most obscure places they could think up.

The way I remember it though, you couldn't just bottle fairies in LttP and expect that to be enough to get through everything. In particular, I remember the boss with the ice and fire heads pretty much requiring four bottles of the health&magic potion for it to be possible to beat him. Because as soon as you run out of magic on that one you're as good as dead anyway.

edit: Why does it change "Adam" to "weirdadam" when I post the quote?!