Ranking the 3D Zelda Games

08 Jun, 2025

When I was around 12, I played The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the first time… almost ten years after its original release.

My gaming history is certainly not one of always playing the latest and greatest. During the Wii/Xbox 360/PS3 generation I spent a fair amount of time playing classics that I downloaded from Wii’s Virtual Console service. I am extremely grateful I did, because it gave me a far better understanding of gaming history—but that aside, playing the games was just plain fun.

But yes, I played Ocarina of Time in 2008, and perhaps this is surprising to say, but I had never played a game like that before—I mean, with my GameCube I had mostly just been playing games with Mario or SpongeBob on the box. As I progressed through Ocarina of Time slowly, I became more and more invested. When I finally beat the game, it was the beginning of an obsession with the Zelda series, and I still carry that with me to this day.

So I’m going to give my opinions on the 3D Zeldas here.

Why not include the 2D ones? I’m gonna be honest, I’ve dabbled in almost all of the 2D ones, but I never actually beat them. I know it’s pathetic as a Zelda fan, but I guess the 3D worlds just interested me more. Look, I’ll beat Link’s Awakening on Switch 2, ok? I intend to finish A Link to the Past eventually. But for now I’m gonna talk about 3D Zelda.

7. Skyward Sword

By the time I got into Zelda, Twilight Princess had been out a while. Around that time I was also starting to get into the habit of checking game news sites, so I was on the lookout for any word of the next Zelda. Skyward Sword was the first time I had the chance to get on the hype train for an upcoming Zelda game.

Skyward Sword also ended up being the first time I experienced disappointment with a 3D Zelda game.

Now, I think it is a very good game overall. But it’s lacking in a few key areas that I feel have always made Zelda games particularly special to me.

For one, the exploration feels somewhat different. Your main areas in the game are a bit more obstacle-course-like than in previous games. There are more puzzles outside of dungeons than in past games. I think these areas are fun, but they don’t quite give you the same feeling as entering a vast field with the freedom to go any direction.

You could say The Sky gives you that feeling—I am referring of course to the floating islands you can travel to on your bird. The problem with The Sky is that it’s very empty. They threw a couple points of interest up there but clearly didn’t have time for much else. And I found flying to be more of a pain than Wind Waker’s sailing was.¹ So I can’t say I got much enjoyment out of the sky.

Skyward Sword is really lacking in the realistic and atmospheric touches previous games had. There’s no day/night cycle in this game except for in one specific location, and even there, time doesn’t change without player action. The main ground areas of the game are also not interconnected; instead you have to go to the sky and skydive again anytime you want to go from one area to another. This gives the game a sort of “Mario level select” feel that I’ve never felt from Zelda before.

Actually now that I mention it, several aspects of this game do kinda give me Mario Galaxy vibes, but I think it just doesn’t work as well as Galaxy (one of my favorite games ever) because the feel of a Zelda game is just going to be very different.

This is a lesser issue, but the assistant character Fi wants to give you advice at an annoying frequency. Nintendo was really trying to figure out how to help beginners play games during this time period, and this seems to be what they came up with for Skyward Sword. What makes it worse is that I don’t really like Fi’s personality. She’s like a robot, always giving numerical probabilities. There is some humor in this, but I prefer a character who is more personally invested in the quest and is opinionated, like Midna.

Skyward Sword did do some good stuff with story, mainly by showing Link and Zelda at the beginning of the game as childhood friends who mayyybe have romantic feelings for each other now too?? I got invested in it right off the bat. Then you get Groose. Ahh, Groose. What a legend. Legendary theme song too. I can’t say I was as enthusiastic about the story towards the end, but overall, they did good stuff.

The thing everyone loves to complain about with Skyward Sword is the motion controls, which require the gyroscope of Wii Motion Plus. I never had too much of a problem with them myself. They’re not perfect, but I give Nintendo points for the ambition. It is cool that they made a combat system that is built on swinging your controller in the correct direction. Do I want to ever play another game with this system? Not really. But it’s cool that they did it once.

However, the time it took to get these controls working is probably what led to other parts of the game feeling a bit rushed, like the part late in the game where you return to a previous area but now it’s flooded and you just gotta collect the collectables.

Back on the positive side though, Skyward Sword does have a couple of the coolest dungeons in the whole series. The time manipulation mechanic made me say, “How does Nintendo think of this stuff?”

Skyward Sword was also developed at a moment where Nintendo was looking for ways to make a Zelda game feel new and not just a repeat of the same exact formula. The motion controls were part of an answer, and adding more puzzles to the overworld is another, but another twist is that they have you actually return to dungeons after you’ve already beat the boss! Ooooh!

I should also mention that the art style is lovely. It’s kind of a middle ground between Twilight Princess and Wind Waker, leaning slightly more towards Twilight Princess, but more colorful. Twilight Princess’ graphics looked rough in some areas, even to me as someone who didn’t have an Xbox or PlayStation at the time, and to repeat that art style in 2011 on the Wii probably would have just made the game look ancient. Instead they went with this whole watercolor aesthetic, and it’s very unique and attractive.

A number of reviewers at the time of release gave Skyward Sword the highest scores possible. The game definitely has moments that will leave you awestruck, like the setting of the final battle, for instance, and you can’t deny the creativity and passion that went into making those. They don’t make me forget about my complaints about the game, but maybe those reviewers just weren’t as bothered by the things that bothered me. Actually, if I had to write a review immediately after finishing Skyward Sword, I think I would have sounded a lot higher on it too. What happened for me was that I started a new game on the more challenging mode you get after finishing, but as I recall, around the second dungeon, I got the feeling that I just didn’t really want to keep playing anymore. And for years I never looked back. I just feel like too much of the stuff that happens in between the great parts is not fun enough.

Overall, Skyward Sword is a pretty cool game, but when it comes to Zelda, there are many other options I prefer.

6. Twilight Princess

Because the gamer crowd in 2003 in America was against anything that seemed “kiddy,” The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker didn’t have the best sales. The next game in the series, Twilight Princess, was meant to give fans that Ocarina of Time feeling again, where you see Link as this very cool, grown-up hero in a huge, dangerous world who’s facing down the evilest of foes. The art style, music, and story left an unforgettable impression on me. It’s not truly the exact same Ocarina of Time feeling—it’s a little darker, a little creepier. Perhaps if I had played this game when I was a bit older, it wouldn’t have hit the same, but as a 13-year-old, that slight darkness just drew me in.

But now we come to the real question: why do I frickin’ hate this game?

Ok obviously I don’t hate it. Actually, when I first played it, I loved it and thought it might be the best one yet. But when I played the Wii U version years later, I thought I’d explore the game more extensively, and that’s when my disappointment set in.

They made a world that was meant to seem big. But it’s really just the background for a very linear experience. It makes your journey feel more epic and exciting knowing that you’re traveling these seemingly vast distances to fulfill your quest. The problem is when you break from your quest and start searching around in some of these locales for secrets. You start to realize that the empty fields are mostly just… empty fields.

I wouldn’t complain much about this if Ocarina of Time hadn’t been so good about putting weird secrets in various places. I know the scale of Twilight Princess is larger, but they didn’t scale up the amount of content to match.

I’m not asking for a smaller map. I’m just asking for them to throw some weird secrets into the large map.

Zora’s Domain, Goron Mine, heck, even Castle Town to an extent—why are these places mostly just a few people standing around doing nothing?

Whatever though. Twilight Princess is good when you’re focusing on the actual main quest. It’s a linear experience—I mean literally, when you’re a wolf they give you a line to follow so you won’t get lost. Linear does not mean bad, and experiencing all the well-made dungeons and unique story moments is quite a good time.

But I still feel like if you’re making a Zelda, making free exploration fun needs to be a high priority, and it seems like it slipped down the list a bit here.

The other thing that kind of detracts from the epicness of this game is when the battles start to feel rather easy. Sure, a Darknut is good at blocking your moves, but even if it hits you, it’s not gonna hurt that much. Not even the final boss felt like much of a threat, even if the twists and turns of the whole sequence were a thrill to witness for the first time.

Overall, the vibes of Twilight Princess made me love it. But trying to get more out of the game by exploring the corners made me love it less.

Oh, right, and also the gameplay of twist of being as a wolf isn’t all that fun. Wolf combat doesn’t feel nearly as good as sword, the Tears of Light sections are boring—really the whole mechanic boils down to “you can sense stuff that you wouldn’t be able to otherwise” which if you think about it, makes it not much different from the Lens of Truth. I mean you can also dig holes and talk to animals (though they don’t do much with that), and Midna can make a magic circle so you can defeat multiple enemies at once. It’s just not as cool of a mechanic as stuff like Ocarina of Time’s time travel, you know?

5. Majora’s Mask

I’ll start by saying this: Majora’s Mask can be considered a more complete game than The Wind Waker.

Nintendo set out to make a Zelda “side-story” in just two years. How’d they do it? By reusing a bunch of assets from Ocarina of Time and limiting the number of dungeons to just four.

There was more work to do for Wind Waker, on the other hand, and to avoid delaying the game too long, dungeons were cut. If you’ve played a Zelda game before, you can sort of feel their absence in a few parts of that game.

So yeah, Majora’s Mask is a smaller game, but it was always meant to be.

I come back to Majora’s Mask every now and then, but I admit I’ve only actually beaten it once. I think I found it intimidating as a youngster, and that feeling has not fully left me. After all, there is a time limit in this game—what if I run out of time mid-dungeon and have to start all over? Honestly, if you play the song to make time go half-speed, that probably won’t happen, but still, what if?

Perhaps my favorite aspect of Majora’s Mask is the concept on which the plot centers: the moon is crashing into the earth and we’re all gonna die. It’s just a scary idea. Scary in a way that makes me want to contemplate it. Plus the moon has a very human face which makes it even more terrifying.

After getting to know Ocarina of Time so well, stepping into the world of Majora’s Mask really is like a bizarro mirror dimension.

I go to the swamp area and the music seems so ominous. On the other hand there’s a boat tour here, so that’s pretty fun. But then I find out that Deku Scrubs have imprisoned a monkey? Huh?

The main quest in this game is crazy, but the side quests are even crazier. It’s amazing to me that with the three-day cycle mechanic the game designers were like “What if we have people on a schedule and you as the player can learn their schedules as you repeat the cycle?” There is one super elaborate side quest where knowing where people are gonna be is essential. Back in the day, I just used a guide I printed off, but props to all the people who figured it out in the first place.

Now I don’t want to spoil some of the best parts of Majora’s Mask side content, so I will just advise you to definitely go to Romani Ranch when you get the chance.

Completing side quests will give you masks, some of which are really funny!

See, with the large amount of optional content in this game involving unique little stories, it’s no wonder I complain about Twilight Princess’ lack of it.

Overall, Majora’s Mask is an incredibly cool game, and the fact that there are four Zelda games I prefer above it is a testament to the quality this series has maintained over the years.

4. The Wind Waker

Playing The Wind Waker for the first time was so cool. I just remember being stunned by the dynamic music and the way the whole screen would be affected when you cut a tree. Of course this was 2008, but remember, just because I was late, doesn’t mean I personally had seen anything like the game before!

In Wind Waker, the characters are funny and cute, the world is full of color, and you can pick up pigs and throw them. Also the whole world is an ocean and you sail around from island to island.

One of the biggest aspects of Wind Waker I love is in direct opposition to an aspect I dislike about Twilight Princess: the world is very open. Sure, in the beginning you will be forced to go to a certain island, but after that, you can go literally wherever you want.

With such freedom, you are going to see islands you’ll have to come back to later. I always remember seeing one volcanic island that’s spewing out lava all day. There was nothing I could do with it at that point—and to me that’s fun! It gets me asking questions!

Wind Waker is really a proto-Breath of the Wild in that sense. Making the world an ocean was a smart way to make a vast seamless world at the time within the Gamecube’s capabilities. The other big difference between it and Breath of the Wild is that in Breath of the Wild, you won’t have to say “I guess I’ll come back here later,” because you can pretty much do anything at any time once you get the glider.

The music is great, the characters are great, and I like the dungeons.

Now, there is a Triforce quest which is infamous for being boring. Yeah, it is quite long. But, you can work on parts of it at any point of the game. Now granted, early in the game, I didn’t even know I was going to have to find Triforce pieces, so how could I have worked on it? On the other hand, when I first played, there was one task I was doing that I thought was just a side quest. I come to find out later it’s actually part of a Triforce quest and is thus essential for completing the game. I love being able to do stuff in the “wrong” order, man!! Anyway, that doesn’t solve the problem of the quest being boring, but I kinda didn’t like that the HD version trimmed down the quest a lot, because getting to the end of the game suddenly felt a bit too quick and easy for me. But perhaps it’s better that way and I’m just being affected my bias as a returning player.

Wind Waker offers a wonderful sense of exploration. While a lot of the islands on the Great Sea are not all that interesting, it’s still very fun to fill out the entire sea chart.

Windfall Island, an area you’ll spend a decent amount of time at, also takes inspiration from Majora’s Mask’s Clock Town in that there’s a number of people you’ll be able to help, and I love those kinds of quests.

I complained about lack of difficulty in Twilight Princess, and I gotta say, in Wind Waker, I did not see the Game Over screen much at all. But I do think there’s a slightly better difficulty curve, surprisingly. In Twilight Princess, I would die early on in the game from overconfidence and lack of hearts, but in the late game, nothing could hurt me. In Wind Waker, I may not have been dying much, but it still seemed like late game enemies were appropriately more of a challenge than the early ones (of course you get fewer heart containers in Wind Waker, as there are fewer dungeons).

It should be clear by now that exploration is what I value most in these games, and Wind Waker’s open structure provides that. And I don’t think sailing is that much of a pain, especially once you get teleportation! The game overall is super charming and is just a treasure, with graphics that look good to this day.

3. Tears of the Kingdom

The decision of where to put Tears of the Kingdom is a tough one. It’s a game that reuses a lot of what Breath of the Wild built. It also makes a lot of improvements on that foundation, which at one point had me saying “Why go back to Breath of the Wild?” But at this point, after two years—

Wow, I can’t believe it’s been that long. Huh. ni nen buri desu ka?

Anyway, with the passage of time, I think I’ve decided that nothing quite beats exploring this world of Hyrule for the first time, so even though Tears of the Kingdom does improve on some of Breath of the Wild’s shortcomings, I still hold Breath of the Wild in higher regard.

Perhaps if you play Tears of the Kingdom without playing Breath of the Wild, you’ll get that fresh Breath of the Wild-like experience—though I do wonder if the tutorial area with its focus on teaching you Ultra Hand makes the experience feel a bit different compared to exploring the Great Plateau. It’s like, if I could only have one exist… maybe it’d be this one?? Yet I still like Breath of the Wild more???? My feelings are getting confusing.

Well, whatever, this is what we’re going with. I love Tears of the Kingdom. It has the open-ended exploration, but now there are caves and an underground! It has bigger side quests called Side Adventures, which I think are pretty neat, especially because the lack of interesting side quests was one of my biggest complaints about Breath of the Wild.

What’s really crazy is that on top of Breath of the Wild’s crazy physics system, there’s this even crazier building system where you can stick objects together and build contraptions!

The shrines blew my mind and made me feel like a genius. Yes many of them can be cheesed, but I mean… if you don’t like that, then just don’t do the cheese way and try to do the solution the devs might have thought you’d do? The fact that players found ways to break a lot of the puzzles just doesn’t bother me, personally.

There is another cost to all the flexibility the game offers you, which is that the UI is pretty clunky. I learned it and got comfortable with it, but I certainly wouldn’t say it’s effortless. You’re often scrolling through a lengthy row of items just searching for a specific item you want to throw or attach to your arrow. That design was fine when you’re only scrolling through a dozen items, but when that number gets multiplied, it gets rough.

I found Tears of the Kingdom’s story more interesting than Breath of the Wild’s, though admittedly, my expectations were high going into Breath of the Wild and low going into Tears of the Kingdom, so that surely colored my perception. But I still think that bringing back Ganondorf (not a spoiler because that’s the very beginning of the game) automatically made things more fun. It’s exciting to be going against a really evil guy instead of Calamity Ganon, which is more like a force of nature (though both are Ganon technically).

I think the main complaint I have with this game is that the sky islands aren’t very interesting. (It’s like Skyward Sword all over again, huh)?

But I think this is a magical game and maybe I will change my mind someday and put it above Breath of the Wild, because obviously I think it is the better game in several ways. But Breath of the Wild just gets a lot of points for being the foundation that allows Tears of the Kingdom to even exist.

2. Breath of the Wild

With a game as acclaimed as Ocarina of Time, most developers probably would’ve given us sequels every couple years with only slight twists until it got boring—and that would’ve been pretty cool, not gonna lie, but the Zelda team believed strongly in trying to give players new experiences, so you get stuff like Majora’s Mask’s time limit and Wind Waker’s ocean.

Still, all these games maintained the structure that had been proven with A Link to the Past. The pattern is broadly defined by exploring the fields and towns, finding your way into a dungeon, obtaining a useful item inside the dungeon, and defeating the dungeon’s boss.

I think the Zelda team knew that some people considered Twilight Princess too derivative of Ocarina of Time, which led to Skyward Sword mixing up the classic structure slightly (i.e., making the “field” areas more about puzzles and other challenges, as well as defying the assumption that dungeons never need to be revisited). Say what you will about Skyward Sword, it didn’t feel derivative.

But following Skyward Sword, the Zelda team was ready to make much bigger changes. In fact, they were ready to stop thinking in terms of shaking up a formula and instead throw out the formula altogether. In 2013, Eiji Aonuma explained in a Nintendo Direct that they wished to find the “essence” of Zelda. In other words, what is Zelda, really, at its core?

You play the first game, and you’re free to just explore the world and go inside caves. There’s no one telling you where to go, there’s no one to stop you from doing some dungeons in the wrong order.

Eventually, we see the results of the Zelda team’s attempt to get back to the true essence of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s a game where very early on, you are free to explore any direction you wish.

It really is the closest 3D Zelda has gotten to being like the original NES game.

Except there’s a whole lot more going on in this one. The world is huge, and you can attempt to climb any cliff you want. Shrines are scattered throughout, each one functioning like a sort of mini-dungeon. In order to make the game completely open and non-linear, the classic gameplay element of “You need a certain item to get here” is gone. This is one of the more controversial changes for longtime fans, who enjoy the feeling of seeing a collection of strange items grow over time. But for that tradeoff, you get a game where you can literally go anywhere and have an interesting experience no matter how much you’ve progressed in the game so far.

That’s not appealing to everyone, of course, but if you’ve been reading what I’ve been saying this whole time, you already know that a game totally focused on exploration was exactly what I craved.

And yet, in many ways, it took time to grow on me. First of all, the combat was all different, so I go in all overconfident because 3D Zelda combat hadn’t really challenged me much in a while (I mean Skyward Sword had its moments, but I didn’t have to swing the Wii Remote in this one, so I wan’t worried). And then I find out that weapons break? That’s kind of annoying! I wondered if getting the Master Sword would eliminate that mechanic, but even the Master Sword needs to recharge once you use it enough. So I’m like “Dang.”

It took me so long to actually appreciate the weapon durability mechanic. There was this one day, though, where it finally dawned on me: “Wait, the fact that my weapons are breaking is forcing me to think on my feet. This is actually ingenious.”

I went into Breath of the Wild thinking I pretty much knew how I was supposed to play, but that caused me to not even utilize all the tools I was given in combat. You have a magical magnet, you have the ability to freeze time, and enemies usually are standing near objects with which you could probably do some damage if you get a little creative. But I’m just like “I have a sword and bow and bombs so I’m good.”

You can’t even get rupees by cutting the grass in this game. I mean is this even Zelda?

I say that in jest, because I believe all these little elements like “Oh look there’s a whole long animation for opening a chest once again” are not what Zelda is at its core. I think the Zelda team understood correctly that the series was fundamentally about going on an adventure, one that the player is in charge of. They do not need to have their hand held every step of the way. You can just give them a sword and let them go explore.

Now, the game you build around that idea can be a lot of things. In this case they decided to make the world a highly interactive sandbox, and they fully committed to non-linearity—I mean, ok, there are certain things that have to be done in order, but this is still a game that lets you go to the final boss from almost the beginning, if you think you’re skilled enough. I think they still could have found the essence of Zelda without going that far, but going that far was very cool!

The biggest reason I ultimately began to consider this game on par with Ocarina of Time for me is that after beating it twice (my first time was on Wii U), I had believed that I had pretty much seen everything—but when I started attempting to find every shrine, I found that I was wrong. And it wasn’t just a matter of “oh, more content,” it was that I was discovering locations that weren’t copy-and-paste, but were unique and interesting. The sun was setting and I was struck once again by the beauty of what I was seeing in this game.

I’m not sure if a lot of people who talk about games online just have particular things they expect from each game they play, but for me, the more I saw this game for what it was and not for what I expected it to be, the more I loved it. There is such a magic to experiencing the wilderness of this game, not only for the first time, but to an extent I still feel it today as well. The soundscape, the animals, the lighting, the subtle music, all make each simple moment in this world beautiful.

And I like climbing mountains and gliding off of them.

You know what I didn’t like in this game? The story. When I saw the January 2017 trailer, I was like “Holy moly, this is gonna be an epic story like Twilight Princess.” Then I played it and it was like… “ok, so the scene after every Divine Beast is basically the same. And with these memories, it’s kind of fun to see Zelda, I guess, but they’re not telling me much I didn’t know.” Expectations can really set you up for failure, huh? I would like to see a Zelda story that has me super invested again, but ultimately, to me a good game can be a good game even if it doesn’t have a good story. (I mean that’s most games, really).

Also the Divine Beasts are kinda lame.

1. Ocarina of Time

Although Ocarina of Time ignited my passion for Zelda games, for a long while I wouldn’t have considered it my favorite. I loved replaying Wind Waker and Twilight Princess as a teen, while Ocarina seemed like more of a pain. But when I replayed Ocarina all the way this one week in 2018, my mind was blown, because I realized this game holds up.

I talked earlier about how the Zelda team was trying to make every game seem fresh after Ocarina of Time. But with every twist, you upset the balance of the game a little. What do I mean by balance? I think Ocarina of Time has a perfect balance of dungeons, exploration, secrets, and uh… miscellaneous other stuff that makes up the game. Wind Waker could have kept that balance if they had been allowed to finish the dungeons, but instead you get Triforce Quest’d. Twilight Princess, it was like Ocarina of Time but stretched thinner. But Ocarina of Time is a game I just found a pure delight to play through.

It changed the combat of 3D games forever by pioneering a lock-on system, of course. But even ignoring the impact… the game is just fun.

It’s sort of funny how I knew Link from Smash Bros. but when I played Ocarina I was like… so he’s a kid? Alright. I knew Young Link from Smash Bros. as well, but at this point I was not sure where regular Link even came from.

When Link is a kid, the game seems simple. Just get the spiritual stones. And then, once I had them, I felt so accomplished. I go over to Hyrule Castle, and storm clouds are gathering. Strange. Then, you see Zelda again, followed by Ganondorf. What follows is the twist of the dang century—at least that’s how it felt as a youngster.

Seeing Hyrule in the next portion of the game caused so many feelings. One of the first things you see is Death Mountain. It always had a ring of smoke, but now it’s a messed up ring of smoke!! Eughh! All the characters you meet in the first part, you’re suddenly so concerned about what happened to them. The simple story of the game is, honestly, extremely effective.

The dungeons in this game are super atmospheric and interesting—the Water Temple ticked us all off, yes, and it’s mainly because of that one room with that difficult-to-notice opening, but conceptually it’s a very cool dungeon. Meanwhile, the world has so many weird secrets, some of which I never even knew about until recently.

Breath of the Wild and Ocarina of Time are about on equal ground to me as games that feel revelatory and extremely special, but I guess I put Ocarina a little higher because hey, it just feels so concise and satisfying, and it came first. During every replay I remember that it does have its problems too, of course, and you can’t exactly compare Breath of the Wild and Ocarina directly in a fair competition, because Breath of the Wild is trying to be way bigger—but yeah, this is the ranking I’m going with.

What I realized when I replayed Ocarina of Time in 2018 is that I wouldn’t mind seeing more games just like it. Just shamelessly rip it off and I’d probably enjoy it on some level. The scope of its world wouldn’t feel particularly realistic today, but if it makes for a fun and tight game, I say just go for it.

That’s all the time I’ve got. I’ve gotta get back to playing Animal Crossing New Leaf on my Nintendo 3DS Mario Kart World on my Nintendo Switch 2.