Legend of Zelda

Link to the Past. Partially the nostalgia hit, but even going back and playing it today just feels good IMO.

Same here. A Link to the Past feels like it defined Zelda games for me. OoT too.
Replayed it last year and it was as good as I remembered. Windwaker is my personal favourite but LTTP is so close it might as well be a tie.
If you haven't tried them, the randomizer for LTTP is well polished and makes the game really fun for another play through!
- I am very bad at the randomizers, but that doesn’t stop me from playing them anyway. :)
- In case anyone doesn't know, the mobile port is incredible when you don't have time to play a full run.
LttP is the origin of the iconic gameplay style. My preference is Links Awakening which refined it a bit and introduced some fun characters. I was happy with the version on the Switch.

Link’s Awakening. I played the shit out of that on GameBoy. If you knew the screen skip glitch you could break that game wide open.

Most importantly, finish the game while having Marin as a companion until the end. I'm playing the game every year cycling through the three versions and every time I get to the original version, I skip the walrus.
- If you're emulating, there's a romhack that restores the screen warp glitch to DX.

I really liked Spirit Tracks.

Train gameplay was actually enjoyable for me (especially the way it got used in one of the end game fights was so cool). It was also nice that Zelda was an actual part of the game and helped solve puzzles instead of some princess locked away in a castle.

I played Phantom Hourglass much later and Spirit Tracks honestly just felt much more polished and fun.

I preferred the ship of Phantom Hourglass more to the train but I agree that Spirit Tracks felt much more polished and fun.

Except that last flute challenge which can fuck off
- Oh jeez I completely forgot about the pan flute. I'm pretty sure my DS mic was broken so those were all torture :,(
- I really think that everyone really had trouble with the DS microphone rather than the flute challenge itself. It came pretty easily to me but I doubt I'm a particularly expert mic blower, so I can only think my mic was a fully functioning one and people like you got a much harder challenge.

Honestly, I think Wind Waker is and I didn't like it when it came out. The art style has grown on me over the years, the combat is satisfying without being to complicated, and the exploration is fun and unique for a Zelda game.

Wind Waker was an amazing game

Twilight Princess. I loved the characters and the vibe, the MUSIC was something else too. On par with OOT. The snowy mountain theme was chilling.

It was not revolutionary like OOT, experimental like MM, or transformative as WW, but I feel like it was the most polished, quintessential Zelda game we got.

Now that BOTW and its squeakwal are just cash cows though, it’s sad to think we’ll never get a good old fashioned Zelda game again.

The Wind Waker for me. At the time, the open world and sea felt so massive, and the colorful cell-shaded graphics made me feel like I was immersed in a cartoon. I played other Zelda games before, but it was the first one to hold my attention all the way to the end. To me, it’s one of those games I wish I could experience again for the first time.

Windwaker would've been an easy #1 for me if it weren't so stretched out. The ocean really didn't need to be that big, I remember many times where I was just holding forward on the boat and browsing my phone for 5 minutes.
- What got me was the Triforce hunt. Nearly no guidance/signposting, constant trips back to tingle, then back to a warp point, then sail around, rinse repeat. Ugh.
- I actually really enjoyed the size of the ocean it made me feel like I was really on a journey

Game Boy Zelda is best Zelda.

I love Links Awakening due to nostalgia, but Oracle of Ages is still the longest game I’ve played (since I’ve yet to beat it). Seasons is fine but not my cup of tea, and minish cap is a bit too shaort

Never finished Ages either ! my 11yo self was too thick to get through some of the puzzles. I should try it again

I've only ever played the two Oracle games on gameboy color, they were excellent. Never dinished Ages though, too damn difficult. Something about this format (topdown, block-based...) works really well with my brain

Old guy who has played every Zelda game there is. Breath of the Wild wins.

This was the first zelda I really felt like nailed the open world feel. I had a blast playing this one with my partner.
I think my first was Majora’s Mask (I joined the N64 age late) and I’m the same. I wasn’t even committed to buying “new Zelda” until I saw they were upping the difficulty and having players be more self-reliant, and I loved it. I still can’t categorize the exact mode of fun people associate to “dungeons” compared to wide-open exploration.
TOTK overtook BOTW as my favorite because there is just so much to do. It's one of the things I loved about BOTW, and they somehow managed to cram even more into TOTK.

Before BOTW, Ocarina of Time was my favorite Zelda game.
- It’s a super close second

Ocarina of Time, for sure

I've played them all over the years. My favorite for a long time was Wind Waker, because of the feeling of freedom it gave me, so it'll surprise no one that Breath of the Wild beats it.

Breath of the Wild is my new fave. I gotta say that the story of Tears of the Kingdom really did it for me (just absolutely sobbing at points) but since it feels like it wouldn't have had that impact if it wasn't for Breath of the Wild, I give it to Breath of the Wild.

(Special shout out to Link Between Worlds. Really feel like that game was fun as hell.)

Edit: Gotta be real. I don't remember which one I played first? I think it was Link to the Past.

A link to the past for sure, it's one of the greatest games of all time. My favorite modern Zelda is skyward sword, the dungeons in that game were so well crafted it's insane the amount of effort and detail they contain. Least favorite has got to be breath of the wild, it's a wonderful open world game, but an absolutely horrible Zelda game.

Maybe I'm getting to be an old head but it's OoT for sure

My top three:

A Link to the Past. Basically gave the Legend of Zelda its identity, so many staple mechanics, so much lore, comes from this game. First appearance of the Master Sword, the idea of Ganondorf as a king of thieves/sorcerer before becoming a pig monster, Kakariko village. The creation myth with the three golden goddesses came from here. In fact, there's a passage in the manual that basically reads like the design document for the next 30 years in the series, look it up. Gameplay is polished to a mirror shine, and it's amazing how it has lasted with the randomizer community.
Ocarina of Time. A sequel which referred to previous entries and expanded on the lore without shitting on it. Imagine that! It's amazing how right they got it as basically the first attempt of a game like this in 3D, even if controller technology had some evolving to do.
Breath of the Wild. While it does get a bit samey since there's only so many enemies to encounter, and exploring the world will result in finding shrines or koroks, the openness with which it approaches puzzles aka "just get to the goal, we don't care how." I find very refreshing compared to the previous "you're in a room with a lock and a key. Bet you can't find the only existing solution to this puzzle" dynamic the games increasingly had.

My bottom three:

Skyward Sword. The artwork is charming, the soundtrack has a few gems in it but is mostly short repetitive and annoying loops, a lot of the gameplay elements are just blatantly recycled from Twilight Princess. The mysterious floating girl who flies back a distance when Link approaches to lead him somewhere would have been more effective if the Zora Queen's shade hadn't done it a few years earlier, and I fully expected Fi to explain the collect the light fruit games by saying "Yes Master, 'this shit again'." Combine that with the frankly terrible motion controls crammed in as much as possible and the "Master, I have detected a 97.3333% chance that the man you just talked to said that he lives here in town" nature of it all...fuck this game.
Adventure of Link. Nintendo Hard via outright unfairness, not much story, not much lore, and rather meh graphics.
Tears of the Kingdom. Never before has a game been this much mile wide and inch deep. The story barely exists, there is more content in the Hudson & Rhondson's daughter storyline than in the main story quest. There are two different crafting mechanics added to the game, plus the one from Breath of the Wild, but none are really explored because there's no room, there's no time. In addition to the original map, there's the entire sky and the entire underground, both full of basically nothing. They could have gotten two games out of the concepts found in this one and explored the individual mechanics a lot more, but no. This game is a mile wide and an inch deep.

OoT for me. ALttP and Link’s Awakening were already my favorite games at the time, but OoT came out at that perfect time in my life when consoles were being made for kids my age and 3D was this mysterious, exciting new thing. To this day, I usually end up replaying it about once a year, and I suspect I’ll continue doing that until I pass on.

I'm currently going through every (mainline) Zelda game and replaying them. Took a bit of a break at Links Awakening, but I'd have to say my favourite 2D Zelda are Seasons/Ages, and my favourite 3D is Majora's Mask.

Something about the worlds in those games that really draws me in.

Changing seasons and epochs kinda multiplies the experience I think. I will try MM when I get the chance since I align with you on the Oracle games

Probably a Link to the Past. Although I’ve only played the games in the series up to Link’s Awakening so that might change although the game would have to be pretty damn good

Wait so no ocarina?
- Its next on my list!

Gotta be Breath of the Wild, for me. Taken together with Tears of the Kingdom, the series' storytelling and immersion has never been better, I think, and as a game, Breath of the Wild was the tighter, more-satisfying experience, overall.

Wind Waker is a veeerrrrrrry close second. I think it's the most-polished entry in the whole series, in both categories. I'm really not sure what I would change, if given the chance.

Zelda: Majora's Mask. The characters were more real in that game than any other Zelda. So much emotion and good music.

That's probably the Zelda game I had the most negative reaction to. Oh, you're going to undo all of my progress because I didn't know how much more there was to do in this quest line before the world reset? No, I'm not going to do all of that again.
- But that's the fun of it! The game really manages to put you in a hurry if you really want to do everything you can in one cycle. Plus, my emotional atachment to the NPCs made me feel so relieved every time I went back in time and saw people living their little lives, clueless about the horrors to come
This was the last Zelda game I played, but I couldn't really get the hang of it since I really went into it expecting OoT 2: Eclectic Boogaloo, and OoT was really the best thing I'd seen up until then regardless of franchise. Then I saw all the cool stuff being done in later games with all the amazing tech that was being developed but I just couldn't get around to have the time or patience necessary to sit and play anymore.

Honestly, I think the original. I know its inferior to most of the other games in most ways, but I've found a lot of the modern Zelda games feel pretty shallow and formulaec. Not to say they're bad, but none of them really feel like they stand out to me either - they're just good games. The original on the other hand, feels very different from a lot of the games since then. The world is kept a lot more foreign and hostile both in terms of aggressive enemies and in terms of tutorialization. Its makes the exploration so much more rewarding, and when you do find a new item, that much more special.

Link to the Past for being my first. Twilight Princess for the modern era.

Used to be Link to the Past but now the title is held by Tears of the Kingdom.

I've been playing the series since LttP. Twilight Princess is my top, for presentation and storytelling.

I feel like Skyward Sword tried to repeat that, but the dungeons and style / atmosphere of the world of TP still come out on top (even though I'm not very much into gothic style and furries). I think SS is way too cartoonish and happy-go-lucky for a world where the surface has been abandoned to the demons and yet everyone who lives there is cool (gorons, kiwis, moles, proto-Zora), that's a massive tonal dissonance between the narration and the actual environment and it just takes me out.

The next ones on my top list are Minish Cap and Link Between Worlds.

Twilight Princess is the perfect LOZ game

Ouff, this is difficult.

To me it's a very close call between:

Majora's Mask (atmosphere, inventiveness with the loop, boss battles)
Link's Awakening (first self-owned game, lots of memories, also that nerve-wrecking final battle with forms after forms after forms)
Tears of the Kingdom (the way they hid the third world until release, the grand atmosphere, the whole thing around the Master Sword)

Majora's Mask probably wins. But it's a really close call.

Majora's Mask

OoT

Skyward Sword

Twilight Princess

Totk

Botw

Wind Waker

Phantom Hourglass

In that order. Only Zelda games I played.

Oracle of ages and seasons were me childhood.

I love them all. But Majora's Mask and Ocarina of Time will always live in my heart. As well as the original, I beat that one yearly.

Nostalgia-wise it'd be Phantom Hourglass, it's super underrated, super fun game! But otherwise it'd be the Switch duology, they're incredible games

Phantom Hourglass was a lot of fun, it really took advantage of what the DS can do.

My wife hated having to return to the temple repeatedly, but I enjoyed revisiting the same area and seeing the shortcuts I can take with my new items.

Also, freely drawing notes on the map was awesome.

Link to the Past is how I discovered Zelda.

Never got to play it through as a kid, but then we got OOT when N64 came out. There's never gonna be a game I'll have better memories from.

Majora's Mask is the best Zelda game. However, Wind Waker is my favorite Zelda game. The setting, art style, and musical score all combined perfectly to make a game that was both really fun and relaxing. No Zelda game since has ever matched the feeling of sailing to the Great Sea soundtrack.

My favourite is Link's awakening, but there are a lot of great games in the franchise.

Breath of the wild is a work of art. SNES was my favorite before it came out

Zelda is one of those things I somehow missed growing up. The only one that I ever sunk any significant time into was Phantom Hourglass. It was pretty good. I've tried some of the other ones but I get the sense that they are hard to enjoy if you don't have nostalgia goggles on.

You mean the old ones or all of the series? Skyward Sword, Breath and Tears are all very polished games.
- You must have played the remake of SS. The original has its merits, but polished it ain't.
- I tried BOTW. The story felt very uninteresting. Like nothing that was happening felt justified. And the gameplay just felt like Just Cause but without all the cool stuff to interact with.

Oracle of Seasons

Link's Awakening was my first game on my Gameboy, so will always have a special place in my heart! Ocarina was my first N64 game too, and it blew my mind! Nostalgia plays some part in how I feel about those games, but both are still solid games to this day.

BoTW and ToTK both managed to push the boundaries of gaming, and the sheer joy of discovery in both games makes them stand out. I do also love ALttP though, and in its own time it was just as revolutionary I reckon. I didn't play it until the 2000s though.

There was nothing quite like when your parents finally let you get another game so you brought home majoras mask and read the booklet thoroughly on the dive home, then after getting control of link again after what felt like centuries to an impatient child and seeing him do flips and shit up the tree stumps

Phantom Hourglass was my first but Spirit Tracks is my favorite. I actually really like the stylus DS controls (and it's not even that bad using a mouse on an emulator either) but the main thing I like is the music and story. Music and story I would say are both better in Spirit Tracks than any other game in the series. It also is one of the few games in the series that you can really call a legend of Zelda. She's there the whole time and the main story focuses on her character arc.
Just overall an amazing experience with some really dramatic moments, if I had to summarize what I like about it more than the other games in the series I'd say it's the most "cinematic & dramatic"

I've sunk more time into TotK than any of the others. I have nostalgia for OoT, TWW and TP, but their gameplay don't hold up to BotW or TotK if you take off the nostalgia glasses.

Might replay BotW at some point.

Breath of The Wild for me. The open world and exploration just blew me away. I wanted to just spend as much time as possible exploring that version of Hyrule.

Second is Majora’s Mask. It was so different than all the Zelda games before it and really dark. I loved the time element and really getting to know all the different npc characters.

It's cool to hear someone say their favorite is TP. I always felt like it was OOT on steroids. Which in my opinion is a good thing. I wish TP had gotten more than an HD port of the original. Would love to see that get a facelift for the Switch with higher polygon count and his res textures.

Seasons and Ages. They were my childhood.

BotW and TotK for sure. Mainly for the exploration of Hyrule in two different forms. Visually appealing as well.

LttP would be 3rd. Story and gameplay was great.

Probably unpopular, but I loved WW as well. Soundtrack is wonderful to listen to.

Until Breath of the Wild it was Ocarina of Time (I'm so original, I know /s), then BotW, and now Tears of the Kingdom improved on BotW in just about every conceivable way. I'm not much of a big completion type of gamer, despite really enjoying BotW I didn't go for every shrine, but I definitely made the time and effort to do that in TotK. The only aspect of it I didn't care for was that I didn't really like going into the Depths and largely stayed above ground as much as I could (and screw Gloom Hands). Makes me excited to see where the series will go next.

My first was the OG Legend of Zelda on the NES, and it will always occupy a special place in my heart. I hated The Adventure ot Link because it was so different from the first one, and because I could never get past the first dark cave. I spent hours scouring the towns for a candle, and it never occurred to me that I could just go through it in the dark.

OOT was amazing getting to ride Epona and move around in 3 dimensions. The puzzles, the stories, the polygons, I think that was my favorite Zelda experience overall.

Twilight Princess was fun, and I loved Skyward Sword more than most people seemed to. To me, the Wii mechanics and the flying were worth the frustrations. But I understand why it was divisive.

Breath of the Wild had that OOT feeling of discovery to it. It was fun to play, and novel enough to keep me exploring. I haven't played Tears of the Kingdom yet, but my son loves it so I'm looking forward to it.

I regret that I never played A Link to the Past, Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, or any of the handheld games.