The Besties - Deciding The Best Zelda Game of All Time

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

We thought we'd take some time to dive into a very scientific study: What is the best Zelda game of all time? To determine this, we've started with all 16 main games and, well, stuck them in a randomized bracket for true chaos. We've got some spicy match-ups coming your way, so buckle up! Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Do you hear? Hmm? Texas is open for business. You don't need to cover your face. Show me that smile again. Greg Hammett says that it's safe that the disease has been conquered, even though 40,000 Texans have died. But it's okay.

Show me that smile again. Show me that smile. I can't fucking wait. Get down to Cracker Barrel with my face out. Yeah, baby. Yeah, seriously. How have people been eating those candy canes all this time in Cracker Barrel

if they've got masks on? I don't know. I don't know how I'm supposed to get my flapjacks in there. I don't know how everybody's supposed to see the big smile I do when I solve that little triangle puzzle. But now that's not an issue anymore because my boy Greg Abbott said said it is safe it is safe don't be a don't be a fucking baby about it get out there big party at those rocking chairs get out there show me that smile

again party at the cracker barrel we lifted our stay-at-home order too uh but i i kept my own stay-at-home order that i've had in place for a decade that house wide stay-at-home order that I've had in place for a decade. That house-wide stay-at-home order has not been lifted. Yeah. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of Hyrule. My name is Griffin McElroy, and listen to us talk about Zelda. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant, and I know about some Zelda games, but probably not as many as the rest of you. My

name is Russ Frushing, and I have the best game of the week. Hello, and welcome to the Besties, where we talk about the latest and greatest in home interactive entertainment. It's a video game club. And if you're listening right now, you're a member. And today's

Club Business 1 dues. Time to pay up. Okay, everybody, we'll pass the bucket around. And good, we got dues taken care of. Now we are going to announce the old minutes. I missed last week's show, so let's skip that. It probably wasn't important. But how much do you guys kind of wish that elise could just take my place because she's

much funnier and smarter than me um certainly certainly i think we picked a great episode for elise to sub in on because i believe that your opinions about super mario 3d world would have gotten us uh would have gotten us i guess double canceled real quick yeah i was just furious cool as hell i didn't get to say that last time. And I didn't want the many hours I spent playing that game, which is half bad. You know, it ain't half bad, but it is half bad. Right. Because that's 3D.

The other half is not bad, yeah. But yeah, today we're going to embark on a legendary quest uh where we are going to uh pick the best zelda game and i hear what you're saying what if i don't agree with you guys that what you pick is the best zelda game that doesn't matter this is legally binding folks it's legally binding and you have to stick with it what we say goes and we're going to settle it once and for all. And we're going to delete the other ones. To delete the other ones, there's only going to be this one.

Shigeru Miyamoto said we could delete one Zelda game. We're also going to pick one to delete, so that's going to be huge. He gave us the source code for all the Zelda games, and he said, you know what you have to do. And we said, we actually don't.

And he just kind of smiled in the way he does you know yeah the smile how he does it um do you want me to explain the uh setup real quick like how we decided what's going up against what yeah i will say if you know elise had appeared on the show last week and i feel like left ripples of chaos that have gone on to inform these these episodes that we are currently doing. Well, Justin had this idea a few weeks ago to do the best Zelda game of all time series, but at least

made the valid point that like it's kind of boring if it's just like, well, Ocarina versus whatever at the end, because it's like, who cares? So instead, randomized brackets so that who fucking knows what the matchups are going to be in round one. And we got some spicy matchups in round one.

So we're going to have to make some tough decisions. So rule number one, randomized brackets already covered that. Rule number two, no spinoffs like that Target practice game or the like Muzu, whatever franchise, they don't count. Remakes are bundled together. So like the recent Switch remake of Link'sakes are bundled together so like the recent switch remake of links awakening bundled together with the original similar games like four swords and four swords adventures bundled together uh ditto for uh oracle of ages seasons basically all that is just so we can have an ease and even 16 and no unin like, intentionally including terrible games

like Wand of Gamelon or, oh, actually, nevermind. I see Phantom Hourglass is on here. Nevermind, that was not. Oh boy. Gonna get good. Yeah, this is gonna get very good. Justin, you wanna start it off?

Yeah, baby. Wow. Wow, this is a confrontational opener. I actually don't think it is but i'm curious to know well it's just very too very divisive it's zelda 2 versus majora's mask which if i had to pick the two most divisive games in the zelda canon i would probably pick these two not saying what what one's worse or best but i'm saying in terms of like, I've heard more conversations about Majora's Mask between people saying it is the worst

and people saying it is the best. I've never heard anyone say Majora's Mask is the worst. I have heard people say they don't like playing it. Yeah, let me slide up in here. I did not care for Majora's Mask when it first came out, but then replaying the 3ds remake which was exceptionally good what it was grezzo was that the company that made the remade the n64 games on 3ds both of those were exceptional and i thought uh majora's mask on 3ds like kind

of made me appreciate if you were coming into majora's mask as we all were as this this is going to be the sequel to ocarina of time. Then it was, that's why people responded to it the way that we did. But I think as its own sort of idea, it's pretty radical. And just for people that are not familiar with Majora's Mask. So Majora's Mask came out, as Griffin said,

right after Ocarina of Time. And the big hook with this game was that every three days, the world ends because the moon smashes into it. And it's a Groundhog Day situation where you're reliving these three days over world ends because the moon smashes into it and it's a groundhog day situation where you're reliving these three days over and over again and you begin to learn patterns and get new abilities that can help you go further in these three days to eventually save the world so and you have a journal that you keep track of where you know all the side quests and where

everybody is at any given time so you know like where, like where to, where to, where to be. It's a really clever way of handling it, but very, it always gave me a ton of anxiety. Cause it's like, Oh, every single second counts. And yes,

yeah, it's, it was always very intense for me personally. Yeah. Just, I think it's confrontation. It is. I don't hate it.

It's just, I get it. It's just not my, I feel like it's contrary to this. I have actually gone back and made a run at it. And I guess probably in the same time frame that Griffin did. It's been a while. I like what it does.

I think it's interesting what it does. I just, for me, that spirit of exploration is so endemic to what I love about the franchise. And having that back of my mind pressure, like, well, you better hurry up. It's not gonna, you know, I just find that low level of stress unpleasant. Do you remember Juice when Zelda 2 came out? You would have been what, six when it came out?

100% remember exactly, exactly how I received it. How about this? I was,iffin i was in the dining room of our kitchen and it was uh easter uh uh and i received a package for easter it was a gift for easter link is back much very appropriate for easter yeah okay good uh it was uh it was a package i opened it up and there was actually we got to take a break here russ i worry you have some fundamental misunderstandings about easter and the entire sort of yeah you may not know about the whole bit um so okay so i opened the package and i find a pair of pants i'm like oh my god i got pants for easter bummer but then inside the pair of pants my parents had

wrapped a copy of the legend of zelda 2 and i was beyond thrilled the adventure of link was right there in my hands i would have been yeah six years old uh cool ass box wait wait wait box with a silver sword on it radical and then you put it in the nes and you realized you got the pants of video games and then it's the pants of video games i don't think name for me a bigger drop in quality from a debut to a sequel and i don't i don't think i can come up with one in games yeah yeah that's tough maybe not yeah it's easy to picture why zelda 2 happened you know going to that kind of 2d side scroll platformy stuff mario is this huge hit everybody loves mario and you're like i don't know maybe we need to make zelda more mario and then you actually make it and you're

like we've done grievous error it seems very informed by like the popularity of jrpgs the like top down like exploring a world yeah except then it jumps to side scrolling platform or action rpg stuff i i almost i i should know this but like is this a like super mario 2 doki doki panic situation where like this was something else and then they were like oh no this was not this was made internally a good question and and and to be fair the core idea isn't terrible because people would make act razor eventually and act razor is good and act razor kind of borrows from some of the same stuff yeah it's they're definitely, and they're trying to move things forward for sure. It just, everything about it, it looks worse than the predecessor.

Like, it looks, Zelda looks better. Yeah. Like, this look, it looks worse. It's uncanny. Yeah, it is. I will say this to, like like levy some praise at it. It is, it does like create this very interesting like sword fighting mechanic

that actually makes fights like a little more interesting and fun because you're like ducking and blocking, which is stuff that you really never did in the first Zelda game. It was just like, I'm going to shoot my sword at people. So it does make it like a little more tactical, tactically and tactically interesting,

but it never really feels great. We, we can't spend this much time on what we know is an open and shut case for Majora's Mask. Just want to set up that one, but yeah, I think we got to let Zelda 2 go here. It's a bizarre thing

um hey magic meter yeah that's true speaking of uh uneven matchups we got ocarina time versus oracle of ages slash seasons oracle of ages slash seasons we don't even have to talk about it ocarina of time all right uh it should i think oracle of ages I think Oracle of Ages Seasons is a pair of games that time is a little bit forgotten I think when they came out everyone was very obviously psyched to get two Zelda games on the same day and they're great in the style

of like Link's Awakening they're great top down games that had some like interesting connectivity functionality and stuff like that i really i haven't played i haven't replayed these games in probably 10 years but i remember them being like very good also made by capcom true um my problem with these games is like the critical path of them like for as much as that can exist for a zelda game is garbo uh like i love zelda games and i have beaten i think every other zelda game except for these two because it is it is uh it's

just not an enjoyable experience and i think maybe i i think they bit off much more than they could chew uh you compare it to lynx awakening and links links awakening you know it takes place on this island and there is it's not impossible to kind of figure out where you're supposed to go next just based on the tools that you have and where you're able to get to on this island and when you add these layers of uh oracle of ages had a time travel mechanic where there was like a future world and a past world and oracle of seasons allowed you to change between the four seasons at any point which like opened up new routes and stuff like that it was just too much for the world design critical path design team on these games to handle because it's just it it while you are playing these games you never feel

quite certain of where you're supposed to go next there's also a lot of returning to like a central hub sure zone like there's this underground city that you're supposed to go next. There's also a lot of returning to like a central hub zone. Like there's this underground city that you're slowly kind of rebuilding, I think in seasons. And like, that's not particularly fun. I think, I think they are rad games and rad ideas.

And I love the Game Boy Color kind of era, but I never finished them because they are, they're not that easy to kind of traverse. For Ages and Seasons seasons too the development of them was actually more ambitious than what came out they were going to make three games and the idea was that you could play any of them in any order you wanted and like they would focus on the different strengths of zelda so like one would be more adventure-y one would be more action-y um power wisdom and whatever the third triforce maybe sure and and then they were like yeah this

is not possible we have to we have to cancel one we have to streamline the other two um and that it works at all i think is like kind of a miracle i do want to make my defense against ocarina of time just because i want i want to lay it out can't fucking wait to hear this and it should be noted we will also have opportunities to dunk on Ocarina of Time later on. But yeah, go ahead. I will say this in the defense of Ocarina of Ages and Seasons. Ocarina of Time is

I think one of the most important video games ever made. As in, it like set up 3D world, open world quest building. It set up like locking on to enemies in 3d spaces it created like a language very well but unlike super mario 64 i don't think it's like a timeless game i don't think it's pleasurable to go back and play that game compared to literally any of the 2d zelda

games um and some of the later some maybe of the later 3d stuff i think what we what we saw with like link to the past isn't a combination of zelda it's a combination of like 2d games i think link to the past is a brilliant game because it is like all 2d video game design for 40 years have been building up to that 40 probably 30 i guess no jesus 40. Yeah. If it came out in the 90s. If it came out in like Space War. 80, 70, 60. So 30. 94. I guess 25.

I'm trying to think of like, when is tennis for two? Yeah. Yeah. You know? Let's get Ralph Baer on the show. The fifth bestie, Ralph Baer. I think the thing about Ocarina of Time is

it is more of a starting point than an ending point and i think we'll talk about this when we talk about breath of the wild that like i think we're that we have a little bit too much fondness for ocarina of time respect for it because of its technical achievements and not because of its actual like pleasure as a video game i completely agree with that statement i i think it will still win this uh uh category but i completely agree with chris plant i i do want to just dissent here and say that it's a fucking masterpiece and i have it's probably the game i have beaten more than any other video game me and my my uh old old buddy

clint uh used to like casually speed run it until we got it down to like a neat four hour like i think it's a brilliant extremely fun game that is very good and yeah you can say you i you can't understate what it did for 3d games because we're ignoring that like there were plenty of name like a playstation game that was 3d that like oh no i i agree technical what medieval oh my gosh anyway i i want to agree with griffin i think griffin is spot on ocarina of time is the win back of zelda games i think we can all agree on that you'd stop it okay we'll come back we will come back i guess uh i did not think that it was going to be uh i love it dunked on so thoroughly but um this one will be this one will be speaking of capcom didn't they

make both of these who made i don't don't remember who, it's Four Swords slash Four Swords Adventures versus the Minish Cap, which was Capcom, the Game Boy Advance Capcom game. And that one I think is way better than Oracle, the Oracle twin games. Big time. Yeah, let's set these games up. So Four Swords and Four Swords Adventures.

Four Swords originally came out on Gamecube i want to say no so four swords was a pack-in game right with uh link to the past when it came out on gameboy advance which like hey that's a good fucking little bundle there is you got gameboy you got uh the link to the past remake and then also like if you link cabled up with your buds if you had one of those weird fucked up octopus link cables uh you could play four swords together but four swords adventures was a gamecube game kind of in the style of crystal chronicles where you played it with your gameboy advance so that you had access to your own ui on your gameboy advance screen but also you could go inside of caves or in a door or something and you would come out on your screen on your game boy advance it was i i played this game maybe twice and it was incredibly good i also

think four swords adventures came with the zelda master bundle which had ocarina of time master quest and i think majora's mask yeah on it i could be misremembering that uh which again is another good ass bundle so i think that four swords and four swords adventures is the cooler game just because it worked really well and was genuinely fun but also impossible to to find a group of people to play it with together minish cap has some of the best art i think of any zelda game i love love love the art of minish cap and for people who can't conjure it in their brain it's kind of the cel shady tune link of wind waker but run through the like top end game boy advance uh like color palette and design i think this is one of the final game boy advanced games is that right yeah was very, very late in the cycle.

So it's like they've really nailed down how to make the most of the system. Also, you could shrink. So there's a lot of fun visuals with larger-than-life bits of nature in Link. And I want to say giant versions of familiar enemies that became way more dangerous when you shrunk down like was there like a giant octorok or something it is funny that these two games are up against each other

because they they are part of sort of the same trilogy essentially they are part of the the four sword story um because minish cap has the same i think vash do you ever get the are we dipping into the canon of zelda which makes perfect well no i mean it's it's you talk about the visuals of minish cap and it's very similar to the visuals of four swords adventures because it's it's sort of the same it's i think a different team made it um but it's i mean they look kind of similar yeah this was a weird this was a weird era this was like a strange era a forgotten era and i think it's partially because like at that point,

we're talking late Game Boy Advance and also late GameCube. So it's like, who was still all about this? It's cool digging this up too, because I, right now, Koei Tecmo is,

you know, doing so much Nintendo stuff, which I think we talked about this on the last episode. And that seems unprecedented, but I, you know, looking back and actually,

yeah, there's there is plenty of history here that like the idea of capcom i mean just straight up making lead zelda games seems unimaginable now um yeah but here they were doing it and they made good stuff like these are good games i think with minish cap in particular it is uh in the way that oracle stages and seasons kind of bit off more that they could chew this felt like okay we're going to unify the team we're going to bring everything that like a normal core zelda game would have into a single project and because of that like

the whole thing feels way more holistic and and thought out um and the flow feels really good um i i love finish cap i think the logistics of playing four swords adventures even though conceptually it's a very cool idea makes it very tough because like yeah no one fucking has link cables like i would release that shit online i'll play it in a heartbeat yes absolutely well here's the thing though i feel like that is never going to happen because triforce heroes was such a disaster that was i feel like triforce heroes was sort of the spiritual successor to four swords adventures triforce heroes if you don't remember it and i do not blame you was the 3ds multiplayer zelda game that was supposed to be like kind of rrpge where like you went through and tried to

collect these treasures and got a stronger link of a different color with different like tools that got stronger but like it wasn't great was was it the zelda game that came out before breath of the wild i think it may have that would be wild so yeah it came out in 2015 and i don't think we had anything else until until 2017 well link between oh yeah no that's right yeah that makes sense that's that's wild um where are we at between these i think minish cap here all right and then we can set up i really want to hear justin's opinion on the next one because it's a real doozy did you have any thoughts on this one juice on this match no i couldn't even fucking remember what minish cap was yeah what am i gonna go on youtube and watch minish cap i've got two kids i'm not doing that i think i think it's i trust your guys judgment

i i think four swords and four swords adventures is novel and was really really fun at the time but i think minish cap gets it just because it is like the best not nintendo zelda game like it is it is kind of incredible how good a game it is when it doesn't have that like you know that nintendo quality stink on it now for for the mishcap gets it for the next category i want you to picture um someone like a mike tyson in the boxing ring and then having me step into the boxing ring and sort of also their picture how that might play out and they're like and and he's all been over and they're like have you had any vitamin c for months russ and you're like no i've got i've got super scurvy they call it um i mean the only fair matchup would have been phantom hourglass versus spirit tracks and then all of us could have just like kind of gone to sleep a little bit in the

middle of it or use the restroom and come back and say it doesn't really matter but we do have phantom hourglass versus lynx awakening plus remakes okay i'm gonna talk about phantom that's a that's very fucking sneaky by the way just sneaking in like and that awesome switch remake that came out i mean we had to round out the 16 it needed to be i don't think we even need to talk about lynx awakening too much because we're going to talk about it a lot more. So let's just inform people on what Phantom Hourglass is. Okay, so Phantom Hourglass came out on the Nintendo DS, right? Correct.

If you look at gameplay, if you forgot this game, but you look at gameplay of it, you will not believe that that's actually what it is. It's like a lot of stylus integration into the Zelda game. Exclusively stylus integration. And that really... With the stylus. That really was

the biggest downfall of Phantom Hourglass. I actually think it has some pretty interesting puzzles and dungeon mechanics and stuff like that that is entirely failed

by the fact that the only way to attack enemies is to swipe your stylus across the screen like a maniac. There is no upside. You could have stripped all that stuff from the game and it would have been a pretty okay zelda game but they were so dead set in the way that like nintendo gets like well it's a wii game so

it needs to have the wii stuff that's how it was on the ds hey we have this stylus pad you're gonna have to use it a lot and and it just totally kills my enthusiasm so wild do you guys remember uh metroid prime hunters yeah it was like the ds metroid game sort of the same thing and they released like a special peripheral which was a thumb it was like a thumb tack thing or a little thing that you slipped over your thumb yes was like a little tiny stylus on your thumb because you had to use that as the, basically the right, the screen as right analog stick. It was fucking horrible.

And I feel like they just tried to do, the DS was such a great handheld. It was such a great system. And the only company that seemed to not be able to figure out how to fucking use it was Nintendo because they kept like putting up brick after brick. I mean, it just felt like they were so like internally they were like well every feature needs to be used if we're gonna be a first party

nintendo game we need to use every little bell and whistle so you're gonna blow into that mic you're gonna use your stylus and you're gonna go ham on it because otherwise into the mic what's the but even but and that was terrible and it was also not the worst thing about phantom hourglass the worst thing about phantom hourglass is the structure of the game was terrible you would go into a dungeon which weren't memorable or particularly fun and every time you finish one you had to come back to this central castle location that you had to sneak through it was a big stealth mission essentially over and over and over and over again it was mind-numbing and and terrible.

Every time you came back to the castle, I think you had to replay the floors you had already done to get to the new area. It was egregious padding. And yeah, I can't believe it. Hey, y'all. We're talking about it. I think Link's Awakening won.

I think that brings us to halftime. Okay, that was a lot of talk about Zelda games. And we've got a kind of a palate cleanser here for you where we talk about more Zelda games. A Link Between Worlds versus A Link to the Past. Well, that's... This is probably the hardest matchup in the entire list. Yes, I agree.

A Link to the Past is of course a classic and like we talked about, the culmination of 2D game design up to that point, but fuck, Link Between Worlds was good. Man, Link Between Worlds was a good-ass game. Yeah, we talked about canon a little bit, but Link Between Worlds is, as

far as I'm aware, a direct sequel to A Link to the Past. Isn't that interesting? It is set in these same world, like same high rule, same locations, but it's a low, low rule. Actually,

if you want to be, uh, Oh, I think it's actually both. It's high role anyway, but it is a total re-imagining of like what a Zelda game could be. Can I make a confession to y'all? Sure.

Please. Uh, link between worlds is my favorite zelda game like hands down hands out and i've played the vast majority of zelda games one zelda game i had not played until this week is called the link to the past um i know i know i know i just i i just assumed it wasn't good in the same way that you do this for a living i know he had a genesis growing up it's the best game ever made i was a Sega Genesis kid and here here's the thing i will say about link to the past i really want to be like

it's garbage in the same way that i just cannot get into super metroid at this point as much as i really want to what the fuck i know i know but but but but a link to the past is incredible it's incredible like yeah i mean playing through it i was astonished at the like about just everything about it i i can't imagine i'm so i'm most sad that i didn't play it as a kid and also kind of happy that i can play it now as a grown up with all that time passed and knowing how far video games have come. Because if I had played this as a kid, I think it would have broken my mind and completely destroyed my expectations for video games. Yeah. It is.

It's doing so many things at such a high level that nobody else was doing at that time. If I could just highlight the sound, the sound of this game is astonishing like it is this incredible sweet spot of like before we're into red book mp3 like actual symphonies yeah being recorded but above like the sort of bass midi of like the nes and they're using midis to recreate like symphonic sounds like the way that they're using midis to recreate like symphonic sounds like the way that they're and every sound cue in this game sounds

unlike it's like it falls into like a the reverse of an uncanny valley where it's like it doesn't sound real but it doesn't sound like anything you've ever heard before like it this the music the sound effect every sound cue in this just like absolutely sends me back to the sound of a sword clinking against the rock is like the hookshot sound is one of the most satisfying yeah no it's it's

let's it's a masterpiece and i think if we had done this episode like the week after link to the past came out it would have been easy to be like oh well that's just the best game that's been made so far like that's the best uh let's eulogize then link between worlds because we we mentioned that it reinvents the wheel very similarly to how breath of the wild does i feel like uh what it accomplishes is it's like between the world's ones with like where you can get the where you buy yes there's a shop where you buy the items right the i think it actually won the besties the year it came out it did it was the first it was the first besties i think uh you buy the items instead of having to go into dungeons and find them and so you buy an item and it basically unlocks the route you need to get to the dungeon where

you you know would have earned it in any other zelda game so you spend money on that if you die you lose the item unless you spend a ton of money to kind of insure it so that you won't lose it anymore. That loop alone creates a reward system, an economy, and I think I harped on this when the game first came out, that works so well. And it inspired me to seek out every treasure, every rupee, every hidden hole, everything I could to eke out just what I needed to like fully purchase the, you know, super bombs or whatever.

That alone, having that carrot in front of you is not something that a Zelda game, I feel like had accomplished before and made it like I 100% of that game because I felt like I needed to because it was so satisfying yeah i i wish breath of the wild had borrowed more from this game we'll talk about breath of the wild later i'm probably going to be the person who dissents the most on breath of the wild or as it's written on our document the bread of the wild um very good i i i really like breath of the wild i i deteriorating weapons is a huge

bear we're not talking about fucking breath of the wild right i know i know but we're gonna but it but it relates to link between worlds what i like about link between worlds is they're it and breath of wild are going after the same thing which is how do we incentivize you to actually make use of the world around you, right? How do we make it so that all the knickknacks and all the distractions aren't just meaningless stuff that you're doing to check off mindless boxes? And in Breath of the Wild, it's, well, stuff degrades, so you just need to do it to survive. And in Meet Between Worlds, it is, hey, you put in the hard work, and once you do'll pay off and you'll get to like actually retain

that payoff it is a permanent reward and that personally for me is more rewarding the the gimmick also of link between worlds of being able to kind of blend into the wall you can like turn into a painting that can explore that way and also the story is fucking great like it's a it's you are kind of in this war between the the dark world and the light world which you explored in link to the past but now like the stakes are higher and you learn like hey not everybody in the dark world is like a monster and so you know fighting to destroy it is maybe not the best thing to do uh it was it was surprisingly kind of uh emotionally complex um man that's a good i want to go fuck of all the games that i'm going

to come off of wanting to play again after this like series uh link between worlds i think it's the one but i think link to the past link to the past congratulations yeah i guess so i don't feel great like but if we have that for the listeners i think there's a very real chance that that would have been a final showdown had the bracket been any different i think there's a very real chance that that would have been a final showdown had the bracket been any different. I think there's a very real chance. There's a lot of good games in this list. Random showdowns, I'm telling you. Windbaker versus Twilight Princess.

Windbaker. I'm trying to get as many bread puns in as I can. You did one unintentionally, and I'm just going to lean in. Windbaker versus Twilight Princess. So I'm going to talk a little bit about twilight princess real quick even though win waker i've i absolutely adore twilight princess i think in retrospect gets a hard knock um did anybody replay the god what was that was that wii u hd it was on the wii u the hd remake i did not play it but i do think that that game is better than people remember it is.

And people sort of malign it by like, oh, it was the emo dark Zelda. But I think it has like a lot of really neat dungeon ideas, upgrade ideas. It doesn't have that boss fight with the gear where you're flying around on that gear. Yes. Yeah. No, it has a bunch of really. It has, I think, back to back back the air the sky dungeon where you get two hook shots now you're like swinging around like uh george of the jungle and then it goes into

the desert temple where you fly around on the giant gear fighting the big skeleton yeah there were rad ideas in twilight princess it's i think it's another structural issue uh for at least for me like having to repeat and go back to the same like forest temple over and over and over again there were there was just a lot of monotony in that game that i wasn't crazy about yeah also funny that these two games would show down against each other because twilight princess is a reaction to wind waker yep when wind waker came out and it had the cell shaded art which now i think is like almost universally loved at the time there was a very divisive people were grumpy that it was you know too childish and kiddy and video games are for

grown-ups now and how will they be art if they are not sad um they they both i think are games uh of maybe all the games we're going to talk about that have aged the best and i think that helps that they both got hd remakes and so you know you you we got a second take on on both these games and i think they are much better than than we gave them credit for but i but i would say with wind waker even without the hd remake it aged incredibly well way better than any other 3d zelda game because of the art style which was designed to scale it's like being able to play a game from 1996 and it still looks good now because it was a sprite game and sprite games still look good.

But with this, it was a 3D game, but because of the style, it was so consistent and clean. The fact that the ocean was just like a blue flat line with occasional like white waves in it just looks so cool. And I like really dug the structure of just like sailing to an island

and not knowing what to expect. Maybe you had like a little mini quest to uncover a treasure. Maybe you had a dungeon there. It was just really interesting. Good maps in this game. Really good maps. I think something that people are just now realizing about open world design based off Wind Waker is big open oceans is a brilliant way to design open world games assassin's creed is finally catching on because you don't need to have all that filler

like it makes it clear that like this is meaningless it's the ocean what do you want right it's beautiful you're traveling through it and then when you do get to land you know like okay something is going to happen in this confined space it's levels within open spaces and i think yeah i think that format is inspired also uh wind waker best final boss fight the absolute raddest and hardest and and coolest yeah shit that final boss fight kicks ass that's the best the best sort of i i am huge into speed runs and like adore them wind waker is my favorite partially because it is legendary in like uh uh developing techniques there's like this big wall that you can't get through unless you collect all these

different things so people were like putting out huge bounties on how do we get past the wall but the the moment and it's in every speed run where you have to like say time and they stop the time in this game is when you bury the fucking master sword inside of ganondorf's brain it's like that's him punching the button to stop the clock it's so dope every time uh yeah wind waker is great love it yeah i think wind waker is going to take this without struggling too difficult but again you know i think there will 100 be this wind Wind Waker Twilight Princess bundle happening this year. Oh, you do? Wow.

Yeah. Scoop. The general concern. It's likely. It's very, very likely, I would say, probably for the fall. So that is a great opportunity. Wind Waker and Twilight Princess? Well, I mean, I guess it could be what?

Like a Zelda 3D All-Stars? Well, the games are already made for Wii U, so it wouldn't really require very much effort because it's already HD. And the rumor has just been around forever. So I think it's going to happen this fall. The only bad news is they're going to kill Zelda in March 2022. Oh, no. Breath of the Wild versus Skyward Sword. Chris, do you want to just get your sort of dark business out of the way if you're going to be how you're going to be?

Oh, yeah, no, I'll do that really quick. Breath of the Wild is easily the winner here. It's a fantastic game, and Skyward Sword is a cursed experience that I wouldn't wish upon my enemies. A lot of great ideas, the art design in Skyward Sword that's kind of like somewhere,

it's pseudo-pointillism, I guess, at times. It's like a middle ground between Wind Waker and ocarina is the what i think of it as it's actually pretty close to ocarina uh to breath of the wild rather it's it's a it's a pretty game um but and and i like the idea of you swinging your remote around and like and chopping stuff but just in in ultimate execution does not work for me and also the worst beginning of the zelda game oh for sure by far it's huge i reviewed skyward sword for i think joystick i think it was like one of the last things i reviewed for joystick uh and had like four days to beat it. And that is a long, probably the longest Zelda game.

It takes, it's like JRPG length. And way overstays its welcome. Way, way, way, way, way. Way, way, way, way overstays its welcome. It is, it's so heartbreaking. First of all, they're remaking it, right? Yes. They're not remaking it.

They are releasing it on Switch in this HD whatever. And I'm very excited for that because I will be curious to see how that experience plays out without the motion controls which were very uh it had the wii motion plus which was an attachment for the wii remote so that like when you moved the sword it sort of followed your movements one to one so when you swung vertically the swordsman etc uh they're removing that right for the switch version and i will be curious to see how that works but even without that structurally skyward sword had really really incredible moments and really really great ideas that were mired by entire chunks of the game that were terrible like the intro to the game

there's a lot of returning to areas you've already been but only this time it's flooded and you have to swim through the area and it's and that like it's so uneven which sucks because it also has like it adds a lot of rpg mechanics that work really really well and there's a lot of like really cool innovative ideas that i think breath of the wild wouldn't have happened without that like seeing how that experimentation played out um super handholdy that was the really the big thing for me is that there's a lot of like ton of dialogue a ton of talking i think zelda is at its best when it really shows rather than tells and this game does the exact opposite of that it it feels like i'm much more picky about jrpgs than y'all are i know but like that slow portion of

like a dragon quest game where it's like you need to climb the mountain it's your birthday and you're a very special boy that you play the beginning of dragon quest 11 i see yeah that is the epitome of the beginning of this game and to see it in a zelda game is so jarring and it just does not work so yeah uh i had to restart my dragon quest 11 save uh fresh and let me tell you it is much better when it takes literally two minutes to play through what took me 30 minutes by just skipping all the cut scenes yeah um i i want to just re-emphasize a point that griffin made because i think it is super important the worst zelda games are still relevant because the best

zelda games don't exist without them. Like that is one of the cool things about this series. Even the worst games produce ideas that end up being better used in better games. Yeah. I think also you want to talk about tone and talking about Twilight Princess. Like that's the dark emo game. Skyward Sword is pretty fucking pitch black. The world has been destroyed by this uh

this this monster and the the antagonist of this game is not like it is uh kefka kefka-esque in in it's sort of like wow that guy's actually kind of fucked up uh there's stuff in skyward sword that i mean your your sword is sentient, there is stuff going on here that is like, asks some existential questions that Zelda has been a little bit afraid to ask until then. But, yeah, so I'm excited to actually replay that one despite sort of my mixed feelings about it. Yeah, we got one more. And just before, when I say one more, do we have more of these? This is the entire first round. Okay.

So, yeah, next week we will decide the best of these eight finalists. But we have to pick the eighth finalist between the original Legend of Zelda on NES versus Spirit Tracks on DS. So that's... So I want to... Okay, let me drop some love for Spirit Tracks really quick. Zelda already got highlighted in the Google Docs. And this applies to Fountain of Hourglass as well. I think both games

look really good for being handheld games. I actually like... They're cel-shaded. They are the spiritual sequels to Wind Waker. So any you know, louding that we can lay on Wind Waker's design, I think you could also say. To accomplish that on the DS in the way that they

did with these games is kind of, I just remembered something about Fresh Dick that I don't even know if you'll remember. I was sitting next to Fresh when this game was announced at GDC and a new Zelda appeared on the screen and a new Zelda appeared on the screen and he gasped. He was like so excited. And then the trailer played and the second ended And he gasped. He was like so excited. And then the trailer played.

And the second ended. He just went, not even to me, a fucking train? Like it was like. So there's a train in this game. So imagine Wind Waker, but instead of a boat, there's a train. And the whole structure of the game is built around this idea of your, your like laying down tracks for this train to follow, to explore the world. Um,

uh, I, it's interesting structurally. It's like an, it's a risky thing. I don't, I think I might like Phantom Hourglass more. Uh,

Spirit, Spirit Tracks does not have the big hub temple that you return to over and over and over again so for that i remember enjoying spirit tracks more but it's i mean that's like saying i enjoy being stabbed more than i enjoy being shot it just felt like to me like after found fan maverick glass and everything that everyone said like just fucking have a button to swing your goddamn sword y'all like just have a button come on just we're better than this we're better to have a regular button right uh but but seeing a train in cel-shaded wind waker style was dope and uh link had a little

like conductor outfit that i loved uh so i think zelda was a ghost that inhabited a suit of armor that you could like yes that may be actually i think that's phantom hourglass was zelda the train i don't know was zelda the train a question we'll be asking for many years okay that's our eight yeah that is our reviews of uh of fucking spirit tracks on on metacritic and not not beloved well no no i mean when it first came out it's that thing that it's like the zelda bump like like hundreds right and 90s but there are a few that are like at the very bottom like av clubs like wait what what are y'all doing like this can't we can't be serious here it's a train quick review russ a recap uh of the uh of the winners and, I would get very excited for part two of this series

because we've got Majora's Mask matching up against Ocarina of Time. We've got Minish Cap matching up against Link's Awakening. We've got Link to the Past versus Wind Waker. And we've got Bread of the Wild versus the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. Those are all good matchups.

Yeah, they're really good matchups. That's good. I'm very psyched. Has anybody been playing anything else? Do we have time to talk about? I wanted to mention, I've been playing Bravely Default 2, which I wanted to just like really quickly talk about

because I couldn't get anybody else on this podcast interested in checking it out. It sounds very boring. It has such a fucking cool, you were talking about dragon quest and i've been really into jrpgs lately just because like we all have lots of time uh and i think bravely default has the best like rpg combat system ever made uh the whole thing it has the really good like jobs and you know you can combine different kind of like rpg archetypes to create your own

kind of like classes and and characters that can unlock all these different abilities that you can combine different kind of like RPG archetypes to create your own kind of like classes and characters that can unlock all these different abilities that you can mix and match. And that all is great. What Bravely Default does is it lets you basically borrow turns if you need them. So you can have somebody take like four turns in a row, but then they can't act for four turns. So on top of the usual RPG of like, I need to hit this fire monster with a ice attack and all that usual bullshit. You also have to think about the timing of your moves. The combat is so fun and it's really hard. It's probably one of the harder Square Enix RPGs I've played.

And there is a bit of grindiness that goes into that, but I also enjoy the combat so much that the grindiness doesn't bother me. But everything else about the game's not very good, which sucks. There's so many like like repetitive sub quests and the story is nothing to write home about um the character models are very strange to look at it's it's in a better game with like a better story and a better

kind of like structure i think this game would be a real classic because the combat and the gameplay is genuinely some of the best like rpg stuff i've played but uh yeah i just it's there are so many other rpgs that have done story better and everything else better i did just play through for the first time all the way the dragon quest 11 and i think it beats the shit out of bravely default and really most other square enix rpgs in that department um so yeah I'm enjoying it. I'll probably finish it, but I won't like it. Justin, how about you?

I kept going with... I'm still going through There Is No Game, by the way, on iOS. I think it's kind of sad that I didn't play it last year because I would have been making a uh a serious bid for it to be our um our game i just got to the pay to win the pay to win microtransaction chapter oh my god it's so funny as you play through the game there is no game starts off it's like incredibly meta where like there's no game except the game is you have to kind of solve puzzles using menu elements and other ephemera in like weird ways. And then as you progress through the game, you start falling through like dimensions and stuff like that that are represent different gameplay periods.

Imagine a LucasArts game, except you're able to go behind the game to see the different ropes and pulleys that are holding up the scenery and being able to reuse those elements in different ways. And then a love story develops out of nowhere. It gets weirdly moving. There's musical numbers. I mean, it is absolute. Every time that you think you've seen everything is going to do but what griffin's referencing there is a sort of like zelda-esque uh open world action game adventure game that you play through this section with these bizarre mechanics that involve like using the life bar to cut down a tree and crap like that uh and then you life bar to cut down a tree and crap like that uh and then you start it again except now it's a pay to win like clicker where you have to like click on different items in the uh environment

to like make money and stuff like that and it has a lot of like interesting stuff to say about like pay to pay to play games uh or free to play games or however you want to state it uh it's fantastic i i really i can't recommend it enough. Fresh, how about you? No, I'm just still playing Stardew, which is incredible. I'm nearing the end of the 1.5 update content and it's just spectacular. I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Yep, same. I have been playing a new emulator handheld and I started playing Astro Boy a mega factor the gba game fuck yeah yeah that game is amazing it's been on my to-do list forever for people who aren't familiar with it which i understandably i should be most people this game was published by sega thq and activision and it was developed by treasure who did like oh yeah some

of the best 16-bit uh action shooty games they did mischief makers they did gun gunstar heroes yeah and yeah also co-developed by hitmaker uh which had tetsuya m Mizuguchi on their team. Oh, I didn't know that. So, I mean, like, this team is just truly bonkers. The game, we were talking about, you know, the beauty of a Game Boy Advance game. This is one of those games that you look at it and you can't believe it is an actual video game. Like, it looks like what would be, like, a music video

using pixel art today, more than like an actual playable video game um and it's the combat is inspired it it it feels big despite being trapped in a very confined space of a gba screen um i i really cannot recommend y'all digging it up enough because it it is special um and and definitely worth your time yep uh so nick i mean we know what we're doing next week right hell yeah we want to save reader reader thoughts about zelda games until we uh have conquered the mountain so to speak yeah i think that makes the most sense sounds good i don't want to be biased uh thank you so much for listening to the besties uh we've been so excited to have you here please leave us a rating or review on the podcast

platform of your choice uh you can follow us on twitter at the besties pod there's also a link to our mailing list there if you want to sign up for that uh anything i'm forgetting gang oh sorry there is one more thing uh folks made it folks folks made our subreddit for the besties uh i forget the subreddit's name but if you search the besties podcast i'm sure it'll come up under reddit uh thank you to the fans of uh the besties on reddit we love you looks like don't say anything mean about us please please no yeah we will be reading it. Link. Thanks so much for listening to the besties. Be sure to join us again next time for the besties.

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