Which Zelda Game Is Right for You?

You’ve gnawed on raw meat in Breath of the Wild and stapled a log to a twig in Tears of the Kingdom, but have you looked past open-world Hyrule to explore all that the 38-year-old The Legend of Zelda franchise has to offer? Well, you know what they say: It’s never too late to go deeper into a series with nearly 50 main and spinoff titles. Really, though, The Legend of Zelda is such a resplendent action-adventure franchise; it offers plenty of options for fans of any age, skill level, and familiarity. Your next favorite Zelda game is still out there.

And you’re expanding beyond BoTW and ToTK at the perfect time. This year’s Echoes of Wisdom is the first main Zelda game in history to let you play as the titular princess; until now, Nintendo has forced Zelda into spending her time off-screen, being kidnapped or wise. Everyone knows a girl should not have to be either! But Zelda’s been getting the side character treatment since 1986, when the original Legend of Zelda released for Famicom. That game introduces Link, the series’ quiet green knight, as a resilient dungeon-crawler and Zelda as the pink elf who needs his help.

That said, many things have changed since Zelda’s days in the ’80s as a top-down adventure. While subsequent Zelda games retained the dungeon and temple exploration of the first series installments, 1998’s Ocarina of Time set a precedent for 3-D graphics. In more recent history, BoTW remixed the Zelda standard again by introducing Hyrule’s first open world. So why shouldn’t things start being different for Zelda herself? Instead of trapping smart Zelda in the background once again, Echoes uses the difficult puzzles and life-threatening, dark mysteries associated with Zelda games to finally plop its princess in the driver’s seat.

Trying out other Zelda games will help you prepare for the franchise’s changing future, which is also set to include an as-of-yet-unnamed live-action movie — another first of its kind. But, for all the novelty Zelda is toying with at the moment, its heart glows with the same enduring qualities. It’s a game series about loyalty, ingenuity, and playful creativity.

Read on to figure out which of Zelda’s legendary fantasy games you should play next.

If you’ve only played BotW: Link’s Awakening

Since its 1993 release for Game Boy, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening has been one of the most exemplary Zelda games. The top-down adventure has you, as a tiny Link sprite, proceed through the strange Koholint Island after being shipwrecked. You want to go home, but a little owl informs you that, first, you’ll need to gather hidden instruments to wake the island’s slumbering Wind Fish.

To accomplish this, you crusade through dungeons and defeat the goofy bosses that wait within, including the Genie who looks like a wad of bubble gum injected with hyaluronic acid, and the Slime Eel who threatens to eat you with its remarkably yonic maw. But your progress only further obscures the truth of Koholint, now overrun with Nightmare creatures. 

So Link’s Awakening is a careful balance of impish humor and light danger — much like David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, which inspired the game (and its dreamworld owls). Director Takashi Tezuka’s urge for an hallucinatory narrative here is tantalizing enough on its own, but the clever dungeons and puzzles you find in Link’s Awakening help it stand as an archetypal Zelda title, too.

For both of these reasons, Link’s Awakening is the perfect game for people who have only recently become Zelda fans through Breath of the Wild, which is similarly full of starry melancholy. Plus, Link’s Awakening is easy to play on Switch; Nintendo published a remake in 2019, and Nintendo Switch Online subscribers also have access to the enhanced 1998 Game Boy Color port, Link’s Awakening DX, in their libraries.

If you think you’ve seen it all: Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland

Not every The Legend of Zelda game gets to live under marquee lights like Link’s Awakening. Some seem to lurk in the dusty crevice beneath a couch instead, like the largely forgotten Nintendo DS spinoff title Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland. While it has some traditional dungeon exploration elements, the Japanese and European exclusive is a largely unorthodox Zelda installment. That’s almost purely because it centers the recurring character Tingle, a peculiar man who enjoys money and wearing a full-body unitard. Who doesn’t?

But, despite his relatability, Tingle is polarizing. (That’s what happens when you’re named Tingle.) Since his first appearance in the 2000 Nintendo 64 game Majora’s Mask, Tingle has smirked through life as sort of an entrepreneurial type. He sells maps, travels by red balloon, and he inspired a 2004 IGN blog that says Tingle is “hideously deformed” and should be killed.

Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland explores this multifaceted existence. Though several fans call developer Vanpool’s three Tingle games non-canonical, Rupeeland offers a Tingle origin story through an intriguing indictment of capitalism. It explains that Tingle, the player character, was a normal, bored 35-year-old until getting approached by the mystical Uncle Rupee — you can think of him as a Judas figure. This sentient piece of Zelda currency convinces the player he should aspire to reach the idyllic Rupeeland, so he rebirths you as Tingle and makes money necessary to do anything, even breathe.

It’s a one-of-a-kind Zelda game. Though, over the years, Tingle has become more Easter egg than misshapen man (there’s a Tingle armor set in Tears of the Kingdom, but no Tingle), Freshly-Picked Tingle’s Rosy Rupeeland will probably still intrigue longtime fans who think they’ve seen it all. It’s easy enough to find an emulator for the game, too.

If you’ve ever imagined Zelda and Link kissing: Skyward Sword

Don’t let DeviantArt fool you — Princess Zelda and Link’s sacred relationship isn’t explicitly romantic. Their two canonical kisses have been brief and polite (behind a curtain in 1987’s Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, then on the cheek in 2001’s Oracle of Ages). Also, official guidebooks (and some games, like Breath of the Wild) establish that Link and Zelda have spent most of the franchise being teenagers, so they should be allowed to discover themselves and what else is out there.

But if that doesn’t work for you, and you’re already done with your hundredth rewatch of The Princess Bride, you should pick up The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword for Switch. In the game, which was originally released in 2011 for Wii, Link chases Zelda through the clouds and back in time. He risks his life to take down the demon king Demise as Zelda’s childhood friend and fated champion. And everyone knows there’s nothing more romantic than being your childhood friend’s fated champion.

That said, any amorous undertone in Skyward Sword is implied rather than stated. Though many fans consider Skyward Sword to be the strongest evidence for Link and Zelda’s true love, the game also gives you the option to ruin everything and get Link involved with the shopgirl Peatrice.

You don’t have to take the bait. Skyward Sword doesn’t feature the big Hyrulian wedding so many fanfic writers have prophesied, but it does have an adoring princess promising Link that “I’m still your Zelda.” Your heart will hurt.

If you wish you could still play “Hot Cross Buns” on recorder: Ocarina of Time

Hardly any other game comes close to matching the magic you find in Ocarina of Time — according to Metacritic, it’s the best-rated game of all time. Practically nothing else is as good at being a wind instrument simulator, either.

A simple blue ocarina is the core of this pioneering 1998 N64 game, which was the first Zelda title with 3-D graphics. It was also the first to feature Navi, the blue fairy fans love to hate, and Ganondorf, the humanoid form of Link’s lifelong nemesis, Ganon. To save the lush Hyrule he knew as a child — and to free Princess Zelda, who Ganon antagonizes — Link has to follow Zelda tradition and slash his way through dungeons and temples.

Seven years earlier, Zelda trusted Link with the Ocarina of Time, an object that would help Ganon achieve world domination. But with you, as Link, the Ocarina brings puzzle solutions and peace; as the game progresses, you learn to play enchanted songs by treating the buttons on your controller like music notes. Performing them correctly lets you do things like travel to specific locations or call upon friends like Epona, the horse, who makes her debut here. 

Being mapped to a controller means that all songs in Ocarina of Time have a no-frills lullaby quality to them. This makes Ocarina not only one of the best games ever made, but also one of your better options for creating a sweet little melody with your fingers. You can play it on Switch with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription.

If you’ve read Walden: Majora’s Mask

The Ocarina of Time sequel, Majora’s Mask, is widely considered to be one of the best Zelda games because of its unique time system, arcane side quests, and soothing music. But I’d like to add that it sort of embodies your tenth-grade summer-reading list; precisely as Thoreau writes that “I go and come with a strange liberty in Nature,” Link, in this game, is turned into a lowly coconut head by a wayward child under the influence of an evil mask.

More specifically, the impudent Skull Kid steals the Ocarina of Time and turns Link into a Deku Scrub, those antagonistic tree cannons first introduced in Ocarina. With some help from the reluctant ally Tatl, a yellow fairy Skull Kid rudely leaves behind, you work to retrieve Link’s lost ocarina and, if you can, stop the world from ending. Skull Kid plans to pull down the moon in three days, so Link has to constantly reset a 72-hour cycle with the Song of Time until he’s ready to combat Majora’s Mask, the source of Skull Kid’s evil.

Though living in a time loop is arguably “against nature,” the story of Majora’s Mask is strongly concerned with restoring the world’s natural balance, making it an appealing pick for people who like justice and/or plants. Link spends a decent amount of Majora’s Mask as the latter, and he executes the former throughout demanding quests that still feel innovative today. “Live deep and suck out all the marrow of [The Legend of Zelda]” by playing Majora’s Mask Switch port with a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, or by trying modder Wiseguy’s recent PC port.

If you listen to Lana Del Rey: Twilight Princess

Swap American flags and Pepsi for unnatural darkness and Bulblins, and you’ll discover that Twilight Princess could make a great fatalistic Lana Del Rey song. The 2006 action-adventure game has Link trying to banish murky Twilight from the typically sunny Hyrule, similar to how Lana expels shame from dating old guys and living in Florida.

The divinely chosen hero, Link, spends the game flitting between his human form and the body of a wolf (a metaphor for the rich cocaine daddies of Wall Street/the bayou/Venice Beach?). In either case, Link comes off as more somber than he does in other games, a fact that coincides with Twilight Princess’s distinct gloom.

As Twilight devours Hyrule, Zant, the game’s cat-faced villain, acts more out of nuanced greed and desperation rather than one-note, inherent wickedness. The shadows he brings with him fill oblivious Hyrule residents with unfixed despair, and they don’t even have the option to cope by streaming the “Born to Die” music video. The process of acquiring the game is just as esoteric, too. The best way to play Twilight Princess is through an emulator. It got an HD remaster for the Wii U in 2016, but, since Nintendo shut down the Wii U e-shop in 2023, Twilight Princess HD’s physical copies are considerably marked up.

It could be worth it to you. All of the dark clouds and romantic gloom in Twilight Princess make it as indulgent as the most moody Lana song. Only the watchful Light Spirits, who Link unleashes by collecting radiating Tears of Light in his wolf form, provide a steady sense of hope. And let’s acknowledge that the title “Twilight Princess” is #coquette #officesiren.

If you’re just adorable: The Minish Cap

Where Twilight Princess is tough, 2004 Game Boy Advance title The Minish Cap is too cute. Visually, it benefits from both the top-down view characteristic of early Zelda and the GBA’s 32-bit color screen. Link is represented by a tiny sprite who looks as squishable as a jelly mold, with impressively voluminous hair; Hyrule is a series of abundant green valleys and diminutive, cobwebbed dungeons. The GBA’s graphics assure The Minish Cap can be both well-defined and sweetly cartoonish.

That’s important, since cuteness is part of The Minish Cap’s story, too. The dark magician Vaati — a former member of the teeny, mousey Picori, or Minish race — turns Zelda to stone in his pursuit of the Light Force, an intrinsic source of power. To save her and to reforge the fabled Picori Blade, Link shrinks down to the Picori’s miniature size with the help of Ezlo, a disgruntled Minish sage Vaati turned into a hat. In his Picori form, Link looks to be about as tall as a sunflower seed. It’ll make you want to cry with motherly joy. In fact, the whole thing plays out like an interactive nursery rhyme with a moral message: If you’re brave, you might end up with a new hat. Check it out in the Nintendo Switch Online library.

If you’re really into trains: Spirit Tracks

The 2009 Nintendo DS game Spirit Tracks makes a plea for more mass transit. In it, Link is Zelda’s Royal Engineer responsible for operating Hyrule’s otherworldly Spirit Tracks railroad. But, before Link can perform any public good, the nefarious Chancellor Cole makes the Spirit Tracks disappear, eroding the seal on the Tower of Spirits prison, which restrains the demon Malladus. With Paranormal Activity plans in mind, Cole removes Zelda’s body from her soul and has it taken to the Tower.

So train-heads will love this game, but ghost train-heads will appreciate it even more. Throughout Spirit Tracks, you and Zelda’s phantom visit five temples. Your goal is to restore Hyrule’s railroad and recover Zelda’s body, which Malladus will soon possess. You ride the Spirit Train all around and huck bombs at the Dark Trains that threaten you with wreckage and Game Over. You begin to wonder if this whole thing could have been avoided had Hyrule’s thought leaders adopted high-speed rail instead.

On the topic of technology, the best way to play Spirit Tracks is unfortunately on the DS. In his pursuit to revive the Spirit Tracks, Link has to play songs on the sacred Spirit Flute, which requires players to blow awkwardly into the DS microphone. Operating the Spirit Train also relies on the structure of the DS; you draw a path for it with your stylus. That said, emulators for iPhone and PC can get the job done, too, unlike six-lane highways.