Best Zelda games
From Hyrule's windswept fields to sunken kingdoms and ticking clockwork moons, the Legend of Zelda series has spent decades redefining what adventure games can be. Fans have fiercely debated which entry reigns supreme for just as long, comparing dungeon design, storytelling, and that unmistakable sense of discovery. Cast your vote and help settle which Zelda title truly deserves the Triforce of greatness.
What counts: Seeded with approximate figures where shown — the crowd's votes decide the order.
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild▲ Rising
You step out of the Shrine of Resurrection, look down at Hyrule Field stretching to every horizon, and Nintendo dares you to walk straight to Ganon with nothing but a paraglider and stubbornness. It tore up forty years of series conventions — no mandatory dungeon order, no hand-holding, just chemistry-set physics and vertical freedom — and every open-world game since has been chasing its shadow. The argument for the top spot is simple: it didn't just reinvent Zelda, it reinvented what 'open world' meant for the entire industry.
Year: 2017Critic score: 9.7/10
added by IJRin 9 rankings
137
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom▲ Rising
Ultrahand turns Hyrule into a physics sandbox where you're bolting together jet-powered death machines and Zonai contraptions just to cross a canyon, and the sky islands plus the nightmarish Depths triple the map Breath of the Wild gave you. It's the rare sequel that makes its predecessor feel like a rough draft, answering every 'I wish I could just build a bridge here' moment with an emphatic yes. The case for its ranking is that it took the most acclaimed game of its generation and somehow out-scaled it.
Year: 2023Critic score: 9.6/10
added by IJRin 6 rankings
80
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
The first time you play Zelda's Lullaby and watch Navi flit into a 3D dungeon, you're witnessing the moment adventure games figured out how to exist in three dimensions — Z-targeting alone rewired combat design for a decade. Water Temple frustration and iron boots aside, this is the game that made Ganondorf a legend, gave us the Master Sword pedestal twist, and became the answer to 'greatest game of all time' for an entire generation of critics. Its place here isn't nostalgia — it's the blueprint every 3D action-adventure since has been photocopying.
Year: 1998Critic score: 9.9/10
added by IJRin 9 rankings
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The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past▼ Falling
Dropping you between the Light and Dark Worlds via a single mirror, this SNES classic perfected the top-down formula so thoroughly that it's still the template modders and indie devs steal from constantly. The Pyramid of Power, the Master Sword pull, the sheer density of secrets packed into sixteen bits — it proved Zelda could be huge and intricate without a single polygon. It earns its spot as the granddaddy blueprint, the game that made 'It's dangerous to go alone' into a design philosophy instead of just a meme.
Year: 1991Critic score: 9.5/10
added by IJRin 4 rankings
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Comments (7)
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Voted — and the gap between #1 and #2 should be bigger.
Exactly the kind of argument the internet was built for.
The crowd is sleeping on the bottom half of this list.