Zelda is a great game with good action and puzzles, but how come the puzzles don't put people off? You'd have thought it would knock out the lowest common denominator. How many other games have so many puzzles.

Well, in my case, I like action, and I also like puzzles, so Zelda offers me the best of both worlds. Actually, it also offers me adventure and exploration as well, which are two other things I like. Plus the games are extremely well polished in all regards.

I guess there are just lots of people who like the same things I do, which is why Zelda is popular.

And with me, it wasn't really nostalgia, as I was first introduced to Zelda with Zelda:Ocarina of Time. I've since played most of them (although not Link to the Past yet, I really should find a copy of that) and liked them, but I like lots of puzzles in my games, as long as the puzzles are well designed.

I've never been a puzzle fanatic. As a strange aside, I am an Engineer, and I got really tired of speakers saying that Engineers are the ones who always enjoy puzzles. In fact, I don't. Puzzles - at least the ones in video games - generally have a "trick" to solving them, like a trap door function in cryptography, without knowing it, the puzzle appears impossible. A lot of the Zelda series has these types of puzzles. The last Zelda I played was A Link to the Past. I liked the style of play, and while some of the puzzles were 'tricks' they generally just involved some work, careful planning, and maybe a bit of research (i.e. talk to all the townsfolk, try everything all the time).

I'd have to say that, for the most part, it's because everything is made easy. How many times have you come up to a boss, didn't know what he does or how to even hurt him, but managed to beat him the first time through? It makes people feel smart to be able to solve puzzles that aren't immediately answered, but are solved through a simple process. I've gone through Ocarina of time without picking up a single heart and only the single, required, bottle. I'd like, just once, for there to be an enemy that fakes being hurt when you hit some glowing eye, just so everyone could have a big laugh at how ridiculous the mechanics can be sometimes.

Nintendo has you all fooled!

It's the music. That damn beautiful theme has backwards-encoded messages, forcing you into a deep state of linkalysis. No, but seriously, the music adds a lot more than you probably realize. The people who didn't fall in love with Zelda most likely didn't dig the theme song :D

I think simply it's this: Everyone grows up with a game they really enjoyed and because of that, it is most likely that they will continue to buy sequels to that game. Wonder why Mario is popular? Because of that. Sonic? Same thing. Gameplay and music do still matter, but I think games must get a person early in order to gain fans, right? This doesn't apply to hardcore games like Halo and Metal Gear, which have gained fans during the teens years rather than the childhood years. Wouldn't want little jimmy coming around the corner and slitting your throat with a butter knife.

It's definitely not nostalgia for me - I met Zelda through Ocarina when I went to uni, and completed it about a dozen times more or less in a row (including once with no unecessary pickups and delaying necessary ones as long as possible - man is crossing the desert without the Eye tough! - also completing it in a single sitting and completing it getting items as far ahead of sequence as possible). By now I must have completed it more than 20 times, though I've long since stopped keeping count.

I've no idea what, specifically, drew me to it - the soundtrack's good, the minigames are generally well designed, the basic combat mechanic is fun, the puzzles are generally solvable through logic in advance rather than needing to guess and then realise why (or in some cases guess without a clue why) as can be the case with adventure games. The game-world is internally consistent (though not very realistic) so things you learn in one situation usually transfer across to other circumstances (the most common reason for getting stuck in a Zelda game is probably failing to realise a given item has a given capability) and the path through the game is clearly signposted, but there are also rewards for exploring the rest of the world.

The biggest negative about the entire game (for me) is the early tutorial section, where, after a lengthy prologue cutscene which you can't skip, but do have to keep prompting to continue, you keep getting stopped to be told how to play the game - great for a first time player, but increasingly annoying on replay - most particularly the three times you're told to "Pay attention to what the action icon says" (one of which you can avoid). Yes, guidance on how to play the game is a good thing, but if you can't turn it off of avoid it, and have to wait for it to scroll past every single time, it gets a little intrusive.


Ultimately, with the exception of Zelda 2, the Zelda series follows a formula, and does it well, with each game being an individual experience, but the entire series having a lot in common - in many ways paralleling the Final Fantasy series (though Zelda might have a single coherent storyline connecting all the games). The formula seems to be pretty successful, and the games implement it well.