The Legend of Zelda Tender's Talk Episode 2

[Tenders]

What are your guys' favorite zelda games?

[Reality]

I think the prompt questions were kind of weaker this time around.

Some things I disagreed with -

Oracle of Ages having good puzzles - Oracle does some smart things with the seed shooter and it's "swapgun" hookshot, It had some room-based puzzles, like the colored floor puzzles, and like Oracle of Seasons, it pushes the feather in ways that other 2-D zelda's don't, since you have to combine it with peasgus at times, do diagnol jumps, etc.

However, the good puzzles are undermined by the bad ones in this game. It's the most backtrack heavy zelda. Doing the Islander and the Goron areas back to back is basically torture. The way that some areas are used with the past/present mechanic had similiar problems. Even within the dungeons themselves, you have the spinner/hallway thing (which shows up in 6/8 of the dungeons) that forces you to go all the way around and reset it so you can make it go right twice. Jabu Jabu's Belly is probbably one of the worst dungeons in the series since changing the water level and going all the way back to the top floors multiple times really didn't work out well in 2D.

Oracle of Seasons has all of the good things that Ages did, without having as much a problem with backtracking. The rod of seasons had a much shorter cutscene (and never got overused to the point of using it once every 2 screens like entering zora village/symmetry cliffs in Ages did). Seasons had it's own set of good items, including the seed shooter (again) the magnet gloves and the roc's cape. It keeps the higher difficulty and need for diagnol jumping that Ages have (compared to 2D games like Link to Past /Link's awakening) I feel that overall it is definately the stronger game, mostly due to not wasting your time nearly  as much (although the subrosa sequences share problems with oracle of ages).

Twilight Princess's Zelda - I definately don't think she's one of the absolute best zeldas like spirit tracks/skyward sword/wind waker, but I do think that she's definately at least medium quality.

Most of her strength or lack of strength as a charather comes from how people interpret she healed Midna... If you just think it was magic (as you seem to in the conversation), then yeah, she's kind of passive in TP. However, most people think that Zelda has a more extreme role in that cutscene and that she actually gives Midna the triforce of Wisdom. This is mostly backed up by  Midna flinching away from the Master Sword when Link first gets it and then realizing that it's light won't burn her. etc. I also appreciate that Zelda wears a black moruning shroud, since while she's strong charather in other game's she doesn't usually do much with her role of being the kingdom's princess. Honestly you could ust make her a non-royal "priestess of light" in a game like Ocarina without changing the story, while in Twiligtht Princess her political status is a little more important.