Where is the best place in The Legend of Zelda to fight?
When you play a Zelda game, one of the best parts is fighting through a bestiary of strange monsters using each game’s unique battle system. Even though the basics of combat are always the same—attacking with swords, bows, boomerangs, and bombs—each game in the series gives combat a different twist.
Some Zelda games keep the fighting easy and straightforward, while others use more complicated methods. Each battle system is different, which means that killing monsters in Hyrule is always a new experience from one Zelda game to the next.
The Legend Of Zelda
The Legend of Zelda on the NES, which started it all, has the oldest fighting system, but that’s because the game is well over 35 years old. Back in the 8-bit era, it was hard to make complex battle systems, but the original Zelda does a great job considering what it could do.
Link can fight with swords, bows, and bombs. He can also use more complicated moves like the Sword Beam, but that’s about it for complexity. More of a basic plan for how better combat tools will work in the future.
Link’s Awakening / Oracle Of Seasons / Oracle Of Ages
The things you learned about fighting in A Link to the Past are put into these three Game Boy/Game Boy Color games. Link can now use the spin attack to fight, and the basic sword attack is now a swipe instead of a stab. There are also a lot of fun new things that make fighting more interesting.
But fights can feel a bit cramped on the small Gameboy screen, and most of these games, except for Oracle of Seasons, are more about exploring and solving puzzles than killing enemies. Still, in Link’s Awakening, you can beat Goombas (yes, those Goombas) by stomping on their heads, so that has to count for something.
Phantom Hourglass / Spirit Tracks
The quality of the fighting in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks depends on how well you like to use your touch screen. On the surface, these games have some of the most complex battle systems of any handheld Zelda. Link can use his sword to swipe, stab, and spin attacks. Getting the Swordman’s Scrolls also lets him use some cool special moves.
But it’s hard not to think that the fighting in Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks would be better if you could use buttons. The touch controls work well enough, but when the fight gets intense, they don’t do what they were meant to.
A Link To The Past
A Link to the Past changed the way the game fights, and those changes are still being used today. It was in this game that the spin attack, sword swiping, and a lot of other fun new ways to fight monsters in Hyrule and the Dark World were introduced.
Since it came out more than 30 years ago, the fighting in A Link to the Past shows some signs of its age. The controls for the sword are a little tight, and the physics don’t feel as snappy as they did in later 2D games.
A Link Between Worlds
Like the fights in A Link to the Past, but better. The swordplay in A Link Between Worlds is as smooth as a Zora’s flipper. This is in part because the game runs at 60 frames per second. The item rental system gives you more ways to customize your weapons and makes each fight more dangerous because if you die, you lose everything.
The game’s battle system could have taken a few more chances. Outside of the final boss, there isn’t any fighting in the parts where you merge walls. This seems like a missed chance, since 2D side-scrolling battles would have been a nice nod to The Adventure of Link.
Skyward Sword
No Zelda game has had as many different views about how to fight as Skyward Sword. The discussion comes down to one easy question: Did the one-to-one motion controls work for you, or did they not?
Skyward Sword’s fighting was immersive, strategic, and gave each swing of the Wii Motion Plus Remote a sense of purpose that you can’t get with regular button controls. Unfortunately, the end results were different for each gamer, and many of them thought the motion controls were nothing more than a gimmick.
Zelda 2: The Adventure Of Link
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link is known for being hard, and there are a lot of things that don’t make sense in the game that make it hard to play. But its fighting is still surprisingly tight, deep, and, given that it is a 2D side-scrolling game, completely different from anything else in the series.
Link can hit in Zelda 2 in a wide variety of ways. He can thrust his sword up, down, left, right, and while jumping or ducking. There are also a few spells that can be used in fight to make some of the more dangerous situations a little less scary.
Ocarina Of Time
When Ocarina of Time brought the Zelda series into the third dimension, it had to solve a lot of problems. The makers were smart to use a new feature called “Z-targeting” to lock in fights. This made sure you never lost sight of your enemy and kept the fight feeling controlled and easy to follow.
It’s also impressive how well all of Link’s most famous items work in 3D. The bow, bombs, hammer, and hook shot are all easy to use and add to the timeless appeal of this game.
Majora’s Mask
Majora’s Mask takes the basic ways to fight from Ocarina of Time and adds a lot of masks on top of them. Some masks, like the Deku, Goron, Zora, and Fierce Deity masks, have their own unique ways of fighting. This means that as you progress through Drift Boss game, you get to try out new moves and skills.
Majora’s Mask has a fighting system that feels different from other Zelda games before 2017 because of how Link can change into different forms.
The Minish Cap
When it comes to fighting, The Minish Cap is way better than any of the other 2D Zeldas. Capcom did everything it could to make the Game Boy Advance version of a 3D Zelda game’s fighting feel as deep as it does in 3D. And they did well.
Link has a lot of sword moves to choose from. And finding the Tiger Scrolls lets him use many of them. When everything comes together, The Minish Cap’s battles are just as complicated as some of the best in the series.
The Wind Waker
With its dynamic quick animations, dynamic combos, and timed counter-attack prompts. The Wind Waker brings 3D Zelda fighting to a whole new level. All of these things come together to make a combat system that is both fast-paced and strategic. This makes sure that there is never a boring moment when fighting in The Wind Waker.
Combat in The Wind Waker was fun when it first came out. But it wasn’t until Hero Mode made it harder in the HD version that its subtleties could be seen.
Twilight Princess
Combat in Twilight Princess is a good mix of being easy to learn and hard to master. Link learns a lot of secret sword moves as he goes through the story. And each one feels like a natural addition to his moves. Putting a helm splitter, a back slice, and a jump move all together is always fun.
The way Wolf Link fights is a lot more simple, but it’s still fun to mess around with. Overall, the Twilight Princess battle system was the best of all Zelda games until a few years ago.
Breath Of The Wild
Breath of the Wild made a big improvement to how you fight in Zelda. Gone were the days when you could only use one sword on your journey. Now, the world of Hyrule was like a huge used weapons shop with all kinds of blades, bows, boomerangs, wands, and other weapons for anyone to take.
The game’s mechanics were also changed, and a new dodge, counter. And parry system was added to give the game a nice risk/reward factor. Breath of the Wild made fighting in the series feel more open, playful, and experimental than ever before.
Tears Of The Kingdom
The fighting system in Tears of the Kingdom is the most expressive and free-form of all the Zelda games. Every weapon can be combined with a huge variety of things from all over the world to make a huge number of strange combinations that can be used in battle.
It’s hard to believe how much you can change and try out. And that’s not even talking about the war machines you can build. Tears of the Kingdom gives you the freedom to picture the game’s battles in any way you want. Because of this, it has the most layers of any system.
