Last year, in anticipation of Tears of the Kingdom, I started playing all the Zelda games (mostly) for the first time. Tears of the Kingdom didn't really do much for me, so I dropped my Zelda marathon after getting burnt out by Link's Awakening. But before that, I had played the 3DS version of this game and Majora as a child and thought they were decent fun, and that was pretty much the extent of my experience with the franchise pre-BOTW. Something about this playthrough completely changed how I view this game, bumping up from "it's pretty good" to feeling like Danny DeVito's character in It's Always Sunny watching Mac's play: "Oh my God.... I get it..."

You can see a lot of this game's DNA in BOTW, and for good reason. The concept of Z-Targeting is still used in so many games today (DMC and Kingdom Hearts come to mind), but it's not always the best way to attack enemies. There are genuine advantages to untargeting to crouch behind your shield and poke between an enemy's legs, or to corner-trap certain bosses. The emphasis on slow, methodical sword combat against enemies like the Lizalfos, Wolfos, Stalfos, the Gerudo, and the Iron Knuckle are some of the most fun combat of any game I've played. Most enemies are standard Zelda fare, though, and don't require that much thought to fight them in the same way as these guys. I don't necessarily wish there were more enemies like the larger, smarter enemies, but they're still the most fun to fight and utilize the system to its full potential.

You can use the Control Stick to change the way your sword swings while targeted or untargeted. A swing sideways or slashing down versus a straight thrust forward makes it easier to hit certain enemies. After visiting a Fairy Fountain, you can get a charged 360 sword attack, but you can avoid using magic with it by doing a motion input with the attack button. If you're feeling like the game has too much stopping and waiting for openings, use the tools at your disposal to stun enemies, or use movement to your advantage by sidestepping around an enemy to hit a blindspot. The combat is just so much fun, man. I could gush about this shit for hours.

The sword combat WOULD be the best thing about this game if it wasn't full of so many fun, well-designed dungeons with intuitive puzzles. Really, the only time I was frustrated was trying to find the last small key in the Water Temple. I had to look it up online and I felt stupid for not realizing where it was because the game basically SHOWS you (you have to go through the center tower and raise the water, then go UNDER the giant block. The camera shows you this, but I just wasn't paying good enough attention...)

Also, I had no clue that you could do the Adult Dungeons in basically any order, provided you have the Bow before Water Temple, and you finish the first three before the trigger for Spirit and Shadow Temples activate. The game steers you in a specific direction if you call Saria or listen to Navi's hints, so that players aren't completely lost on what to do themselves, but it gives some replay value to be able to do things in a different order, and seeing how easy or hard it might be in comparison.

And my god, the storyline of this game is so cool. The English dialogue itself can be a bit stilted, I presume these lines were very direct translations, but is otherwise really well-written. But the world is full of so many fun characters, beautiful locations, and a twist I desperately wish wasn't ruined by Smash Bros. Much of the lore, and even the ending, is a reimagining of the backstory to "Triforce of the Gods" (the Japanese version of Link to the Past, which took a lot of liberties with some details regarding the English translation in the manual). A lot of details were retconned, but I'd say it was for the better because the slow process of awakening all the Sages is so much fun.

While I was playing Link to the Past last year, I noticed that this game has very similar progression structure to it. You do a few dungeons, go into the castle, you warp between two different worlds to progress (Past/Future vs. Light/Dark World), do more dungeons to save the Sages, and then you go back to fight Ganon. I think this game does the structure far better than LTTP, though. Something about that game just wasn't hitting for me. It felt more like a 2D prototype for what would eventually blossom into Ocarina, but it was still cool.

The game takes full advantage of the time travel mechanic in really cool ways, much better than the Light/Dark World mechanic of LTTP. Sometimes, you have to enter a dungeon as a kid because you have to be small enough to squeeze through a hole, get something for yourself as an adult, and then finish the dungeon as an adult with the item you got.

Finally, I'll mention the graphics at the end here. If you're playing the game upscaled in an emulator or using an "HD texture pack", you're missing the point. CRT filters aren't always great, but playing this on the closest approximation of one that you can reveals how nice the game looks when you can't tell how stretched and blurry the textures are (I use S-Video filters, personally). This is one of the best-looking low-poly games I've ever played, on par with (sometimes looking better than) a game like Metal Gear Solid. Pray your emulator can accurately render the fog and lighting, and the game looks beautiful. The only thing I'm curious about is why some environments are pre-rendered and some are fully rendered in 3D. The pre-rendered backgrounds look very nice and are high-quality, but it seems like they choose the most random places to make something pre-rendered.

Really the only major negative (hidden Water Temple key aside) that I can think of is how lacking Hyrule Field is as a hub area. It connects all the major locations together, but it's just so big and empty that traversing it early on (especially as a child) quickly becomes a bore. It's really fun to run around in once you have Epona as an adult, and I'm sure it'd be twice as impressive if I was a kid in the late 90s experiencing something so revolutionary, but man... it just takes ages to cross on foot unless you sidestep jump spam. That majesty of "wow, I'm impressed that they were able to make this work on the N64" wears off when you have to cross the field for the 15th time and you just wish you could get to where you were going a little faster. Especially in cases like first-time visits of locations, or when trying to get back to Zora's Domain (afaik, there's no quick warp there).

Not without its flaws, but as close to a masterpiece as you can get. Can't wait to play the rest of the games in the franchise as I slowly work my way through it before giving Tears of the Kingdom another chance.