The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (GameCube)

Best: Completely revolutionized combat

While the N64 Zelda games were serviceable as action games, they were pretty stiff as far as sword combat went. This all changed with The Wind Waker, which still feels incredibly fluid to this day. With more attention put into dodge mechanics, sword-based combos, and just an overall feel for movement within a combat space, Wind Waker’s swordplay helped elevate the series’ fighting to the level of its dungeon and puzzle design. It’s because the combat is so great that the final boss sequence is still one of the best in the franchise. Link and Zelda teaming up to fight Ganondorf in a flooded Hyrule hits as hard as it does because the fight capitalizes on all the mechanics introduced throughout the adventure to create an all-time great moment melding drama with gameplay.

Worst: The Triforce shards

Wind Waker forcing you to gather all those Triforce shards was and still is pretty universally derided. This entails traveling around the world by boat to track down pieces of the Triforce that are buried at sea. It was incredibly tedious, but necessary to progress the story, so it served as a huge momentum killer for a lot of players. Wii U’s HD remaster attempted to streamline this, but the Triforce hunt’s still recognized as the biggest drawback to an otherwise beloved game.

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