The Legend Of Zelda was never my series growing up. My dad, who introduced me to video games, was all in on the then-newcomer PlayStation in the mid-to-late ‘90s thanks to the power of CDs. The hand-me-down Game Boy I got from a cousin came with a copy of Link’s Awakening, but at six-year-old I couldn’t make heads or tails of what that game was supposed to be. And when I finally played Ocarina Of Time’s 3DS port in college, I found that even games considered the greatest of all time could be tough to go back to if you don’t have the nostalgia to push you through its more obtuse mechanics.
As a player, I’ve always had a lot of reverence for Nintendo’s iconic adventure series. I loved what it meant to gaming culture, listened to its many excellent soundtracks over the years, and respected how it moved game design forward. But when it came time to actually play it, I’d concluded that it just wasn't for me. That was until 2017, when Nintendo’s decision to take the Zelda series in a bold new direction with Breath Of The Wild finally made this legendary series click for me.
