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What is your favorite Zelda overworld?

DragonSworne said:
hyrule-map.jpg
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Zelda 2 by a landslide. No other overworld in the Zelda franchise has a right to call the land Hyrule Kingdom.
 
MvmntInGrn said:
Majora's Mask. Termina Field is big but not a hassle to travel across like Hyrule Field in OOT or TP or the Great Sea in WW. Its also very easy to see where you want to go without needing the map due to the distinct areas unlike the hill-filled Hyrule Field and its poorly placed fences.

I find the LTTP style overworlds (extending to the Oracle games and LA) pretty darn annoying to travel across period. LA because its filled with more item-dependent overworld travel and LTTP due to a neat looking but ultimately useless map and then that dark world. I don't remember the Oracle games having such annoying travel hiccups (even with their own alternate-world mechanics). I liked the smaller Minish Cap overworld best from the 2D games.

MM is the best balance. It also has bunny hood and song of soaring (without the need to park your boat) going for it. I enjoy an overworld I don't have to constantly trek across but get to revisit for new areas until I unlock the statue.

And because my post looks anti-LTTP/OOT; they are all great games m'kay?

I don't have enough Zelda I & II expirience. Shame on me. Oh and Skyward Sword has an atrocious overworld.
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MM does have several ways of travel; that's a huge plus.

It can't be used in every game, but Goron rolling is the greatest.
 
Majoras Mask wins out on 3d by a significant margin, it had the least useless filler for a map while still maintaining the illusion of exploration.

But Links awakening beats everything else, they clearly went into it with the idea that *every map square has to be important!*, and it worked out so well.
 
I just don't get how you can say The Wind Waker when it's so empty. It's beautiful to look at, and with great music, but so boring.

For me, probably Ocarina of Time, then The Minish Cap, then A Link to the Past.

Special shout-out goes to Skyward Sword's Lanayru Desert, though. In general, I would say I found Skyward Sword's overworld a mostly unmemorable experience, but with very interesting parts.
 
I know it gets a lot of hate but my fav is Wind Waker and the sense of scale. Really felt like I was on an adventure exploring each island regardless how small and trivial some where. ALttP a close second due to that being the game that got me hooked on Zelda with each area and dungeon very distinct plus come on it had twice the size due to the dark realm.
 
Ocarina of Time (so, Twilight Princess as well, I suppose). Like the OP said, I know that isn't the most exciting choice, but I really felt immersed in that world. I don't think I've felt that way about a virtual world ever again. And, also, I didn't really consider Skyward Sword's hub as an overworld. Felt like a patchwork of stages.
 
Yea, definitely a tie between Twilight Princess and Majora's mask for me. Those two games had the most atmospheric worlds, imo.
 
abunai said:
Minish cap. Apparently nobody likes it but me, never see it in gaf zelda threads. I still haven't played Skyward Sword though, so maybe my opinion will change.
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I'm currently replaying Minish Cap, I love the game but the overworld isn't great. It's too segmented, you are lead to one of the four corners, go around in a circle once to get to the dungeon entrance, then head off to the next region. I do appreciate all the hidden secrets however.
 
Only Zelda game I've really played thru is Ocarina of Time 3D, didn't grow up with an n64. But I imagine hyrule field was pretty impressive in 1998.
 
DragonSworne said:
Zelda 1 and 2

the overworld in the first 2 Zelda games had scale. Multiple towns, castles, lakes, oceans, etc.

The recent Zelda games have all become cookie cutters of aLttP, even down to the same damn tiny map scale.
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Zelda 1 didn't even have real towns. The area you start in can maybe be considered one (after all, in this place you find most caves with people in them) but the overworld Zelda 1 for sure isn't bigger than the ones in 2D games afterward. Zelda II, though, oh yes, that one's quite big.

Holy Order Sol said:
Some Zelda Classic quests have great overworlds especially if you like them maze-like and packed with stuff. Gottta love Lost Isle.
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Absolutely.
I personally loved it in "Isle of the Wind", which is based on Wind Waker, but in 2D and many isles are actually really big. "Hero of Dreams" doesn't have the density of nintendo games like Links Awakening, but it's at least three times bigger and has quite a lot of secrets, some I didn't even noticed after two playthroughs.

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For me it's fairly hard to choose. Most of them have some excellent overworlds.

I personally really love the overworld in Twilight Princess. I loved riding around the huge area, just fighting some enemies with all the items I have. I also loved it that there's more to discover than I thought. The reward itself isn't great, but knowing that you just found a new area feels good enough for me. Wind Waker gives me a similar feeling. Just sailing around, moving to the next square to see what the island looks like and what stuff it has for me.

I don't think that Links Awakening is so dense like everyone likes to claim - there are quite a bunch of screens that are just for traversal and don't have anything there, and quite a lot is wasted on a minigame - but they still nailed it. It still has the wonderful feel of adventure and there are quite some interesting things done on the map, like the maze of signs. The Oracle games manage to continue this very well.
Minish Cap has the greatest amount of secrets, the best town and is very diversive, so I personally would consider this game to have the best map.

Btw.: I would love to see the Zelda 2 map done in a 3D HD Zelda.
 
Wind Waker. While most of the world is just water it was pretty fun to just go from square to square on the map and see what you could find there.
 
A Link to the Past and Minish Cap. I LOVED those games, in part because of their fantastic overworlds. By comparison I hated WW and TP's for having large, nearly empty ones with lots of boring traversal.
 
Termina, by a country mile.

It's not really the world that makes it, but the fact that there are 3 days worth of everyday lives to explore. It's not static like every other Zelda overworld, it's always in motion.
 
Link's Awakening. 16x16 screens of 16x16 tiles. Looking at every one of them I can still remember what I was doing on each of them.
 
OoT was novel when it first released, but now it's just empty and its size is just an excuse to ride your horsey.
TP was empty and its size is just an excuse an excuse to ride your horsey when it first released and it still is.
Majoras Mask is ideal because it's quick and easy to get where you want to go.
WWhas the best sense of discovery in the series. The best thing in the game was seeing a silhouette of an island and you start wondering what it is. Unfortunately the rewards for your curiosity was usually unsatisfying because of the copy and paste islands.
SS has a hub world that takes too much time to go.. The bird controlled like shit, having to fly in the turbo rings was shit, the lack of things to do was shit. It should've just been a menu. Worst over world in the series.

So yeah, Majoras Mask has the best over world.
 
What do you consider Skyward Sword's overworld? The bird sections were pretty barren apart from some treasure chests and a couple minigames, but the sections under the clouds (before the dungeons themselves) were great and very dense.

My favourite overworld is probably A Link to the Past. It's huge and full of secrets.
 
Kiryu said:
Majora's Mask Map

MMMap.jpg
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Majora's Mask overworld map was the shittest Zelda map of all time!
If you take a map showing the actual areas in the game & not a hand drawn artist rendition, you'll see it's basically just a few linear branching paths around a narrow circular area surrounding the clock town.

it's literally the worst overworld in the series bar none.
 
Link to the Past.

I remember when first got to the Dark World after beating Wizard Guy, I was super excited to see what had changed in the world. I remember dying to get to Kakariko Village (Or Village of Outcasts, whatever it was called in the Dark World) to see what had happened to it.

Edit: I guess the appeal was that the Dark World was so strange, yet so familiar. It was a great feeling, especially for 12-year-old me.
 
Of the 2D games, ALttP and LA by far.

Of the 3D games, they've all got their ups and downs. I think TP's had the potential to be the best, if it hadn't cordoned off various sections through narrow canyons for loading reasons.

Skyward Sword's just feels too game-y to me. The sky part needs more things to do/explore, and the surface stuff (the non-dungeon parts), although denser than previous games, pretty much destroys the world-building/pacing by being subdungeons. There's like no break for wonder because of it.

TWW is just a little too spread out for my tastes and needs a couple more substantial islands along the lines of Outset/Windfall.

So... OoT/MM then?
 
See You Next Wednesday said:
Majora's Mask overworld map was the shittest Zelda map of all time!
If you take a map showing the actual areas in the game & not a hand drawn artist rendition, you'll see it's basically just a few linear branching paths around a narrow circular area surrounding the clock town.

it's literally the worst overworld in the series bar none.
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So much wrong in this. The overworld is one of the best in gaming, simple, effective and dark.
 
2D: While Zelda II has more fleshed out overworld, I gotta go with A Link to the Past (with Link's Awakening being right behind it). Both of those overworlds were jam packed with secrets, which is something the 3D games (minus Wind Waker) have suffered from.

3D: It's Twilight Princess (with Skyward Sword right behind it), easily, since the overworlds in the 3D games have sucked. At least TP and SS felt like they were connected, OoT and MM are just barren fields shaped in a circle with nothing in it.
 
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