(Warning: There will be spoilers!)

The Legend of Zelda was one of my earliest video game experiences, and an unusual one in a lot of ways. It wast the first game I had ever played that featured an open world of any sort. There's a constant demand for the player to explore and experiment. There was a whole remixed version of the game to play hidden within. And that fancy gold-colored cartridge was pretty eye-catching, too. But from those earliest days of Zelda, my history with the series has been spotty, at best. There are a lot of games that I either haven't played, or only partially played but never completed, or maybe only played a scant little before never going back to it.

So I'm hardly the hardest of the diehards when it comes to being a hardcore Zelda fan. I've enjoyed what bits of the games I've played, but tend to feel like an outlier at times (I like Twilight Princess, for example). Within the past year, I started playing Link's Awakening on the 3DS Virtual Console and the Wii U version of Wind Waker and set them both aside early on. I keep telling myself I'll get back to them, but will I? I'd like to. They're both fun games. But the draw isn't there for me at the moment. Yet despite this on-again, off-again interest in Zelda, I asked for and received The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds as a Christmas gift.

And it hooked me more than any other Zelda game I have ever played. A lot of its appeal for me does relate to its status as a direct sequel to A Link to the Past; one of my all-time favorite SNES games and one of the few Zelda titles I've put more than a modicum's worth of time into. There's nostalgia at play in recognizing the familiarities of the world map, the enemy designs, the sound effects and music. Even after so many years, A Link Between Worlds managed to bring a number of dormant memories to the surface of my recollection. And yet it doesn't feel cheap in doing that, or like it's merely a nostalgia cash-in, because it does so much more than just emulate the look and feel of Hyrule of old.

Part of this is due to the gameplay, which is like a Link to the Past in many important ways, but the biggest key difference is in the way that the subweapons are all up for grabs, almost from the very start. Not only does this free up the player to tackle the game's dungeons in any order and explore at will, but it frees up the dungeon designs as well. In A Link to the Past and similarly structured games, it's generally the case that the player explores a dungeon to find a specific item that is key to completing that dungeon and/or defeating the boss before moving on to the next dungeon in a specific sequence. But in A Link Between Worlds, these dungeon designs have the freedom to be more open-ended. True, they generally each require a specific piece of equipment in order to proceed, but there's never a point where not being able to explore dungeon X because you don't have item Y is a problem that can't be solved by a quick item rental or purchase. The whole wall-merging mechanic has an equally profound effect, taking a map that was once strictly explorable in two dimensions and turning it on its head in dramatic fashion, from the initial reception of the power to the final moments of gameplay. For everything that the world provides with its nostalgia, it provides even more in making the old feel brand new.

Just as important, to me at least, are the characters. Zelda games have always had their recurring figures with a colorful cast of newcomers, and A Link Between Worlds delivers on this in ways that again play on nostalgia while feeling entirely fresh. There are Link and Zelda of course, as well as secondary characters like Sahasrahla and the potion-brewing witch. There are also the seven sages that Link has to rescue, each given a smattering of screen time before being sealed in paintings for the majority of the game.

But then there's the goofball merchant in the purple rabbit hood, Ravio, the androgynous Ganon stand-in, Yuga (hey, I thought he was a she when I first saw him), and Hilda, the Princess of Lorule. I'm not going to sit here and say that the game is unpredictable; there were some twists that I saw coming from a distance, particularly in the endgame, but it's possible to be telegraphed while still maintaining punch, and this game has some punch. Whether it's Hilda revealing herself as the mastermind behind the sages' kidnappings or Ravio turning out to be Link's less courageous, Lorulean doppleganger, the pieces in the ending fall firmly into place in ways that are satisfying on numerous levels. The way that the game plays with certain expectations (because of course Yuga betrays Hilda in the end for his own gain). The twist on how the final battle is won using the traditional magical arrows seen in past Zelda titles. The way that Lorule's myriad woes are resolved via the power of the Triforce, much like how the Dark World's woes were fixed by the Triforce in A Link to the Past. The way it all ties up left a smile on my face.

Yet, the ending isn't something I'd have experienced were it not for the fact that the gameplay that makes up A Link Between Worlds is so much fun. It's certainly not the most challenging game I've ever played in terms of combat difficulty (I only died seven times on my first time to the ending), but the dungeon layouts and puzzle designs are teasing enough to encourage pushing forward, rarely falling into the realm of frustrating. Really, the most frustration I had with the game as early on in the Lost Woods. I became stuck on a glorified shell-game of a puzzle for an embarrassingly long time, while made me feel even sillier when I realized the obvious solution that I had been ignoring the whole time. It was the sort of trip-up that made me realize how I had to focus not just on what I was seeing, but on what wasn't in plain sight. Whether that be through merging with walls to find new pathways or trying items in unintuitive ways to locate maiamais.

(And Mother Maiamai is just the sweetest lady you'll meet in this game. Believe me!)

It can often be the case that when someone declares a game the best in a series they've ever played or a best game ever mere days after playing it, it comes off as hyperbole that is difficult to take seriously. It's like listening to Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons. But I feel that with everything that A Link Between Worlds brings, gameplay, characters, and everything else, it has easily become my favorite Zelda game, beating out the age-old luminaries. I wouldn't have expected this, but then again, for everything familiar about A Link Between Worlds, there's a welcoming unfamiliarity.