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MediumDave

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What are the best Zelda-likes that still hold up?

With the recent sale of old Square games on PSN, I got to thinking about classic JRPGs and SRPGs and Zelda-likes and Metroidvanias and wondering if any of them hold up.

That's all I used to play and I want to share a lot of these games I have memories of with my daughter, but are any of them still worth it?

Well, it's time to find out as I play though a shitton of them over the next couple of years.

I will be going mostly in chronological order, with some exceptions. If a game had a great re-release that modernized it, I'll probably check that out. I'll be hitting up stuff that I played, mostly, with some that I didn't thrown in. I never played any NES Zeldas, really; for me, the genre starts at the SNES. I will be giving some other game a shot, to see if they click with me.

I don't feel "action-adventure" game does justice to what I'm looking for. I'm talking about Link to the Past style games. Overworld. Dungeons. Items that gate progress. Not turn based combat.

This list isn't every Zelda-like, obviously. But it's pretty damn close to a definitive, QUALITY version of that list.

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alianger

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Edited By alianger

Good list, just wondering when it was made? GB doesn't include that info automatically.

It is a bit odd that you've listed something that you didn't think holds up, like Ys 1-2, so high.

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MediumDave

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MediumDave

@alianger: man, I think I made this list like...5 years ago??? Crazy.

I seem to recall I used various searches and wikis to find that info. I actually have a more refined list on a OneNote doc now. I had debated my sorting on it but went with original release date, whichever country it was. I thought it would help transition between games better when you had some stuff releasing in the US years after Japan when other games came to the states in between, Earthbound was a prime example.

If I'm remembering how I initially setup this list, it was more of a light chronological order with some instances of "I want to place this sooner rather than later" so Ys isn't actually that high. I made a Metroidvania and JRPG list at the same time.

I haven't yet started playing these with my kids yet, gotta wait until they can read, but I am looking forward to the day we can sit down and try. They like watching video games, old and new, though, so that's promising.

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alianger

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Oh, wow. I was just searching for "zelda-likes" as I was curious about how common that term is and if I could find some decent discussion about it, and this came up.

I have a pretty good retro-focused list myself but if you feel like sharing it'd be cool to have an up to date one.

Right, that makes sense. I've started playing some games with my nephew who's 4yo myself, he tends to get impatient with anything text heavy and most games are too hard for him at this point but he still gets really into Mario Kart and picking characters in Pokemon.