5: The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
Another gem from the GameCube. It’s a gorgeous game, that stands the test of time simply due to its unique art style that went for a cartoonish look instead of the more realistic approaches of most other Zelda games. Wind Waker is not flawless, there’s the arduous Triforce-piece treasure hunt section that goes on for way too long, while the meat and potatoes of the main questline is a bit too short, with too few meaningful things to do on the game’s many scattered islands. Yet still, it’s the most unique Zelda game there was.
While there still are the series’ token dungeons and gadgets, the open sea setting, the sailing and the neat art design make it more of a timeless classic than Ocarina of Time, at least in my own humble opinion. Sadly the style didn’t win the series a lot of fans, so the subsequent titles mostly abandoned the gorgeous cel-shading in favor of more traditional art styles, which eventually made the more recent Zelda games quite less memorable than this entry.
