The atmosphere, exploration, challenges (whether puzzles, enemies, dungeons or whatever), development (items, heart pieces), secrets, and of course, the combat.

Some Zelda games focus on these elements more than others. Wind Waker, for example, is one of the best looking games ever - the characters look amazing, the water, the islands, everything. I love the way the story plays out - it's just really simple and has its own charm. Unfortunately, it suffers in other areas like combat (one of the easiest games ever) and adds unnecessary downtime (sailing, brb taking a piss).

I'd have to agree with Rol that the enemies need to pose a threat. Having each upgrade significantly improve your progress is something that can really feel satisfying (see: Monster Hunter). I'd love it if all the different weapons were actually useful in combat, so you'd switch between them depending on the situation (sort of like, say, Mega Man), rather than use them primarily as tools for solving puzzles, or hiding secrets.

Actually, I think Zelda can really benefit from taking a page out of a game like MH. There's nothing like the feeling of, "How the fuck am I gonna kill this thing?" and the sense of accomplishment you get when you bring it down. In Zelda games, for nearly every boss you just end up using the dungeon item, and the goal is to figure out how to use it against them (something like a puzzle)... I think it'd be better to mix things up a bit, and give the player multiple ways to down bosses / enemies.

They could definitely use more bosses or enemies that make you think, "How am I going to hurt this thing without getting hit?" rather than, "How do I hurt this thing?"

I agree so much with Rol's post on why enemys should be harder :)

The ideal thing would be for everyone to be challenged by the enemys, but not too much over-challenged.

I think the game should have something like 5 or so enemy difficulty pre-sets that are hidden to the player, or maybe even a more organic system in this vein. If you're having too much of an easy time, the game ups the bar, doing the opposite if you're dying a lot.

Link, swords, items, puzzles, enemies, plot, dungeons, and fun.

note that lack of Zelda/Ganondorf.

Zelda is exploration game with a well balanced dose of puzzles and seamless meaningful combat that adds to the experience. Zelda is not a crappy game of combat with token puzzles.

Hmph. If this was a Zelda forum, I probably would not touch this thread with a ten foot pole. Why? Well, it is my personal experience that Zelda fans are among the most narcissistic, conceited, belligerent people ever to walk this earth. At times, it seems is their only unifying tenet is their thinly veiled animosity towards the developers and vehement exasperation at the current state of the franchise.

Less sardonically, one could say they are opinionated. Still, threads like these mostly ended with some douche throwing insults and blaming Aonuma for everything that is wrong with the world.

That said, I'm cautiously optimistic; this isn't the belly of the beast, after all.

So, what of my own opinion?

Well, I do think that what I value the most in a Zelda game, is the experience. For me, this is true for all games, to some extent, but the ideal of 'an adventure' is epitomized in Zelda. What is most important to me is not any single element of a game's design, but how they combine to meditate a journey that is larger than the sum of its parts.

The Wind Waker is the perfect example of this; as time passes, I find myself more and more appreciative of the Wind Waker experience. It is of a classic Zelda structure, combining elments of both Ocarina of Time and the earliest 2D titles, but it is also a game where the synthesis of elements is near perfect and every facet supports one another.

The aesthetics are simply marvelous. Not just the style, but the way it is used to breathe life into the world. In this case, one can literally see the call of adventure in the wind.

The same holds true for the music, which, more than in any other title, interactively infuses the game and adds its own element to experience.

Atmosphere is closely tied to esthetics, and is another element of importance to me, and again an area where the Wind Waker (and Majora's Mask) excels.

Of all the Zeldas, the Wind Waker is the one I found to have the most satisfying combat system; combining style and flair with dexterity and tactical depth. In this case, combat doesn't need to be overly challenging in order to be to be rewarding.

Exploration is limited, linear, and controlled, but is also among the most satisfying in the series. Even those who did not like the Wind Waker have fond memories of that first decent to Hyrule.

The Wind Waker's story develops striking narrative motifs and a lush thematic web using simple but sophisticated means.

Link and the player's relation is one of the central tenets of the series, yet that relationship has been cast in more than one light throughout the years. The way Wind Waker handles it is so different from the way Majora's Mask did, yet both have their merits.

Generally, these are some of the things things I look for in every Zelda. They way they are implemented, however, are different. I'm not against new schools of Zelda design, but I'm also appreciative of the merits of the current paradigm.

In the end, though, I can only ask that people play and hopefully appreciate the games in question. Nothing can be truly (de)constructed, and no two readings will be the same. In the words of Tzvetan Todorov:  "Each work is its own best delineation; truly immanent and exhaustive."

@Helios:

Well, that's why I (and assumedly you) made my exodus away from Zelda forums long ago. It's the same for almost any series. I wouldn't want to talk about Final Fantasy in a Final Fantasy fan forum, either.

Now to make my own post.

I think that what makes Zelda the great experience that it is would be the combination of the amazing action sequences and the extremely creative puzzles.  It isn't a game that you beat by being an amazing gamer, but by using your mind. 

When I played the original Zelda for the first time a couple of years ago, I didn't have a map - naturally, since I was playing on the virtual console. But I was easily lost. So what I did was draw out my own map using a plain sheet of printer paper, a pencil, and a ruler. I mapped out the most important parts of every screen, including the exits, so that all I needed to do to plot out a course to any previously visited screen was glance at the map. By the end of the game, the map was a mess, but I could read it perfectly.

There is one room in Death Mountain in the first game - everyone knows it, if they've seen it - with an absurd number of Blue Darknuts and nothing else. That room is Hell. I can't get through that room without dying at least once, but it hones your skills to a razor edge before you can continue. If you can get through that room, you can get through anything in the franchise.

When you leap headlonng into the Pyramid of Power in Link to the Past, you fall directly into combat with Ganon. There is no intro, no moment to take a breath - just a couple of lines of dialogue and then being thrown headlong into combat. It's intensely frantic, and becomes only more frantic as time goes on. I fought him a couple of days ago and won with a single heart left.

In Ocarina of Time, the final battle begins after the enemy fortress has fallen. He rises up out of the rubble and turns into a monster, huge and ominous and screen-filling, the only visible parts of him being his eyes and his colossal, twisting horns. You could not se him properly, save only when lightning flashed and illuminated him for a raction of a second, giving the barest immpression of his appearance. Your previously powerless helper, in a moment that still gives me an adrenaline rush every time I see it, says "He won't hold me back again! This time, we fight together!"

In the Great Deku Tree, at the very top, there are a series of jutting platforms that lead out into thin air and precipitate a long fall to the bottom of the tree. Most people would never leap from these, except that there are rupees at the end of the platforms, far enough out that you have to jump for them. I remember jumping out for them the first time, and falling - I hit the webbing at the bottom of the tree slightly off-center, so it did not break. But that let me figure out how to get into the lower levels, and I climbed up and jumped off again.

In the Tower of Spirits, Zelda flips her shit and goes ballistic over the idea of the bad guy possessing her empty body. She goes on a long and frantic tirade, ending with her telling Link to go get her body, and then asking a crippled old woman to help him. "I will stay and wait here! It is what princesses do! I UNDERSTAND IT IS A TRADITION IN MY FAMILY!"

In Wind Waker, you come home after a long time, perhaps curious to talk to your grandmother. You can talk to villagers, and they'll mention that she is sick and not feeling well. It's not just that, either: with her two grandchilden gone, she literally worried herself sick, and then spiraled into full-blown depression. She doesn't go outside. She barely eats. She doesn't even know you're there. You need medicine to help her get better. And all this is because you left her alone. Your only grandmother. I have never completed any sidequest with the speed and guilt with which I completed that one.

In Ocarina of Time, there is a soldier that 99% of players will never see, because he only appears after you meet Ganondorf outside of Hyrule Castle Town and before you go into the Temple of Time to pull out the Master Sword. He's wounded in an alley, and breathes his last words of regret before dying.

In Twilight Princess there is a dungeon that does not feel at all like a dungeon, and you spend most of your time and energy getting ingredients for soup to nurse a yeti's sick wife back to health. Every time you bring the yeti an ingredient, he knocks you over in his eagerness to add it to the soup.

In Majora's Mask, I helped Anju and Kafei die in each other's arms, their final fulfillment before embracing oblivion.

In The Legend of Zelda, I burned bushes without knonwing what they might hold.

In Link to the Past, I opened up chests full of hundreds of rupees when my wallet was already full.

I wanted desperately to see Colin returned safely so that I could look his mother in the eye.

I laid a Goron chieftain to rest, and played a lullaby for his infant son.

I listened to a girl sing on the beach just to hear the music.

I held a golden sword over my head, relishing the sound it made as it cut the air.

I leaped over walls on my horse.

I put on a red ring, and felt ready to do battle with evil.

Zelda for me is something like a collection of moments, a string of experiences given cohesion by mechanics. Each game has managed to make me care deeply about what I was doing, whether I was exploring the ocean or fighting enormous lava-dwelling insects or trying to kill undead abominations. The essence of Zelda doesn't lie in any single mechanic or concept, but in those moments that I remember so well.

I don't have a good answer - or, at least, not a concrete one. There is no doubt that I enjoy Zelda games as products of craft, where introduction to mechanics facilitates moving through levels beyond initial challenges (both in terms of combat and puzzles), but I also enjoy them as experiences. You can do so many things in them, whether required to or not, and I don't think there was a tim in a single Zelda gam where I wasn't having fun in some capacity. If it ever happened, I have forgotten it, and all that is left in my memory is the good.

I'm going to go start another file in Wind Waker tonight, I think.

@Khuutra:

That's an unusual way of expressing it, and yet it captures everything I wanted (and failed) to communicate...

Many of my favorite moments are listed in your post. Many are not (as I am sure is true of you as well). Some I had not thought (much) of; that's what differentiates us as individuals, I would say. It's a joy to be a fan of a game series that offers that kind of self expression.

Indeed. I think one of the best things about Zelda is that it can be enjoyed individually in many ways; it is many things to many people, as it were.