The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

What if Link could turn into a painting on the wall and literally walk along it? This crazy idea stands at the very heart of The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, a game that took a revered classic from 1991 and built something surprisingly bold on top of it.

The 2013 title is a loose sequel to A Link to the Past and takes place in the same world of Hyrule seen from a bird's-eye view. The fundamental novelty is the ability to merge with a wall and move in a two-dimensional plane, opening up paths that would otherwise remain unreachable. On top of that, stereoscopic 3D makes sense here; thanks to it, the depth of walls and chasms is superbly legible.

The boldest change, however, is the structure itself. Instead of the game gradually doling out equipment in a fixed order, it offers a system of renting and later buying items from the mysterious merchant Ravio. Thus, right from the start you have access to most of the tools and you can tackle the dungeons in almost any order. With this, Nintendo elegantly broke the series' long-standing rule of linear progression and foreshadowed the freedom it would later fully develop in Breath of the Wild.

Behind the game stand Nintendo EAD and director Hiromasa Shikata. The developers consciously built on nostalgia, but took care to make it a full-fledged new game, not a mere remake. Hyrule flows briskly at sixty frames per second even with 3D turned on, which was a technical feat on the console.

Critics reacted enthusiastically. A Link Between Worlds collected a number of high scores and appeared in the rankings of the best games of the year as well as the best 3DS titles ever. Reviewers highlighted the clever dungeon design, the freedom of progression and the perfect pacing. For many, it is one of the best-designed entries in the entire series.

Why play it: It combines the warm nostalgia of classic Zelda with a boldly modern approach to freedom and gameplay. Brilliant from the first to the last dungeon.