“ough why did moondancer get so upset over one person not showing up to her party” easy. rsd.

hm, im a pretty casual gamer and i probably wont be able to actually play any other zeldas since the switch is my only console. My favorite tone is darker but with bits of hope but i also like light hearted things! My fave thing abt botw was the characters, how every npc was unique and had a different personality. I also loved the champions! I also liked the setting, that they failed and now had to try again. I also liked Link!! I thought his character was great! i wanna know more abt him!

My heart of hearts is SCREAMING at you to watch a let’s play/full playthru of Majora’s Mask. You can’t really do “cutscene movies” with Zelda like a lot of other games because fully-rendered cutscenes weren’t a thing til BOTW (and... neither was voice acting, for the record. BOTW/AOC is the only zelda with True Voice Acting xD)

BUT Majora’s Mask ticks a lot of your boxes. It’s probably the darkest Zelda game but there’s a lot of bittersweet to it? The synopsis is you’re basically trying to prevent the end of the world in this one specific town, and along the way you get to meet every single person in the town and learn about their entire lives. All the NPCs have stories, incredibly rich ones more often than not, and they all operate on set schedules. So there’s a 3 day, 24-hour cycle and you can mess with time, and you see them doing the same things in the same places at the same times, consistently. It’s really cool! 

It’ll grab at your heart but for me, someone who can’t really handle dark/depressing media, there was never a point in MM where I felt like the story was devoid of hope. Things seem very catastrophic and you run around wondering how you can stop something as big as the end of the world but the whole game just kinda feels like you’re laying in a bed with your loved one while bombs go off outside. I cannot explain the tone, but I think you’ll love it. Both the 3DS remake and the original N64 MM look really nice, but I think the N64 version has a bit of a leg up because the low-poly rendering makes the creepy bits of MM extra creepy in a way the 3DS doesn’t.

(This game is also a sequel to Ocarina of Time, but do know you literally do not need to know anything about OOT to play it. The game gives you everything pretty much immediately.)

If you like Link specifically I’d also say Skyward Sword would be a fun one for u!! It’s on the more Lighthearted side tone wise but it’s the game that gives Link the most personality. He’s intended to be a blank slate because the idea is to project yourself & your motivations onto him (they named him for this, he’s the link between the player and the world) but a few times they’ve veered away from that and decided to kinda give him his own feelings and thoughts. 

Skyward Sword is about the first Link ever really. Back in the timeline before a lot of Zelda Lore would come into play. And instead of living in this vast, sprawling kingdom, him & Zelda are just childhood besties about to graduate high school. The game literally opens up on their equivalent of, like, prom night sfdgfsghgf.

But what’s cool about Skyward Sword is that because Link has this incredibly emotional connection to Zelda right off the bat, he spends the game pretty much frothing at the mouth intent to protect & save her once the Plot kicks in. There’s never a scene in the game where you can’t see everything he’s feeling painted directly on his face, which is not actually that common for other Links! The chemistry between him and literally every other character really thrives because of this. While some people probably enjoyed the freedom to make their own interpretations of Link, in Skyward it’s really clear what his relationships with everyone are, and you get to learn what kind of person he really is much more easily than in, like BOTW where you have to go digging through diary entries to find out anything about him.

Skyward Sword, being the first chronological game in the timeline, also just has a lot of awesome lore for the franchise as a whole. Like you get to see where the master sword comes from!!!! its actual origin!!! and you get to learn about why Link and Zelda and Ganon keep getting reincarnated and living out this same battle in more or less different ways throughout the ages. You get to learn stuff you didn’t think even mattered, like why there’s a red bird on the Hylian shield, or why Link wears that stupid green outfit in other games. You get to learn wtf Zelda was talking about in BOTW when she talks about the sword “having a voice” and “speaking to her.” Lots of cute stuff to set the tone for the series.

my LAST recommendation is Twilight Princess but the conundrum here is I HAVE NEVER BEATEN THAT ONE because every time I try I just can’t get into it. but do not let my trepidation steer you away it is very much a Me Problem, TP is widely considered one of the best Zeldas of all time. It, like Majora’s Mask, is darker-toned, and from what I can tell has a Pretty Emotive Link as well who has a whole life in the tiny village he starts out in, so I think you’ll probably like that one too! I just cant do my long rambling about it dfghdfghfggf

ANYWAYS hopefully this helps. skyward sword & twilight princess have  pretty comprehensive “cutscene movies” but you really gotta watch an LP for Majora to get the full scope of the game. Majora is ALL about the sidequests. If you want reccs for who to watch I’m always gonna say Chuggaaconroy because the respect he gives to the games he plays & their tone is unparalleled & also he’s autistic so you know you’re getting infodumping about the lore at every fucking turn which I LIVE for. 

I am so happy you’re enjoying Zelda and hopefully this ask inspires you to dive in!!!! Remember there’s no wrong way to do it! These games are made to be accessible at any point haha. Keep me updated if u want, I’m super excited to learn what you discover!