Forty seven and one half hours of solid gaming in the past three days and I've put down The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. THAT was a wonderful vacation. I can't say much that everyone else hasn't already, so I'll just add it to my line up and mention one or two points.

So how does it rank? Number 2. I may have mentioned before that Majora's Mask is my personal favorite Zelda game partially for the creepy ambient atmosphere and particularly for the game's ending and how you have control over pretty much all of it. Its kind of an Alice in Wonderland bit that departs from the typical mythos which I really liked, but I know a lot of people did not. So, with that in mind, Twilight Princess falls right behind that on my scale of favor. The game was epic and that really came through a lot stronger than the fairy tale aspect the Zelda series usually takes. There weren't as many dungeons as Ocarina of Time, but the ones here were incredibly well crafted and the items in each of them were all a ton of fun to play with, though the more entertaining ones didn't see much use outside of their respective dungeons.

I do have to admit that there were a couple of dissappointments, but nothing serious enough keep me from enjoying the game (except once). Most of the enemies I faced seemed too easy until about dungeon five or so, then I had to start getting clever. Before that point there were very few enemies I couldn't beat just by swinging wildly. You have Epona at the very beginning of the game which is awesome, but my poor horse didn't get nearly enough screen time particularly after I learned to warp (which seemed way too early in the game). Also, it may just be that I have an industry insider eye now, but there way too many little technical issues for a Zelda game. I was dissappointed with all the camera clipping or the fact that some of the visual effects were drawing in the wrong order (letting you see them THROUGH other parts of the world). I found a way to lock my horse in neutral where I wouldn't be able to move unless I dismounted and got back on, a simple enough bug to have caught, so I'm hurt that it was still in there.

Then the one part where I got really hosed and it really took me out of the game was that I got locked into the wrong state at one point. Early on they show you the trick for catching and deflecting things (goats) that are rushing at you: you take a stance where you can only scoot left or right and have to hit the button at the right moment or get knocked down. At one point I hit this stance, but did not come back out of it. I was stuck on a narrow path only able to move sideways with a weak enemy ALMOST out of threat range and the realization that the last time I had saved had been about three hours ago. I had to move sideways to the wall where its slight angle would slowly push me forward as I pushed against it until I was within range of the enemy that would knock me back and deal a quarter heart of damage. Needless to say, this took a while. Then when I died, the fairy I had in a bottle brought me back to life. I would have set her free before I started trying to kill myself, but the locked state didn't let me use items either. That really sucked. Once I Game Overed, I hit Retry and things worked just fine, but for that little bit of time I was really let down by Nintendo. However, that was the one time I ever used a fairy or had to Retry, thank you very much. Not that the game was easy: there were a number of fights I dropped to less than a quarter of my life before I finally caught the rythm. Just the fact I had to resort to death as a means of reset hurt.

Another great thing about the game (that spawned one very futile wish) were the great character designs. Everyone I met had great little bits of flavor that made them interesting, and the one thing that would have let me enjoy the game more than I already did was if I could have had Link try the dating sim thing. There were so many great female characters that I wish I could have given Link a little nudge towards. I think that would have instantly tripled my play time as I tried to get different endings with different characters. Its a silly request, I know. That's a hard thing to pull off even for games that take it seriously, so I'm more than happy with what Zelda did focus on: an epic adventure full of strange and colorful characters. Like these guys (seriously, they ended up with a lot of my rupees):

Oh, and as a PS, the list of Zelda favorites goes :
Majora's Mask - for atmosphere and for making time itself my enemy
Twilight Princess - for the epic legend and awesome world full of great characters
Ocarina of Time - perfect in every respect, but I never found that 'one thing' I could hook on to
Wind Waker - fun, but too easy, though it had the best version of Ganon from any Zelda game
Link to the Past - I hate to put this last, since its still an amazing game, the others have just done things better since then.
(and I still need to get to the Minish Cap, hopefully it arrives soon)