I loved both Oracles titles, but for me, Seasons beats Ages, though I feel that both are very superior to Link's Awakening. With Ages, I felt there were instances between some dungeons that felt more arbitrarily padded, giving me a few moments of OoA burnout:
Also, aside from Queen Ambi's Palace, the world of the past in Ages looks far too dull and monochromatic; Seasons looked excellent because the changing of seasons gave its locales variation. Most of Labrynna's present also consisted of a singular color scheme, but at least it's spring-ish and not terrible to look at. Finally, the concept of changing seasons felt more original to me than going back in time (which, despite it being time travel, is actually pretty much a rehash of the Light/Dark World concept from LttP).
That aside, storytime: when I had these games when they first came out, the concept of the exchangeable content between the two games was awesome, and whenever I'd visit my cousins once a week or so that summer, I would particularly look forward to those visits. I only had Seasons (at first) and my cousins only had Ages, and we'd sit there for hours finding and exchanging secrets. I really wish they made that third Oracle title. But alas, now my favorite original portable Zelda title is Phantom Hourglass (yes, that Phantom Hourglass).
EDIT: I'm almost done with Mermaid's Cave in my 3DS OoA playthrough, and I forgot how horribly Capcom cocked up the new swimming controls for the Mermaid Suit. A simple fix would be to allow Link to automatically swim about as fast as his walk. Just... rggh, constantly tapping a direction to swim is fucking terrible.
Also, aside from Queen Ambi's Palace, the world of the past in Ages looks far too dull and monochromatic; Seasons looked excellent because the changing of seasons gave its locales variation. Most of Labrynna's present also consisted of a singular color scheme, but at least it's spring-ish and not terrible to look at. Finally, the concept of changing seasons felt more original to me than going back in time (which, despite it being time travel, is actually pretty much a rehash of the Light/Dark World concept from LttP).
![[+]](images/collapse_collapsed.png "[+]")
ranty tl;dr-nessThat aside, storytime: when I had these games when they first came out, the concept of the exchangeable content between the two games was awesome, and whenever I'd visit my cousins once a week or so that summer, I would particularly look forward to those visits. I only had Seasons (at first) and my cousins only had Ages, and we'd sit there for hours finding and exchanging secrets. I really wish they made that third Oracle title. But alas, now my favorite original portable Zelda title is Phantom Hourglass (yes, that Phantom Hourglass).
EDIT: I'm almost done with Mermaid's Cave in my 3DS OoA playthrough, and I forgot how horribly Capcom cocked up the new swimming controls for the Mermaid Suit. A simple fix would be to allow Link to automatically swim about as fast as his walk. Just... rggh, constantly tapping a direction to swim is fucking terrible.