A Link Between Worlds

Did You Know?

• Ravio and Yuga appeared as downloadable playable characters in the 2014 game Hyrule Warriors.
• Ravio's hood appeared in Breath of the Wild as a wearable clothing item added with the DLC The Champions' Ballad.
• Princess Zelda's design in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is partially based on her incarnation from A Link Between Worlds.

Synopsis

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is set in a fantasy realm. In the series' timeline, it belongs to the "Defeated Hero" branch, occurring after A Link to the Past and before the original The Legend of Zelda, positioned between the Oracle games. The story unfolds in Hyrule, a familiar land from earlier Zelda titles, and Lorule, a new kingdom that mirrors Hyrule as its dark counterpart. An old Hyrulean legend recounts events before this game: Ganon tried to conquer the kingdom using the Triforce, but a hero defeated him, and the Seven Sages sealed him away.

To prevent future evil, the Triforce was split into three pieces. One piece remained with the royal family, another returned to Ganon, and the third went to the hero and his descendants. Lorule once had its own Triforce, but its people destroyed it to stop conflicts over its power. Without it, Lorule fell into decay and became a wasteland. In this game, Princess Zelda rules Hyrule, while her counterpart, Princess Hilda, governs Lorule.

Link, a blacksmith's apprentice, is tasked with delivering a sword to a captain at Hyrule Castle. There, he meets a strange figure named Yuga, who turns Seres, a descendant of one of the Seven Sages, into a painting. Link tries to fight Yuga but is overpowered. A merchant named Ravio offers assistance, giving Link a bracelet and his own equipment.

Following Ravio's advice, Link tells Princess Zelda what happened. She gives him the Pendant of Courage; Hyrule has three such pendants, which together grant the ability to wield the Master Sword. While searching for the other pendants, Link defeats Yuga but is turned into a painting himself, allowing Yuga to escape. The curse from Yuga is absorbed into Ravio's bracelet, giving Link the power to merge with walls at will.

Using this new ability, Link finds the remaining pendants, claims the Master Sword, and visits Zelda. He then sees Yuga capture her in a painting and confronts him again. Yuga escapes through a dimensional crack into Lorule. There, the captured sages are used to revive Ganon, and Yuga fuses with him. Lorule's Princess Hilda helps Link by trapping Yuga.

Development

After finishing Spirit Tracks for the Nintendo DS in late 2009, most of its development team moved on to work on Skyward Sword for the Wii. However, three members from that team started on a new handheld Zelda game for the upcoming Nintendo 3DS. Two of those three were Hiromasa Shikata and Shiro Mouri. Early on, they weren't planning a sequel to A Link to the Past; instead, they focused on a concept built around "communication." About six months in, they showed their idea to series creator Shigeru Miyamoto, who told them it felt outdated. That led the trio to scrap the plan and start over.

Shikata then suggested giving Link the power to enter and flatten onto walls, which later became a key gameplay feature. Within a day, Mouri put together a working prototype to show how it functioned. Seeing it in action sparked a flood of new ideas. Link could shift from a 3D character into a 2D form by slipping into walls, then glide around corners to access areas that were previously out of reach. This opened up fresh puzzle possibilities and new mechanics. At that point, the team still saw the project as a continuation of the DS Zelda games, using the same camera angle and Link design from Spirit Tracks.

Around October 2010, they presented the prototype to Miyamoto again, and this time he gave it the green light. But within two weeks of starting full production, key team members were pulled away to work on launch titles for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console, set for 2012. With the core group broken up, development on the game stopped entirely.

Reception

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds earned a "universal acclaim" rating from Metacritic, making it the second-highest-scoring 3DS game of 2013, trailing only Fire Emblem Awakening, and the fourth-highest-scoring 3DS title overall on that site. On OpenCritic, it received a "mighty" approval rating, recommended by 90% of critics, which placed it as the highest-rated 3DS game there. In Japan, Media Create reported that the game was the top seller in its debut week, moving over 224,000 copies. By the end of 2022, worldwide sales had reached 4.26 million units.

Critics widely regarded A Link Between Worlds as a fitting follow-up to A Link to the Past, while also praising it as a standout title in its own right. Reviewers commended how it refined the series' core and traditional elements, and welcomed the new additions and changes to the established formula. Polygon called it the best Zelda game in two decades, and GamesRadar deemed it essential for every 3DS owner. Kotaku highlighted the story as one of the series' best and darkest, portraying Link in an unusual light.

The puzzles drew strong praise, particularly for how the wall-merging mechanic was woven into dungeon puzzles and every area. IGN considered it Nintendo's finest puzzle game, while Game Informer noted that some dungeons and boss fights ranked among the franchise's best. The difficulty of the puzzles and dungeons was well received; GameSpot described the challenge as perplexing rather than frustrating.