The Legend of Zelda : The Wind Waker by malonromani
Gamecube

The first Zelda game for Nintendo Gamecube. This game experiments with cel-shading, so all the characters, enemies, and environments look like three dimensional cartoons. It might seem dorky in the beginning, but once you enter combat, these graphics are beautiful.

The basic plot of the Wind Waker is that Link's little sister, Aryll, got kidnapped by a giant bird when a group of pirates chased it to Link's island. The leader of the pirates, a girl named Tetra, offers to help him rescue his sister from the fortress where the bird resides. When the plan fails, Link is thrown out of the fortress and knocked unconcious. When he wakes up, he finds himself in small, talking boat named King of Red Lions. With the help of this boat, and a conductor's baton called a Wind Waker, he must travel the Great Sea, fighting evil monsters and awakening sages and collecting Triforce pieces to save the world from Gannon once again.

Exploring this world of Hyrule is way different than every other Zelda game out there, because everything that could be considered "field" is water! The Wind Waker can help you control the wind, which is helpful for sailing. There are also a lot of fun things you can do on the boat that you can't do on land. For example, you can use the Grappling Hook as a sort of crane to pull treasures up from the bottom of the sea, or use bombs with an on-board cannon to launch long-distance sea based attacks. The boat itself can also be helpful, as you can ask it a question when you get stuck, as well as travel on it.

There are also mini games and side quests galore in this game, not to mention the collecting of figurines. Using a color picto box (camera), you can snap pictographs of practically every character and enemy in the game, and take the pictures in to a guy named Carlov the Sculptor to have him create a figureine. You can view your collected figurines in the gallery, examining them from any angle you want. You can also read descriptions of the character or enemy you are viewing, which can give you helpful hints on enemy weaknesses or character subquests. The Wind Waker also features a beta quest, if you start a new game on the same file you beat the game on. The plot will be exactly the same, except that you will start out with all your figurines from your last game, and Link will play through the entire game in his pajamas.

Well, that's my "short" review of the game. I hope that it's enough to convince you to play this fun chapter of the Zelda saga.