Rolling Stone has been making waves with their controversial Legend of Zelda game rankings, and we have decided to weigh in. A numerical ranking of the games does not fully encapsulate the quality of these games compared to each other, so we put together a tier list of every mainline game in the Legend of Zelda franchise.

S Tier: Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Wind Waker HD

For a game to end up in the S tier, it had to not only be a brilliant Legend of Zelda game but a brilliant game in general. Breath of the Wild won Game of the Year at the Game Awards easily, and Tears of the Kingdom could have done the same had it not released the same year as Baldur’s Gate 3. Both Legend of Zelda games are regarded as some of the best of all time, and of course deserve to be at the top.

Ocarina of Time was Breath of the Wild before Breath of the Wild, taking the industry by storm and redefining what an adventure game was meant to be. The only bit about the game that does not hold up today are the questionable N64 graphics, but even then it’s one of the better looking games on the console. The narrative still serves as a foundation for Legend of Zelda games today and is still considered a must-play for any retro video game fan.

It makes me so happy that we’ve all come to love The Wind Waker. Coming on the heels of Majora’s Mask, fans wanted something a bit more gritty than what was presented in 2002. The game breathed new life into the adventure genre with open-sea exploration, something that had not been attempted at that scale for consoles. It’s a shame that The Wind Waker‘s combat system has not been attempted in another Legend of Zelda game, with a simple method of executing a multitude of moves. And The Wind Waker HD took an already spectacular game and made it even better, eliminating redundant steps to a primary mission in the final stretch of the game.

A Tier: A Link Between Worlds, Twilight Princess, Ocarina of Time 3D, Link’s Awakening (Switch), Skyward Sword HD, A Link to the Past and Majora’s Mask

The games in A-tier are some of the best in the franchise, but require you to click through a few pages on Metacritic’s list of best games of all time.

I promise I have not lost my mind with the Skyward Sword HD pick for A-tier. It drastically improved one of the most criticized Legend of Zelda games (primarily by getting Fi to shut up), cleaning up the game and presenting it to new audiences. And the Wii release of Skyward Sword absolutely deserved a second chance: Groose is one of my favorite characters in the entire Legend of Zelda series, and Impa’s role in the game, without spoiling anything, nearly brought me to tears. There was a good game beneath all the motion controls, it just needed an update.

Twilight Princess is the reason why we made this tier list in the first place. Frankly, A-tier might be too low for the game given the novel gameplay that Twilight Princess introduced to the series. The dark, gritty tone of the game allowed it to appeal to an audience that would not usually pick up a Legend of Zelda game and grew the franchise that much more heading into the Wii generation.