The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia Review: A Master Work

“The Legend of Zelda” series is massive. With the series going on for over thirty and multiple games, it has created so many characters, locations, items and locations that even hardcore fans get overwhelmed. Sure enough, Dark Horse released an English version of “The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia” which does exactly what it says on the cover and then some.

So, what exactly does this encyclopedia have? It not only has a timeline of the games released, but also the story timeline. Yes, this was touched upon in “Hyrule Historia,” but here they seem to go a bit more into detail about it with passages of each major point in Hyrule’s history. This is a great thing for anyone who has any kind of interest in LOZ’s history and when they happened.

Other goodies that this book has are chapters on each game in the series, lists of weapons, maps, items and locations. In fact, there is a huge section on every single enemy featured in the games. This is exactly what an encyclopedia should have. It even brings up each race in the games, their history and how they evolved from game to game. Now there’s no reason to question why and how the Zora turned into the Rito.

One of the best things featured here are each game has some developer documents and notes. Not that many, though. Just a few random ones here and there. Some of the ones that are here are interesting and many fans may not have known about them. Of course, there are some that most people could have lived without knowing because they’re just not that interesting.

All of these sections have artwork and screenshots from the games. Yes, that does mean that each character, enemy, item etc. have their own screenshot which is a great thing to have depending on the screenshot of course. The ones featured here are fine. The artwork consists of artwork we’ve seen on the games’ covers and instruction manuals.

As an added bonus, there is an interview with “Legend of Zelda” series producer, Eiji Aonuma originally recorded at the Nintendo Headquarters’ Development Building in Japan in 2016 and translated for this book. It’s mainly about the growth of the series and the production of “Breath of the Wild.” It’s an interesting read, though a bit odd because this was originally an audio interview and the fact that the interview keeps interrupting with “I see” because that’s how Japanese interviews go. It gets a bit grating to stop every time to read these pauses.

If you’re a hardcore fan and want an easy to read resource guide, “The Legend of Zelda Encyclopedia” is perfect for you. With a ton of entries on what seems like everything, background information on everything and a nice interview this is well worth having.