RPG Legends: Link and Zelda

While Final Fantasy is often thought of as the game that introduced RPGs to North America, the truth is that another title did so first. The Legend of Zelda might not be a classic JRPG, but most of the Action-RPG genre owes a huge debt to the game. From overworlds filled with dungeons to the reliance on tools to open up new areas of the map, there are few third-person games that don’t crib something from the long-running series.

If you take the time to examine the series’ past, though, you’ll...