Review: The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening
Some time after A Link to the Past, Link is shipwrecked and stranded on Koholint island, a strange place full of strange characters. Koholint is immediately a far cry from the familiar locales of the series past; the island is seemingly only inhabited with a small village, monsters from the Super Mario series run rampant, the town's merchant is a deadly sorceror, and so on. Right away the game hits home that Koholint's dream-like quality is intentional, and Link is tasked by a mysterious owl to "wake the Wind Fish," who, according to statues around the island, is "Wind Fish in name only, for it is neither." The strange nature of the game is one of its defining characteristics, and one of the main reasons I would recommend it. Don't quit reading now, I have a bit more to say than that.
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Much of the surreal quality of Link's Awakening stems from the game's bizarre development cycle; as mentioned before, the game was initially conceived as a port of A Link to the Past before moving to an original project. After deciding on a new idea for a portable Zelda, director Takashi Tezuka took major influence from the then-recently-canned David Lynch masterpiece Twin Peaks, a bizarre crime thriller set in a town full of unique and quirky individuals. Link's Awakening introduces a dark and foreboding atmosphere at points when the game's bosses begin fearing for Link's success; despite the fact that Link was forcibly drawn into the dream of the Wind Fish, if he wants to leave Koholint island he must awaken the sleeping Wind Fish. The Wind Fish is forced into a perpetual dream by an enigmatic monster called Nightmare and only by defeating the monster can Link leave. As the Nightmare reveals during the course of the game, waking the Wind Fish means ending its dream, meaning Koholint and the villagers will disappear forever.
If this was in a game like A Link to the Past where most of the characters are fairly static the player's moral debate would be far less engaging. There's no hint of choice when it comes to the story, so the only way to not effectively murder an island worth of living people is to not play. The developers were keen on this fact, which is where many of the Twin Peaks inspirations begin to shine through. To quote the game's director, "The drama was all about a small number of characters in a small town. So when it came to Link’s Awakening, I wanted to make something that, while it would be small enough in scope to easily understand, it would have deep and distinctive characteristics." Every character on the island has something to do and each has their own interests, but none are more apparent than the character Marin.
Marin is one of the best characters in the entire Zelda series; she loves to sing and wants to leave her small island to explore the wide world. People and animals love her, though she's not without her strange and at times horrifying quirks such as her sadistic bloodlust for murdering chickens. Compared to other major characters in the series, Marin is completely relatable. Compared to the likes of Sahasrahla, the villagers in Adventure of Link, any version of Zelda and so on, Marin has pretty reasonable goals and doesn't fall into the trap of concerning herself with the mystical aspects of the world in which she lives. Link's Awakening makes sure the player becomes intimate with Marin, as she is a major figure over the course of the game. She pulls Link out of the ocean and gives him his shield; she teaches Link the Ballad of the Wind Fish; the player is even tasked with bringing her across the island to wake up a sleeping walrus blocking the desert. Characters speak very highly of her, and because she's such a help to the player without getting in the way there's no real reason a player might have to dislike her. If there's any reason the player might feel conflicted about waking the Wind Fish, Marin is likely going to be it.
The even greater emphasis on the story comes at a price, however, as Link's Awakening is even more linear than A Link to the Past, though still not quite as bad as Adventure of Link. Much of the island will be cut off by progression-blocking obstacles preventing the player from exploring as much as they want, an annoying compromise between its two forebears. Even worse, and this is my biggest annoyance with Link's Awakening, is the gating of exploration behind important story events.
Like I've said before, I don't mind story in games and I outright love the characters and setting of Link's Awakening; up to this point in the series, this is by far the most engaging Zelda simply from those perspectives. The problem comes looking at the series history: in past Zelda titles, players could explore a dungeon up to finding the item required to progress and simply leave before finding the boss. It wasn't exactly a good substitute for the instantly explorable open world of the first game, but it did allow for some interesting breaks in pacing if players wanted to run into a dungeon, find an item, run out, make a beeline to a dungeon which might have a more urgent item, and otherwise explore at their hearts' content as long as they went back to beat the dungeon bosses.
Link's Awakening instead forces the player to finish each dungeon in order rather than allow them to search Koholint at their own discretion. For example, the second dungeon can only be entered by walking a villager's Chain Chomp--a Mario character--into the swamp and having it eat the plant blocking the dungeon entrance. This chain of events only begins once the player has defeated the boss of the first dungeon--upon returning to the village, the Chain Chomp will go missing and Link will be prompted to find it.
That's not the only example of this, either. There's an extremely long and elaborate trading sequence required to finish the game, and one step of the trading sequence involves handing a stick to Marin's father, Tarin, who will only appear in that location after the third dungeon is completed. Marin won't move to the beach for the wonderful moment in an above screenshot until after Tarin is given the stick, so the player can't access the desert using her song. After the fourth dungeon a ghost will begin haunting Link and stops the player from entering most locations until he's put to rest. You get the idea.
What annoys me about this kind of design is that the requirements can become a bit obtuse, especially since the map never has any sort of waypoint in case the player gets lost. As a series first the map will fill out by each grid when the player enters it, but that's hardly a decent substitute if the player is exploring the map as much as possible when it becomes available. There's an old man in the village who Link can call--but can't interact with in person, because the man is shy--but I sincerely think that if the game is obstinate enough to require specific plot triggers then a small point on the map should at least be a courtesy.
To be frank, this is pretty much my only real complaint with the game, though it does make repeat playthroughs annoying when so many specific events crop up. Outside of that, the game does a very good job at translating the gameplay mechanics of A Link to the Past; since the game is running on much weaker hardware it's not possible for Link's sword to be animated as smoothly, so instead the developers drew a motion blur sprite over the sword in order to keep the fluid side swipe. The Pegasus Boots and Hookshot return, and there are even new items like Roc's Feather which, as a series first, allow Link to jump. Link's Awakening does a great job of complimenting A Link to the Past while serving as a great sequel, expanding ideas that never made it into the earlier game while experimenting with ideas that might have been harder to implement.
Dungeons are just as massive and labyrinthine as past entries in the series, and I'd go as far as to say some of the later dungeons stand as some of the most difficult in the Zelda series. One dungeon, either the sixth or the seventh, was so difficult that as a child I had to completely drop the game and didn't actually finish it until it was time to write this review.
I mentioned this in an earlier review, but I really appreciate games that can make you reflect on the work put into its creation. The opposite of "this didn't age well," I suppose, is "this was ahead of its time." For a console that was barely stronger than an NES and could only display monochrome colors, it's miraculous that Link's Awakening has so many expressive and detailed sprites--even more when considering the DX remaster. I think the real problem some people have with games that don't "hold up," aside from the obvious reason that these games might have been played at a much younger age of a person's life, is more that there are just so damn many video games that a lot didn't do much to stand out among their peers. When I look at a game now like The Legend of Dragoon, a title I held in very high regard in my younger years, it doesn't really stand out compared to its contemporary and my favorite game of all time, Xenogears, as the former mostly falls in line with many role-playing tropes of the time: a young man comes back to his home village to find it's been razed by an evil army who kidnapped his childhood fling; hijinks ensue across a fantasy land before the bigger and more ancient threat is revealed. Xenogears, despite being unfinished, places a heavy emphasis on exploring and deconstructing JRPG tropes which is part of why I hold it in such high regard as a huge adult.
The Zelda series is far from the most original in terms of storytelling, but what made the original Zelda stand out was the way it confronted gameplay tropes of the time and created a wholly unique experience with a familiar backdrop. The second game didn't stand out at all aside from the story presented at the end, but A Link to the Past took much of the formula found in both games and perfected them to their upper limit. Link's Awakening, on the other hand, took the challenge of transporting that unique formula into a fully-fledged sequel on much weaker hardware than its predecessor, and the dedication shines through in most aspects. I can only fault the story progression so much because I know it was trying something new, and for its part the story is far more intricate and thoughtful than any of the other games in the series.
It's a bit of a subtle point, but the sound design in Link's Awakening is utterly brilliant and will likely shock first-time players. The music is vibrant and triumphant when it needs to be, but can also become dark and foreboding when the situation calls for it. The boss theme is frantic and tense, though it's a bit of a shame it's repeated for the final boss considering the battle with Nightmare is such a shocking encounter. This aside, the major goal of the game is for Link to find the instruments which can wake the Wind Fish. I have a theory that this was a last-minute addition to subtly gloat about how spectacular the soundtrack of such a low-resolution game came to be, but that's just me thinking about what I'd do in their position. Link's Awakening also expands the ocarina from A Link to the Past, which itself expands on the flute from the original Zelda. Players familiar with the series will probably know what I'm trying to say here, but there's a great progression of the involvement of music in each Zelda--the second game aside. Having music be a thematic element to the series would never have worked if the sound design wasn't so high quality, and despite using a worse sound chip I do think much of the soundtrack is even more memorable than even that of A Link to the Past in many cases.
Link's Awakening is a sequel on an entirely different scale than Adventure of Link, down to perfecting the thematic elements of the game's story. Both The Legend of Zelda and A Link to the Past deal with a character growing in the face of adversity when all hope seems lost; Adventure of Link and Link's Awakening are more internal struggles, though the former only briefly touches on this theme in its final hour while Link's Awakening presents this struggle throughout the entire game. Link is still haunted by the stress of his long journey, as evidenced by the forms the Nightmare takes in their long struggle at the end of the game, but the player at this point is also likely feeling the stress that their actions will probably end up killing the entire population of Koholint. Weaving the conflict in a video game between the protagonist and a player is a difficult task even in modern game storytelling, but Link's Awakening presents this struggle effortlessly with clever dialogue and endearing characters.
Verdict
Link's Awakening sort of daunted me when approaching it for this review. Unnecessarily obtuse at points with some seriously imposing dungeons, this isn't the kind of game players should approach for a quick weekend play--as I've since discovered to my own detriment. It's a really slow-burning game, and for impatient or people less interested in older games, it might become overwhelming. Luckily for those with taste, Link's Awakening is designed to be taken in slowly, rewarding patient players or those who want to explore a unique world. It's not perfect, but consider that my biggest complaint is that the game sometimes demands you become invested in its world--to be blunt, Koholint feels like a fully lived-in place, full of charm and more personality than anything the Zelda series has seen so far. If you have that patience, this is easily one of the finest handheld games of all time and is a worthy successor to A Link to the Past.
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