Zelda Retrospective: Zelda II - The Adventure of Link Review

Reception to the original Zelda was both immediate and overwhelming. A critical and commercial success, the game changed the shape of the entire gaming landscape with its mix of real-time action and heavy emphasis on character growth based on exploration. Games for years afterward would try and fail to capture the open-ended game design, inspiring the creation of brand-new genres in its wake. Naturally, Shigeru Miyamoto's team at Nintendo went to work straight away to create a sequel for the game, an infamous title that has rent the series fanbase since its release. Is it as bad as its legacy imply? Does it deserve better? Let's delve right in.

Review: Zelda II - The Adventure of Link

Zelda II is, in a word, different. The gameplay is different; the presentation is different; even the title is different--the American version even dropped the "legend" part of the title. I'd like to point out that being different is not a negative quality, especially in a sequel. When approaching an original title for a sequel, a big concern is differentiating the new from the old. Just look at your modern military shooter--how many new games were shoveled out in the seventh generation to capitalize on Call of Duty's success? Dozens? Hundreds? Then you have sequels that are just a little too different; if you told me Resident Evil 6 was going to be a crazy action shooter with gun katas, I would have told you to please get out of my house because I don't personally know you, dude.

The main concern is where Zelda II lies on that spectrum. Is it a good sequel, or is it too different? Well, look at the first moments of the game with a fine-toothed comb, beginning with the intro.

Looking at the two at a glance things seem relatively similar. The original game begins with a striking blast of music while the Triforce glows and the waterfall at the bottom of the screen rushes down. In contrast, the title screen of the sequel opens with the lone sword at the tip of a cliff, overlooking the ocean while stars twinkle in the sky. The music is far quieter, more contemplative to reflect the more personal story before the logo crawls into view. You can draw even more comparisons when the story backdrop appears: in the original game, the sky grows dark as the music quietens before the triumphant main theme returns and the title screen fades entirely to make way for the text crawl. A similar lead-in occurs with Zelda II, though the music becomes discordant while the story plays out.

The stories as well are notably different: for the original Zelda, Link is tasked by Impa to recover the Triforce of Wisdom in order to defeat Ganon and save Hyrule. It's a simple premise for a game, and the main themes of exploration are presented well. Link needs to find the Triforce, and in order to do that he must go on a quest. Zelda II features a far less desperate story and is more akin to a fairy tale: a sleeping spell has been placed on Princess Zelda, and Link is tasked by Impa place stones in statues across the vast land of Hyrule. Unlike the original game, this new story occurs across the entire continent which Hyrule seems to consist of, though there's little to indicate where exactly Hyrule Castle is located. It's a kingdom, right? But either way, that's splitting hairs. The scope of the game is far larger than the original, though the story is more intimate. To fully grasp the larger world, here's a completely non-canon and unconfirmed image comparing the possible maps of both games and how they overlap:

Credit to nobody because you idiots don't attribute these things to yourselves

Even if this is simply a fun bit of speculation, Zelda II does indeed take place in a larger Hyrule and nothing exemplifies this more than the second screen of gameplay. I say second screen because the first screen is:

Opposite of the original Zelda, the first screen of gameplay in Zelda II places Link in a bizarre 2D plane, though this is a much smarter bit of design than players might initially believe: in order to ease players into the action, the game forces players to become familiar with the new controls by having them walk out of the temple. This is also one of the few instances in the game's side-scrolling view where players aren't going to be forced into combat, save for exploring villages. Zelda II was designed from the ground up as a side-scrolling action game with a heavy focus on sword combat so naturally the developers would want players to become as knowledgeable about their skill set as possible. This marks one of the bigger differences in the two games, as combat consists of semi-random encounters on an overworld--I'll return to combat in a bit because there's quite a bit to talk about, but this leads into what I consider to be the second biggest difference and one of the major faults I have with the game. As soon as players acquaint themselves with the controls in the palace, they are thrown into the game's world map:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

One of my favorite features of the original Legend of Zelda is the intimate nature of exploration, as it really felt like Link was part of the world of Hyrule. The scope was smaller, but the scale felt larger to accommodate the feelings of dread and wonder that Miyamoto tried to impart from his childhood memories. The world is also far less dense as a result: rather than searching for bushes to burn, rocks to bomb or woods to get lost in, the world map of Zelda II consists of stupid obstacles the player must tackle with specific items found in dungeons. This could be a monster who needs to be soothed by a flute, rocks that need to be destroyed with a hammer, or towns that are inexplicably hidden on the world map. I'm going to just be as open as I can here and say that this is nothing more than a completely average JRPG field map, complete with scaled-down towns and landmarks. I absolutely hate this change and you should too.

Furthermore, rather than enemies wandering the map at their own pace, black blobs will occasionally appear and track Link while searching the world map. When touched, the player is thrown immediately into a combat scenario. I sincerely hate the fact that monsters are so bland while exploring the world, and Miyamoto himself seems to also dislike how combat was presented.

The actual mechanics behind combat are actually pretty interesting, as enemies have different weaknesses and can be approached in multiple ways. Some enemies can only be damaged by a jumping attack, others raise their shield and need to be attacked by a sweep, while some enemies attack from afar and require the player to avoid their barrage of ranged attacks to exploit their weaknesses. Blocking, like the original, is also automatic which means a greater emphasis is placed on precise movements, though this is also balanced out by stronger enemies having unblockable attacks. Link can obtain spells to compliment the player's fighting style, some of which include a fireball, a damage-reducing shield spell, a spell to increase jump height, a screen-wide area of effect attack, a healing spell, a spell that allows the shield to reflect magic, and so on. This is also the first time Zelda introduced a magic meter, which, like the player's health, can be increased by picking up Heart Containers and Magic Bottles. Oh yeah, hearts have been replaced by a bland, generic health meter. It's stupid and ugly.

While I'm on the topic of combat, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out the brilliance of dungeons in the game. Zelda II makes pretty clear the difference between running around in the overworld, visiting towns, and combat encounters with only the first taking place in an isometric perspective. Towns will never cause players harm and most even have healers to assist Link, but dungeons all begin with the same entrance and are carried by an imposing soundtrack. Level design is somewhat similar to the original with locked doors, winding passageways and secret items necessary to continue the adventure, but the 2D perspective can become disorientating and really adds to the sense of exploring a forgotten temple. Even this comes with a downside as, unlike the original, there's no map found in Zelda II at all. The original game obviously had maps for every dungeon, but aside from that it also had a world map. It might not have been detailed, but it still gave the players a sense of direction. Excising maps entirely was a poor choice, especially with how winding and repetitive some of the later dungeons can get.

Unlike the original game, Zelda II annoyingly requires the use of some spells in order to defeat a few of the bosses, one in particular being the penultimate final boss. I don't necessarily dislike a game requiring the completion of puzzles in order to tackle later challenges, but requiring players to discover clandestine items and puzzles is a concept that I'm glad to see gone from modern games. There's also the fact that Link's sword is barely longer than a dagger and can be extremely frustrating when enemies hit for non-inconsequential damage, but I'll get back to that in a minute.

The problem isn't just in hiding requirements from the player, but also the utterly horrendous localization job. Cryptic hints are reduced to pure gibberish at multiple points, and on more than one occasion this is usually the only hint that the player will ever be given about the mere existence of said puzzle. There are too many instances of this to count and I don't particularly feel like going back through the game to find examples, so take that as you will. Then there are simply frustrating elements like the player finding a plot-crucial item underneath a chair when there was no indication that was even a thing present in the game. Not only does this grind the adventure to a halt, it also obliterates any sense of the game being open-ended like the first Zelda. One dungeon will include a plot-critical item required to advance through the world, which will then help the player in finding a spell required to open a new temple, and in that temple a new item will be hidden to open the world further. The original had designated level numbers, but they were by no means necessary for a very large majority of the game. Zelda II has a path it wants you to follow and so help it, if you step out of line just once--!

To get back to the combat, one of the more frustrating elements of the entire game is in character progression. In the original Zelda players could find stronger swords and better armor simply by searching through the game's world. If you want to be a spoilsport you could simplify this down to a mere stat increase, but the player was still invested in exploration when it came down to increasing their base stats. Furthermore, a damage increase was all that was really needed. Look at how massive Link's sword was in the original game compared to his body:

That thing is enormous! To scale, Link's sword in the original game must be the length of his entire body. I'm only half-joking; feasibly, the sword is long enough to safely attack any target and give the player time to maneuver around if the action got dicey. Let's compare this to Zelda II:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Flaccid, small, and all-around worthless, the sword found in Zelda II might just be the worst in all video games. I want to strongly reiterate that I appreciate the combat and think it's one of the best on the NES, but the piddly length of Link's sword is one of the biggest detriments to the overall game. To make matters worse, there's no way in the game to strengthen the player's sword--you can upgrade your attack, but that's about it.

You'll notice in the combat screenshot that every stat has a number, leading to my biggest complaint with the game: The Adventure of Link has a full-blown experience-based leveling system akin to other RPGs of the time. If the real-time combat is a huge leap forward in terms of gameplay, then reverting to what other games were doing at the time in terms of character progression is jogging backward at a breakneck speed. As if the game didn't need anymore negative qualities, for some absolutely stupid reason the developers added a 1-up system like Mario or Ninja Gaiden. Dying will restart Link from the beginning of an area, but losing all one's 1-ups will throw Link back to the very first screen of the game with all his currently-pooled experience points taken away. This adds a completely unnecessary level of difficulty on top of an already challenging game; just think about my horror when I found myself one hit away from death facing one of the bosses of a later dungeon. It's a good thing the Wii U has save states, because if I'd had to start over from that point this review would probably have an even harsher tone. Killing that guy without being hit was a nightmarish experience, by the way.

Part of what made the original Zelda so memorable was the forward-thinking approach to the design of a role-playing game. As I mentioned in my review for the game, it's simply awe-inspiring to see a game released before so many RPG series so venerated today and flip the genre in so many unique ways. For Zelda II to fall back on mechanics like giant, empty overworlds full of mostly-random encounters and then include a by-the-numbers experience system is simply baffling, not to mention the finite restart points. So much of the game could simply be replaced with mechanics found in the original Legend of Zelda; simple changes like finding better gear or armor rather than finding a worthless spell to turn Link into a fairy to solve two puzzles throughout the entirety of Zelda II would have created an experience that stood out from the original Zelda while still being fairly unique in several aspects.

I do like the inclusion of towns though, and the presentation of the story is pretty novel. The game's closing scenarios are, to me at least, pretty profound, as Link is tested by a silent sage who draws out his shadow for a duel that's since become one of the most iconic scenes of the entire series. Dark Link has all the moves the player character does, turning the final boss into a test of skill over brute force. Light and shadow play a prominent role in the game; every time a boss is defeated, Link's shadow flashes across the background to foreshadow the final boss. I suppose you could glean that Link's final trial is overcoming his own fears, but I like to think it's more of an internal struggle over the literal darkness in Link's heart. Courage to overcome your fears is one thing, but the courage to confront your moral failings is just as important. Link becomes a hardened warrior over his experience and each boss highlights this maturity. so what better way of punctuating this theme than a hero overcoming personal change?

Verdict

All the quibbles aside, I actually found myself enjoying The Adventure of Link. Granted, I was completely glued to a guide for the entirety of my experience, but even if I wasn't I don't think this game loses as much as The Legend of Zelda when it comes to that. If the theme of the first game is personal growth by exploring the world, I'd say the theme of Adventure of Link is growth by exploring one's self. Much like the game's change of Link's health from a row of bright and iconic hearts to a bland and forgettable health bar, Zelda II: Adventure of Link loses a lot of the heart that made the first game so unique. To rely on mechanics the original game subverted so well to create a fairly standard action game betrays what made the original Zelda so special. As a child I fondly remember my time adventuring around the seemingly massive world of The Legend of Zelda, and returning to that game is always a pleasant experience. Playing Zelda II for the first time as a hairy adult probably doesn't help things in terms of nostalgia, but a good game is good forever. Zelda II merely flounders, barely staying above water by a very few powerful moments. It's such a shame, too, because those last few minutes are some of the best in the entire series.




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