Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Spirit Tracks Review

Two years after the release of Phantom Hourglass, Nintendo released a second DS sequel to The Wind Waker. With a greater emphasis on the relationship between Link and Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks sought to correct many of the flaws of the previous game while simultaneously expanding the world of New Hyrule. Even though the game dragged on far longer than I ever expected it to, my thoughts on Spirit Tracks are a bit more complicated than those of its predecessor.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Spirit Tracks 

A century has passed since the ending of Phantom Hourglass, and the sailors from the Great Sea have established a home in the land of New Hyrule. The land is covered in a spider's web of a railroad known as the Spirit Tracks, with train engineers being a highly revered profession blessed by Princess Zelda herself despite the fact that the tracks are slowly fading away. Link is on the final day of his training and meets the princess to become a fully-fledged engineer; she warns him of the danger presented by her chancellor, a man named Cole, and begs Link to take her to the Tower of Spirits which connects the tracks. Along the way, Cole and his partner Byrne defeat Link and capture Zelda, splitting her soul from her body. Zelda's soul begs Link's assistance to restore the Spirit Tracks and get her body back.

Complications arise when the two reach the tower: the tower's attendant Anjean, a sage from the Lokomo race, warns them that the Spirit Tracks were in fact shackles holding the ancient demon Malladus. Cole plans to ascend the Tower of Spirits and use Zelda's body as a vessel to revive Malladus, and the only chance for Link and Zelda to stop Cole is to restore the Spirit Tracks and climb to the top of the tower.

The Spirit Tracks constitute both the game's main thematic element and the primary method of travel: the Spirit Train. Calling everything Spirit-whatever sounds weird in retrospect, as if the Adam West Batman were in charge of the naming conventions of New Hyrule. The train is only tangentially similar to the boat of Phantom Hourglass and even further removed from the boat of The Wind Waker. Players track their intended path over the rail line tracing to their destination, which seems laid back and easy but because this is a DS Zelda everything is unnecessarily obtuse.

The speed of the train, even at its highest setting, is absolutely too slow and unlike Phantom Hourglass, the method of travel is too restricted to get players where they need to be quickly. Instead, being stuck on a path commonly leads to players just watching themselves travel with all the excitement of paint drying. Of course, small distractions will occasionally pop up to keep the player invested in the tedium of traveling the Spirit Tracks but these are just that: distractions.

Forcing the player to randomly shoot at boars or other wild animals on the road are just about the height of depth that ever occurs on the Spirit Tracks. I'd argue that it's not much different from the little distractions of the World of the Ocean King from Phantom Hourglass, but giving the player the option to trace entirely free paths across the sea at least allowed for some level of mobility. In that regard, the tracks are a complete step back from Phantom Hourglass. Warp points existed in Phantom Hourglass to help the player travel to specific areas of the map, so even though it felt fairly large it was very easy to navigate since all it took was the easily-found Cyclone Slate and some decent aiming on the player's part.

As this was apparently too intuitive the developers chose to sprinkle warp gates all over the Spirit Tracks which connect to the different sections of the overworld, but the locations make no sense and there's no reliable way to tell where you need to go aside from entering a warp point and hoping for the best. At a certain point players will either need to write detailed instructions for the warp gates or just go back to the Tower of Spirits to enter one of the four realms. Since I was on a time crunch, I never had the time to do the former and chose to go back to the tower in order to make travel just a bit easier, but I don't understand why the warp gates wouldn't just allow players to choose where they wanted to travel to. I also have a minor gripe with the way the game deals with stopping at stations on the world map; I appreciate the detail of having to stop the train if the player wants to enter a station, but it can be annoying to orient the train if the player missed the stop.

Even worse, and probably my absolute biggest hang-up of the overworld, is the existence of the Dark Trains which roam the Spirit Tracks. These trains patrol a specific area of every line of tracks, but stopping and starting the train to avoid these is an annoyance at best. If a Dark Train touches the player it causes an immediate game over which restarts the player at the beginning of their starting point on the map. The idea of the Dark Trains could have been interesting in concept, but the execution is horribly flawed and gives the game an unbelievable amount of annoyance in even the smallest areas.

That's not even to mention the unintentional difficulty of just moving around, which has been carried over from Phantom Hourglass. There's really not much to say about the on-foot gameplay since it's virtually unchanged since the previous game, but there are both positive and negative changes in various aspects. Naturally, items like Heart Containers and item capacity upgrades cost an exorbitant amount of rupees, and by the end of the game I was missing both the larger bomb bag and quivers and still had six Heart Containers I simply couldn't find or afford. The maligned central dungeon reappears as the Tower of Spirits, though this time players are not required to scale floors that have already been completed. Because these games are designed to annoy their players, the dungeon instead consists of several new floors each visit and each one is more difficult than the last; by the end of the game, players are revisiting floors seconds apart for a single item or power-up and drawing complete maps of floors which are entirely blanketed in darkness.

While I hate the implementation of the multiple floors, the dungeon layout seriously appeals to the dormant dungeon crawler fan in me; charting out entire floors for a dungeon is an incredibly challenging and satisfying element to dungeon crawling and I was surprised to see it appear so frequently in Spirit Tracks. Charting maps also appeared as a very brief island puzzle in Phantom Hourglass, but its larger importance near the end of Spirit Tracks was an element I simply didn't realize I wanted in Zelda. I'd go a step farther and say I wish the entire game was like this, but I'll take what I can get. Like I said, the game was designed to annoy and it doesn't necessarily stick the landing: since the blank maps are only utilized when the floor is coated in darkness, it can be irritating to stumble around and frequently have to make adjustments to the map. I accept the annoyance of stumbling around in darkness because it's such a fascinating design element, but the developers should have gone all-in.

The actual main feature of the Tower of Spirits comes in the way that Princess Zelda is utilized as a character. Spirit Tracks includes possibly the most likable incarnation of Zelda--she's hyper, outgoing, and drives Link to continue his quest. She appears to want her body back at all costs but she's not pushy about it--one of the biggest fears I had going into the game, even knowing what it was about, was that Zelda was going to act like a brat and constantly nag the player like Tatl from Majora's Mask, but this Zelda understands the weight that is placed on both her and Link and takes responsibility for her role in Cole's plan.

As part of her outgoing personality, Zelda takes charge when players enter the Tower of Spirits and becomes an integral part of climbing the tower, possessing the spirits of the Phantom guards that roam each floor. Unlike Phantom Hourglass the floor doesn't have a time limit and challenges are planned accordingly; the floors are made more difficult as a result, not only in terms of sneaking around guards but also in the addition of puzzles which require both Zelda and Link to complete. Zelda is able to possess the bodies of Phantoms after Link collects the Tears of Light--yes, a returning item from Twilight Princess though utilized much more smoothly this time around--and with that ability is able to distract guards and carry Link across danger zones. Players need to find intelligent ways to use Zelda's Phantom body and the game's difficulty is such that it constantly scales up to match.

Link is also likable in his own way, this time being less of a warrior on a quest and more of an easygoing engineer who is swept into a series of events for which he is partially responsible. His voice is changed from Phantom Hourglass and The Wind Waker to match his role as a distant incarnation of that version of Link, and his new outfit is a unique change as well. I downright hate that the game forces Link into the green recruit uniform as it diminishes the unique nature of his new incarnation, and as soon as I was given the option to change into his new engineer outfit I made the change and never looked back. The recruit uniform should have been donned long enough for a callback to the Wind Waker Link and swapped back out for the engineer uniform as soon as players began to explore the world with the recruit uniform serving as a reward for collecting Niko's stamps, but I'm glad the option existed to allow the engineer uniform to come back.

The stamp collecting is one of the areas of collectibles I actually enjoyed, though I can't say the same for treasures and mini-games scattered around the map. Treasures return from Phantom Hourglass, though they're much more involved as Linebeck's descendant use them for currency to upgrade the train. Since treasures are random it's difficult to gauge when exactly it's time for an upgrade, and for my part I only upgraded two parts of the train over the course of the entire game. It made the final boss a bit more difficult than necessary, but nothing that couldn't be handled. What makes the treasures annoying is that, since it uses the same engine from Phantom Hourglass, players are taken out of the action and shown the treasure they picked up every time a new one appears.

Since these treasures are random drops now this can lead to several seconds of players picking up the exact same treasure, showing the camera, having a detailed description of these treasures, and putting them away in quick succession. The Zelda series had been getting bad about this obtrusive design aspect for a while, to a point where Twilight Princess would describe coin amounts of rupees every single time a player loaded their save file despite the fact that players could just look at the rupee counter and see what the total amount ended up being. Spirit Tracks doesn't go to this extreme when rupees are involved, but it's made worse by the fact that strings of treasures could lead to several seconds of randomly being taken out of the game. The only positive I can add is that at least the incremental fairy upgrades are nowhere to be seen.

Apart from returning to the tower, Spirit Tracks contains a formula of its own: find a Sanctuary, play a duet with the Lokomo in charge, and finally enter the dungeon. Most of the dungeons also require a challenge in order to enter the dungeon itself. These steps are repeated in each new realm and each time the difficulty increases, made worse by the sudden inclusion of passengers. I like the idea of having a passenger boarding the train and it's a nice diversion, but it should have been just that--a diversion. Passengers force the player to randomly speed up, slow down, blow their whistle and take corners slowly so as not to upset them, but the biggest flaw is that on two occasions the player has no choice but to take on a passenger.

Frustration takes root of every part of the DS Zelda games, but I'm shocked at how pervasive it is here. I like the idea of the Spirit Train, but it's implemented poorly--the moment Spirit Tracks started to break me was upon entering the Ocean Realm where rather than simply going the sanctuary and playing a duet like normal, they instead forced me to go to another town to find a song, then return to a different town to find the Lokomo, return him to the Ocean Sanctuary, then play the duet with the Lokomo. The Lokomo there then gave the challenge of riding past islands in a specific order, blowing the whistle, and finally entering the temple when it appeared. The game never explicitly states the player needs to blow the whistle at specific statues, so when I came to the very end of the challenge I thought the statue lighting up was indicating I did the order correctly. Instead I found out that I was supposed to be looking at the statues directly before blowing the whistle, so I had to light the statues in the incorrect order to reset them and then do them in the correct order. As I mentioned before, the train can only go so fast so it took an absolutely ludicrous amount of time to just access the temple.

The challenge before the fire temple is even more annoying since it requires the players to enter a town, go all the way back to the Snow Realm to pick up ice, then transfer that ice all the way back to the village to find the Lokomo. Had I not unintentionally finished a side quest earlier it would have taken me even longer to get the ice required to find the Fire Lokomo and therefore longer to finish the Fire Realm--even after jumping through these hoops players are forced to hunt flying monsters to gather keys necessary to enter the temple. I understand that the length of handheld games need to be stretched out to keep players invested, but game design has come a long way. The Minish Cap has almost no filler and despite being significantly shorter than Spirit Tracks, I'm more inclined to go and replay that game simply because it didn't seek to annoy me at every step of the way.

The rhythm mini-game, and accompanying flute instrument, is half-baked at best. The flute requires players to blow into the system's microphone, and I'm not sure how well it works on the DS but playing it on the Wii U--which by all means should have a stronger mic--the flute responded maybe three quarters of the time. If you know you screwed up playing one of the duets with the Lokomo, there's no option to reset and naturally, you're going to screw up even if you're the best flute player in the world simply because of the microphone's response. I don't doubt play-testers also had problems with this part of the game so my question is this: if there's a gameplay element that the developers know only work part of the time, how much would the game benefit from its removal? Playing the flute itself is a neat concept, but its implementations are sparse and the game wouldn't miss out if they had been assigned a button.

The game's story feels like it's wrapping up after the Fire Realm is completed, and there's even a nice fight between Byrne and the combined efforts of Link and Zelda that feels like a step before the final boss, but just to annoy the player even further a new temple is introduced at the last second. Just as the game picks up and the big threat is fully revealed, the player has to step back once again and complete an entirely new dungeon. The realm itself is smaller and constitutes only part of the Ocean Realm, but in a narrative sense I'm blown away by how terribly it damages the pacing of the story. The Sand Realm should have simply been a bonus dungeon the players could complete if they so desired, but forcing them to go through one final hoop is baffling, especially given how important and dire the situation becomes after the events at the top of the tower.

The Sand Temple is actually pretty fun and the layout is very clever, but I feel that's the case with most of the dungeons in Spirit Tracks as they dial down on overall dungeon numbers in favor of intelligent layout. While most of this is just brilliant level design I believe part of this is that it takes back the one-key-at-a-time approach that began in Twilight Princess, allowing players to carry multiple keys at once and therefore giving more options to explore. I still believe this should have been optional content and it damages the pacing of the narrative, but I have to give credit where it's due. This also causes the game to have a strange number of dungeons in comparison to previous Zelda games. Six I understand, even four is decent if they're carried out well; the ideal number for me would be nine for bigger games or four for smaller ones. Five dungeons is just odd, and I'm not sure why it bothers me so much.

As much as the little details irk me about Spirit Tracks, I need to say that the final area of the game more than makes up for the disruptive pace and accomplishes one of the finest conclusions in the entire Zelda series. I utterly adore the idea of returning to the very beginning of a long adventure to access the finale, and Spirit Tracks accomplishes this spectacularly by opening an island most players would never have thought twice about as the entrance to the Dark Realm. The Dark Realm itself is one of the most cathartic experiences in the franchise, allowing players to gather Tears of Light along the Dark Realm's Spirit Tracks and finally destroy the Dark Trains. Players who actually completed much of the game's side content are likely fed up of the trains, and even someone like myself who tried to make a beeline to the end of the game still felt a deep resentment toward them. Having a chance to finally destroy these things feels triumphant and allows the player to enter the final encounter with a sense of accomplishment.

The boss battle against Malladus is also one of the game's highlights, running through multiple types of encounters which utilize each gameplay type in succession: a train battle, a puzzle with Phantom Zelda, a top-down boss where the player must protect Zelda, a rhythm game, and finally a straight boss battle which uses a unique perspective controlling both playable characters. The rhythm game annoyed me when it first came up, but I'm not sure if it was more lenient or I simply became better because for the first time I cleared this mini-game without any trouble. The final phase of the boss is something I never knew I wanted and I'm glad I got a chance to play it without spoilers.

Zelda games have a surprising tendency to end on a high note; even the weaker games like Adventure of Link wrap up the game neatly and leave a strong final impression. There are a lot of complaints I have with Spirit Tracks, but the climax of the story is easily one of the best in the entire series. More than its own great ending, I felt like Spirit Tracks serves to fulfill the promise of King Daphnes at the conclusion of The Wind Waker: when Link and Tetra finally find their new home it'll be a land of their own. Link and Zelda of Spirit Tracks finally accomplish the king's wishes and claim New Hyrule as their own land, and if the player has been following the storyline then this ending gives a great sense of closure.

Verdict

Spirit Tracks is lacking a great deal of polish, and a few of the game's weaker elements seem like the developers doubling down on the elements some players disliked in Phantom Hourglass. Some elements feel half-baked, and in the case of the Spirit Tracks themselves I feel like the developers could have put more time into making this more fun for the player. The game mechanics feel like a direct step backwards from Phantom Hourglass in some respects, but in those cases I wonder if they were last-minute changes to account for player feedback from that game. The problem is that I wish the gameplay had been given additional polish because I actually like this version of Link, Zelda, and New Hyrule. The setting and characters work well and the narrative is truly engaging--if not poorly paced--but as far as gameplay is concerned Spirit Tracks is a weird amalgamation of experiments which rarely work well in tandem.

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Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap Review

After the release of the Game Boy Advance, Capcom's subsidiary Flagship was finally able to release a fully-featured handheld port of A Link to the Past, now with additional secrets, sound effects from Ocarina of Time, and a brand-new multiplayer mode called Four Swords. With the Link to the Past port finally accomplished, Flagship began developing their third original handheld Zelda: The Minish Cap. Like the Oracle games, I had never played The Minish Cap prior to this retrospective, and honestly I wasn't very interested in playing what looked like a smaller Link to the Past. With that flippant opinion at the forefront, I did my best to approach The Minish Cap with an open mind and tried very hard to keep my thoughts as objective as possible during its surprisingly brief duration.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap 

The first thing to note is that The Minish Cap discards the Link to the Past art style in favor of a design very similar to The Wind Waker, a style which you now know I absolutely adore. Unsurprisingly, the sprites are colorful and the world is vibrant as a result. The music greatly resembles A Link to the Past, even using an almost identical rendition of the Overworld Theme. Within the first few moments of gameplay something seriously clicked for me. Right away, I was utterly smitten by everything about The Minish Cap from a stylistic standpoint. I just want to throw that out there before I get into the meat and potatoes of this Zelda stew.

The narrative of The Minish Cap carries a similar flow to The Wind Waker, but aside from story beats it feels like its own beast. Like The Wind Waker, the story begins with a legend long before the story opens and tells an entirely original tale. In this story, monsters invade Hyrule and are fended off by a young hero who is aided by the microscopic Picori race. The Picori are celebrated as mythical, and every year a tournament is held in their honor where the winner is allowed to touch the sacred blade of legend.

In a first for the series, Link and Zelda grow up as childhood friends. Zelda is still princess, but because Link is the grandson of the castle blacksmith the two share a close friendship. The story opens on the day of the tournament and the one hundredth anniversary of the Picori descending to Hyrule. Legends state that a gate to the Picori realm will open, and because of that the festival is the most bombastic in Hyrulean history. After the player visits the festival with Zelda, the victor of the Picori tournament is shown the Picori Blade. The victor, Vaati, reveals his intent to open the chest and recover the legendary Light Force--known in later eras as the Triforce. Zelda is turned to stone and monsters are released from the chest the Picori Blade was stored, so Link is tasked with finding the Picori to restore the blade.

Already the story is far simpler than many of the previous Zelda games, and because the world is somewhat smaller than A Link to the Past it never begins to feel overwhelming. There's also the presence of Vaati, a much more interesting villain than Ganon in many ways and who has been severely underutilized by Nintendo. Vaati is deeply intertwined with the overall narrative of the game in surprising ways, and he's fleshed out over the course of the game in a natural progression of events. I deeply appreciate that the game goes out of its way to set itself apart from past games of the series, and because of this individuality it's easy to simply say it's worth your time and you should play it immediately. That wouldn't make a very informative review, so I'll continue.

The assistant this time comes in the form of Ezlo, a cursed Picori who takes the form of a bird. Ezlo latches on to Link's head and becomes his iconic hat, but aside from that he's very similar to The King of Red Lions in that he seems to know more about the world than Link, though he's reserved about giving away information. Ezlo begins to take on a mentor role to Link throughout the game, and the bond that grows between them feels natural and heartfelt. When Navi left during the end of Ocarina of Time, I really felt nothing. Without giving too much of the ending away, I started to feel genuinely emotional knowing later incarnations of Link would never again interact with the Picori--or Minish, as they're known to themselves. Furthermore, in keeping with the connection with the King of Red Lions the player can interact with Ezlo at any time--and finally, this interaction is mapped to a designated button. I can't begin to describe how giddy I was to know that The Minish Cap was answering every single complaint I had with previous games in the series and did so with such little fanfare.

Like The Wind Waker, the main objectives of The Minish Cap focus on a small number of large dungeons spread across the world as opposed to a multitude of dungeons sprinkled around Hyrule. In the interim between playing the Oracle series and The Minish Cap, I began to wonder if those games would have benefited from a smaller dungeon count. By the end of my Linked Game, I was utterly exhausted by the sheer number of similar-looking dungeons and would have definitely preferred a smaller count. The Minish Cap still retains some of the esoteric nature of handheld Zelda games by forcing players into an involved string of events before gaining an item necessary to move the plot forward, but it never forces the player into these long events.

One of the reasons I'm fine with this in The Minish Cap is that when compared to the Game Boy Color Zelda titles, The Minish Cap is an absolute blast to play. I never liked movement in the previous handheld Zelda titles simply because the restricted NES Zelda-like controls felt very limiting. The Minish Cap is unrestricted from the set X and Y-axis movement of the previous games and feels far more like A Link to the Past, though many gameplay mechanics have been touched upon in important ways.

Combat is overhauled to a point that it completely overshadows A Link to the Past and even allows players to learn new techniques from Dojo masters scattered around Hyrule. Unlike The Wind Waker, elements like the Dojo are never forced upon the player, and since the plot never funnels players and allows them to step away and explore it feels like a true sequel to A Link to the Past in many ways. Orca from The Wind Waker felt like wasted potential since he served as a forced tutorial and only taught Link an upgrade Spin Attack, but the Blade Brothers more than make up for this with a suite of techniques Link can learn. In fact, many of these techniques return from Adventure of Link, and it was shocking to see the plunging attack finally return in such a unique and useful way.

To offset the small number of dungeons, players can randomly find trade items called Kinstones. This new item serves as an overhaul for the goddamn worthless trading sequences of past games and allow for a highly customized approach to finding secrets. To summarize it quickly, the Kinstone system allows players to trade their half of a Kinstone to an NPC who is always holding a specific half. This will unlock a secret on the map which, thankfully, is marked until the player decides to swing around and pick it up. Since Kinstone drops are mostly random, this allows for some side quests to open up in different orders each game. My only complaint is that one of these Kinstone quests is missable, and the item it rewards is extremely useful for the final boss. As an aside, I actually found the final boss in The Minish Cap to be fairly challenging, requiring quick thinking and utilizing many of the game's mechanics in intelligent and fun ways.

There's also no shortage of Pieces of Heart this time around, and unlike The Wind Waker players don't have to go too far out of the way to augment their health bar. In fact, I'd say Pieces of Heart are given out like candy; even though the player will only have an 8-heart health pool at the end without doing side quests, I never once felt like I was underpowered because I simply pieced together so many Heart Containers that it felt closer to a standard Zelda game.

Like The Wind Waker much of the plot revolves around bolstering the Picori Blade, but it's taken to such a ridiculous level that by the halfway point I was in a state of pure bliss. Players will gain a total of five swords by the end of the game, each incrementally gaining new power which also bolsters one of the new gimmicks of The Minish Cap. Before I get into that I want to seriously reiterate how hard I fell in love with the focus on powering up the sword, and by the time it upgraded fully to the Four Sword I had the urge to go back through the entire world just to play with it. It's not quite the Master Sword, but the differences are neither good nor bad--they're just different.

Each Zelda game has a unique gimmick, though I'd argue for the NES games this was more of a necessity than a gameplay twist. A Link to the Past introduced the two-stage setup and second world, Link's Awakening introduced jumping and multiple songs, Ocarina of Time created an entire system out of music and implemented two distinct eras while innovating a new type of 3D gameplay, Majora's Mask had the repeating time feature and masks for different gameplay styles, Wind Waker introduced complex wind physics and the Great Sea, and the Oracle games pissed about with their stupid season- and age-changing mechanics.

When I started The Minish Cap, I thought the only gimmick was that it had a new villain. After a few minutes of play, Ezlo is introduces a size-changing mechanic to the game which allows Link to enter small structures. Many of the bosses are simply regular monsters who are colossal in comparison to Minish Link, and navigating around simple buildings as a microscopic being is implemented so well that I'm baffled it hadn't been thought of before now.

The second new gimmick, and the one I was surprised by the most, is the Four Sword mechanic which is strengthened each time the sword is upgraded. The Minish Cap is a prequel to the Link to the Past mode Four Swords and the Gamecube Four Swords Adventures, both of which being multiplayer-focused Zelda games which center around a team of Links facing down against none other than Vaati, who in those games is a mindless beast.

The creation of the Four Sword in The Minish Cap means that the four-player nature of Four Swords is introduced in its nascent form here, where Link can split into multiple bodies using the sword's charge ability. By the end of the game, players can split into four bodies; this is implemented so smoothly over time that it might honestly be one of the best introductions to a new mechanic in the entire series. Players aren't able to create clones until after the second dungeon, nearly halfway through the game. As the game continues, more clones can be created at once to push huge blocks or fight bosses but it's used sparingly and each puzzle associated with the clones is typically built up toward, rather than thrown haphazardly at the player.

A feature of the Game Boy Zelda games I had yet to mention was that players could opt to customize their buttons to any item they wanted; in Link's Awakening for example, players would have to equip both the Pegasus Boots and Roc's Feather to leap across some of the bigger gaps, but this was an extremely cumbersome mechanic and I grew to hate it more the longer it went on. The Minish Cap does away with most of the problem by allowing the right shoulder button to be used for examining or moving objects, completely doing away with many of the annoyances like the Power Bracelet being an equippable item.

At this point the Zelda series had begun to implement a formula for dungeons by having players clear much of the dungeon, pick up an important item to advance through the later parts of the dungeon, and use that for the boss. The constant item switching was mostly fine in Link's Awakening since the formula hadn't been so set in stone by that point, but implementing this new system into the Oracle games made many of the dungeons a complete slog to sit through. Because The Minish Cap does so much with so little, these annoyances are almost entirely gone.

That's not to say what I fell in love with the most from The Minish Cap is that it fixed complaints I had with previous games. It's a solid entry into the series, albeit on the shorter side--I finished it in about two days. Rather, everything in the game bursts attention and care, from its multitude of named NPCs to the gorgeous art style and music. It does rectify many of the mistakes of the previous handheld Zelda titles, but it also adds new features and streamlines the game flow when compared to the cumbersome and restricted Game Boy titles. If this is what Flagship could do with all of Nintendo's resources at their disposal, then it's sad to know they haven't been given the chance to try a bigger title.

Verdict

I could sing The Minish Cap's praises all day, but I feel like I wouldn't have been so enraptured with the game if I actually knew what I had in store. This game was a complete surprise and I'm kind of shocked that it doesn't receive that much love from Nintendo, especially considering its major characters are so fleshed out. I would guess it's because it technically wasn't made by Nintendo, but to have its characters ignored in games like Hyrule Warriors so blatantly seems like a massive oversight. I'm stealing the words of another critic here, but The Minish Cap oozes with creativity despite being so humble in scope. The story is almost entirely detached from any other Zelda title and the most heartwarming moment of the plot is such a little detail that I didn't expect it to resonate with me so much. The Minish Cap is a game deserving of your time, even if it's been neglected by Nintendo. Don't look up a walkthrough, don't look at anymore spoilers than I've likely given out, and play it at a relaxed pace. This is the most pure, condensed Zelda title I've played yet, and even if it is on the short side, it shouldn't be missed out on.

Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Oracle of Seasons/Ages Reviews

Between the releases of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, Capcom subsidiary Flagship proposed a full Game Boy Color remake of the original Legend of Zelda. Facing severe budgetary and hardware constraints, Flagship was approached by Shigeru Miyamoto with a new pitch for their project: a trilogy of Zelda games to see the Game Boy Color off into the sunset. After planning a series of game-linking mechanics, the third game was cancelled and the remaining two were released as Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages in 2001, a year after Majora's Mask. Because the games were released only a few weeks before the Game Boy Advance, I ultimately missed this series and only played the games recently; so recently, in fact, that I honestly thought I wouldn't finish them in time to write this review.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages

If I had to describe the Oracle sub-series of the Zelda franchise in one word, it would be "baffling." Developed by a team at Capcom and released on a soon-to-be-obsolete handheld, Oracles has against all odds been a fairly high-selling entry in the series and both are rated pretty highly among fans and critics alike. A Zelda Universe poll reveals the games are more or less middling in the grand scheme of things, but consider the implication: even while considered average when compared to the rest of the Zelda series, Oracles reviewed well and sold millions of units on a handheld console which was a month away from being replaced entirely.

It should go without saying, but Ocarina of Time helped to usher in a resurgence of Zelda popularity; if the series before had been renowned, then 1998 would mark the series as legendary. The formula had been conceivably perfected in its first attempt, but even still this was all a distillation of the original Zelda on the NES: explore the world, conquer dungeons, find items to keep exploring the world, rinse and repeat. A Link to the Past polished the first game to perfection, and Link's Awakening took many of those improvements and deconstructed them. Link's Awakening served an important, albeit understated, role in the series progression: if you can't innovate, deconstruct. You could argue Adventure of Link started this trend, but Link's Awakening actually did it right where the prior game fell on its face.

I hate to admit it, but Oracles is an extremely safe series. Many of the innovative items found in Link's Awakening return in different forms; for instance, Roc's Feather is upgraded to Roc's Cape in Oracle of Seasons, which grants players the ability to glide for a brief time. The Zora Flippers are upgraded into the Mermaid Suit in Oracle of Ages, allowing Link to swim freely underwater--this item handles like trash and is extremely frustrating to use, and I hate it. The games reuse a few sprites, but thankfully new and fairly detailed sprites for the Goron, Deku and Zora races have been implemented.  The games look great, but in terms of game feel they're identical to Link's Awakening.

For seemingly no reason, many of the iconic items in the series have been replaced with cheap imitations: the bow and arrow are completely absent, but players can use a three-pronged slingshot in Oracle of Seasons to shoot seeds for no reason. Speaking of seeds, more than a number of classic items were replaced by these generic items; the Pegasus Boots are replaced with Pegasus Seeds, the Lantern is replaced with Fire Seeds, and the fast-travel Ocarina or Flute is replaced with Wind Seeds. It's a needless change and to make matters worse, Link needs to replenish his stock of seeds from trees scattered around the world. Having the slingshot as well as a stupid multi-aiming seed shooter feel like meaningless additions, especially when players have to waste a resource used for other purposes just to use them.

Aside from implementing bizarre new items for the sake of being unique, both of the Oracle games focus fairly heavily on narrative. In both games, the Triforce throws Link into a quest in either the lands of Holodrum or Labrynna, for Seasons and Ages respectively. The Triforce being some sort of entity throwing out quests to heroes is kind of a stupid set-up, but I guess the developers needed to get Link out of Hyrule somehow. Majora's Mask handled this much better, but given how much longer Oracles was in development I guess the team didn't have much time to take inspiration from that game. It definitely feels like a step backward, but since the Game Boy hardware was so ancient by this time (twelve years, with the Color being only a minor upgrade) I don't doubt Oracles pushed the hardware to its near breaking point.

The games can be played in any order, but because I played Seasons first I'm going to just pretend I'm right and say that's the correct order. Both games have a distinct quality, where Oracle of Seasons is combat-oriented and Oracle of Ages is puzzle-oriented. Because the series has always leaned toward puzzle solving it feels like a steady difficulty scale, especially since puzzles are my mortal foe. That also creates a bizarre problem in that no matter which game is played first, some elements will seem out of place; combat will be easier if Oracle of Ages is played first as the player is given better weapons and starts with more health in a linked game, but if Oracle of Seasons is played first the combat of Oracle of Ages will be trivialized since the more difficult monsters appearing all over Holodrum will only start to appear at the later stages of Oracle of Ages.

There's no equivalent to this when it comes to puzzles, so if Oracle of Ages is played first then the puzzles in Oracle of Seasons will be far easier even by the end of the game. I'd have preferred the difficulty to scale a bit more smoothly, and since there's no easy answer it makes more sense to simply play Oracle of Ages last. Since many of the bosses in Oracle of Ages are puzzle-oriented, it can feel like the game is increasing in difficulty even when the player is dying less. Difficulty can be subjective and I feel much more pressure when I'm asked to think critically to solve a problem, because swinging a sword wildly doesn't take as much effort.

In Oracle of Seasons Onox, probably the most generic villain video games have ever seen, captures Din, the titular Oracle of Seasons, and as a result Holodrum's Temple of Seasons descends into the subterranean world of Subrosa. The seasons of Holodrum are thrown into disarray, and only Link can find and wield the Rod of Seasons to save the land. The game's narrative takes a step back after this and like Link's Awakening, players need to conquer eight dungeons across the land before tackling the final boss.

The number of dungeons feels appropriate individually, but when playing both of these games back-to-back it can come across as extremely cumbersome. The bosses range from nostalgic throwbacks to the original--likely a holdover from the planned Game Boy Color remake of the original Zelda--to completely forgettable monsters like a fish or an octopus. In fact, I'd say the biggest flaw of the Oracle series is the mere fact that these are supposed to be played as one long game broken into two parts rather than two distinct games with a few similarities. Holodrum and Labrynna both feel unique, but because the narrative and characters of Oracle of Seasons are so forgettable and generic I felt like it was kind of a waste of time.

Oracle of Seasons is not as difficult as its supposed combat-oriented approach would seem, and the season-changing mechanic simply comes off as obtrusive. Players might need to restock on seeds, but those seeds might only grow in one season--to remedy this, players need to walk all the way to a stump to change seasons and walk all the way back to the tree they were harvesting. This problem exists all over Oracle of Seasons and unlike Oracle of Ages, there's never an upgrade which mitigates the problem of stumbling around an area just to find a stump to use the game's main gimmick. To make matters worse, players have to enter the small and restricted area of Subrosa, essentially a lava pit, in order to upgrade their Rod of Seasons to access more of the game. It's an extra step in a game with too many extra steps.

The game ends as awkward and boring as it began, too: Onox is just a big guy in armor, and the final boss is a fight with a dragon. In general I'd say Oracle of Seasons does very little to set itself apart, but players need to play both games if they want to access the true ending to Oracles. After defeating Onox, a brief cutscene plays to show the Gerudo priestesses Koume and Kotake, or Twinrova, attempting to summon Ganon. At this point I was starting to get irritated at the enormous volume of Ocarina of Time callbacks--Link's Awakening was already set after A Link to the Past and at that point the Goron, Zora and Deku races had yet to be created. The introduction of these races in the Link to the Past era is just anachronistic, but shoving Twinrova into the story as an excuse to set up another encounter with Ganon seriously damaged my already-growing dislike of this sub-series. Oracle of Seasons starts weak and ends with a heavy thud, so by the time I started Oracle of Ages I had pretty much given up hope.

While Oracle of Ages starts in much the same way with a villain capturing an Oracle, the presentation of this game is leagues better than Oracle of Seasons. Veran, the villain of Oracle of Ages, possesses the body of Nayru, the Oracle of Ages, and travels into the past to instruct the queen of Labrynna to turn her nearly-finished lighthouse into a menacing tower celebrating her opulence. Like Onox, Veran's goals seem fairly generic but the presentation is good enough that it doesn't really matter. Ganondorf is a fairly generic villain as well, but as long as the villain gives the player a decent motivation I'm okay with it. Instead of juggling multiple seasons, players are given an item to travel back and forth through time, eventually being allowed to do so at will. Labrynna is smaller overall than Holodrum, but both the present and past have their own unique maps; Holodrum had a bigger map but the difference in seasons is usually confined to progression blocking stones and a different color palette. There's also Subrosa, but it's so small that it's typically only visited when necessary.

To go along with the theme of warping between ages, the Black Tower grows in size over the course of the game which gives the plot a feeling of progression, unlike Oracle of Seasons. The player has to stop their quest at one point to save Nayru from Veran in a small and interesting boss battle, and the tower is shown to be nearing completion as the player beats each dungeon. Linked games pointlessly shove Princess Zelda into the story, but as with the Veran subplots it gives the story a feeling of time passing throughout the game much like the roaming NPCs of Link's Awakening.

Speaking of the roaming NPCs of Link's Awakening, Oracle of Ages shares one of the biggest flaws I found from that game: players have to progress through side stories in order to gain access to each new dungeon. To name a few off the top of my head: after crashing on Crescent Island, the player needs to travel back and forth through time in order to gather their belongings which were stolen by the Tokay inhabiting the island. As a side note: look at how easy it was to just implement a new race of creatures--were the Ocarina of Time races really that necessary? Anyway, after accessing Rolling Ridge players need to complete a mini-trading sequence which involves completing several minigames in a certain order before being able to approach the dungeon of that area. It's frustrating and slows down the pace of the game, but it's far from the only time something like this happens.

One of the more annoying side stories is one in which players need to navigate a complex series of whirlpools before discovering the Zora Village, where they need to give medicine to King Zora--the same King Zora from Ocarina of Time, in case you weren't nostalgic enough. The player then needs to complete a minigame in a library nearby in order to heal a fairy who was poisoned by the water supply, which then gains the player access to Jabu-Jabu's Belly. Yes, entire dungeons are injected into Oracle of Ages from Ocarina of Time, though this version of Jabu-Jabu's Belly is cursed with the aforementioned Mermaid Suit, turning an already annoying dungeon into a complete nightmare just to navigate. Compare all these needlessly complex steps to Ocarina of Time or A Link to the Past, where players faced a series of challenges in order to access each dungeon, which in turn were marked very clearly on the map. It's an annoying holdover of Nintendo Hard, though instead of just being annoyingly difficult the steps needed to progress are intentionally convoluted to keep the player invested in the game longer than necessary.

The boss fights against Veran are as interesting as she is a villain, and the climb up the Black Tower is a memorable setpiece moment. The ending is full of action and gets pretty tense, though the actual resolution is fairly quick and a bit disappointing. Of course, this is all ruined in a Linked Game when players are funneled into a fight with Koume and Kotake, then Twinrova (with one of the most bizarrely obtuse methods to beat the boss I've seen in a Zelda game), and finally Ganon. This all just feels like an unnecessary grab for nostalgia and I'd have much preferred some sort of resurrection with both Onox and Veran, the latter being the real highlight of this series. Like many players I'm kind of sick of Ganon, and his presence in this game at the very end feels forced.

The most disappointing thing in the Linked Game is the final screen, which shows Link in a boat sailing into the distance. I get that the developers likely wanted to make some sort of connection with Link's Awakening, but to just shove it in after the credits feels lazy. What really gets me about this is the implication of this particular Link's adventure: it can be safely assumed that the Link of the NES Zelda titles is not the same as this one, so when first approaching Oracles I assumed these were going to be the last hurrah of the Link to the Past character after surviving his harrowing adventures at sea, but with these games being firmly located between A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, the ending to the latter seems far more bittersweet.

If there are a total of four games dedicated to this Link and his last appearance is floating by himself at sea, then the fate of the character looks dire at best. I don't like to believe that such a legendary figure died at sea like some random asshole, and Oracles could have patched things right up. I do admit that it's a unique direction to go with such an important character, but so many of these games are full of dark, tragic stories that I feel it's becoming too common with the series. A Link to the Past had such a happy ending but both of the Oracle games turned Link into some throwaway hero at the whim of the Triforce, and the message I get is that when Link tries to escape all this Zelda nonsense he's lost at sea and dies alone after being forced to murder an entire village of people to wake up a stupid fish.

Verdict

Try as I might, I just can't find much to praise about the Oracle series. Oracle of Seasons is bland and unmemorable, while Oracle of Ages has good presentation marred by unnecessary plot obstructions. Both games are full to the brim of annoying throwbacks to Ocarina of Time despite being set in a world where these throwbacks seem anachronistic, and for some players it might be overwhelming. Classic items are replaced by weird gadgets for seemingly no reason, and the implication at the end of the Linked Game is just depressing. The best I can say is that both games are decent continuations of the gameplay seen in Link's Awakening, so if you really liked that game then these are just more of the same. It's cool to see just what Capcom could squeeze out of the Game Boy Color during its autumn days, but Link's Awakening does more than either of these games without overstaying its welcome. I highly doubt I'll be returning to Holodrum or Labrynna any time soon.

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Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Majora's Mask Review

With the sixth generation of consoles looming, Nintendo attempted to fight back against Sony's third-party-consuming Playstation console--a beast of their own creation--by experimenting with a disk-based add-on for their Nintendo 64 known as the 64DD. The project was scrapped due to poor sales and Nintendo eventually moved on to the Gamecube, abandoning the games in development for the system. Ocarina of Time was actually a proposed launch title for the add-on, but development of the 64DD was delayed and Nintendo instead decided to port it to their currently-existing Nintendo 64 console. Of their aborted projects, two remain as legendary "what-if" titles: Ura Zelda and Zelda Gaiden. Ura Zelda would have served as an expanded version of the original and would have been inserted into the 64DD while Ocarina of Time was in the console; this was intended to be similar to the NES Zelda "second quest" feature, where players would approach dungeons in different orders with a much higher difficulty ceiling. Ura Zelda featured new dungeons and enemies, but the general idea of the expansion was implemented into the Gamecube Collector's Edition bundle titled "Master Quest." The other game was released almost in its entirety, though because it was developed for somewhat more powerful hardware it still required that strange Nintendo 64 Expansion Pak. You know the one. Zelda Gaiden finally saw the light of day as The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Majora's Mask

Because Majora's Mask was intended to be a pseudo-expansion to Ocarina of Time, very little changed in the way of gameplay mechanics. I'd love to delve into it the way I did its predecessor, but truth be told there really isn't much left to say. Link occasionally performs a flip when he jumps, the UI looks a bit flashier, and the overall graphics are just a bit improved. This should go without saying, but if the core gameplay was what impeded your enjoyment of Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask isn't going to sway your opinion.

The story is a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, as was expected of each flagship Zelda title: Zelda had Adventure of Link, A Link to the Past had Link's Awakening, and by now the time had come for Ocarina of Time to get its sequel. Since Link was sent back to his original timeline and successfully stopped Ganondorf's plan, Hyrule was saved from collapse and Link became a lauded hero. With Navi's work finished, she mysteriously vanished without a word to Link, and with the call to adventure still beckoning him to the wild the young hero embarked on a quest to find her. He's not on a journey for long before a masked Skull Kid from the Kokiri Forest steals the Ocarina of Time, hides Link's horse Epona, and transforms Link into a Deku Scrub.

With only a few minutes played as Link, players are forced to enter the game's hub, Clock Town, and play through a small series of events before finally regaining control of Link. Clock Town rests in the direct middle of Termina and is under threat of its moon falling, also caused by the Skull Kid. Despite the fact that the player finishes their goal  of restoring Link's body within an hour or so of gameplay, the much larger problem of the falling moon needs to be addressed as it could spell the end of the world.

The brilliant design of the opening sets expectations for the player: small individual stories make up the game's narrative, and each subplot leads back to the Skull Kid in some way or another. By solving each problem individually, the plot eventually wraps around to the Skull Kid and the end goal of the story. The game's main conflict, and the primary gimmick of Majora's Mask, is the restricted time limit. The moon will fall in three days, and there's simply no way to get it done within the time allotted.

The Song of Time returns from Ocarina of Time with a highly expanded use: in order to maneuver around the time limit, players can use the Song of Time to reset the in-game clock back to the first day. In order to take full advantage of this feature, many of the game's side quests occur on a set schedule, so in order to completely finish everything in the game players need to constantly be on the look-out for quest triggers and follow each schedule accordingly. Only a few side quests have narrow timing windows, so it's lenient on that front.

Speaking of side quests, this is easily the most side quest-heavy Zelda in the entire series. The other side of this detail is that it's also one of the shortest if players are only focused on the main story; in an interview, Shigeru Miyamoto revealed he had wanted to try a small and very dense Zelda focused on revisiting areas for hidden detail and finally had the chance to do so with Majora's Mask. You might not be aware of this, but because of this focus on short stories in a detail-rich world Majora's Mask is more of a favorite among a "hardcore crowd" compared to Ocarina of Time.

Since the developers wanted to create an atmospheric title, the atmosphere of Majora's Mask is quite eerie and at times far more disturbing than that of Ocarina of Time. The darker tone this time feels much more intentional, given that some of the creepier moments of the previous game are due in part to its technical limitations. Majora's Mask is a subversion for Ocarina of Time, exemplified by its original title Zelda Gaiden (or Zelda Side-story) and this is most apparent when approaching the game's multitude of characters--most of them are based on existing characters from Ocarina of Time down to their character models. For players who have invested time in the original game, this can create a menacing dissonance. If the team behind Link's Awakening were attempting to create a tone similar to Twin Peaks, then I'd say Majora's Mask gracefully nails the landing--a sentiment also shared by Zelda frontrunner Eiji Aonuma. The fact that Link travels to Termina through an underground passage that literally turns the world upside down should give the player a hint about how strange the journey is about to become.

Despite the small number of dungeons, each one feels unique and they all serve as an important milestone for the story. Because each region of Termina is separated into distinct corners of the map, conquering the dungeon feels like putting each area to rest. The oppressive atmosphere comes into play when it becomes clear players will never be able to clear every dungeon without resetting time, ultimately leading to feelings of hopelessness. Each boss can be fought multiple times so there is a chance for players to save all of Termina, but the game never rewards players for doing this and instead continues its three-day time limit; even in the best of circumstances, Link is trapped in Termina seemingly forever.

The density of the game world further emphasizes the role of side quests: if the player merely continues through the game to make a beeline for the ending, then by the final boss they'll only have up to seven Heart Containers as opposed to eleven hearts in Ocarina of Time and fourteen in A Link to the Past. Side quests offer Pieces of Heart and other helpful items like bottles, and returning after its absence from Ocarina of Time players can once again permanently upgrade their sword. Although I stand by my stance that it wasn't necessarily worth the trouble in Ocarina of Time, the sword upgrade is almost necessary given the small size and weak power of Link's beginning sword. It's not a very difficult side quest either, but it does take the player's allotted three days to complete. If the player wishes to find a substitute for the Biggoron Sword, there's a side quest for a similar weapon as well.

The typical reward for major side quests are the main focal point of the game: mask collecting. Much like Ocarina of Time placed such a high value on music, Majora's Mask focuses almost entirely on collecting masks--all of which serve some purpose either in the story or in the completion of some of the longer side quests. Furthermore, three of the four major areas each have their own mask allowing Link to transform into a member of the fantasy races established in Ocarina of Time: a mask for the Deku Scrubs, one for the Gorons, and one for the Zora. Each mask is utilized over the course of the game and, much to the game's credit, there's never an instance where Majora's Mask seemingly forgets the original items exist--unlike Ocarina of Time, where nearly half of Link's arsenal is completely unusable depending on the timeline. The fantasy races will also react to Link differently depending on which mask he's wearing and even which race he appears to be, a small detail which helps make the world feel that much more established.

Masks inundate the world of Termina, so when the player is given one as a reward it comes off as being a precious memento or keepsake by the character giving them away to the player. It's a unique way of world-building that I think a few players might miss out on if they don't give a few side quests their due time. Furthermore, aside from the races and a number of returning character models, there's almost no link to Hyrule in the entirety of Majora's Mask. The Triforce is never mentioned and both Hyrule and Zelda are only seen briefly; I'd have personally preferred to see Link-centric sequels and spinoffs be emblazoned with the title The Adventure of Link (so far example, The Adventure of Link: Majora's Mask) as a callback to the first sequel in the series, but Nintendo is short on rugged, handsome critical-minded people like myself, so The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is apparently okay for a game that features the titular character for no more than about two minutes.

Like Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask is not without its share of flaws. Unlike the prior game, these flaws come more from the actual design of the game rather than the growing pains of the medium. The only way to permanently save is to reset time; if players want to save while exploring a dungeon, they need to leave and quick-save at an Owl Statue which then kicks them out of the game. Further aggravating this problem is that these quick-saves also delete themselves after the player gets into their game. It serves its point that resetting time is an option players should consider wisely, but given that this resets bombs and arrows it can get annoying to start a game again and be forced to farm for these items.

Keeping track of side quests can be a hassle as well. Players can pick up a notebook which tracks the schedule and completion of the important characters, but learning their schedule and planning ahead can be a bit annoying. Having a woman tell you to meet her in her hotel at a certain time only to discover that hotel closes hours before that is one such example, and it persists through multiple side quests. I don't want to have to reset the clock every time I screw up a quest, but because it feels intentional I guess this complaint can be chalked up as subjective. Anji might just be a forgetful idiot, and if that's the intention I guess I just overlooked it.

The 3DS version mitigates both of these problems by allowing players to warp to specific hours and there's also a new item to keep track of many of the game's side quests, but as I pointed out in my mini-review, this version comes with its own set of issues. The hit to atmosphere is retained from Ocarina of Time 3D, and many of the bosses have somewhat different patterns for no discernible reason. Like Ocarina of Time 3D, players need to seriously consider if the game's tradeoffs are worth it. Considering how heavily the game's atmosphere adds to the overall feeling of Termina, it's a much more difficult consideration than Ocarina of Time 3D.

Verdict

While not as influential as Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask is a worthy sequel and flips many of the series conventions on their heads. This is the point in time when Zelda had fully come into its own as a series and experimentation was beginning to creep into all of Nintendo's titles. Thanks to the perfection of the formula in Ocarina of Time the developers managed to create a unique title which stands apart from its predecessor. I would recommend players tackle Ocarina of Time first to truly appreciate Majora's Mask, but the vibrant, detailed world and charming characters make this a great addition to the series. Just please avoid the Gamecube Collector's Edition of Majora's Mask. Nobody deserves that headache.



Zelda 3D remaster mini-reviews:
http://subjective-objective.blogspot.com/2016/03/mini-review-zelda-remasters.html

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Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past Review and Analysis

Four long years and a brand-new home console passed after the release of Zelda II, but in 1991 the third Zelda title would drop to an unbelievable reception: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The US would see a localized version release the following year, only a few months after the launch of the Super Nintendo. The game was in development for quite a while, as like the original game A Link to the Past was developed in tandem with the Super Nintendo's new Mario title and even switched platforms from the original Nintendo to the SNES during its development--though please don't quote me on this, I learned this from an unsourced IGN article. Cite your sources and credit your work, people! On a personal level, this game and Super Metroid were the games which finally convinced me to beg my mother for a Super Nintendo well into the fifth generation of consoles, even after I'd already played the legendary Ocarina of Time. My take on the game might be a bit biased, but I'm not going to talk about the latter game just yet. So please join me today in a look back at what I consider to be one of the greatest games ever made.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past

With a much more powerful console at their disposal, Shigeru Miyamoto's team went hard at work to develop a game that could finally keep pace with ideas merely hinted at in the original Legend of Zelda title. The result is a perfected version of the formula presented in the 1986 game, brought out in full force on the brand new Super Nintendo console; diagonal movement, burnable objects, water physics, and a much bigger and more vibrant world than even Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. Even though the world was smaller in scope than that game, it does have at least one populated town in the vein of Zelda II while maintaining the smaller world and sense of scale of the original Zelda.

One of the most interesting aspects of Link to the Past comes from the merging of elements from the NES titles; the player is given a menu to select items similar to The Legend of Zelda, but within this menu is a selection of spells the player can acquire over the course of the game. Rather than Adventure of Link's approach to receiving spells from sages in each town, all of the spells in Link to the Past are found by exploring the world. To smoothly transition these new additions to the formula of the first game, players are once again given a magic meter which can be extended through exploration.

The combat has been fairly simplified when compared to Adventure of Link, especially since all instances of side-scrolling angles have been removed for a consistent experience. Even the original Zelda would occasionally encroach into sides-scrolling territory for equipment rooms, but this is a minor point. As a compromise, the combat is actually a bit more complex than the original with a few new attacks added to Link's arsenal. The attack button can be held down to add distance between enemies, and in most scenarios holding out the sword will push back both the player and whoever the sword touches in order to play a bit more defensively. The sword now swings in a horizontal arc as opposed to the straight stab of Zelda or the absurd poke of Adventure of Link.

Picture credit: https://zerot.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/analysis-the-legend-of-zelda-a-link-to-the-past-snes/
There was no way I was going to take time out of my busy schedule to grab one of my own.

The swing is a perfect width, clipping most enemies in an arc around Link's model and allowing for pretty tense action, especially when paired with the game's enormous upgrade to movement. Magic can augment combat as well, as can items like bombs, the bow and arrow, and the brand new hookshot which serves as both a weapon and useful item. A colossal new mechanic is introduced in Link to the Past which would become a cornerstone of the rest of the series: the Spin Attack. It might not be as in-depth as jumping, diving and positioning from Adventure of Link, but I honestly can't think of too many ways Link to the Past could be improved on the combat front. Spin Attacks take a second to wind up and can be cancelled if an enemy bumps into Link, but since the hold pushes enemies away in the first place it's often a very safe maneuver. It also doubles the normal sword damage compared to a normal slash, so in many situations players will want to be charging their sword. To balance this, speed is dramatically reduced when Link charges for the attack so it's not feasible to just constantly hold the button down; enemies can still attack Link from the sides or back and when players commit to a direction for charging the Spin Attack, there's no way to change it until releasing the button. Combat is just as deep as it needs to be, closer to the original while exchanging brutally hard-hitting and awkwardly-roaming enemies for responsive, real-time sword combat.

Thankfully, the heart system has also returned from the first Zelda, where enemy attacks can deal anywhere between half a heart of damage to several depending on the character's equipment. Heart Containers were present in a far more restricted capacity in Adventure of Link, with four hidden across the world and the only way to decrease damage taken was by leveling up the player's health stat. Once again, every major dungeon boss drops a Heart Container in Link to the Past, but a new system replaces full Heart Containers found on the world map with smaller Pieces of Heart; players can discover twenty-four of these all over the world, adding six hearts for a grand total of twenty. With the exception of a few of the handheld games, this has now become the series standard for maximum health a player can acquire. That also means that by the end of the game, players will have picked up at least fourteen Heart Containers to mitigate damage in case one isn't particularly interested in sidequests.

Much like the original, Link can acquire new equipment throughout the game to both decrease damage taken and increase damage output. It's a fantastic return to form, and because of the far more detailed world and higher number of Pieces of Heart required to increase maximum health it always feels like a major goal has been reached in terms of exploration. That's not to say it's such a high cornerstone of the experience as wandering the Hyrule countryside in the original Zelda, as the game is a far more linear adventure due in part to the structure. And because this game is such an important part of my life, I want to give it the respect it's due and analyze the general flow of the game, so if you don't want the story spoiled (and if you haven't played the game by now, you should), skip to my verdict at the end.

The Unique Design of A Link to the Past

A Link to the Past begins with an opening crawl much like the first two, though rather than setting up the main goal of the plot it instead explains much of the world and establishes a backdrop for the story. Before the events of the game--ostensibly a prequel to the original Zelda--an omnipotent power known as the Triforce lay hidden in a Sacred Realm. Adventurers sought the Golden Land to discover whatever power was hidden there, though none returned. The entrance to the Sacred Realm began to exude an evil power, so the King ordered seven sages to seal the land away and the event faded into obscurity. As the main story opens, a wizard named Agahnim usurps the throne of Hyrule and subsequently begins to banish the descendants of the sages.

Compared to the introductions of the NES games, Link to the Past throws multiple concepts at the player before the game even starts. I should take a step back and point out that the instruction manual for Adventure of Link also goes into great detail about the mystery of Princess Zelda I; this has since been heavily retconned and I don't really think it's worth delving into. On the other hand, the instruction manual for Link to the Past includes a three-page description of the creation myth of Hyrule, down to the presence of gods and the creation of both the world and the role of the Triforce--interestingly, this blurb in the manual actually is canon to the lore of Zelda. Moving on, rather than dumping the player into the game a brief cutscene plays: a mysterious voice urges for help, but it's Link's uncle who takes the call to action rather than the player himself. The player then leaves their home, but one of the biggest flaws of the game presents itself the first time the player enters the world map.

If the player attempts to go through any of the exits in this first screen, enemy soldiers will cut them off in order to guide them through a set path. I don't necessarily mind railroading the player in order to set up an important setpiece moment, but the linear nature of the prologue is unfortunately reflected in the game's direct approach to pacing. Link to the Past has a story to tell and it's going to make sure you appreciate it whether you want to climb Death Mountain right away or not.

It's not quite as bad as Adventure of Link, which requires players to grab otherwise-useless plot-critical items from each dungeon before progressing further, but it's still a far cry from dumping the player in Hyrule and telling them to go nuts. All that aside, the story is pretty engaging and creates a unique setting--despite the opinion of Shigeru Miyamoto himself, who thought by the time A Link to the Past released "swords and magic [were] quite common." The appearance of a darker reflection of Hyrule was an interesting change of pace and has since been a common theme in the Zelda series, not to mention more than a few Nintendo properties like Metroid Prime 2, where the player traverses a dark version of the title's setting.

That, however, is jumping ahead. While it's not necessary to talk to every single NPC and finish every sidequest to progress the plot--the player can skip talking to an NPC in Kakariko village who guides them to Sahasrahla, for instance--some events must be completed before the player can move forward. The trek to Sahasrahla's hideout serves as a nice interlude between rescuing Zelda and officially exploring dungeons, and there's plenty to do in the world before the first major dungeon. Where the original Zelda basically forced players to explore the world before tackling the dungeons, Link to the Past offers its enormous Hyrule as a mostly optional sandbox for the player to discover secrets and minigames.

The only problem I really have is that for the first part of the game, there's a definitive order the player must follow before progressing through the story. Sahasrahla needs to be talked to for the player to pick up the Pegasus Boots, which he won't give away until Link shows him the first Pendant. The boots are required to knock down the Book of Mudora, which are then required to enter the Desert Palace. The Desert Palace houses the Power Gloves, a necessity to unlock Death Mountain.

I'm not going to pretend like the first Zelda didn't hide required items in dungeons, because that's honestly part of the charm behind the major theme of exploration. Explore the dungeon, find an item, then find a use for the item once you've left the dungeon. Bombs are still required for King Dodongo, the candle is required to enter the eighth dungeon, the raft pretty much only has two uses and one of those is to find a dungeon. But what was so special about the sense of adventure in that game was that if a player found a dungeon, there wasn't a thing that could stop them from exploring it. You might come face to face with an enigmatic monster who you need to feed meat because "grumble grumble" is supposed to tip you off that he's hungry and the confusion around this destroys your fragile three-year-old ego, but after coming across a roadblock like that your next course of action is to simply leave and explore a bit more.

That's the catch, and it's why I prefer A Link to the Past multitudes more than The Legend of Zelda. With few exceptions, the entirety of Hyrule is available for the player to conquer, but the game is far from the daunting meatgrinder its predecessor can be at times. It's also not so dreadfully linear as Adventure of Link, as the dungeon items in that game are entirely superfluous keys required to continue to the next area.

The brilliance of A Link to the Past is in the basic structure of exploration and conquering dungeons. Side activities exist all over Hyrule to strengthen the player, and there are several completely hidden items some players may not find for their entire first playthrough if they're not thorough. Each dungeon instead leads players to find an item which will augment their tools to explore the world and engage in combat.

For example: the first pseudo-dungeon, Hyrule Castle, introduces the player to the lantern, the boomerang, and naturally the sword and shield. With these items players can then cut down trees and fight enemies on the field, opening up a majority of Hyrule. The Zora flippers and Power Gloves are required to fully explore the light world, and it's not until players have full access to the Dark World with the hookshot and magic mirror that all the secrets can be found, but I personally feel the world opening gradually helps make an already huge map feel even larger. Several secrets can be found on each screen, and thanks to the scrolling nature of the world map as opposed to fixed coordinates of the original it never feels like players are retreading old ground. To go a step further, the second dungeon gives players access to the bow and Sahasrahla imparts the Pegasus Boots as a secondary treasure; the second dungeon's item allows players to lift rocks which can be used to attack enemies and opens many of the Light World's blocked areas, and the third dungeon gives players both the Magic Mirror (by way of the old man on the mountain) and the Moon Pearl to safely traverse the Dark World, which is coming up shortly. These items also serve to foreshadow the twist of the second half of the game while gearing the player up to confront the upcoming upswing of difficulty.

The Master Sword is also nothing short of brilliant as it's established very early in the story. Link is tasked with finding the Master Sword and finding Sahasrahla is necessary to learn about the Pendants. Players can actually interact with the Master Sword before finding the Pendants if they want to fully grasp the gravity of their adventure, and upon drawing the Master Sword the benefit is immediate: not only does the swing double the damage of Link's uncle's sword, but Link is also given a long-range attack as strong as the first sword when at full health. Because of its width and how long each swipe travels, players go from a bright-eyed adventurer to a killing machine the moment they draw the sword from its pedestal. There is even a blacksmith found as early as Kakariko village before finding the first Pendant who offers to upgrade swords if his brother is found, opening a sidequest that can even upgrade the Master Sword at a later point in the game.

There are also several spots in the world to upgrade base equipment--I don't want to get too far ahead of myself with these reviews, but this is a feature I sorely wish would have been implemented in many of the future games. The boomerang, shield, Master Sword, and arrows can all be upgraded for free simply by exploring and discovering specific fairy fountains, though these are all hidden pretty well from the player.

The Dark World

After defeating Agahnim and being drawn into the Dark World, the game truly begins to shine as the atmosphere changes, enemies grow more powerful, and the landscape is completely devoid of life. The game makes a small misstep by forcing the player to return to the first dungeon, but more than makes up for it by making it clear that the Dark World is absolutely not playing around. The plot becomes darker as a result as Link desperately searches for the sacrificed maidens, including Zelda, in order to confront Agahnim's master, Ganon.

Ganon managed to find the Triforce before the game began and made a wish to morph the Sacred Realm into a vision more suitable for himself; if Link doesn't stop him from mustering his forces before the two worlds merge, Hyrule will fall. This sets up an interesting parallel between A Link to the Past and the original Zelda, given that in the first game Ganon successfully took over Hyrule, but A Link to the Past makes it clear that this game is a prequel to the events of the original.

The first maiden marks the location of every dungeon on Link's map, though the bigger challenge is in how the player can actually approach these dungeons as they're all hidden throughout the world. Even though the dungeons are clearly marked in a numbered order, at this point the dungeon order can be mixed up in several ways. I believe this to be the height of Zelda open-endedness, as it's not so ridiculous as to leave the player wandering fruitlessly in the world like the first game and not so linear as the first part of A Link to the Past or any part of Adventure of Link. Each dungeon also feels wildly different and they all have interesting gimmicks, a far cry from the palette swapped dungeons of the first two games. Bosses can be fought in a number of ways, with multiple weaknesses for players who want to experiment.

The pre-Dark World dungeons can also prove as a comfort to players who are daunted by the size and danger the Dark World poses, as any new player now knows that almost every item required to progress will likely be found within the dungeons. This is also the point the game demands players to explore Hyrule as some of the later dungeons are blocked off by spells hidden throughout the world, although because of the easily-accessible warp mechanic in the second half of the game it's far easier to fly around and backtrack. To give the game a sense of progression, at this point soldiers will be scouring the Light World for signs of Link which really bolsters the feeling that the world is moving along with Link.

After saving the Maidens and defeating Agahnim again, Ganon appears and crashes through the Pyramid of Power, another subtle convenience in that any time a player restarts the game they're right in front of the final boss. It's annoying to have to start over with three hearts, but given how easy it is to find fairies it's not a big problem. What is a problem, however, is that Ganon shares his weakness of silver arrows from the original game--silver arrows which are hidden on the world map. For players who want to just get to the battle and end the game, this might serve as an annoyance. Luckily, the fairy fountain which upgrades the arrows is on the Pyramid of Power, and the shop which sells the Super Bomb to access the fountain is located at none other than Link's own house in the Dark World. Link's house is close to the Pyramid, so players won't have to search far and because it's in such an obvious place it likely won't be too long before the player finds it. I do find it annoying that the wall blocking the fountain isn't very clear, but given players can enter and find the two best weapons in the game is hardly a high price to pay for a bit of exploration.

The encounter with Ganon is also very memorable, especially if you grew up in a time where you had to fill in the blanks to make up for the rudimentary graphics. I always like the idea of mortal enemies fighting in a collapsing arena, and the game actually conveys that pretty well as Ganon tears down the Pyramid during the fight. It's tense and actually pretty difficult, even if it does rehash some of the original game. Link enters the Triforce chamber and makes his wish to set the world right, elevating A Link to the Past over either of the original games as this is the first time the Triforce is seen in its entirety.

Verdict

While A Link to the Past can at times seem like a retread of many elements from its NES predecessors, I don't think I need to justify myself when I say the developers took every single negative qualities those two games had and distilled the best qualities into a perfect, timeless experience. Beautiful sprites, a unique setting dying to be explored, endearing characters, a dark plot and some of the most memorable music in video game history, A Link to the Past is sheer perfection. Oh yeah, I completely glossed over the music. I wish I was more of a music guy, because honestly this game deserves all the praise it can get for creating such an amazing soundtrack on such old hardware. Anyway, Nintendo struck gold in 1991, and I can't think of anything I would change. This game will always have a place on my all-time top ten, and if it's not on yours I don't want to know you.

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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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