The Original Persona Broke My Spirit. (Review)

I first heard of the Persona series when the third game was hitting its stride, though I never actually played the franchise until much later. I'm not one to skip entries in a long-running series, so despite the fact that mouth-breathing idiots say that someone can start the Persona series with Persona 3 before moving on to Persona 4, that type of flippant ignorance never really sits well with me. Instead of jumping right into the casualized, pathetic dating sim of the third game and the redundancy of the fourth, I decided to sift through the mountain of Shin Megami Tensei titles I vaguely knew the series was related to. Although the original games were either hard to find or outright unreleased, luck was on my side: Atlus released updated ports of the original games on the Playstation Portable and copies were both abundant and affordable. I thought, why not? If I'm gonna be a hipster, I might as well go all the way and play through these old games new, stupid Persona fans outright reject. It's not like they're nightmarish dungeon crawlers straight from hell or anything, right?

Review: Persona

Megami Ibunroku: Persona is the hardest video game I have ever played. Ninja Gaiden Black is difficult, but it's beatable. The venerated Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne might be a descent into madness and corruption, but it only took me two attempts to crush what I believe might be the most satisfying final boss of all time. It's not even the main course of the game that's a hellish meatgrinder, though that's still a significant criticism.

Persona is a first-person dungeon crawler in the vein of earlier Shin Megami Tensei titles, a common through-point of each spinoff of the series. For example, the Persona and Devil Summoner series might have gone in wildly different directions from the Shin Megami Tensei mainline series, but the early entries in both of these spinoffs retained much of the series mainstays: negotiating with demons in order to strengthen the player's party, heavy emphasis on spellcasting, dark moral decisions, and imagery of a ruined Tokyo sprinkled throughout.

Fusion Accident

Negotiation is one of the more entertaining aspects of Persona; in previous Shin Megami Tensei titles, players were given a choice between being "friendly" or "threatening" to demons when initiating dialogue, then going down a small dialogue path before either recruiting the demon into the party, gaining an item, or receiving money. Money and items are still available as dialogue choices in Persona, but one of the biggest differences is that the original Shin Megami Tensei featured between one and three human party members while the rest of the party would need to be filled with recruited demons. Lower-level demons could be discarded by fusing two or three together, resulting in a constant flow of new allies with new abilities and stronger stats.

Since Persona has a full party at most times, demons themselves can't be fused but rather give the party a card of themselves which can be fused with other cards and turned into a new Persona. While a few demons can be created from fused cards, most of the equippable Personae are unique as deities and concepts from world religions; unlike demons, a Persona is a manifestation of the user's will, so stronger Persona users evoke godlike beings as their Persona.

To be frank, this system is worse than Shin Megami Tensei in multiple facets. The benefit of a successful negotiation is not tangible or immediate; rather, the player will have to wait until they find a Velvet Room--the Persona series version of the Cathedral of Shadows--and fuse Persona from the cards gathered. Cards and held Personae are highly limited, and to add to the frustration the game is very strict on who can equip which Persona. Each character is aligned with several tarot arcana which in turn dictates which newly-fused Persona can be equipped; additionally, each character will have certain affinity with each arcana, which ranks as worst-bad-good-best. Characters like Reiji only have one or two arcana aligned with good affinity, while only one is considered best and the rest are unusable. The protagonist, on the other hand, carries affinity with most arcana and is more versatile as a result.

Aside from the annoyance of being forced to create a small pool of Personae narrowed down to align with the cast's best affinities, each Persona has a very small skill pool considering they're fused from demons with a set amount of skills. In other Shin Megami Tensei titles, demons could be tailor-made to carry lineages of skill sets to create unstoppable monsters by the end of the game--look no further than the legendary Nocturne Daisoujou recipe to behold what truly nightmarish combinations can come about from tinkering around with demon fusion in specific circumstances. Even though the game is renowned for its difficulty, I fused a Daisoujou roughly halfway through Nocturne and it carried me all the way to the end of the game with the skills I fused for it then.

Persona is not as deep or satisfying in large part due to how narrowly-focused the fusion mechanic has become. Because MAX-level Personae can only be returned for new fusion totems or items, no skill lineage can be created throughout the course of the game; for the most part, this means a Persona will only have a mish-mash of skills from their parent demons and will never, ever be able to pass on whatever skills it may learn. In most cases, a Persona will be fused for two or three skills while it learns new spells that completely outclass the ones it begins with. It's almost baffling that a game with such strong ancestry would make a decision this poor, and to think it might have been the blueprint for the rest of the series is a bit mind-boggling.

Spellcasting is almost universally required for combat due in large part to the game's completely mishandled positioning system; while the ingredients for a neat combat system were all in place, Persona very often misses the mark. Characters and demons form a grid when starting a battle with each side composing a five-by-five square. Each attack type then targets specific points on the opposing side; for instance, Masao attacks in a sort of "W" pattern, with his direct front attacking the first two blocks in front of him, the attacks on either side taking only one block, and the furthest blocks on either side taking two blocks again. Reiji only attacks the front row, while Maki can attack the entire enemy formation--so long as she's in the back, in which case her gun can't be fired.

The characters' strengths and weaknesses do make the battles engaging as positioning becomes a concern later in the game, but by the end each encounter becomes increasingly more difficult to the point of lunacy. Having to keep in mind each formation for each selection of enemies is horribly tedious and makes the final few dungeons incredibly difficult. In a series known for punishing the player for every little mistake, the final dungeon in particular can be a true nightmare. Spellcasting is a godsend as it allows players to attack any target from any position without worrying about positioning. Although spells cost a significant amount of magic to cast, the developers seemed to know that this would be the preferred method of attacking anyway as characters are fully healed upon leveling up. Furthermore, characters have an entirely different level for equipping Personae compared to their natural character level--for example, a character who throws around spells constantly might be two or three Persona levels higher than their character level, which will allow them to equip a Persona which might be higher than their natural level. Of course, this only applies to characters who have been using spells with regularity, so those who aren't using their Persona at all times might not be able to equip a Persona they have best affinity for because their Persona level is too low.

To be totally fair, the heal upon gaining a new level mechanic gives the game a very brisk pace allowing players to just constantly throw themselves against enemy crowds since levels are fairly easy to come by; rather than forcing themselves to run back to a healing fountain earlier in a dungeon, it's usually more feasible to use items and power through to the next level. The only thing I want to ask is this: if the developers intended the characters to be played almost exclusively as spellcasters and reward those who go down this path, why even bother with the convoluted grid? I can't say I hate combat outright in Persona, but forcing unnecessary changes is a misstep that hinders a system that could have been perfectly serviceable in a very good dungeon crawler.

Moral "Choices"

While the previous Shin Megami Tensei games focused on the player's conflict with their internal alignment, Persona merely punishes players who make wrong dialogue choices. It's interesting to see the ways in which the game tries to incorporate elements from the mainline series, but the presentation for these choices is weak at best.

Shin Megami Tensei typically offers moral choices when the player comes across decisions that fall under "lawful" or "chaotic" alignments; lawful characters believe in absolute order and helping the weak, but without a failsafe in check this can lead to fascist systems in which those under the law are punished for stepping out of bounds in the least. So basically, college campuses. Chaos, on the other hand, favors absolute power and freedom over all else. Naturally, the weak are crushed in this environment while the powerful thrive. So basically, the current Presidential Administration.

The choices given in Persona don't have much weight and are instead focused on forcing the player to stand true to their convictions when faced with difficult situations. It allows the protagonist to feel like a true leader at points, but the story and gameplay benefits are entirely too weak; answering correctly for most dialogue choices only allows the player to fuse decent mid-level Personae via special totems, though by the time I reached the end of the game I was still too underleveled to even equip them. Oh, but I'll get to that.

In one situation near the mid-point of the game, the player is forced to make a series of dialogue choices to help out a plot-crucial NPC. If the player answers all three questions incorrectly (each question has three answers, by the way) the player will then be given the bad ending--several hours later, well after their old save data has been overwritten. It's a needlessly cruel way to punish players for an ambiguous round of questions and I would personally not blame anyone for dropping the game if they got this ending; Shin Megami Tensei has always focused on "not evil, but not necessarily right," though some players will obviously lean toward one alignment or the other. Grey morality as a system thrives in the franchise, and having the neutral route as a secret surprise for players who don't become too embroiled in the extremes of either side is icing on the cake. Persona has no grey morality and the choices will come back to haunt players who didn't pick the correct options, but even if the player picks a choice they feel is right the plot continues as if nothing happened and later shames the player for picking that choice.

"Ruined" Tokyo

The franchise-standard imagery of a destroyed major city appears in a bizarre turn in Persona, though the concept of ruination is vague. Near the beginning of the game, the characters play an occult game called Persona which awakens them to their own ability to summon a Persona. After visiting their terminally ill friend Maki in a hospital, the characters are dragged into a strange version of their town where hospitals are replaced by forests and old houses were never demolished for business offices. The town is under the rule of local business owner Kandori, who is attempting to pull elements from a twisted version of reality into the real world in order to rule as a god.

The real standout character is Maki, the terminally ill student whose personal conflict becomes the main driving force behind the story. Psychology and spirituality are mixed and implemented to stunning degree as the characters race to save the town from Kandori and Maki's inner demons. Unfortunately, the rest of the cast is somewhat rote in comparison; the protagonist is a standard silent hero who the party simply follows because he has the best hair, while the other two main party members Nanjo and Masao are often only used to fill in the plot. Nanjo is an analytical and haughty rich kid who feeds backstory to the player, assembling the plot in his head as he learns more information. Masao, on the other hand, is the free-natured punk with a heart of gold. You can guess exactly what these characters will say when they need to say it.

One of the interesting elements of the party dynamic is the fifth member, a student who also took part in the Persona game. After entering the twisted town and rescuing Masao, the player can accept help from one of the other characters who will accompany the party for the remainder of the game; these party members are typically background noise and only really help as additional damage during combat, but one of the final party members adds a significant amount of new dialogue and context to the Kandori subplot.

Reiji is the definition of a secret Easter Egg as the character requires an unreasonable amount of hoops to jump through in order to unlock him as a party member. He also demands the player deny help from every last one of the final members until he's finally unlocked, and if the player missed any requirements for Reiji they'll be stuck with one of the weakest and most bland characters in the game. Reiji isn't even worth it for much of the game; aside from having the worst affinity set in the game, he can only attack the front row and his ultimate Persona is weak against the final boss. He makes up for this in raw power and the interesting plot details he adds to the story, but you'd think he'd be an instant win button for all the trouble it takes to unlock him.

The plot moves forward at a very brisk pace--my save file was around 30 hours by the end--and twists and turns in interesting ways. The game's strongest point is definitely in its dungeon design, not totally incomprehensible like mainline Shin Megami Tensei but still labyrinthine enough to force players to really consider their forward path. For what it's worth, the plot is serviceable enough.

The Final Boss.

Pandora is one of the most unbearably difficult final bosses I've ever encountered in a video game in my entire life. Her dungeon is a complete slog to navigate and even includes a pitfall which can drop the player back to the very beginning of the dungeon from a point very close to the end and one floor is entirely full of pitch-black chambers that snake around into horribly confusing pathways. The final floor is a confusing maze full of damaging tiles nearly every other step full of demons that are themselves nearly max-level with a wide coverage of elemental repel; since demons are so high-level on this floor players will have to grind out levels near the healing fountain in order to actually recruit for new cards.

The first form of Pandora is simple enough, but it begins the battle by reminding the player very quickly that this is in fact a Shin Megami Tensei title, often using turns to buff up with Tarukaja before casting party-wide attack spells. I'm not exaggerating when I say that here, in the final encounter of the game, I felt my jaw drop as soon as I realized that Pandora was going to give me an eleventh-hour kick in the asshole. The training wheels were off. I'd beaten Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse without a single game over. I cleared Nocturne on normal as my first mainline game, I was ready. Nothing would stop me.

My under-leveled Personae and woefully unprepared skill set, which actually consisted of various debuffs and high-level spells, completely crippled my chances of defeating the final boss.

I thought about how simple this game would have been had I only the option to fuse all these stupid, worthless Personae together to form one of my beloved world-ending debuff nuke demons, but this was not meant to be. I had about three of the five ultimate Personae already pre-baked, but not a single one of my characters was high-enough level to equip them. The protagonist was closest at level 57, but his ultimate Persona was level 62. Nanjo and Masao were dragging along behind the rest of the party at a dismal shared level of 46, utterly collapsing my chances of recruiting higher-level demons for fusion. Naturally, because everything about Persona needs to be as convoluted as possible the recruitment level for demons is not the highest level of the party but actually the combined average of the party; since Masao and Nanjo were at such a lower level than everyone else, my party average was no less than six levels lower than the protagonist who was nearly level 60. Yeah, no recruitment in this dungeon.

The worst part about this horrible situation? I'd been there before. I played through the entire game before on Easy Mode, before I knew about fusions and moon cycles and debuffs and Matador and ONE MORE GOD REJECTED and reaching out to the truth and crying about Tokyo Mirage Sessions. See, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona was my first game in either of these series. I'm not some wimp who comes into a franchise at the midway point even though I did exactly that with Nocturne, I'm a man dammit and I'm not about to skip some neat dungeon crawler because some loser waifu idiots wrongfully think Persona 4 is a good game.

Dungeon crawlers were one of the first game genres I was ever exposed to; watching my dad play Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Genesis was an interesting formative memory. It's a fairly little-known spinoff in the Shining Force series and replaces the series trademark tactical strategy combat for a pure first-person dungeon crawling RPG. I was always so enraptured watching him go through the town, stock up, talk to all the characters and listen to the king's plight. I loved watching him navigate through the corridors and rush some poor snakes and whatever other monsters were lurking around--in the darkness.

One of the main reasons I got into this series, and why I'm so bummed about the direction it's taken in recent years, is because I always wanted to break into this style of game. I've always had a very horrible sense of direction and something about the winding corridors of these types of games always intimidated me, but I was just so enthralled by watching my dad confidently play through Shining in the Darkness that I could never drop my fascination with the genre. At the same time, I've always been so intimidated by the style that I never knew the best place to start. I figured Persona would be a great entry point, given how widespread the series popularity has become and since by then the team had so much experience with their mechanics by this point, I was sure it would be a great jumping-in point.

The first time I played Persona, I went into the Pandora battle on easy mode with all my basic, first-level Personae equipped and no idea what debuffs even were. I was beaten so handily that I turned off the game and thought I'd never come back. With the release of Persona 5, I thought I'd come back and take a look at the game with a more weathered pair of eyes, only to constantly come up against nagging issues--specifically, the fusion system. I never thought I'd end up having trouble with it after so much experience, but yet again Pandora completely trashed my team and I was sent back to a save room half an hour away from the boss which I'd already been fighting for half an hour.

To this day, across two full playthroughs, I've had to give up on the final boss of the game. I feel like I could probably grind it out and get those beastly max-level Personae, but what's the use? I already told you about how brilliant the pacing of the game was, how I never once had to stop and grind for experience or spell cards because it's such a smooth ride throughout the game up until the very end. Even the dungeon before Avidya World is fairly difficult, but by the end it felt like the game was merely trying to destroy my spirit. And for now, while I write this review, it's still broken.

The Port

Two versions of Persona exist: the original Playstation Megami Ibunroku: Persona and the PSP remaster Shin Megami Tensei: Persona. Everything about the PSP version is better, and for players who buy the game digitally they can actually play it on a Vita or Playstation TV. It seems redundant to play a game remade for portable systems on a TV, but the spritework and level design looks brilliant on a nice television.

The Playstation version of Persona, released in the West as Revelations: Persona, is less easy on the eyes and I feel much of the reworked visuals went a long way in helping me to enjoy the portable remaster. The city of the original game is a huge, ugly 3D map which requires the player to constantly rotate and double-check locations on a minimap to discern where anything is; the PSP remaster, on the other hand, features a beautifully-drawn 2D map segmented into portions which allow for very simple navigation. Moreover, the Revelations release featured some very odd changes: the town was relocated to a generic American city and all character names were changed to reflect the setting. 

Nanjo became Nate, Reiji became Chris (which caused some very major confusion the brief time I spent with this version of the game), and while other characters suffered some strange sprite alteration no character was hit harder than Masao. Poor, oafish Masao became Mark and was completely changed into a black kid. The horrifying realization that this was likely done because his initial Persona is dressed in tribal attire and the character's negotiation skill is "dancing crazy" is sobering and, while very hilarious, somewhat uncomfortable. Not only this, but the game's difficulty was tweaked by lowering the encounter rate and increasing experience values across the board. It's a pretty horrid way to play an already middling game, though the minute-to-minute dungeon crawling is still just as good as the PSP version. There's also a completely optional side route--not side quest, a full-blown secret campaign hidden from the player--that was completely removed from the Playstation release, though the PSP remaster naturally restores it.

The biggest drawback to playing on the PSP is honestly a rather big one: Megami Ibunroku featured an absolutely stellar soundtrack, a tense and lively mixture of hard rock and unsettling industrial music. It seriously helps set the tone for an eerie trek across a nightmare world and contains some of my favorite music tracks of the Playstation library. The PSP remaster, on the other hand, has replaced nearly all music with annoying, loud, ear-grating J-Pop that actually sounds like it came from the Persona 4 soundtrack. Seriously, at one point I had to stop playing the game to look up a similar track and make sure it wasn't just lifted from the later game. It utterly destroys the atmosphere of the game and every single time I hear "leave dis berry memly" I want to shut the fucking game off and refund the two copies of the game I bought because I can't help but love it.

No seriously, listen to this crap.

To make matters far worse (and funnier), the singer utterly obliterates the pronunciation of the lyrics. I know it's very gauche to make fun of an ESL, but the lyrics are botched to such a ridiculous degree that it's nearly impossible to discern what's actually being conveyed. Just look at the first verse of the song:

Leave this buried memory
This fear-ridden self-consciousness
I'm just a lone prayer

The first line is sang decently with the exception of the obvious Engrish errors, but with the second the entire song collapses in on itself. "This" has been almost entirely skipped past, causing the reading to sound more like "s'fear-ridden" which sounds more like a contraction of "it's." "Ridden" in "fear-ridden" is almost entirely skipped because of the enunciation, while "self" takes two syllables to pronounce. "Consciousness" is fine, if not bizarrely slurred. Rather than "This fear-ridden self-consciousness," it sounds like the singer is shouting S'FEAR-RIN SEH-ELF CONSCIOUSNESS. And that's just silly. Where things take a very dramatic turn for the worst, and the point the song cannot possibly hope to pick itself up over, is the final line where the singer completely forgets the sentence article "a," so rather than the singer telling the listener she is "a lone prayer," which doesn't make any sense, she's telling the listener "I'm just lone prayer." This signifies that she herself is identified as "Lone Prayer," which just makes no sense at all. Hell, the first time I heard the song I thought the lyrics were pure gibberish, then eventually I convinced myself it was:

Leave this valid memory,
Spirits of consciousness
I'm just one player

It still doesn't make much sense, but at least it doesn't sound like garbage.

This is the first verse of the stupid battle song which the player is going to hear with almost permanent frequency, especially in later stages of the game where every three or four steps will cause a random battle to occur. Even if the player nukes the enemy field in one spell, it's almost impossible to skip the first verse of the song. That's disregarding the weird chorus which throws around Japanese lyrics with reckless abandon. In short, the music is a complete mess which makes no grammatical sense and shatters the tone of the game. In a word, it sucks. And don't get me started on the abysmal world map theme which is plagued with poor enunciation, weird grammatical errors, and just a very poor melody. The only good song in the game, and ironically the only one I'd consider great, is the final boss theme. It's even better than the original soundtrack, strangely enough.

There's rumor of a fan patch which replaces almost all of the shitty J-Pop with the wonderful soundtrack of the Playstation game, but I'm not here reviewing a fan fix. If you really want to play the game and don't mind getting your hands dirty--and I want to point out that I suffered through the PSP music so you should too--I recommend at least looking into that.

Given the slew of improvements to the PSP release it's obviously stupid to ever assume the Playstation version is better in any capacity other than music. I always thought of a game's soundtrack as being one of the least important aspects of game design until I played Persona on PSP, but after comparing the two I'm almost stunned that anyone at Atlus thought this was a good idea. If you have to play Persona, I'm sorry that your only option is the musical equivalent to someone spraying diarrhea on a wall and proclaiming it as art.

Verdict

For the majority of its run, Persona is a great dungeon crawler that runs at a brisk pace through some of the best-designed first-person dungeons in the industry. Not overly complex like Strange Journey or mindlessly stupid like Persona 4, Persona has the makings of a great entry into the dungeon crawler genre. That said, the finale of the game utterly destroys the masterful pacing set up in the game's narrative and core mechanics, then spits in the player's face by offering a final boss seemingly lifted from a different game entirely. It's broken my spirit for now, but I don't think I've given up yet--watching the ending on Youtube just doesn't have the same impact. I won't review Persona 2 until I beat Pandora on my own though, so you better hope I get my ass in gear.

Zelda Retrospective: The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time Review and Analysis

1998: the greatest year in the lifetime of video games. X E N O G E A R S, Resident Evil 2, Starcraft, Banjo-Kazooie, Metal Gear Solid, Baldur's Gate, Thief, Half-Life--the list just keeps going. Video games had begun to fully embrace the nature of 3D game development after Super Mario 64 stomped its way into the scene in 1996, and in only two short years some of the most influential games of all time began to see the light of day. Baldur's Gate revitalized computer role-playing games, Metal Gear Solid successfully wove fully-voiced cinematic cutscenes into a video game, Half-Life shook the foundations of the first-person shooter genre, and even fighting games saw a minor resurgence with games like X-Men VS Street Fighter and Marvel VS Capcom. If these games were fundamental in establishing a foundation for video games in the coming years, one game crushed even those and has remained the top spot on Metacritic's list of best games since the site's conception; on Game Rankings, it's only been overtaken by Super Mario Galaxy as the highest-rated game on the website by a mere fraction of a point. You know exactly what game I'm talking about; hell, if you clicked this link you kind of have to know. I'm talking, of course, about The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. As part of my retrospective on the Zelda series, I am very proud to present you with my review and analysis on what I consider to be one of the greatest games of all time.

Review and Analysis: The Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time

Five excruciating years passed from the last official release of a Zelda title and seven since the previous home console release--the Nintendo 64 launched in 1996 without a Zelda game in sight, and the hype was unmatched. As with previous games in the series, Ocarina of Time was in production alongside Mario 64, one of the pioneers of 3D movement in games, though it wouldn't be until two years after that game released that Ocarina of Time would see the light of day. One of the biggest challenges, though, was that Zelda as a whole was always far more intricately designed than Mario; where the latter had always concentrated on tight controls with an emphasis on overcoming obstacles, Zelda was a slow-burning adventure title on the opposite end of the spectrum. Thankfully, Mario 64 laid much of the groundwork for Ocarina of Time--so much, in fact, that the original design of Ocarina of Time was planned to share the same world-select painting system in a large castle like the earlier title. 

Ocarina of Time wasn't any ordinary sequel, though: like Mario 64, this was the important transitory period where the series would shed its 2D roots and break into 3D, and for that it needed to be perfect. We can see just how important it was at the time for a series to nail the landing when it came to this transition, as games like the disastrous Bubsy 3D would drop and completely destroy their respective series forever. Even the Sonic franchise hit a speed bump when Sonic Adventure dropped on the Sega Dreamcast--in the same year as Ocarina of Time, no less--a launch so pitiful it destroyed one of the titans of home console gaming. I'm going to break down the exact ways I believe Ocarina of Time executed the many necessary steps needed to achieve greatness, and what better way than to start at the beginning?

The Boy Without a Fairy

Much like A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time opens with dialogue from a secondary character: the mystical Deku Tree. After a brief introduction and an ominous dream foreshadowing events of the story, the Deku Tree tasks the fairy Navi to find and assist Link, the only Kokiri child who is not accompanied by a fairy. When the player is eventually charged with purifying the Deku Tree and then implored to stop the black-clad man from the desert, it really feels like Link is facing near-impossible odds from a story perspective. As an aside, the story subtly hides Ganondorf's identity from the player since at that point, returning players will only remember the villain as simply Ganon, a giant pig monster. It's a great way to subvert expectations and throughout the game, players familiar with A Link to the Past will already know that Ganondorf will eventually claim the Triforce for himself. Beginning the game at a disadvantage is nothing new for the series--in fact, at this point I'd say it's more common than not--but the much greater emphasis on the plot presentation can create an emotional connection between the player and the game's protagonist.

This focus on story presentation is probably the most apparent flaw of the game as it can potentially take players out of the action. Dialogue-based cutscenes are often longer than any of the past games by a pretty sizable margin and to make matters worse, there are no ways to skip them to jump back into the action immediately. In an Iwata Asks from a few years ago Shigeru Miyamoto himself rejects the notion that Zelda is story-focused and would prefer for players to focus on the gameplay, which I find incredibly ironic given just how much more strongly the game presents its narrative. It's not necessarily bad design, but gone are the days of the player naming their save file and being dumped right into the overworld.

In a year of so many narrative-driven games, Ocarina of Time is a bit more generic than the likes of Metal Gear Solid, which featured fully-voiced cinematic cutscenes and a bizarre, contemporary story. The biggest difference in the games comes pretty much when the player is given control: much like Mario 64, Link controls using analog movement in a 3D plane. In contrast, Metal Gear Solid largely uses digital controls in an overhead perspective with the exception of limited first-person control; if the game had been created with 2D sprites and removed the first-person option, it would highly resemble its MSX2 ancestors.

That's not to say Ocarina of Time is even the first title to merge an involved story in a 3D game, I mean hell Mega Man Legends came out in 1998 as well and that one had both a behind-the-back camera and fully-voiced cutscenes. Ocarina of Time sets itself apart by transplanting the legendary Zelda design into a new dimension of video games which, at the time, was still nascent. Much like the original Zelda took a genre which was still going through learning pains and flipped tropes which at the time had yet to even be established, Ocarina of Time took the overall design the series had developed at that point and attempted to carefully recreate it as close as possible in a fully 3D world.

This is accomplished so well in the introduction to Hyrule Field that I kind of feel sorry for people who were too young or never had the chance to experience this moment when Ocarina first released. The camera sweeps across the world as the brand-new theme plays its strong first notes before settling on the small corner of Hyrule from which Link hails. The sheer size of the world, translated almost perfectly from prior games in the series, is laid out in its full glory for players to explore. But first, a certain owl (a callback to Link's Awakening) impedes the player to make sure that even after clearing an entire dungeon, they know how to navigate the world. Tutorializing is an annoying contrivance which reared its ugly head during this console generation, and while Ocarina of Time is fairly light on explicit tutorials it can still take players out of the game. Navi will occasionally alert the player if she feels they've gotten lost or forgotten the destination, but I'd have much preferred a system wherein the player could just talk to Navi at any time because she is genuinely helpful. I know later games remedy this problem, but I'd like to go at this one game at a time.

What a Hot Beat!

3D space aside, Ocarina of Time shines most brightly as a composite of the Zelda series as a whole. Much of the game can feel like a portmanteau of the entirety of The Legend of Zelda, though unlike Link's Awakening the developers understood the importance of perfecting what was at hand rather than fumble at reinventing the wheel. That's not exactly a flaw for Link's Awakening, but given that game was a handheld sequel the stakes were much lower for Nintendo to experiment. Because A Link to the Past was largely a new take on the original Zelda, it's a bit difficult to see which key components Ocarina of Time took from the earliest entry; on the flip side, I feel Ocarina finally fulfills the promise of Adventure of Link's intricate combat system without any of the annoying tedium. Players can position themselves and attack enemies with a multitude of attacks; players have access to a hard-hitting jump swing, directional inputs can be used to swing the sword in several directions--even combat mechanics from A Link to the Past are intricately woven into Link's arsenal with many of the spells making a return as well as an upgradable Spin Attack.

Much of the game's plot progression has been kept from A Link to the Past to the point where most players can identify that, at its core, Ocarina of Time is only very close to being merely a 3D remake of the older title, though the setting is far more unique in many areas. The players are tasked with finding three gems in order to stop Ganondorf, which boosts the player's power while sending them to a darker and inverted version of the previous world. As I mentioned in my A Link to the Past review, I actually played this game first so upon discovering the older game I was pretty astounded by just how similar they actually appear to be, though I think it's a discredit to both games to simply say Ocarina of Time is just a retread of A Link to the Past. Further emphasis has been placed on character development in the vein of Link's Awakening, with almost every single character the player encounters being memorable in some way. Because the major characters are so well-written and unique it gives the player a much more urgent pace in the second half when the goal is to awaken the sages; rather than the fairly boring maidens of A Link to the Past, the sages needing to be awakened are all revealed to be characters Link befriended as a child.

This makes the fairly shocking twist that many of them die over the course of the game that much more impactful; it's sad that Darunia is likely killed by Volvagia, but in death he's able to repay the enormous debt he owes to Link. Link isn't merely foisted as a hero figure by a mystical entity who bestows him great power, he earns it over the course of the adventure. Saria and Link are established as childhood friends; Darunia feels a brotherhood with Link because Link was the only person able to defeat King Dodongo; Link saves Princess Ruto from Jabu-Jabu's belly and cleanses what ostensibly amounts to the Zoras' God. The actions Link takes as a child permeate the entire second half of the game and make the player feel that much more involved in the world.

The Gap Between Both Dimensions

The weakest link is a holdover from Link's Awakening, where later parts of the game require beating the dungeons in order before new parts of the map can open up. Link can't access the Gerudo Valley as a child unless the player can warp through the back, but in order to gain access to that warp point the player needs to find items from the Shadow Temple in order to safely cross the desert as an adult. An interesting aside is that the game never truly forgets about the younger Link and actively forces players to travel back and forth through time once the Shadow Temple is accessed, though it's annoying to me that this dungeon is barred until the player collects the medallions from the first three temples.

I do like that although the progression is similar to A Link to the Past, the game can be broken down into even more layers than simply Light World to Dark World; the player has to finish three dungeons as young Link, then three dungeons as adult Link, then two dungeons as both versions of Link across time before finally moving on to the final encounter. And I would be remiss if I didn't give the Shadow Temple its fair due, as it and its childhood-accompanying dungeon Bottom of the Well are easily the most memorable dungeons in the entire game. The only thing that really irks me is that the player must clear the required dungeons before opening up either of these areas in the game, although I have to admit that the three-act structure is an interesting change of pace especially since these acts are cleanly separated by three dungeons apiece.

Beating the Shadow Temple also gives players the hint that the game can be tackled in a number of orders, as the Medallion for the Shadow Temple is actually displayed last in the order of the Quest Status sub-screen, despite it appearing correctly on the save screen and song selection. The subtle hint here is that players who actually take the time to notice this might begin to speculate the ways to approach dungeons in different orders for a second playthrough; once a player determines a new direction for a second game, this might also prompt players to think about the order of the first few dungeons as well. It's impossible for players to completely forego later dungeons before finding the major item in some dungeons, but unlike Link's Awakening most dungeons aren't locked behind plot progression.

Pictured: 9-year-old me developing forreal OCD

CURSE YOU, ZELDA! CURSE YOU, Link!

Two notable elements return from Link's Awakening, the less obvious of which being the expanded Trading Sequence. While the original sequence required players to remember dialogue and specific items in order to eventually receive an item necessary to progress to the end of the game, the sequence in Ocarina of Time is far more streamlined and is one of the many optional sidequests of the game. Players must take items across Hyrule Field on a short timer and ultimately acquire a new sword, though this is not an outright upgrade like previous games in the series. Instead, the Biggoron Sword offers players an interesting trade-off of higher damage and longer reach, with only the Master Sword being able to equip shields while dealing less damage.

I generally prefer big, passive upgrades and transformations--which I suppose is likely due to being such a big fan of anime like Dragon Ball as a kid--but given that this is reinventing the Zelda formula it totally works in context. The Trading Sequence can even be ignored entirely if players have no interest in the Biggoron Sword, much like the option to skip Epona or the Golden Skulltulas. Giving players beneficial upgrades as opposed to hiding plot-crucial items and events behind an obtrusive fetch quest is not the best example of game design, so in the case of Ocarina it feels more like an activity for players who want a distraction from the main quest. I have a very good friend who always makes a beeline for the Biggoron Sword when he reaches the adult section of the game because it matches his playstyle more, and the fact that this option even exists is pretty spectacular.

Perhaps the most notable gameplay mechanic to return from Link's Awakening comes in the form of music, which is greatly expanded upon into a robust system. Link's Awakening revolves around song: Marin is a singer; Link is given an ocarina on which to learn three different songs which can be used at various points for different results; and the ultimate goal of the game is to recover the Instruments of the Siren in order to play the Ballad of the Wind Fish and awaken it from its slumber.

In Ocarina of Time, seemingly everything in the world revolves around music. Warp points are used with specific songs, greatly expanding the warp mechanic in A Link to the Past. Songs are also used for puzzle solutions; one background song in particular returning from A Link to the Past is used to solve many block puzzles, though there are also songs to change the time of day, to change the weather, to call Link's new horse, Epona--the list goes on.

To me, this is a way of grounding Ocarina of Time and helps to give it some of the transcendental quality that makes the game so special. Music is a language without words; it doesn't have to fit into a setting or be presented in a strange light to communicate a feeling. The Song of Storms is chaotic and whimsical while the Song of Time is mysterious, and all of these songs are performed with the same five notes on one small ocarina. To say it bluntly, it's beautiful.

Even though Ganondorf's battle theme is similar to the theme of the Ganon battle from A Link to the Past, extra care was put into creating a discordant, unnerving, and ultimately oppressive song that perfectly suits this version of the series villain: in a world where song is so pervasive, it's only natural that Ganondorf would stand out in such a menacing way. Ganondorf even plays music on an organ to really hit home that by the time Link reaches him, the two are fundamentally two sides of one coin--one light, one dark. If you don't believe me about Ganondorf's battle, just listen to the soundtrack. The most common time signature in music is 4/4; that is, four instances of quarter notes. You've likely seen an orchestra composer exaggeratedly counting time in some form or another, but this is basically just counting "one-two-three-four" and then repeating that on every measure. The more complicated the time signature the more uncommon it is to find examples of those signatures being used--Ganondorf's battle theme, to really drive home his imposing theme, is theorized to be counted in 23/16 time! You could probably simplify this to alternating measures of 13/16 and 10/16, but to be frank there's nothing simple about it.

To have a game with a stand-out final boss theme can be difficult, but "stand-out" and "complete insanity" are two very different things. As I said, what makes this so very special is the permeation of music in every aspect of Ocarina of Time--a master of their craft strives for perfection, but even then Ocarina of Time goes a step further to completely shatter expectations. There's a phrase that I feel has basically lost all meaning now, but I'm drawing a very hard line in the sand and making a firm statement on a debate that should have been settled an extremely long time ago.

Ocarina of Time is the Citizen Kane of Video Games.

I hate the idea of a "Citizen Kane" of any type of medium, but this is a very specific argument that I think deserves to be dismantled. In recent years bog-standard shooters like The Last of Us and Bioshock Infinite have been inexplicably given such praise as "gaming's Citizen Kane moment," but what does that even mean? Put your analytical helmets on my beauties, because this is going to get rocky.

Even if you've never seen the movie yourself, you likely know that Citizen Kane has a legacy for being "the greatest movie of all time." And to be very fair to Orson Welles, the praise is not unwarranted: Citizen Kane is a very unique and engaging story, but what really set it apart from its contemporaries is the groundbreaking cinematography which at the time of its filming was unheard-of.

Filming techniques like deep focus are used to their full effect, along with other techniques like angle shots and panning. I'm not all that versed in film as the experts so I'm likely missing a very large and more important innovation, but what matters is that Citizen Kane perfected its medium. Unreliable narrators and framed narratives were a thing long before Citizen Kane, but the ultimate product is an engaging character study in a unique format which would go on to influence its medium forever. Film has everything to thank for Citizen Kane in the same way modern video games have everything to thank for Ocarina of Time.

To be clear, I completely acknowledge all the derivative elements taken from earlier games in the series don't necessarily make for a compelling argument, but as I mentioned earlier what's really important is that no 3D game had yet approached an adventure story of this scale before. From combat to presentation, games have forever been indebted to the forward-thinking nature of Ocarina of Time much in the same way general role-playing games took from the original Zelda. What's even more impressive is the sheer amount of ingenious ways the game works around and even engages in its own technical shortcomings, one way being the Z-targeting system.

Is this a Dark Souls reference? Probably.

Z-targeting paved the way for lock-on systems in action games to come, from Devil May Cry to Dark Souls and all games in-between. While Mario 64 focused on tight controls and maneuvering around big levels in search of one goal, Ocarina of Time focused on the best way to immerse players in its world; how would it have accomplished this if combat had been a chore? Instead the game takes elements from Adventure of Link, specifically blocking and positioning, and translates them perfectly into a 3D space. Z-targeting allows players to focus on the encounter ahead of them and plan accordingly while avoiding potential mishaps like misjudging distance or, if the game had been more like A Link to the Past, simple one-button combat with little variation.

Aiming with ranged weapons was still a shortcoming of the system given the fairly convoluted nature of the controller. And without a standard camera angle for third-person shooting, the developers needed to take serious consideration before deciding on a way to implement items like the bow or hookshot. In order to do this, first-person aiming is used to fairly admirable results; while it's a bit on the touchy side, aiming the ranged weapons feels far more responsive and balanced than it has any right to and even if players have trouble with this, Z-targeting is always available. Ocarina of Time makes no attempt at standing out as a first-person shooter, but it implements the style of gameplay when necessary because it was the best option available. Oh, and that thing about third-person shooting angles? I lied.

Pictured: innovation. Also pictured: a sizable amount of annoyance because none of you idiots have taken a screenshot of this angle before and I had to take it on my own 3DS. You're welcome.

The rule of thirds is hardly a new idea in photography or shot composition, but I'm kind of astounded that it took until Resident Evil 4 before game developers really gravitated toward using this angle for weapon aiming. Ocarina of Time implemented this camera angle seven years before Resident Evil 4 and even then, it's for a very specific camera hold that players will likely never use--if you need it for whatever reason, the developers made sure to include it. Astoundingly, this angle still uses a rudimentary form of strafe controls and is mostly used to re-position the player if they're unable to find a decent angle when lining up a shot.

Verily, Thou Hast Felt It

Recently, critics have seemingly wanted to "take Ocarina to task" for a perceived problem of the game's unshakable legacy and continued status as one of the greatest games of all time. Online animator Egoraptor released a flaccid half-hour hitpiece full of half-truths and an outright appeal to look at its predecessor with more rose-tinted nostalgia goggles compared to the revolutionary Ocarina of Time. Maybe it's because I played Ocarina of Time first so I don't necessarily feel like the games are even worth comparing negatively, but to wave away the contributions of Ocarina of Time to make a still very good game appear in a better light is a waste of effort. Since then, the crushing weight of his sins destroyed any notion of creativity and stopped his animating career for the rest of time. May he be missed. That Sequelitis was not worth the death of Girl-chan.

That's just one example, and it's probably the most popular criticism Ocarina of Time will ever get. I don't even disagree with some of the points made, but as I mentioned in an earlier review it's important to remember the time in which a game released and keep its limitations at heart. Other criticisms, both within that video and on other reviews critical of Ocarina of Time, are usually far less thought-provoking or insightful. There's no badge of honor to criticize popular or well-received games two decades after their release unless the reviewer places the game under a very fine microscope, but a half-hour video is far from the time investment necessary as in order to criticize Ocarina of Time, I believe it would be more important to analyze the negative influence the game had, if any. Most negative criticisms of Ocarina of Time are instead often relegated to edgy contrarianism for quick clicks.

The typical moronic Ocarina of Time naysayer. Don't debase yourself like this. You're better than that. Respect yourself.

Citizen Kane isn't revered because it's just a particularly good movie; a good movie though it may be, its legacy will remain because no movie ever is going to live without the shadow of its influence sneaking into production. It's not that Citizen Kane is some emotionally involved story or even the best story of all time; it took limitations of its time and created a sum that, while good now, was groundbreaking then in a way that no film has managed to replicate.

Don't give me your horseshit about The Last of Us being some sort of Citizen Kane-level savior of the medium. It's a good story, but in gameplay terms it's outstripped by even Resident Evil 4, the grandfather of the third-person shooter. I like it as a survival horror game, but it does nothing revolutionary for its genre. I know this is all a silly point and kind of undermines the whole critical aspect of my review, but Ocarina of Time is a game of such quality that it doesn't even seem feasible for it to come together so well while other games struggled to even come close.

Verdict

Compared to A Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time appears at first glance to be missing some of the intricate open world that Zelda had been known for. Sure, the sword can't be explicitly upgraded and there are fewer dungeons, but what Ocarina of Time strives for and ultimately executes perfectly is the overall sum of its parts. Taking elements of every single Zelda game up to this point and combining them into an untouchable experience, Ocarina of Time once again followed up on one of the most important aspects of the Zelda formula: look forward and continue innovating. Endearing, deep, sometimes creepy and always a blast to play, Ocarina of Time deserves its spot as the best game of all time. There might be more complex games or titles that have since taken the formula found in this game to new heights, but without Ocarina of Time these games would have never existed. Ocarina of Time isn't merely a good game or an influential game, it is--pardon the pun--timeless.


Before I sign off, I want to address the many ports and versions of the game as I outright recommend players who haven't tried Ocarina to give it a shot. The original Nintendo 64 gold cart is far and away the best as it was the only version of the game to not be touched by censorship, but good luck finding it at a reasonable price. The second printing is just as good, and the Wii and Wii U Virtual Console ports are decent. The biggest problem is that Ocarina of Time was developed specifically for the controller of the console it was designed for, so a strange downside to these ports is that the controller layout just doesn't translate perfectly. The Gamecube version is the only one to play the original game at 480p, but it's probably last on the list for me as it crashes and seems to have new glitches.

There's also the matter of the 3DS remaster, which boosts the game's original 20 frames-per-second up to a more modern 30. The difference is night and day, and many of the game's character models were improved dramatically. I have a full write-up of that port and the other remasters of the 3D Zelda games linked below if you want details; if you're fine with the notably worse atmosphere of the 3DS remaster, it's an improvement in nearly every other aspect. To get the most out of Ocarina of Time, I'd say play the original Nintendo 64 version for your first playthrough, then for repeat games play the 3DS version. Either way, please do yourself a favor and try out this piece of video game history.


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 - Link's Awakening Review

While A Link to the Past released in 1991 and took the world by storm, Nintendo's handheld Game Boy was still missing a dedicated Zelda title despite its age at the time. In 1993, this time released in the same year worldwide, the Game Boy finally saw its first Zelda in the form of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. Beginning its life as a port of the Super Nintendo A Link to the Past, Link's Awakening has found a place as one of the fan-favorite games of the series. Five years after the release of the original game and a month after the release of Ocarina of Time, a remastered version of Link's Awakening was released on the Game Boy Color, featuring full-color sprites and additional content. Graphical differences and a new dungeon aside, the games are fairly similar; that said, this review is going to talk about more specific points of the game so knowledge of one or the other won't be necessary. I should note that the DX version is the only one I've played so don't hold me in too much contempt if there are more differences than that. I'm sure there are more than a few purists of the original for whatever reason.

Review: The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening

Some time after A Link to the Past, Link is shipwrecked and stranded on Koholint island, a strange place full of strange characters. Koholint is immediately a far cry from the familiar locales of the series past; the island is seemingly only inhabited with a small village, monsters from the Super Mario series run rampant, the town's merchant is a deadly sorceror, and so on. Right away the game hits home that Koholint's dream-like quality is intentional, and Link is tasked by a mysterious owl to "wake the Wind Fish," who, according to statues around the island, is "Wind Fish in name only, for it is neither." The strange nature of the game is one of its defining characteristics, and one of the main reasons I would recommend it. Don't quit reading now, I have a bit more to say than that.

This actually works when dating. Try it out!

Much of the surreal quality of Link's Awakening stems from the game's bizarre development cycle; as mentioned before, the game was initially conceived as a port of A Link to the Past before moving to an original project. After deciding on a new idea for a portable Zelda, director Takashi Tezuka took major influence from the then-recently-canned David Lynch masterpiece Twin Peaks, a bizarre crime thriller set in a town full of unique and quirky individuals. Link's Awakening introduces a dark and foreboding atmosphere at points when the game's bosses begin fearing for Link's success; despite the fact that Link was forcibly drawn into the dream of the Wind Fish, if he wants to leave Koholint island he must awaken the sleeping Wind Fish. The Wind Fish is forced into a perpetual dream by an enigmatic monster called Nightmare and only by defeating the monster can Link leave. As the Nightmare reveals during the course of the game, waking the Wind Fish means ending its dream, meaning Koholint and the villagers will disappear forever.

If this was in a game like A Link to the Past where most of the characters are fairly static the player's moral debate would be far less engaging. There's no hint of choice when it comes to the story, so the only way to not effectively murder an island worth of living people is to not play. The developers were keen on this fact, which is where many of the Twin Peaks inspirations begin to shine through. To quote the game's director, "The drama was all about a small number of characters in a small town. So when it came to Link’s Awakening, I wanted to make something that, while it would be small enough in scope to easily understand, it would have deep and distinctive characteristics." Every character on the island has something to do and each has their own interests, but none are more apparent than the character Marin.

Marin is one of the best characters in the entire Zelda series; she loves to sing and wants to leave her small island to explore the wide world. People and animals love her, though she's not without her strange and at times horrifying quirks such as her sadistic bloodlust for murdering chickens. Compared to other major characters in the series, Marin is completely relatable. Compared to the likes of Sahasrahla, the villagers in Adventure of Link, any version of Zelda and so on, Marin has pretty reasonable goals and doesn't fall into the trap of concerning herself with the mystical aspects of the world in which she lives. Link's Awakening makes sure the player becomes intimate with Marin, as she is a major figure over the course of the game. She pulls Link out of the ocean and gives him his shield; she teaches Link the Ballad of the Wind Fish; the player is even tasked with bringing her across the island to wake up a sleeping walrus blocking the desert. Characters speak very highly of her, and because she's such a help to the player without getting in the way there's no real reason a player might have to dislike her. If there's any reason the player might feel conflicted about waking the Wind Fish, Marin is likely going to be it.

The even greater emphasis on the story comes at a price, however, as Link's Awakening is even more linear than A Link to the Past, though still not quite as bad as Adventure of Link. Much of the island will be cut off by progression-blocking obstacles preventing the player from exploring as much as they want, an annoying compromise between its two forebears. Even worse, and this is my biggest annoyance with Link's Awakening, is the gating of exploration behind important story events.

Like I've said before, I don't mind story in games and I outright love the characters and setting of Link's Awakening; up to this point in the series, this is by far the most engaging Zelda simply from those perspectives. The problem comes looking at the series history: in past Zelda titles, players could explore a dungeon up to finding the item required to progress and simply leave before finding the boss. It wasn't exactly a good substitute for the instantly explorable open world of the first game, but it did allow for some interesting breaks in pacing if players wanted to run into a dungeon, find an item, run out, make a beeline to a dungeon which might have a more urgent item, and otherwise explore at their hearts' content as long as they went back to beat the dungeon bosses.

Link's Awakening instead forces the player to finish each dungeon in order rather than allow them to search Koholint at their own discretion. For example, the second dungeon can only be entered by walking a villager's Chain Chomp--a Mario character--into the swamp and having it eat the plant blocking the dungeon entrance. This chain of events only begins once the player has defeated the boss of the first dungeon--upon returning to the village, the Chain Chomp will go missing and Link will be prompted to find it.

That's not the only example of this, either. There's an extremely long and elaborate trading sequence required to finish the game, and one step of the trading sequence involves handing a stick to Marin's father, Tarin, who will only appear in that location after the third dungeon is completed. Marin won't move to the beach for the wonderful moment in an above screenshot until after Tarin is given the stick, so the player can't access the desert using her song. After the fourth dungeon a ghost will begin haunting Link and stops the player from entering most locations until he's put to rest. You get the idea.

What annoys me about this kind of design is that the requirements can become a bit obtuse, especially since the map never has any sort of waypoint in case the player gets lost. As a series first the map will fill out by each grid when the player enters it, but that's hardly a decent substitute if the player is exploring the map as much as possible when it becomes available. There's an old man in the village who Link can call--but can't interact with in person, because the man is shy--but I sincerely think that if the game is obstinate enough to require specific plot triggers then a small point on the map should at least be a courtesy.

To be frank, this is pretty much my only real complaint with the game, though it does make repeat playthroughs annoying when so many specific events crop up. Outside of that, the game does a very good job at translating the gameplay mechanics of A Link to the Past; since the game is running on much weaker hardware it's not possible for Link's sword to be animated as smoothly, so instead the developers drew a motion blur sprite over the sword in order to keep the fluid side swipe. The Pegasus Boots and Hookshot return, and there are even new items like Roc's Feather which, as a series first, allow Link to jump. Link's Awakening does a great job of complimenting A Link to the Past while serving as a great sequel, expanding ideas that never made it into the earlier game while experimenting with ideas that might have been harder to implement.

Dungeons are just as massive and labyrinthine as past entries in the series, and I'd go as far as to say some of the later dungeons stand as some of the most difficult in the Zelda series. One dungeon, either the sixth or the seventh, was so difficult that as a child I had to completely drop the game and didn't actually finish it until it was time to write this review.

I mentioned this in an earlier review, but I really appreciate games that can make you reflect on the work put into its creation. The opposite of "this didn't age well," I suppose, is "this was ahead of its time." For a console that was barely stronger than an NES and could only display monochrome colors, it's miraculous that Link's Awakening has so many expressive and detailed sprites--even more when considering the DX remaster. I think the real problem some people have with games that don't "hold up," aside from the obvious reason that these games might have been played at a much younger age of a person's life, is more that there are just so damn many video games that a lot didn't do much to stand out among their peers. When I look at a game now like The Legend of Dragoon, a title I held in very high regard in my younger years, it doesn't really stand out compared to its contemporary and my favorite game of all time, Xenogears, as the former mostly falls in line with many role-playing tropes of the time: a young man comes back to his home village to find it's been razed by an evil army who kidnapped his childhood fling; hijinks ensue across a fantasy land before the bigger and more ancient threat is revealed. Xenogears, despite being unfinished, places a heavy emphasis on exploring and deconstructing JRPG tropes which is part of why I hold it in such high regard as a huge adult.

The Zelda series is far from the most original in terms of storytelling, but what made the original Zelda stand out was the way it confronted gameplay tropes of the time and created a wholly unique experience with a familiar backdrop. The second game didn't stand out at all aside from the story presented at the end, but A Link to the Past took much of the formula found in both games and perfected them to their upper limit. Link's Awakening, on the other hand, took the challenge of transporting that unique formula into a fully-fledged sequel on much weaker hardware than its predecessor, and the dedication shines through in most aspects. I can only fault the story progression so much because I know it was trying something new, and for its part the story is far more intricate and thoughtful than any of the other games in the series.

It's a bit of a subtle point, but the sound design in Link's Awakening is utterly brilliant and will likely shock first-time players. The music is vibrant and triumphant when it needs to be, but can also become dark and foreboding when the situation calls for it. The boss theme is frantic and tense, though it's a bit of a shame it's repeated for the final boss considering the battle with Nightmare is such a shocking encounter. This aside, the major goal of the game is for Link to find the instruments which can wake the Wind Fish. I have a theory that this was a last-minute addition to subtly gloat about how spectacular the soundtrack of such a low-resolution game came to be, but that's just me thinking about what I'd do in their position. Link's Awakening also expands the ocarina from A Link to the Past, which itself expands on the flute from the original Zelda. Players familiar with the series will probably know what I'm trying to say here, but there's a great progression of the involvement of music in each Zelda--the second game aside. Having music be a thematic element to the series would never have worked if the sound design wasn't so high quality, and despite using a worse sound chip I do think much of the soundtrack is even more memorable than even that of A Link to the Past in many cases.

Link's Awakening is a sequel on an entirely different scale than Adventure of Link, down to perfecting the thematic elements of the game's story. Both The Legend of Zelda and A Link to the Past deal with a character growing in the face of adversity when all hope seems lost; Adventure of Link and Link's Awakening are more internal struggles, though the former only briefly touches on this theme in its final hour while Link's Awakening presents this struggle throughout the entire game. Link is still haunted by the stress of his long journey, as evidenced by the forms the Nightmare takes in their long struggle at the end of the game, but the player at this point is also likely feeling the stress that their actions will probably end up killing the entire population of Koholint. Weaving the conflict in a video game between the protagonist and a player is a difficult task even in modern game storytelling, but Link's Awakening presents this struggle effortlessly with clever dialogue and endearing characters.

Verdict

Link's Awakening sort of daunted me when approaching it for this review. Unnecessarily obtuse at points with some seriously imposing dungeons, this isn't the kind of game players should approach for a quick weekend play--as I've since discovered to my own detriment. It's a really slow-burning game, and for impatient or people less interested in older games, it might become overwhelming. Luckily for those with taste, Link's Awakening is designed to be taken in slowly, rewarding patient players or those who want to explore a unique world. It's not perfect, but consider that my biggest complaint is that the game sometimes demands you become invested in its world--to be blunt, Koholint feels like a fully lived-in place, full of charm and more personality than anything the Zelda series has seen so far. If you have that patience, this is easily one of the finest handheld games of all time and is a worthy successor to A Link to the Past.

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