This game follows the style of most Zelda games. Zelda is in trouble, and Link must rescue her. The storyline is that there is a Light world and a Dark World of Hyrule, and many years ago, the Seven Sages of Hyrule sealed the Dark World, and the Triforce forever. Or so they thought. In the beginning, Link wakes up after hearing Zeldas pleas for help in a dream. His uncle tells him that he is leaving for a while. Link goes outside searching for the voice that is calling him. Upon Links arrival to Hyrule castle, in a hidden passageway Zelda tells him of, he finds his uncle dying in the hallway.
Link takes his sword and shield and begins quest. Throughout the game you learn that an evil entity called Aghanim (sorry it's been a while I forget how to spell his name). You must then get three pendants to receive the Master Sword. Then you find that Aghanim is just a puppet for Ganon, who is trying to get the Triforce so he can rule the world. Link must find the descendants of the seven sages entrapped in seven crystals around Hyrule, all guarded by powerful monsters in castles.
Gameplay is very addictive, and in my opinion is the best Zelda game. Graphics are good for the SNES, very much detail on terrain and characters, but most other things are in solid colors with little detail.
<i>A Link to the Past</i> remains one of my favorite games, and I'm sure it will be one of yours too. I rate <i>The Legend of Zelda : A Link to the Past</i> an 8 out of 10.
Hey you deleted my reply about your score being retarded. CAN'T TAKE THE HEAT, CAN YOU!
8/10 does seem a bit low...
I apologized to everyone for any replies I may have deleted before the no-replies rule was lifted, but I'll say it again. My apologies.
As for the review itself, this is one of my many old reviews that I want to improve and lengthen to fit with the new standards here.
Well anyhow, I think the 8/10 is pretty crazy for such a highly-regarded game.
Then write your own review. And if you do make it a decent one, please, none of that Super Metroid stuff again. Otherwise just don't bother.
I know, I need to update it :)
8 OUT OF 10?!?!?! Hmm, I'll write a perl script to fix this travesty.
#!/usr/bin/perl
open(REVIEW, "lttp_review.txt"); #open the review for reading
$text= < REVIEW >; #read file into variable
$text ~= s/8/9.9999999/; #sub 8 with 9.9999999, a proper score
print($_); #print out the fixed review
exit 0;
And if you are running a real OS, you could simply type this:
sed -e "s/8/9.9999999/g" lttp_review.txt
Why not just round it up to 10?
I also wonder about the score. You don't mention any shortcomings of the game, and it makes the score seem a bit arbitrary.
That isn't to say I don't agree with the score. I do. I'd give it an 8 for the simple fact that the game is far too easy, and it didn't have the replay value that the other games seem to hold for me.
I think that people who say LttP is easy have played it too many times. :)
Like me!
No seriously, the first time I played it, my death/save counter at the end showed me a lovely record 7X (er, roughly 70 deaths or so, I've since deleted that file so I'm not sure). At least I didn't break a hundred :D, but my point is LTTP was pretty hard back then. Having played it constantly since then, the only part I can really call "tough" NOW is early in the game when I have few bottles and heart containers, and even then it only took a few times to get past that early stage of the game (also called "the light world") without saving. After that, the game flew by surprisingly easily, with the only trouble spot being perhaps the forest area, where I ended up using 4 bottles of the blue stuff (though I believe a few times were more for magic than health). So yes, I'd say that with a LOT of practice, the game becomes pretty frickin' easy.
I also say that about Zelda 2, and I've yet to see anyone aside from a few people that actually got the game back in the NES days like I did that would agree...
I, of course, hadn't played LttP until I got it for GBA last year, and I think it's quite a hard game. Hits do lots of damage, dungeons are long, and if you die you start from the beginning again -- none of those "mid-boss halfway warps" or "shortcuts" or anything, most of the time, just a long linear sequence of rooms you must fight through each time after you die... so yeah, it's definitely a hard game. It only seems easy to some because of the same reason I find LA not overly hard -- you've played it a lot and know the game really well. But don't confuse that with the game being easy.
Wind Waker is easy. Not LttP. (or LA, or OoT, etc)...
Yes, Wind Waker is easy. OOT is somewhat easy, but I did actually die a couple times in it. I can't say I was even close in Wind Waker, except for two parts. The first was that pitiful excuse for a dungeon, the constant abyss of "how long can you last?", which didn't have hard battles so much as it just kept GOING. That's a SORT of difficulty I will admit, and it has it's place, but that place isn't where a dungeon is supposed to be. The other was actually fighting Ganon. Now it's easy enough after finding out a few tricks, but first time I was drained pretty badly because that battle had FAST going for it. It was the best battle in the whole game actually.
Most Zelda games allow you to set your own difficulty, in a way. Unlike the other games, LTTP requires you to pick up Heart Containers from bosses, forcing you up to 13 hearts. One thing I love to do in other Zelda games is the Three Heart challenge, where you play through the entire game with nothing more than the three hearts you begin the game with. The only real way of doing that in LTTP is by not collecting bottles, but I'm good enough at the game that I rarely miss them anyway. OOT is fun with 3H, and the original Zelda is brutal, as skipping the hearts prevents you from getting the better swords.
I will admit that it is rather invigorating to fight Ganon with the green tunic in LTTP, as attacks take off six hearts :D
And Zelda II is just fucking brutal. I've never beaten it. I have a game now where all my stats are maxed out, and then I learned that stats only take you so far, after that, you just simply have to really, really master not ever getting hit. Even at max stats I can only barely make it to the final temple, and forget all about even finishing it.
To think there are people who have been brave enough to play without ever upgrading. That takes some balls. The game's nearly impossible as it is.
It just takes practice is all. When you've been playing that game since you were a kid, well of course you'll be good at it.
Anyway, you may or may not realize that the Grand Palace, the final temple, is the ONLY place where you can get a game over and continue right from the start of that palace. So in other words, you only need make it there and then if you die and lose your last life, no problem, just pick continue and you have 3 lives right off the bat. Now if you want to challenge yourself that's another matter, but if your goal is just to beat the game, which it usually is the first time through, then this will get you there. With 3 full lives to go on you should be able to get through that palace. I love those jumping red bird knights :D. Even now those things are tough. And enjoy the final boss, Shadow Link, in all his glory! Not that dumbed down version in OOT I'll tell you that...
Here's something I would practice. As a kid, I remember one of the things that took forever was just beating one orange iron knuckle. Those guys just kept coming and it took minutes just to get in enough hits to kill it. But, eventually, you learn how to fake him out.
Let me tell you what I've learned. For any iron knuckle, your best bet is to generally duck and stand only as a respone for when it draws it's sword. If you want to fake them out. Jump, and as you come down (try falling towards him, but not TOO towards him), slice at his head. As you come down it will reflexively lower it's shield, but you aren't THAT low yet, so strike! Repeat a few times and it's gone. As the iron knuckles get new abilities, you'll just need to adapt them. For blues, just remember they can hit you from long range. As a general rule, only do the attack just after blocking an attack. When things get crazy with jumping reds that attack rapidly, well it's hard to really explain it but, really the idea is to notice all their weak points and counter them. If he jumps, use an upward thrust (though pretty often you'll take a hit too, it may not be the best idea unless you are just sorta running through and don't mind taking the hit), or alternatively, just wait for when he's about to land (don't be too far from where that is) and jump and swing and you should hit him just as he is landing and lowering his shield.
But I'm presuming that those are the things that get you. There are others. As a kid, I had an aweful time with those river demons that kept showing up on bridges, but constant movement across those areas is normally enough to avoid things. A fun enemy to deal with are those "axigators" when you are going for the hammer at the clock-like death mountain. They just keep COMING, unlike a lot of humanoid enemies, so you can't count on them, you know, stopping in front of you for a duel. But, it's still easy enough to kill them when you realize that their ax swings are timed like clockwork. Just figure out where to stand so that they have the ax behind them just as they get in your swing range. Also, make sure you swing just a bit in advance to make up for Link's swing delay. Takes some practice, but you'll get it down and those freaks will be shoes and suitcases and so on before they know it. And yes, leveling up only gets you so far, but really for my purposes, getting to level 8 on all 3 stats at about the same time I was entering the 6th temple, it was good enough. Skill really is the focus in this game. You can't just buff yourself to god status like in the later games.
About the 3 heart challenge you like to take, I REALLY need to try that myself. Since that is a self inflicted limitation (which by the way is NOT a proper way to gauge the game's difficulty, it's like gauging the difficulty of climibing Mt Everest, not an amazing feat any more with today's technology, by imposing fake trials and tribulations like doing it on one foot, oh wait people do that and call it amazing... ugh.., yes impressive, but it's only a gauge of what things you can surive that you put on yourself, to an odd extreme, what if you were to say "can I do it if I limit myself to not using any sort of "skills"?".), then I would suggest another way to keep LTTP hard by the same method of self affliction. If you really only want 3 hearts, just set out to purposefully injure yourself down TO 3 hearts after every dungeon, and if you should heal yourself above it, take a time out in the midst of the battle to just injure yourself back down to your imposed limitation. It's somewhat silly, yes, but it will get you what you want. It's basically not just limiting yourself in the sense of refusing to GATHER certain things, but also refusing to use certain things you are forced to gather. There is a special sort of self made challenge for Zelda 1 involving not even getting the first sword. In this, in the standard version, you can get everything else though. The one thing to keep in mind is that you can't actually complete the game. You can only get as far as Ganon, who is the only thing in the game that HAS to be damaged by a sword to be killed (so you can hit him with silver arrows). I haven't done this for myself, so maybe I got that last detail wrong, but the idea is to at least get TO him. And, doing that, just go through the second quest the well known way since you can't unlock it beating the first quest (that is, the ZELDA code).
I've only done a few self limiting challenges myself in... gaming in general really. Some of that involves such things as a "no level up" challenge in FF6 (the reward being a LOT of leveling in which you can get esper bonuses later on), with limitations like "you can't use any instant death glitches like vanish/doom or bringing an undead enemy to life". Also, a time trial in FF7 where I attempted to beat the world record of about 10 hours or so (last I checked). I failed... My personal best is about 15 hours. As you can imagine, though super powerful things like Knights of the Round would be HELPFUL, you just don't have the TIME. Your main source of power will be stocks and stocks of potions to make up for low levels.
The idea of forcing my life down to three hearts is rather annoying, because I'd constantly be picking up hearts untintentionally, then forcing myself back down to three, not to mention, it presents the temptation of cheating.
I agree that self-imposed challenges aren't a great way to gauge a game's difficulty, but they do allow someone like me a good reason to replay a game I might otherwise be bored with. I've done the Three Heart challenge in OOT (successfully) and Zelda 1 (so far unsuccessfully), I've beaten Symphony of the Night with my fists and basic armor (and the 99 Luck cheat, since it dramatically lowers your beginning stats). I'm going to try FF7 without materia, I hear that's a lovely exercise :D
Haha, yeah the "no materia" thing. I haven't done that yet... Oh boy, if I beat it, you can bet I'll go further and actually try beating Emerald and Ruby with no materia... At a million hit points each, um... elixers... lots of elixers...
And yeah, I do admit that self imposed challenges add to a game's replay value.
Oh and, as far as being tempted to cheat, I sorta have that little temptation in the back of my mind anyway :D, so, I just keep reminding myself that there's a reason I got this far with some weird restriction in place anyway...
LttP seems easier and more fun on SNES than it was on GBA...
... Link's pink hair is still ridiculous though. :)
Why's that? Controls? I mean, the game is pretty much a perfect translation, and the X button was only for the map anyway, and the R button as "action" isn't really that much of a problem.
Some gameplay elements were altered, I've noted, but the only thing I can really say is a negative about the package is the wussification of the ice temple multiple floor puzzle.
You can see more on the screen, for one thing, I believe... "original format" might be part of it too (I prefer LA original to LA DX, for instance), and "now that I've played it some I can actually play and not get really frusterated like when I was first playing it"...
The story is just as lame, but oh well. Storytelling isn't the focus of Zelda games...
Maybe playing it on the GB Player would be similar (to SNES), but not quite, since that's not the same resolution, it's just that same smaller size scaled up... it would help with things like the sword though (Link's sword swing works a bit better on the SNES size-wise, though it's not perfect)... but that would matter more if my GC worked more reliably and I could test it...
But anyway, $7.50 for SNES LttP, cart and manual? Worth it. I didn't get it when I saw it earlier this year cart-only, but with the manual... couldn't resist. :)
But yeah, I definitely like it more on the SNES...
*looks at LttP-GBA, still unfinished at some point in the Dark World* Hmm, wonder if I'll actually finish this game this time... we'll see...
I never thought LTTP had a lame story... Felt epic enough for me at the time... :(
Anyway, your arguments just seem like "notes". I fail to see where the "it isn't as good" conclusion comes from.
I put in the cartridge and immediately started having fun. It didn't happen like that on the GBA. The best reasons I can think of are that I know the game better now so the annoying things aren't as annoying (where to go for some of the items, its somewhat odd character (and item, the way those hearts float down as little red things is weird) sprite designs, etc -- they're still odd, but I'm more used to them now...) and that since you can see more of the screen the reduction of the amount of scrolling helps the game... LA has no scrolling areas at all, and I thought that that was just about perfect...
Quote:I never thought LTTP had a lame story... Felt epic enough for me at the time...
"Save the Princess!"
Works fine for me! I mean it was told pretty well and there was more to it than that.
Quote:The story is just as lame, but oh well. Storytelling isn't the focus of Zelda games...
I hate you die you're dead look at you dying with your stupid dead face
Here let me help you oops I stabbed you in the eye 50 times
*comes back to kick your dead body*
LttP's story is terrible. Every single Zelda game released since it has a better story, CD-i games likely excepted. But other than them, it's not close... LttP's story and characters may have been improvements over the NES Zelda games, but compared to anything since it, from LA on, it's very seriously lacking. The characters are pretty much nonentities who barely matter and have little to say, there is even less to do in the towns, the basic plot is the most cliche thing ever (rescue princess from evil monster trying to take over world!) and is told in an average at best manner... decent for its time, I guess, but compared to any more recent Zelda, it doesn't look good at all. LttP does not have a good story.
Eh, I got drawn into it. The game's environment played a huge part in it.
Oh, and simply because of the fact that in two of the three CD-i games you're Zelda rescuing Link instead of Link rescuing Zelda yet again, I'd be inclined to say that even some of the CD-i games have better stories than LttP. :p
Quote:Eh, I got drawn into it. The game's environment played a huge part in it.
How so?
You'd be inclined to say their stories are better just for "originality"? If a story does something not done before, but otherwise is utterly reprehensible to my senses, I don't give it bonus points for creatively being aweful. Blair Witch Project was original, but it was still horrid. There's a REASON that sort of thing hadn't been done before.
Anyway, yes the story was "rescue the princess". Heck most of the games are, but I like how it was told, what with the journey to find my uncle, the discovery of the guards turning evil, the escape from the castle at the start with the princess safe and then trying to find out what's up with Aggy, and then later finding out about a whole other world, and the places I went, well the forests, the thief's den, death mountain, and Ganon's tower, I loved the experience, and as a side effect ended up thinking the story was pretty well told for what it was.
Well of course LttP has vastly superior gameplay to any of the CD-i games, I was only referring to story and characters, not gameplay or design. :)
But yes, originality does matter... like with WW vs. TP, where TP is better in most ways gameplay-related, but I put WW at about equal because of the better story and how much more unique and original it is... well, and that the whole sailing thing was pretty fun, but running around TP's OoT-style world is fun too, so that's not a big edge. But TP, while a great game, feels like it's been done before, while WW feels new... and is, to a degree. I think that does matter.