Some Zelda Things

[Sacred Jellybean]

Minish Cap

Capcom did quite well with this, and I'm curious how much of Nintendo's direction was involved. It's curious why they enlisted Capcom in the first place. I kept trying to sniff out whether it had a different feel and in the end, I don't think I'd have been able to tell that it wasn't a first party creation.

I like the big/small gimmick. The Kinstone system was kinda neat. I was a fan of controlling multiple Links and solving puzzles that way. The way they brought it out in the final battle was fun. The villain wasn't terribly inspired but I mean it's Zelda. It's not like Ganon isn't much more than a stock bad guy. 

What I didn't like: that the shield had to be wielded as the secondary weapon. No no no. Every other Zelda I've played (outside of the 3d versions I guess) let you just carry it around. If they wanted it to be a toggle (which I wouldn't have minded), I think they could have used the L button for that. It feels a little odd that the only use of L is to swap Kinstones but whatever.

Zelda 2

Still underrated imo. The knights that raise/lower shields and their swords are fun as always, even if the blue knights are obnoxious. I don't in the least mind that this is a side scroller. I'm a fan of being able to jump and stab downward. The only other Zelda game I've seen that be a thing is Minish Cap, and iirc I got it later on in the game and hardly used it.

Still making my way through this and it's fun to revisit.

Link's Awakening

This is pretty fun but for some reason it didn't gel with me. I beat maybe 4 dungeons before my attention wavered. No real desire to go back to it. I'll give it credit for giving Link the ability to jump with a special item. There was something about that I liked. Why DOES Link never jump, apart from walking off a ledge? It's like he sees all the legwork that Mario does and is too shy to attempt the same and focuses on swordplay instead. Where's Mario's sword? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Link to the Past

Solid game, though it feels dated. I played through it and they definitely improved upon many aspects of LoZ 1. I never played it as a kid, so the other Zeldas have a sense of nostalgia that is missing here. Still, I can see why it was popular in its time. I even revisited a thread here recently that suggested LttP was overrated. I'm inclined to agree but given that it was a pioneer of its time I think it deserves grace. It's like criticizing Citizen Kane for not holding up. 

It feels more like a museum piece than something I'd replay. I can't say the same for other Zelda games: Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask are still fantastic. I suppose nostalgia could be driving that but I don't think so.

[Geno]

I actually love Link's Awakening. The dungeons are decent, perhaps not the best or most memorable in the series. However, I like Koholint Island itself, I like the residents you meet along the way, and most of all, I like the story. The fact that none of this is real (in-universe I mean... obviously, the fictional world and fictional characters in the fictional video game are... well, fictional) yet feels so real makes it all the more heartbreaking, knowing that Link's options are to succeed in his quest and basically kill everyone he's met on this island, or... stay asleep forever, never able to leave Koholint Island and reunite with his friends who truly do exist. The ending is quite somber, and if you don't get any game overs (don't steal from the item shop, or if you do, don't return to it--you will get Kamehameha'd), then Marin will live on as a seagull in the game's aftermath.

I have played very little of The Minish Cap. I've heard great things about it. I don't know why I never really gave it a fair try.

A Link to the Past was, if nothing else, the best Zelda game ever at the time of its release. Did future Zelda games do the formula better? I would say yes. I prefer most of the 3D Zelda games over it (other than maybe Skyward Sword, which I don't hate, but in all honesty, if it wasn't a Zelda game, I'd probably never give it another thought). But I have to respect LttP for what it was and the advancements it made to the series. That said, if someone played Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, or even Wind Waker or Twilight Princess, then went back and played Ocarina of Time for the first time ever, I could see them calling it overrated as well. I can never not love Ocarina of Time, though; firing it up feels like returning home, every single time.

[Dark Jaguar]

Zelda 2: The "Dark Souls" of Zelda games.  Yes I know, I may as well have said "This game has a little something for everyone" or "It really makes you FEEL like Link", but keep reading if you would.  The game involves leveling by picking specific stats to increase over the game, enemies that force you to learn their patterns in order to best defeat them, numerous creative out of the box solutions to problems (like turning into a fairy to pass through a locked door's keyhole and skip finding the key), and very obscure secrets.  Further, the game's got heavy punishment for mistakes but managing to make it all the way back through the palace can be rewarding.  It's only a shame the game has a total of two checkpoints, one at the very start, and the other at the entrance to the vast final palace.  All in all, much more action focused than most Zelda games, but well done.

Capcom making Minish Cap makes sense after they had impressed Nintendo so much with the GBC Oracle games and the Four Sword bonus mode in the GBA port of Link to the Past.  Personally, I can feel a shift in design focus, with a bit more story (with some actual twists here and there) and very clearly they started with a story and worked in the gameplay second, contrary to Miyamoto's method.  The story isn't something on the level of Planescape Torment or anything, for any of Capcom's Zelda games, but it's got enough little twists here and there to keep one curious enough to push forward.

Link's Awakening isn't my favorite Zelda game any more, but it's still up there.  The dungeons, to me, are all memorable, but I've played this game in all it's forms many many times at this point.  I also like how creative they got, breaking out of the typical "video gamey" tropes to some extent.  There's the pot themed one, the mural themed one, the crystal and slime themed one, the tower where you "don't trouble yourself with going up the stairs and instead bring the upstairs downstairs"...  Also one lava temple...  Well they had to have a few "normal" ones.  In any case, it's interesting you bring up not wanting to use a button to pull up the shield, when Link's Awakening started that trend and the Oracle games did the same.  It makes combat a bit more strategic, which I appreciate at times.  However, I'll say the Switch remake made gameplay dramatically faster in the game as I didn't have to constantly pause in order to switch items all the time.  Once you don't have to do that any more, it's hard to go back.

Link to the Past is still one I regard VERY highly.  It spends time as my absolute favorite in the series, depending on my mood.  At other times, I go back to the very simplistic but very short Zelda 1.  I do absolutely love both Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask, but here's my thinking there.  On replays, I like trying new things, doing things in different orders or finding a harder path.  LTTP allows for this, while also being a more complex game than Zelda 1.  It isn't AS open as the first game, but it's more open than what would follow.  In fact, until Breath of the Wild broke the trend, the Zelda series at least in the main entries kept getting more and more prescriptive and limiting.

The biggest sin Skyward Sword commits is that for all it's side quests in Skyloft, it never really allows you to do even a single thing out of order.  There's even a glitch in earlier revisions that will flat out break progression if you go back and go to another location before you're "supposed" to.  Fi, that talking sword spirit, was nothing but an annoyance.  People complain about Navi, but the worst she had was a squeaky voice.  Fi meanwhile can't be ignored.  She just won't shut up.  Every single temple you enter, she's there popping up and telling you in detail EXACTLY how to solve the puzzle you JUST encountered.  Navi you can ignore, but you can't ignore Fi, no sirFibob.  I'd hoped the Switch remaster would provide a "silent mode" for the character, but nothing doing.  They barely touched the gameplay at all.  In fact, while previous Zelda games let you "save" at any point (even if you continued at a checkpoint), in Skyward Sword you could ONLY ever save at save points.  Also, they introduced the annoying "Stamina bar" for... realism I guess?  What game do you think you are, Skyward Sword?  It's like Quake II adding upward aim drift to the machine gun.  C'mon cut that out.

I go on this side tangent on Skyward Sword only to explain why I hold it in lower regard than the other Zelda games.  Even the dungeons suffer from that design choice.  I appreciate that they redefined what a "dungeon" could be, turning whole outdoor areas into spaces that act, effectively, as "dungeons" in their own right.  I don't appreciate how this went even further than Twilight Princess in that you literally have no choice in what order to even enter ANY of the rooms in.

Now go back to Link to the Past.  While there's a prescribed order to take on the dungeons in, this can be broken.  How intentional is this?  It depends on how the sequence is broken, but there's enough there to get really creative without any outright glitches involved, and it allows a player to actually get lost in the spaces presented.

Link Between Worlds came along later as a return to form.  They took what was only relative openness in LTTP and made it so open the dungeons really could be taken on in literally any order.  While I wasn't a fan of the "shop" for getting special items (I'd have had separate "lesser" dungeons for acquiring the items throughout the game), I did appreciate a return to the older form.  Further, there was no longer a little companion solving all my puzzles for me.  I much prefer how both Link to the Past and the very first black and white edition of Link's Awakening handled hints.  They were riddles in themselves, more or less.  THIS is my favorite way of giving me a dungeon hint.  Anyway, the downside of how open the design was is that every single dungeon was on a totally flat difficulty curve, and that difficulty was low.  Only the very last dungeon really ups the challenge.  There was a habit Nintendo had, whenever they remastered one of their classics, to "fix" difficult puzzles in dungeons, like the Ice Temple in LTTP or the "Water Temples" in both OOT and MM, but rather than provide additional hints, they just flat out remove the puzzle element entirely and it's now just like any other temple.  With this game, it seemed they at least realized it was ok to keep puzzles intact.

Breath of the Wild was a major shift.  Firstly, they did away with the cute little "spirit companion" that Nintendo had felt the need to jam into every single one of their mainline titles since Super Mario Sunshine and Fludd.  Ever notice that?  Even Luigi's Mansion jammed in a little ghost dog companion.  Peach had her umbrella, Paper Mario had all kinds of little buckets or stickers or whatever, Link had been getting more and more overt puzzle solving companions ever since Navi and Tatl.  Heck even Donkey Kong is now carrying around some lost child version of the woman his daddy used to regularly abduct.  I've got NO clue how that timeline works at this point, but I get why they did that because it'd be a LOT harder to animate having a grown woman clinging to his back the whole game.  Anyway, Breath of the Wild will OCCASIONALLY have Zelda beam messages into your head, like in Link to the Past actually, but beyond that the game makes a point that you are on you OWN and that the game trusts you to be able to figure out where to go and what to do on your own.  If Link Between Worlds was a shift away from Skyward Sword style "linearity", Breath of the Wild was a full embracing of letting players enjoy the game on their own terms, and that extended to the emergent gameplay you could get out of numerous systems interacting with each other.  Use fire arrows to start a grassfire that the wind will sweep right into a pile of explosives laying next to a moblin camp.  Boom.  It was the saving grace, when so many "camps" were just copies of each other more or less.

But, what brings replaying that game down in my estimation are the primary dungeons.  Namely, the game is littered with over a hundred mini-dungeons.  They're fine as they are, and they are even "ranked" in varying difficulty so you know going in roughly what to expect.  Since they're shorter challenges, I have no complaints there.  In fact, I love that while those puzzles clearly have an intended solution, the game fully embraces totally sequence breaking them.  You have to connect a circuit pad to open some doors?  Drop that metal sword you brought in and link the circuit with that.  You need to play a game of Logical to get a marble to the end?  Just flip the whole puzzle over, ignore it, and move the marble easily along the flat backside.  Gordian knot solutions abound!  This I love!  But then, there's the "main" dungeons, and this is where the game loses me.  The four beasts and the final palace don't really have much in the way of puzzles at all.  Don't get me wrong, it's really creative that you can change the shape of the dungeons, but they don't do much of anything with it.  They're SO intent on making the puzzle design open and going against the mistakes made in Skyward Sword that there's not really much to the dungeons, nothing to get "lost" in.

Anyway, I just rambled on for a bit there.

[Geno]

Skyward Sword is indeed linear to a fault. I thought it actually had some decent dungeons and boss fights. I liked the Ancient Cistern and Koloktos, in particular. But the sky was... very empty. There weren't many places to go in the sky. You spend most of the game on the surface, which feels like false advertising. I was promised a sky game where I get to fly around on a bird, but that part was little more than a glorified hub connecting the different areas of the world, which otherwise feel disconnected from one another. There's also a lot of retreading, and that section where you have to escort the little robot dude across the volcano was annoying. There is eventually a new location you go to in the sky as well as a boss fight involving your Loftwing, but for the most part, it feels like wasted potential. It could've been the Wind Waker of the sky. A lot of people complained about the amount of sailing you had to do in The Wind Waker, but at least there were islands with... you know, stuff on them. Most of the sky in Skyward Sword is just empty rocks. Otherwise, there's the main town, a mini-game, and like one or two other places of interest.

And yes, Fi is annoying. I don't love the hand-holding in some Zelda games, and Skyward Sword was one of the biggest offenders. Navi was annoying, but like you said, she could usually be ignored despite her annoying "HEY!" Tatl didn't bother me as much, I guess because she would make a ringing sound instead of a high-pitched yell (they played more into the Tinkerbell aspect of the fairy companion in that regard). The Wind Waker didn't overdo the companion character. The King of Red Lions offers some help and occasionally speaks to you through that sapphire necklace or whatever it was, but he doesn't solve entire puzzles for you. Midna is my favorite of the companions because she actually has a personality, and I like her sassiness. (Tatl is sassy too, actually.)

But yeah, the complete lack of a companion (other than the occasional telepathic message from Zelda) in Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom is nice. I also like that in these two games, there is no one right answer to solving puzzles, as you described. But yeah, I agree that it would've been nice to have full dungeons that are... actually good. Some of them were okay, but I don't recall any of them being great. The Wind Temple from Tears of the Kingdom had a really cool boss fight, though, with an epic orchestrated remix of the Dragon Roost Island theme from The Wind Waker. Speaking of games not having one single right answer to solving puzzles, has anyone here played Echoes of Wisdom? I rather enjoyed it; it's one of the smaller scale Zelda games, but it's still fun and charming, and you actually get to play as Zelda for once. This game also allows you to be creative with your abilities (the echoes, in this case) and solve puzzles in a variety of ways, and I appreciated that about it. It's not super difficult, but it's fun. I would even call it "cozy" as far as Zelda games go.

[Dark Jaguar]

Echoes of Wisdom was absolutely amazing.  Sure, it would have been nice to give Zelda a sword, but frankly I appreciate the creative direction they went in, giving you basically anything you can see.  She can even command an army, essentially, which fits with her being a royal and all.  Turning her leadership role into a gameplay mechanic was a good choice.

Echoes was a great return to a smaller scale Zelda game.  I think it's pretty clear with how delayed Tears for Fears turned out to be that even reusing assets as they did when they cranked out Majora's Mask in such a short time frame wasn't enough to speed up development of a vast game with that level of graphical fidelity.  They clearly had to step things back a bit.  Even so, three whole Zelda games in a single console cycle (as well as a couple remasters) was something a lot of us wouldn't have expected.  We're more used to getting one or two, though admittedly I'm stretching things a bit considering that a "single cycle" used to include both handhelds AND home consoles at the same time, so each generation did get more Zelda games with that in mind.

I absolutely love how they're embracing freedom, and while they did once again toss in a tiny little helper spirit in Echoes, at least it wasn't solving puzzles for you to the same extent as the games we'd mentioned earlier.

[A Black Falcon]

Link's Awakening is of course one of my favorite games ever.  I have always said that it's the best 2d Zelda game ever and certainly still 100% stand by that.  Of course my nostalgia for it being the first Zelda game that I owned helped there, but I'd played some of the first Zelda for NES before that.  LA just does everything right, its whole design is pretty much perfect.  Link's Awakening has probably the best story in any Zelda game (only WW really comes close), inspired by Twin Peaks I believe, and it should be really admired for doing something so different and not just being 'Link saves Zelda and beats Ganon again...'


I know this isn't new, I'm sure I've said this in threads from years ago, but comparing LttP and LA is fascinating because you see the way gaming was changing.  In LttP, there are a lot of parts where you have to just find some item randomly hidden somewhere, NES game style.  I complained about this at length in a thread some years back, about all the annoying random hidden objects LttP requires you find, some of which aren't mentioned at all and some of which only have the most cryptic of hints as to their locations.  I did like the game, but when I got to the END of a dungeon only to learn that I'd missed a key item that is somewhere else in a random overworld cave, so I'd need to redo the whole dungeon because this was before dungeon warps... yeah I was not amused.  Also, LttP has a really weak attack range.  You don't have much sword range and the shield is, like in the NES games, only of use against arrows, not anything else.

In contrast, LA is in a lot of ways the first fully modern Zelda game.  Here, instead of a large open world, you largely follow a set path.  There is a world to explore, but it is more segmented than LttP.  The dungeons have warp points in them and are designed with more of a hub-and-spoke design, as opposed to the often long linear paths of LttP, so that you won't have to repeat extremely long paths to get back to where you were.  The game gives you a new item in each dungeon that you will make use of in that dungeon and sometimes outside of it, as every Zelda game has done since.  (LttP moved towards this system, but it wasn't fully formed yet.)  The shield is actually useful for the first time in the series, made possible by its being an item now you use with a button, which was a fantastic change.  You can push Spinies and block enemies!  It's a real shield, as it would be in the 3d games!  So nice.  The sword has more range than before, and hits diagonally above you in addition to in front and above.  The puzzles are still challenging, it's a difficult game, but only the trading game is potentially seriously confusing and even there, there are a limited number of places to go and you know that every step involves talking to someone, and also you know that that's your task currently.  It's nothing like 'find the Ice Rod you didn't know existed'.  

As for the overworld design, LA goes for tightly designed, meaningful screens where everything matters.  I like this design MUCH MUCH MUCH more than vast amounts of meaningless empty space!  The world in LA feels large, but it is actually pretty limited in size.  They did this with things like how trees in LA are a quarter the size of trees in LttP.  (I am reminded of an old argument between me and OB1 on this subject... heh.)  Brilliant stuff.  It's my favorite Zelda overworld ever for sure, no question.  LttP may have a larger world in screens,  but most of it is just empty space that doesn't mean much.  It's not close to LA.

Oh, and lastly, I like the original B&W version of LA the best.  The DX version's colors are too gaudy-looking, I don't think they look like how I imagined the game looking while playing it in B&W.  The new color dungeon is fine but nothing special, and its rewards make you overpowered.  The new additional dungeon hints (multiple hints per dungeon instead of only one) are fine I guess, but I think the game can be completed without them so I've never really liked the addition.  As for the Switch remake, it's quite nice looking and plays great, but ... eh, I'll always like the original version best.


As for the other 2d or 2.5d Zelda games...

The first game is a good game, and it's a very important classic, but it has issues: the combat difficulty is off the charts high (it's probably the hardest Zelda game...), there aren't really any puzzles in the dungeons other than "push blocks and bomb walls", the game heavily relies on you wasting your time finding random hidden nonsense by burning every bush and whatnot, etc.  I kind of like it but have never finished it.  I think I gave up in dungeon 6 on the GBA version, which is the one I got the farthest in.  It just gets so hard and combat is really all there is to the game apart from 'find hidden nonsense' and 'push blocks/bomb walls/etc'.  It probably did about as much as you could with the amount of cartridge memory available at the time, but it does make it somewhat hard to go back to.

Zelda 2... it's good, but I've never really gotten into it.  It's maybe even harder than the first one and sending you back to the start point of the game when you die anytime not in a dungeon is needlessly punishing... not to mention that the dungeons are pretty confusing to remember and don't have much in terms of maps.  ... I am remembering that right, yes? No maps in dungeons?  I really never got far in Zelda 2.  It seems well made but is so different and not as fun as the others.

LttP, I covered above. It's a great game but has some annoying random nonsense to find and annoying combat due to the nearly useless shield (LA making it an item was the best thing ever to happen to Zelda shields!) and very short sword range.  The world is bland-feeling, the story very basic and irrelevant, etc.  It did some nice things and looks great visually and was fun to play, but if you do have a walkthrough handy for when you get stuck.  That 'LttP is overrated' thread was probably mine, but I do think it's an A- grade game at least, it is good.

The Oracles games I really love, they are some of the best Zelda games ever even if Capcom made them.  I like the Oracles games second best of the 2d Zeldas, behind only LA.  It's the LA engine but with some scrolling screens in dungeons, lame to terrible stories, and lots of challenging puzzles and combat.  Exceptional games, apart from the awful stories.  They're like LA but mixed with some of the aesthetic and town/character dynamics of OoT.  Just amazing stuff, Capcom did so well!

Minish Cap I've never loved, but it is fun enough.  In difficulty Capcom WW-ized this game by making it extremely easy, it's like 100x easier than the Oracles games were, but it is still a fun time while it lasts.  The problems are that I don't love the art style and it's way, way too easy.  The world feels quite small, too, with more empty space without purpose than you have in LA or the Oracles games.

Echoes of Wisdom I was very interested in conceptually -- a Zelda game from Nintendo that lets you play as Zelda? Amazing! -- and I bought and started it, but I lost interest a bit in for some reason and haven't gone back.  I probably should go back because it's mostly good, but I do have a few complaints.  Using the stuff you summon for attacks is fun, but the bits where you get a sword and can just attack things show that a lot of the challenge is somewhat artificial, you know?  As in, it only exists because of the reduced combat ability Zelda has than Link.  Character-wise this entirely makes sense, Zelda shouldn't be identical to Link, but it was a bit annoying sometimes.  On the other hand, I like the strong puzzle focus of the game.  Most of the puzzles seemed too easy as far as I got, but I did get stuck once, so maybe if I go back and get farther in there will be more parts that are actually interesting.  The visuals are nice also.