Games I Have Finished (as far as I can remember)

[A Black Falcon]

Oh, I've played it. I didn't start from nothing here, I picked up my save file from whenever it was I last played the game, which was at the lake having to find the way into the Ice Palace. I'd played the rom a little bit years back, and bought LttP/FS for GBA back in like '04 or something as well. I then got the SNES version sometime last year, largely because it included the manual (which is a lot more interesting than the boring GBA version manual... backstory, art, and all... :)), given that I only barely thought that the GBA version had been worth the money. The SNES one was a lot cheaper, sure, but given that I kind of disliked the game, was it really worth owning? Oddly, I found the SNES version more fun (the better graphics and sound help, for one thing...), so that's why I've finished it while I still have no new progress in years in the GBA version, where I am still at the sixth dungeon, Misery Mire. It was too hard and I gave up... and that was after repeated FAQ use to find the stupid item you needed to get in (the Ether Medallion, that is). How in the WORLD was I supposed to know that some random cave on top of the mountain on the top of the map near an earlier dungeon had a critical item in it? That little icon on the ground? If you don't know what it means, that's no help... and as I said, they don't help you beyond that.

My opinion of it now is pretty much the same it was then... it's okay, but annoying, frustrating, and nowhere near as good as Link's Awakening, Oracle of Ages, or any of the 3d Zelda games. And I still don't like the character sprite art.

Anyway, items that you need but the game doesn't really tell you what it's for, where to find it, or that you need it at all, except maybe for a nearly useless, extremely vague "clue":

-Bombos Medallion (I think, I can't quite remember)
-Book of Mudora
-Ether Medallion (as I said, this one had me stumped for a long, long time...)
-Quake Medallion (THIS one forced me to restart Turtle Rock all over... at the boss, couldn't figure out what to do, yet another point where without guides I'd have given up for sure... (there are many of those, in this game!)... guide tells me I need the Ice Rod, which is of course hidden in a random cave on the overworld. Great. So I have to do the whole thing over, now, after reaching the end? I hate you, Nintendo...

And no, the game gives you absolutely no hint that you need an Ice Rod to hurt that boss, much less that an Ice Rod even exists. You just have to hope you wander into the right cave before getting that far. HORRIBLE game design!

There was a Sarasrahla thing at the start of the dungeon... he merely says "have a blue potion, you'll need magic". Good advice, but not enough.)
-Silver Arrows -- Oh, you tell me how vitally important the arrows are only AFTER I get them, not before? That's helpful! And as far as finding them, before you do all you get is a "you need a strong bomb to break that wall" at some point. How am I supposed to know that at some random point a Super Bomb appears in the Bomb Shop and that I must use it on that one specific wall to get a vital item? I would never have thought of looking there without a guide, I'd say... "I've been there (the bomb shop) before, had nothing interesting..."...

I only knew to find the Silver Arrows before fighting Ganon because I knew Ganon needs Silver Arrows to fight, because I remembered it from the comic and other sources. I don't remember the game itself actually telling me that until AFTER I'd already gotten them.

The only things I can remember being remotely like this in LA were some of the Trading Game steps -- particularly the part where you need the monkey's help and the part at the end to get the magnifying glass. But the LA overworld is so much better designed and so much more fun to explore and the game gives you better clues (characters hinting at items they will want later on, for instance), so I don't think it's as stupid as this.

I will admit that the first time I played it back in the mid '90s LA did take me several months, so it was hard, for sure, and I absolutely did get stuck a lot... but still. LA took me a few months to finish the first time after I got it. I've owned or had access to one version or another of LttP for years, and only now did I finally manage to force myself to finish the game...

Oh, the ending was underwhelming, but for some reason a lot of Nintendo's first-party SNES games seem to be like that. The version of the story in the Nintendo Power comic is way more interesting than the version in the game, really. But of course, that comic actually has a decent story... the game doesn't. LA was the first Zelda game to actually attempt to tell an interesting story, really. For a first attempt, it's amazing how incredibly successful it was at it. I can also see the origins of stuff like the cast of NPCs and such in LttP (I know the NES games had a few, but not like how it ws done in LttP), but that montage at the end really highlighted how little most of them mattered for the most part. It was a first attempt, but the next two games (LA and OoT) had vast, vast improvements on the issue. The NPCs are there, with a bit more personality than before... but unlike LA, OoT, or beyond, they aren't very important. But at least it was an advance...

Granted, I have played the game so much now that I have lost all sense of objectivity

This is absolutely true for me with LA now, though. All the puzzles are so easy and obvious, how could someone miss them? :D

Oh yeah, and it's really annoying that the SNES version has such limited restore points when you load your game. It doesn't even save you at the start of a dungeon when you turn the system off, instead you have to walk back there from the center of the world in question? What were they thinking?

... I should say SOMETHING good, shouldn't I... :)

-Dungeons -- fun, when you don't get killed or turn your system off. The challenge level ramps up nicely. Bosses are oddly quite easy through most all of the game, but the dungeons are challenging, as that death total suggests. I got killed quite a bit... The very complicated dungeon designs are also interesting. Still, I prefer LA's dungeon designs... such as, for instance, its mid-boss warps. LttP forces you to replay more stuff when you die in a dungeon, most of the time; in a few dungeons they make up for it with doors to the outside that let you continue from those points, and those are great, but a few dungeons could have used that that don't have it... the Ice Palace, for example. :) But the game's huge dungeons are interesting to explore, and after the annoying and challenging Ice Palace and Misery Mire, things got a bit easier and more fun in the last couple of dungeons, which was good. And there were definitely some clever puzzles, too. The last couple of dungeons were definitely fun...

-Background art and music-- Often pretty beautiful and very well done... and with a great soundtrack of course.

-It's Zelda -- even if it's definitely not my favorite Zelda game, it's still a very good game..