10th June 2005, 11:13 PM
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.
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.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)