A Link to the Past. A monolith of the Zelda franchise, alongside Ocarina of Time, that simultaneously solidified the series formula and set its subsequent sequels on a path that would take 26 years to break free from. Nowadays a divisive title between the fanbase, its reputation for turning the series into a restrictive, hand holding, linear affair is mostly undeserved and severly exagerated. While lacking the first screen statement of the original Legend of Zelda and guiding you through a small set of introductory dungeons with little deviation before opening itself up, ALttP still retains the exploration DNA from its predecessors.

Allowing for a surprising amount of choice in how you tackle its questline provides numerous fun guideless discoveries such as the Zora waterfall or the warp travel bird, and without the intrusive tutorialization and puzzle signalling that would later on plague the franchise, players are left to their own devices to figure out dungeon entry enigmas and solve meticulously puzzle box designed dungeons that do not hold any punches in their mental and physical challenge. In what I consider a brilliant decision, in order to be able to defeat the final boss after a gauntlet of the hardest rooms in the game, you need to have had completed a series of side quests that you would think were just optional content, a devious trick that would make the NES games proud.

Having said that, I unfortunately do tend to agree with most of the critical reevaluation that ALttP has recently gotten from its detractors. While the colorful and detailed Super Nintendo presentation lends a newly found personality to the series, it also ends up removing much of the alluring mystery and mystique of its more simple and abstract looking prequels. The more perceptible aesthetic is itself a double edged sword that easily signals what you are allowed to engage with and what is noise to be ignored, a harmless consequence of technology advancement that ironically ends up reducing the scope of ALttP's map, despite how much bigger it is than Zelda 1 and 2. It's true that ALttP allows room for the player to decide which path he wants to take, but that certainly becomes a harder decision to make when you can just open your map at any time and realize you are going the wrong way.

Make no mistake in assuming I am implying that A Link to the Past forever strayed the Zelda franchise away from its strength and potential, as that's not the point I'm trying to make. But it's hard to deny that the series philosophy took a turn here, in the same manner that something like DMC3 would forever rob the franchise of another DMC1 happening. And maybe it was for the best, as moments like finally being able to pick up the Master Sword in the middle of a shady forest represent some of the most awe-inspiring and affecting iconography the series offered. The true mark of A Link to the Past's success is in the ability of the franchise to ride on its coattails for almost 30 years.

everyone deems this game as one of the greatest of all times and I think this time I really have to agree

a link to the past feels grand revolutionary and awe inspiring even after 30 something years from its release and honestly it's something that I can't really say for a lot of games from this time they'd always end up being clunky or obtuse to play them today but for some reason I found none of that in this one so i can only imagine how incredible it would've been to play this game in 1991

after the very first zelda for NES (great but antiquated nowadays) and zelda II (haven't played it yet but I know it's a fucking chore) they went back to the winning formula of the NES era and greatly expanded on it on every level of existence and its not a surprise that this was the blueprint for ocarina of time and many zelda titles to come

story in this one is as simple as it gets zelda seeks help through the power of telepathy and link goes to help her shenanigans happen here and there and she gets kidnapped like a stupid ass so basically the main gameplay loop of the game is 3 + 7 dungeons going back and forth from the dark world until you get to the last dungeon and beat the shit out of ganon the end

its not really the most convoluted story ever in the universe but the atmosphere themes and vibes are absolutely unmatched the scene where you free zelda and run away with her is something so incredible I cannot put it into words its like I was reliving ICO all over again and I was really surprised they got rid of this sequence in a link between worlds like what were you thinking

the main lore is told by some different characters here and there like the legend of ganon and shit like that and thats also pretty jnteresting but the main meat of the game is pretty straightforward go to a dungeon get the dungeon item beat the dungeon rinse and repeat

playing this game is an absolute fucking blast and I was absolutely stunned at how many different weapons and accessories and upgrades and items there are here its kind of weird like theres probably 20+ items because the dungeon items are already a lot and then you get some extra items from exploring and shit like that so yeah

the overworld is absolutely incredible and traversing it is a fucking blast moving link around feels good and there's always rewarding you for exploring its useless to explain the main gameplay because it's fucking zelda I should not explain it but I gotta say that the dungeons range from fun to absolutely fucking ??? like I cannot explain it but ??? I had to open a guide most of the times because theres some stuff that made me go crazy im not joking funnily enough the ice palace didn't really give me a problem as much as the fucking mine did that dungeon is incredibly 1 boring 2 dumb 3 frustrating and i had to do it 3 times because first I didnt know I needed the ice rod so I had to take the ice rod and redo it and then I realised I also needed a magic bottle because my default magic tank wasn't enough what the FUCK were they smoking in the meeting room

and thats probably my main crutch in this games the fact that most of the time you won't know what the fuck you have to do now I do really enjoy exploring its world and defeating enemies or whatever but going around the overworld 99+ times without nothing new happening gets boring really fast and also some stuff is truly impossible if you don't open a guide like how am I supposed to know that to get the ocarina I need to dig a very specific square in a point that NO NPC told me about do I look like a fucking clown to you anyway apart from that? this game is perfect

using this variety of items is the most fun I had with gimmicks items in zelda coming and going to the dark world even tho a chore sometimes really gets the theme across and all the while listening to the bomb music

now art department ? this shit is insane the art style is incredible this chibified yet detailed kind of style for the sprites drives home the entirety of the game with the characters blending perfectly with the environments theyre in plus theres sexy alligators trying to fuck your ass and id honestly let them

music is also unmatched and every single thing is a bop and most of the tracks here will become staples of the series throughout the years but a personal favorite from this score is the dark world theme this shit is absolutely jawdropping yall don't even get me started the first time I listened to it I was sweating profusely for the love of everything holy

so umh for my current marathon in which I played two (2) games I can say that this one is my favorite one of the bunch now if you tell me do you prefere this or twilight princess I will smack you on the face and call you slurs try me

bring pink haired link back I'll become homicidal

This game presents a lot of interesting and great ideas, but they're all hidden behind hours and hours and hours of tedious tests of patience. A Link to the Past is largely held back by a lack of modern conveniences, as well as general lack of direction. I think this game is great for children who have countless hours to spend walking around and exploring Hyrule, but as someone who has played any Zelda game that came out after this, it is a slog to get through. The dungeons are generally annoying to sift through, the Dark World is boring and annoying to traverse, the Light World is effectively a giant time waster once you finish three dungeons. There are only a couple of good dungeons in the game, and unfortunately they're the last ones and are still ridden with various issues the other dungeons (and the rest of the game) contain. I think the good ideas this game presents are done far better in later titles, so I really recommend only playing this if you want to play every Zelda game or if you haven't played one yet and want to see what all the hubbub is about.

No spoilers discussed from a narrative perspective; however, I do speak extensively on the gameplay and dungeons, which may be seen as spoilerish for people who wish to go into things completely carte blanche. As such, for those of you who do, avoid reading: the tl;dr is I don’t recommend playing ALTTP without a guide

Beaten on the SNES Classic

I did not want to give this game a mixed review. In fact, when I first booted up A Link to the Past, it genuinely enthralled me, the pixel art and 4:3 display bringing back memories of a childhood long forgotten; where the stresses of adulthood were as far away as the skies of Hyrule and fields of Arcadia. There’s always been something about the Super Nintendo that’s rung a deep chord within me, and I was consequently eager to re-indulge in nostalgia for the next 15 hours or so.

Alas, that was not to be. ALTTP starts off on a great note, yet a severe flaw of the era rears its ugly head again-and-again, degrading the experience no matter how often you try and address it: deliberate vagueness for the sake of artificial elongation. Picture this -- you’ve tolled extensively through a dungeon, dodging hazardous obstacles, slaying countless enemies, even dying a few times, but all that doesn’t matter as you’ve finally made it to the end boss, only….something’s off. Your attacks aren’t working, and you’re confident you’re employing every trick in the book….

Or, let’s not even go that far- say you’ve spent almost an hour meandering towards one of the new dungeons on your map, stressing about finding the right entrance, the right pathway, all whilst evading your usual hodgepodge of critters and traps, only….you can’t get in. Or you can get in, and you can’t progress past the first room for reasons you’re unsure of.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is what we call obsolete game design: when a game expects you to have meandered aimlessly in its world for the sake of finding that ONE hint or ONE item placed elsewhere that can circumvent a major hindrance of a dungeon down-the-line. While Fourth Generation titles were significantly better in this department than their forebears, you still had a number of releases, particularly in the RPG genre, that indulged in such hapless tactics for the sake of offsetting early-return losses.

Of course, ALTTP is not a pure RPG; however, it borrows enough here to the point where it shares those same criticisms as a Lufia I or a Castlevania 2: where you NEED to talk to a number of random villagers or scour the far reaches of the map(s) for the sake of progression. Fail to do that, and you’ll stumble into the same pitfalls I encountered above.

And look, I get it. Games back in the day, particularly Nintendo titles, were built on in-person cooperation and guide book procurement: heck, Nintendo Power explicitly published hints in its monthly catalog as a way of enticing more young’uns to subscribe. But in this day-and-age, such capitalistic feedback loops are nonexistent, and games are expected to be solvable without extensive manuals, a minimum standard ALTTP simply fails to live up to. And what makes this particularly irksome is that it literally doesn’t start off like this. For the first section, you can cruise along and complete the trifecta of introductory strongholds at your own pace in whatever order you want without worrying if you missed X trinket at Y location. Then the Dark World springs up and you’re granted access to 8 additional dungeons that can seemingly be completed in any order; a revolutionary feat for the time that probably inspired similar “open door” moments in later games.

EXCEPT, it’s a partial lie. The final four dungeons (Ice Palace, Misery Mire, Turtle Rock, Ganon’s Tower) all require you to have acquired a certain tool beforehand lest you get stuck either at the entryway or, worse case scenario, boss fight following an extended period of drudging.

You may be thinking, well Red, given that the dungeons are numbered on-screen sequentially, wouldn’t it make sense for the closing four’s secrets to be locked behind keys gleaned anteriorly? To which I would say yes if said keys were provided to you in a linear fashion. The problem is, all but one of those items (ranging from medallions to weapons), are not dungeon drops- they’re literally random loot hidden in specialized locations you have to go out of your way to find, and the only way you’re going to find them is through either talking to every random joe you see for a clue, shelling out rupees to the town fortune teller, or good old-fashioned hapless exploring. And hey listen, I definitely understand how all of this forced reconnaissance could’ve been enjoyable to a young person growing up in the 90s without similar console titles for comparison; but nowadays, it feels restrictive and tedious to have to meander elsewhere when you just want to complete the next fortress.

The pseudo-free roam nature of ALTTP also bothered me in a couple of respects. One, much like the Tomb Raider reboot and Metro 2033, it gets under my skin whenever a game lies about being wanderable: launching the Dark World map for the first time, you’re left with the impression that you can tackle any of these objectives in whatever order you wish, yet that’s immediately unveiled as a lie blatantly intended to waste your time running to locales you’re unable to enter. And two, there were so many small ways the developers could’ve alleviated said time-wasting: make the fast-travel bird system mandatorily accessible from the get-go; have an option to purchase charts or info to mark out secrets on the map (or prerender them entirely ala Metroid Prime); allow Link to transport between worlds without having to recharge the Magic Mirror; or incorporate better interconnection from area to area (seriously, it angers me how your sole option for traversal are these narrow roadways tucked inside each dimension -- I get they maybe wanted to limit how far players could travel initially, but considering they either way softlock places, it felt annoyingly redundant).

It’s a shame you run into these qualms because the vast majority of the dungeons are superb and really fun; the only ones I would say I was not a big fan of were Skull Woods, Gargoyle's Domain, and Ice Palace due to either an influx of unbeatable enemies/obstacles (more on that later) or extensive backtracking. This same praise extends to the bosses as well -- yes, like most SNES games, their brawls come down to a Phase 1 and slightly stronger Phase 2, but the bulk of them necessitate some level of strategy and, above all else, they’re grotesquely fascinating to stare at. If there’s one thing we can all agree on about ALTTP, it’s that its graphical design is top notch.

I know there’s been some controversy regarding Link’s pink hair, but putting that aside, the mute boy and his world have never looked better in 2D. As I mentioned before, the SNES capitalized on pixel art craftsmanship, and ALTTP is certainly one of the best depictions of this visual philosophy. Unique NPC figures have been developed for the two worlds, and thanks to some extraordinarily-talented artisans, they never feel like reskins of the other. Whereas the Light World is a plane dominated by humans, in the Dark World you get a sense it’s the opposite, with humans explicitly a minority amongst the roaming monstrosities everywhere: cyclopean bomb throwers, carnivorous vegetation, chimeric bodyguards, clawed wraiths etc… Yeah you get some uninspired variants like discolored turtles, mummies, and literal globs, but they don’t take away from their more-fascinating compatriots (a noteworthy trait given the SNES’s aptitude for creature feature extravaganza). I was also intrigued by the use of 3D geometry (the Princess capsules and TriForce assemblage), which never felt at odds with the in-game engine. The only critique I have is the lack of vivid differentials between the two realms: swapping from one to the other feels less like a dimensional rift and more like a seasonal change, the Dark World cloaked in muddied tints.

SFX was never elaborate in the SNES days, but ALTTP is pretty bare bones even by those standards. Compared to Donkey Kong Country, for example, there are only two wound cries (if you can call them that) for EVERY breed of enemy, with bosses somehow having it even worse. This lack of diversity extends to the OST, which inexcusably features 45 minutes(+) worth of music for the 10+ hours you’ll be playing. Because of this, you’ll be hearing A LOT of repetition, and while I like the Zelda theme as much as anybody, it, in particular, becomes GRATING to listen to given its usage as the Light World motif (as soon as those trumpets started to restate Michael Jackson Smooth Criminal-style, I wanted to shut off the TV). The Dark World’s version fares a lot better on the ears, but even still most locales simply don’t have anything unique: towns are nonexistent, there are only two dungeon tracks in the entire record, bosses (save Ganon) share a single leitmotif, and even the unique tunes tend to be a single chorus looped twice/thrice. Nintendo and Koji Kondo really dropped the ball here.

That said, there is some unique sound editing in the game that deserves to be highlighted. For starters, whenever you enter interiors, the overworld medley goes soft; secondly, inside of cave-like locations, Link’s dins gain an echoey effect; and thirdly, each of Link’s tools are granted a nice distinct rattle (a wise decision considering the amount of times you’ll be utilizing them during your journey).

There isn’t too much to say about the gameplay other than that there’s a ton of sword swiping and puzzle-solving, the latter usually simple and never falling into nonsense territory. Combat, on the other hand, leaves a lot to be desired, namely because of two big reasons: one, this game desperately needed a joystick as turning to reorient Link for a new slash can get vexing, due to the absence of diagonal movement and the jumpiness of later thugs; and two, I felt there were issues with the hit detection, particularly when an enemy was getting out of the recovery phase of an initial strike -- it’s not Secret of Mana-level bad, but it does prop up every now and then.

Worse, still, are the sheer number of unbeatable enemies Nintendo programmed for the sake of concocting barriers, a game design aspect that’s never made sense to me from a lore perspective: if bosses are meant to be the strongest foes, why can they be hurt whilst their underlings remain scratchless? But, putting that aside, ALTTP has one too many of these entities, and they become particularly irritating when placed alongside stationary threats like spiked columns or rebounding shields. I’m talking: bouncing diamondheads, firestreams, rotating laser eye projectors, wall-mounted laser eye projectors, little charmander things, water bubbles, etc….I could go on. While I understand they were just trying to craft unique challenges, it got to a point where it became ridiculous to encounter all these entities that not only served the same purpose, but were somehow stronger than Ganon.

In the end, ALTTP lives and dies by its dungeons, which would’ve been perfectly fine had they not been affected by the game’s other flaws. It does a lot right, and I’m happy it made a large impression on so many people back in the day, but by contemporary standards it’s frustrating- I didn’t even go into the difficulty and poor save spots, which send you back to the very beginning of a Dungeon (thank the Lord for the SNES Classic’s Suspend Points).

If you do play it, I implore you to utilize a guide; otherwise, you’ll be wasting a lot of time (like I did).


NOTES
+The 45 minute total is being generous as a chunk of those tracks, like the main menu and fairy pools themes, have the same copy/pasted harmony. Not to mention the official release comes with an ugly unused ting that was luckily removed in the final product.

-There is a story with a surprising amount of text dedicated to it, but it essentially comes down to the standard good/evil plot of yesteryear (in fact, there are times where it gets silly, like the beginning with Link’s Uncle - you’ll know it when you see it).

-Didn't even get around to talking about the respawning enemies, which get annoying, and the inane control scheme (I will never understand why Nintendo made the select button your weapon menu instead of the map- it's something I never got used to).

-Turtle Rock is full of homages to the Super Mario games: you’ve got lava pits, warp pipe-esque tubes, discount Pokeys, and even two freakin chain chomps!

-Don’t know why it’s called A Link to the Past when you’re traveling between alternate realities. A better title would’ve been A Link Between Worlds….

De longe o game que mais me marcou na vida. Aliás, isso é pouco: simplesmente a obra que mais me marcou na vida, independente do meio.

Até hoje lembro da primeira vez que me deparei com A Link to the Past, aos seis anos de idade. Estava visitando um amigo e, antes de voltar para casa, passamos na casa de um vizinho dele que tinha um Super Nintendo e vários games. Chegando lá, as crianças estavam na sala, já com o videogame ligado e apenas escolhendo o que jogar. O garoto mais velho, que nunca descobriu qual era o nome e provavelmente nunca mais vi na vida, pegou um cartucho e disse "esse aqui, esse aqui é legal". Foi amor à primeira vista. Apenas a cena inicial do game, com Link vagando nos derredores do castelo durante uma noite chuvosa, foi o suficiente para eu ficar absolutamente apaixonado pelo game. Começou assim uma gigantesca obsessão minha pela série, que no decorrer da vida influenciou até minhas relações pessoais. Posso não ser mais tão fanático pela série como há uns 15 anos atrás, mas o impacto que ela - e esse game em específico - tiveram sobre mim é inegável.

Como analisar um game desses objetivamente? Não tem como. Fica a notinha aí e simplesmente segue o jogo.

Fast and hardhitting enemies, constant projectiles and rare heart drops that always requires you to keep moving around while Link is having the traction of a wet diaper. Better be bringing yourself enough healing and magic potions or face the consequences.

A Link to the Past is both challenging and diverse with its otherwise well structured overworld of unique dungeons, sidequests and minigames. There's a fun and charmy adventure to be had if you can abide to its less forgiving nature.

Yeah yeah, this is the best Zelda game ever made and I say that while also not owning a switch, it’s one of the best SNES games of all time, it’s a masterpiece and all that. You've read a review of this game before, I don't need to mention any of that again. Instead, what I want to do is talk about walkthroughs. Folks, do not ever try to shame me for religiously seeking out a walkthrough whenever I play a long game, as I am at this point in my life impervious to such barbs. You want to know why? This fucking game is why.

I received this game for my thirteenth birthday, and I completed it... on my fifteenth. That's right, it took me two straight years to finally beat The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. This was a time where I had no internet, you see, and sad to say I did not even have a dedicated power guide available to me. I had a subscription to Nintendo Power, true, but hints were scant and scattered, and I could neither pinpoint hints that were helpful to my situation nor muster up the courage to ask my mom permission to call the hotline to ask for specific hints. So when I got stuck, I got thoroughly stuck.

I would take hiatuses on this game that lasted for months at a time. I would then one day fondly remember the fun times I had back when I knew what I was doing, and decide to venture once more into the breach. And man, in terms of what the fresh hell this game could possibly want me to do to progress, I stretched my imagination to its very limits. The first time this happened, I needed to get to the castle on Death Mountain to get the third medallion for the Master Sword. I scoured the whole world map, and while I found plenty of heart pieces, and I even found the ice rod, I found no item that would let me access that damn castle. I even thought I needed to go to the side of the mountain with a collapsed bridge, and then use the ice rod to create like an ice bridge to maybe walk over it to the other side and then climb up to the third dungeon. Fuck man, how was I supposed to know? And then guess what? After a time of maybe eight more months of guessing and banging my head on the wall and taking long breaks, I finally figured out, completely on accident, that you're just supposed to stand on a different-colored patch of ground and use the mirror to warp back and forth to reach the Light-World castle. I didn't feel gratified for finally solving a hard puzzle at all, I felt mad that it took me so long to find something so stupidly simple.

Well, whatever, at least now I get to keep playing and finish this thing, right? That's what I thought. Now we're at the second dungeon in the Dark World, and I guess I'm supposed to fill the ditches with water or something. Well, fine, but how? What, with this thing here? What even is it? It's a gray square brick with a thing sticking out of it? What do I do? Reader, I pushed this thing, grabbed it, dashed into it, shot arrows at it, bombed it, hammered it, I thought maybe there's a cracked wall I need to bomb out with another switch somewhere... nothing. For another goddamn year, nothing. I even remember asking a buddy of mine from school who had beaten it before, and all he said was I dunno man, you just throw the switch, and I was like where? Which one? How??!?!? And then, once again, JUST like before, I accidentally ran up against the switch, made it rumble with the sound effect that happens when you push other heavy things. I kept pushing, and it finally flooded the hallways. Well... great. Again, I don't feel proud of myself, I just feel stupid.

The third time is what did it, what made me bite the bullet and just ask my mom to get me a goddamn strategy guide. I don't even remember what it was exactly, but it had something to do in the Turtle Rock dungeon in the room with the chomp-chomps (on a side note, what are chomp-chomps doing here? That's Mario shit, not to mention that's the only time in the game that they show up). Then I finally blaze through Turtle Rock, then Ganon's tower, and then I finally beat Ganon and save the world of light. Was it a satisfying ending? Sure. Worth two goddamn years of being stuck? I dunno.

Cut to a year later, I'm in high school and playing one of the PSX Final Fantasies. I'm stuck again, and I am dreading a repeat of Link to the Past. I'm going to spend three goddamn years hugging and kissing and cuddling my copy of 7 like a teddy bear when I go to bed, all until I finally get through the damn thing. It was my mom who suggested that maybe there's something on the internet (which we now have, thankfully). I searched online and couldn't believe what I saw! There are people who write out entire walkthroughs of any game you can think of, all in their spare time! Well, guess what. I found out I needed to breed a golden chocobo before I could spam Sephiroth with Knights of the Round. I did it, and from that moment on I never looked back.

Folks, I'm gonna use a walkthrough whenever I damn well please. Is it nice when a game is so intuitive that you can not use one and still have fun playing it? Sure, but that happens far too rarely to count on it, and so what, do I just never play any of those other games? Or do I spend years going back and forth on everything, like A Link to the Past, because it's not gentlemanly or some shit unless I beat a game entirely unassisted with only my big brain and the force of my own will? No. I mean, why would I do that? Spoilers? What the hell is there even to spoil in this game? You get medallions, you get a sword, you get seven crystals, you get a silver arrow, you beat Ganon. No one’s playing a Zelda game for its prose!

But even if there was, do you really ruin the game for yourself if you spoil it with a walkthrough? I truly believe in the deepest recesses of my heart that spoilers are overrated. It's true, I more often than not spoil a movie for myself before I watch it, 99% of the time. I just do. First of all, I personally don't like the feeling of not knowing what's going to happen and being in suspense the whole time. And second, when I know what's going to happen, I can focus on other aspects of the storytelling, like hey, it's kind of sad/funny that this character thinks or feels a certain way, especially in light of what I know is going to happen. So it is with me and games. Yeah, a walkthrough can spoil the surprise in a game, but who cares, surprises are superficial. "Sephiroth kills Aeris" is a spoiler, sure, but it doesn't spoil the experience for you of the heartache you feel between Cloud and Aeris' time together knowing what's to come, of Sephiroth gliding down and plunging his sword into her heart from behind, of the sad music as Cloud gently places her body into the water and lets her sink to the bottom as he tearfully says goodbye.

And meanwhile, spoilers can also let me know what I need to do so I'm not grinding my ass trying to figure it out like when I was thirteen with A Link to the Past. Not to mention, if a game is also going to have the audacity to hide things that depend on a "good" ending, or else just include missable content, then it's only thanks to a walkthrough that I'm going to find this stuff. Whenever I figure out a puzzle that takes me forever, or I deign to try a pointless challenge for the sake of achievements, there is something about the way I'm wired that never allows me to say "wow, I did it, I'm so proud of myself!" but always instead, "thank God that's finally over, it was a pain in the ass and I could have been doing anything else instead." And that kind of stress, actually any kind of willful stress like that, is bad for your health, so if I both enjoy games but also want to take measures so I never say that to myself again, well, that's my business.

Am I just showing my ass here because maybe these puzzles weren't all that hard and I was just really dumb as a kid? Yeah, maybe, and what do you care? This isn't a MENSA application, I'm not interviewing with you for a job, I'm not trying to impress anyone on here. You know what, I was kind of dumb as a kid, and truth be told I'm still kind of dumb. You know what I also am? Mortal. I have a finite amount of time and I am never going to waste it again being stuck like I was with ALTTP. There are so many games out there I want to play, and not to mention, so many books, movies, music, and places to travel that I want to experience as well, and I only have a lifetime to catch as much of it as I can. You want to hide your "true" ending behind an easter-egg hunt with no hints whatsoever? I'm gonna look up where they all are on youtube. You want to make your gameplay willfully obtuse because you're banking on me being a salaryman in Osaka who needs an RPG to waste his own time on the Shinkansen before he punches in for work? Well, I'm not, so I'm gonna look it all up in a walkthrough. Do you have an ultimate weapon that I can only get if I spend hours on a casino minigame that takes no skill to complete, but only luck and hours and hours of your own freetime? Thanks, but I think instead I'm going to plug in a code that will give unlimited tokens to get that weapon anyway. Fuck all that bullshit, I don't have time.

And that goes for all of you on this site, especially if you're primarily into retro games like myself. Remember, developers back then deliberately made games either more challenging than they needed to be, or more obtuse than they had to be, all to justify the $60 a pop pricetag for these things. You don't have to play their little game anymore, we have the technology where you can bypass all that shit and experience games like these as fun and playable and approachable. And you owe it to yourself. Just like me, one day you are going to die too. Do you really want to tell St. Peter at the pearly gates that you spent a year of your life playing Ninja Gaiden II over and over again so you could beat it on a no-hit let's play video, do you really think he'll be impressed when you tell him you finally got the pink tail in Final Fantasy IV, or do you maybe, just maybe, want to tell him that you broadened your horizons and played a whole slew of games, and also had time to read books and listen to symphonies and even get out of your house once in a while and see incredible vistas and experience cultures around the world you never thought were possible?

Think about it.

cool little niche underrated gem i found (you probably havent heard of it)

pure ludology crystal - the logical (and good) evolution of the original zelda with features such as "secrets that are hinted at instead of just listed in a guidebook", actual "pacing", "not feeling like youre throwing quarters into an arcade machine" and real, 100% organic, non-gmo "level design"

"it was bad, you should be playing crash twinsanity" - calm gamer

I loved this game so much when I was a teenager. Revisiting it all these years later I found it still largely enjoyable, but it has not aged perfectly. There's still some of the frustrating cryptic progression-gating from the NES original here that forced me to look at a guide a couple times for where on Hylia I was meant to be heading next, whilst the story is a barely-glorified fetch-quest that gave me very little reason to care about its characters (though the opening, breaking into the castle in the pouring rain, still gives me chills).

The dungeons blurred together at points due to the extent to which I felt funnelled from one to the next without that much of a breather, something later Zeldas would avoid via both actual-plot and more substantial side-quests, but they're pretty fun in general. Skull Woods and Thieves' Town were my personal favourite dungeons, with the structure of Skull Woods somehow feeling innovative even almost three decades later, and the boss fights throughout the game are consistently great too.

Overall I still like A Link to the Past, and I certainly respect its historical importance and how huge of a leap forward from the NES original it is, but I think nowadays I see it primarily as a solid foundation that later, sometimes better, entries in the series would build more interesting things on top of.

I've tried twice to beat this game and this most recent time made me tap out in a "death by a thousand tiny cuts" type of way.

It's an adequate game. Nostslgic tunes, wonderful sprite work in the graphics, and it's really neat to see the origins of Zelda tropes that I fell in love with when I played my first Zelda game ever: Ocarina of Time.

And I think that last distinction is what kills this for me. So many quality of life improvements from Ocarina onward make LTTP just unplayable for me.

Yes, it's impressive how LTTP plays with the illusion of 3D space despite being 2D. However, simple things like being unable to strike an enemy because "They're in front of you, but also half a foot below you by the game's standards" made me lose my mind (Literally, you can watch it: https://www.twitch.tv/badelephantgaming/v/1412099864?sr=a&t=145s).

Combat also quite frankly sucks. You get one chop at a lousy 45 degree angle, and a spin attack if you're lucky. Enemy group encounters are basically a death sentence, and the inability to manually control your shield means a fireball hitting your "fireball proof shield" at JUST THE WRONG DEGREE means a precious heart lost.

Look these sound like nitpicks, but as I said: "Death by a thousand tiny cuts." Bad combat means exploration can be tedious because of how often enemies swarm you. It makes you play so defensively that often I'm not exploring at all, I'm strategically running through areas and missing things because I don't want to die and get sent back to the entrances of the long ass dungeons, or on the wrong side of Hyrule.

I've played and enjoyed other 2D Zelda games, but the fact that this is often proclaimed as the best Zelda title baffles me. I just don't feel the power.

Quick prefix, I played this using the SNES thing on switch

I was always very interested in why this game is held as highly as it is. Still to this day being regarded as one of the best Zelda games and it came out 33 years ago. Needless to say this was one of the titles I was looking forward going into during this series replay I'm doing. Upon completion I do really get where the praise comes from, but it still unfortunately suffers from one big issue.

A Link to the Past is the first game in the series to properly nail down the format that the later games can follow. By that I mean that this game adds way more life into its open world through more NPC's, side content and slightly more detailed narrative. Comparing this to Zelda 1 its almost night and day, where that game was as basic as move from dungeon to dungeon, Link to the Past adds so much more to do. It also massively improves upon some framework started in Zelda 2 with towns and proper NPC's. This game is also the introduction of so many franchise mainstays being the first appearance of The Master Sword, Kakariko Village, Hyrule Castle and The Lost Woods. To sum up, this game is where the franchise properly kicks into gear in my opinion.

The dungeons are where this game properly shines. There is 11 dungeons in total if you include Ganon's tower at the end. Each dungeon feels very unique with varying enemy types and layout. The bosses are a big highlight for me as they provide a decent challenge and tend to get tougher as the dungeons go on and also as Link gets stronger. I like that most items are made useful throughout the game unlike in Zelda 1 where most were useless outside of the dungeon you got it in. Traversal is made less boring with the addition of the Pegasus boots letting Link dash across the screen, also allowing fast travel using the flute item which can annoyingly only be used in the light word.

This is also the first Zelda game to have a "Gimmick", such as how Majora's mask has the masks and Tears of the Kingdom has the ultra hand stuff, Link to the Past has the ability to switch between the light and dark world. The dark world is much more of a challenge with enemies dealing way more damage and being harder to kill with weaker weapons. I think this is a great feature for its time but I wish that you got to spend more time properly in the light world as outside of the three introductory dungeons, you spend the entire game in the dark world. Obviously you can jump back and forth to collect items/heart pieces but I wish there was more main quest to do in the light world.

Im a big fan of the SNES art style on a lot of games, something about it just feels nice. It keeps the retro aesthetic but adds in more colour. A lot of enemy variety with sprites and Links design is very unique when comparing to later games. Soundtrack wise it has a slightly more diverse track list than Zelda 1 and 2 but still ends up with tracks becoming repetitive. I also had this issue where whenever I would enter somewhere like Kakariko Village or The Lost Woods, the regular overworld theme would play instead of the specific theme which was annoying.

Now all the positives that I have said about this game come with this one massive * beside them. This game is borderline impossible without a guide. If you want to be on level with the dungeon you are going to, good luck finding the items/heart pieces you need as they are so well hidden that its a surprise people found them in the first place. I think a big reason for this is because of all the advances this game makes in its story and gameplay, it neglected to fix the biggest issue with the first Zelda which was "I don't know how to find anything" which is in turn made worse in this game due to its bigger scale. If it were not for the guide I would of had no clue how to get all the heart pieces I needed, how to get certain items or that you can upgrade the master sword twice. This problem comes with age as Videogames used to be designed with no hand holding whatsoever so that people would spend more time looking around and combing the game for secrets, unfortunately this has not aged well at all. I should also mention a few dungeons are like mazes with lots of unnecessary rooms just to throw you off. Its a massive problem that effects most games on OG Nintendo consoles not just this specifically. There is no shame in using a guide to play this game as you will have a 10 times more enjoyable experience that way and not be walking around lost.

That being said I will still give this game a decently high score. It properly starts a lot of trends the franchise follows from here on out. Besides the caveat of the aged game design, its still a great Zelda game and one of the best 2d Zelda's. For the love of God though, use a guide.

public focus is nearly always put on the changes LTTP would make to the zelda structure, a structure that would go famously untampered with for many years. the way in which dungeons and setpieces are housed within the world and the resultant rhythm of the entire adventure would go on to define zelda for many people. in a similar vein, the dungeons adopt the trademark zelda puzzle-box quality but do not be fooled! dungeon design was still in the oven when this game came out! there are some binding of isaac ass dungeons in this game!

instead, i’d posit the most potent and enduring of lttp’s feats is the game’s embracing of sentimentality.

of the super nintendo’s myriad catalog of “superized” NES titles, lttp stands nearly alone in its reluctance to expand in size. its hyrule is an 8x8 screen block, only matching up to the original’s 16x8 map when bundled with the dark world. instead of building out, all of the increased power has gone into fidelity. gone are the days of nondescript old men and moblins in caves, all replaced by bespoke NPCs with rudimentary but individualized identities. story objectives/side quests and unique characters are mapped to each other, inducing a Pavlovian association between interacting with the people in this realm and forward momentum. this is the game that created the cucoo. can’t argue with that shit

more than the people, the world itself is rife with sentimentality. people don’t remember how prosaic the dungeons can get because of how thematically developed, and crucially, thematically distinct they are. i smiled every single time a dungeon kicked me out to the overworld for a moment, reminding me of the greater world i was inhabiting. your bread and butter in this game is environmental puzzle-solving which engenders a reverence and familiarity of the world in the player. all this is cute, but it wouldn’t mean shit if the world itself didn’t respect your attention. fortunately, it’s real nice. there’s an excellent balance between well-trodden corridors and out-of-the way crannies. furthermore, hyrule is filled with cute details and fun little ornaments. there’s a sense of craftsmanship to the world that rings true even when you’re in a corner that isn’t extrinsically rewarding, something that certainly isn’t true for the games before this one.

these individuals and this world are heralded until the very end, where the game begins another zelda tradition by using the ending sequence to give us a farewell tour of hyrule, followed by a melancholic staff roll over a horizon of rolling hills.

there’s an argument to be made that this sentimentality eventually somewhat swallowed zelda- how many complaints by now have been made at the gargantuan openings of the wii games? but there is an undeniable power in the sense of a wider and grander adventure that you get with these theatrics. even though the moment-to-moment gameplay of this game isn’t revolutionary to the series, zelda 3 plainly earns its notoriety as where the “legend” truly began.

An early 16-bit action RPG with actually functional hit detection and physics? Where using items and magic (with the exception of the medallions) doesn't pause the screen and bring the action to a screeching halt?! Yes please - I wish Secret of Mana / Secret of Evermore took notes from this!

The sense of exploration and discovery is fantastic too - the game drops you in the literal middle of an open world and then nudges you to complete tasks in a somewhat linear order, but it almost always manages to straddle the line between "obvious railroading" and "guide dang it". Supplement this with the large number of minor secrets that don't have anything to do with your main quest but are just waiting to be found, and you have a winner. The world of Hyrule is the perfect size too - sprawling but not overwhelming. The near-perfect sense of exploration plus the decent action elements are enough to make me love this game sans nostalgia goggles, despite its flaws - of which there are quite a few!

I get that it's to be expected from games of this era, but some boss fights and dungeon rooms must have been designed by sadists. Icy floors, moving conveyor belts, darkened rooms, and graphical layers that obscure your view of the action are all present, sometimes in conjunction with each other. And of course Moldorm exists. And while the game is generally forgiving with giving you opportunities to heal, I think having your attacks get stronger as you lose health rather than having a ranged attack that you can only use at full health would make for more compelling gameplay.

Also, the open world works both for and against the game experience. Exploring and discovering new things is a dopamine hit, but backtracking through familiar places fighting the same enemies starts to feel like a chore - not easy enough to switch your brain off (powering through a dungeon you're overleveled for in a JRPG), but not tense enough to feel engaging (Resident Evil remake). I feel like the sense of tedium I sometimes felt when wandering around was linked somewhat to the plot's pacing - the extreme paucity of story beats made me lose momentum at some points, particularly in the game's second act.

As negative as some of the above points sound though, they can be seen as the game being a victim of its own polish. I'd been judging it against other mid-90s RPGs because it looks and feels and sounds like a mid-90s RPG. The fact that this was made so early in the SNES's life cycle blows my mind. This is the first Zelda game I've completed and I'm planning to follow it up with more - and while my impression of this game may evolve once I can view it in the larger context of the series, I can't imagine thinking of this game as anything other than excellent.

Not sure what to say about this game that hasn't been said by basically every other Zelda fan. It's an absolutely fantastic game and a wonderful breath of fresh air after playing the mediocre NES Zelda games. Took me way too long to play Link to the Past but I'm glad I finally did.

The gameplay holds up against any of the modern 2D Zeldas in almost every way.. The combat is great, the exploration is fun, the dungeons are solid. I loved every minute with this game. My only minor complaint is that the combat can be a bit finicky with respect to enemy hitboxes and how an enemy can just sit on top of you, damaging you multiple times. But those are just minor gripes in an otherwise stellar game.

"Finally. Some good fucking food."
For modern players this is likely the oldest Zelda that is still palatable.
Structured to be a semi-linear experience as opposed to the mostly open-ended nature of Zelda I and the strictly segmented structure of Zelda II, ALttP keeps the guard-rails on until the Dark World has been unlocked for a while. Really only offering the option of swapping the order of a few mid-game dungeons around granting the opportunity to attain an upgraded sword early. For 26 years this would be the last time a Zelda game provided such freedom of routing to players. Anyway it's a super solid and laid-back romp through pixel-perfect Hyrule. Unless you're trying to pull off a no-death no-continues clear for a "perfect" save-file, there's minimal challenge to be had that can't be overcome with persistence. Making for an easy recommend to the general gaming audience.

"Mmm. How can we be needlessly obtuse this time... Ah yes. Let's force players to fire their hookshot off-screen in order to reach the third darkworld dungeon." The only reason this didn't trip me up this time was due to my distinct memories as a kid getting annoyed that the skulls to hookshot to have to be blind-fired at. That this is pretty much the extent that ALttP gets obtuse is a credit to its improved signposting for player directions.
It strikes me I forgot about the entrance to Blind's Hideout...

Fuck the digging minigame.

O melhor: O mundo cheio de puzzles e segredos
O pior: Os desafios nas dungeons as vezes são bem frustrantes
Satisfatório: A música de vitória ao derrotar o boss de uma dungeon é uma das melhores do tipo já criadas

Mais um clássico pra riscar da lista. Esse é um que eu tenho a sensação de que gostaria mais se tivesse jogado na época, mas mesmo assim achei um bom jogo. O mapa de Hyrule é bem legal de se explorar, mesmo que os desafios de combate sejam mais um empecilho do que algo divertido de se abordar. Isso fica pior nas dungeons, que no geral não tem um design muito interessante, e muitas salas parecem ser só um amontoado de inimigos e armadilhas, sem muita coesão, para explorar o hardware novo.

Dá pra perceber que o jogo sofre um tanto por ser do primeiro ano do SNES, sempre achei curioso nunca terem lançado outro Zelda nessa geração. Link's Awakening é um jogo que eu consigo ver bem mais polimento de forma geral, mas entendo o carinho que muitos tem por A Link to the Past. Alguns momentos são bem memoráveis, principalmente quando envolvem possíveis descobertas no mapa do jogo, algumas delas bem obscuras. Dá pra ficar perdido algumas vezes se não prestar atenção nos detalhes, e o nível do desafio em geral foi mais alto do que eu esperava.

I don't really think there's much to say about this game that hasn't been said, so I'll keep this short. I wasn't a huge fan of the hit detection or like, overall feel of the game? Too often I felt like I was in the wrong place, or attacking the wrong way, and it just kinda felt mushy to me. Also, some of the late game dungeons throw back to zelda 1 in terms of opaqueness and lack of direction. ANyways pretty much the rest of the game is wonderful, and I get why so many people love this game, even if I don't really. That world, and all the ways you get to explore it at your own pace, would certainly be magical if I was a kid, and had all the time in the world.

Following the massive success of the original Legend of Zelda, and yes, even the success of Zelda II, it was clear that Nintendo needed to pull a hat trick with a third installment to signify the series as one of their staple franchises. With the release of the Super Nintendo, and the incredible success of Super Mario World, it was all too clear where the series needed to go from here. So, after three years of development, Nintendo would then release The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

If you are familiar with the Zelda series, you would know that this game is one of the most beloved in the entire series, and is considered by many to be one of the greatest video games of all time. Personally for me, I also love it a great deal, but I wouldn't consider it to be THAT great. With that being said, it is an absolutely fantastic entry in the franchise, and without of doubt the best Zelda game in the series so far.

The story is standard for Zelda games, but then again, it works for this game and how it executes it, the graphics still hold up extremely well to this day, and are very appealing, the music is incredibly catchy, memorable, and iconic, the control is very solid, with no real problems with it whatsoever, and the gameplay is some of the best that 2D Zelda has ever offered up to this point.

Thankfully, this game returns to the top-down style of the original Legend of Zelda, and the gameplay mostly follows the same formula as that original game. It's an adventure game where you explore a vast world, fight monsters and traverse dangerous landscapes, take on numerous dungeons, fight bosses, and gather a wide assortment of items and upgrades to help you along the way.

All of this would become the staple formula for Zelda for a reason, as this formula was executed almost masterfully with this entry, and I absolutely loved replaying through it all. Exploring this vast, yet simple world, with so much more detail compared to the original game, finding all of the secrets throughout the land, seeing all the different landmarks and people throughout, and conquering all of these simple, yet demanding challenges with the dungeons and bosses. It is all so much fun to accomplish, all accompanied with a sense of freedom to explore the world around you, yet still having a bit of a helping hand with where you need to go next via the story text from NPCs, so you won't feel too completely lost the original Zelda.

As mentioned previously, this game would introduce the formula that most Zelda games after this would take after, where you have to hunt down three treasures of some kind, and then you are sent to a parallel version of the main world, where you then need to then collect more of a central artifact in order to finally take on the big evil, in this case of course being Ganon. Yes, it may be formulaic, especially compared to other games and later entries in the series, but again, it is executed almost perfectly in this entry, and there is a reason that it is still replayed all the way to this day, even with different alterations and playstyles used with the game, like randomizers and plenty of speedruns. Not to mention, many music pieces that would become staples in the Zelda series also stemmed from this game as well.

Now, I know I have been sucking this game's dick throughout the whole review at this point, but believe me, as I have eluded to, I don't think it is perfect, and I do have some issues with it, albeit small ones. First and foremost, while getting all of the optional items, Heart Pieces, and all that is usually pretty enjoyable, some of the little side minigames or whatever that you do in order to get these items can be pretty tedious and annoying. For example, there is this one side minigame in the Dark World where you are given 30 seconds to dig up this field, with there being a heart piece randomly placed in one of the dirt patches every time, so if you aren't lucky, you will have to keep digging... and digging... and digging... and DIGGING over and over and over again. It can get pretty annoying, and again, there are several instances of this in the game.

In addition, I'm not sure if it is just me, but sometimes, the game can become quite a pain when it comes to the amount of damage you can take all at once, with all the shit the game can throw at you either out in the overworld or a room in a dungeon. Again, that might just be a me thing, but that can become quite annoying at times. Other than that, the only other complaint I would have is that it can be a guide game at times, but that doesn't bother me in this instance.

Overall, it is an incredible third entry in this franchise, and a fantastic game in general. Sure, it can be annoying with some elements present in the game, but aside from that, there is a reason it is so fondly remembered as one of the best games in the entire series.

Game #112

There's a lot that's already been said about this game that's pretty obvious but still bears repeating because of just how cool it is, especially when it comes to the dramatic leap in scope that this had when compared to its NES counterparts. With that said, one of the biggest things that I kept thinking about throughout my experience with this is the fact that the way the concept of linearity has been made to sound inherently negative, especially in games that lean into exploration, has made discourse a bit more cut and dry in a lot of areas in ways I'm personally not especially fond of. It ties back into Link to the Past with the way that the game is one that by all accounts acts as if it would feel like a stylistic step away from the first game with its stronger emphasis on concrete story and a more rigid order you need to tackle challenges seeming like it'd detract from the total freedom that the original focused on, but it honestly doesn't. This same feeling is applied to basically everything else this has to offer as well, with the various shifts into more direct ways to guide the player and present ideas almost exclusively contributing to a more well rounded, yet still bold experience.

The big way in which this game feels far closer to what the original was doing than I expected is with the way the separation between the overworld and dungeons is handled. While it's true that the way the player needs to approach the dungeons is basically set in stone and outright told to the player through the map they have, the same cannot be said about the way you're expected to traverse the overworld, and this right here is what allows the game to retain a strong sense of exploration. There's a pretty huge portion of the overworld that you're almost immediately able to explore, and this time around there feels like an even greater reason to do so thanks to the densely packed mountains of secrets and cool little setpieces that you can interact with. In a lot of ways I feel like this manages to even do a better job at encouraging the player to get to know the world they've been placed in than the original due to the way that certain areas are gated off by various means that they'll be able to access later, not just giving a reason to return to a lot of locations multiple times, but rewarding those who put the world of Hyrule under closer scrutiny as they're traversing it. This helps solve one problem with the original game's approach where there was a somewhat impersonal atmosphere to most of it as a lot of screens felt almost exclusively just like another way to get from point A to point B.

This becomes even more vital once the 2nd half of the game begins and the dark world opens up, where the goal becomes learning to understand the relationship between these two worlds and how they'll interact with you switching between them. This ultimately results in turning the entire way that you approach moving around this world as a puzzle in its own right and further facilitates a deeper understanding of the most minute details of everything, where by the end of the game you're almost certain to be intensely familiar with both sides of the world and still end up missing a few things because of how well hidden some of the collectibles are. With that said, the way that you're forced to discover so much of this on your own without any major prompting unless you go out of your way to talk to the fortune teller is what ultimately still allows this to all feel so open despite nudging you in the right direction far more often.

On the other side of things, the linearity of the dungeons is one of the game's most valuable assets with the way that the game is paced practically perfectly in regards to having a ramping sense of difficulty and complexity. The game is only able to feel as smooth as it does thanks to this, as you'll often be combining concepts and item usages you learned hours ago in new settings on top of playing around with whatever new gear you picked up along the way, all with combat scenarios that become increasingly hectic and punishing that are bested thanks to the ever-increasing arsenal you pick up along the way. The progression just feels absolutely spot on, and the fact that this game was still decently action oriented unlike the later games that would often take more of a puzzle approach to most situations at hand leads a greater sense of variety that doesn't solely rely on the item you just picked up to succeed. As a result, the boss fights and dungeon layouts end up being pretty varied, and while it sometimes leads to mild travesties like the Moldorm fight, you also end up getting some insanely cool stuff happening, such as the entire skull woods dungeon or the Trinexx fight.

The story mostly being kept in the background was also a cool choice that I appreciate here, with a lot of it being explained through short lore dumps after you accomplish certain goals before moving onwards, keeping this strange sense of isolation intact while being able to convey a sense of narrative as well. This combined with the hostile nature of the dark world encroaching on the world of light ends up providing some very solid context and drive for you to want to take down Ganon too. Not everything works especially well unfortunately, especially with sword hit detection feeling wonky and there being some moments that really could've been conveyed with more clarity, which stop this from being an all time favourite, but in the grand scheme of things they feel minor enough to stop it from affecting things too egregiously either, Everything about the way the game handles its more conventional and accessible aspects as a means to elevate the core experience while only slightly shifting things along is a big part of the genius that brings to the table, and I feel like it's an element that deserves more recognition considering it was able to do all this while also being such an ambitious step forward in basically every category.

Link to the Past is a tremendous jump forward for the series. A beautifully realized world with several memorable moments along the way, great secrets and stupid fun items. Any and all issues I have are nitpicks, but they do pile up to a point where I enjoy this title less than most. I suppose they just affected my experience more than most. I tried to do this without save states for the most part, so I felt the wrath of backtracking for each one of those small things quite a bit.

Hitboxes are very inconsistent. Slashing horizontally is perfect, but doing so vertically is not. From what I gathered, there is some blind spot on top of your model when swinging from one of the angles. This also causes some enemies to get stuck in your model to hit you multiple times while staying inside your hitbox. Best example of this is the Swamp Palace Boss. If you pull one of his balls with a hookshot from the bottom or top and don't move, you will always get hit. If you do so from the side, you won't. Yes, I have died to this many a time. Yes, it was a skill issue.

I think there's a weird choice to have the same sort of idea for progression through the overworld and the dungeons sometimes. I think there are a lot great secrets that are fun to find after going past them several times and realizing you can now interact with them. Trying to find these somewhere around these huge, scrolling screens you're seeing for the first time isn't as intuitive. Some optional secrets late into the game are much more visible than ways of progressing through the main story. Also, having the first required statue pulling puzzle over halfway into the game threw me for a loop. It was the first thing I had to look up. I know, once more, skill issue.

But that's really it. There's some small inconsistencies I noticed but they didn't really do much against my experience. Those two things led me to many a death, but even then I really enjoyed this game. The dungeons are phenomenal, I enjoyed every bit of them. Super clever design, so many fun ideas, so many cool enemies, so much color, so many excellent designs. Again, just such a huge progression for this series. It's really difficult not to appreciate, and I know because I hit my head against the wall here for a WHILE. Probably took me twice as much as beating the two previous games combined... times two.

the first few hours of alttp's design are nothing short of magic. the game tosses so many new items and concepts of traversal and exploration at the player and allows them to lab those ideas and figure out how they can apply these new concepts without holding their hand through it - and looking at the game from a birds eye view, this is emblematic of the entire experience. that is to say, alttp structures itself around linearity while also nudging the player in new directions enough while they take that main path that they'll find sidequests and off-the-trail objectives on their own if they're paying attention. i think more often than it doesn't the game strikes a wonderful balance with this - and most of the time it's pretty fair in what it expects from you.

presentation is both timeless and beneficially superior for gameplay now. walls are clearly designated when bombable, for instance. holes that can and should be jumped down - considering alttp's love of multi-level dungeons are typically clear in pointing that out. and even from an aesthetical standpoint, alttp shines with gorgeous sprite art and one of the series' best scores.

that said, i think the game often gets ahead of itself with lodging tons of unfun, gratuitous combat in areas where it actively detriments the experience. some dungeons are SERIOUSLY built better than others, with the skull woods and ice palace landing close to the "pretty bad" side of the scale. boss battles typically range from alright to obnoxious. but still, alttp remains a reliable and solid foundation for what the series would do moving forward and a pretty great starting point for those interested in the 2d roots of the franchise.