A Link to the Past was my very first Zelda game and only the second video game I beat after Super Mario World. I was 5 years old that Christmas when I unwrapped my final present to find this beautiful gold box staring back at me. There was no way for me to know that this would be the start to my unconditional love for this video game franchise.

This is the game I have beaten the most during my life and is my favorite Zelda game of all time. From the opening moments in the title screen as the Triforce slowly fades in, I knew this was a special game.

You start the game as Link (although I have always named my character Alex after my uncle who introduced me to the game), as he is sent on a mission to rescue the Princess Zelda from the evil wizard Agahnim. To destroy him you will require the legendary Master Sword which can only be obtained by finding the magical pendants hidden in dungeons across the land of Hyrule.

The formula of the Zelda is well know and is one of the main strengths of the series as you figure out the location of dungeons and the many puzzles within to finally come face to face with the Dungeon Boss. You will move through each area finding keys and special items that help you solve the puzzles that allow you to progress, it is a satisfying loop that challenges and rewards you. The Boss of each dungeon also requiring study to find the weak points that are typically related to the special item you recently found.

When you have finally earned the Master Sword and are on your path to save the Princess and end the game, we are thrown a twist. Transported to the Dark World, we find a Hyrule that is a mirror image of our own however more sinister and twisted. You will travel and beat 7 additional dungeons to earn the power needed to finally take down the mastermind behind the plan, Ganondorf himself.

A Link To The Past is an expertly crafted experience that challenges you to not just solve the puzzles in the dungeons themselves but of the overworld as well as you upgrade your items and discover all the secrets the world has to offer. The music is the highlight of any Zelda game and the score here remains one of my favorites of all time. For many, A Link To The Past may not hold up to the standards set in 2020, but it is without a doubt a monumental achievement for its time that influenced thousands of games that followed it.

Surprisingly immersive for its age and does a fantastic job with the atmosphere throughout the adventure. From key aspects like themed dungeons to Zelda essentials like Cuccos, I really respect how influential this entry is to the rest of the series. I do still prefer the 3D games since the combat here can feel "spammy" and some mandatory sections are too reliant on secrets. Regardless, it's worth commemorating as the oldest Zelda that I still enjoy playing today.

Also, this is not the fault of the game in any way, but I unfortunately associate the art style too much with Graal, a Zelda clone for iPod Touch that I would sink many hours into during middle school.

> Defeats Ganon
> Can wish for anything now
> Wishes for the return of the Monarchy
> Dosen't even fuck Zelda
LINK, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!

A Link to the Past is placed among my top 5 Legend of Zelda games. It was a welcome return to the original style that Zelda II departed from, while adding more features and things that would become staples of the franchise. From heart pieces and Kakariko village to Zelda's Lullaby and the idea of 7 sages (though they are called "wise men" in this game, granted), and many more things to appear later, A Link to the Past was quite formative for the series. The game is truly wonderful. It plays well, looks great and has wonderful music. Definitely worth your time.

When I was a kid, my primary experience with this was messing around in a 100% completed file on a cartridge I borrowed from a babysitter. Like, I never completed it or anything, because I was a dumb kid who didn't really know how to play video games, but it was a really fun sandbox with a bunch of toys to mess around in... toys I didn't even know all the applications of! But it was fun to explore the light world and especially the weird, freaky Dark World, and whenever I tried to start up a file to actually play it I didn't like not having all the items or access to the Dark World right away. So I'd quickly lose interest, especially when the game decided to be at all difficult.

With that said, I feel like the various dungeon items are pretty interesting, especially comparing them to later games. Some of them are not at all necessary to completing the game but provide some interesting combat applications or means of trying to get heart pieces.... while a few end up really redundant or completely useless after a certain point. Looking at you, lantern and Book of Mudora. I guess this isn't really unique to A Link to the Past, but it did lead to the inventory feeling a little cluttered after a while.

As far as the dungeons go, they were pretty alright, I guess. I think my favorite was the town dungeon just because the concept of how to reveal the boss was really neat, and I felt like it had more of a flavor than just... being a dungeon. I sure am glad that I was playing on the Switch Online service with its rewind feature instead of on the Super NES, though, because this game was hard in ways I was not always particularly fond of! Managing the magic meter in particular felt more frustrating than anything else, until learning it was way better to invest my bottle space in cure all potions instead of fairies.

In any case, as far as not gameplay stuff goes, the spritework was overall really great! I loved the designs in the Dark World in particular... and everything to do with the Dark World in general, honestly. The atmosphere was good as heck, and there were a bunch of creepy-cool stories dotted around, like the sad tale of flute boy. The music was also really excellent overall, with some tunes I've been really happy to hear get remixes in games later in the series.

With some of the frustration I felt with the game, I expected to rate this lower, but I feel considerably more positive about it now that I'm done with it? I don't love it the way I love my favorites, but it's a pretty solid game all around. The ending credits were really cute and made my heart smile, so there's that.

This is the first video game I ever emulated, and the first game I beat on an emulator, years and years ago when I was a kid. A lot of time has passed since then and I wanted to give this another go while playing through Zelda so I figured that was a good excuse. Dungeons and exploration become a bit of a slog especially near the end, but overall this might be the second most technically “perfect” game I’ve played after Chrono Trigger. Really encourages me to continue with the older Zelda games I haven’t played yet and give them a first try.

For years - probably as many as six - I'd completely dismissed this game. It just didn't grab me at all, and I'd always dropped the game shortly into the Dark World.

Back in May, I revisited the game and completed my first complete playthrough, forcing myself through... with a guide, if so be it. I disliked it, albeit less than I'd used to. I had difficulty finding heart pieces, and even how to get to the Dark World dungeons... I decided at the time that it's a "perfectly fine game for those who've already taken the time to get used to it" - which is something I still feel about the original Legend of Zelda, but for vastly different reasons.

To some extent, I think I ended up confirming my own thoughts with this playthrough. I was generally familiar with how the game worked better, like the various warp points across Hyrule that wasn't just the Hyrule Castle door; or how you could choose your own order for the dungeons for the most part, postponing Skull Woods for as long as possible so that you're as well-equipped for what it throws at you.
(It's also worth noting that once you're familiar with the dungeon layouts, they're often still just as dungeon crawl-y and straightforward arcade action as the original Legend of Zelda - which I really appreciated now that I didn't find myself completely lost.)

But another key difference is that I think I gave the game time to explain itself as I actually tried exploring around Hyrule as comprehensively as I could with all the gear I had at any given moment, actively looking for potential secrets and shortcuts.

I think LttP's 24 heart pieces and 2 optional items are well-intended, but a little too sparse for what feels like an overworld at least four times as large as the original's, including the Dark World, with considerably less instant payout. Still, I went for them as diligently as I could, realized just how vastly the blue medicine obsoletes having bottled Fairies late into the game, learned that the maps were generally given out early in dungeons and became better at reading them, and made good use of the Cane of Byrna to give myself an easier, more fun time.

Essentially, I started playing Link to the Past almost the same way I played the original Legend of Zelda, and exactly the same way I went through my very first complete run of Link's Awakening (2019) this year.
And with that patience and open-mindedness, Link to the Past reached out to meet me halfway in return.

I can't say I love it, but I like Link to the Past now. It has its place in the series just as much as the games before and after it, even if my own troubled history with it will sometimes convince me otherwise.

What a masterpiece.

I first played A Link to the Past as a young child and was obsessed with it, but it was playing the NES Zelda later in life that really made me appreciate ALTTP all the more. It is where the series really hit its stride, the power of the Super Nintendo having allowed developers to incorporate ambitious design ideas that were impossible before. This was also when the series began to have more of an established identity, with many of its staples being born here, like the Master Sword, the Spin Attack, the hookshot, bottled faeries, those text boxes that end in a "did you understand?" prompt... though in that latter case, the cruel practice of defaulting the cursor to "no" would only begin with Ocarina of Time.

It sounds like a minor thing, but the fact that the game started worrying about information conveyed to the player is in itself a sign of a major shift in the series. The original Zelda rarely expressed itself in words, and when it did, it was immensely cryptic. In A Link to the Past, information gathering is paramount: it's important to talk to NPCs wherever you find them, as they'll give key information that will aid in your quest. They'll also give important hints about the overworld in general, like the location of optional items and upgrades. If someone says "toss a stone into the river up north", you'd better start practicing those throws.

The game strikes a nice balance where it doesn't hold your hand, but also rarely has you making logic leaps about what to do next. On my latest playthrough, I put that to the test, pretending I didn't know where to go or what to do, and it made me appreciate why some people call Zelda an RPG: ALTTP punishes players who play it as an action game and ignore the world around them. It's a game where exploration and note-taking are as important to your quest as completing the dungeons.

Speaking of dungeons, it's another area in which ALTTP is a massive step forward for the franchise. The original LoZ may have had some sprawling dungeons to navigate, but each room was relatively simple: it had enemies to kill and/or blocks to push, and had up to four exits. They also only spanned one floor, with stairs leading to secret passages that connected two faraway rooms. LoZ's levels were groundbreaking for their time, but nowadays feel simplistic and, by the end of the game, repetitive.

A Link to the Past features a whopping eleven dungeons, each of which has a defined identity and hides an important piece of equipment for Link to use, and their design has been massively overhauled. On the room level, rooms come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and can be entered and left from multiple directions. Often, it's important not just to reach a room, but to enter it from the right place. The dungeons' structure in itself has been greatly overhauled, with levels now spaning multiple floors that offer multiple ways to move between them.

Despite being a 2D game, ALTTP expects its player to think of a maze as an object in 3D space, carefully minding which rooms are above or below others, as well as what paths around the level are possible. It's impossible to overstate just how devious the level design is: so many times, the thing you need is right in front of you, unreachable, making you scratch your head over how to get it. The game calls for plenty of observation as well as out-of-the-box thinking, with places like the Tower of Hera hiding the Moon Pearl behind a combination of stage contraptions, the Swamp Palace and its very first room exploring the relationship between worlds, and Skull Woods having multiple entrances, turning the surrounding overworld area into a part of the dungeon.

The overworld is almost a dungeon in itself now, its paths gradually opening themselves as Link's inventory fills up. The map has tons of nooks and crannies ready to reveal themselves the avid explorer, but also features notable landmarks and locations that make it feel like a world instead of just a grid of screens. The experience is further enhanced once the Dark World enters the mix, a twisted version of the real world that becomes accessible after the first few dungeons.

The Dark World changes how the player thinks about overworld navigation by opening up impossible paths in the Light World, and the duality between worlds is explored by a handful of puzzles throughout the game. Plus, the Dark World's atmosphere, enveloped in eternal twilight, filled with far more dangerous monsters than what you'd faced to that point in your adventure, reinforces the feelings of desolation that are central to A Link to the Past's narrative.

A Link to the Past is a true marvel. If anything, replaying it makes me slightly melancholic that the game gets pushed aside so often, along with the rest of the top-down Zeldas, as being outdated and obtuse. I've heard so many complaints that the puzzles are too hard, or that the enemies are too strong, or that it has too many dungeons. If that wasn't bad enough, I've watched a streamer ragequit over a puzzle that can easily be solved by looking at the in-game map, which he refused to do.

And the saddest part is that the Zelda series in itself evolved in order to accommodate these complaints, with some of the later games not respecting the player's intelligence and preventing them from navigating the levels on their own -- heck, the industry itself followed suit, with so many modern AAA games going as far as spoiling puzzles before you even touch them. ALttP is a throwback to earlier times, not too early that games gave you no information, not too late that they held you by the hand. A true Link to the Past.

...I cannot possibly end on that pun, can I? Uh... So, ALttP is really good and... uh... Hey, did you know there was this Japan-exclusive SNES Zelda game that was essentially a remix of A Link to the Past?! It's called Inishie no Sekiban, or Ancient Stone Tablets, and was released on an obscure SNES addon called the Satellaview. It has four parts to it, and plays basically like an official romhack of ALttP, which is a treat for all of us who love the game. If you're interested, you can find more info on the game and how to play it over on the BS Zelda (that's "Broadcast Satellite") section of the Zelda Legends website.

“THE REASON YOU BOUGHT A STRATEGY GUIDE IN 1992”

My previous forays into Legend of Zelda have not been kind. Shortly after giving up on Zelda II, I decided – you know what? – let’s get into A Link to the Past!

I’d heard a lot of good things about ALttP. Many friends and longtime Zelda fans have claimed that this is where the series truly begins. This is where the Legend of Zelda gets good.

And well, hey, it’s definitely my favorite opening hour of any LoZ game I’ve played so far. For a fleeting sixty minutes I really believed I might’ve been playing the best Zelda game ever made. Captivating, deftly-paced, and a map with objective markers. Talk about an upgrade!

So what happened?

Honestly I haven’t been feeling very confident about my internal rating system as of late. Sonic 1 and 2 are a 5/10. Super Mario Land is a 5/10. Final Fantasy XVI is a 5/10. And now this. I can’t really reconcile with the idea that all these games are similar quality-wise, because they’re not. All scores are subjective. Maybe one day I’ll realize Super Mario Land is actually the best Mario game ever, and maybe I’ll revisit Sonic 2 and fall madly in love.

Likewise, a Link to the Past is not a bad game by any metric; for me personally, a 5/10 is not a bad score by any metric. I’m weighing everything but I’m also going with my gut here.

I believe that playing Link’s Awakening prepared me a little more for ALttP. Knowing that Link’s Awakening was released after ALttP makes me want to play through Link’s Awakening again at some point – but also, it makes me question some of that game’s mechanics/conceits a bit more.

There is a good amount of streamlining here, mainly with map markers and fast travel using the ocarina, but it’s still not enough. Link’s Awakening had Ulrira giving you hints through the telephone, which was a good way to give players some direction (or a necessary refresher if you took weeklong breaks like I did). ALttP has fortune tellers, which give you some hints and even refill your health to max when you consult them – this is great! I was very happy with the fortune tellers… until they stopped being useful.

Towards the second half of the game, I guess the developers decided that hints weren’t conducive to players making progress, and then relegated the remaining hints to optional side quests.

Unfortunately, I suffered from a lot of the same meandering in ALttP as I did in Link’s Awakening. I was always wondering, “Where am I supposed to go?” Even with a map marker, the exact sequence of steps needed to access some dungeons can oftentimes be a little confusing at best, and downright hieroglyphic at worst.

There was always a 50/50 chance that what I needed to do was tied to a puzzle within the vicinity of the place I was in – or it was on the complete opposite end of the world map. I hate playing games where I need to keep referring back to a guide to navigate. For this game, I only opened a guide when I needed to know – is the answer nearby or someplace else?

Unlike Link’s Awakening, however, I found that the answer was almost always close by. There were also only a few times where my progress was interrupted because I didn’t have X or Y items. You get the idea. It still ain’t perfect.

I really enjoyed the dungeons in the latter half of the game where I felt the difficulty was balanced more around a series of increasingly harder encounters and room-based puzzles instead of constant backtracking and guesswork. Or maybe I’m just getting better at the series’ vocabulary.

Sometimes, you push a block, and a door opens. Sometimes, you kill all the enemies in a room, and you get a key. Simple stuff.

Even so, and knowing full well this is a 30+ year old game that’s been endlessly reiterated upon, the game really should’ve been more explicit in its demands and expectations of players.

For example: in the seventh dungeon, Turtle Rock, the player gets a popup saying they shouldn’t proceed unless they have a magic potion (to refill their magic meter). What the game doesn’t tell you is that you need the Ice Rod to defeat the dungeon boss, which is an easily missable item on the other side of the Light World map that isn’t required for any other section in the game.

I understand most people that’ve played this game are speaking about it from a nostalgic POV. They played it growing up. Tips and strategies for certain areas were tribal knowledge. Games were journeys back then.

It’s a weird problem because I’m playing this game on my Nintendo Switch handheld, and I typically space out hour long play sessions over days or weeks. I feel like the average player back then would’ve spent double or triple the amount of time I did dawdling around looking for clues on how to progress. I would love to really soak in Hyrule and appreciate every pixel of the artistry on display here, but that’s just… not how I play games. Obviously I don’t like to rush through games either, but I have my limits. I don’t always need to know what I’m supposed to be doing, but I’d at least like some more direction.

I don’t approach games or films or television shows or books with the goal of “consumption”. But with games, it’s also a matter of ability – both latent skill and learned experience. I mean, other types of media can be “challenging,” sure, but with games, it’s not like films or TV shows stonewall their audience if they don’t understand the plot or the script or the visual storytelling. Movies don’t stop if you don’t ace a pop quiz or whatever. Video games are different. You’re getting pop quiz after pop quiz and if you don’t pass each one consecutively, you get held back.

Written guides feel like cheating if you ask me. But also, what else are you supposed to do? Spend countless hours trial-and-erroring your way towards victory? You do you, man. If you’ve got that kind of time – by all means, go for it. Thing is, I didn’t grow up with this. I’ve got hundreds of games I want to play. I’ll do guesswork until I’m red in the face and then I’m just using a guide because I need to progress.

Just tell me where I need to go. That’s it. If I need an item in the desert, tell me. Give me a popup that says, “Hey [playername], you might need an item from the desert to access this dungeon”. That’s all I need.

I also definitely abused the rewind feature on this one. Too many ridiculous traps and combat encounters to contend with later on. Way too much combat for my tastes. The i-frame windows are not generous at all, some enemies practically stunlocked me to death in some instances.

Maybe you’re a fan of the cryptic puzzles. Maybe it makes you feel like a real adventurer. That’s great! I love that for you. I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum.

My enjoyment of the game was split 50/50: on one hand, when I was able to figure out a puzzle solution or traverse a dungeon on my own, I had a blast; on the other hand, whenever I ran into the myriad progression-halting puzzles or trial-and-error boss fights, I felt like I was banging my head against a wall. My score reflects this experience.

You might want to play this one with a guide.

As technological advancement came, arose the opportunity to streamline the format introduced in the first Legend of Zelda, attempting to replicate its penchant for exploration, all the while setting new standards for accessibility and world design, trying to keep the sense of wonder and adventure from the original but without the obtuseness and steep difficulty. All that seems like taking an already brilliant game and polishing it to perfection, introducing new ideas that improve the experience, yet, in the case of this game, that approach has diminishing returns. In a nutshell, the ideas introduced in this game would inevitably spread in the gaming industry like wildfire, all the while defining Zelda experiences to come, yet, this first implementation of said ideas is, while playing in present day, very lacking.

'Dated' is a very common adjective in gaming discourse, much more than with other mediums, as the standards for how satisfying and fun a game can be and how pristine it can sound or look are intimately tied with technological advancement, and consumers are even more picky for it being an interactive medium which demands many hours of time investment. Take the 80s as a reference point: for pretty much the whole of the 2010s there was a wave of 80s nostalgia, many movies, TV shows and music from that era are still considered classics to this day and the entire cultural ethos of that era is still being replicated in all sorts of media; except for video games – you don't really see titles from the 80s being talked about anymore, aside from rare exceptions like Pac-Man, Tetris, and the early Mario games from the tail end of the decade, and the design philosophies that were commonplace back then are comfortably considered a thing of the past, even the retro-est revivalist game won't try to replicate the cheap deaths, the password system, the chopped audio and the deeply limited color palette of that era. The point being that, while other mediums have so many enduring classics from many eras, games usually age much faster, and while classics like Chrono Trigger and Super Metroid have managed to remain a part of its canon, for every one of these there's a thousand 'Boogerman' and 'James Pond's completely lost to time.

With all that said, A Link to the Past is not dated. Not in the slightest even, its revolutionary ideas such as its progression system from which nearly every action RPG or adventure game since its release borrowed at list a bit, with stuff like heart pieces and item-specific quests becoming a staple, its dungeon design and puzzles, its narrative structure which places every beat around an objective being fulfilled, bringing a sense of cohesion with the gameplay, its alternate dark world map and the many ways it interacts with the main one, and, specially, the way it conveys information to the player through visual and audio cues, all still feel very modern, and its mechanics still could show up in a game released in 2022; Tunic is an obvious example. Definitely, age is not what brings this game down in my estimation, at least not in a direct way.

What does, though, is how all those brilliant ideas were implemented in such a staunchly boring way. Take the story, for example: princess gets kidnapped by evil wizard who needs her for magic shenanigans, Link goes to the rescue, is aided by a guy named fucking SARASRAHLA, needs to collect three thingys to find a sword strong enough to kill him, but unsurprisingly he's not the main villain, so Link goes to save more maidens in distress + Zelda, kill the true bad guy Ganon and restore peace to the world. I can't even think of a more unimaginative fantasy backdrop for a game, there's like one or two memorable characters in the game and they aren't even IN the main story. Without a strong narrative to engage the player constantly, there is an even greater need for the game mechanics to shine, and while they do, in parts, they're mostly every bit as uneventful as the storytelling.

The original Zelda, despite its severe limitations, was very successful in channeling a sense of wonder and adventure to the player, Hyrule really felt like a three-dimensional and mysterious land with secrets at every corner, the powerlessness of the player character and its handling of information surely helped in this, making the world feel huge and challenging to traverse, while keeping a cohesion that further made it feel like a true interconnected world. In a Link to the Past, however, i'm reluctant to even call the map 'open', since it's so restrictive and bound to a linear sense of progression it feels pointless to explore and take risks like in the original, ending up resembling the open worlds of today, and not in a good way; if the player wants to poke around the map looking for something interesting to do, the possibility is there, but there won't be almost anything to find, since nearly every area of the map is bound by some story beat you need to overcome first, otherwise it's either inaccessible altogether or just devoid of anything to interact with, and that's made even more annoying by how hostile the overworld is, just traversing from point A to point B is a pain in the ass since the game won't allow for any spot to not have relentless respawning enemies. In that sense, the moments where it rewards exploration the most are in the side collectibles, such as the heart pieces and items, specially in their interactions in the dark world, with some cool tests of spacial awareness, yet those are so telegraphed and simple they barely even feel satisfying, like they're not even an achievement to begin with, just something you have to go through to strengthen your character, essentially Zelda's version of grinding.

Speaking of the combat, well, it sucks. Sure, you can get used to it, and even get quite good at it, that skill is surely needed in some bosses down the road, but it's never really fun and absolutely not empowering in the slightest. The quirky mechanics applied to every enemy and the way there's a different strategy for every one of them is a very creative idea, one which surely influenced the Souls-like games, and should work beautifully to make the combat more engaging, but instead it just makes it frustrating and annoying, as it never really feels like you're fighting monsters as much as like you're solving puzzles, and not even the good kind. There's just so much about this combat system that i hate, like how the fighting itself feels iffy, with still no diagonal attacks like in the original – even though many enemies CAN attack diagonally –, the way so many attacks and offensive items are mostly useless, like the spin attack that has a veeery situational use and the boomerang which even fully upgraded i struggled to find any use for. There isn't a particular problem for taking a more strategic approach to a combat system that doesn't feel like just a power fantasy, but with this pace, this balancing, this presentation and this difficulty? It doesn't really work, a much simpler and shallower system would be much more welcome instead of an intricate one done poorly.

Admittedly, when i squint my eyes i can still see the sparks of brilliance this game has, and can definitely imagine how amazing it would have been to have played it in 1991, there truly wasn't anything like it back then; the Dark World stuff is specially compelling and cool, one of the most surprising aspects of the game. But playing it in 2022, i couldn't help but view it as just a blueprint for better games to come, which would take those ideas and make something truly special out of them. Even if all those elements it introduced are still modern and thus made it "age well", it lacks much of the charm, polish and uniqueness that would make this a truly timeless game; it's that extra oomph makes a game that's clearly dated, like Super Mario 64 with its sucky camera and unflattering graphics, still a masterpiece to this day – while equally influential, its singular feel hasn't really been replicated or done better since, which can't really be said for ALttP; a timeless game isn't about not being 'dated', it's about doing something special that resonates through all time. So, for all intents and purposes, the SNES cartridge for A Link to the Past documents a remarkable triumph of creative and innovative game design, which unfortunately makes for an unremarkable game that adds up to less than the sum of its parts. If anything, it makes me excited for the rest of the games on the franchise!

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is the first honest-to-god great Zelda game. Whereas the previous two titles were held back both by hardware and the design ethos of the era, this 16-bit entry is far less encumbered and thus able to make good on the promise of the original.

After Zelda II's side-scrolling detour, A Link to the Past returns to the top-down formula that was at the core of the original. Once again you're traversing the overworld of Hyrule, discovering and completing dungeons, gaining new weapons, filling out your hearts, and preparing for a showdown with Ganon. But the amount of depth available here is almost staggering when coming off the heels of its predecessors. Dungeons are more complex and loop around on themselves in a way that feels much more intelligent, and puzzles are far less rote. The tools and items you find along your journey not only provide clear utility for the dungeon you're currently exploring, but open up new pathways in the overworld, encouraging the player to return to familiar locations and experiment. The overworld itself (and the discovery of dungeons within) is a lot less obtuse to navigate, and is brimming with NPCs and interesting locations, drawing you in and connecting you more to this rendition of Hyrule than the two that came before.

Augmenting this is the Dark World, a shadow version of Hyrule that players must explore to complete puzzles. This mechanic of layering two versions of the same location has been oft-repeated gaming since, and to varying degrees of success. More often than not I'm not a fan of it, so perhaps I'm a bit biased, but I feel it's a weak point here. There are times where it's utilized to great effect and others where it feels like padding. Ultimately, I think A Link Between Worlds (the direct sequel to this game) made better use of it overall by freeing up more of the world map, giving you more of a reason to explore the Dark World outside of addressing a few key progression puzzles.

I didn't get to play this game when it came out, though I did have my gross PB&J encrusted hands all over my grandpa's NES controller getting absolutely nowhere in the first two games. I'm sure if I played this at the time it would be utterly mind-blowing given the only two available points of comparison I had. I've played a lot of Zelda games since then. Almost all of them. A Link to the Past's DNA is ever-present in the franchise, and in a lot of ways I felt I've played this game without actually playing it. But damn if it doesn't hold up to the scrutiny of time. I was so sure that by now there was no way it'd live up to the hype, and to a certain extent it doesn't and never could, but A Link to the Past still exceeded any expectation I had for it. If you haven't played any of these earlier Zelda games, Zelda and Zelda II are fine for a novel glance, but you should really give A Link to the Past your attention.

Its suprising to find so many great elements introduced in this game that would reappear in most zelda games that released after this one. It aged really well as I was enjoying playing the game in 2021 without major issues. In the first 80% of the game I basically never used a guide because I did not have to. Only for the last 2 Dungeons I kept looking into a guide as it helped me progress more smoothly towards the end. I did not really enjoy the last 2 or 3 Dungeons in Zelda 1 and as this is the second Zelda game I played since starting the "lets play all zelda games in release order" project (I skipped zelda 2), I appreciate that the dungeon design wasn't nearly as annoying in the last two dungeons here. I have to be honest and say I abused the "wind back" feature the switch emulation offers quite often, but I did not want to get frustrated by dying in the last dungeon a dozen times :)