Reviews from

in the past


Rounded off my revisit marathon of the old isometric Zelda games with a linked playthrough of the two Oracle games on the Gameboy Color. As with Link's Awakening, I just bought them on the Japanese 3DS eShop, as it was the cheapest and easiest way to play them for me (and I'd never gotten a chance to play through them in Japanese before, so this was a very neat way to do that~). Ages took me just under 13 hours to get through, and Seasons took me just a hair over 10 hours. I didn't do alll the content in both (and made no dedicated effort to collect rings in either), but I did do most of the heart pieces and the trading sequence in each. They're games which were released as a pair, and even have content that can only be accessed by using a code at the end of one at the start of the other. All of my praises and comments of one are really directly linked to the other in many ways, and the way they were developed side-by-side as well just made it make more sense to me to do a combo-review for them both instead of just constantly referring back and forth to each of them in two separate reviews to make all the same points twice XD.

The first thing I'll comment on is the original translation of the games. Other than some super minor things like General Onox being named General Gorgon in this version, the translation is pretty hard to find differences in compared to the English version. Nowhere is there something nearly as blatantly obvious on a visual level as Link's Awakening's changing of you returning the mermaid's bikini top to her (instead of her necklace as it is in the English version). However, the one REALLY painfully obvious bit that was changed for the English version is the ring-shop owner. The Oracle games have a ring-system that is basically just passives that Link can equip several at a time at the ring shop after having them identified. In the English version, the ring shop owner is just a bit of an eccentric guy who loves rings and sharing them with people. In the Japanese original, however, the ring shop owner is a pretty damn offensive gay stereotype who hits on Link in like every conversation they have together (he even gives Link the ability to use rings because he says Link is "his type"). '~' to emphasis syllables being said lyrically and hearts punctuate his speech constantly, and I'm just glad he's a pretty easily ignored part of the game, because it's honestly a pretty terrible portrayal that has NOT aged well (although is hardly a rare sight in Japanese media from back then, unfortunately). Like, at least he isn't a villainous character, but using "they're queer" as shorthand for eccentricity is just such appallingly lazy writing on top of the offensive trope that I really can not let it go unmentioned here in good conscience. And while I can let Nintendo themselves slide on this one, as Flagship wrote the scenario for this instead of them, main villains like Yuga and Girahim in more recent Nintendo-written and developed Nintendo games show that they still aren't afraid to use queer-coding to denote eccentricity :/

Pivoting to their design, both games take a lot of graphical assets, like a LOT, from Link's Awakening, and both play pretty similarly to that game. There has clearly been some engine work done on more subtle mechanical levels (for example, picking up pots with the power bracelet takes ever so slightly longer), as well as more directly and immediately noticeable ones (like how you need to be moving forward to throw a bomb/pot in front of you, and not just drop it on top of yourself). Other than that, though, the way the game plays should be immediately recognizable to any who has spent any length of time with Link's Awakening, even down to how you can still reassign any item you have to either the A or B button.

The main difference that is most immediately obvious is how much this game has improved its signposting compared to Link's Awakening. You just about always have a character whom you can go back to talk to for a hint about where to go next, and they always hit you up with a quick, mandatory cutscene not only after dungeons but after key plot developments to give you a kick in the right direction. Knowing where to go next and how to do it is FAR less of a problem in the Oracle games than in Link's Awakening, and it makes getting from point A to point B in each game a much easier affair.

These games have an interesting history that really shows in their final presentation. Originally intended to be SIX games developed by Capcom for Nintendo, two of which being remakes of the first two NES Zelda games, that was soon scaled back to three new games that would be interconnected, and then again scaled back to two. This can be seen not just in how Seasons has many dungeon bosses that are straight-out of Zelda 1 (likely assets finished before the decision was made to scrap that remake idea) to how similar the sub-items in each game are to one another.

However, the other thing I really noticed that made sense with this history is just how much Oracle of Seasons feels like the "first great idea" for the interlinked-game premise, and Oracle of Ages feels like the "good enough supplementary idea". Oracle of Seasons is superior in so many ways to Oracle of Ages, mostly on account of each game's respective gimmick, that is makes Oracle of Ages look a lot worse quality-wise when the direct comparison is forced due to their connected nature.

Seasons' gimmick is a rod that lets you change seasons by standing atop stumps you can find throughout the game. A mechanic that Minish Cap would later almost directly copy with how you can only shrink on top of certain stump (or stump-like objects). You change the seasons depending on what season-spirits you have, and it's an animation that takes roughly a second and a half. The world around you will change depending on the season (snow piling up to make new platforms in winter, leaves covering up pits in fall, water drying up in summer, flowers blooming in spring) and can allow you to access new areas because of it. It works really well, and even though you need to find the stumps to progress are easy to find as the world map is telegraphed very naturally to lead you where to go next. The game has lots of effectively micro-areas that are explored on their own and lead to the next dungeon, and it gives the game a very nice flow that is reminiscent of how quick the pacing was in something like LTTP.

Ages' gimmick is a harp that allows you to change time periods between the present and a hundred years in the past. This is done first through special spots on the map where you can activate a time portal, but you eventually get the ability to do it anywhere in either time period. However, you need to do this a LOT, and the animation for changing time period genuinely takes like 10 seconds, and it's not loading times or anything. It's just a luxury animation that takes that long to do. This means, especially later in the game when you're trying to find out just where to go next, the trial and error to find those places takes FAR longer than in Seasons' where the season changing is so quick. The methods of design necessitated by these gimmicks is where the steep shift in quality between them originates from.

Originally, there were going to be the three games, one for each part of the Triforce: power, wisdom, and courage. Courage (and the intriguing concept of it being based around a color gimmick, not unlike Link's Awakening DX's color dungeon) was scrapped and Power became Oracle of Seasons and wisdom became Oracle of Ages. This means that, as a deliberate focus of the design, Seasons has a bigger focus on combat, and Ages has a bigger focus on puzzle solving. But this extends further than just a marketing platitude.

Ages' focus on not just puzzle solving but time travel means that it has a MUCH larger focus on narrative than either of the other GBC Zelda games, as the causality-focused time travel game mechanic is inseparably linked to the game's narrative. The evil Priestess Veran is constantly coming back up in the story with a new scheme to alter time in her favor usually involving the titular Oracle of Ages, Nayru. By comparison General Onox (aka General Gorgon in the Japanese version) and the Oracle of Seasons he kidnaps, Dinn, are so rarely even mentioned, let alone present, in Seasons' narrative it can be easy to forget they're even there.

But this has the knock-on effect that Ages is a much more frustrating and rigid game to get through, as many more NPC-related sidequests are required to get from dungeon to dungeon as Link alters their fates through the time stream. This ends up slowing the game WAY down with a lot more dialogue (and time travel cutscenes), especially if you can't quite work out how to progress the plot. The signposting in these games is better than Link's Awakening, but it's still noticeably rougher in Ages than Seasons. Where the end of a mini-area in Seasons is often capped off with entering the dungeon for it, Ages is plagued with frequent back-tracking through an area and its NPCs to try and find the dialogue cue you missed that lets you get the next thing that will let you get into that dungeon in the first place.

Seasons still has puzzles, and good ones too. I found them more often far more intuitive than Ages, where I frequently had to look up online how to progress because I just wasn't getting what the game wanted from me. Ages' focus on puzzles for the sake of them really slows the whole game down, and can make its dungeons feel labyrinthine and kinda devoid of enemies because the puzzles are the focus. This makes Ages' dungeons feel like far more of a slog where progression is incremental and mechanical, like work, where Link's Awakening and Seasons' more mediated approaches to dungeon design give them far better pacing and makes the dungeons more fun. Sure, Seasons has a lot of bosses recycled from Zelda 1, but if it ain't broke, don't fix it as far as I'm concerned. Seasons' re-use in a GBC-style of Zelda 1 bosses (and one Link's Awakening boss as a mini-boss) gives it ultimately better boss fights than Ages, which often feel more like an afterthought (or a frustrating, poorly explained puzzle in and of themselves that require looking up how to even harm). Ages feels like its focus on puzzles comes at the expense of the rest of its design, where Seasons feels like a more balanced experience overall, and only has a more pronounced combat focus in comparison to Ages. As far as overall balance is concerned, Seasons feels like a much more natural successor to the pacing set forth in Link's Awakening than it does as a companion game to Oracle of Ages.

Ages' narrative is really nothing special either. It's the most dialogue-heavy of the handheld games for sure, but both Oracle games came out after both N64 titles (and each actually feature NPCs from each N64 game to boot). Ages narrative, the most noticeable and pronounced part of its design, does not do nearly enough legwork to make up for the overall quality lost in its mechanical and design aspects, and even then doesn't hold much of a candle to either N64 game's narrative.

Verdict:
Oracle of Seasons: Highly Recommended.
Oracle of Ages: Hesitantly Recommended.

Both Oracle games were designed around gimmicks, but where Seasons exceeds its status as a gimmick game and just feels like another good Zelda game, Ages feels bogged down by its gimmick every step of the way and never escapes feeling like a gimmick title. Oracle of Seasons feels like a natural progression of the good combat and dungeon design of Link's Awakening with better signposting to boot. Oracle of Ages, on the other hand, feels like a monument to compromise in many ways, and it consistently feels like a game that was put together to fit the theme rather than the other way around, and the quality suffered because of it. Oracle of Ages certainly isn't a bad game, but if you can only play one Oracle game, make it Seasons. Seasons has always been my favorite isometric 2D Zelda game, and this replay re-confirmed that for me. However, all my replay of Oracle of Ages did was cement it firmly at the bottom of the list of my favorite 2D isometric Zelda games.

The dungeons lack the finesse of other 2D Zelda games where there are a lot of dead ends that only serve as rooms for keys, forcing you to backtrack through the platforming rooms after obtaining the items on another end. It's actually quicker to save and quit so you respawn back at the entrance of a dungeon.

The last dungeon, Sword and Shield Maze, contains one of the most annoying soundtracks in the series, which is made even more so by having the dungeon being one of the largest and longest as well.

Despite those, I had a good time with this game again.

i read the manga as a kid and those books convinced me that I had to play this game. It's kinda just alright tho, would love a remaster

No me imagino hoy en la actualidad buscando cómo avanzar, realmente es un Zelda clásico que necesita su tiempo para avanzar


Holodrum is one of my best Zelda lands ever. It's a nostalgic game so I guess that plays with my judgement, but I still love the environment so much.

La mecánica de las estaciones es muy buena, al igual que los dungeons. Un excelente Zelda.

Played it as my linked game and it wasn't long before I realized it was my favorite of the two. From the seasons mechanic, to the items (magnetic glove, magic boomerang, roc's cape are all much preferred to the power glove and switch hook), to the dungeon themselves, to certain pieces of music such as Tarm Ruins and Temple Ruins, and the subterranean land of Subrosia. While not as powerful or as complete an experience as Link's Awakening, it is top tier Zelda in the gameplay department.

This game released in a very awkward time for Nintendo games, being primarily designed for the Game Boy color. The overall scope and length of the game is considerably improved over Link's Awakening, but offers little nothing more in its gameplay. The Rod of Seasons mechanic is definitely very well thought out but the dungeons came across as a tad bit tedious to me. Still a fun game, but when compared to other portable Zelda titles it does not seem to be up to par.

This review contains spoilers

Tremendo juegardo. Un par de veces no supe donde ir, otro par de veces me quedé atascado con gilipolleces. Pero como videojuego de aventuras esta bien. Los puzzles no son en exceso complejos pero si que hay un par que te hacen pensar o mirar las cosas desde otro punto de vista. El combate es sencillo, la única pega que tengo es en el combate final no me quedó claro lo de usar la varita de las estaciones para empujar, por qué es algo que en ningún momento aproveché, lo probé, pero no le vi mucha utilidad. El diseño de niveles me gustó, y los personajes también aún no habiendo mucha profundidad. Musisotes chudos.

((Jugué este primero creyendo que de los dos era el más enfocado en puzzles, cuando no es el caso. Oracle of Ages está enfocado en puzzles, mientras que Oracle of Seasons está más enfocado en la acción))

If you wanted more Link's Awakening, this is more of it. This is the more action-oriented one of the two Oracle games, and it's my favorite of the two.

played in its entirety on my r4 on my 3ds. it's fantastic, and overlooked!

Note: This playthrough of Oracle of Seasons was played as the sequel to Oracle of Ages via the Linked Game feature

What strikes me most about Oracle of Seasons is how different the overall experience feels from Oracle of Ages. While both games in the duology were released on the same day in 2001 and look similar at a glance, Zelda fans of the era were treated to two unique adventures. A common refrain for these games is that Ages focuses on puzzles while Seasons focuses on combat. I personally find this view is a bit simplistic as dungeons in both games contain elements of puzzles and action. Rather, each of these games channel different modes of exploration that the Zelda series tends to draw from. And these modes of exploration can clearly be seen through the design of each game's overworld.

Oracle of Ages is a puzzle-led exploratory action game. The world of Labrynna is, as its name suggests, a labyrinth. It is confusing to navigate around and requires using your items to puzzle out the path to the next dungeon via the present and past timeline maps. There are specific routes and combinations of items that need to be used to navigate its world.

Oracle of Seasons is a discovery-led exploratory action game. While the overworld still gates specific areas until you get a specific item, you can explore much more of the overworld in a freeform manner. The map doesn't feel nearly as constrained in how you can navigate it. The featured item of the game, the Rod of Seasons, can manipulate how you traverse the overworld by changing the season while standing on a tree stump. This enables the discovery-led exploration. The flow of the game is such that you find a new area with a stump, manipulate the seasons, and explore the surrounding area to discover new changes in the overworld that will allow you to traverse forward. You are also encouraged to keep an eye out during exploration since secret caves, staircases, and portals can become available to you as the seasons change.

With an emphasis on discovery via exploration, Seasons specifically feels like a spiritual successor to the original Legend of Zelda on NES. Having just played the original Zelda, it was fun to spot all of the connections! The manner in which you navigate to Dungeon 1 and its appearance on the outside directly resembles Dungeon 1 in the original Zelda. Seasons also has a mechanic where you can burn bushes, bomb caves, and find other mysterious entrances to reveal old men that do a variety of things. Like in Zelda 1, these characters can steal your money, give you money, or other provide other fun secrets. Even some of the Zelda 1 dungeon bosses make a return!

The other notable feature of the Oracle games is the ability to link the games to each other to create a seamless story. After finishing Oracle of Ages, you are given a password that can be entered into Oracle of Seasons to continue the story. After doing this, Seasons will contain new plot events, a new endgame, and the ability to upgrade items by passing passwords you discover in Seasons back into Ages (and vice versa). Even after finishing Ages, I was constantly dipping back into it during my playthrough of Seasons to get secret items I could transfer back to Seasons. It sounds a bit confusing to type out but works well in practice. It's a cool system that makes these Zelda adventures feel like more than the sum of their parts.

Overall, I enjoyed the flow of Oracle of Ages slightly better than Seasons as my personal preferences for 2D Zelda slide towards puzzle-led exploration. I also connected more with Ages' world since it was a difficult experience to puzzle my way across it. But Oracle of Seasons is an excellent game in its own right and when linked with Ages, these two games provide an epic, handheld Zelda experience. The dungeons are excellent, the overworld exploration is satisfying, and the scenarios you come across are funny and memorable.

Favorite Music: I love the music in Oracle of Seasons so much more than Oracle of Ages. Playing Seasons puts into contrast what exactly I thought was missing in Ages. The town themes and dungeon themes are memorable and atmospheric. The songs below are all unique to Oracle of Seasons while my favorite songs in Oracle of Ages are shared between both games. That fact alone puts my feelings on both soundtracks into clearer focus.

Horon Village: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MP5BC6rgFas&list=PLD7475F03564D42CA&index=9

Dancing with Din: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR8TCFjlfxM&list=PLD7475F03564D42CA&index=7

Dancing Dragon Dungeon (Level 4): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhGS79bPPCI&list=PLD7475F03564D42CA&index=21

Tarm Ruins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0EumkAeEAo&list=PLD7475F03564D42CA&index=4

Holy octorok (sorry), the Oracle series is amazing. I went into Seasons thinking it would be quite similar to Ages, but they are entirely two different games.

I played Seasons as a linked game with Ages, and the way these two games piece together is incredibly impressive even in 2024. They seamlessly work together to earn upgrades and complete side quests in a way I haven't experienced in gaming otherwise. I thought the password system was clever as heck, and it's so so satisfying to finally get that master sword after completing the two games. The dungeons and bosses in Seasons are very creative and rarely become tedious. The final boss sequence was also extremely gratifying and worth working your way through both of the games. if you haven't played Oracle of Seasons (and ages of course), these games are a piece of history, and they think WAY outside the box.

Also the ring system rules, I love punching things. thank you Capcom <3

It felt very much like an escape room, where you're constantly looking for a way to do this, and when you find that way then you unlock some new spaces that allow you to find more different roadblocks. I really enjoyed this gameplay loop, and the seasons mechanic was really fun too. Dancing Dragon Dungeon, Tarm Ruins, and Ancient Ruins are all great tracks

Okay, here Poison Moth's Lair was really grating lol. Not as bad as Crown Dungeon though!

The changing seasons mechanic is actually very clever for a GB game

BRO I played for like an hour and somehow I lost my progress and goddamn if that’s not the real gameboy experience right there. I was really digging it too but for now I gotta put this bad boy on the shelf and return to it later. Maybe I’ll play ages now and then resume seasons after I beat it idk. Honestly though from what I played of it, I was actually liking it more than Links Awakening. Faster paced while still feeling full.

As a certified Gameboy Zelda Lover, I am biased, and the ability to transform into an Octorok deserves a perfect score.

On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.

I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.

The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?

But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.

Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.

Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.

It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.

To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.

There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.

Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.

I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.

I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.

There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.

Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.

Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.

I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.

I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.

I disagree with the opinion that the combat and puzzles have a difficulty difference between the oracle games overall, but there were definitely a couple times that made this game more annoying than the other.

Ambos os Zelda Oracle of Seasons e Oracle of Ages são ótimos jogos feitos pela Capcom assim como o Minish Cap, a mecânica de estações no Oracle of Seasons é interessante mas que pode não agradar todo mundo, devido ao backtracking, certa estação pode ter um caminho que está bloqueado e em outro ele está liberado; o jogo assim como os outros Zelda dessa época são difíceis e você pode acabar perdido em seu objetivo, mas no geral são bons jogos, notáveis diferenças do Oracle of Seasons e Oracle of Ages são itens exclusivos em ambas versões

this game lets you date a creepy creature girl who has a GIANT BOW so it's the best zelda game ever made


The season-change mechanic at times felt really shoehorned in and could have been replaced with a unique item. It caused a lot of confusion and backtracking that served to ultimately make the game more boring

Really cool, short adventure in the Zelda Universe!!


+ Grand adventure on humble handheld
+ Well designed dungeons are a blast
+ Whimsical/fun new world to explore

- Seasons gimmick and item gates make overworld exploration a chore
- RNG, bloat, and unnecessary complexity in Gacha Seed and Ring systems
- Uninspired story
- Overly iterative, doesn't bring much new to the table