Beating every Zelda in timeline order 18/20:

To say I beat Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a bit of an exaggeration. Thank the lord for save states because this game is a motherfucker. I thought the original Legend of Zelda was difficult and enemy placement was a bit arbitrary but still a fun time overall. Zelda II, from the very beginning, kicks you in the shins and spits in your face. Whether it be the erratic overworld enemy encounters, the esoteric item usage or retrieval (maybe the manual cleared this up) or the fact that I just can't seem to fucking figure out to consistently hit those god damn iron knuckles. Every single enemy is extremely annoying to deal with. I'm not a huge fan of the level up and magic systems either. All it really resulted in was me grinding before dungeons to get my levels up so I'd stand a chance. At least 3 hours of my 9 hour playthrough was grinding. The dungeons are a series of dead ends and required secret passageways that are easy to miss unless you accidentally stumble upon them. Not that the first Zelda had too many actual puzzles but the game at least made me enjoy experimenting with bombing walls, burning bushes, etc. Zelda II feels like beating your head against a brick wall and then sometimes your head goes through the wall and actually that wall was a secret passageway, didn't you know that? You stupid fucking idiot! You dumb bitch!

However, despite all this, I weirdly do enjoy the combat. If the enemies fought a little more fair, I could see myself really getting into improving at this game. With everything Link can do with his sword in this game, it feels snappy and in player control way more than any other Zelda game. At some points, I found myself having a weird amount of fun with the amount of time the game was telling me to go fuck yourself. I could see Zelda II being fun. You've just gotta be like, REALLY good. And I'm not. I'm dogshit. I also like the music.

Even though I enjoy the gameplay at the most basic level, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a frustrating, overly difficult, esoteric grindfest of a game and absolutely deserves the reputation it has.

I was surprised how much fun I had playing Zelda II. I'd heard a lot about how punishing and unforgiving it is - and that's true, but the game feels excellent to control. Link is responsive and mobile, and getting through a tough encounter with minimal damage makes you feel very slick indeed.

It's impressive how much you can achieve with just a d-pad and 2 buttons. Obviously, you have attack and jump. When link isn't attacking, he is blocking - either high or low depending on whether you're ducking. As the game progresses you also unlock the iconic down and up stabs from the Smash games - these expand your options greatly as there is a great deal of verticality in the movement.

The magic system also works well, although only 3 of them (shield, jump, life) see a lot of use. The rest are only really useful in specific situations (some of them only need to be used once). Jump is great, and even when not required can make difficult platforming sections much easier. It can throw off your combat timings, as well as using up precious magic, so it's an interesting trade-off!

Zelda II also has an excellent soundtrack, some of which will be familiar to many people. The dungeon theme in particular is incredible, but the whole score is very pleasant and catchy. Which makes the incessant beeping at low health in this game all the more torturous!

Now, don't get me wrong, the game can be very cruel, especially the lives/continue system. You get 3 lives, and after a game over you continue from the starting location of the game. It's not all that bad though, you keep your level (but lose all exp on your current level, which can be a lot in the late game) and any items you've picked up. It can be emotionally draining to respawn at Zelda's side. However, the world is very quick to navigate as you unlock new shortcuts throughout - so I don't think it's quite as severe as it feels.

Although Link gets stronger through the adventure, the enemies do also and appear in increasingly awkward situations. Still, by the endgame you can tank quite a lot of hits and restore your health somewhat frequently if you manage your magic meter well. Although I did struggle in places and get frustrated, in reality even with retries and a couple minutes of extra walking after a continue I was back in action fairly quickly. The game is still rather short by modern standards, so having to replay some sections a few times isn't all that big of a deal.

Zelda II is truly a worthy member of the Zelda lineage, and I think it gets a bit overlooked! Honestly I enjoyed this game more than the original, simply due to the feel of the movement and combat. The soundtrack will stick with me for a long time. Strongly recommended for those with the patience to put up with this game's minor annoyances!

Another early sequel that veered way off the path set by the original game. I think this is one of the weaker results of that experimentation.

While it's easy to see how this may have been influenced in part by Dragon Quest, the hybrid approach here makes the world feel way more disjointed than the first game. The combat itself could get frustrating, and dying was very punitive. Combined with the fact that the change in combat rendered the actual overworld almost entirely pointless made this change in design feel like a step backwards.

The game still excelled in the music department, and while it looked better than the first game, it was actually falling behind some of its other action RPG contemporaries in the visuals department. Commendable for trying some new things, as the Zelda series would continue to do, but in this case it didn't click for me.

This was the one game in the franchise that I was dreading coming back to. I got to the area just before the 2nd dungeon and genuinely just couldn't take anymore of it. I played this using the NES switch thing and eventually switched to the "SP" version which gives you most upgrades off the bat.

Due to me not finishing it I cant really talk about it in full detail but from what I played, the world design is horrific. I really did not like the top down world view especially with enemies popping out every 3 seconds and being impossible to dodge. Some enemies are designed really poorly, having to be frame perfect with attacks in order to do damage, also similarly to the first game, when Link has full health he shoots a sword beam, in this game it doesn't damage half the enemies so its totally pointless.

The impression that I got was that if you want to be appropriately levelled their would be a lot of back tracking and with a game as slow as this I just couldn't bring myself to keep at it.

I do have a couple positives. I really like the music, there is a decent diversity in tracks as supposed to the first game. Also you can see a lot of the framework that goes into the future games come around here with towns and villagers, i think a large issue for this game is it was too ambitious with the hardware it was on.

I may come back to it but I highly doubt it and if I do it will be out of pure spite just to finish it.

Considered to be the black sheep of the series, I actually liked a lot of aspects about it.

The side scrolling parts are actually very fun and I love the RPG elements with collecting XP, leveling up and distributing stats. I wish more of these elements were present in future Zelda games.

The biggest issue for me is the difficulty. I don't mind challenging games at all but this one is just unfair. It's so unfair that it actually ruins the fun. A lot of the enemies are just atrocious and this would actually be a good Zelda game with better enemy design. Soundtrack is also a downgrade from the first one.

However I still enjoyed playing it even though it was very frustrating. There were a lot of things to hate but also many to like. Better than I expected it to be with the reputation it has.

This game is so frustratingly bad. Its a good game chained up in some of the most dumbass decisions ever.
Why send me back to the start of the game when I game over?
Why make some of the secrets invisible?
WHY TAKE AWAY MY EXP WHEN I GAME OVER?!?
This game would of been at least a star to a star and a half with just these 3 changes.The early game especially during palace 2 was so frustrating to me that it made me pull up a walkthough for the rest of my playthough after play all of zelda 1 without one. Zelda 2 is not without positive though its combat is really unique and reminded me of a fighting game blocking attacks and finding your opening. Normal enemies where fun challenges although some of the bosses just boiled down to hitting their weakpoint with the sword some of the bosses like the knight that charged on a horse was fun to take down. This game makes me want to take a shot at making a spiritual successor to it as the idea of a platformer zelda game isnt a bad one this game just isnt a good example of that concept.