yeah, i don't know about this one. i feel like i played this one a little too late into my life. to get this out of the way, i understand how impressive and well made this game is for it's time. the influence this game had on almost every game since cannot be understated. i even thought it was funny going through the game and realizing how much this game inspired the binding of isaac. i think my main gripe with this game is the combat. it's just not fun or satisfying, and can be quite annoying at times when you're completely swarmed by enemies. trying to aim your sword in the proper direction on the d-pad just frustrated me quite often. the exploration and design of the world is top tier, however. each dungeon feels unique and navigating both the light world and the dark world can be pretty fun. i died quite a bit playing this game. 60 times to be exact. it was easily the most challenging Zelda game i have ever played. each enemy seems to always hit you for 2-3 hearts, and it's quite easy to get trapped in between some enemies and see your health quickly drop to near zero. this isn't necessarily a bad thing, but did leave me annoyed quite a few times. i really wish i liked this game more than i did. I by no means think this is a bad game, but I do think I prefer nearly every other Zelda game I have played, both 2D and 3D.

One of the most overhyped Zelda games out there. It is not well balanced. And has a lot of bad design. Might be a classic, but it did not age well.

Okay, i know, controversial opinion. Let's start with the good. It's still a Zelda game. Game still looks good. It plays fine. The music is great.

This game is very unbalanced. Everything hits like a truck. There is nothing you can do about it until LATE GAME. Once you get your first defense upgrade, you get your last one a mere 2-3 dungeons(the final dungeon). That makes the game an infuriating experience. You go 2/3 of the game with taking max damage for everything. You could have given a defense item before that to balance things out a bit.

The first half has pretty good dungeons. Fairly well signposted. Good and fair experiences. The latter half is hell. Unbalanced, terrible dungeon design, poorly signposted mess of a game. It's infuriately hard.

Examples, drop rates are terrible. Hey you need magic for this boss, sorry the boss doesn't drop it. That's just terrible design. I should not fail because I don't have enough of a consumable that I was supposed to magically know to conserve for the boss despite it also being the gimmick of the dungeon. Bad Design.

Oh hey, the NPC across the map gives you a cryptic clue to something. Oh you didn't talk or see them? Have fun being lost! The game turns into, guess what the devs were thinking.

There are so many cases of infuriating design. Things don't drop when you need them. Making you have to leave the dungeon. Bosses don't drop required consumables needed to beat the boss. Requiring you to either die, try and grind out what you need, or leave. Late game dungeons are infuriating to get around. Late game bosses are infuriating to fight. Do you want to fight a boss with conveyor belts, moving spikes everywhere, spiked walls, etc. You are constantly taking damage out of your control. Just bad game design all around. You want to guess what the devs were thinking because you didn't talk to dude in cave. You want a boss that keeps knocking you off a ledge thus resetting it's health.

Oh and my favorite terrible design decision. A required item to beat a boss is in a random cave and you would never know. You don't get the item in the dungeon you need it for. THAT WOULD MAKE SENSE! So you get all the way through thus dungeon. You cannot beat the boss. Have no idea why or where to go to solve the problem. You cannot defend that terrible decision.

I wanted to like this game so much. I had to force my way through it. This game did not age well. It has some great sprite work. Some fun genre defining ideas. A lot of bangin music. It's too bad that the 2nd half is a miserable experience.