An arcade-style game about violence and death, both of which fuel the entire world. There's always something about to go wrong, whether your blood meter is high or low. You can't do too well, can't stick out too much, or else you'll be dealt with quickly. Can't spend too much time wallowing or hiding, or you'll never make it to the next screen. You need just the right amount of pain, waiting for the right moment to feed yourself, or to hurt yourself intentionally. It's a demanding balancing act, always having to give something up to survive, and it feels like it never gets easier. But maybe getting to the end will prove something, to someone. It could change something, even if it's the smallest change possible, even if it's a change so small that no one even notices. It could.

Video games are so much better than we give them credit for.

Team Ladybug has done it once again, and by "it" I mean Symphony of the Night.

Well actually, while Deedlit's sprite and animations are very much influenced by Alucard in SOTN, and the game has a similar weapon system, this game isn't really structured much like that game at all. It's much more in line with previous games from the team like Luna Nights and Synchronicity, in which backtracking is more for finding power-ups and extras, rather than uncovering a new path to take. I don't mind this at all, I love how focused and compact Team Ladybug's games are, Luna Nights is after all my favorite Metroidvania. But after about 4 of these games, I do find this game less exciting than the previous ones.

Once again, it's a Team Ladybug game with a property I'm mostly unfamiliar with, a lot less familiar than I am with either Touhou or SMT. Lodoss War never really interested me as it seems to be a lot of high fantasy-type stuff that's never been my thing, but it does have a 90's OVA done by Madhouse so it's probably pretty tight. Regardless, Team Ladybug has done an incredible job of rendering these characters and the show's iconography in their style, this might be their best-looking project yet. They always go hard on the sprite work in their games, and there were so many moments where I just had to stop to take in the background and animations. The music, while at first, I found to be a little 'typical' of what they've done in the past, ends up capturing the fantasy setting of the world really well, it's more of what this team does best.

This game controls very similarly to Luna Nights in terms of jump and attack feel, but obviously without any of the time stop mechanics or secondary weapons. The two biggest mechanics in this game are the bow, which can be used for attacks but is more often used for puzzle solving, and the two elemental spirits that can be switched out. Each spirit can absorb projectiles of their respective element as well as deal damage of that element to enemies that may be weak to it. The game often has you switching between the two Ikaruga-style, and it's especially important to do so since attacking with one spirit levels up the other, and when a spirit reaches level 3, it can heal you automatically (and rather quickly, I might add). I found this mechanic neat in Synchronicity, but in this game, it felt a little like busy work. It was a lot more interesting to use it as a way to absorb projectiles and avoid damage while traversing a level in Synchronicity, and instead, in this game you just switch to the element the enemy is weak to and continue attacking like normal, there's no real strategy change needed. Also, the automatic healing feels a little too powerful, especially while in the overworld, especially combined with how often you get save points. Luna Nights' graze system was a healing system that demanded a lot more from the player for the same effect, and since reaching level 3 on your spirits is pretty trivial, it was also a lot more satisfying. Bosses are where spirit switching feels most like Ikaruga, and a problem I kept running into was that it was difficult to immediately tell what spirit I was currently using. The game gives some indicators like the spirit being a sprite following you on screen as well as the color of parts of the UI and your outline, but the sprites in this game are so detailed that these indicators can be easily missed, especially in a heated battle with a ton of projectiles on screen. I'd say this lack of clarity was responsible for a decent amount of my deaths in-game.

While the bosses in this game can be fun, they never reach Luna Nights levels of thrilling or demanding. That might have to do with me being more experienced with these games, or there being less to juggle here than in that game. This makes sense, as we've gone from insanely powerful youkai girls equipped with bullet hell attacks to one-on-one fights against either giant dragons or other characters similar in ability to Deedlit, something a little more "grounded". I think some people will enjoy one or the other more. Personally, I can't see any boss fight here sticking with me as much as the one's in Luna Nights.

I mentioned the bow and arrow a while ago now, and while I think the inclusion of arrow puzzle rooms is odd, I do enjoy the mechanics of bouncing arrows off surfaces and rapidly shooting a bunch at distant enemies. Being able to switch between weapons and bows and experiment with them is neat, as they can have huge differences. I do wish being able to hold different weapons on different hands like in SOTN was in this game, but that's only a minor complaint, and it probably would've hurt the whole balance of the game anyway.

The game's story didn't do much for me, someone who has no familiarity with this series, but there is one aspect of it I'm disappointed in. Like Luna Nights, the main character is not actually traversing the world of the series but instead a constructed labyrinth version of it. As I've learned more about this series, I've come to feel like there's so much more potential in a game set in this universe than to just put me in more corridors of mostly indistinct locations. This didn't feel like a huge problem in Luna Nights, and while I haven't nailed why, I think it's a bit of a letdown that essentially the same conceit from that game is being used again. To be fair, the context is different, and I think the payoff for it at the end was cool. Maybe they simply weren't allowed to make the plot of this game matter too much, so I won't be too down on them for it, but hopefully, the next game from them actually has, you know, a setting. The level settings were so strong in Pharaoh Rebirth and Synchronicity, I would love to return to levels like that.

In the end, if you wanted more of what this team does, you won't be disappointed. For me, it doesn't reach the heights of previous games, but that may just be fatigue from this specific formula that they've had for a couple of games now, as well as the introduction of mechanics I never really gelled with. But really, even their weakest effort is something I would recommend to any fan of the genre. Their latest game, Drainus, seems to be a completely different genre, and while I'm not a shmup I'll gladly check it out someday. Oh yeah, and fuck XBOX PC Game Pass for fucking this game up so hard, literally went and just got the game myself on a separate service in order to verify that the app was just running this game at half speed for no reason.

Finished the middle route and got through about half of the top route before deciding to move on.

The framerate is definitely something to adjust to, but it didn't end up hindering me in most cases. I often found the screen pretty readable in terms of where enemies are and where their projectiles are heading. The main killer for me here is the lack of a reticle and how tilting/rolling feels. Aiming just feels unsure in this game, I eventually got a bit of a feel for it, but I did infinitely better in levels where you go in first person and actually get to have an aiming reticle. There are also these levels where you have to carefully maneuver, tilt, and adjust the speed of your Arwing to make it through tight corridors, and while they accomplish their main goal of making you go "oh shit star wars", they're not very good. As someone whose reference point for Arwing gameplays is Star Fox Assault, the lack of an instant roll is deeply felt, and pulling off a barrel roll in this game never felt right.

Now, all that being said, I did come out of this game fairly positive on a lot of stuff. Obviously, the music rules, nearly every iconic Star Fox song comes from this game, and it all goes in so hard. I honestly do think the look of this game holds up, it creates this surreal world of abstract shapes and strange alien forces, I mean just look at Andross and tell me that doesn't rule. And like I said, with some adjustment, I did acclimate to the game's quirks and enjoyed a decent amount of it. Getting good at this game feels pretty fun. Finding out the way to avoid a lot of the missiles from the second-to-last boss of Venom is to boost forward made me feel like a genius (please don't tell me you knew this immediately).

The thing is that knowing 64 exists and is so much more advanced and developed than this makes revisiting it a bit of a hard sell, but I think it's worth seeking out at least once. I ended up bailing on the second route because the levels went on a lot longer than I liked, so I doubt I'll come back to finish this, but maybe someday.

Honestly fun central mechanic as well as good sprite animation and design severely held back by how punishing the game is. No lives system, just 3 hits and it's over, and it feels like your hitbox is slightly bigger than the sprite. When you die, you go back to the start of the 10-level world your on. As neat as the way attacking enemies in this game works, I don't think it's neat enough to justify making it through the rest of the game. Could see this being like, a good single-screen arcade game rather than what it actually is.

Overall, this is a pretty decent set of games. It's great to have a reasonable way to play Championship Edition, Arrangement rules, and Pac-n-Roll Remix and Pac Motos are neat inclusions that I'm glad aren't stuck on the Wii forever. There are some choices about the games in this collection that I'm not so sure of, but I'll get to them later. The main complaint I have is about the presentation. Pac-Man Museum takes place in an arcade (which isn't a museum, so already failed the test) that you can customize. You unlock furniture by playing games and more characters will show up if you play more. This is mostly harmless, except there was very little thought put into any of it. The space you have is kind of small, so you can't make anything too elaborate without running out of space. You can't customize the furniture, and also you can't remove any of the cabinets, in case you were thinking of trying to just get rid of Pac and Pal. The characters that come in just kind of wander around without you being able to interact with them. I doubt anyone would find this part of the game anywhere close to something like decorating in Animal Crossing.

Every machine in the Arcade, except for one which houses all of the console games, uses coins. You start with 500 coins and earn more by playing the games. At first, you hear "each play of a game costs some of this in-game currency" and shudder, but the money never actually becomes an issue. The only way you can end up not having enough to play the machines that require money is if you just dump credits into a game or you spend it all at the gacha machine for more furniture. Money in this game is so inconsequential I'm assuming it's only here for the gacha machine because there should be no world where you could possibly not be able to play Pac-Man in Pac-Man Museum. It just feels pointless, along with everything else about this arcade. There's also a mechanic where some games need to be played twice in order to unlock other ones, which is very dumb, and even though I'm about 13 or 14 levels into Pac-in-Time, the game still hasn't registered me as having played it, so after days of owning this game, I still can't play Pac-Attack (not that I'm dying to play Pac-Attack). I guess I have to end my current playthrough of the game for it to count as a play, but then WHY would you ask me to play Pac-in-Time twice then, a game that is not played the same way the other arcade Pac-Man games in this collection are?

For a game called "Museum", there also isn't much in the way of archival content or extras. Most games do have some good art in their borders, but no concept art or stories about development, no scans of manuals or art collections, I think that kind of stuff should be standard given how many of these collections are coming out these days and carry this kind of content.

Lastly, I do have some gripes about some of the choices of games here. There's a reason why Ms. Pac-Man isn't on here, but its absence is still a bummer. Surely Namco can work SOMETHING out with the people who own the rights to that. The console version of Pac-Man 256 is also here and has always been strange to me. I can't imagine engaging with that game outside of playing it on your phone when you're bored, and its inclusion here feels more like trying to add more "value" to the collection than anything else. Championship Edition DX would've fit in so much better. Pac-in-Time and Pac-Attack are here, but no Pac-Man 2: The New Adventures? If the reason they didn't put that here is that they think it's bad, then why do Pac and Pal and Pac-Attack get a pass for being bad? And hey, why not try and figure out how to make Baby Pac-Man work as a console game, that would be a fun exercise.

If you have any affinity for Pac-Man, I would say this collection is worth getting. It has lots of great games, some of which are not easy to come by or even emulate, and having them immediately accessible on Switch made the collection worth it. I just wish there was more thought put into the presentation and arcade environment, and more effort into making this the "definitive" collection of Pac-Man games, which it, unfortunately, isn't.

EDIT: After playing this collection on and off for the past couple months, mostly for Championship Edition, I feel like I need to bring up the input lag. Maybe the Switch version just has it worse than other versions, but it’s become very noticeable, especially when I compare it to how CE DX feels on PC. As I’ve gotten better at the game it’s gotten more unbearable, so im knocking off a star for this collection. Still has its good points but im not convinced it’s worth a purchase really.

First of all, this is one of the best renderings of Pac-Man I've ever seen. Round as hell with stubby little arms and legs, bouncing around, screaming while throwing fireballs, I can't get enough of him in this game. Part of me wonders if Smash should've gone with this game as the primary inspiration for his moveset instead of Pac-Land.

Of course, the reason Smash didn't do that is that this is barely a Pac-Man game. Pretty much any other character could take his place and make as much sense if the dots, power pellets, and ghosts are removed. In fact, looking at the developer's previous game proves this. Even if you didn't know about this previous game, you can feel how forced the Pac-Man elements are. The power pellet only allows you to eat ghosts, which there aren't that many of in levels, and all the other enemies are unaffected by it.

Ignoring this aspect of the game, playing it is fun, at least early on. The movement takes some getting used to due to how slippery Pac-Man is, but once you get a feel for it and his bounce, as well as the great swinging mechanic, it's easy to get into the game's rhythm. The biggest problem here is that Pac-in-Time outstays its welcome. There are 50 levels in this game, and they only get longer and bigger as the game goes on. There are also only 5 themes to spread across these 50 levels, so the first hour or so may drive you insane over how you're still seeing the same grass levels with the same music (pretty good music, though). What you do in these levels gets stale, and around level 13, after two days of playing the game, I had to call it quits after dying and not having it in me to get back to where I was. While Pac-in-Time is one of the better Amiga-style Platformers (derogatory), it still ultimately is an Amiga-style Platformer.

Incredibly fun sprite work and great music, up there with Championship Edition in terms of the best versions of Pac-Man to play. My only complaint is that by world 3 or 4 things get hectic in a way that I find a lot more difficult to handle than normal Pac-Man. The mechanic of ghosts transforming into more complex, harder enemies is neat, but eventually, there's so much going on on-screen that you can't find time to stop any of them from transforming. Once I was regularly dealing with 4 powered-up ghosts and no power pellets left, I just spammed the credits button to get through the game, and death becoming trivial to me like that isn't very fun, but maybe I just need to get better. Out of all the games on Pac-Man Arcade+, this and Championship Edition are probably the biggest highlights.

The best version of Pac-Man available IMO. Every game ends with me going "okay, but one more run", it distills the best parts of Pac-Man and puts them together into the tightest package possible. So good I legit thought about buying an arcade stick to see if it would make me better at this game. My only complaint is one that someone already mentioned on this page, should have a scoreboard of all your best scores like Pac-Man, instead of just your best. It would make for a better incentive to finish runs that aren't going to beat your high score. It's too bad this version became so hard to come by.

When it clicks, it's good, high-speed, momentum-based platforming and swinging, but something always seems to get in the way of that happening. This might be just a personal gripe, but it's absurd to me that this game has no option to invert the x-axis camera. Playing with the default camera is completely off from what I'm used to, and by the time I figure it out, it's too late. This is especially bad considering how often the game expects you to be able to move the camera during fast-paced segments, both to see what's ahead or below you and to aim the tongue. Even if the camera was the way I like it, I suspect I would still end up fighting it in order to actually see where I'm supposed to go. This kind of speed-focused 3D platformer really can't have that kind of problem. The tongue also tends to always grab the exact wrong thing, and in general, I don't have a good grasp on its feel and mechanics. Whenever the game needs me to climb up a wall using it, it feels like hell. This game feels like it's only about 2/3rds of the way there, it needs a little something extra for me to really latch onto it because even when it's fun it feels barebones and half-baked (this might also be due to the music sounding so much like stock music).

A great vehicle for delightful British cartoon hijinks. The soundtrack really puts in the work to make every moment land, several things made me laugh that probably wouldn't have if it weren't for the perfect timing of the piano. This is a game that caught the eye of everyone even mildly interested in games, so I admire that the controls and puzzle-solving aren't compromised to appeal to as many people as possible. The way your control over the goose changes between running and walking, and having to remember to bend your neck down manually, makes pulling off objectives feel genuinely satisfying. The puzzles you have to solve take some real thinking and observation. Very neat game, only takes a couple of hours too.

E3 2004. Possibly one of the most famous moments in E3 history occurs when the audience at Nintendo’s conference gets their first look at the next Zelda game following The Wind Waker, something completely different. Darker colors, a more “realistic” looking world, the words “Blades Will Bleed” show up on the screen, and everyone cheers because there’s BLOOD in a ZELDA game. There’s a strong focus on combat, and some text about light and darkness that hints at the story of the game, which currently has no title besides just being the new Zelda game. If there’s something gamers love to do, it's scream at a giant screen showing a new game, and this is considered to be one of the best moments of this tradition, but I could never really get into the excitement and joy of this video, mostly because of what had to precede it for this reveal to get this reaction.

E3 2002. The new Zelda is revealed and it's completely outside of what anyone would predict. About a year or so before this trailer, Nintendo showed a Zelda tech demo featuring Link and Ganondorf, modeled after their Ocarina of Time appearances, sword fighting. The demo was said to show off the power of the upcoming Gamecube, and people had it in their heads that THIS was the next step for Zelda. So when Wind Waker shows up completely unexpectedly, there’s a strong reaction. Kiddy, immature, a step back from the direction the N64 Zelda entries were headed, why does everything look like that, these are NOT next-gen graphics. The term “Celda” starts to get thrown around, which I guess is supposed to be an insult for the game since it uses cel-shaded graphics, which is bad, according to the insult. I don’t know, as someone who was like 4 when this all happened and didn’t actually play the game until around 2010, the whole backlash seemed absolutely insane to me, how are people mad about just the IDEA of cel-shaded graphics. But as I got older and looked more into it, I got a better picture of how this all happened. Not only was the Spaceworld demo on everyone’s mind, but there was also this idea, one that I honestly still come across to this day, that things from our childhood should grow up with their audience. Zelda should have more cussing and blood because IM AN ADULT NOW, Pokemon should get fucked up, Mario should have a gun. I understand why this attitude happens, but it’s honestly ridiculous to expect every single piece of media you interact with to have a “cool adult version” so you don’t feel insecure about being a fan of a children’s series. But to be fair, this trailer comes as we’re entering the era of edge, where everyone needs to get a little more brooding, start saying “damn” a little more, and those guitars need to start fucking chugging. Nintendo releasing Wind Waker to this audience at this time, well no shit it went the way it did.

Now, just because I understand why Wind Waker got the initial reception it did, doesn’t mean I think the people that reacted this way were right, in fact, they were very wrong and also stupid. And this is why the E3 2004 reveal video doesn’t sit right with me, because now these people are being rewarded. It’s Nintendo giving in to the angry mob by giving them the Gritty Violence Zelda they were crying over losing to Wind Waker. “Look, this one has cool sword fights, the horse is back, it’s adult Link, it’s basically Ocarina of Time 2, that’s what you pigs want, right?” And that was my impression of Twilight Princess for a very long time, a crowd of insecure people getting a dumb edgy Zelda where Link turns into a Wolf and says fuck, with Wind Waker having been rejected for actually being a good game. That’s why whenever someone said TP was their favorite, I reacted negatively. I had this idea in my head about the kind of person who says that. You know, the kind of person who gets really mad at someone giving their favorite game getting an 8.8.

Now, this is all some pretty heavy baggage to bring into a game. But I went into it with an open mind. I put aside all my preconceived notions of Twilight Princess and its fans, and all of my feelings about how good Wind Waker is, and just let myself experience this game. And I have to be honest, I was wrong about what this game is. First of all, describing this game as the “edgy” Zelda is somewhat foolish. It’s not really going for Hot Topic Tim Burton, which is what I thought it was, as much as it is going for, to borrow a phrase coined by PansyDragoonSaga, “cozy pastoral pseudo France/Holland Ghibli steampunk fantasy carnival vibe”. In this game about light and dark colliding, this aesthetic represents the light side while the dark side uses an angular, ancient alien technology type aesthetic, also with its own healthy dose of Ghibli-isms. It’s not really edgy, it’s just fucking weird, and I love it. The NPCs look as odd as the N64 NPCs but now made semi-realistically. I genuinely admire Nintendo for being willing to make people this weird-looking, and to make a world as alien and strange as the Twilight Realm, while never condemning it as a purely evil place. As for the color, while it is more muted than previous entries, it’s not necessarily another case of “7th gen brown game”. The game is going for “fantastical world with realistic touches”, so the color is more restrained. In terms of environments, I don’t find it to be all that interesting outside of a few of the dungeons, but it’s a valid choice. So like I said, while this game can have serious, genuinely unsettling moments, and do them well, it also has some of the goofiest and out-there shit I’ve seen in a Zelda game, to the point where calling this “the dark Zelda” is like, only kind of true. I’m just thinking about everything involving Malo, this weird baby with a cynical personality who all of a sudden starts running a business and eventually takes over the most expensive store in Hyrule Castle Town and turns it into a store where everyone inside is constantly dancing and begging to have something sold to them. This game is delightful in how strange and alien it’s willing to be, especially impressive considering how often it recalls parts of Ocarina of Time.

This is another part of the game I thought I wouldn’t enjoy, the number of different references and similarities to Ocarina of Time. Several sections of the world share names with famous OOT locations, some of them even geographically in similar places, horse riding is back in the game, it takes place in Hyrule Field again, Gorons and Zoras play a big role as they did in OOT, it intentionally parallels OOT a lot. This is a pretty big difference from Wind Waker’s approach to referencing OOT, which was to drown the whole world of that game and build on top of it. WW felt like a big leap into something completely different, centuries removed from the events of previous games to the point where most of these events are considered old myths, and the traditions inspired by them have become so old no one bothers asking why they’re traditions. Twilight Princess’s approach to OOT is different but just as interesting. There are a lot of similarities, but it doesn’t line up completely. Locations are very different in appearance and structure from their equivalents in OOT, and while it has similarities in world-building like the three goddesses and Ganondorf, the events around them aren’t close enough to OOT to make this a direct sequel. The village that Impa built for the Sheikah tribe is shown, and it could be inferred that it's the same one from OOT, but it’s just off enough that you can’t be completely sure. I think this is ideal for a Zelda game, where it can carry the weight of the series' history and iconography while also not worrying about where exactly it fits in the timeline or in relation to any other game.
While I’m talking about story generally, the cast here is pretty decent, I don’t think any of the village kids outside of Malo are that strong, Ilia and most of your allies throughout the game are okay, but the big standout is Midna, who may be the best character to be in any Zelda game. I love this piece of shit creature who puts on an image of being above everything around her and seems to enjoy mocking other characters as weaklings, only to end up a big softy who obviously and deeply cares for everyone in her journey while carrying a shitton of baggage as someone from the Twilight Realm seeing the world that cast her people out. She’s so well animated and expressive, the made-up language she speaks in is cute, and she’s got a big fucking hat, I couldn’t get enough of her in this game. Also, unlike Navi, she often had some actual advice I could use when I asked her for it. I don’t think any companion in the series is going to surpass her.

One thing I want to touch on is this game’s combat. It’s heavily emphasized in that first trailer at E3, and there is more going on there than in previous entries. There are 7 sword skills to learn in the game on top of previous moves from Ocarina of Time. The parry attack from Wind Waker is absent, probably in favor of allowing the player to have more direct control. Obviously, this doesn’t turn combat into a character action game or anything, but there are more options than ever. However, I don’t think this choice pays off that much. Combat in previous games was definitely simple but was capable of generating great moments of quick thinking and reaction. Here, sometimes combat feels a little too much like “if this move doesn’t work, do this one, and if that doesn’t work, try this one, and so on”. Despite having more options, combat doesn’t feel more free form so much as just offering slightly different ways to kill what are still relatively simple enemies. Emphasizing combat also means that a lot of enemies feel like they take a bit longer to defeat. Having to use a finishing move on certain enemies to avoid them getting back up is cool, but significantly less so when there are multiple of them in one place because in those situations I can’t help but fall back on just using the basic swing, which means they’re all getting back up and taking several more hits. Sometimes it hits a sweet spot, but I never felt it surpassed what was going on in Wind Waker. WW also had additional things like the boomerang which could stun all enemies and not just certain ones, the grappling hook to rob enemies of spoils, and the ability to pick up other enemy weapons. There were more layers when it came to figuring out how to handle combat with multiple enemies, and those layers not being present made this game’s equivalent of the Savage Labyrinth from WW a lot more boring.

As a big Wind Waker fan, I don’t just want to sit here and say this game should be more like that one, but I do miss mechanics like picking up weapons and stealing spoils from enemies. The spoils bag was fun because each item became its own sidequest you could follow, and as I said earlier, spoils added a layer to fighting large waves of enemies. I guess when it comes to picking up weapons, they thought it would disrupt the combat system they set up, but I still miss it. Another thing about spoils in WW is that the items in it served as alternate rewards to just getting rupees, and I think this game needed something like that because nearly every treasure chest in the game is more rupees. The economy is in fucking shambles in this game, in no time you’ve overfilled your wallet and have to leave every chest with rupees in it behind. Getting the first upgrade isn’t bad at all, but getting the 1000 rupee wallet is easy to miss if you’re not paying complete attention to the collectible needed to get it. Say what you will about the Triforce shards section of Wind Waker, it was an effective way to not constantly be holding the max amount of rupees. It just kills me to have to leave treasure chests behind constantly, this game needed something else it could give players, which you think wouldn’t be as much of a problem given that hearts are now made up of 5 heart pieces.

Another criticism I have of the game, one that I think a lot of people share, is the way dungeon items are utilized in the game. Items are often at their most useful in the dungeon you find them, and very rarely find a use later on in the game. And the thing is that a lot of the new dungeon items rule in this game, and they make the dungeons in this game some of the best in the series. The spinner is fun as hell, but it deserves so much more utility in the game (and also should be faster when not on rails). The ball and chain is a fun weapon but also barely ever finds use outside of the dungeon it is found in. The dominion rod is basically a more fun version of the Command Melody from Wind Waker, and the dungeon for it is maybe the highlight for dungeons in the game, and this item definitely doesn’t completely disappear after you get it, but it deserves so much more time. In a way, it feels like the devs of this game really wanted to make unique items and scenarios for a Zelda dungeon, but ran into the problem of not being able to integrate them into the structure of a Zelda game. Thankfully, the double hookshot, up there in terms of the best all-time Zelda items, gets plenty of utility and never gets stale. I’m also not in love with Hyrule Field in this game. It’s got good music and horse riding is a good time, but I feel like it doesn’t have much in terms of out-of-the-way sections and pockets like Wind Waker. I understand why they sort of reign in the open world to be more reminiscent of Ocarina of Time, and to cut out the slow in-between travel that was a complaint from Wind Waker players, but the trade-off wasn’t worth it.

But I finished the game, with most of the side quests done. This game was a very pleasant surprise, I was very happy to be proven wrong in this instance. I forgive you, Twilight Princess fans, you are no longer cringe. In fact, I think it’s kind of baller to say this is your favorite Zelda. Skyward Sword is up next, gonna wait a bit before jumping into that one considering this game took me THIS long for some reason. Looking forward to seeing that, I never really understood why that game, in particular, has to bear the title of Worst Zelda Game, but I would love to find out whether that’s true or not.