At first, this game is pretty simple. The objective is the same every stage, and that's collect 2000 Force Gems so you can destroy the things at the end of the stage. There's (almost) always enough Force Gems with plenty to spare, barring probably one level, and that's 4-3, the Hyrule Castle stealth mission. If you're tying to blaze your way through without getting caught, there's a realistic chance you could reach the end without enough Force Gems, which isn't a game problem, but a me problem.
One thing I wasn't too big a fan of was the number of Shadow Link fights. You got at least one per level, a couple of times two of them. It's not that they're bad, it's more that Shadow Link barely has any changeup to his moves aside from the arena. He's always dropping bombs that help you stun him. I do like the second phase where he changes to one of your Link's colors and only that Link can damage him, but the fight started getting a bit old after a while due to the number of times you fight him.
Vaati is an afterthought. By Level 5, Ganon is the main villain everyone's talking about. He's even the final boss while Vaati goes down like a chump. Even the Palace of Winds literally had Ganon statues laying around with no Vaati statues in sight aside from the front entrance. For a big bad wind sorcerer sealed up by the Four Sword, he lacked any sort of real impact, especially since you literally only see him at the start and end of the game.
That's not to say Ganon's any better. Sure, we hear mention of the guy in Level 6 and 7, along with the knights saying they were beaten by someone other than Vaati, but he kinda just...shows up at the tail end of the game in the flesh. We don't know his plans or anything. He just...appears.
Then there's the items. While some had a lot of time to shine, others felt like they were underutalized, like most of the Level 2 items like the Fire Rod especially, which only got a chance to use it's Level 2 abilities in the Ice Temple, where it was just a Cane of Somaria replacement. The shovel was barely used too. Roc's Feather got some nice time to shine, which is nice because I'm pretty sure it'll never appear again after this game.
Overall, as another relic of my childhood, it was alright. I'm pretty shocked at how easy the final part of the Ganon battle was since that was literally the part I never finished as a kid because I didn't know what to do at that part. Past me was pretty stupid.
One thing I wasn't too big a fan of was the number of Shadow Link fights. You got at least one per level, a couple of times two of them. It's not that they're bad, it's more that Shadow Link barely has any changeup to his moves aside from the arena. He's always dropping bombs that help you stun him. I do like the second phase where he changes to one of your Link's colors and only that Link can damage him, but the fight started getting a bit old after a while due to the number of times you fight him.
Vaati is an afterthought. By Level 5, Ganon is the main villain everyone's talking about. He's even the final boss while Vaati goes down like a chump. Even the Palace of Winds literally had Ganon statues laying around with no Vaati statues in sight aside from the front entrance. For a big bad wind sorcerer sealed up by the Four Sword, he lacked any sort of real impact, especially since you literally only see him at the start and end of the game.
That's not to say Ganon's any better. Sure, we hear mention of the guy in Level 6 and 7, along with the knights saying they were beaten by someone other than Vaati, but he kinda just...shows up at the tail end of the game in the flesh. We don't know his plans or anything. He just...appears.
Then there's the items. While some had a lot of time to shine, others felt like they were underutalized, like most of the Level 2 items like the Fire Rod especially, which only got a chance to use it's Level 2 abilities in the Ice Temple, where it was just a Cane of Somaria replacement. The shovel was barely used too. Roc's Feather got some nice time to shine, which is nice because I'm pretty sure it'll never appear again after this game.
Overall, as another relic of my childhood, it was alright. I'm pretty shocked at how easy the final part of the Ganon battle was since that was literally the part I never finished as a kid because I didn't know what to do at that part. Past me was pretty stupid.