Even playing this at 60FPS with the dogwater DOF removed, and all the little QOL touches, I can't help but feel I should have played DX instead. I like the renditions of the music in this for the most part, like I'm glad Nintendo acknowledged that bass wind instruments exist again, but I feel it was a horribly missed opportunity to flesh out the overworld with more than 4 themes, because unfortunately the game's soundtrack sounds a lot better in an album than in the game where half your time will be accompanied by 30-60 seconds of Overworld Theme a hundred times over. I'm also just really not a fan of how it looks, I've seen people beg Nintendo to give the Oracle of Ages/Seasons games and even A Link to the Past the same treatment and I think saying it looks "toy-like" is being extremely generous, as I would describe it as very sterile, albeit colorful in the most basic sense. It's not bad looking, but it feels very inconsistent in the look it's going for, too; I rarely looked at the dungeons and thought "toy-like", they just looked like a watered down version of A Link Between Worlds. I also just strongly detest the implication that retro graphics such as the NES, GB, or even SNES = "toys" or "childish", it's needlessly closed-minded about entire swaths of artistic direction. The more detailed look we get glimpes at by the photographer in DX looks so much better stylistically, it's sad to me they didn't go with that. Look how expressive they all are!! It's also ridiculous that the performance on actual hardware is weirdly terrible with constant frame dips despite being locked to 30FPS. The remake also weirdly draws out a lot of interactions and cutscenes, nearly every interaction with the owl takes 2X longer than it used to, as with every NPC interaction. I think this remake is "competent" at best, and I would generally encourage anyone to play DX instead.

inhale
ANYWAYS, enough about this remake specifically.

This easily has my favorite handling of "side"quests in any Zelda game and I deeply appreciate that this isn't yet another "FIND THA COOL RANCH DORITO OF MAKE GO AWAY". Another thing too is that everyone in this world seems genuinely so loving, in a very sincere way that doesn't reek of that usual quirky one-note Zelda stuff.

The dungeons themselves are probably the most complex and interwoven I've experienced in any Zelda game, though perhaps almost to a fault as I'd begun asking myself "alright, which of these 4 pairs of stairs are actually connected...". The game also expects you to use literally everything at one point or another, so even though the solutions at a couple points are a bit nonsensical I still also greatly appreciate they demanded that at all. It's something Tears of the Kingdom did horribly and I don't get why people aren't more bothered by it over there, to have the climax of the game be devoid of any meaningful statement about your progress because uhhh being able to say "erm you can finish it any time 🤓" somehow justifies how padded that game is with its unevolving, barely passable "temples" which don't build off of each other in any capacity.

Link's Awakening doesn't beg you to stop and smell the roses, it makes you, because goddammit they're romantic. It has my tied 2nd favorite ending in any Zelda game that touches on a thematic subject matter in a way I favor immensely, which I'll likely never forget, "or [her]"

Thank you /u/Nowhere for suggesting the game to me and referencing the photographer in DX.