464 reviews liked by CoreyLand64


yeah ill give it 5 stars this time

The trilogy ends with a whimper. DKC 3 tries so hard to be a Mario game (especially with its over-reliance on a phony world map) that it sheds the series' promising unique flavor. The level order feels thematically cobbled, without the natural dramatic build of DKC's first half (the sunset-night-morning progression of 'Kongo Jungle' is neither equaled nor attempted here). And despite developer Rare's efforts to up their graphical prowess, this final game boasts the worst visuals of the bunch: blurry, low-contrast, overly-textured models in lieu of the first game's aesthetic clarity.

kinda insane how this is still one of the greatest TCG simulators and they managed it on the fucking Game Boy

It don't get any better than this.

A blast in the arcade and I wish more people knew about this game.

Awesome testament to why custom arcade cabs make for kino experiences

This is the first Zelda game I played and also the only Zelda game that a person ever needs to play.

My mother has told me she wished I was dead on more than one occasion and it still hurt less than Courtney's Ninetails flipping 8 heads on Dancing Embers

Link's Awakening is an incredible game for Gameboy standards, and one of my favorite entries in the Zelda series. It does not escape every problem that comes with making a Zelda game for a system with two buttons, and a limited amount of storage space, but I'd say the design of the world heavily outweighs the issues and makes it a must-play if you're looking for some good dungeons to explore, and caves to spelunk.

Oh, right, we're talking about DX. Sometimes, you kinda forget that Link's Awakening was originally a 1993 black and white Gameboy title, as the addition of color in the DX version makes the original pretty obsolete. In addition to that, it contains a bonus dungeon with a very useful powerup, and an optional side quest, that albeit mechanically useless due to its dependence on the Gameboy Camera, still provides some cute art that makes it worth seeking out. In other words, make the DX version your priority, it keeps everything and adds more cool stuff on top.

Despite being an 8-bit title, I was impressed by the translation of Link to the Past QoL features onto it. Your sword still a satisfying sense of range, and with the press of one button, you have access to a full map of the overworld, although in this instance, it fills out as you go along. It'll still ensure that you'll never get lost, and really makes me wonder why Zelda 1 couldn't do this. Was the case that the Gameboy had more powerful specs that allowed for a full map compared to Zelda 1 on the NES? Or was Zelda 1's inclusion of a manual map a fully intentional choice rather than a technical one? Either way, the way Link's Awakening handled it is much more preferable.

The world has an immense amount of locale variety, and each dungeon will challenge you in new ways through each new item it introduces. It's crazy just how close to Link to the Past's quality this game is, if not, in my opinion, even better. It feels like there's less overall empty space in the overworld, in part due to game going back to a grid-based map with each room being a square long, which makes each room feel like it serves more purpose. Perfect for a handheld entry.

Something I find especially enticing about Link's Awakening is the tone of the story itself, which seperates the series from the generic fantasy roots, and strands you within the confines of a mysterious island directly inspired by Twin Peaks. It definitely shows, the NPC's aren't just stilted hint dispensers directly telling you what to do, they're much closer to people with their own lives, with hints disguised behind their troubles, or their curiosity over something they saw recently. But even sometimes, their dialogue isn't about giving you a hint at all, sometimes they're just minding their own business, or doing something weird or silly that doesn't help you at all. And while all of this sounds completely expected for a modern player, believe you me, if you were to play a couple RPG's that were released around this time, the way Link's Awakening handles NPC dialogue would be a refreshing breath of air.

All this makes the moral conundrum of the story that appears within the latter half all the more interesting, as Link's Awakening proceeds to raise an existential question within its latter half, challenging your preconception of what is right, what is wrong, and whether your quest is even worth it. I mean, we're not talking master-class writing here, but because of the strong sense of personality this game exudes, the things it wants to ask yourself hit pretty strong, and as it lets you contemplate this all the way to the final stretch of gameplay, it'll hit all the more strongly. It's a simple, yet powerful story about what are you willing to sacrifice to succeed in your goal, and even if it may make me look stupid, I always tear up a little for its message.

There's a lot of good, but there is a little bit of jank. Firstly, going back to the game having very few buttons to work with, the inventory system takes some getting used to. While Zelda 1 has one slot to equip an item in, Link's Awakening has two, and that includes the slot you equip your sword in. Where this screws up is the impractical implementation of certain equippable items that could've worked far better as context-sensitive-use items. Such as the shield. This did not need to be something you gotta equip for it to work, it could've worked like Zelda 1 where all you do is face towards a projectile to automatically use it.

Ditto for the power gauntlets that let you lift heavy objects, all you needed for that to work is have it activate based on proximity to the object, but instead you gotta equip it first.
Now, generally speaking, you can get away with just keeping your sword on the A button, and whatever current item you need on the B button, but that's still gonna be a whole lot of times where you'll be heading into the inventory to swip and swap and swoop and sweep your items around based on what you currently need, and it surely could've been a lot less with some simplifications of how items work.

Thankfully, the upside to this is that the inventory system is very quick to access, equip, and get out of. Once you get used to it, each inventory-equipping session should take a little less than 3 to 5 seconds.

The second bit of jank pertains to Awakening's random drop items. Occasionally you'll get your usual stuff, like health drops, rupees, and whatnot. But more than often, you might get powerups that double your defense or attack power. What's more, these powerups don't have a time limit on them, they last for as long as you avoid damage, so you could keep them for long amounts of time if you're good enough. Sounds good, right? Okay, now imagine the entire game's soundtrack is replaced by an 8-second jingle that plays on loop for as long as you keep this powerup.

The result is that you eventually start deliberately avoiding these powerups, and everytime you accidentally touch one, you go "fuck!" and proceed to start deliberately taking damage just so that maddening jingle can stop playing. It's like if you played Mario 1 with nothing but the Starman song on loop. This was a very poorly thought out design decision, and should've been represented through a visual change rather than an auditory one.

On the topic of sound, I would also say that the dungeon music doesn't exactly hold up in all the right places. Having a unique song for each dungeon was admirable, but the game being several kilobytes long means that these are all stupidly short loops, and some of them can get quite grating. I think I would've rather preferred this space to be dedicated to a 2-3 minute dungeon song with more variety, and have just that be used for all dungeons. I mean, one of the dungeons literally just has the cave music but sped up, come on guys.

The best way to play Link's Awakening may be subjective, but my recommendation would be this one. You should also consider getting the Redux romhack, which I think fixes the powerup music issue by disabling it, and introduces some other small QoL things. As for the Switch remake, that could probably be a good way as well, but I'm honestly not big on that version's 30FPS, and its excessive use of depth of field. The soundtrack is a lot nicer, though. All in all, I think the Gameboy Color and the Switch remake both have their pros and cons, and you may just wanna play both of them to experience the game from two wildly different perspectives.

The game itself is wonderful, even amid some of its smaller flaws, and some of the best top-down Zelda action you can get. It's smart, chock-full of content, charming to boot, and even a little sad at times. Next to Minish Cap, it's way up there on my top Zelda games.

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