The thing about playing the old classics and building block games which you missed is that sometimes one of them blows you away. This thing just goes down so smooth, especially compared to everything else in the franchise. The thing I expected least was just how Zelda 1 it is. The dungeons are the same collection of squares with destroyable walls and everything. The different weapons serve as your set of tools, and the complexity of having to switch between them for puzzles and enemy weaknesses increases on a good clip through the game. The sort of melodrama I'd expect from the series (FF or Mana, honestly) is strong here for a gameboy game, nothing mind-blowing but complicated enough to keep me invested. It does fall off in the last third or so, when the map opens up.

I could nitpick things here and there but I don't care to. Game's great. One of my new top Gameboy games and good enough to stand with plenty of console titles of the era.