As a certified Gameboy Zelda Lover, I am biased, and the ability to transform into an Octorok deserves a perfect score.
On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.
I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.
The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?
But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.
Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.
Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.
It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.
To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.
There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.
Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.
I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.
I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.
There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.
Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.
Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.
I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.
I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.
On their own, the Oracle games are a pretty middling Zelda experience, with Ages not shining as brightly as Seasons. But together, through the programming magic of sharable passwords, they become a much more interesting and full experience. An experience that feels like the season finale of a Saturday morning action cartoon. This review, copied and pasted for each game, for better or worse, will be on that experience.
I should start by saying that when these games were first released, you had to buy each of them. For twice the price of a regular game you got the Oracle Twins’ full experience. Nowadays, one could easily play both of these games for as little as one savvy google search. Regardless, it’s worth criticizing nintendo for more or less selling you two weak games that make up a somewhat stronger, more interesting experience, rather than just making a great experience from the start for half the price. But what’s done is done, and I’ve said what I wanted to say on that.
The Oracle Twins are at their most fun and interesting when you have beaten at least one of them, but which one should you start with? Which Oracle game takes place first in the Zelda Timeline? Well, as far as the games themselves are concerned, each game has the potential to be the first or second in your playthrough. So start with whatever you want. Oracle of Seasons for the action? Or Oracle of Ages for the puzzles? Do you like blue haired ladies? Or redheads?
But why is it more fun to have already beaten one of them? Why not be fun from the start? Well, it is fun from the start. You’re playing a Zelda game, after all. But once you beat it, you’re given a special unique password that you can then use when you start the other game to turn it into a sequel of the one you started with. There are dialogue differences that slightly change the context of the games’ respective intros, your animal friend is carried over, and most importantly, your magic rings that you spent countless hours grinding for, which I will get into later, are also carried over. It makes the second playthrough a much more personal experience than just “the next game to play”. It’s a continuation of Your journey.
Since these games started off on a handheld console, they already had the benefit of being more personal than something that is played on a tv where anyone in the room can watch. Add to that the intimate nature of the Oracle’s Linked Game, and you have a nice quaint story all to yourself. Add to THAT the Linked Game Only side quests that require you to go BACK to the previous game and talk with old characters to fulfill those quests and bring the reward back again to the second game, and you have not just a story but an ongoing saga with living breathing worlds, all in your back pocket.
Now maybe you’re more of a Zelda Freak than I am. I only beat Ages and then a Linked Seasons, but if you want to get the full Oracles Experience and get all the little details: you beat each game, and then using the link codes, start a linked version of them, effectively starting both games again with slightly different contexts. That’s too much work for me, but here I am writing a review on it, so maybe I should have done it.
It’s kind of wild how much of a preamble this review has, considering the overall simplicity of the games themselves on their own. They’re your usual 2D Zelda affair, elaborating on 1993’s Link’s Awakening’s already abundantly charming graphics and fun controls. As someone who in turn abundantly loves Link’s Awakening, the Oracle Twins are a great time if only because I get to play as this Link some more. And then you tell me that there’s new goodies for this Link to play with? Like the Roc’s Cape that extends your jump into a glide? And the noisy but interesting Magnet Glove that opens up a host of interesting puzzles? I’m sold.
To add to the fun, there’s a horde of 64 magical rings to collect across both games. The usefulness of these rings range from simple baubles commemorating an achievement, to making enemies drop extra money when you defeat them, to tripling the damage you both deal and take. There’s also rings that transform Link into a green palette swap of some of the enemies in the games, like the shield swallowing Like-Likes or the perfect little Squit, the Octoroks. These rings are kind of just for show and don’t act as a disguise or anything, which is a shame, but they’re fun and I like having fun.
There is however, something shameful about the rings that I find indefensible, and it isn’t that you can only wear one ring at a time. It’s how you acquire these rings that I cannot defend. While some of them are scripted rewards, a great majority of the rings you collect will be through sheer chance. You might occasionally get a ring drop in the Maple the Witch minigame, which you have you grind for. You might also get a ring drop from a Gasha Nut, which randomly gives a tiered prize depending on how much you’ve grinded. So you could be like me and spend half an hour grinding away at killing enemies to spawn the Maple Minigame and then harvest a Gasha Nut only to get the same useless ring three times.
Because of this, I did not get every ring between the two games. I got every piece of heart between them, but I didn’t 100% them and I’m okay with that. There are other, better Zelda games to spend every waking moment with.
I’ve talked mostly about the mechanics of the games and not the story, because the mechanics are much more interesting to me. That doesn’t mean there isn’t intrigue here though. Veran is a fun villain for Ages with a really strange design (I’m serious look up the promotional art for her and try to figure out how her hat looks, it’s infuriating), and Seasons is the only Zelda game where you can find the Jawa-like Subrosians. They’re very fun and silly but I think it’s the simplicity of their designs that held them back from being a recurring Zelda race. It’s a great design though. Everyone loves a little cloaked freak.
I think Subrosia alone is what makes Seasons the better of the two games. Being a pseudo-dark world with its own currency, it makes the world in this little game feel so much bigger, despite its relative simplicity.
There are sadly, other reasons why Seasons is the better of the Oracle Twins, and those reasons are things that are in Ages but are absent from Seasons. The most egregious being the Mermaid Tail. Ages gives you a swimming upgrade to make you move not only move faster in water, but also dive down into combat-capable underwater rooms. However, the Mermaid Tail requires you to frustratedly mash the directional buttons to move. You can't just hold the left button to move left. When switching back and forth between the linked games, the different swimming styles become dreadfully apparent, and playing Seasons just becomes less annoying.
Ages also has the Simon Says-like Goron Dancing minigame, which was a miserable time for me. And you can't hit me with that Skill Issue nonsense, i'm the Karaoke King in all the Yakuza games and i soloed the Orphan of Kos. It's not me.
Regardless, both games are a fine time. I have my problems with Ages but the good outweighs the bad. Despite the mermaid tail, I will probably play it again some day. Honestly, I dread running into the last few dungeons in each game than I do the mermaid tail. Those dungeons can get pretty tedious.
I have played each game twice, but only done a Linked Game once, where I got every piece of heart for each game.
I recommend the Oracle Twins Experience for anyone who enjoys Zelda but also anyone who likes the Game Boy. For some reason, the Game Boy has had a massive resurgence in the DIY/custom building scene, and the only reason i could see myself sinking the time and money into putting a backlight on a Game Boy Color would be to play the Oracle Twins again.