This is a game I wasn't really planning on replaying or rebuying any time soon, but then I found it in very nice condition for a whopping 300 yennies, so into the playlist for GameCube month it went! X3. It's a game I've beaten a time or two before and played with friends on several occasions, but that was so long ago I'd forgotten just about everything about this game. It took me about 8 or so hours to complete the Japanese version of the game by myself.

Four Swords Adventures is the Nintendo-made follow up (of sorts) to the extra Four Swords multiplayer mode Capcom put into their GBA port of Link to the Past several years before. Rather than just a handful of levels, this is a whole game designed for four Links to partake in as they fight to save Hyrule from the evil wizard Vaati. The story is very light for a Zelda game outside of simple plot exposition, but most of the text is dedicated to light flavor text or just explaining what to do in each stage, and the writing that is there does a good job of explaining things and being as entertaining as it needs to be. And that's right, you read that right. This is a Zelda game with stages. You play through eight worlds of three stages each trying to get to the end of it to complete your exceptionally linear adventure. Granted that isn't a bad thing, as this is a fairly necessary concession to make for the sake of the multiplayer, which is this game's main draw.

This is an adventure for four Links, and you can control them by yourself or you can have up to three other friends take control of them. Playing by yourself or with any number other than four people, you can use the C-stick or hold Y to access fixed formations for your Links to walk in to achieve different environmental puzzles or take on particular enemies or bosses that demand more spread out or compact formations (such as walking in a horizontal line to push a large block or form an offensive wall to take on oncoming enemies). The only real downside to this is that playing with any number of friends is a pretty significant investment in equipment, as each player needs their own GBA and link cable to the GameCube to play (as you go into a personal sub-screen to go into sub-areas of a larger area). You don't need that to play alone, but it's a pretty unfortunate obstacle in experiencing what's otherwise a pretty damn impressive and unique multiplayer experience.

If you imagine a Zelda game with all of the fluff known as "adventure" taken out and boil it down to a more linear approach to the usual puzzle solving and enemy fighting, then that's what you've got here. The combat arenas and the sheer emphasis on the number of enemies in combat are a little unorthodox for a 2D or 3D Zelda, sure, but it fits really well into the multiplayer format this game is designed around. Stages have an impressive diversity of being more combat, platforming/exploring, and puzzle focused, and that leads to always feeling like you're doing something different. Some of the puzzle focused stages are a little too puzzle-y for my liking (both as a kid and as an adult there were a few solutions I had to look up on my own), but perhaps they're mean to be harder because you're intended to have four heads thinking up solutions rather than one XD. At any rate, it really pays to pay attention to what NPCs tell you, as they often given rather crucial hints to solving the puzzles in your way and are almost always there to do more than simply add flavor text.

The presentation is a very wild thing, even in the context of Zelda in the mid-2000's. You have a 2D game that feels a lot like the original Four Swords game, but the presentation is this weird mish-mash of Link to the Past-like and Minish Cap-like environments combined with a lot of NPCs (and bosses) plucked straight out of Wind Waker (though they're obviously different characters within the universe of the game). They do a really cool job of converting what were once 3D boss fights into 2D ones, and it overall gives the game a very eclectic feeling in how it's presented. The music is also excellent, but it's also by and large remixes of existing Zelda tracks, just to add one more onto the pile of how much of a delightful mish-mash of Zeldas this game feels.


Verdict: Recommended. This is definitely more highly recommended if you have friends to play with, but just as a solo game, it's simply quite good. It really won't set your world on fire, but it's nonetheless a really neat and unique game by any measure, particularly for the time. Definitely one worth spending a weekend on if you can find it for the right price, even if you don't have friends to enjoy it with~.