I remember this game being talked about a fair bit back when it came out as a really good "Nindie" title on Switch that was a loving tribute to Legend of Zelda games from the LTTP-era. It's on sale for like 50% off for Nintendo's post-E3 sale right now, so I decided to pick it up. While a very competent game, I don't think Blossom Tales is really for someone like me who's beaten all the other 2D top-down Zelda games already. I hunted around for goodies as much as I could but still apparently missed quite a few (or at least a couple, if there aren't actually 2 complete rows of hearts), and it took me about 8.5 hours to beat. While I did enjoy my time with the game to a point, I'd be lying if I said I didn't regret buying it at least a little.
Blossom Tales' narrative conceit is that it's a grandpa telling a story to his grandchildren. The game is very much in the style of a LTTP or GBC Zelda game, and doesn't so much wear its inspiration on its sleeve as it has it tattooed on its forehead, as it even opens with the grandpa wanting to tell them the story of the little boy in green who saved a kingdom beginning with H-, but the kids have heard it so many times he has to think of another story. The humor is silly, but the narrative is fairly spread apart enough that it's not really a super big part of the game. You really rarely have to talk people if you don't want to, but the grandpa's asides explain further goals or introduce bosses. There are twice where the kids will actually argue about what the story will be (like what kind of enemy you're about to fight) and you, the player, get to pick which one of them is right, but it only happens twice, so it's not really a mechanic/gimmick the game takes much advantage of.
The dungeon design is super duper simple. Basically every dungeon of the four in the game are just a series of rooms, sometimes branching off of a main room, full of either corridors full of traps, self-contained puzzle rooms, or monster arenas, and you have to complete that to get to the next room. You'll eventually come across a switch that will unlock the way forward in the aforementioned main room. Rinse and repeat. There will be a mini-boss and eventually a boss in there somewhere, but all 4 dungeons in the game follow that same formula. Again, it's competently done and can be quite fun, but it's hard to get excited about after playing so many actual LoZ games that do this so much better.
The music is very heavily Zelda-inspired, one town in particular very clearly opening with the first few bars of Zelda's Lullaby (I'm sure other places do that too but I don't know Zelda songs well enough to tell :P ), but there wasn't anything particularly great other than the blacksmith theme you barely ever hear because you're in the blacksmith for maybe a total of 20 seconds in the whole game. I found the graphical style fairly ugly, to be honest. The monster design, particularly the boss design, is pretty good, but the world felt fairly generic (albeit nice looking) and the NPC characters and player character all had oddly simplistic design compared to the rest of the world and it just didn't look nice to me at all.
The combat and item use can be pretty annoying as well. Unlike the GBA or GBC Zelda games where you can slash with impunity and it's always the same slash, BT has a 3-step slash where first it's to the right, then the left, and then a roundhouse swing and there is a slight pause in the momentum of the swings. This combined with the often huge enemy hordes you're fighting actually makes the combat fairly frustrating, compared to LoZ, as you just can't help but get hit because you can't kill stuff fast enough (most enemies take 3 hits to kill). Trying to fight stuff with the sword was almost always more trouble than it was worth, especially because your sub-weapons are SO much better.
Your items like bombs, arrows, and boomerang (among others) all just use a constantly regenerating "energy" so you don't need to refill them at a shop ever, but they also do like 3-times as much damage at your sword, which basically makes the sword your last line of defense and something you basically never want to use. This is made pretty annoying at how you can't actually sort the sub-weapon menu in any way, but that's a very minor annoyance. The combat may be frustrating at times (particularly before you have very good sub-weapons), but the game is actually really easy. It's one of the easiest games in this style I've played. The damage you take is super forgiving, and on top of that the game just spits defense, healing, and revive items at you quite a lot.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Blossom Tales really isn't a bad game, but it was not the game for me. If you just like the exploration, dungeon trekking, and simple combat of Zelda, you'll probably quite like this game despite the fact that it ever really presents a challenge. If you wanted to get a non-gamer or a kid into Zelda games, this is a great first-step into the genre with how relatively easy it is compared to most Zelda games. If you're someone who loves 2D Zelda, has played them all, and is looking for a new interesting or challenging take on the formula, however, Blossom Tales will very likely leave you quite disappointed even at the sale price going on at the moment.
Blossom Tales' narrative conceit is that it's a grandpa telling a story to his grandchildren. The game is very much in the style of a LTTP or GBC Zelda game, and doesn't so much wear its inspiration on its sleeve as it has it tattooed on its forehead, as it even opens with the grandpa wanting to tell them the story of the little boy in green who saved a kingdom beginning with H-, but the kids have heard it so many times he has to think of another story. The humor is silly, but the narrative is fairly spread apart enough that it's not really a super big part of the game. You really rarely have to talk people if you don't want to, but the grandpa's asides explain further goals or introduce bosses. There are twice where the kids will actually argue about what the story will be (like what kind of enemy you're about to fight) and you, the player, get to pick which one of them is right, but it only happens twice, so it's not really a mechanic/gimmick the game takes much advantage of.
The dungeon design is super duper simple. Basically every dungeon of the four in the game are just a series of rooms, sometimes branching off of a main room, full of either corridors full of traps, self-contained puzzle rooms, or monster arenas, and you have to complete that to get to the next room. You'll eventually come across a switch that will unlock the way forward in the aforementioned main room. Rinse and repeat. There will be a mini-boss and eventually a boss in there somewhere, but all 4 dungeons in the game follow that same formula. Again, it's competently done and can be quite fun, but it's hard to get excited about after playing so many actual LoZ games that do this so much better.
The music is very heavily Zelda-inspired, one town in particular very clearly opening with the first few bars of Zelda's Lullaby (I'm sure other places do that too but I don't know Zelda songs well enough to tell :P ), but there wasn't anything particularly great other than the blacksmith theme you barely ever hear because you're in the blacksmith for maybe a total of 20 seconds in the whole game. I found the graphical style fairly ugly, to be honest. The monster design, particularly the boss design, is pretty good, but the world felt fairly generic (albeit nice looking) and the NPC characters and player character all had oddly simplistic design compared to the rest of the world and it just didn't look nice to me at all.
The combat and item use can be pretty annoying as well. Unlike the GBA or GBC Zelda games where you can slash with impunity and it's always the same slash, BT has a 3-step slash where first it's to the right, then the left, and then a roundhouse swing and there is a slight pause in the momentum of the swings. This combined with the often huge enemy hordes you're fighting actually makes the combat fairly frustrating, compared to LoZ, as you just can't help but get hit because you can't kill stuff fast enough (most enemies take 3 hits to kill). Trying to fight stuff with the sword was almost always more trouble than it was worth, especially because your sub-weapons are SO much better.
Your items like bombs, arrows, and boomerang (among others) all just use a constantly regenerating "energy" so you don't need to refill them at a shop ever, but they also do like 3-times as much damage at your sword, which basically makes the sword your last line of defense and something you basically never want to use. This is made pretty annoying at how you can't actually sort the sub-weapon menu in any way, but that's a very minor annoyance. The combat may be frustrating at times (particularly before you have very good sub-weapons), but the game is actually really easy. It's one of the easiest games in this style I've played. The damage you take is super forgiving, and on top of that the game just spits defense, healing, and revive items at you quite a lot.
Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Blossom Tales really isn't a bad game, but it was not the game for me. If you just like the exploration, dungeon trekking, and simple combat of Zelda, you'll probably quite like this game despite the fact that it ever really presents a challenge. If you wanted to get a non-gamer or a kid into Zelda games, this is a great first-step into the genre with how relatively easy it is compared to most Zelda games. If you're someone who loves 2D Zelda, has played them all, and is looking for a new interesting or challenging take on the formula, however, Blossom Tales will very likely leave you quite disappointed even at the sale price going on at the moment.