Remarkably, the good majority of Zelda holds up in the current day. It's interesting to hear people call this a "guide game" in a negative lens because... that's always how it was marketed and sold to us. The manual that comes with the game not only expands quite a deal on the story and context of this first entry, but includes gorgeous artwork and maps - complete with walkthroughs for the first few dungeons - to get a new player started. This was indeed always meant to be an adventure, one the player would get their nose lost in manuals, handwritten notes and drawings, and of course not the least of which murmurings and tips passed between friends in the schoolyard and the fabled Nintendo hotline.

That said, the original Zelda experience isn't without flaw, for all of its adventure purist expression. I think Miyamoto and the team learned pretty quickly that an indicator for which bushes to burn, which boulders and walls to bomb, and stronger guidance for the sake of general gameplay flow were all in order by the time Link to the Past would roll around. The combat so desperately wants Link to have an arced swing of his sword, evidenced by how much combat relies on inter-tile maneuvering, but it's not quite there yet. Still a massive step in the right direction from the competitions' push-combat approach... much as I do like early Ys. What's here is still very solid, and a great deal of fun. I just replayed this with my best friend in an impromptu single session and it didn't drag at all. For as minimal and bare-bones as Zelda feels now, that adds to the unique charm and status it takes within its series and adventure games as a whole.

a lesser person would say "i'm speechless" when reviewing this. i am not speechless. i got the speech.

this is, somehow, really fucking cool. i love experimental and surreal shit, and this is obviously not exactly a "game" but more of an experience. you watch this weird ass footage while INCREDIBLE music plays -- no shit, this is going on my list of the best soundtracks of all time.

i played this purely out of curiosity. i watched a bit of a gameplay on youtube but i wanted to know how it actually controls, like what do you do while watching. basically nothing. but i still think it's something cool. and i must note, if these weren't images of a near naked woman, i would still love it, hell, i'd probably love it more. if it were bad early 2000s surreal cgi, it would be amazing. this is going on my list of "dream games".

i'll probably not watch this all the way through because i honestly don't care but i'm really impressed lol.

"The great filter" is a idea that poses the idea that there is a limit to the intelligence of a species before it destroys itself. Sewing the seeds of their own demise, the species does not pass the titular filter. One time, I asked my dad if he knew what "titular" meant and he said "I don't know, but he sounds like a real boob!"
The reason I bring up The Great Filter is because a lot of people like to muse about "what if humanity is on its way there (likely because of phone) (bad). However, it would seem that The Great Filter has already arrived, just in an... unexpected form.
The reason I bring up my dad is because it's kind of funny.

OOPS it kinda went and DESTROYED any goodwill I felt back for the original release. hard to still appreciate those glimmers of 'PROMISE' and ''''POTENTIAL'''' that maybe shined through before when on this big chance at a do-over they give us that same unpolished, dlc typical "the game, but worse!!!" treatment (in this case tho - A LOT WORSE!!!! :O ).

Even that ever potent Sonic "SOUL" factor you'd wanna see manifest DOESN'T HIT thanks to all the plot happenings looking like shit and coming off so RANDOM and abrupt in delivery. Not a very cool time!!

we cannot trust these old names to carry on the will of our beloved memories! their time has come and gone!!

This so clearly needed more time in the oven, it's baffling. There are aspects of it I somewhat enjoy but they are far outweighed by the lows. I'll start with the positives.

First off, having new playable characters is fun although they come with their quirks. Generally I think they're fun to play as but the open world challenges built around Tails in particular are really... Awkward? I guess that's a good word for it. A lot of the time I don't feel like I'm playing a Tails challenge in the way the game wants me to. It does seem like there's missed potential in the new characters' utilization though. Particularly with Knuckles, you'd think you would be doing more fighting with him, maybe having to clear out groups of enemies or a mini boss guarding the next objective, but nope. You don't really need to fight anything with Tails, Knuckles or Amy unless you just want to for the sake of 100% completion, which is a shame (As far as I'm aware at least. As of writing this I'm at the Master King Trial).

I think the new open world challenges are fine, though nothing standout. I haven't tried many of the Cyberspace levels but the one I have played was awful. I hope the others are better.
And uhhhh yeah, that's about it for positives.

The Tower Trials range from utterly unfair, to miserable to okay, the first two in particular having the absolute worst climbing challenges in the entire game. These challenges exemplify the larger issue of movement as a whole, and paired with the atrocious camera angles you're put through the first two towers made me want to rip my hair out. Did anyone at all playtest this even for 30 minutes? It wouldn't even be so difficult if not for the camera and movement. I've always had a problem with the movement, because you're given the freedom to toggle how fast your speed decelerates when stopping or jumping, your turn speed, bounce height, a ton of stuff that can allow you to easily cheese certain open world challenges. It's cool on paper, but the game is not designed around some of the control combos you'll come up with, and nowhere is that more clear than in the Tower Trials where you're constantly on a tightrope at risk of falling and losing all progress. No doubt its fun to mess with, I'm glad the options are there, it's just that it feels like a band aid solution for these platforming challenges that require precise movements. Maybe this is just me, but it feels cheap for me to have to change the default movement to better fit the the challenge rather than working around what I have. It might be a nitpick, because I could choose not to tinker with my controls, but it's convenient and easily accessible. Anyway, point is fuck the first two tower trials. The combat trials make it even worse though, the snake trial took me about half an hour or more to get down, and don't even get me started on the Master King Trial, which is what I'm stuck on currently. You're telling me you want me to fight 3 bosses in a row with no ring refreshes between fights, nor any checkpoints? This isn't fun, it's annoying, tedious and plain unfair, because if you make a single mistake in the Wyvern fight it's practically over. What makes it all that much worse is how easy Giganto and first 5 minutes of Wyvern are. I know what I'm doing, it's really not hard. It just takes so fucking long to get back to the part I have to retry. I don't know who at Sonic Team got pissed off, but sincerely, this isn't how you handle difficulty. I've set my difficulty to Easy mode and even still it can be so unforgiving. I'll probably update this if I can manage to push through and finish the story, but what I've played is incredibly underwhelming, riddled with issues.