Went into this nearly completely blind, though I'm aware of general online consensus that the game is needlessly obtuse. To that I say... it's not really that bad if you refer to the manual, you know, like the opening text crawl actually tells you to! The manual includes information on enemies, treasures, hints, instructions on how to get to the first couple of dungeons, and a pretty detailed map of your starting area, and so I didn't feel like any of the secrets that were mandatory to progression were impossible to find.
The Legend of Zelda is just as revolutionary and influential as a Super Mario Bros or a Doom; its sprawling overworld and extreme nonlinearity bids the player completely immerse themself in the game, and the little touches (the helpful minimap, the treasures and secrets waiting to be discovered, even the fact that this is one of the few NES RPGs where death does not erase your progress or even carry a monetary penalty) only further serve to enhance its adventurous swashbuckling spirit.
The only difference between Zelda and the two classics mentioned above is that I feel this game didn't quite hit on the perfect storm of good game design that made even the first installment feel refined and complete. Hidden secrets all over the world sounds good, but fighting every Armos, checking every tombstone, burning every bush and bombing every wall doesn't exactly sound like my idea of fun (or of engaging puzzle design for that matter). And while the combat could have been worse, the enemy sprites are very simple - they mostly don't indicate which direction they're facing in and don't have attack 'tells', which makes their attacks and movement feel erratic and random and makes dealing with them feel like a matter of luck. Hardware limitations mean that certain enemies teleport or pop out of the ground without warning one square in front of where you're walking, pretty much always resulting in a guaranteed hit. Put simply: all the core concepts that make classic Zelda great are all here, but the game itself doesn't really feel great to play.
This does a heck of a lot more right than wrong and I'd recommend it to any fans of the series who haven't yet tried it for whatever reason - with the caveat that you might want to have savestates or a rewind feature in reserve just in case!
The Legend of Zelda is just as revolutionary and influential as a Super Mario Bros or a Doom; its sprawling overworld and extreme nonlinearity bids the player completely immerse themself in the game, and the little touches (the helpful minimap, the treasures and secrets waiting to be discovered, even the fact that this is one of the few NES RPGs where death does not erase your progress or even carry a monetary penalty) only further serve to enhance its adventurous swashbuckling spirit.
The only difference between Zelda and the two classics mentioned above is that I feel this game didn't quite hit on the perfect storm of good game design that made even the first installment feel refined and complete. Hidden secrets all over the world sounds good, but fighting every Armos, checking every tombstone, burning every bush and bombing every wall doesn't exactly sound like my idea of fun (or of engaging puzzle design for that matter). And while the combat could have been worse, the enemy sprites are very simple - they mostly don't indicate which direction they're facing in and don't have attack 'tells', which makes their attacks and movement feel erratic and random and makes dealing with them feel like a matter of luck. Hardware limitations mean that certain enemies teleport or pop out of the ground without warning one square in front of where you're walking, pretty much always resulting in a guaranteed hit. Put simply: all the core concepts that make classic Zelda great are all here, but the game itself doesn't really feel great to play.
This does a heck of a lot more right than wrong and I'd recommend it to any fans of the series who haven't yet tried it for whatever reason - with the caveat that you might want to have savestates or a rewind feature in reserve just in case!