Pros: The sprite-work and animation in this game is excellently detailed and incredibly smooth, and is by far the best looking 2D pixelated Zelda game out there. The big gameplay gimmick here is shrinking down to miniscule size, and oftentimes in that size, the world will simply look ginormous around you, and that's when the visuals look their most impressive, with massively textured and detailed background sprites, whether big chunks of ground, leaves, nuts, flowers, or even indoor settings like massive shoes or a giant bookcase where you're climbing books, it all looks stunning with rich details and vibrant colors! In fact, this game using the Wind Waker art style, did it several favors, fitting 2D gameplay sprite-based Zelda perfectly.
The gameplay is true blue 2D Zelda through and through with tons of overworld adventuring, items to collect and trade, and tricky and creative dungeons utilizing the many new wacky items and weapons, as well as Link's new gimmick of shrinking down to the size of an ant. The puzzles are pretty great, honestly, some of them would stump me for some time, but if I kept at it, I'd use that old noodle of mine to figure them out, and it was never the game's fault, I never once felt it was unfair, and solving some pretty tricky puzzles was extremely satisfying to do! It's all mostly solid stuff here, some trading quest objects (the Kinstones in particular) can become wearisome, but for the most part, and for the main quest, it's a grand old time.
The story is, it's... it's okay, it's far from my favorite, but you get the regular partner character that helps Link on his quest, Ezlo, an old elf dude who transforms into a hat for Link to wear. He offers plenty of personality and humor, he's alright as a character I suppose, and also this time around we have a new villain, well, a reused villain from Four Swords, Vaati. They give him a backstory, a more humanoid form, and he too... is just alright. But they manage to work in a story that contextualizes Link's shrinking mechanic by using a new race of creatures called the Picori, teensy tiny elf-like dudes that explain a bit the origin of Link's hat... I don't much care for that origin, or much the main partner character, Ezlo's, visual design, as he's just a dumb looking bird on the back of Link's pointy hat...
Cons: The bird hat, just simply looks too silly in my opinion for a main mechanic to be taken seriously, first of all, it's Link's hat, I never wanted Link's hat put on a pedestal as some holier than thou important relic of Hyrule history, nor do I feel making the partner character into a Muppet-y looking bird hat does it any favors for the stakes of the story, or as one of the consistent visual repetitions of the game. Yes, Zelda can be silly, and I enjoy the silliness, but when the main item, one of the main characters, as well as primary story hook, is this silly, I have to cringe a little, I'm sorry.
This isn't a major complaint about the way the game plays, so it's not that big of a deal, and if it doesn't bother you, no worries. As for gameplay elements that I wasn't the most jazzed about, the aforementioned Kinstones aren't the most compelling side content, I appreciate how much they offer the player, but at the end of the day, I'd rather a more organic system of simple character interaction trigger the events and puzzles to accomplish, rather than trading coin fragments with them in order for something random somewhere on the overworld to occur. And since I mentioned it, the overworld isn't really that captivating this time around, it's not bad or nothin, but compared to other 2D Zelda games, I feel it might be one of the weaker overworlds. That may do in part to the central gimmick not doing the overworld any favors, as shrinking down to size works great in exploring small sections and doing intricate puzzles, but when it comes to a larger open landscape, it doesn't heighten the sense of adventure and exploration in that area much. I felt the Oracle games with their alternate worlds like different seasons or past and present, made their overworlds more compelling, not to mention the animal friends you could ride atop to travel through those worlds. But hey, there's a lot of familiar faces from throughout the Zelda franchise here in Minish Cap's Hyrule to bring some smiles here and there.
What it means to me: I for real just finished this game for the first time ever prior to writing this review! This was one of the Zelda games I had on my bucketlist for the longest of times, and you know, it was better than I expected it to be!! Extremely fun adventure with some of the most satisfying puzzles in the series. And it makes me want another 2D pixel/sprite-based Zelda game again... Can't believe this was the last time we had gotten one...
The gameplay is true blue 2D Zelda through and through with tons of overworld adventuring, items to collect and trade, and tricky and creative dungeons utilizing the many new wacky items and weapons, as well as Link's new gimmick of shrinking down to the size of an ant. The puzzles are pretty great, honestly, some of them would stump me for some time, but if I kept at it, I'd use that old noodle of mine to figure them out, and it was never the game's fault, I never once felt it was unfair, and solving some pretty tricky puzzles was extremely satisfying to do! It's all mostly solid stuff here, some trading quest objects (the Kinstones in particular) can become wearisome, but for the most part, and for the main quest, it's a grand old time.
The story is, it's... it's okay, it's far from my favorite, but you get the regular partner character that helps Link on his quest, Ezlo, an old elf dude who transforms into a hat for Link to wear. He offers plenty of personality and humor, he's alright as a character I suppose, and also this time around we have a new villain, well, a reused villain from Four Swords, Vaati. They give him a backstory, a more humanoid form, and he too... is just alright. But they manage to work in a story that contextualizes Link's shrinking mechanic by using a new race of creatures called the Picori, teensy tiny elf-like dudes that explain a bit the origin of Link's hat... I don't much care for that origin, or much the main partner character, Ezlo's, visual design, as he's just a dumb looking bird on the back of Link's pointy hat...
Cons: The bird hat, just simply looks too silly in my opinion for a main mechanic to be taken seriously, first of all, it's Link's hat, I never wanted Link's hat put on a pedestal as some holier than thou important relic of Hyrule history, nor do I feel making the partner character into a Muppet-y looking bird hat does it any favors for the stakes of the story, or as one of the consistent visual repetitions of the game. Yes, Zelda can be silly, and I enjoy the silliness, but when the main item, one of the main characters, as well as primary story hook, is this silly, I have to cringe a little, I'm sorry.
This isn't a major complaint about the way the game plays, so it's not that big of a deal, and if it doesn't bother you, no worries. As for gameplay elements that I wasn't the most jazzed about, the aforementioned Kinstones aren't the most compelling side content, I appreciate how much they offer the player, but at the end of the day, I'd rather a more organic system of simple character interaction trigger the events and puzzles to accomplish, rather than trading coin fragments with them in order for something random somewhere on the overworld to occur. And since I mentioned it, the overworld isn't really that captivating this time around, it's not bad or nothin, but compared to other 2D Zelda games, I feel it might be one of the weaker overworlds. That may do in part to the central gimmick not doing the overworld any favors, as shrinking down to size works great in exploring small sections and doing intricate puzzles, but when it comes to a larger open landscape, it doesn't heighten the sense of adventure and exploration in that area much. I felt the Oracle games with their alternate worlds like different seasons or past and present, made their overworlds more compelling, not to mention the animal friends you could ride atop to travel through those worlds. But hey, there's a lot of familiar faces from throughout the Zelda franchise here in Minish Cap's Hyrule to bring some smiles here and there.
What it means to me: I for real just finished this game for the first time ever prior to writing this review! This was one of the Zelda games I had on my bucketlist for the longest of times, and you know, it was better than I expected it to be!! Extremely fun adventure with some of the most satisfying puzzles in the series. And it makes me want another 2D pixel/sprite-based Zelda game again... Can't believe this was the last time we had gotten one...