It is ludicrous that these games work as well as they do. Capcom taking the reins of Nintendo's second-biggest series, attempting to build a multi-game narrative on a nearly-dead 8-bit portable system using an 8-year-old game's blueprint, featuring a rocky development that went from remake to trilogy to a pair of games releasing simultaneously. In most realities, these games either died on the vine unreleased or were dead on arrival with a reputation approaching the CD-i games. But what we got in our reality is arguably the peak of 2D Zelda in terms of pure gameplay.
Oracle of Ages doesn't quite meet my dream vision for a puzzle-focused Zelda. Over time I've increasingly wished for dungeons that forego combat altogether and just focus on navigation and manipulating the environment/architecture. Look at the opening dungeon of Dragon Quest VII and tell me they couldn't do the same with Zelda. Ages gets close at times: Jabu-Jabu attempts to translate the Ocarina Water Temple to 2D and is largely successful, but it insists on littering the excellent design (which incredibly actually resembles a whale in terms of shape, unlike Ocarina) with annoying electric jellyfish that are frustrating to fight underwater. It also leans a bit too heavily on room-specific puzzles (all of which are good to great), and its one time-jumping dungeon is a bit more tedious and obtuse than one would hope.
In the overworld, I genuinely don't understand how the puzzle-focused game got a simple two-state switch as opposed to the four-way switch of seasons. As in similar implementations of such a mechanic like Link to the Past or Metroid Prime 2, it's usually just a matter of getting as far as you can in one world then flipping over and continuing or clearing some obstacle, rinse and repeat. Difficulty mostly becomes a matter of how many hoops you have to go through to switch between states, and I've yet to play a game that has a satisfying curve for this type of thing. There are a few fun riffs on time travel as in Ocarina, but it's not nearly as fleshed out as the seasons mechanic in its counterpart.
I'm a being more critical than is representative of my experience, which was largely excellent. Basically just a case of expectations being inverted for which game I'd connect to more, and wanting the reviews to maintain the distinctness of the games themselves. (And why not see how distinct the other review is, hmm?)
What these games unlocked for me is the way the Zelda series has cultivated a spectrum with one end being "you are an adventurer" and the other being "you are The Hero". I'd say the adventuring side is embodied by the original Zelda, Breath of the Wild, and the Oracles; even when you are technically constrained in terms of dungeon order or how much of the world you can access, you feel like you're making your own way based on your sense of direction and curiosity. When you're The Hero, you are driven instead by what needs to be done and have situations and setpieces placed in your direct path rather than feeling like you came across them organically. Both games cultivate that sense of adventure well: you're self-reliant and using every tool at your disposal to untangle knotted and unfamiliar dungeons. If you're into 2D Zelda and especially the adventuring end of the Zelda spectrum, you owe it to yourself to play them.
Loose thoughts:
-this one definitely got more love on the story front, with more ongoing plot development (some of which might be a result of playing this second) and a nice little emotional twist at the end.
-very funny that there's one Zora who's whole job is just to explain they aren't like River Zora, even though the Ocarina Zoras were in a river.
-I would play the shit out of that one minecart shooting minigame if it had longer tracks, why wasn't it expanded in Minish Cap??
-Nintendo absolutely fumbling the opportunity to build excitement for the series as a whole in the run-up to Tears of the Kingdom. You could have had these from launch on the NSO Game Boy library, plus Four Swords multiplayer with the NSO GBA. These are the origin point for the guy who's made the three most recent 3D entries, that's pretty important!
Oracle of Ages doesn't quite meet my dream vision for a puzzle-focused Zelda. Over time I've increasingly wished for dungeons that forego combat altogether and just focus on navigation and manipulating the environment/architecture. Look at the opening dungeon of Dragon Quest VII and tell me they couldn't do the same with Zelda. Ages gets close at times: Jabu-Jabu attempts to translate the Ocarina Water Temple to 2D and is largely successful, but it insists on littering the excellent design (which incredibly actually resembles a whale in terms of shape, unlike Ocarina) with annoying electric jellyfish that are frustrating to fight underwater. It also leans a bit too heavily on room-specific puzzles (all of which are good to great), and its one time-jumping dungeon is a bit more tedious and obtuse than one would hope.
In the overworld, I genuinely don't understand how the puzzle-focused game got a simple two-state switch as opposed to the four-way switch of seasons. As in similar implementations of such a mechanic like Link to the Past or Metroid Prime 2, it's usually just a matter of getting as far as you can in one world then flipping over and continuing or clearing some obstacle, rinse and repeat. Difficulty mostly becomes a matter of how many hoops you have to go through to switch between states, and I've yet to play a game that has a satisfying curve for this type of thing. There are a few fun riffs on time travel as in Ocarina, but it's not nearly as fleshed out as the seasons mechanic in its counterpart.
I'm a being more critical than is representative of my experience, which was largely excellent. Basically just a case of expectations being inverted for which game I'd connect to more, and wanting the reviews to maintain the distinctness of the games themselves. (And why not see how distinct the other review is, hmm?)
What these games unlocked for me is the way the Zelda series has cultivated a spectrum with one end being "you are an adventurer" and the other being "you are The Hero". I'd say the adventuring side is embodied by the original Zelda, Breath of the Wild, and the Oracles; even when you are technically constrained in terms of dungeon order or how much of the world you can access, you feel like you're making your own way based on your sense of direction and curiosity. When you're The Hero, you are driven instead by what needs to be done and have situations and setpieces placed in your direct path rather than feeling like you came across them organically. Both games cultivate that sense of adventure well: you're self-reliant and using every tool at your disposal to untangle knotted and unfamiliar dungeons. If you're into 2D Zelda and especially the adventuring end of the Zelda spectrum, you owe it to yourself to play them.
Loose thoughts:
-this one definitely got more love on the story front, with more ongoing plot development (some of which might be a result of playing this second) and a nice little emotional twist at the end.
-very funny that there's one Zora who's whole job is just to explain they aren't like River Zora, even though the Ocarina Zoras were in a river.
-I would play the shit out of that one minecart shooting minigame if it had longer tracks, why wasn't it expanded in Minish Cap??
-Nintendo absolutely fumbling the opportunity to build excitement for the series as a whole in the run-up to Tears of the Kingdom. You could have had these from launch on the NSO Game Boy library, plus Four Swords multiplayer with the NSO GBA. These are the origin point for the guy who's made the three most recent 3D entries, that's pretty important!
Reviewed on May 08, 2023