it's really good! probably not my favorite zelda or even my favorite 2d zelda but i still liked it a lot. succeeds as a remake in that i don't feel like i've "lost" any part of the experience by playing it in this format.
very faithful to the original in ways i could not have predicted. presentation is 100% on point, which shows Grezzo has learned a thing or two since their washed-out N64 remasters.
judging the game on its own, i think it represents a pretty big stepping stone: the NPCs have finally come into their own! thanks to some unexpected inspiration from Twin Peaks(?!?!) and its small-town charm, we get some joyfully fun characters on Koholint, many cleverly repurposed from extant Nintendo titles, and with them comes the first trading sequence in Zelda; possibly my favorite of the series' hallmark features and one i wish would return some day :(
the dungeons are a big step up from Link to the Past's, despite the smaller scale and shrunken item set; the tedium still reaches frustrating heights toward the end (the 7th dungeon of 8 particularly felt dull and overlong) but overall the design is far more intuitive than any of the Dark World Dungeons, and still a bit more clever, at that!
my greatest complaint is that, in spite of the numerous QoL changes and streamlines, the Roc's Feather, an item that serves as a de-facto jump button in a game with sidescrolling sequences, remains an item that needs to be equipped. whose idea was this???

make no mistake this is a review of the remaster and not the original game, which i never finished. although now i'll have to, because i found the balance changes of this rerelease to be painfully egregious towards the end. why would you nerf the quake 2 railgun are you insane?
compass is a welcome change though, a suitable replacement for looking up a walkthrough in another window every time you get lost in these head-bashingly stupid levels (which, btw, don't even try alt-tabbing in this version lol)
i can't insult q2 on its own too much though, i think the weapon lineup is mostly solid and the combat encounters are generally more fun than anything in q1. avoid this remake and just play the original. i hear Yamagi's a good sourceport

a slick punisher-lite story by way of john woo and film noir. storytelling has rarely been done this well in games. playfully machismo but reserved enough to be self-aware; max is a sensitive and vulnerable man as much as he is a bloodthirsty and unstoppable one, and the women in this story often have more agency than their male counterparts, who rarely exist as more than pawns.
the game itself is brilliant. somehow utilizes the humble quicksave key better than half-life 1. bullets travel slower than you'd be led to believe but they're almost invisible until you activate bullet time so you never really notice. your only "evasive" manuver is one that's incredibly risky and takes a great amount of consideration to use effectively. big chef kiss on this one