Link's Awakening was one of the first games I played as a kid and it's been one of my favorite games for a long time. I was super excited for the switch remake when that came out and it was very good, but something about it never felt as refined or good to play as the original. I thought the new graphics were great, the music was very well done, and the gameplay changes were good, but something about it made it seem less than the sum of its parts. This version isn't a perfect way to play the game, but it was a joy to experience one of my favorite games in a new light.
Obviously, the biggest change is the updated camera system where it scrolls around the world along with the character and can display a much larger space, which wasn’t something I ever really thought was necessary for the game. But, when I stepped outside of Marin’s house for the first time after booting the HD version up, I started getting a little emotional. Seeing the town I was so familiar with all at once was just so powerful to me for some reason. The switch remake does have a slightly similar camera system where it will follow along with the player but it doesn’t really display much more of the world at once than the original did. That along with the updated visuals somehow didn’t make as much of an impression on me as this HD version did.
Unfortunately though, a great change to an otherwise identical game creates some issues. The main issue I have with the camera is in dungeons, seeing all of the rooms feels a little cheap when you’re supposed to be going through them like an explorer. The different floors and rooms also don’t connect together in a way that looks correct because they’re all just laid out right next to each other. Obviously the player was never supposed to see the game like this but it's questionable why the developer of this HD version chose to hide some parts of the dungeons and not others. In eagle’s tower, the different floors aren’t able to be seen off screen, but they are in most other dungeons. Also, showing the boss room and the instrument kind of takes away from their significance.
A quite great change is the addition of two more inventory slots. I've gotten used to switching items all the time in the original game but it's a lot more painless to get around the world knowing you won’t have to pause every few screens to equip the feather or power bracelet. The animation for opening the inventory screen also seems to take less time than the original, which is a great addition. That being said, I feel like the developer still didn’t take this far enough. I ended up having the sword, feather, and power bracelet equipped for the vast majority of my playthrough, leaving me with just one slot for another item, which isn’t ideal. It would’ve been great to implement a change similar to the switch remake where the power bracelet becomes a completely passive item, but I understand if the developer wanted to make it more close to how the original worked.
I assume this HD version was created from the ground up for computers, while incorporating some aspects of the decompiled code for the original games. For the most part, I’d say the developer or developers did a remarkable job emulating almost everything about the original in a very convincing way. There are still some issues with the recreation, most of which aren’t really worth mentioning, but there are a few that detract from its quality. It seems like the player gets sucked into holes a lot more often than in the original, which was still an issue and source of frustration even then, but it's only more emphasized in this version. There are also some enemies that don’t take damage properly, namely the armos statue in the southern shrine and the ganon stage of the final boss fight. Both of them only take damage from the pegasus boots, which took me quite a while to figure out. Another big issue I had was in the turtle’s rock dungeon, where two small keys seemed to disappeared from my inventory when I went outside. This would have softlocked my save file, but I was able to edit the file with a text editor to fix it. Anyone who also has this problem, open the file and go to the sections that start with d8 (aka dungeon 8) and start changing the lines that say ‘d8_smallkey_x 1’ to ‘d8_smallkey_x 0’.
Just as with the switch remake, it was amazing to play one of my favorite games again under a new light, but unfortunately, just as with the remake, it seems we haven’t yet gotten the perfect version of Link’s Awakening.
Obviously, the biggest change is the updated camera system where it scrolls around the world along with the character and can display a much larger space, which wasn’t something I ever really thought was necessary for the game. But, when I stepped outside of Marin’s house for the first time after booting the HD version up, I started getting a little emotional. Seeing the town I was so familiar with all at once was just so powerful to me for some reason. The switch remake does have a slightly similar camera system where it will follow along with the player but it doesn’t really display much more of the world at once than the original did. That along with the updated visuals somehow didn’t make as much of an impression on me as this HD version did.
Unfortunately though, a great change to an otherwise identical game creates some issues. The main issue I have with the camera is in dungeons, seeing all of the rooms feels a little cheap when you’re supposed to be going through them like an explorer. The different floors and rooms also don’t connect together in a way that looks correct because they’re all just laid out right next to each other. Obviously the player was never supposed to see the game like this but it's questionable why the developer of this HD version chose to hide some parts of the dungeons and not others. In eagle’s tower, the different floors aren’t able to be seen off screen, but they are in most other dungeons. Also, showing the boss room and the instrument kind of takes away from their significance.
A quite great change is the addition of two more inventory slots. I've gotten used to switching items all the time in the original game but it's a lot more painless to get around the world knowing you won’t have to pause every few screens to equip the feather or power bracelet. The animation for opening the inventory screen also seems to take less time than the original, which is a great addition. That being said, I feel like the developer still didn’t take this far enough. I ended up having the sword, feather, and power bracelet equipped for the vast majority of my playthrough, leaving me with just one slot for another item, which isn’t ideal. It would’ve been great to implement a change similar to the switch remake where the power bracelet becomes a completely passive item, but I understand if the developer wanted to make it more close to how the original worked.
I assume this HD version was created from the ground up for computers, while incorporating some aspects of the decompiled code for the original games. For the most part, I’d say the developer or developers did a remarkable job emulating almost everything about the original in a very convincing way. There are still some issues with the recreation, most of which aren’t really worth mentioning, but there are a few that detract from its quality. It seems like the player gets sucked into holes a lot more often than in the original, which was still an issue and source of frustration even then, but it's only more emphasized in this version. There are also some enemies that don’t take damage properly, namely the armos statue in the southern shrine and the ganon stage of the final boss fight. Both of them only take damage from the pegasus boots, which took me quite a while to figure out. Another big issue I had was in the turtle’s rock dungeon, where two small keys seemed to disappeared from my inventory when I went outside. This would have softlocked my save file, but I was able to edit the file with a text editor to fix it. Anyone who also has this problem, open the file and go to the sections that start with d8 (aka dungeon 8) and start changing the lines that say ‘d8_smallkey_x 1’ to ‘d8_smallkey_x 0’.
Just as with the switch remake, it was amazing to play one of my favorite games again under a new light, but unfortunately, just as with the remake, it seems we haven’t yet gotten the perfect version of Link’s Awakening.