I wanted to play more Zelda, but I didn't have any more 3D Zelda games to play. That's when a friend of mine mentioned that she had just started Minish Cap, and I just had the urge to play through it again. While I don't have a physical cart anymore, I have it via the Ambassador Program on my 3DS, so that's how I played through it. It took me around 11 or so hours to play through the English version of the game on my New 3DS XL.
The last 2D Zelda game made by Capcom, Minish Cap is a mid-life GBA game that reuses a lot of assets from their Four Swords GBA game to tell an all new tale. Long long ago, the land was under assault by monsters until a hero in green appeared with a blade bestowed to him by the very small Minish. This Piccori blade was used to defeat the evil, and the blade has been enshrined in Hyrule ever since. One day, the evil wind mage Vaati destroys the blade, turns Princess Zelda to stone, and releases a massive swarm of monsters into the world in the process. It's up to Link and his strange friend Ezlo to restore the blade and defeat Vaati once and for all. It's a pretty standard story for a handheld Zelda adventure, and it does the job of Ezlo is a former Minish who was turned into a weird triangular bird thing by Vaati, and he joins Link on his quest by riding around on his conveniently hat-less head (given his very convenient hat-like shape). Ezlo not only gives you advice like Navi does, but he also gives you the ability to turn small like the Minish themselves, and that turning big and small is the most significant gimmick of this game. Being small is generally very similar to being big, mechanically speaking, but getting a mouse's perspective on human-world objects has a delightful charm that never outstays its welcome. Outside of that, the game is a fairly standard 2D Zelda affair with dungeons to complete and special items to find in them, sidequests to complete, and monsters and bosses to defeat. The dungeons are fun and well designed as are the bosses, but the signposting on how to progress or even fight bosses can be a bit confusing at times. This isn't helped by the fact that Ezlo often doesn't give terribly helpful hints on how to progress, so being a bit stumped on how to progress is a not infrequent issue in this game compared to other mid-/late-2000's Zelda titles. Like Capcom's Oracle series of Zelda games, there's a bit more involvement with NPCs than in Nintendo's 2D Zelda games, but in this case it takes place in the form of Kinstones that you fuse with other NPCs to both unlike side quests, treasure troves, and sometimes story progression. The Kinstones are a neat collectible and fun to do, but they're also effectively the entirety of the game's side content, so there isn't much writing for side content that doesn't ultimately get reduced to fusing Kinstones and wandering to where they've had their effect. The presentation is very charming. While the game plays more like the GBC Zelda games, it has the aesthetic of the Four Swords games and Wind Waker, giving it a lovely colorful and cartoony style. The music is also quite good, and the game all around plays and sounds just like you'd expect a Zelda game should. Verdict: Recommended. I didn't enjoy this game quite as much as I remembered enjoying it, but I still liked my time with it nonetheless. It can be a little clunky and unclear in places, but it's still a really solid Zelda game and another remarkably good job by Capcom in bringing Zelda to life on Nintendo's handhelds~.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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