My desire for more 2D Zelda goodness was not fulfilled by completing LTTP last weekend, so I picked up Link's Awaking DX on my Japanese 3DS eShop for the super good price of 600 yen (seriously the eShop has a lot of really good deals on Gameboy games even when they aren't on sale, certainly compared to a physical cart that may have a dead save battery, anyhow). As with LTTP, I played this one a LOT growing up, so I could basically go through most of it by memory and didn't need to fumble through the Japanese too much to figure out where to go, and could mostly just sit back and enjoy the original version's dialogue. It took me about 7.5 hours over the course of a few days, and I got all but 3 heart pieces as well as the ultimate sword (which I didn't even need a guide to find all the shells for, and I was very proud of myself :b ).
Given that I started it the evening after I finished LTTP, the first thing I noticed was just how much easier this game is than that one. Most enemies, even bosses, don't do THAT much damage, certainly not compared to the heavy hitters in LTTP, and the combat overall just felt a lot more easy and forgiving. Especially in the DX version, where you can do the bonus color dungeon after the 3rd main dungeon to get a tunic that either doubles your damage or defense permanently (and you can go back to swap between them whenever), the boss battles almost become trivial at a point when you kill them in like 5 or 6 sword hits. Especially when you get the ultimate sword (so you're dealing 4 normal sword hits-worth of damage per attack), anything that can be killed with a sword dies REALLY fast XD. That said, around the 5th dungeon, most bosses and mini-bosses aren't even attacked with the sword, and are often hit with either bombs or by throwing things at them, so they clearly anticipated you wrecking things with your ultra sword at least a littttle bit XD. The world and map design are things I'm kinda torn on. On one hand, if you know what you're doing, the world map and dungeon design are super fun to navigate and conquer over and over, and have a good blend between feeling like something you're naturally constantly wanting to explore and simple puzzles to navigate. On the other hand, if you DON'T know what your doing or where to go, you can wander around for AGES trying to find the ONE bit of the map where the area you can progress through is. Especially once you get to around the 6th and 7th dungeons, the game can be pretty unforgiving in expecting you to basically remember the entire map and what bits contain elements you couldn't get past before, and even then the ways you get to those places aren't always very intuitive *glares angrily at Flying Rooster*. Dungeon maps aren't super detailed, but they often get the job done. The real stumbling block they hit is that there are a lot of staircases that lead to 2D platforming sections which will wrap you around to other areas of the dungeon. These staircases nor their 2D sections are shown nowhere on your map, so again, the game really expects you to have a keen memory for how a dungeon is laid out or you're gonna spend a LOT of time lost. Especially in the 8th dungeon, which has a much more non-linear design than the others in the game, and I can specifically remember I just got so lost and confused in that dungeon I gave up on it on two separate playthroughs growing up (and the gimmick to finish the 7th dungeon is also one that stumped me a lot as a kid, and I had to look that up eventually too). This is really Link's Awakening's biggest problem. The limited graphical hardware of the GameBoy made it so a lot of important map details couldn't really easily be made to the player, and outside of remembering what the Owl tells you when you beat a dungeon (that makes sense in context I promise), you often have very little clue of where to go next or what to do it outside of remembering where you have or haven't been. Most areas of the map are visually distinct enough that you'll remember them, at least, but there aren't enough tile sets in the game to keep that from happening EVER, and there are fields I frequently confuse the locations of still to this day despite how many times I've played through this game. The overworld map is almost comically useless with how unspecific and vague it is about the locations of things, so while you can kinda use it for the general location of things, it's useless for actual navigation (in stark contrast to the map in LTTP which had basically EVERYTHING on the map which you could see on it). Verdict: Recommended. The bad signposting is really the only thing keeping me from giving this game a whole-hearted highly recommended mark. Losing where you're supposed to can be SO frustrating that it really just makes it feel like the game isn't respecting the player's time. This wouldn't be something I'd complain much about if this where any other game, as that bad navigation that expected a lot of the player was very common in old action/adventure games. But Link's Awakening unlearns so many good design lessons from LTTP that I cannot leave it unpenalized in good conscience. This is a great game, but do be expecting to use a guide to get through some of the later (or even quite early) overworld sections if you do decide to pick it up and don't want to spend ages wandering around the overworld trying to remember where to go (or if you like making really meticulous maps with notes for your retro adventure games, then I suppose you'd probably love this game).
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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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