Liking or even loving The Legend of Zelda series is not a
unique claim on the internet. For those of you unaware (side note: how the hell
did you end up on a blog about video games?), The Legend of Zelda series is one
of the most popular and well-received game franchises of all time. On the list
of best-selling game franchises it’s currently only 20th place [source].
I know, surprised me too, but I’d guess quantity has a lot to do with it, as
well as games selling more in general as time goes on. Since these games started
coming out in the mid-80s, before aggregate sites like Metacritic existed (for
better or worse), it’s impossible to get average review scores across the whole
series. However, I would be willing to bet money that if you could take average
review scores from each Zelda game and then averaged the whole series, it would
be better received than any other game franchise (with at least a few entries,
because averages) in history.
Put another way, I don’t
think there is a single series of video games more universally beloved than The
Legend of Zelda. There are series that sell more, series that get more
publicity, and plenty of individual games that score as well as it. But many of
the other biggest game series are divisive. Final Fantasy, Call of Duty, Grand
Theft Auto, Sonic the Hedgehog...these are all series of games that have people
who really like them and some who really despise them. But I’ve never really
seen people hate The Legend of Zelda.
Oh, such people exist, sure. No need to show me examples, I’ve been on the
internet before. But at worst, people typically just seem ambivalent towards
it. And at best people really, really love
it.
Why am I explaining this
to you? I’m telling you because I love The
Legend of Zelda. It is quite possibly my favorite game series of all time. I am
a person who owns and has played several hundred games, many of them regarded
as fantastic masterpieces. And yet if you asked me what my favorite games of
all time were, I guarantee that multiple Zelda
games would be near the top of the list. But despite this, I haven’t actually talked
about Zelda games much at all in my time writing for this blog. Why is that?
Was it alien
tampering? I bet it was alien tampering. It’s the only rational explanation.
Well, part of it is that
all the obvious things I could say about the series have already been said
countless times. Obviously, given that the games are so beloved, they’re fairly
well explored on the internet. That isn’t to say I have nothing to talk about.
Game design is a broad topic and I there are tons of things I could say about
the various entries in the Zelda series. But to dig into those concepts I’d
have to go deep and, perhaps more pressingly, I’d feel obligated to start
talking about the whole series. Apart from a few rare spin-offs no one counts,
the Zelda series is 16 games long; and I own and have played all of them except
one (The Minish Cap, and yes I’m getting around to it). Even the thought of
writing deep, thoughtful critiques on 15 beloved games which have already received
a huge body of established criticism is intimidating.
And so more often than not, it’s easier to write about more obscure games and put
that off for another day.
Well today is that day. A
short while back, a popular let’s play that I watch known as Game Grumps started playing through Zelda
2: The Adventure of Link. Seeing the game again brought me back, but what
brought me back even more were some of the comments on it. It was noted in the
let’s play and by commenters that the game was something of a black sheep in
the Zelda series, and they questioned why. There were a decent amount of people
who claimed that Zelda 2 was reviled merely because it was different from the
rest of the series. I could recall hearing the same thing said online about 5
or 6 years back when a high school aged me bought Zelda 2 on virtual console.
...I did not have a good
time.
But this remembrance was
a chance for me. It was a chance for me to revisit a game that so frustrated me
that I quit midway through it. A chance to see once and for all whether such
frustration was validated. A chance to take one of my least favorite games in
my most favorite game series and examine it, for better or worse, critically. And
of course, it was a chance to finally talk about a Zelda game in detail on this
blog.
I took that chance. Since
we’re about 800 words into this, I should probably get to what I found already.
Overview
Zelda 2: The Adventure of
Link was originally released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in early
1987, less than a year after the original Legend of Zelda. It was intentionally
made as a fundamentally different game from its predecessor. Unlike the
original (and all other 2D games in the Zelda series), Zelda 2 mostly took
place as a side-scrolling action game. The game had you walking on an overworld
map similar to RPGs, where you move in a larger, representative space until you
get to specific towns or dungeons. The game also had semi-random encounters,
where enemies spawning on and wandering around the overworld map would take you
to another screen to fight them.
Here we see the
overworld, where you can encounter these random enemies. The encounters are
different in every area, with these two sprites representing ‘weak’ and ‘strong’
groups of enemies.
When you touch those
enemies on the overworld you’re transported to a screen like this. Here you’ll
run, jump and stab your way through foes. Or, in a random encounter like this,
you could just keep walking off-screen without fighting anything.
So looking at the
interface in that last screenshot, we see another thing unique about this game:
Zelda 2 had RPG elements. Specifically, enemies you killed would grant you
experience (shown in the top right). When you obtained enough experience, you
could level up and upgrade attack, magic or life. You’d use your magic to cast
a series of spells you’d unlock from hidden ‘wise men’ found in each town. They
let you do things in addition to just jumping and stabbing, like shooting
fireballs or healing yourself. It was a simple system, but it was an
interesting addition that I actually quite enjoyed. It gave you options in
combat and gave you something to look forward to acquiring as you continued
through the game. Speaking personally, RPGs and platformers are some of my
favorite types of video games.
This is important to
note, because this system is very different from most Zelda games. When you
hear Zelda 2 brought up on the internet, the majority seem to say “it was different,
some people didn’t like this”. I could understand this being the view of some,
but it frustrates me because this is something that I have no problem with.
Many of the differences in Zelda 2 are fine by me, and I like that the game
tried something new. But I do think that Zelda 2 absolutely has problems that are completely unrelated to it being different from the rest of the
series.
Movement and Combat
Movement in Zelda 2 is a
little bit strange. Link has momentum he builds up as he moves, much like in
platforming games like Super Mario Bros.
However, it’s a very small start-up time to running full speed. The main issue
is that unlike in the Mario games, you can’t jump on enemies to kill them.
Instead you have to stand in front of them and hit them with your sword, but
the range of the sword is fairly small. It’s like if you took side-scrolling
contemporary Castlevania, gave the
character momentum instead of defined speed and jump arcs, and then made their
weapon about 1/2 or 1/3 the size.
“BEHOLD, the almighty
strength of – oh fuck it’s a bit short again, isn’t it?”
This means a lot of
combat is spent edging closer to enemies but trying not to get so close that
they touch you (as this damages you and throws you backwards). This is even
worse with advancing enemies, as you’re constantly readjusting slightly and it
can be very finicky. Also worth noting is that when you hit enemies, assuming
they don’t die, they are stunned for a half second or so. But enemies can do
the same to you if they touch you, knocking you back and throwing off your
rhythm. So a lot of combat tends to come down to stun-locking your enemies
before they stun-lock you, mashing like crazy and/or randomly crouching up and
down. This doesn’t even touch on enemies with projectiles, most of which fire
off random patterns that are impossible to predict, further encouraging
spam-happy blitzkriegs as the best option for combat.
I admit, there are rare occasions
when you and an enemy can have tight, purely skill-based exchanges of attacking
and blocking with shield-based positioning. These moments feel reasonably
satisfying, but honestly they weren’t the norm for me. For me, there was only
one part of the combat that felt consistently satisfying. This one attack,
whether it even does damage or not, is the one part of movement and combat in
this game that I always enjoyed. As those who have played the game may have
guessed, I’m talking about the downward thrust.
Pictured: One of, if
not the best thing about Zelda 2.
Sometime into Zelda 2,
you are granted the downward thrust, a move that lets you strike at enemies as
you are falling to the ground. Not only does this damage enemies, but you can
bounce off of them and chain hits as you hop from foe to foe. It’s the most
satisfying move to use in the game, and you may recognize it as exactly what a normal platformer is. Normal
platformers like the Mario games have attacking through jumps for a reason, and
that’s because it’s a movement type that gives immediate and satisfying tactile
feedback. Bouncing on foes doesn’t just defeat them, it defeats them in a way
that’s fun to execute again and again. Games are capable of making 2D
sword-fighting satisfying in this way as well, but it’s harder to do and I
never felt Zelda 2 was quite up to the task. There’s too much finicky movement
and careless button-mashing. There’s also the constant stress of failure, which
really puts a damper on things. Speaking of that, let’s cut to what I believe
to be the game’s biggest flaw.
Difficulty and Lives
I am going to make the
argument that Zelda 2 is unreasonably difficult. Before I make this argument, I
want to make a distinction. I have no problem with games that are difficult; I
have problems with games that are difficult for the wrong reasons. If you want more detail on my opinions on difficulty in
games, particular old-school ones, I wrote about them in a previous article. Zelda 2 is often difficult in all the wrong ways. Sometimes it
pulls cheap shots on you, with randomly thrown or hard to see projectiles, and
it takes a cruel delight in putting instant death pits all over the place more
and more as the game progresses.
Zelda 2 is also a game I
would never want to play without a walkthrough. It’s filled with the worst type
of secrets-as-a-means-of-progression bullshit that games of its era were known
for. Sometimes the game will change the rules on you, requiring you to do
things you didn’t know you could do with absolutely no hints indicating you
can. One town on the overworld is hidden in a forest, and to find it you have
to press A in front of all the forest tiles to smash through the forest until
you find it. Previously you could smash boulders, but there was no reason to
believe the A button served any other purpose. Just a few specific times in
towns you can interact with objects to get items or hints. Each time you
interact with an object, like say a table, it’s an ojbect that you can’t
interact with anywhere else. There’s no indication you can do it, you
presumably just have to run through town mashing the B button and hoping you’ll
pick something up instead of stabbing the air.
Swinging your sword
wildly around empty houses is the BEST way to search for mirrors.
Another point in the game
you have to visit a man in the middle of nowhere, out in the woods. No one
tells you where this man lives. No one tells you that this is the man who will
give you permission to progress in the story. At this point in the game there
are hundreds of tiles worth of overworld and I guess the game just expected you
to painstakingly explore every single one in search of this man you didn’t even
know you were looking for. The dungeons are huge mazes filled with dead-ends
and identical looking rooms. I’m glad I used a walkthrough for the last
dungeon, because it’s hard as hell and it seems over half of its rooms are
completely unnecessary to get to the end. Also, the rare sort-of hints you get
on what to do next are often too vague or poorly translated to be any help. All
this being said, most of these issues can be solved (albeit unsatisfyingly)
with a walkthrough and they aren’t the worst part about the game. As for
that...
Let’s talk about lives.
At their inception, lives
were a way of handling arcade games. These games were very short, so they had
to make up for it by being challenging. They also needed a way to pay for
play-time such that customers kept coming back. So the player only had so many
chances at the game before they would be sent back to the start of it and/or have
to pay more to keep playing. When console games that people permanently owned
came around, lives remained partially out of habit. They increased the length
of games, and length was still partially connected to a games value. There is
also an argument to be made that having to repeatedly replay sections of a game
forced players to improve and master the games mechanics.
In general, I don’t like
lives. I like being challenged, but prefer games that let me get straight to
the challenge. Super Meat Boy is an
example of this. It’s a game that’s unflinchingly, seriously difficult, and
that difficulty is such that you’re going to need skill, not luck, to beat the
game. But levels are so short that there’s very little wading through previous
content. However, not every game is suited to the sub-30 second hell-storms of
challenge that game presents. Some games prefer to segment their challenges,
like Dark Souls or Shovel Knight. But although these games
force you to repeat segments, neither of them have lives. Instead they just carefully
choose the checkpoints from which you can proceed. Though we can haggle on the
time penalty these games use, they are consistent penalties that are clearly
and intentionally crafted by the designers.
For example, in Dark
Souls’ Blighttown, the designers carefully and intentionally crafted a
hellscape of misery to sap away all of the enjoyment you were experiencing.
Lives have very little
design value from my perspective. You can get into all sorts of resource
management and other benefits with health, but lives aren’t typically something
you can ration. Unlike saving healing items for later or similar, lives are a
binary state. You die or you don’t, and it’s never good to die. Perhaps in some
edge cases you could purposely use a fresh life for some challenge, but unless
you can acquire extra lives there’s barely even that level of management going
on. Speaking of extra lives, did I mention Zelda 2 has those? They do! The
catch is that there are only about a half dozen in the entire game and they
never respawn ever, no matter how many game overs you get because apparently
someone on the development team HATED HAPPINESS AND JOY.
So Zelda 2 has lives,
unlike any other Zelda game. Unfortunate, given that it’s probably the most
difficult Zelda game, but whatever. You get 3 of these lives before a game over
occurs. If you die without running out of lives, you’ll respawn in the same
room you died in. If you run out of lives, then you get a game over. Aw,
bummer! Guess you’ll just have to go back and play from the starting point of the entire game and dear god do I WISH that was a
joke!
To be fair (in contrast
to the game), you do keep your progress apart from experience towards your next
level. You keep your items, spells, and what dungeons you’ve completed. But let’s
say you died to the boss of a dungeon. You now have to walk across the entire
overworld to get back to that dungeon. This can involve crossing over bridges,
through caves, around mountain passes, and other mini-dungeons on the way. You’ll
also likely encounter at least a few random groups of enemies. Then, you have
to walk all the way through the dungeon to the boss. Even in optimal scenarios,
this will probably be at least a third of the dungeon. This entire time, you
only have 3 lives. If you die at all on the way to the boss, your chances to
fight it and learn how to beat it are severely limited. It is not at all
unreasonable for this run back to the boss to take about half an hour in some cases. All for a brief minute of panicked
battle. This is not helped by there being instant death pits everywhere, just
waiting for a single stray projectile or mistake to eat a third of your
chances. Hell, they even put instant death pits in one of the boss fights!
I’m tellin’ ya’, this
is downright Barbaric! Aahahaha
no seriously fuck this guy.
In my eyes, this system
of lives is a horrific flaw that just crushes
my enjoyment of the game. The other issues I have with the game are
notable, sure, but none of them even come close to this. Because of this, I’m
always paranoid of what’s coming next, always worried that the game will throw
something at me that will force me to replay a bunch of tedious crap I’ve
already seen. I’m almost never willing to take risks or experiment, I always
prefer to run from fights when I can, and new challenges fill me with dull dread
instead of wonder and excitement. It damages, ever so slightly, every single
part of the game in a way that really frustrates me for existing. It’s like
someone made a relatively nice piece of art, which had some flaws in it but
still looked pleasant. Then someone set fire to said piece of art, and though
the beauty is still faintly visible it’s hard to see beneath the flames and you’ll
seriously question whether it’s worth the discomfort and effort getting close
enough to see that beauty.
This is, without
question, the main reason I have trouble liking Zelda 2. I also maintain that,
in this context, it is an objectively bad design decision. Or if not that, it’s
about as close to objectively bad as I can imagine. This review is getting long
though, so now that we’re over the flaws lets wrap some other things up.
Visuals and Music
Despite me ragging on
them in the mouse-over text of almost every image, I don’t have much of an
issue with the visuals in Zelda 2. The graphical quality is, of course, as
severely limited one might expect of a game from 1987. Aesthetics are always
more important than technical ability, however, and Zelda 2 looks fairly nice
for its time. Okay granted, there are some awkward perspectives, objects and
buildings are often weirdly proportioned, repeating textures in temples are
often a bit of an eye-sore, and the ground can look a bit like pixel vomit in
side-scrolling segments. It’s certainly not perfect, and even using the same
tools the designers did here I’m sure they could’ve done better. However, the
game uses plenty of color and contrast, has some nice enemy designs, and in
general does a lot with the limited pixels they can use. I’d call it decent
artistically, if nothing amazing.
I still have NO idea
what the hell the Thunderbird is supposed to be, though.
The music in Zelda 2
is...alright. Nothing special really, but it’s got some nice songs. There are
only about 7 of what I’d call real songs in the game, and even among those I
only really like about half of them. The soundtrack has a unique feel to it,
with a very echo-y sound not seen in any other Zelda games. This is not a
coincidence, as it’s one of the Zelda games not scored by typical series
composer Koji Kondo. As per usual around here, I’ll run through some of my
favorite songs.
The Palace theme is
Zelda 2’s most famous song, and for good reason. Popularized with a later remix
in Super Smash Brothers Melee, this is a catchy, unique piece that is easy on
the ears through the many frustrations of the games dungeons. The games echo-y
flavor works in its favor here, and it’s overall just enjoyable to listen to.
For a more laidback
tune we have the Town theme. The isolated, reverberating notes create a sound
that, though little odd, works pleasantly enough.
Finally we have the
Title theme. I think the space given to these slower tunes makes its odd sound
work more, though it’s still a bit strange and people less inclined to this
style of chip tunes may find it grating on the ears. Overall though, I still
like it well enough.
Conclusion
There are definitely
things to like about Zelda 2. Its RPG mechanics are interesting and fun, combat
can occasionally be satisfying, and it has hints of the exploration I love the
series for, though not as much as I’d like. But despite those positives, after
playing through the whole game, I’m not sure I can recommend it much. It has
some pretty glaring flaws, completely unrelated to it being different from the
rest of the series. Ultimately, those flaws cost me a lot of enjoyment, and keep
the game from being anything further than okay in my eyes. In one of the most
consistently quality game franchises of all time, this is even more noticeable.
Perhaps some can enjoy it more than I, but to me it is the worst game in the
Legend of Zelda series. Consider yourself encouraged and warned, respectively.
...seriously though,
screw the lives thing.
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