Ryushikaze
Deus Admiral Parsimonious, PHD, DDS, MD, JD, OBE
- AKA
- Tim, Ryu
I decided to try Link’s Awakening since it’s “free” on the Switch.
Score: 3 out of 5. It’s a glorified DLC. Link’s Awakening :: A Link to the Past as Tears of the Kingdom :: Breath of the Wild.
The Good:
The Bad:
- It’s a Zelda game. You already know how to play and what to do.
- It’s a Mario game. Seriously. You can jump on Goombas and shit. How cool is that?
- It’s a Game Boy game. So, it’s not that long. And it’s in color.
The Ugly:
- It’s a Zelda game. You‘ve played this before.
- There’s only two buttons, and previously passive items are now active.
- Want to use your shield? Go into the menu and assign it to B.
- Need to move a rock? Go into the menu and assign the bracelet to B.
- Need to jump over a hole? Yeah this shit gets old quick.
- Of course you could just assign items to B and A. How often do you need your sword anyway?
- It’s a Zelda game. You have to wander around and figure out what to do next.
- In most Zelda games this isn’t tedious, but this one? You have to brute force travel every single screen you can reach, talk to every single person, mow every single lawn, dig every single hole, call that weird old guy on the phone, and pray your ass off to Naryu for a can of food you can trade to an alligator for a fucking banana.
- Plot spoiler: It’s all just a dream. All that time spent looking for bananas…
- Ending spoiler: To see the only redeeming part of the ending, your choice is A) don’t die a single time or B) die all you want and go watch it on YouTube.
The thought of Link's Awakening being difficult to parse sort of astounds me, given it just seemed to signpost itself well for at least the plot segments.Ah see Link's awakening for the original game boy was the first video game I ever played, borrowing my childminder's game boy to play. I would have been maybe 6? It took me genuinely multiple weeks (bearing in mind i could only play it occasionally as it wasn't my game) to figure out you could push the spiky sea urchins out the way to get to the sword, and that moment when you pick it up and the music changes is etched into my mind forever. It's why I got into video games. The genuine strangeness of that game absolutely captured me, I used to tell people that the ballad of the wind fish was my favourite song ever until I was like 11. Before I even knew what fanfiction was I was writing elaborate backstories for all the villagers on my dad's windows 95. The dude by the fishing pond, the dad of the quintuplets and Marin's dad were the main characters.
Yeah it can be frustrating. Eventually I got my own copy of the DX version for gameboy colour and had to use a game faqs guide to finish it. I have played the Remake and I haven't actually finished it cos I hit the point where my memories of how to proceed ran out and I haven't had the time or inclination to go back and work it out. But that game is absolutely foundational to me, and remains my favourite Zelda game by a long shot, only Majora's Mask comes close. I did play Link to the past later and it just didn't grab me the way this one did.
And it was also stupidly easy to break open over your knee because of the select warp glitch. Fire Rod before the first dungeon? Don't mind if I do.