A Brief Review of the Handheld Zelda Games

if you've been around the channel for a while you'll know I'm in love with the Zelda franchise I enjoy practically every game and I've covered almost all of them on the Channel with tears of the Kingdom on the horizon I've been itching to jump back into the ring and talk about Zelda again a good place to start would be in re-examining what Zelda used to stand for since it seems we'll probably be leaving it behind for the foreseeable future I'd like to give an updated perspective on the 3D games since those videos are so outdated that it hurts however I don't think there's ever been anything wrong with my videos on the handheld titles so I've decided to compile them into one Mega review some of these are a few years old so apologies for any audio discrepancies you may notice now whether you're returning to these videos for the umpteenth time or you've never heard of me before sit back relax and enjoy my ramblings on the handheld Zelda titles before we begin in between playing games for 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King K APR 50 for 50 off plus first box ships free again use my link or go to hellofresh.com and use code POG King K APR 50 for 50 off plus first box ships free [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] Link's Awakening released in 1993 for the Game Boy is a fan favorite to say the least you could say Link's Awakening helped push handheld gaming alongside Pokemon Red and Blue it wasn't as influential or as powerful as Pokemon but it certainly helped develop the new tech it reminds me of the relationship between Super Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time wherein Ocarina didn't Pioneer 3D gaming but it helped develop it for all intents and purposes it's a game with the breadth and scope of A Link to the Past crammed into a tiny portable screen for this video I'll be focusing on the director's cut for the Game Boy Color which as you'd expect had well it had color it comes with an entirely new dungeon and color printing capabilities that are hilariously useless nowadays I mean most people play the director's cut anyway because it didn't take anything away from the original it's about as definitive as you could possibly get a true director's cut and as such I don't really feel like talking about it as in depth as I have for the other Zelda remakes what originally began as a port of A Link to the Past eventually transformed into an original project with almost no ties to the series traditional motifs no Hyrule no Zelda no Triforce instead it would see link stranded on cohaland island and tasked with waking the wind fish by collecting eight musical macguffins structurally it Bears resemblance to a link to the past which is likely where its roots as a port shine most clearly I suppose The Twist this time is well I guess it's not even really a spoiler to say that the events of Link's Awakening take place within the windfish's dream you can sort of piece it together at the beginning you fight nightmares your task is to wake something up the title of the game is Link's Awakening the core conceit is to awake from a troubled Slumber but it raises some interesting questions about that Journey see the past games in the series were fairly straightforward there's an evil plaguing the land in the form of Ganon and you've got to put an end to it sometimes there will be an initial twist like agonim pulling the strings and a link to the past but eventually everything falls into place you get the Triforce and the deed is done this time because the events are largely disconnected from any overall Mythos the stakes are a lot more personal as the game goes on it becomes more evident that your inside a dream that everything around you is fake and that completing your quest will mean the Island's eradication this wouldn't be a huge issue you don't develop any particularly strong bonds with the townspeople except for Marin she saves you after you wash ashore she tells you where to get your belongings you listen to her song you have a heart heart at the beach you save her right before the final dungeon and throughout all these encounters it's clear that she develops somewhat of a crush on link it's pretty adorable and that's exactly what you don't want to feel towards a figment of your imagination imagine you have a really good dream perhaps life isn't the best at that moment and you dream of something far better maybe you're rich maybe you're famous maybe you achieve your life goals maybe you fall in love whatever the case I think we can all resonate with that initial feeling of dread when we wake up and realize it was all a dream that's the Bittersweet Sucker Punch of Link's Awakening story rather than looking forward to the final battle as the game progresses you begin to dread it that inevitable encounter that'll effectively kill every resident of cohalant though it is implied that Marin lives on as a seagull I sort of prefer the regular ending where link is forced to keep cohalint alive through his memories a sentiment echoed hard by the manga adaptation this one sees link giving up halfway through his quest in an effort to keep cohalint from Vanishing only to realize that it's his Destiny to wake the wind fish the island would be ravaged by monsters on The Daily unless link finally put an end to it all what he does assumedly in both the game and the manga is hoped that cohalint can stay alive through his strong memories of it it's a unique story setup and that it lands squarely within the confines of A Link to the Past structure is pretty amazing side note this manga ain't half bad it contextualizes some of the game's events rather well and is incredibly faithful to the events of said game it allows more time for late to forge bonds with Marin and Taran which makes that ending even more heartbreaking I love this story damn breath of the wild eat your heart out structurally it's not much different from the 3D titles fine dungeons raid them take the new item fight a boss and collect the MacGuffin rinse repeat coal lint however is a little different from overworlds of series past and present Hyrule in previous games was large and expansive especially in A Link to the Past Not only was the base map large there was an entire Dark World to explore that had unique dungeons items and side quests coal lint is comparatively small the base map is all there is to see and do and though it is indeed smaller in size I'd argue that's to its benefit if you recall one of my biggest problems with Ocarina of Time was that at some points progression could be incredibly confusing most of the comment responses I received stated that I should have been talking to the NPCs and reading their hints ignoring the fact that the game doesn't really do much to incentivize that Hyrule was so large with so many people in so much space that talking to absolutely everyone during every point of story significance just isn't visible when you have to travel back to Kokiri Forest for zarya's song to cheer up darunia there aren't many hints available that would lead you to that conclusion also I know you can use the stick to light the fire to break the bomb for the shortcut I know now so stop telling me same with jabu-jabu but since in that case there's a threadbare hint dropped by an NPC many people make it seem like it's a totally okay puzzle to solve except the funny thing that hint is actually pretty blatant the Zora States according to the legend of Zora the act of offering a fish to Lord jabu jabu will make you happy honestly it doesn't get more blatant than that and what's cool about this is that it's contained within Zora's domain when my comments put me on blast for not talking to everyone when I entered a new area well I actually now believe they were right I was being really impatient when I first played Ocarina of Time looking back I think it's actually more infuriating that it's so clear where you have to go and what you have to do much of the time so feeding a fish to jabu jabu and hiding that hint behind Azora and forcing you to explore in an adventure game for progression is really cool can't believe I just said that all of this is to set up what I really like about Link's Awakening the progression gating on kohaland can initially seem equally strange but I'm generally okay with it because the amount of residence and information sources on coholand is fairly small just like Zora's domain they make it apparent from the get-go that you need someone or something like the sleeping walruses thought bubbles depicting Marin or the kid in town who tells you where Marin is when you need her it's even more feasible because there's barely anyone in the town and they're basically the only source of relevant information aside from maybe the animal Village as a result story progression felt like a genuine puzzle in and of itself rather than a pace-breaking annoyance this owl will tell you where you need to be headed in general terms and urira is liberally available to point you in the right direction with a few more specifics but it's up to you to piece everything together you're left to explore cohalint on your own what it encourages is that you play to the strengths of Zelda's similarities to the metroidvania genre at the end of the day Zelda is about Gathering items that give you new abilities and using those items to access previously blocked portions of said world it's remarkably similar to Metroid in that regard as such one of the best things it could have done was make progression into a puzzle so that the linearity wouldn't feel as suffocating and it would still feel like an adventure across covalent again this only works so well for me because covalent is about the size of a typical metroidvania map so exploring it with new items was just something I was gonna try anyway though I have changed my mind about jabu jabu I still largely think that Ocarina of Time was a little too big for its own good and that's how I ended up with weird misfires like zarya and darunia in this case bigger isn't always better this bleeds into the side quests as well there are only 12 heart pieces a trading sequence a few upgrades and only one Central collectible in the secret seashells the heart pieces are well hidden as they are in any Zelda game maybe a little too well hidden sometimes nothing ever tells you that diving under the water in specific tiles will net you items and heart pieces and some Overworld walls are bombable but your only indication would be to hold out your sword and meticulously tap each and every cave wall I know I said that some meticulous searches are more welcome in cohaland because it's smaller but this is a step too far I really like the pseudo dowsing mechanic within the dungeons as it further adds to their often disorienting nature The Way Forward is usually blocked behind a bumble wall and within the confines of a small set of rooms it's more reasonable to expect the player to douse for bombable walls after obtaining the treasure map you can spot which rooms you haven't entered and if you see any suspicious lone rooms on said map it's almost always a safe bet that there's a bombable wall in the way in the Overworld however there's no map to make sure in a search area so large the player needs some sort of hint that the possibility of a bombable wall exists this is sometimes the case like with this piece of heart hidden behind a bubble wall telegraphed by a lone tile of land surrounded by water it sticks out in your mind gets you thinking and that's just enough of a push to get you dowsing to make sure however in yarna desert there's a cave that has no such Telegraph this just some bombable wall after you fall through the quicksand this area is intended to be a consequence for failing during the Desert land mola fight and you'd be forgiven for thinking that's all it was there's absolutely nothing indicating a bombable wall except for your dowsing tool unless you spend the entire game tapping every wall you'll likely miss it but in that case you're probably not having very much fun there are creative ways to Telegraph these walls without ruining the surprise in at least a few of these dungeon there are tiles in the shape of an arrow pointing toward a bombable wall and in both of these cases I actually missed that seemingly obvious clue the first time around they're just tiles after all same as anywhere else in the dungeon so looking too closely at them isn't much of a priority until you're stuck and then you'll reach that Revelation then there's a puzzle that involves pushing some blocks to match the eye holes of a skeleton drawing one room over and you have to piece it together yourself none of these quite reached yarn a desert unfortunately but I think we can consider it a bad apple additionally I enjoy that the heart pieces cap out at 12. while I don't think having more is a problem inherently it is a little more tedious to track down every single one when there are 45 of them to look for it's occasionally overwhelming in some of the heart piece locations end up feeling underwhelming as a result in this game I can remember where I got most of them because there are only 12. it gives you the same sense of progression and escalating power just not as mad mass of a jump as other zeldas since your final heart count is lower than most zeldas anyway I'm willing to bet that the low heart count is the reason I died a lot this time around either that or 2D Zelda is just more brutal than average it was refreshing I'm not complaining about it but I've never struggled with a 3D Zelda to this degree before the rest of the side quests aren't nearly as hard to figure out the trade sequence is bearable because say it with me is a lot smaller and there aren't as many people to talk to some characters will even outright tell you what they want or who you should give something to Expediting the process even more I do sort of question the magnifying glass reward though you get the boomerang which is extremely powerful and well worth the quest but they also lock the solution to the wind fish puzzle behind this trade sequence and that seems a little odd the game essentially forces you to do the trade sequence in effect forcing you to find a really broken item just so you can finish the game it's less of a side quest and more of a background necessity leaving only the secret seashells as your last collectible hiding under tiles you can dig up with a shovel or thrown around grass tiles and inside trees since you only need 20 out of the 26 and the reward is a powered up sword that can sort of break the game if you've also completed the color dungeon I can excuse the seashells being hidden in sometimes obscure locations you might argue that this leaves Link's Awakening with less content to explore but I don't think that's the right way to look at it the focus this time around is almost exclusively about finding the path forward at all costs in the Overworld and in the dungeons a lot of your play time will be devoted to that goal especially in those dungeons which in this installment are fairly unforgiving and I love that see as someone whose Zelda experience basically amounts to the 3D titles it feels like reverse Whiplash to play Link's Awakening a game that is so unabashedly non-linear in its dungeon design that it hurts to give a quick recap some of my favorite dungeons in the series are the ones where progression is disorienting I like feeling lost and trying to feel my way out of a bad situation as such I love the water temple the Great Bay Temple and pretty much every dungeon that everyone else hates every single dungeon on offer here fits that desire and they all follow a similar structure if you want an in-depth breakdown of that thematic identity based around keys and locks well let's be real you already watched boss Keys basically the biggest distinction with 2D Zelda in comparison to 3D Zelda are that the dungeons allow you a lot more freedom often there will be small keys to collect in various different keyholes to take them to in some cases like key Cavern it's the concept the dungeon centers itself around it's still pretty much the same as 3D Zelda everywhere though you find a dungeon item somewhere along the way and that item gives you access to the rest of the inaccessible areas you find the nightmare key to unlock the boss door bada bing bada boom from tail cave to Turtle Rock there's a steady increase in complexity but the cool part is that the starting line is already higher than average tail cave will introduce you to many of the Staples you'll see later on such as the compass playing a chime when you're in a room with a potential small key and that each room will have a puzzle associated with it to drop said small key or to open closed doors sometimes that puzzle will be as simple as defeating all the enemies but other times you'll have to think outside the box the room at the northernmost portion of the map has a door that won't open until you push this block to the right and you'll only get that hint after you can talk to owl statues and you can only talk to owl statues after you get the beak located at the Eastern portion of the map essentially even when you're on the right path the dungeons like to force you off of it and thus lead to more opportunities where you'll get confused not so much in this first dungeon as it's fairly small and simple to navigate but once you start getting to the dungeons with dozens of rooms each accessed using a meticulous route things get more complicated your dungeon item here is The Rock's feather allowing link the ability to jump you can use it to jump over the gaps in the floor but more interestingly you can use it in these 2D platforming sections that have Mario enemies in them it bizarre I know but it does lend Link's Awakening A uniqueness that it otherwise might not have you can use that feather to access the nightmare key hidden behind gaps in the floor then you fight moldorm and you're done let's skip to anguish tunnel same idea but ratcheted up not only do you have the Rock's feather you have bombs you have the Pegasus boots and you have the power bracelet and in Link's Awakening every item you have is useful in some way in a few cases you can even combine their Effects by using the Pegasus boots to build up speed your rock's feather will jump even further than it otherwise would allowing you to cross large gaps this is a required skill in Angler's tunnel and in the key Cavern before it traditional Zelda wisdom wouldn't train you to do something like this much less require it yet here we are Angler's tunnel uses the same philosophy as tail cave it hides several keys and you've got to figure out which locks to open so you can hopefully find the dungeon item and fight the boss except this time there are more room The Roots aren't as simple and the keys are harder to find the two you initially need are in the easternmost room one at the very top and one hidden behind a block pushing puzzle that you need a bomb to access this allows you to open the two locks at the southeast portion of the map thus allowing you to access the northern potion that you could only Glimpse previously so from the start of the dungeon you have to travel through the middle to the East and then back through that path to the beginning traveling East and into the same room just so you can finally travel northward even then you need three keys to complete this process the last one is hidden south of the room near the beginning you've got to do all this while you pass up chests that you can't access get glimpses of areas that you'll need to keep in mind for the future and make a mental note of any obstructions that dungeon item could potentially bypass because once you get the flippers you've then gotta think about where you can actually use them you can open this door with a switch but behind it is a lock that you don't have the key for you've got to think back to earlier in the dungeon when a small key fell into one of the holes if you end enter the 2D section near here you'll see that it fell into some water but you can't swim once you have the flippers you can easily access this key but you have to remember where the key was in the first place something that's a lot harder to do when the area is obscured from view Turtle Rock is The Logical extreme of this progression the largest and most open-ended dungeon in the game it utilizes player confusion in the best way possible at the start you'll first have to figure out how to damage this fire and oddly enough he's damaged by Magic powder yeah remember the magic powder you got at the beginning of the game you use it throughout the adventure to make fires and damage enemies and bosses when I said every item is useful I wasn't kidding here we are at the final dungeon and the magic powder is a linchpin to progression once you defeat it this beginning room already has three different options available and they don't all lead to an immediate dead end like they usually do no they all Branch off into their own areas with their own enemies and items and that ranching nature is exactly why it's so confusing you've got to test them all out remember which paths have which things in them and come back when you can finally access them you get this really satisfying feeling near the end when there are only a few paths left and you know exactly where to go after toiling around for hours trying to get to that point in the first place or maybe that's just me I'm not interested in discussing each dungeon individually mostly because they all follow this pattern and I'd be saying the same thing over and over plus boss Keys did it better but I would like to discuss the two dungeons that break away the most from this pattern one for the better and one for the worst first up I guess we'll get this one out of the way the color dungeon is an afterthought meant to give the director's cut more content and it shows the puzzles are almost entirely contained within the rooms themselves and the progression structure reminds me of the gibdo cave you go into a room solve a puzzle and then go into another room none of those puzzles are terribly difficult to figure out you can damage an enemy and turn them into a ball and the puzzle is that you throw them into the correct sockets you do this twice by the way there are a few instances of these switch puzzles where it will change the colors around it I don't know what these are called but you've played one before I guarantee it they're in default configurations that are so easy to solve from the beginning so I never spent more than a few seconds on them other than that there are some mini bosses and the final boss that consists of you hitting it really fast I'm not even kidding and you're done really it's more for the offense and defense reward than it is for a fulfilling dungeon experience Eagles Tower is the other break from that pattern but this time it's a refreshing break the central gimmick revolves around the stone pillars that you need to break using a ball that you transport throughout the dungeon there are two primary floors you walk through to make this happen and it dials the meticulous pathway Mantra up to 11. gotta factor in that there are switches to block off and open certain Pathways that you can fall from the second floor onto the first floor using some of the pitfall tiles that you need to find ways to get both the ball and link to the same place using different methods the dungeon lets you go about smashing the pillars in any order you want and that makes it even more confusing at certain points trying to figure out how to smash that last pillar took a very long time since each of the pathways intersect however not all of them have equal amounts of exits so you have to enter from other areas activate the switch which enables you to go through a different pathway that leads to the same end point it's pretty wild I don't envy the child who had to contend with something this complex I struggled with a lot of 3D Zelda dungeons as a kid I can't imagine trying to do something like this with my P brain I'm a little dumbfounded that every dungeon manages to be this good they don't go on too long they're all sufficiently challenging from the perspective of a newcomer and they all play with items and Concepts that are refreshing for the series I particularly enjoy the focus on upgrading existing items there's a tendency in Zelda to create dungeon items by throwing ideas at the wall and hoping they stick I usually look to items like the spinner or the ball and they aren't used much outside of their dungeon and they tend to take up space in Link's inventory not that there's limited inventory in Zelda games you know what I mean they're unnecessary Link's Awakening decides hey we only really need a core set of items the ability to run jump block pick up create fire and hook shot so in a place like the face Shrine for instance the dungeon item is an upgrade to the power bracelet allowing link to pick up heavier objects than rocks and pots in Eagles Tower you get the mirror Shield replacing your regular shield and internal rock you get the magic Rod which lets you shoot fire long distances this isn't new for some Zelda games the mirror Shield has been done before and that also replaces your Shield same with the hook shot and the long shot I find it notable in Link's Awakening more so since it feels unusually restrained and focused on only a few items that you'll use all the time as opposed to having something like the Dominion Rod I feel like I'm exclusively picking on one of my favorite zeldas this is a small thing but I love how you need to open the dungeon beforehand with a key or in one case a chain shop named Bow Wow as soon as you see a keyhole you know that this place will be important sometime later and once you get the correct key you can come back like a giddy school girl and access it from the outside but then it's up to you to find a way to access that dungeon in the case of the Angler's tunnel you unlock it from the ridge above and then must make your way to the entrance another way this doesn't happen every time some dungeons are pretty straightforward forward I just like that you literally unlock some of them it's cute I guess if I had to devise a complaint of some kind I would point to the boss fights the mini bosses don't bother me much because they're kind of supposed to be simple but many of the nightmares were jokes oddly enough the easiest dungeon in the game tail cave starts out with one of the hardest bosses you just need to hit moldorm from the back three times to win but the room is very small it's hard to jump over him with the right trajectory without him snapping back into you and it's especially hard to avoid dying or getting shoved into the pit below you're only going to have three hearts at this point and he does a full hit of damage each time additionally when you fall into the pit you don't recover Hearts but he does so as soon as you get back to the arena you're back to square one except you have less health I remember being taken aback when I got here for the first time but eventually I got through it and thought well hey maybe this is a good sign for the bosses to come it is followed up by a genie need one that repeats the same text over and over has a simple attack pattern and yeah these easy maybe you'll die to his last phase but you're more likely to die from boredom when you're dodging his initial Fireballs then you fight slime eyes a boss that is moderately challenging I guess but as long as you're jumping at the right time and using the Pegasus boots effectively it shouldn't give you much trouble at all then you're hit with a triple whammy anglerfish slime eel and facade all three of them are laughable I got to the anglerfish and killed him before he could even attack or do anything I still don't even really know what he's supposed to do slime eel has an interesting gimmick with the hook shot and ordinarily the spike ball rotating around the middle would be threatening except it can't touch you when you're in any of the Four Corners so it just becomes wait for the head to come out in hook shot it otherwise you kind of just sit there and do nothing facade is hilarious you just drop bombs onto his face I'm not joking that's all you do even mustering that complaint though the rest of the bosses are pretty good evil eagle inherits the regenerating health of moldorm when you fall off the tower and has some genuinely hard to predict moves the final boss has several phases that each have specific weaknesses you need to figure out and exploit the first of which uses the magic powder again still useful somehow so when I complain about the bosses here it's more of a nitpick than anything else just a shame that some of these dungeons couldn't have been bookended by better challenges I mean it's really the only complaint I have with the dungeons you'd think they wouldn't feel memorable thanks to the game boy's limited visual prowess but it still manages to look distinct specially on the Game Boy Color I don't know if this is just me but I kind of like how the Game Boy Color uses solid defining color choices in its Sprites it helps them to pop out at you and stick it in your mind each dungeon is set in a neat location with a visually stimulating and fitting color palette the inside of eagles Tower uses gray for the stone walls and green for the floor tiles making it feel like the inside of a tower whereas catfish's maw is murkier seeing as it's underwater so the tiles are a muted yellow with darker red walls this way every dungeon is visually distinct because they each have different color palettes and tile sets it's just another way to build that mental image within your mind and to keep it contained within each dungeon instead of letting those thoughts bleed into one another I would imagine this was harder in the original release and I guess that's just another reason why the color is so important surprisingly enough the soundtrack is equally important I'm not sure if I'm biased or ignorant or whatever but I genuinely didn't expect to love the soundtrack as much as I do I don't really listen to 8-bit music and I always kind of regarded the Game Boy sound chip as technically inferior and maybe that rotted my brain a little bit I love the rendition of the main Overworld theme it feels peppier and more befitting of a pleasant dream I also love how you don't get to hear it until you find your sword and that there's an entire music track devoted to playing while you find beside the sword the face Shrine even has a great track I was surprised since the series Dungeon music is usually only there for Ambiance and atmosphere but in this case I actually think I'd listen to it on my own time if the loop wasn't so short I'd recommend the video by 8-bit music theory on Link's Awakening it does a far better job than me explaining why the soundtrack works very well all in all the tone of this video is surprise I've got to be honest going into Link's Awakening I did not expect to like it very much I wasn't familiar with 2D Zelda I was afraid that it would feel too limiting or that the smaller screen space would be an issue or that I wouldn't like the music or that it would have some huge flaw that everyone liked to ignore Link's Awakening offered none of that and is a genuinely brilliant Little Game Boy game sure sometimes I'll get fed up by the Limited map or the constant pausing to switch items but I got over that stuff very quickly it doesn't go on for too long it says and does exactly what it needs to do in the short time it has and best of all I don't feel like at any point I was wasting my time honestly I find this game more enjoyable to play than the likes of Wind Waker or Ocarina of Time even Skyward Sword and that certainly came out of left field it's just so tightly paste yeah that's the right word for it it has a pacing that is never obstructed for too long you find a new item talk to an NPC do something in the Overworld watch a cut scene whatever and then you move on to the next dungeon and you keep doing this while you build up to the inevitable Bittersweet conclusion no wasted time no intense frustration no growing boredom just a joyous contained Adventure on the island of cohort like a dream it comes and goes but the memory of that Adventure will never be forgotten foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] Nintendo did something unexpected they handed the reins of one of their most popular franchises to another company in a shocking turn of events Capcom would come to develop three Zelda games for Nintendo they were originally tasked with remaking Zelda 1 on the Game Boy Color to get their feet wet and hopefully that experience would prompt them to develop even stronger original zeldas going forward though due to a number of unforeseen difficulties during the porting process the idea morphed into a Trilogy of games which would each represent a piece of the Triforce the mystical seed games or the Triforce Trilogy as they were once known each would focus on a distinct gameplay theme though since one of them was lost to time we would only come to know too Oracle of Ages the game focused on puzzles and Oracle of Seasons the game focused on action the idea here is that you play them both one after the other and link them to get crossover elements main campaign moments will be slightly altered if you started the second game including the ending which will have an added epilogue segment tying both games together there is no official starting point the manga adaptation begins with Oracle of Seasons but that seriously doesn't mean anything I mean I started with ages because it had time travel in it and I thought that was neat in order to allow the video to flow more naturally I'm going to discuss each game separately cross-comparing them when the moment arises and saving all the linked game features for the end when it is relevant let's begin with Oracle of Ages [Music] we are now in a post-ocarina of time world one with din nehru ferror Goron Zora and time travel it's no surprise that Oracle of Ages would borrow heavily from that framework seeing as Ocarina of Time is without a doubt the most influential Zelda in the series or at least it was for a time it features the goddess this game was centered around nehru the Oracle of time and is set in the land of labrina in a startlingly similar fashion to Link's Awakening link sorta just appears without a clue as to where he is or what he's supposed to be doing this sets in motion the core conflict of Ages the Sorceress Varan is Unleashed upon the world possesses nehru travels back to the past and shapes the future to her liking your goal then is to fix everything therein Breaks by traveling between the past and present finding eight dungeons with mystical items I think you get the drill by this point whereas links Awakening felt like the build up to a cruel punch line Aegis feels like an assortment of memorable moments leading up to a climactic battle you go from place to place on a whim fixing various issues varen has caused like the poisoning of the water in Zora's domain or the eruption in symmetry City there's no Rhyme or Reason why you're going anywhere in particular you're just kind of collecting the mystical artifacts and exploring new areas until you have what you need to storm the Black Tower and defeat Varan as a villain she's nothing special she certainly makes an impression I like her design and I like how successful she is at destroying the timeline however she doesn't have that X Factor you'd expect from a primary villain not the same way Ganon or Majora do she's contained to this one game and doesn't get a whole lot of screen time the time she does have is dedicated to her monologuing about her evil plan and this is likely because she's a tool sent to defeat link by twin Rover where the actual villains of the overarching story I remember being dumbfounded when I walked up to the Black Tower in suddenly I'm being told that Ralph is the Queen's ancestor and you've got to go stop him from attempting to kill varen it's an interesting conflict but it comes out of [ __ ] all nowhere and that's how most of the story feels it's hard to enjoy the stories of Ages and Seasons separately they're really supposed to be experienced one after the other so it can end with the epilogue crossover unfortunately it means that both ages and seasons have a hard time standing on their own using their narratives kind of a shame right off the heels of one of the most unique stories in Zelda history I am surprised by just how far the time travel is stretched in ages when compared to Ocarina while it was never a prevalent thought it did bug me that Ocarina didn't use its time travel very often it was refreshing to see a world where Ganon had won and to play a grown-up link who was mechanically evolved but the only points at which it made sense to travel between the past and the future of a progression was at the bottom of the well and within the spirit Temple other than that it was a linear child track and a linear adult track it separated Ocarina from other games of its ilk but it didn't really run with concept the way Aegis does in the beginning you're limited to preset locations where you can jump between the time periods and there are progression puzzles built around this ability it's not so complicated at first to obtain the mystery seeds you need only travel to the past and explore the forest in that time period however once you finish the second dungeon The Way Forward becomes deliciously complex you're told to Head South toward the Crescent Island and for that you need a raft the guy who'll make a raft for you needs some rope and that rope is supposedly in possession of someone on the opposite side of the river who hasn't developed it yet Ralph tells you of a grave in the present that may hold what you're looking for but he doesn't tell you where the grave might be you're left to piece that together on your own I figured he meant in the graveyard that you visit at the beginning and sure enough you meet one of your first animal buddies here visit the grave in question find both the Zora flippers and the rope and go back to the raft maker though you finally have everything you need he then requires you to find a c chart so you won't get lost this time Ralph's only clue is a weird guy who sells maps if you've played Zelda before you most likely know what this means but if not there's a new event on the Overworld in the form of your next animal buddy who gives you new traversal abilities this gives you access to tingle one room over where you get the C chart then the raft and then Sail Out for crescent Island except even now you aren't done you're stranded on the island your belongings are stolen by these adorable lizard creatures and you have to find all of your items again in an elaborate insanely satisfying puzzle before accessing the third dungeon which is itself an elaborate insanely satisfying puzzle Oracle of Ages is supposedly the Triforce of wisdom where the mechanical theme is puzzles almost everything you do is a puzzle and while that might be overwhelming for some players it tickles me greatly I adore how puzzled I was at almost every point of progression in ages as soon as you get the ability to freely travel between the time periods ages wastes no time taking advantage of they make you think about where you're teleporting for example entering zor's domain requires you take into account both Maps simultaneously in order to correctly travel back and forth to access different areas everything in the southwest quadrant of the map is gradually moving East as time goes on which means when you travel to the past everything will be further Westward jabu-jabu will also be smaller in the past than in the present King Zora will die of a sickness if you don't find the key in the library which can be accessed in both time periods but you can only get what you're looking for in one in one particularly memorable instance not unlike the spirit Temple there is a dungeon that can be explored in both the past and the present the chief difference is that Ocarina of Time just about spells this out to you while Oracle of Ages leaves it a mystery you go through the usual motions eventually get stuck retrace your steps until you come to the conclusion that there are simply no other options meanwhile the tool you need to progress is sitting in your inventory staring you in the face every time you the pause button it doesn't fall into the same trap as the Stone Tower Temple either since you don't need to constantly enter and exit the temple to switch back and forth you only time travel once whatever you did in the past affects the temple in the present so the puzzle is simply to notice that you can time travel at all it is so refreshing to play a game this well structured one that makes time travel its gameplay conceit rather than its window dressing Oracle of Ages is like a gigantic puzzle box you solve piece by piece and every piece is important the Overworld progression the trading side quest the heart piece rewards the dungeons I'll admit at some points it can feel overwhelming the trade sequence this time is a little more difficult because Labrador is much larger with a multitude of different people and races he trade with so many of them but at least it isn't as repetitive as it could get in the Wind Waker you're still transporting item to item to item until you get your reward this time a powered up sword it's such a long Quest that the reward feels earned it encourages you you to talk to everyone you find to truly explore labrina this time there aren't any strangely placed heart pieces cracked walls indicate bombable walls in the Overworld it's up to you to find out how to get there instead a much better way to handle bombs some of these are devious too they force you to travel between the time periods so you can MacGyver your way into places that previously seemed inaccessible they're often in plain view so it's about finding your way to them then finding out if it even exists at all you'll find another collectible in Dungeons and other secret areas that are pretty ahead of their time for Zelda Secret Rings you can get them appraised in town and they each have a host of different effects they range from increased damage output at the cost of lower defense increased swimming speed increased bomb damage there are a lot of them the Oracle games developed a loot system for Zelda long before breath of the wild was in its infant they are really cool rewards and give you a ton of reasons to spend rupees a problem many Zelda games seem to struggle with having a huge list of rings with cool effects is a nice way to make sure your money is always valuable and that the secrets you find aren't just more money for some reason that happens a lot in these games so pretty much everything you do in ages is a puzzle and you're rewarded very well for solving each and every puzzle on offer if so many traditionally simple elements are now puzzling what is that say for the dungeons which we're always supposed to be more puzzling than everything else well it means the dungeons are absolutely fantastic Rock Solid head scratching nightmares in the best way here we have highlights like jabu jawu's belly infinitely more complex than it's Ocarina variant there are three switches that control the water level and not unlike the water temple it becomes a very confusing very quickly some rooms won't make sense until they're submerged in water and you have that aha moment to obtain the boss key you must first realize what the room itself is telling you there's a block of water and a high ledge you've got to keep in mind the layout of the dungeon and realize that directly below that square is a high ledge with a hook shot point to bridge the gap it doesn't sound hard but considering how much you're forced to wander around intricate Pathways it's quite easy to Fumble halfway through what with your mind juggling so much information every time you change the water level you both open and close different Pathways meaning you need to keep an extraordinarily large mental map that tracks where you can reach the water level switches and where you can exit adaptively adding onto it whenever you hit a switch all of the best dungeons on offer promote a macro level of thinking the aforementioned sixth Temple mermaid's cave which can be accessed in both the past and the present jabu-jabu's belly and the water level switches the ancient tomb in its rotating entrances all of them force you to think about the room layout overall what connects where and in what order to enter them moonlit Grotto is all about getting this Central switch entrance to fall underneath the dungeon so that you can use it to access the lower floor you do this by breaking the crystals that support it hidden throughout the dungeon it affords a similar level of freedom to something like eagles Tower where you can go about breaking the crystals in whatever order you see fit it's just that one of them is devilishly difficult to figure out your dungeon item is the seed shooter and upgraded to the seed satchel and you can immediately use it to light a fire just out of your reach that's all the game itself is willing to teach you about the seed shooter it leaves you to experiment and find out what other uses it has if you aren't willing to do so you're about to find yourself a mighty pickle one of the crystals is Out Of Reach in an odd position your bombs won't do the trick you can't make your way over to it for a sword swing how do you throw something in such a precise way that it'll destroy the crystal it drove me up the wall I kept trying different things I left the room searched the entire dungeon for an alternate entrance until I started testing out the seed shooter and found that it bounced off walls my mind was racing I went back to that Crystal aimed my shooter and broke it I was ecstatic and I had learned an important skill that the rest of the dungeon was Keen to test now that I'd figured it out on my own the crown dungeon also borrows from Eagle's Tower the obstacle blocks that raise and lower upon hitting the switch it is a decently sized dungeon with colored blocks in almost every room hitting any of the switches will change the box in the entire dungeon just like an eagles Tower this makes progression very complicated since again you have to think on a macro level or you'll get stuck often What Will hitting the switch change what doors will it open what doors will it close rarely will you have a dilemma that only lasts one room switches are placed so out of the way that you're forced to think about that one room across the dungeon after you hit one it's an amazing feeling to map out a correct path in your mind the dungeon map doesn't tell you much only where you have and haven't been which means all you can rely on is your mental math unfortunately I do feel like this ambitious focus on puzzles just about reaches its breaking point in a few instances the skull dungeon is vast and complicated and for a while I was really into it there's some tricky puzzles and platforming sections to sink your teeth into like these areas where you have to Sprint like a cheetah to escape the rapidly Rising lava and get to the end Those runs were so intense that when I cleared one I would let out a sigh of relief seriously I would visibly recline and let out a breath I'd been holding in near the end though there's only one long drawn out path you can take to the boss this would be fine except whenever you die you're sent back to the beginning normally you're given a teleporter to take you further into the dungeon usually closer to the dungeon boss except in the skull dungeon that teleport is useless and the only efficient way back is from the beginning after death or even sometimes when you simply leave a room many of the traps and puzzles reset and this forces you to retread that same path completing many of the same puzzles and combat sections over again not only are there many opportunities on that path to accrue damage like falling in the lava or being hit by enemies the boss isn't exactly a pushover he's not brutal but he does require the player to get close to him for damage which can get dangerous when his minions respawn I was stuck on this boss for a long time not necessarily because he was hard but because I took so much damage getting to him and so much time that I had almost forgotten what his patterns were by the time I dragged myself back the dungeon itself is fulfilling on a base level but its layout does not promote backtracking particularly well and it became easily frustrating near the end because of that still I would not hesitate to call these dungeons brilliant I especially love the way each dungeon will recycle mechanics and get you familiar with them so that they're more challenging variants later on won't appear too jarring they ease you into Concepts gradually these Road hitting entrances are used in many of these Dungeons and each appearance they get just a little more complicated at first you need to find a way to enter it from Another Side that's it later on you need to enter it from Another Side and then enter from Another Side and then enter from another side and on and on and on until there are stars in your eyes as early as the first dungeon you start pushing these Rubik's cubes in specific ways so that they land on the correct color or these colored tiles that change color when you jump on them it isn't as if ages is breaking new ground by doing this in fact the jumping color puzzle in particular is not great but as soon as you get to a puzzle like this later on you're ready to tackle this more challenging very because you've done simpler versions of it in the past much like Link's Awakening your set of items have a lot of longevity that help this puzzle familiarity with a focus on upgrades rather than entirely unique items from the seed Satchel to the seed shooter from the wooden Shield to the mirror shield from the switch hook to the long Hook from the power bracelet to the Power Glove you figure out early on that you can Ricochet seeds off walls using the seed shooter and at some point later a dungeon will ask you to do it again you get familiar with the switch hook and its limits and then your reach is extended that switch Hook is super unique imagine Trafalgar Law's room ability you switch with whatever object you target that's not exactly how laws devil fruit works but hey that's not this video is it it has much better dungeon bookends ironic that the game purportedly focused on puzzles has great boss encounters but it does so through unusual means many of them are puzzles in and of themselves smog comes to mind first using the cane of Samaria you've got to make temporary Bridges to put him back together all the while avoiding their body parts and the fire that spews from them it's an odd way to approach boss design but Aegis uses it well you've got to use the switch hook on plasmarine in such a way that its projectiles will hit itself instead of you ramrock runs the full Gambit of dungeon items and you've got to figure out which phases are weak to which items this one stumped me in particular trying to figure out what it meant when he grew hands or when he had a shield up I tried to go Adam's swords first when in reality he was the culmination of everything the dungeons had been teaching the player up to that point about strategizing about thinking first it didn't seem far-fetched to pull out my seed shooter or my cane of Samaria since I had been liberally using those items throughout the game to positive effect in the wake of breath of the wild where combat is stressed far more often it's on to travel back to a time where Zelda bosses had always been puzzles in 2D link is more limited in what he can do so instead of making bosses where combat is the focus many of them relied on patterns instead it's reflective of how you were meant to play the original Zelda trial and error throw stuff around and see what works except it works much better when contained in a single room against a single enemy ideally with a pattern that doesn't dissipate in five seconds that isn't to say Aegis doesn't have hard-hitting combat focused bosses the last one is a testament to that a multi-form beast of a fight against varen's many forms you've got to avoid a fast-moving B form or jumping Turtle form or giant precise spider form sometimes it feels like the fight will never end testing player stamina in a way Link's Awakening never could it almost comes out a left field in a game that doesn't quite prepare you for combat they throw a ridiculously hard challenge at the tail end I'd have almost like to see something more puzzle focused something closer to smog a boss that requires strategy more than it requires quick reaction timing supposedly that's what seasons is all about so it feels somewhat misplaced in ages that brings me to my final question should ages have been a game about puzzles while puzzles are definitely an important part of Zelda they've never defined it as a series entirely there are explorative elements and moments of action present in even the first Zelda game dungeons used to more so be combat challenges than puzzles really that Trend began with a link to the past which itself still had plenty of enemies and boss fights that held up that other pillar of Zelda both ages and Seasons need to hold those pillars separately thus isolating them into two distinct play experiences whatever element of Zelda you gravitate toward the most will likely determine which of the two Oracle games is more your speed it's no surprise to me that Aegis was exactly what I wanted it to be since I love tough puzzlers seeing as ages as a gigantic puzzle with the Zelda skin placed on top I can say I got exactly what I wanted I don't necessarily think Zelda should have to balance so many different things for a long time I struggled to find a justifiable reason for Zelda to still have combat until Skyward Sword in breath of the wild finally shook things up I think ages has just enough combat in it to be its own Zelda game in other words it doesn't have bad combat it has minimal amounts of combat Zelda games tend to struggle when one element doesn't work rather than when one element is less frequent breath of the wild struggles with some of its puzzles and as such I found it incredibly disappointing there definitely was no shortage of puzzles it's just that a lot of them felt very surface level I don't mind that there are only four dungeons I mind that the puzzles in those dungeons are lacking puzzles in breath of the wild frequently pale in comparison to past games ages doesn't hold itself back in that same way it is an expert puzzle while also presenting a worthwhile action-based supplement in fact this focus on exactly what Capcom wanted ages to be is likely why it feels so good to play I get the feeling that some of the weaker entries in the franchise struggle to Define themselves by anything other than a surface level identity the Wind Waker had a big Open Sea that you could explore with the caveat being that there wasn't much to do in it Ocarina of Time placed a lot of emphasis on its story despite some of it feeling Superfluous and underutilized Skyward Sword was so hell-bent on perfecting Wii Motion Plus swordplay that it destroyed any semblance of a meaningful Adventure none of those games are bad in fact they're all quite good but they clearly had mixed priorities look at Majora's Mask it knew exactly what it wanted to be it was a game about impending doom and how it affected an entire region of people everything in it was in service to this goal breath of the wild is a vast open World adventure and again everything in it was in service to this goal Twilight Princess was an epic adventure everything in it was in service to this goal the blinding linearity the Epic set pieces while it might not be what everyone wanted from Zelda it was clear that Twilight Princess wanted to be something Majora's Mask Twilight Princess links Awakening breath of the wild Oracle of Ages these are the Zelda games I love the ones that forego any sense of tradition that ignore any need to conform and just roll with some crazy idea or concept it could come with unintended consequences like the lack of satisfying puzzles in breath of the wild or the backtracking in Majora's Mask but the unique good outweighs the typical bad in a way some other Zelda games don't quite manage that's why I love Oracle of Ages I've played a hell of a lot of Zelda since I was a child and nothing has come close to challenging my brain the way ages does I don't mind that its story feels less interesting or that the music doesn't stick in my mind much or that some of the areas are eerily reminiscent of Ocarina what matters is that I can't get the same experience in other Zelda games to me such a commitment to an idea however radical is the recipe for Success if done right I guess we'll see how well Oracle of Seasons is able to hold up its pillar foreign [Music] if you've played Zelda 1 holodrome will give you some flashbacks in more ways than are immediately obvious from dungeon entrances to boss fights Seasons takes a lot of inspiration from the original Zelda's framework more enemies dot each screen less barriers prevent you from going somewhere and it echoes that terrifying survival mentality present in the original even in its story setup it feels generic you're plopped into holodrome for seemingly no reason are saved by din the Oracle of Seasons who is immediately captured by onoch's Resident big bad he sinks the Temple of Seasons sends hologram into a catastrophic fluctuation of weather events and seals din in his Palace your goal is to find the eight Essences storm onux's Lair and save holodrome much like ages it's more about the journey Journey but even more so you can fuel the roots of that Zelda one remake shining through narratively it feels almost intentionally stripped down I mean hey I love the new stuff subrosians are cue to Oddball opposite day dwellers and their land of subrosia is a surprisingly fleshed outside location by far the most interesting story content is located here going on a date with a cute girl getting a rock's feather stolen by a Duo of goofy thieves saving a crew of pirates who are trapped in between the Surface world and subrosia everything else pales in comparison at one point you reach a flooded town and the most you get out of that is well looks like the towns flooded oh hey I can swim now there's just this lack of any real initiative to the plot ages doesn't fare much better in this department but at least more stuff actually happens your tree guide falls in love with you during ages and you talk to her at multiple points throughout the game including to set up the final confrontation in Seasons the tree guide has Maybe one short speaking line until you promptly never hear from him again besides a brief set of directions here and there you build absolutely no relationships with these characters and it makes it hard for the story to ultimately matter you barely know din at all you barely know Onyx what does it matter when you storm the final Temple if the build up doesn't feel sufficient I often wonder if these two games are even worth connecting since their stories feel so inconsequential but I'll save that for the end seasons is supposedly the Triforce of power and thus the game focused on action players use the rod of seasons to control the weather spring summer autumn and winter changing the season affects which objects you can move and or destroy what buildings you can access and What mechanisms you can interact with while ages had time travel that affected the entire game State Seasons relies on area chunks when you change the season it doesn't affect the entire world map just the area chunk you currently reside in I really like how changing the seasons can affect progression usually contained to three or four rooms you need to find a way to a tree stump changing to a correct season out of four distinct options and hoping that you remembered that one room correctly some of the effects aren't immediately obvious why do mushrooms only grow in the fall or why do flowers only bloom in the spring or why do Vines only shoot out in the summer spring and fall feel the most Superfluous summer and winter are incredibly straightforward and it almost feels like spring and fall were ripped out of summer so that all four seasons could at least be represented it adds more variety and thus more complicated puzzle solutions so I can't say I dislike it just has a tendency to feel inorganic at a few moments though you use the mechanic often in the Overworld you can tell that it wasn't stressed much overall since season's focus is action there isn't a single point at which you use the seasons within a dungeon or where progression is significantly halted by the season switching mechanic in fact accessing these dungeons feels easier than ever before holodrum is really easy to navigate compared to labrina I found the fifth dungeon and completed it before the fourth dungeon on accident because as soon as I gained the ability to swim so much of the world was open to me I was practically lost at one point you need four sacred objects to access some ruins and they're hidden throughout holodrum hidden as in you have to explore to find them they aren't exactly hidden as puzzles you sprinkle mystery seeds on something an enemy pops out boom mystical object you fall down a few waterfalls a fire taunts you you fall down a few waterfalls again and you pick up the triangle labruna as the name implies felt super clunky to navigate and I think this was done on purpose ages is a giant puzzle box so it makes sense that the Overworld would feel very strict and suffocating with very specific Pathways to take that almost all had roadblocks holodrum has a few blocked off areas but is much more open there so many water tiles that open up to you after you get the scuba gear that it almost feels as though the world is your oyster there are secrets hidden Everywhere by burning bushes changing seasons bombing walls in effect seasons is more about oh what's that I'm gonna go find out and ages is more about whoa how the hell do I do that it might be more apt to call Seasons a game about Adventure that action umbrella is more evident within the dungeons progression in unicorn's cave is potentially confusing as are most Zelda dungeons but it feels more open if it wasn't on the Game Boy Color I have a feeling the first set of rooms would simply be mashed together because they're all open while there is a correct path what you do on said path matters more than finding the actual path if you go Westward you'll be dropped into a room with treadmill floor tiles that you have to maneuver your way through rather than a traditional puzzle this is a balancing act a reaction-based mechanical challenge when you eventually travel east there are several rooms to check out and keep in the back of your head for later many of them have small Keys other than that the mine carts are used to get you from one place to another where you'll have to complete a platforming challenge 2D sections are a dime a dozen this particular section has fire spewing out of tubes and projectiles that you have to time your jumps to avoid it dumps you into a room with a few different enemy types one with erratic movement the other with precise movement the erratic snakes can be hit from anywhere but you'll be more susceptible to their damage whereas the masked creatures have a small weak point and hide it easily with their sharp turns this room is all about vanquishing them as is the room on the left you're supposed to remember the order in which you slay the armos here again puzzle solving is still here and it's still good but it has more of a basis in action or combat there are a few more enemy gauntlets in here and they work so well because the Oracle games have a really good selection of enemies to play with dark nuts are fast and Center their attack from the front in a precise Point avoiding them is as hard as positioning link to get a word in edgewise then there are maganisu who shoot fireballs and constantly move far away from link you need to use the magnetic gloves to force them into your range while taking care to avoid their own attacks this is two straight rooms where all you need to do is fight enemies and most of the dungeons follow this pattern it's not that there are bad puzzles far from it most of the puzzles in seasons are competent enough to get me lost for at least a few minutes it's that there are relatively few puzzles in comparison to other content the Dancing Dragon dungeon has a lot of bmos rooms where you fight Wiz robes and stalfos each experts at avoiding your swings by either jumping or teleporting away you have to manage the enemies and the bemos lasers at the same time wisps litter the room especially in rooms with lots of spikes they have to jump over or in narrow corridors where they become harder to avoid it has you using the Pegasus C jump combo far more more than it was ever used in Link's Awakening in one instance you need to use the seeds to escape a room of collapsing floor tiles and grab the slingshot there's another cool item Imagine The Siege shooter except you can't shoot diagonally or bounce off walls in instead you upgrade it into a shotgun I'm not kidding about that this item is frequently used on mine carts and timing challenges to unlock keys and open doors there seems to be a much larger focus on Keys than in ages since a lot of doors are opened by defeating enemies and there aren't many puzzles a lot of the doors need to be opened with keys because Keys have to be given out as rewards for a tough platforming or combat challenge having three or four keys at once is not an uncommon occurrence additionally these dungeons all feel like well dungeons funny thing instead of mechanical excuses to craft hard puzzles a dungeon like the ancient ruins has a much simpler progression you know floor Masters dark nuts gibdos staffos armos wizrobes so many enemies in one dungeon puzzles are usually contained inside rooms whereas ages felt like a macro level puzzle box Seasons feels like a micro level moment-to-moment Adventure you're exploring a perilous Tower full of booby traps and demons with potential for treasure the dungeon items here feel more useful for combat than the ones in ages the magnetic glove is one of the most creative Zelda items ever it pushes or pulls metal objects and pushes or pulls link if the metal object is stationary it's a recontextualization of the hook shot one that also allows link to pick up metal balls and throw them at Keys the slingshot feels more immediately useful in fighting enemies especially once you get the shotgun spread The Rock's Cape fits with a focus on tougher platforming in combat by giving a double jump the magic Boomerang is great for crowd control it's as if both these games while sharing items and Concepts decided to focus on the ones that strengthened their core the most ages had the switch hook for harder puzzles the sea tutor could only shoot diagonally and bounce off walls because it had the potential to create interesting puzzles and the cane of Samaria has literally no other use than to solve puzzles none of this is to say that seasons has bad dungeon design it just has different dungeon design the puzzles and seasons are competent but the focus on combat means the challenge is raised from a different angle you'll probably die a lot to the mini bosses and main bosses as early as the gnarled route you fight the dragon from Zelda 1 you fight a dragon it has nothing to do with your dungeon item you just need to avoid the fireballs and attack the head seiger from unicorns keep a mere mini boss is very challenging he's quick and deadly you almost need your Pegasus seeds to avoid his attacks and you're forced to attack the small weak point on his tail mothula dashes around the room throwing Fireballs mini moth minions and you can fall down to a lower floor at any point forced to start over again dig dogger is damaged by a giant spiky ball one that you need to move using the magnetic glove you can't let it get too close to you or you'll damage yourself you need to time it just right so that you can push or pull the ball into the boss and after enough hits you've got to squish the super fast mini variants a task that is much harder than it sounds all the while his base form is jumping around the room like a madman and you're busy trying to figure out where the damn ball is going gliac is an upgraded aquamentus it has two heads that it shoots fire out of this time in many more varieties you need to time your kills to get both heads at the same time so that you can move on to the body by jumping during his earthquake move avoiding his charges and Swinging away while many of these bosses technically utilize the dungeons item they're more about raw survival than some of the oh favorite puzzles and ages these bosses feel like real battles Overworld progression is made more interesting at points using the animal buddies I mentioned earlier I love how they expand Link's moveset the boxing kangaroo named Ricky is my favorite since he can tornado punch enemies into Oblivion clearing out entire rooms of those pesky slimes Dimitri can swim up waterfalls and eat cheap sheeps serving a vital role even after you can swim and Moosh gives you the most jump distance even after getting The Rock's cave double jump you have to think this was in some way inspired by Kirby's Dreamland 3 they're just too many coincidences here they're all so cute I love them heart pieces and rings are handled the same way you find rings and secret chests or Gosha nuts that you plant using Gosha seeds heart pieces are equally well placed secrets to making them satisfying to seek out though I think the most substantial difference comes with the trading side quest it's the same as ever trade item to item to item when you get to the final recipient he gives you a hint so that you can grab the noble sword what's funny though is that you can just perform the correct Lost Woods combination and get the noble Sword without ever even starting the trade sequence meaning that on multiple playthroughs if you remember what the combination is you can get the noble sword whenever you want that is by far the best way to handle a trading sequence I have ever seen there's an easier way to find it to know that it exists while also leaving the door open for someone to stumble across it by chance I love that so much you end of course by storming onyx's Castle avoiding his Stomps his ball and chains spin attacking until he morphs into a giant dragon at which point you use the Rock's Cape to platform onto his hands and hit him in the head unlike varen this is a very fitting final boss for such an action-heavy game the perfect little bow on top I suppose then I'll ask the same question should seasons have been focused on action at the risk of sounding predictable yes I absolutely do while it might not tickle me in the same way Aegis does it satisfies my Zelda Cravings in a different way it raises me an urge I never thought I had an action-focused Zelda coming right off a puzzle heavy Zelda is an interesting experience it means that both ages and seasons can stand on their own effectively while not sacrificing the elements that aren't highlighted season still has good puzzle solving and thus the dungeons aren't hampered because of it I used my Spin Attack far more in Seasons than I did in ages because the game itself incentivized it I was more excited to find the noble sword in Seasons because I desperately needed a damage upgrade to go up against bigger threats whereas in ages it was a helpful ultimately less important upgrade again this commitment to an idea however radical is the recipe for success and thankfully both of these games nail what they set out to do and they complement each other well because of it this is helped by the linked game features once you beat one of the games you can enter a passcode that will allow you to continue the story in another game I started with ages so when I booted up Seasons I had four heart containers began with a sword and was able to begin dungeoning right away some characters even referenced my previous Adventures held some characters from that Adventure returned there was a child in ages you gave a name and watched grow over time come to find out that the reason that side quest exists is so that when you link your games he can show up in the next adventure all grown up and shy Queen Ambi showed up to tour holodrum and see the sights leading to one of the coolest twists I have ever seen in Zelda her husband the one she built a tower for so he had a beacon to come home to was the pirate Captain all along that's so cool it made Seasons less of a slog for me because although the main plot had almost nothing going on there'd be little glimpses of cool stuff happening in the background Zelda aiding the townspeople twin Rover scheming in the background the return of your animal Buddies the return of King moblin over here I'd say the linked game system was worth it for these little Easter eggs alone but there are even more features you can transfer the Rings you collected in your previous Adventure into the next game with you and you can take secret passcodes you learned in one game into the next one which will unlock fairy fountains and other goodies it also unlocks a final story though I say that Loosely because it's about five or ten minutes of new content where DIN and nehru team up send you to Twin rova and then you fight Ganon it's typical Zelda Fair it ends with Zelda kissing link and proclaiming you the legendary hero of Courage wisdom and power neat it's nothing special I was kind of expecting more maybe a final dungeon that made use of every ability across both games I don't know something more than two boss fights and a final crossover cutscene would have been nice I'm not necessarily complaining too much because I think the alterations to the main story are enough to Warrant the system I just feel like they could have gone further with it you'll want to play them back to back regardless of whether or not you link them because when combined they make for one of the best Zelda games I've ever played it is true that they both stand on their own the moment I finished ages I put it up there with some of the greats for being the best puzzle of all but then Upon finishing Seasons I realized that the Oracle games together reach that status it doesn't matter whether you're a fan of action or a fan of puzzles each game has a plethora of both and for those who prefer one side of the spectrum there's now an entire game that focuses on only your needs I definitely know that I prefer ages but I still loved seasons for offering a competent level of puzzle solving that not even breath of the wild could keep up with at points Capcom hit it out of the damn park with their first stab at Zelda they made two unique Zelda games that separate themselves from the pack and fit together as well as syrup and pancakes that my friends is an achievement foreign The Legend of Zelda the Minish Cap is as needlessly complicated as it is mind-blowingly simple There You Go video done okay I suppose I should back that up the Minish Cap is a smaller game in most respects it has a shorter main campaign a shorter dungeon count a dangerously small map none of these are reasons I dislike it it is built in such a way to get a lot of mileage out of that small map packing a multitude of side quests and rewards behind puzzles that see you turning small and going about normal tasks from an alternate perspective for instance you can walk into a house while you're normal sized talk to the NPCs fuse some kinstones and you can again enter that same house as a small boy Journey to the attic and talk to picori this is definitely the strongest and most developed mechanic within the Minish Cap it's a mechanic that affects Overworld progression in a dramatic way like the time travel and season switching in the Oracle games but it's also a mechanic that has a more obvious effect on progression when you become small There Are Places you can't go thanks to Paving shallow water and rocks embedded within the ground all of which can be walked over with little to no effort when you're bigger as soon as the second dungeon in Minish Cap has you switching back and forth forcing you to think about some of the same rooms in different ways as it recontextualizes enemies and hazards that were previously pushovers in many sections this switching is merely novel one of the bosses has you entering its core to take it out from the inside while other moments are more puzzling these small entrances are genius because they clue you into the fact that you'll have to turn small at some point you're forced to figure out where and how you can do that to progress this happens more in the Overworld than it does in dungeons more on that later specifically within the main town There's a section in the Northwestern quadrant that teases you for a very long time once you reach a certain progression trigger you can finally open this pathway entering this house moving up the chimney to the next house past the cats into the sewers until you're on your way to the next dungeon it's an excellent method to present fresh puzzles to players new and old the problems come in when this mechanic seems to be the only fully formed and necessary mechanic within its run every thing about this stretch of small exploration is interesting except the method by which you unlock it after obtaining the cane of Pochi within the second dungeon you are provided a proverbial key to open new doors I could flip over these pots inside the houses and finally explore the town as a smaller version of myself I soon realized however that a lot of what I could now do was pointless even though I figured out for myself that I could put out the fire in this guy's house with a bottle and then mosion over to his girlfriend's house through the chimney there was nothing I could actually do here since the story didn't yet gift me with the correct trigger this was all to obtain a book taken from the library a book that is absent until the very point it's needed rendering this side activity pointless it was always for the main quest it was just dressed up to provide you the illusion of Freedom what makes it worse is that Minish Cap doesn't match the level of sophistication in its puzzle solving that the previous two games by the same team were able to accomplish in fact many of the town's secrets were obvious to me as soon as I walked in but because they didn't yield any rewards they ceased to be fulfilling in their own right all these puzzles serve are to be mindless Stepping Stones to the next objective this is a hard issue to Grapple with because I've argued that Zelda benefits from its strong ties to metroidvania-like design and what I'm complaining about here could be seen as exactly that you need a specific item to do a specific thing but in this instance it feels over complicated why are you even allowed to do some of the things you're allowed to do if you can never follow through on them if the main quest is just going to make you do it it's not like ages where I was often stumped about how to do something it's a feeling more akin to frustration I know I can do something here but the game strings me along until it slaps me in the face and calls me stupid for thinking I can even accomplish something here in the first place if it was gonna lock all this main progression stuff away it may as well have introduced more roadblocks that prevented me from ever interacting with them in the first place just put an NPC in the way or something hell the game itself does this at multiple points anyway again I'm not gonna like that what I can or can't do feels arbitrary but at least I'm not being teased at the promise of something more only for it to eventually just be a stepping stone to the next dungeon instead of a cool reward this irritates me so much because the actual way you find secret treasures through the kinstone system oh dear lord I have racked my brain on this for hours I do not understand the point of it I seriously do not get it the Oracle games had loot-based RNG drop tables for the Rings but that made sense because the Rings affected Link in subtle ways that changed the gameplay they felt like a cool bonus on top of the static side rewards kinstones are dropped somewhat randomly throughout the world especially when found in grass or upon killing enemies you can find them in chests where assumedly they are static rewards the way the system works is that there are different colors of kinstones which each have different shapes green kinstones are the most common and usually yield a generic rupee reward bluekin stones are a rarer variant of green and Aid in some essential side quests red kinstones can only be found in treasure chests but yield the best rewards like heart pieces and other side items the system on the surface is sound you fuse kinstones with NPCs and they reveal Secret locations or further side quests sometimes Vines will disappear so you can use a tree entrance or a chest will spawn or an NPC will move basically anything can happen when you fuse a kinstone I guess that's the appeal here you never know what's going to happen until you fuse and there are handy map indicators to show you where you've unlocked points of interest however when you begin to realize just how many NPCs are in the Minish Cap spread out across the map tracking everyone down becomes an ordeal okay so there are a hundred kinstone fusions and not all of them matter it's hard to even figure out which actually do matter until you're already fusing with an NPC if the thought bubble above their head is a rupee it isn't important if it's a heart it's definitely important and if it's a question mark well I've had mixed results usually if it's a green Fusion it'll be less important but by the time you actually reach that NPC and thus the fusion screen you might as well just fuse anyway right all to find a golden enemy that drops some money inevitably you're going to have this moment where you run around the entire map spamming the L button on everyone to see what happens there are 100 of these fusions that all make you do something afterward many of the fusions open an area with a reward one that you have to go travel to why do you have to find an NPC fuse with them and open the way to a side cave with a cool reward why is it that after obtaining the digging bits I can't simply walk to all of those special areas and dig through them there are several dirt caves that are sitting on top of deep water and you're only able to access them upon fusing a kinstone and magically being able to stand on the shallow water does this not feel overbearing it frustrates the hell out of me there are little quirks to the system like some NPCs having multiple fusions you can only trigger by leaving the room and coming back the ghost in Northern Hyrule has an important Fusion hidden behind a relatively unimportant Fusion why I have no idea you don't have any in-game lists to track the NPCs you've met where to find them or even what kinstones you need to fuse I mean imagine Majora's Mask without the bomber's notebook the player is simply expected to cram all of this into their brains to remember where every single NPC is to eventually fuse with their Dumb Stone since there are so many of them you'll inevitably run out at some point I remember trying to fuse with the tingles for that giant chest with the magic Boomerang but I ran out of a very specific green kinstone it took an eternity to get the shape I wanted that's right I had to go grind in Zelda fancy that there's even a mini game house that opens where the owner explicitly states that it's a very helpful way to get kinstones when you have to make a mini game where the incentive for playing is to grind out kinstones I feel as though the system is already lost what then does the system matter I can kind of see the appeal for side objectives the Goron Rock cave is a good example after getting the mole mitts you confuse blue kinstones with markings and several dirt walls and doing this will add a Goron to the pile this incentivizes Overworld Exploration with the digging mitts while also furthering an interesting side quest with useful rewards it still feels needlessly complicated but at least you're getting good rewards out of it in stark contrast to fusing with an NPC watching some Vines disappear walking to that map quadrant walking inside the tree and picking up a piece of heart what about this process is more fulfilling than using the lantern to burn the fines why add this extra step I just don't get it because you can't track this large list of NPCs you're just gonna have to look up a goddamn kinstone guide like I did you think I'm going to remember the names of these people they all have names which is a step above other Zelda games but was it a necessary one you don't talk or do anything memorable with them so I don't know how you're supposed to remember all their goddamn names without a book to categorize them Jesus Christ why is there not an in-game tracker the kinstones drove me insane it got to the point where I'd open a chest find a kinstone and say to myself yep another kinstone beautiful which is odd as on the surface I can see that the kinstones are supposed to serve the same function as the Rings giving you a bigger incentive to explore by offering the player rewards that have the potential to be very rare all from relatively mundane activities while kinstones are more valuable than money in several instances their importance feels artificially inflated it's further compounded by the second collectible the mysterious shelves they're set up the same way you get them through predetermined chests and as RNG drops from grass rocks and enemies they allow you to obtain figures in town the more you trade the greater your odds of getting a new figure this increases by one shell every new figure you obtain at first you only need one shell to guarantee a new figure but after a couple trades only 12 for a 100 chance at a new figure and then after more trades you'll need 20 and then 50 and then 200. I've been told the most efficient way to do this to save the most resources is to just keep putting one shell in until you reach lower percentages like 20 or 30 percent while this is a sound strategy the speed at which you obtain figures borders on parity you can't make multiple trades at once if you want to initiate a trade you have to walk up to the trade person spam through his dialogue set the amount of shells you want to trade watch an animation of the figure dropping out of the machine watch the figure appear read the title of the figure Press B Wade through even more useless dialogue and start again okay so big deal right they're just figures you don't have to go after them if you don't want they're like the figures in Wind Waker yeah except there's a heart piece hidden behind this side quest you need all of the figures to get the heart piece not even a heart container a heart piece there are 130 figures meaning that assuming you have the best RNG you'll have to do the trades 130 times and that is assuming you only give him one shell all of those times realistically you'll want to raise the odds eventually and since you can only carry 999 shells for some reason at some point you'll have to go get more shells even if you don't want to do this side quest a lot of the more obscure dungeon rewards are mysterious shells and you can't carry more of them if you've hit the cap you might as well just go trade some to clear all your inventory none of it would even bother me if you could just do multiple trades at once and be done with it there is no defending this I can't believe they hit a heart piece behind this this is probably the worst heart piece in the entire series that I've played anyway I don't know I still got four more games to go at least other somewhat obnoxious side quests in the series weren't strictly necessary and had a hint of fun to them the golden sculptula and Ocarina of Time wore out their welcome at some point but after collecting a certain amount you could drop the side quests since the rewards afterward were relatively unimportant same with the poe souls and Twilight Princess the sea charts in the Wind Waker and the secret seashells and Link's Awakening not only did all four of these side quests require a lot of work to collect they didn't all need to be collected for heart pieces or new items most of them would reward more rupees some of them like the secret seashells don't net you any rewards for collecting them all but that's precisely why I hate the specificity of the figurine side quest you must collect every figure for the heart piece reward meaning you must collect the necessary amount of mysterious seashells for the final reward you also must put up with the RNG required to unlock those figurines in the first place it is a secondary currency that fails on almost every level and making them rewards for well hidden secrets within dungeons feels like a sick joke what gets me is that this could have been a more interesting side quest by their very nature the mysterious seashells are a currency one that could have been put toward a secondary Marketplace kilton the traveling Merchant from breath of the wild is the only traveling Merchant that deals in an alternate currency monster Parts you get Monster Parts by defeating monsters and you can use them for a variety of purposes though the one important to this discussion is the value placed upon these items by kilton you can use them to buy items that aren't strictly necessary but tweak the game ever so slightly he sells you disguises so that certain enemies won't attack you extract to use in a few cooking recipes and a set of Dark Link armor that increases your speed at night most of this stuff is dumb but they are just useful enough to be considered valuable by the player and by extension for the player to put more value on Monster parts no such exchange occurs with either the mysterious seashells or the kinstones both systems are needlessly complicated and only feel necessary because they hide incredibly useful items behind their exchanges it is not a two-way system the reward is alluring but not the method by which you obtain the reward what this means for the Minish Cap is that all it can reasonably rely on is its main progression the dungeons the story the combat all of which embody that mind-blowing Simplicity I mentioned at the beginning admittedly it's not all doom and gloom in this department often the path to a dungeon is fully explorable all at once and becomes its own mini dungeon as a tension build up to the actual Dungeon Mount crennall for instance has to be figured out beforehand you need the ability to climb which you can only get from a Deku scrub you find behind a ballable wall that is subtly telegraphed you can only get there after you figure out where the mineral water is so that you can grow a Vine and climate it's a winding set of caves enemies and mini puzzles leading to the next dungeon it's the same for practically every dungeon except the first even the Temple of droplets has the lead up within the town itself that acts as its own Preamble you go through each Temple and the order the game drives you towards which is nothing new in Zelda Link's Awakening did it Oracle of Ages did it and while Oracle of Seasons slightly broke away from that format it only did so for a few dungeons as time has gone on I think I've become less concerned with this linear progression as long as it's done well Minish Cap handles it in an interesting way making that linear progression a challenge in and of itself the reason I was so fed up with it in the Wind Waker was because it was a huge open world just begging to be explored yet the game insisted on still having a linear progression it wasn't a challenging linear progression either since the path to a dungeon was simply the act of sailing to a dungeon if making your way through the game doesn't feel fun why not instead make it a non-linear discoverable progression Minish Cap doesn't need to have a discoverable progression to fun though it does sometimes suffer from obtuse progression Flags moments like not being able to unlock the Pegasus boots until you actually go to the swamp and realize you can't cross it or that the library doesn't open until you talk to this Minish in Lake hylia why the game feels the need to do this stuff is beyond me and it complicates progression way too much I had moments where I was running around attempting to figure out what I had to do next only to realize the game needed me to go trigger an ultra needlessly specific progression flag before I could go do it again I have no problem with linear design I often think it's executed well here just an Ever smaller quantities unfortunately much like the wind waker Minish Cap is a set of dungeons that left me wanting more it's not just that there are a smaller amount of dungeons hell I love Majora's Mask you don't see me complaining because all four of those dungeons are expertly crafted with a variety of side caves and mini dungeons to fill that void Minish Gap is a set of six Dungeons and a few of them are admittedly great The Fortress of winds and the Palace of winds are diametrically opposed in their dungeon philosophies but that's okay because I like them both for wildly different reasons I love the Fortress of winds for allowing a bunch of Pathways to explore at the start as boss Keys aptly put it a find the PATH dungeon one that has a lot of small keys and progression puzzles many of them making unique use of the size shifting mechanic turning small so you can walk inside the armos and power them on or off is a really cool way to interact with a fairly standard Zelda enemy the boss as mentioned earlier takes this concept and runs with it a fantastic slightly confusing dungeon that is a joy to figure out the Palace of winds on the other hand is a follow the path dungeon you'll be hard-pressed to get lost in here it's mostly a giant linear path with combat encounters and mini puzzles I love the dungeon mostly because it looks sounds and feels fun to clear you get the Rock's cape and solve a lot of action-based puzzles it's basically the same reason I loved many of the dungeons in Oracle of Seasons despite them feeling less complicated overall the boss makes really really good use of The Rock's cape and your clone sword jumping from these flying manta rays trying to create the right clones in the right areas to hit the eyes at the same time while also taking care to avoid the manta rays flying at you and the projectiles they shoot you have to manage both yourself and your clones so that they don't all disappear it's arguably the best boss in Minish Cap next to vati I also have a very strange specific fetish for things that are in the sky maybe that's why I have a fondness for Skyward Sword that I'll never fully be able to explain I love the Palace of winds for the same reasons I love the city in the sky I fully acknowledge they are shallow and important areas but they make up for it with their aesthetic appeal who could argue with this Serene back foreign [Music] dark Hyrule Castle is a nice blend of both ideas presenting tough challenges that make use of your dungeon items in an interesting way with many bosses that test your swordplay the dark nuts emulate their Wind Waker appearances except this time there aren't magical triangle presses to do the work for you instead you have to dodge their strikes and follow up with your own counter-attacks to get the job done it gives you a reason to use your Shield an item I was hard-pressed to ever use even an Oracle of Seasons you obtain a wide variety of Sword skills to help you in this one that even allows you to perform a Helm splitter of your own volition when pairing The Rock's Cape with the sword refreshing to pull off the helm splitter without a reaction command this dungeon has quite possibly my favorite track in the game a remix of the Hyrule castle theme from a link to the past that makes me quiver it has some challenging puzzles surrounding the four Swords clone mechanic tough enemies I love the Dark Castle theme I have a soft spot for games that end on a warped version of a previously peaceful Sanctuary that's kind of why I loved the finale of Bowser's Side Story how often do you get to fully explore the castle in the same context as Bowser's Castle Hyrule Castle is the same effect what vati does to it is surprising enough but to see all these purple clouds and this gosh damn music oh my God I don't know why I love this music so much you might call it a fetish I can see that there are great dungeons here they blur the line between finding the path and follow the path each giving a different variety of puzzles to solve that play with the central size shifting gimmick a set of fun enemies to fight not dissimilar to the ones in the Oracle games and a moderately challenging set of bosses including vati who makes great use of the Clone mechanic and is quite challenging to boot when you consider that there are two halves to every coin in this game the weaknesses become even more glaring the Temple of droplets again great music why does this game have such outstanding music all of a sudden real quick pause I actually want to comment on this Link's Awakening in the Oracle games had great soundtracks I can see that but Minish Cap takes this to another level I don't know what it is about these compositions but they often elicit genuine emotion out of me on a level that I've only ever previously run into with games that I have Nostalgia for you know what I mean listen to the Temple of droplets it's so calm so soothing but it has such an ancient lost relic-like feel to it [Music] foreign [Music] an ancient Minish ruin I feel that it's sad that the act of exploring it can't do this for me in the same way as soon as you get in you already have your hands on the boss key and you use it at the start of the dungeon I panicked a little when this first happened but turns out it's just a cheeky way to subvert the Trope since you still have a long way to go what you have to do is get the light from above to shine on a frozen OCTA rock you do this by pushing levers on both sides of the room but you can only get to those levers by taking one predetermined path certainly there are mildly tricky puzzles here and there though I largely found myself going through the motions one of the mini bosses is just a recycled main boss of the past with the only interesting shake-up being that it Sparks electricity sometimes it's still just a couple clicks of the Guster away from death but alright Minish Cap it actually reuses quite a bit from that first dungeon that wiggler-like boss the lily pad water traversal but it doesn't do a whole lot to transform those mechanics it mostly feels like they're just well recycled In fairness the wigglers are thrown at you with ice physics and then again in a dimly lit 2V1 but I don't quite think those were enough to use them again the best this dungeon has to offer are a few block pushing puzzles on ice one of them even has two solutions I found out on stream kinda neat I also figured out that holding down the L button prevents link from entering doors and because of a wacky control mapping error in my emulator settings that made the game think I was holding down the L button eternally we all thought I had tripped anti-piracy measures we always did an hour of our time troubleshooting this bizarre problem and I never would have even known this hidden function of the L button if I hadn't streamed it it's still on my channel just go to the stream archive playlist if you're interested I promise Chad I would bring this up in the video and I had no better segue what were we talking about again oh right bad dungeon talks the OCTA Rock boss is all right you hit his Rock back at him and light his tail on fire all the while contending with ice physics it's not awful not by a long shot there are certain only been worse bosses it's just not very exciting it is pretty memorable I do love how a few of the bosses are just normal sized enemies that's cute but I don't feel like that cute subversion was taken very far at all in a gameplay sense the green choo choo again is a couple clicks of the gustar away from Death you don't have to do much of anything at all to down it and it exists within a very simple dungeon one that aslo still has to guide you through for whatever reason I guess kids play Zelda too the most that concept is taken is in the Fortress of Wynn's boss fight where you take on a robot by bashing its insides even then it's a huge ball of missed potential I expected something a little grander maybe exploring a dungeon that itself is the boss fight to take advantage of the idea that you're turning smaller what if one of the dungeons was the inside of an armos instead of the simple ladder that takes you to a switch to turn the monitor off imagine there was a set of rooms confusing by nature of being Clockwork machinations fighting off bug things that had slithered into the core instead there are multiple dungeons that are explored by Link at normal size a mine shaft ancient ruins a sky Temple the only two dungeons that are small in size are both ancient Minish temples those are the only ideas worth exploring I guess the Cave of Flames is almost no different from any other Zelda dungeon the funny Minecart traversal can't mask the fact that it has almost nothing interesting to call its own sometimes you have to turn small to move forward but it's not often you have to think about when to do that or that the entire dungeon will take advantage of it there will be a place to turn small right next to the path forward and since many of these dungeons can be broken down into linear Pathways it's no surprise that this cave got really boring really fast some of the puzzles were painfully surface level hit these enemies so they turn into a ball throw them into some holes pull chest pegs into holes fly across some tornadoes the depth perception is a little wonky but there's rarely anything to actually avoid sections you just have to go wherever you have to go they appear so frequently that it almost feels more like a flex than a well-considered mechanic look at how cool we can make this look on the Game Boy Advance at least the Palace of winds and dark Hyrule Castle place some obstacles in the way even if they don't tend to be threatening perhaps that's the most disappointing thing about the weaker dungeons I felt like I was touring nice looking Vistas and not much else I was walking down endless tunnels with a few vaguely stimulating puzzles until I fought a boss and left to go do more interesting things that I then remembered were needlessly complicated you can kind of see the cycle starting it's such a shame because they all have fantastic music I love their atmospheres coming off the graphically and musically limited Game Boy Color titles it feels so good to play something like the Minish Cap one that can add a lot of graphical and musical flourish to otherwise buy the numbers dungeon design really if the Palace of winds wasn't on the GBA if Minish Cap was on the Game Boy Color or something it'd be less special to me and when your game's strengths feel that surface level there's probably a deeper issue at play they're less like labyrinths that I can get lost in and still less like a series of rooms you can Adventure your way through more like a linear path threaded Along by an appetizing carrot dangling from a rope even the dungeon items are a double-edged sword the Gus jar and Cane Apache are highlights I haven't seen much like these items in the entire series besides the gust Bellows which came after Minish Cap anyway the Gus jar is used for a variety of purposes like moving lily pads and removing obstacles while the cane Apache flips over objects and allows link to rock out of holes in the ground however they are Beyond situational in their use you still use them more often than the 3D titles are willing to use theirs but not nearly as much as Link's Awakening or the Oracle games though the gust star is used later on at a few points namely within the Temple of droplets it doesn't get much use anywhere else many of its uses don't feel fun either the third time you jump jump onto this Lily Pad the repetition sets in harder than the morning after New Year's Eve especially in the temple of droplets where you have to grab the lily pad again and do the section over also you can burn an ice block with your newly acquired Lantern for an essential kinstone piece the lantern in the cane of pachy similarly have very few use cases outside of flipping a jar so you can turn tiny or lighting dark rooms the [ __ ] mitts sport perhaps the most utility of all the new items allowing leak to explore dirt caves except it's definitely an item that rings of progression key there is next to nothing you can do with it besides exploring designated dirt walls even if you do use it often not exactly the most exciting new set of items but I do appreciate that they are new at least this time the lantern doesn't drain a meter or something never understood why Zelda games did that the items that tend to work better are often the tried and true the Pegasus Boots the rockscape the bow yada yada I think at this Point Capcom had a pretty good grasp on the items that did and did not work it doesn't quite reach the Oracle games in terms of frequent use but it does enough that I'm happy with the new additions it's just a shame that so much about Minish Cap falls short of what I initially expected of it some of the things it delivered on well are fairly Superfluous it looks good it sounds good and the size shifting mechanic is well utilized otherwise it has a set of mechanics that feel either Half Baked or in some cases still sitting in the freezer some dungeons are fun some of them feel like a slog some of the dungeon items are great some of them feel a little useless and the kinstones paired with the mysterious seashells are just an overly complicated way to achieve something the zelt games haven't had a problem achieving in the past at all not even the previous games that Capcom already made I think I can best sum this up by diving into the story a story that I feel is painfully underwritten I think the reason the capcom's all the game of underwhelming stories is because Flagship developed scenarios for the games before production even began so what Capcom were working off of were simply scenarios I think please correct me if that's wrong it would explain why the Oracle games didn't have such a great story or an interesting set of antagonists like most other zeldas manage unsurprisingly the Minish Cap is a standard tale with some new characters the pcori are an interesting addition to the series lore I think they're cute and the main antagonist is abecori even as low as a bakory at some point eslo explains that voddy picked up a hat that he'd made one that gives him the power to shape reality yeah it's never really fully explained but it must be true because Zelda uses it to bring everyone back from the dead and save the entire Kingdom vati uses it to become human-sized and have powerful magic he seems interested in a power known as the light Force but can't use the hat to find it for him it doesn't delve far enough into the relationship between eslo and vati for me to connect with that conflict they don't go into detail about why vati fell to Darkness as eslu puts it he became Enchanted by the wickedness of the hearts of men what does this mean seriously what is even being said here vati is the evil bad guy who put on the Bad Hat and you have to stop him granted he gets more screen time than the villains of the Oracle games did and he makes a lot of progress but Varin also made a lot of progress that didn't make her a great villain in my eyes body doesn't scare me or it's sexually intrigue me the same way girohim could he's just a [ __ ] pikora you picked up a magic hat and does evil things out of curiosity he lacks the charm of girrahim the otherworldly Terror of Majora and the genuine fear of Ganon a hulking mass of a beast that you have to take down an imposing figure of a man in all of his incarnations that will never ever stay down vati doesn't scare me at most he's B grade villainy the end of the game feels really abrupt they restore the victims of vati's Rampage and aslo barely even acknowledges the bad things vadi did things just end you stop vati and they end that's it wonderful Zelda is made of stone for the entire run so it's not like you can bond with her and while eslow is one of the funnier's all the characters I don't think there are enough moments to sell me on his character being anything other than mildly amusing certainly nothing on the level of midna here especially considering their parallels midna actually has a stake in the story that is explained well and I sympathized with her plight because of it when you storm the castle and confront Zant there's some baggage there to impact that's built up throughout the game's run midna failed her kingdom she seems nervous to travel back and face that shame head on it takes Link's courage and Zelda's sacrifice to put her on the right path aslo technically has a stake in the plot because he had a connection to vati and created the hat that can apparently manipulate reality but because that connection wasn't explored at all it leaves the story with almost no personal Stakes for God's sakes the king of Red Lions had more of a stake in the story of the Wind Waker he had a beautiful little Arc learning to let go of the past and embrace the children of the future Breaking the Vicious Cycles of old that he helped perpetuate I've said in the past that I don't really care much for Zelda's story and that's still true I don't need a Zelda game to have an outstanding cast or an engaging plot I love the Oracle games even though I don't give a flying [ __ ] about their stories but that doesn't mean I'm not disappointed when a potentially interesting story setup is botched so hard especially in a series that has shown it can be thematically rich I raise the Minish Cap as a bit of a bumbling mess a game that is at some points overly complicated and at other points stupefyingly simple there are moments of Brilliance in the Overworld in some of the dungeons in its main mechanic and especially its aesthetic elements that soothe and all me to no end there are so many moments where I wanted to love the Minish Cap but the overwhelming majority of it baffled me what is the point of kinstones why do some of these dungeons feel like glorified hallways why doesn't the story explore some of its more interesting elements instead of playing out like a standard adventure story why can I not just give you all of these Seychelles at once there were moments playing the Minish Cap where I had almost convinced myself that I loved it because it was a fresh new Zelda experience and I wanted to be enjoying myself a hell of a lot more it was only upon thinking about it for a while playing a bit more of it reflecting on my emotions throughout that I realized it was quite underwhelming in various areas I didn't even really have my expectations set very high I was just surprised by how often it was recommended to me and I was intrigued by some of the talked about mechanics in that sense the size shifting didn't let me down but almost everything else did I know this will be a controversial take but I did think for quite a while before I came to this conclusion just so I could be sure I loved Link's Awakening in both of the Oracle games and I know those are both fairly popular opinions I'm not trying to go against the grain here I just don't get the Minish Cap it doesn't speak to me and that's a mighty or might I say a puny disappointment [Music] as continuations of the Wind Waker both of these games do a great job continuing its momentum moments after the ending of the original the gang stumble across the mysterious Ghost Ship which abducts Tetra leaving link stranded on an unfamiliar Island there you meet a fairy named siala and a brave Warrior of the sea named linebeck who both assists you in your travels to find the Ghost Ship rescue Tetra and eventually put an end to the life-eating monster known as Bellum can I first just say how refreshing it is that Phantom Hourglass respects the amazing ending of the original where Cycles are broken tradition cast aside to allow a new generation to take hold there is not a single mention of anything pertaining to the main series Tetra being Princess Zelda is never brought up she's just Tetra the story of siella Lineback and oshis is a unique conflict unconcerned with relics like the Triforce it's an honest-to-god new threat that exists out in the world somewhere a Legend Made Real if you will you're carrying on the will of the ocean king who failed to entirely stop Bellum from invading the world you're exploring even more of the great sea with new companions it's fine-tuned to the same light-hearted frequency of the Wind Waker it's genuinely funny due in no small part to characters like Lineback aka the OG gruse [Music] that's right [Music] he's less of a bully figure turned good and more a pathetic man turned heroic your first encounter has you save him from the Temple of the ocean King only for him to ditch you seconds later he only agrees to assist you in your search for Tetra because there's rumored treasure aboard the Ghost Ship Lincoln Ciela do all the dirty work while Lineback varies them around basically he often chastises his link for taking too long boasting that he could have done better though he's also the same character who's constantly being chased by his ex-girlfriend and hides waiting for link to handle it whenever she pops up Jolene harasses you on the high seas every once in a while and though it's the same encounter every time you get more insight into their relationship until it's revealed near the end that one of his acts of cowardice ended up saving her from that moment she was captivated by him but he didn't feel worthy of her after all he's a coward at heart but his stubbornness is what won her over and it's why despite his Antics she kept chasing him even though he didn't even steal anything that important from her it all culminates in this ridiculously Great Character moment where he saves link from Bellum where before he would avoid conflict at all cost sticking by the sidelines and running off with the treasure he realized his own hidden potential that's why he wishes for his [ __ ] back at the end of the game his adventures are over in fact they're only just beginning he's a new man a new captain linebeck much like Grouse it's really simple but it works just as well Lineback goes from hilariously afraid to respectfully courageous and there's just something admirable about that through link he became the man he was suppressing all along in a way the player inspired him to get there by sailing the Seas without a hint of fear while characters like siella and oshas don't really get the same treatment I don't think they needed to Ciela is a fun companion not too obtrusive and plays offline back in humorous ways she just will not put up with this [ __ ] I love it when it's revealed that oshis was the ocean King all along for once I didn't see it coming the Temple of the ocean King is an old Relic the legends of the ocean King are similarly ancient so the idea that the ocean king would still be around and kicking never even crossed my mind making the twist even more powerful which is funny because in retrospect it's foreshadowed pretty hard he knows so much about the world and what link has to do and characters even ask him how he knows so much I just assumed he was an adventurer who tried to explore the depths of the temple a long time ago a lot like link evidenced by the sword he keeps behind his house ciela's lost memory being wrapped into this doesn't really go anywhere but again it was a nice mystery with a satisfying payoff it feels like a big new adventure new islands with unique temples cultures and never-before-seen races sure maybe the gorons return but what about the Isle of frost it introduces the anuki and the yuk two races in Conflict ever since a yuck kidnapped in enuki a hundred years ago uncovering the Island's secrets and ridding it of bellum's presence reveals that the yuck were being controlled the entire time it's a neat self-contained story on your path to defeating Bellum or what about the Kabul Kingdom the ruins of an ancient Egyptian civilization not only do you have to find out kabul's location on another Island using a past adventurer's notes as a set of Clues you communicate with its ghostly denizens to learn more about the kingdom and to find the mineral within its Temple this adventure feels distinct from the one in the Wind Waker thanks to all this the first game was a journey to save your sister which saw link saving the Rito in koroks before finally facing down Ganon and ending the cycle of tragedy brought on by the kingdom of Hyrule and its denizens Phantom Hourglass is a quest to save Tetra which sees link ending a feud between two warring races and putting the spirits of a long dead civilization to rest before finally inheriting the will of the ocean King and striking down the evil Bellum once and for all I can't overstate how wonderful it is that these two narrative structures can be so similar yet so different in substance I'm not trying to say that Bellum is some great new antagonist he's really just a big old evil thing I don't really like Bellum I like what he represents he's part of a legend his presence inspires Adventure the same way Calamity Ganon does on an admittedly smaller scale there are a surprising amount of parallels in breath of the wild you learn about events in the past that led to Calamity Ganon destroying Hyrule and Link's failed attempts at vanquishing him the same way you learn about the ocean King's failed attempts at vanquishing Bellum though if I might be controversial I think I prefer the implications of Phantom Hourglass in breath of the wild it feels less like a legend and more like a thing link already did but forgot about he already faced Ganon and already lost so when he comes back for the rematch it's somewhat impactful but none of it is very mysterious whereas oshis is a better stand-in for a previous incarnation of Link even if he is a giant whale link is a foreigner to this land which has its own pre-established backstory so when you come in and take up the mantle previously retired by oshis it feels more impactful when eventually slay that evil after all in both of these games the player is never the one that fails which defeats the purpose of going back for a rematch the final battles aren't rematches as far as the player is concerned their first time encounters which is why it's more effective for me that someone else failed to defeat Bellum that this long forgotten hero was unsuccessful where the player has a chance to correct those mistakes and crafted their own Legend along the way Spirit Tracks takes place 100 years after Phantom Hourglass and opens once again with Nico as a framing device link is ready to become a full-fledged engineer but instead he finds himself with ghost Zelda forcibly cast out of her body ready to restore the spirit tracks and stop the demon king from being resurrected though it does reference aspects of Hyrule I got the Feeling This was done more as an homage than anything else for one thing the story is still entirely unconcerned with Ganon and secondly the Garb that the guards wear is almost certainly an homage to link rather than an homage to Hyrule itself sure Zelda looks similar to Tetra but as evidenced by the stained glass window with Tetra on it this was probably just out of respect to the king of Red Lions or an acknowledgment of her Legacy again there's no mention of the Triforce or anything like that the villains want to resurrect The Demon King malidis another faceless evil another Legend Made Real there are Mysteries surrounding who made the tracks and what purpose they ultimately served the locomos are cool analogues for the sages of old it feels like a plausible Society built off the backs of tetra and a pirate gang it seems this land exists in peace the only evil residing in human insecurities and fear burn has an interesting character Arc based on his own fear wishing to be as powerful as the Demon King should he ever arise after not receiving that power he realizes just how much of a mistake he made and assists Lincoln Zelda in defeating malidus sacrificing himself in the process it's not as memorable or as Charming as lineback's Evolution but I'd be lying if I said his death didn't get to me the sly bastard the chancellor is just evil it's less about a cycle of Despair brought on by a long dead wave of evil and more an ignorant stupid humans set on ruining the land The Demon King isn't fated to rise in fact they seem to have a pretty tight grip on a seal until one of their own went about trying to summon him maybe the antagonists aren't amusing their own right but Zelda more than makes up for that [Music] laughs [Music] this is arguably her best Incarnation she's quippy funny scared of bugs and has some of the best cut scenes in any Zelda game having her accompany you as your companion is the best of both worlds this is exactly what I wanted from Tetra in both the Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass but it was never adequately delivered Phantom Hourglass even shoves her away for the entire game besides the beginning and end which was a massive shame Spirit track Zelda isn't exactly like Tetra she's a sheltered scaredy cat but they play Less on the negative attitudes associated with that archetype and more on the comedic undertones of that archetype she's not an ice queen she's genuinely nice and wants to help people she kinda reminds me of Ciela but with better character moments she's so sheltered that she genuinely believes that she can't be of any help to her kingdom and assumes link should be the one doing all the work controlling her in the Phantom and being a crucial asset throughout the game shows that she is just as capable as he is when link struggles to deliver the final blow to malidis Zelda strolls up and pushes The Sword in with link signifying this as both link and Zelda's Adventure when Link and Zelda hold hands at the end of the game it was one of the only times I bought a connection between the two it isn't a random kiss like the end of the Oracle games it was built up throughout the game you were controlling the both of them and watched them grow closer the farther into this mess they got it symbolizes the end of Zelda's development she grew into a hero worth respecting it's refreshing after recent comments about her place in the Triforce and how she can't be a hero because link is a hero blah blah blah blah Spirit Tracks already proved that wrong so there you go while neither of these games deliver a theme or message as powerful As the Wind Waker they carry on its Legacy through well-written humor excellent cutscene Direction a memorable cast and an entirely new world to explore that gives it a Sharper Edge than some other games in the series intend on dredging up old foes or concepts I appreciate that originality [Music] foreign if you'll recall my criticisms With the Wind Waker can be broadly placed within two categories the great sea and dungeon design I would assume you'd have already watched that video but in case you haven't I think the great sea is too repetitive funnels you into exploring at the very end of the game and is far too restrictive in its linear progression for anything about it to feel exciting its dungeons are far too simple relying heavily on logic puzzles and foregoing all sense of Mystery by limiting your potential paths in my opinion Phantom Hourglass fixes at least one of these problems in its entirety sea exploration has seen a variety of tweaks that make it more exciting it may lack in quantity but it more than makes up for that in its quality one of my chief issues with the wind waker's ocean was that it recycled a lot of uninteresting content likely to make it seem larger than it actually was Phantom Hourglass doesn't fall into the same pitfalls since the ocean itself is smaller in size it has 16 Islands in total and all of the them are closer together meanwhile Wind Waker had a 49 locations of note spread out across the ocean Phantom Hourglass is a bite-sized Adventure by comparison but that bite-sized Adventure Packs more of a punch absolutely none of it feels like filler and you're allowed to explore all of it by the halfway point you've got a few minigame Islands you've got fishing side quests you've got a memorable short trading sequence you've got an island you're forced to create a map for yourself you've got Salvage arm minigames you've got distractions to keep you occupied as you travel an already smaller distance Islands not yet marked on your map that you stumble across on a whim some of which contain permanent combat upgrades like increased attack power or defense some of which contain tools used to fast travel it's important to note that the Wind Waker also had this fast travel was obtained by fighting a mini boss roaming the Seas the mask of Truth gave you a permanent UI upgrade Etc the chief difference is that Phantom Hourglass eliminates the reefs and other pointless Islands in favor of adding more more C charts with a retooled reward system in the Wind Waker everything you could find had to be important in some way unless it was money there had to be a Rhyme or Reason for you to explore which usually meant a heart piece that's fine heart pieces are a good reward but you don't get that immediate satisfaction since there are so many of them a few of them were bound to be locked behind blatantly uninteresting and annoying objectives like destroying a special pirate ship or finding the golden beetle shop there just wasn't a lot to find besides rupees or more sea charts that led to more rupees some of which you couldn't even hold without wallet upgrades your treasure more often than not was funneled into an end game Quest almost no one enjoys Phantom Hourglass still often rewards you with rupees but at least in this game it feels like they have a purpose fairies cannot be obtained in the Overworld your only source of healing as an item is through potions you buy at Shops additionally there are orbs you can buy that contribute to sword and shield upgrades I cannot tell you how satisfying it was to complete an optional dungeon puzzle or hard maze Mini-Game only for it to allow me to shoot sword beams and stuff it's really cool finally there are [ __ ] Parts you can buy from Beetle there are a lot of ship parts you can find throughout the game so much in fact that an average playthrough won't even yield half of the available options besides making your ship look awesome they also raise your ship's Constitution depending on which set you roll with which will change with each playthrough based on which parts you find not only will your playthrough be full of different treasures and [ __ ] Parts than your friends they'll be different every subsequent playthrough your ship is almost never going to look the same since there are so many different parts this makes exploring the ocean even more fun because what you'll find at the bottom of the ocean floor or at the end of a side quest or is the prize of a minigame will always be different they'll also always be useful even if a little bit different playthroughs will also change the value placed on different ship parts and treasures there are several different Treasures you can find that really only serve to be sold however some Treasures will be worth more or less on different playthroughs you'll quickly find out which Treasures are worth the most and when you find a treasure chest through a secret puzzle there's a rush of anticipation what are you gonna find will it be worth a lot there's no wallet in Phantom Hourglass you can hold 999 Rupees at the start even if you reach that cap you'll almost always be spending it on useful items or parts it is a satisfying incentive to explore no matter where you go in this game it'll almost always be worth your time and while that bolsters a first playthrough the most the fact that the magic doesn't wear off on subsequent playthroughs is genius I played this game twice back to back for the purposes of this video and had two entirely different experiences it's very rare I can say that out about his Zelda game especially the Wind Waker which still feels like the exact same Adventure every single time I Revisited of course there are still static rewards but even those have been improved instead of a bajillion heart pieces there are now 13 heart containers meaning that any side quest or puzzle you solve with a heart container as your reward will see an instant bump in your maximum health quite frankly I never knew how much I needed this until I got it this makes collecting pieces of a heart container feel even more redundant in retrospect this only works so well because there's a robust reward system that exists alongside the heart containers It's the Best of Both Worlds the trading sequence is more interesting both because you aren't trading with the same three NPCs over and over and because it rewards you with a helpful new attack fishing for the legendary neptuna is challenging and fun in its own right but you also get a heart container out of it nothing you do is useless once you're past the halfway point and pick up the final two seat charts the C is quite literally your oyster every island has an initial purpose fast travel upgrades mini games however they all also have side purposes you fulfill with dungeon items this ensures that you won't stumble onto an island with literally no purpose there is always something for you to do I really hated having to turn away from an island in the Wind Waker because I lacked the tool required to explore it it was fun to go back once I got the tool I needed but that initial frustration is one of the reasons it failed as a sea exploration game Phantom Hourglass sidesteps this problem without ruining the appeal of gaining new dungeon items maybe you reach an island that you can't fully explore but you'll always get something out of the trip this is helped by the latter half of the game being non-linear the final three objectives can be tackled in any order you desire where the wind wakers blindingly linear story progression clashed hard with its core conceit Phantom Hourglass Embraces that explorative spar Market at second half it's surprising that this game allows for so much freedom in a series that has traditionally had a very hard time balancing its linear and non-linear elements thank you Spirit Tracks changed a lot about its Overworld by comparison There is almost no Freedom you can choose where you want to go and discover new locations but you can only do so on Rails literally in Phantom Hourglass you had complete control over where you wanted to go and in what way you would get there Spirit track strips out the way and only leaves the where certainly the train is a novelty you can control the speed at which it moves you can blow the horn switch train tracks but it's really only a novelty in fact oddly enough I found myself incredibly bored on Long stretches of track where I almost never was in Phantom Hourglass they both have fast travel yet Spirit Tracks still had long stretches of nothing imagine trying to chart the great sea but there were dividing lines everywhere deciding where you were going to go it isn't just annoying it's really boring you still travel back to towns and caves once you get new items but it's not as fun to actually do especially since the Fast Travel is no longer accessed in the menu you have to enter designated Gates which simply means more uninterrupted travel some of the connected gates are confusingly placed and can only be accessed by completing a side quest that rewards you with a force gem Phantom Hourglass fast travel was simple Bonk a gold frog with your Cannon write down the symbol on your map and you can warp back to that location whenever you want in Spirit Tracks you'll first need two gates that are connected you'll often pass by in active Gates and make note of them on your map once you find a gate with a gem on top of it you shoot it with your Cannon activating the link between them blow your whistle and fast travel some of these Gates take a very long time to activate seeing as they're usually hidden behind side quests you can't complete until much later some side quests give you shortcuts by way of creating Railways that connect them in different areas but this still means a whole lot of nothing while you sit on the train in occasion tap the screen or catching bunnies Phantom Hourglass places no such restrictions on travel as soon as you get the northeastern sea chart from the Temple of the ocean King you can travel North solve the whale Island puzzle talk to the gold frog and now you have access to fast travel all you need to do is find the gold frogs which are usually near places of interest anyway there are typically two of them for each quadrant that are situated around areas of interest to cut down on travel time when travel time was higher than average it was typically only because there was a fish to catch or treasure to find spirit tracks only comparable Overworld objective are the 10 bunnies located in each Rail map it's a fun side quest but the mini game itself is much shorter than the fishing or the Salvage arm so you're typically right back to a whole lot of nothing after catching a bunny which would be fine if there were other fun objectives to distract you the vast majority of Overworld objectives involve taking someone or something from one place to another the amount of times you're asked to do this boggles the mind what you're usually tasked with is for example taking anuki from a Nuki Village to a place that's warmer in this case to the gorons you have to take him there while abiding by Railway laws Blow Your Horn when there's a horn sign slow down to normal speed when the sign says so go back to high speed when the sign tells you don't get hit by enemies don't come to an immediate full stop and stop before the line at your destination the first couple times you do a quest like this it's pretty fun you're forced to pay attention and actually follow the game's rules so you don't upset the passenger there are similar quests that see you transporting fish or ice from one town to another usually with the caveat being that it will melt or spoil over time and you'll lose cargo if hit by an enemy again fun the first few times but when you realize that you are forced to in effect travel from one place to another a whopping 22 times and that it makes up almost all of your Overworld exploration it gets maybe a little old these quests are used as a way to open up a secret startlingly similar to the kinstone system you aren't allowed to travel to these locations whenever you want because you're supposed to be humming along the path the game directs you down new Railways usually lead to a dungeon with treasure a fast travel gate or more bunnies I can't tell you how disappointing it is to travel to a new Railway only for it to be a Dumping Ground for bunnies and nothing else that's why I hate this stuff not necessarily because I'm a completionist but because I would appreciate if what I decided to do outside of the main quest felt worth my time I've often gotten comments telling me that expecting Zelda games to be completionist friendly is a flawed mindset I agree that isn't what I'm trying to say here often I won't complete Zelda games that aren't satisfying to complete whenever I decide decided to go back to Ocarina of Time I probably won't be collecting the sculptula again or doing the mask side quest or using the Song of Storms to blow holes into the ground I care far more about the dungeons the story The Music you know everything else the reason I talk about all the side content in these videos is because that's what you're here for right I evaluate all of a game's content isn't it fair of me to point out that doing side content might not be fun Imagine a world where there wasn't pointless filler in games like Spirit Tracks Wind Waker or Minish Cap they'd be better for it right I would want to engage with the game fully rather than only in pieces there are many Zelda games I love fully completing or at least completing most of you won't see me doing so with something like Spirit Tracks or Minish Cap ever again it's hard not to imagine a world where Spirit Tracks had more free form exploration the pieces are already in place when the spirit tracks vanish at the beginning of the game and you get your hands on the magical Spirit train is it so far fetch to imagine your spirit train creating its own tracks this would certainly eliminate rail switching but I feel like that's a worthy sacrifice in the face of increased freedom and less travel time if that's too radical a change maybe upping the travel speed or adding an additional Notch that increased your travel speed would have been a good compromise in the Dark Realm your train is suddenly much faster than it used to be and as soon as I saw that I wondered why it couldn't have been that fast for the rest of the game there really is no explanation that would satisfy me just make it an optional speed Notch so players could adjust it if need be make it an unlock later on or something if you don't want players to be too overpowered I don't care how you fix this I just don't want to be on the train for hours of my life doing nothing now I'll admit what it lacks in Freedom it makes up for in substance while I loved sailing in Phantom Hourglass certain aspects of it could get repetitive there weren't many enemies sharks pirate ships floating eyeballs squitties Vine traps and whatever this is bosses would appear from time to time but they were never more complicated than shoot it repeatedly in the eye sockets Spirit Tracks has four different biomes with interesting new enemies and objectives in each quadrant there are demon train cars halting progression that can one hit kill you force you to think out your path carefully a boss that forces you to be precise with your aiming and even lead your shots since the target is always moving wild boars with moblin riders evil snowmen that Chuck their heads at you pirate ships even still evil squids that change location rapidly sand sharks that only become vulnerable during specific Windows sometimes you travel underwater or to a snow biome through a winter storm or through the Lost Woods on a specific path or lugging ice through the mountains or finding out the most optimal path to your objectives so the dark ore doesn't melt in the sunlight maybe it gets old after a while but it's a variety that the great sea lacked there was a section of Phantom Hourglass where you have to chase the ghost ship through thick fog and you take notes from the Wayfarer to take the path this was really cool and neat use of the map making mechanic but it never really popped up again Spirit Tracks as you taking down specific directions very frequently I remember in the sand rail map you had to recognize that the sand Sanctuary map was the same as your Rail Map and find out where the gazes of the Overworld statue is all connected and transfer that information to the sanctuary map this really cool stuff you don't do that in other Zelda games when the path forward isn't obfuscated you'll be boarded by Pirates or something it feels like there's always something fun happening by the time you reach the final boss where you have to keep up with the demon train switching rails to avoid colliding with it shooting the various targets maintaining your speed it feels earned there's even a pac-man-like section where you pick up Tears of Light and destroy the smaller demon trains which is a puzzle in and of itself the only equivalent section in Phantom Hourglass occurs when you chase the Ghost Ship and even then Lineback sails it for you so all you're really doing is tapping a bunch of objects it thankfully retains the train customization system instead opting to use treasure as both a source of money and a component to craft train parts this is a double-edged sword on the one hand it does make your exploration feel meaningful as the game's relative lack of Freedom means that Overworld exploration is more challenging I never died in fandom hourglass where I died a few times or came close to it in Spirit Tracks when you're on Rails it's a lot easier for them to craft harder challenges so not only are the train car upgrades useful for increased Health it gives new purpose to the treasures you'll be collecting it also means that you can more easily get the ship parts you want since you can craft almost any of them you like nothing was more frustrating in Phantom Hourglass than getting the exact same [ __ ] part three times especially if it only sold for 50 rupees however it also means that the treasure system had to be changed the treasures you find are still semi-random but they're placed into categories some challenges or chests will contain uncommon items some common some rare they will all have values according to their categories so even if they're random Treasures they will always net you around the same price based on the difficulty of the task you completed this defeats the point of having a treasure system in the first place honestly it would likely be more lucrative to give you rupees instead since that initial Wonder upon opening a chest will only ever be there on a first playthrough You could argue that it was necessary because Spirit Tracks had tougher challenges so getting a bad reward would have felt cheap I do agree with that sentiment but Phantom Hourglass didn't seem to struggle with this because you would only figure out the treasure values late into the game until then you're usually left wondering which eliminates the potential frustration Spirit Tracks is more predictable by comparison which is probably fine for some people but I don't like it as much the way I see it they addressed a problem that I don't think ever existed while spiritrax is a more visually appealing and mechanically challenging Overworld it often comes at the the price of a railroaded progression whereas Phantom Hourglass often gives you that freedom at the cost of the interactivity with the sea being fairly minimal compared to catching bunnies or honking your horn and golden Dolphins doing the Salvage arm minigame for the umpteenth time while challenging can get repetitive especially since the great sea is open as it is is visually exhausting after already seeing similar sights in the Wind Waker Spirit Tracks is a breath of fresh air in that regard with a music track that feels more its own Phantom Hourglass didn't have a bad Overworld theme any game borrowing music notes from the Wind Waker is clearly off to a good start but it's clearly reminiscent of the Wind Waker giving it less of its own identity through just the Overworld alone I hope you're starting to understand my dilemma it's very hard to talk about these games separately because they're structured almost exactly the same way they just change each other's particulars which brings me to something they both share [Music] the Nintendo DS is a unique system it has two screens a touch screen a microphone and damn it if these two games weren't going to take full advantage of it link is controlled using the stylus Spirit Tracks link is a little more comfortable to control at the cost of his jump attack feeling incredibly awkward and precise while Phantom Hourglass link is less comfortable but his jump attack is more forgiving I swear I'm not making this up there's a really weird give and take between these two games every single action is done through the touchscreen shoulder buttons are used to activate items and the d-pad is used as a menu shortcut no doubt this is at least a little controversial but I enjoy how much use these games get out of the stylus the movement is whatever you move how you move you know nothing feels different than if you were just using a d-pad but combat is very different you slash using horizontal swipes and lunge by tapping at the enemy a Spin Attack is executed with a spin of the stylus and paired with dungeon items all being controlled using the stylus combat takes on a different Rhythm than past entries where before you would face a direction and press the attack button you have a Freer degree of control here this is technically the first 2D Zelda with analog movement just without the actual analog stick itself as much as I love past 2D entries I am so happy to be playing 2D Zelda with free movement Additionally the touchscreen items make combat a joy where previous games would see you simply throwing a boomerang in front of you or using lock on these games let you draw a path for the boomerang in combat this means you often need to anticipate enemy movement to account for the throw delay and while it doesn't revolutionize combat it does lend each encounter a memorable solution you might have to take out your Whirlwind to send a projectile back at an enemy which requires taking aim with the stylus and firing by blowing into the mic as gimmicky as that sounds it feels refreshingly original in its own way and mechanically challenging you gotta blow into the mic to make it work it's hard to deny how fun it can make 2DS Zelda combat though it is often easier than previous Titles since you do have a lot more control over your character they do both have moments of Metroid Prime 3 itis as I like to call it moments like having you shout into the microphone to get a character's attention or speaking answers into the microphone or blowing torches out with your microphone they're undeniably gimmicky but they're also harmless and not all of them are as useless there are cool DS related puzzles and uses in both of these games one of my favorite puzzles involves putting your DS into sleep mode to copy a map on the top screen onto the bottom screen essentially you're pressing them together by closing the top screen onto the bottom one the game only hints at this which makes it all the more satisfying to figure out while it does not translate well to Virtual Console I think that fact alone shows that it couldn't have existed anywhere else similarly the spirit flute is one of my favorite Zelda instruments for the novelty alone I'm probably the only person who likes the thing I don't know while it can be a little finicky I like the idea that I'm actually blowing into a flute to make music rather than inputting buttons it's a cool successor to instruments Like the Wind Waker or the Ocarina of Time by far the biggest inclusion though is map making using the stylus you can draw on any map you own dungeon Maps area maps c-chart maps and Railway maps you can take notes draw symbols you can do practically anything and I love it this might just be my favorite thing about these two games and it's one of the only things I feel both titles do right mostly because they handle it in exactly the same way be it surface level uses jotting down directions on a map or more advanced uses connecting various objects via lines and digging at their intersection almost as if you're creating your own treasure map though they often don't go as far as I would have liked I appreciate the attempt I also need to sometimes remember that these games were made for children so a lot of what I suggest in these videos probably isn't entirely Fair nonetheless I'm glad we got puzzles like figure out which of these six and Nuki are lying or find out which one of these two heads are friends based on a stone tablet riddle even when remade on the Wii U the Wind Waker had none of this which is a shame obviously I wasn't expecting them to re-haul the puzzle design but at least letting me draw on the map with the GamePad would have been nice in Phantom Hourglass and spear tracks I can write notes wherever I happen to be notes telling me to revisit a town later on notes about traps or notes about bunnies I might have missed it's especially fun in Phantom Hourglass since it complements the exploration a lot more you also tend to take in your surroundings more closely when you're taking notes it feels a lot more natural to talk to every single NPC than it is in other Zelda games you're sometimes forced to for additional directions it's like you actually don't know the way forward you need to figure it out yourself Phantom Hourglass actually has an island that you chart yourself you walk along the edges drawing lines until you've charted out a whale it only occurs once which is a shame but this is completely unlike other Zelda games it's Innovative it asks you to think about the world and solve puzzles in a new way inside the cave on whale Island there's a riddle that tells you to dig under the statue located at the eye that's all it tells you you have to figure out that the whale on the sea chart has an eye you go to the eye you dig there you get treasure I know a lot of it seems way too simple but the fact that you're going off riddles that you're creating your own sea charts that you're doing all this yourself it's a feeling that I haven't gotten in other games which is why I'm slightly more forgiving of the dungeon design I'm Gonna Save the Temple of the ocean king and the Tower of spirits for the very end of this section they are we'll just say Oddities even in their own series for now let's focus on the Dungeons and other areas you visit only once how should I say in terms of complexity they kind of suck not even just by my own standards I would go as far as to say they feel more like a straight line than the dungeons in the Wind Waker in terms of progression the wind Temple is very straightforward you solve puzzles like throwing a bomb at some switches moving a block to avoid the wind using the wind to travel a longer distance yeah none of it is very complicated sometimes you complete combat challenges that's pretty self-explanatory occasionally you open up ways to backtrack more easily even though you never need to do so it's not an exaggeration to say every dungeon is like this some puzzles might be larger and more complicated but they're always confined to one room and the way forward is always obvious with no exceptions I think I'm more okay with these dungeons because they don't try to be more complicated than they actually are and lean into other aspects of their design it's sort of like how I still enjoy a lot of the dungeons in Twilight Princess despite them mostly being straightforward each dungeon in both of these games will present you with an enemy that is more cumbersome to defeat at first in Spirit Tracks you'll come across Elemental enemies that can only be taken out when you use the Whirlwind an item that surely isn't as easy to use as your sword however when you get the boomerang you're suddenly able to deal with these enemies a lot easier once you're at the end of both games it feels like every enemy has an intended item solution in Spirit Tracks you use the boomerang to stun wolfos or the bow to knock the heads off a skeleton I'm mentioning Spirit Tracks more and more because I feel like it does a better job leaning into its unique design aspects than Phantom Hourglass when controlling link Phantom Hourglass had its moments there are several portions of muto's Temple where you have to activate objects out of view of your camera in the beginning there's a switch you have to activate from far away so you have enough time to enter the doorway ahead of you later on you open a doorway so that on the other side of it you can shoot an arrow at the switch that changes the water level unfortunately most other dungeons never even get that far pair that with the dungeons looking incredibly generic and samey and you get a fairly boring main quest progression Spirit Tracks while not doing anything exceptional with its dungeon design in particular generally has better ideas in its linear progression ideas such as sending key Masters after you while you carry the big key Phantom hour us also had this mechanic where you have to carry the big key to the boss door but I'm seriously not exaggerating when I say it did nothing with this idea the closest it brushed was maybe muto's Temple where you take it with you on a moving platform and fend off skeletons you can put it down while this happens and the hammer allows you to literally tap the skeletons and instantly kill them so it's really no different than if it wasn't there in spirit tracks when you pick up the key key Masters are immediately on your ass trying to take it away from you in the fire temple you have to guide the big key through a minecart switch challenge to ensure it isn't lost along the way this is technically in the tower of spirits so maybe I'm breaking my own code here but there's a section where you have to alternate between link and Phantom Zelda and Link has to use his bow to defeat the key masters from across the room where only Phantom Zelda can enter it isn't taken nearly as far as I would have liked but at least it's taken somewhere as opposed to Nowhere additionally item have more original use cases the boomerang can now take on ice as an element and you have to use it to create temporary platforms on the water while also contending with enemies this is surprisingly tricky to do and is used frequently both inside and outside of dungeons or the sand Rod which has you digging up items under the sand creating platforms for yourself stopping Spike cylinders at just the right time to create platforms creating height for yourself to jump on Zelda transporting Zelda across sand she would otherwise sink into and solving these weird falling cube puzzles you know the ones I'm talking about or the whip which is not only a cool redesign for the grapple hook it has an element of timing associated with it which is expanded upon really well in an optional minigame compare that to the Hammer which is only really used to flip enemies over activate switches and fling yourself into the air the boomerang can only really transport fire from one torch to another or activate a switch from far away same with the grappling hook overall speed Spirit Tracks does a good job expanding upon the often lackluster ideas in Phantom Hourglass and does so more frequently to boot though much of it is optional it has more instances of taking notes or completing challenges Phantom Hourglass had practically no secret caves or dungeons mostly just mini-games and treasure which worked fine enough a lot of that stuff was fun one of my favorites was this timed maze there were switches everywhere that did a whole host of things and he kind of had to chart out your optimal path through the various runs so that you could optimize your run hit the switches in the correct order and get to the treasure chest in time it's kind of like a microcosm of the Temple of the ocean King which we'll get to later there are other fun side quests the guy out in the sea who has his own king of Red Lions and is posing as you you go there to spar with them sometimes and it's humorous enough you got the weird telescope people with the plot twists that they're all looking into kaleidoscopes and not telescopes there's an island shaped like a DS you dig where the menu icons are that's kind of neat also there's a Goron mini game here at the end of the game you control the Goron and hit the crystals and the amount of time allotted it's not really that complicated I mean it's fun I guess you know I like what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of fun side objectives in Phantom Hourglass but they're only really fun because the writing is strong it's not necessarily because they're fun objectives in and of themselves some minigames are fun but the fact that there are no optional caves or dungeons really says a lot you know I'd be lying if I said the game wasn't lacking inside content there just isn't as much to do as there is in spirit tracks and though I'd argue that Spirit Tracks had far too much most of the locations you uncover are well worth the trip and beef up the side content in a positive way especially the various optional stations which either test you on a mechanical skill like running across ice as fast as you can or test you on your ability to solve riddles like the disorientation station Spirit Tracks just has more optional treasure chests rupees items and fun challenges than average you could often dig with the shovel to find optional sea charts and rupees and Phantom Hourglass which was fun in its own right and often accompanied by a riddle to solve but Spirit Tracks lets you blow away leaves hit a hidden switch almost out of view blow a cuckoo off a building by positioning it just right and using it to fly to other buildings doing an entire Temple of the ocean King inspired dungeon without a sword this can go on for quite a while and the rewards can sometimes be more interesting than they were in Phantom Hourglass finding the stamp stations for instance will reward you with permanent cosmetic changes like Engineers clothing or the Wind Waker shield and many of those stations are difficult to find especially the ones located in dungeons many of the mini-games from Phantom Hourglass return in an improved format where previously you'd shoot cannons at targets for a while or shoot arrows at wooden targets Spirit track sees you in a mountain range with moving targets that have punishments for shooting too early on a train that varies wildly in speeds or a shooting range that is also a prison breakout with a boss at the end from being ambushed and having to protect the locomos against a unique mini boss to inquiring about the correct path through the Lost Woods to transporting ice through a road infested with enemy train cars again it feels like on the main quest at least you're always doing something fun or interesting I know I haven't talked about the dungeon design itself but it would really just be me repeating myself which is also another reason why both of these games are in one video If you really want a video of me saying the fire temple is too simple the ice temple is too simple the Forest Temple is too simple I guess you're just out of luck just take my word for it I guess Spirit Tracks has stronger overall dungeon design especially in its final 3 dungeons they have interesting moments the mini boss of the Ocean Temple is tricky at first because you're supposed to let him pull you in so you can counter attack rather than trying to run away same with the room where you have to hit a switch so some Boulders will fall in another Square initially you'd think this is supposed to let you cross the boulders but you can't open them in a way that lets you sneak past you have to realize that this changes where the boulders fall in the floor below you which is sneaky and I like that the sand temple has a fun riddle to solve subtly teaching you that the sand Rod can be used to dig up items you're tested later in the dungeon to find the big key it also has a slightly more complicated progression by allowing you to go to so many different places at once after getting the sand Rod though admittedly it closes up pretty fast and is nowhere near as complicated as some of the better dungeons in the series the bosses are often the highlights either using the DS in a cool way or by just being fun bosses there are too many to count I like how the Colossus and muto's Temple plays with perspective I like the bosses and both fire temples one forcing you to make tricky shots with a bow on a moving Minecart and the other a battle to multitask between a Goron and Link the boss of the Temple of Courage has you looking to the top screen Through The Eyes of an invisible boss so you can aim at the screen to hit it none of them are terribly complex or difficult but I appreciate how unique they are some of them like the boss of the snow Temple make really creative use of the boomerang's elemental effects and can be genuinely challenging In the Heat of the Moment that's just it though these dungeons all have satisfying and creative moments they don't necessarily come together in a compelling way the Dungeons and Spirit Tracks come close but they don't quite reach the end goal there are a lot of moments that feel way too simple whenever you're asked to Hit Switches in a certain order are they all but spell it out to you you'll be asked to draw a path for a moving platform but all you really have to do is remember the order to hit the switches because an earlier Stone tablet literally told you to remember the order for the entire dungeon you Never Gonna forget that so it leads to a lot of the puzzles being solved for you Spirit Tracks at least doesn't rely on the hand-holdy gossip stones that spell out the answer for you at least not as frequently that's a large part of what made the Dungeons and Phantom Hourglass so boring there were more moments and Spirit Tracks where I had to think for myself but not many more they're largely disappointing aside from the two standout examples the Temple of spirits and the Temple of the ocean King are the two best dungeons across both games but for entirely different often opposite reasons on paper it sounds like a terrible idea to revisit the Temple of the ocean King over and over but in practice it becomes one of the most unique dungeons in Zelda history whenever you return you have items that open up new shortcuts so while you are running through the same level design you can run through the dungeon a different way each time it incentivizes you to learn the layout jot down helpful notes so that when you return later on you can speed through it like a pro it's genuinely difficult to avoid the Phantoms as they're usually the biggest obstacle to a speedy run you're encouraged to learn their patrol paths and find clever ways to bypass them so you don't run out of time one of your revisits allows you to grab two new C charts all in one visit but only if you're good enough I found myself very very deep into the temple having completely run out of sand and attempting to finish it while losing Health along the way was one of the most harrowing experiences a Zelda game has ever offered me exploring the Temple of the ocean King feels dangerous it feels tense but when you come back at the end of the game storm the temple and show Bellum who's boss it's insanely satisfying because you developed that path throughout the game you conquered this huge challenge over time and I love that so much as a concept some of the final rooms have you doing some tricky maneuvering to stay from the Phantoms and transport heavy items all while you have to manage your walking speed to not alert nearby Phantoms they also have hidden items you can try for but only if you're truly confident you know what you're doing since going for optional items eats up a lot of time unfortunately that focus on moment-to-moment puzzle design holds it back from being truly brilliant imagine one of the more complicated Zelda dungeons in the series the water temple maybe there are a lot of people who would absolutely loathe this but a complicated dungeon under the gun of a timer with enemies that could shave off that time I would love something like that it reminds me of tackling a dungeon near the end of the third day in Majora's Mask I really haven't gotten a similar feeling until I played Phantom Hourglass but I also think as dungeons Majora's Mask had much more complicated design that complemented that timer even more the Temple of the ocean King only really asks you to hit a switch and run to your objective or to stay away from the Phantoms that you can eventually stun it's fun to see how fast you can eventually clear it but that initial run through is always going to be less complicated than it could be the Tower of spirits fixes that aspect of it there are some devious puzzles in this game that had me stumped for quite a while adding Phantom Zelda offers a whole new dimension of puzzle solving you can jump on her shield for additional height or you can use her as a shield to fight larger enemies or protect you from fire or you can use her to distract the other Phantoms so you can slip by but she also can't cross sand or use Link's items so you have to find clever ways of getting her where she needs to go there's one room where Zelda is able to warp to the Seeker eyes but the obvious warp points don't really allow her to do anything on her own you need to instead get her to teleporters so she can warp with Link at various points they both need to do their own parts of the dungeon working together to buy past obstacles that neither of them could accomplish alone in other words it's an evolved escort Quest you're not escorting Zelda you're helping her just as Zelda's helping you not only is this complex it also strengthens the bond between Link and Zelda showing that the both of them are accomplishing great things not just link just compare the final floors of the Tower of spirits to the final floors of the Temple of the ocean King at most the latter asks you to hit a switch with your Boomerang and book it across the level Phantoms do chase you that much is true but they'll never catch up to you and can't chase you into the second floor it's made especially easy considering you can permanently take out the Seeker eyes that alert Phantoms to your location the final floor sees you picking up triangle pieces stunning the Phantoms as soon as they spawn in seriously There is almost nothing challenging about this Spirit Tracks places the challenge within the progression itself there are various different types of phantom Zelda can control some will light torches in Dark areas some can roll around and Destroy obstacles at the cost of not being able to pick up link or other items some can instantly teleport to the Seeker eyes none of them can do everything though and you need to switch Phantoms going from one level to another to First find three small keys by solving multi-level challenges and then activating three switches in multiple rooms on the same floor you've got to do things like create sand platforms to hop on top of Zelda or intentionally get caught by a Seeker eye so you can move into a place that would be ideal for Zelda to warp to or have Zelda hold an arrow shooter so it's at the right height for link to shoot it I was in the last stretch of the Tower of spirits for an hour and 25 minutes on my first playthrough it genuinely confused me and I was in love Zelda as a mechanic is used appropriately up to the final moments of the game where you're using her as a shield to advance on malidis while you use Link to keep the Electro Rats from breaking her composure later you use her to get behind malidis by controlling her path and distracting him with link you're controlling two characters at once it is an intense mechanical challenge to multitask this much and it's a skill I rarely see tested as wonderfully as this it's a mechanic that is taught through a seemingly throwaway stealth section at the beginning and used throughout to great effect Phantom Hourglass doesn't get the same mileage out of its end game sure you draw The Hourglass symbol and it uses the two screens of the DS to link cielo's site with the top screen but it doesn't really expand upon many of Phantom Hourglass mechanics in the same way spiritrax does probably because Phantom hourglass's core mechanics are not as diverse it's similar in the sense that the main dungeon of Spirit Tracks has far more meat on its bones yet even though it feels more fulfilling to complete than the Temple of the ocean King it completely ditched what made that Temple great in the first place there's no longer any timer making the Phantoms feel almost useless as a mechanic and you don't have to redo any of its content which defeats the purpose of traveling back at various points like the games themselves their weaknesses are fixed as much as their strengths are completely ruined why travel back to the Temple of Spirits at all if you aren't going to redo content you've already done there's almost no point you could just take these ideas and put them in the regular dungeons it would change absolutely nothing there isn't as much significance to scaling the Temple of Spirits because you don't come back to it with the same confidence if anything the pacing issues that people claim exist in Phantom Hourglass fit Spirit Tracks far more I've heard complaints that having to run back to the Temple of the ocean King over and over is annoying but I felt far more annoyed that I had to keep going back to the Temple of Spirits because all you were doing was completing disconnected challenges even I can admit that the Tower of spirits is a little too long and some of its puzzles don't lend themselves to being done really fast so perhaps some of the slower stuff you end up doing could have been toned down or removed I'm not suggesting that the Tower of spirits as it now exists be exactly like the Temple of the ocean King but as it currently exists it's missing what made the former so special in the first place even if in terms of design it hits all the right buttons for me if only Phantom Hourglass had better dungeon design and if only Spirit Tracks had better overarching Design This is what led me to the video's thesis what Phantom Hourglass lacks Spirit Tracks has and what Spirit Tracks lacks Phantom Hourglass has they are both held back from being truly great Zelda games by each other I can imagine a truly amazing successor to the Wind Waker but I'm not sure either of these games really provide that in isolation which is a saddening realization when you consider that another game will like these two will probably never happen the DS is long dead the 3DS winding down and the switch simply can't carry over these same ideas and make them work there's just no way unless we get a successor to the DS line that for some reason takes the best ideas from these old Zelda games I don't think we'll ever see these ideas again for all they failed to do I also feel they were some of the most Innovative Zelda games of their time they tried some interesting things and though they didn't always work I'm impressed by just how far they were willing to take some of these ideas Phantom Hourglass is a joy to explore and get lost in but the main quest drags it down and the lack of meaningful content makes the adventure feel shorter and less impactful than it really should be spiritrax is a fun main quest with a lot of interesting dungeon ideas and fun optional areas but it has one of the worst overworlds I have ever seen in a Zelda game filled with so many repetitive fetch quests that listening to one of the best Overworld themes in Zelda history eventually drove me insane I'm hoping at least that a future game will carry on these forgotten ideas a dungeon you visit multiple times perhaps or a set of items with unusual uses or maybe even a limited map making mechanic however hamstrung it might be on a system that can't take advantage of two screens whatever the case we will likely never see a Zelda game this specific a fusion ever again playing these games back to back is worse than playing them individually and that's just depressing just indulge me for a moment there was a steampunk Zelda concept going around a while back and I can't help but feel like this would be one of my favorite games ever made if it took the best of these two games they just let loose and let you explore the land sea and sky I know it sounds like a pipe dream but just imagine it you'd still have map making it would continue to expand the world and introduce new enemies characters and Concepts not only is it the kind of originality I've craved for a very long time in a series so committed to Hyrule it would blend two of the most creative Zelda games ever into an unforgettable experience look I love breath of the wild but even I can admit that it didn't really scratch that same itch it took Zelda into new territory but in terms of identity I don't feel like it made as much of a statement as it could have by sticking so steadfast to Siri Staples while also abandoning so many others it feels almost half committed to its own ideals where these two random DS games were closer to realizing it years before breath of the wild was even a concept I mean I have no way of knowing if that imaginary game would be good all I have is this video as my claim all the evidence is here somewhere between these two games rests the best Zelda ever made one that will never get and I know will never get it ah A Link Between Worlds is one of the strangest Zelda games thus far and no these still don't count for all the smart asses in the comments this game is as much a sequel as it is a remake and that's already a pretty damn odd concession in order to better understand why it is this way though we'll have to delve into a bit of its surprisingly turbulent history I promise this won't be too long I know this can be a little boring after the release of Spirit Tracks most of that team was transferred to work on the newest Zelda project which at the time was Skyward Sword three of the remaining members set to work on an entirely different Zelda for the soon to be released 3DS using Spirit Tracks framework and six months of planning they presented it to Miyamoto Under The Core theme of communication which he dubbed to outdated it was at this point that the team thought up a new idea allowing link to merge with his environment to solve puzzles and Traverse the world Miyamoto accepted the a prototype for this idea but soon after the entire team was set to work on Wii U launch titles which meant that development ceased entirely after Skyward Sword aonuma Revisited this abandoned idea and gathered a team to make a game out of it they presented several Concepts to Miyamoto which he swiftly declined however he brought up the possibility of using this new mechanic to remake A Link to the Past see the 3d effect of the 3DS was at the time best marketed through remakes Ocarina of Time 3D and Star Fox 64 3D only really exist because of this so the idea of remaking A Link to the Past on 3DS wasn't too out there an idea but that original Mechanic still remained what we got was an original game a sequel and a remake it's really weird though the results are strangely reassuring this is the Legend of Zelda A Link Between Worlds [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] link now in Apprentice blacksmith sets off to deliver a forgotten sword to the captain of the Guard through A Series of Unfortunate Events a sorcerer named Yuga casts a spell on the priest's daughter that turns her into a painting after link fails to stop the sorcerer he meets ravio who hands him a bracelet sends him off to Hyrule Castle to warn Zelda of the coming threat and you go on a McGuffin hunt similar to the one in the original three items Master Sword Hyrule Castle dungeon seven sages in low rule a fight with Yuga and Ganon the end what initially seems like a similar structure is quickly differentiated by A Link Between Worlds open progression those three initial macguffins can be sought after in any order the player chooses and even more interestingly the seven sages can be saved in any order the player chooses necessary items can be rented from ravio and you lose those rented items whenever you die you can later purchase those items to keep them permanently for a higher fee but either way you are not locked out of any potential progression paths both Hyrule and low rule are yours to explore this is perhaps the reason why this game is so beloved and at the time it was a fairly radical shift for the franchise you have to remember that this was before breath of the wild when the hottest new Zelda game was Skyward Sword this was pretty damn radical change with such a radical change came a host of new issues to consider how do you properly flesh out a story on a canvas with so many colors how do do you efficiently balance dungeons that have no preset order how do you balance difficulty in such an open game if you'll recall one of the reasons Zelda moved away from a more open structure was to avoid these very questions it was simply a lot easier to tell a conventional narrative and maintain a steady difficulty curve when the player was on a straight track which is why Zelda came to be defined by its linearity over the years however that never quite eliminated the core conceit of the original and it was inevitable that these questions would be tackled head-on using more powerful hardware and years of development expertise you're told a narrative in set chunks and at set intervals meaning you won't miss out on anything important after saving a few sages of any kind Hilda low rule Zelda equivalent will drop a few hints about the fate of their Kingdom each Sage is also plot relevant so their areas are a bit more memorable the blacksmith's son Gully goes missing early on it turns out that because he was a descendant of one of the sages Yuga turned him into a painting and stuck him in the dark Palace it's a small touch but it already makes for a more interesting story when you save him his character is clearly a reference to the flute boy that goes missing in the link to the past except this time he has direct story relevance and a more involved link to the player he's even the first character you see in the game waking you up after you've clearly overslept sometimes it's just done as a gag Irene your fast travel system turns out to be one of the sages when she's absent the broom will follow you without a rider and take you where you need to go neat touch I mean these aren't exactly grade A's Zelda characters but looking at a picture of them standing next to each other they seemed far more inspired than the random maidens in A Link to the Past and your interactions with them after each dungeon are reminiscent of Ocarina of Time this structure ensures that something interesting will happen no matter where you decide to go Rosso goes missing so you have to Brave his mind to find him Queen Warren is gone the Zoras freak out and they ask you to save her again nothing groundbreaking but I like how the world changes over time and that your choices as a player don't ultimately affect the quality of the storytelling I suppose it's harder to tell a linear set of events so a lot of the main plot is sparse until the middle and end of the game but this is also a Zelda story on a much smaller scale and that ending twist is enough to shoot it past anything A Link to the Past was trying to do there's a hell of a lot to take in here Yuga clearly is stand-in for agonim from the original was working under the orders of Hilda low rules Triforce was destroyed long ago in order to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands but that also had a ripple effect that left the entire Kingdom unprotected Hyrule only ever sealed its Triforce which meant that the legendary hero could use its power when necessary low rule had lost that luxury and so it felt to ruin seeing this Twisted more desperate reflection of Zelda is fascinating one who has been driven to such dark depths that would see her stealing the Triforce from another world it's a little scary to think that Zelda could have ended up like this if the same fate were to befall a Hyrule of course link is there to snap her out of it finding out that ravio was this dimension's equivalent of link that he failed in his mission is one of those twists that is almost impossible to see coming I'm sure some of you out there called it I'm not doubting anyone it's just so well masked even though in retrospect it seems really obvious it strengthens a second playthrough since you can comb through ravio's dialogue for hints it's also just really cool that your biggest helper is actually a different dejected version of you attempting to avert a second tragedy and it further bolsters the parallels between the two Dimensions one of my favorite elements of the original was the light versus Dark World traversal and how it made you rethink previous areas for as much as it added though the Two Worlds did feel a little too disconnected for their own good and the crossover that did exist was very slight low rule is a more literal depiction of what would happen if the world fell to ruin some of the same cheery characters in Hyrule are dreary and cynical and low Rule and it's hard not to blame them I think the direct parallels between specific characters is what sells me on the idea the most it retains that wonderful feeling of traveling to low Rule and seeing the direct contrast while also littering it with subtle links to connect them previously hospitable characters like the blacksmith and his wife are now cruel and unwelcoming Hilda is a bit of a brooder a stark contrast to the playful and naive Zelda the captain is now a bitter drunk all as drunk as you can get in a Milk Bar ranting about the pitiful state of his kingdom the masked Elder sahasrola's low rule equivalent is the leader of a cult who put masks on to escape the corruption low rule is Bleak and oppressive which sets it apart from the more overt Terror of the Dark World the best part about it though is that come the end of the game low roll might now have a Triforce but it's not like it's cured of everything wrong with it these people are gonna have to repair their very deep wounds over time they were forced into some very dark and defeating places and climbing out of it won't be simple all you did was give them the tools to climb out of that depression a chance to start over even if it's going to take a lot of work which feels like a disturbingly appropriate message for our very damaged world [Music] exploring High roll and low rule is done at set points throughout the world like the original except now there are a lot more travel points and each area is broken up into distinct sections you still have to find the right portals like the original but it's even more segmented that's fine though because a lot of your exploration will simply be done in Hyrule you'll often be trying to find a way to a new section of low wool one you otherwise can't access due to gaping holes in the ground or giant mountains it's yet another thing A Link to the Past also did this is why it's hard for me to call this a straight up Sequel and be done with it because it feels eerily similar to the original in every way despite the story clearly taking place after the original it has incredibly similar dungeon and Overworld design but with subtle sometimes obvious changes to set it apart you've still got a town of Thieves a dark Palace a big tower a water Palace Turtle Rock the usual but now there is a desert temple for some reason you've got the returning bow hook shot Boomerang Hammer fire Rod ice rod and all of them with basically the same use case as before but you've also got an entirely new set of items like the sand rod and tornado Rod just for fun Additionally the layout of each dungeon is completely different except for a few callbacks here and there but see these differences start to resemble straight up improvements the further you look each of the dungeon items can be permanently upgraded once owned provided you've saved enough of the my mice throughout both Hyrule and low rule A Link Between Worlds has an upgrade for every single major dungeon item one that makes it more effective in combat now you have to upgrade the hook shot into the long shot well it's actually called the nice hook shot but you get what I mean it'll have an extended range while also being able to damage enemies instead of only stunning them the nice bow allows you to shoot three arrows at once in a shotgun spread the nice bombs are twice as large and twice as powerful the nice Hammer hits a larger area and does more damage these upgrades change how you you approach combat in a pretty substantial way ten my Minds will get you an upgrade so the pace at which you get rewards is never too slow this is on top of returning sword and shield upgrades also since you can choose which items you want and when you have more control over your combat repertoire than ever before you can rent the hook shot for Reliable stuns instead of the boomerang if you want or you can go for the bow and Hammer early for powerful ranged and melee options hell if you're a Madman you can even rent out his entire Arsenal which is a bit of a rupee drain but nothing you can't ultimately handle however a single death will see all of those items removed forcing you to rent them again from ravio It's a Wonderful way to encourage players to carry a more limited Arsenal and you never have to worry about running out of resources in a dungeon and getting stuck since every single item is tied to the same stamina bar it retains the pros of magic and Zelda games which is meant to limit your item usage but eliminates the need to keep refilling the bar in off Annoying Ways being overpowered has been turned into a risk reward mechanic which is almost always a good thing in my book thus exploration feels consistently gratifying your rupees feed back into the rental mechanic meaning that they'll always be useful for a majority of your playthrough depending on your skill level so it's almost always worth it to just fumble about the world and see what's around the corner pretty much everything is worth doing in this game avoiding kakus racing across Hyrule with the Pegasus boots Boston enemy gauntlets rupee rushes okay maybe the baseball minigame sucks but oh well we always gotta have one dud in there it's some kind of universal law unfortunately that incentive to explore is diminished a bit by The Game's relative lack of difficulty especially compared to a link to the past A Link Between Worlds is fairly forgiving overall which means that death is a rarer occurrence it still happened to me but not nearly enough to prevent me from renting out ravio's entire shop all the time you just take much less damage overall and it's paired with a less limited sense of movement you can Coast the main Adventure without a care in the world bosses and enemies don't scale with you they just get harder with each story checkpoint in the beginning they're pretty easy and then they get a little harder once you reach low Rule and then they get harder once you're at the final dungeon this means that dungeon difficulty is more or less the same for most of your playthrough maybe you'll struggle with your first or second low roll dungeon but beyond that you'll already have so many heart containers that progress will be no problem at all I feel like this could have been remedied by a more adaptive scaling system though I'm not sure how much work it would have taken to implement or if it would have even been possible Skyrim fixed Oblivion scaling issues hey it was definitely possible at the time on Console at least I guess the game does technically scale but only at specific choke points the final dungeon is obviously going to be harder than the rest because you're forced into it last it just means that for whichever of the seven dungeons you choose to tackle near the end you'll probably carry on without a care in the world thankfully hero mode is an option here where enemies do four times more damage Hearts do still appear and paired with the ability to collect a ton of bottles with potions and fairies late game can still feel a little too easy for my liking it largely fulfills its purpose and makes ravio a more risky mechanic even if it isn't as effective as future hero modes would eventually be I'm not extremely bothered by its difficulty though because unlike a link to the past the dungeons focus more on puzzle solving and traversal I wouldn't consider any of them a personal favorite but the fact that they're also consistently solid is pretty rare for this series the Tower of Hera makes good use of the hammer to play with multiple floors and utilizes the wall merging mechanic to explore both the inside and outside of the tower one cool thing about the 2.5 D perspective is that you get much more depth than you did in A Link to the Past where Bottomless Pits in that game were solid colors with death boxes A Link Between Worlds makes it feel like you're constantly looking over a cliff as someone who's afraid of heights I cringe a little whenever you're exploring the outside of a dungeon they do make for some beautiful landscapes though the ice ruins look incredible and exploring their outskirts is a lot more interesting than simply being in a dank Square cave the I Ice Ruins are probably my favorite dungeon in this game there are some tricky traversal puzzles on the outskirts some moments where you have to play with the perspective to light torches above you and multiple floor traversal that makes you consider all of the dungeon at once it's nothing extraordinary but all I really need is one or two moments where I'm a bit lost and I'll be Satisfied I think it's worse to have a bunch of dungeons that don't test you in any satisfying way rather than a full solid set of dungeons that at least felt thought-provoking in some way my prime example of this game's dungeon design is the swamp Palace when compared to other water dungeons there isn't nearly as much going on previous games forced you to think about how the water level would affect every single room in the dungeon meaning that it was easy to get lost at a return swamp Palace isn't really like that you do have to notice what changing the water level will do to the dungeon as a whole but there aren't nearly as many rooms or floors and they're all bunched together in a way that makes it a lot more straightforward to figure out however I also wouldn't call it an easy dungeon since I did still have to think about where I needed the water level to be and where I had to end up at various points it's certainly more interesting to me than the swamp Palace in A Link to the Past where changing the water level was used mostly to progress rather than as a puzzle solving tool I enjoy that A Link Between Worlds has a set of dungeons with mechanical personality and that don't merely focus on sending waves of enemies at you that [ __ ] got a little silly near the end of a link to the past low rule Castle still has a lot more enemies than usual it is the final dungeon but it isn't just a never-ending Gauntlet of them you have to solve a lot of room puzzles along the way low rule Castle is interesting because it feels like a culmination of every kind of puzzle enemy or boss you've completed up to this point you push statues navigate dark labyrinths trick floor Masters into breaking walls hook shot onto a raft to sail around pools of lava sometimes all of the above of at once it's a really solid final Bunch the dungeon bosses also feel thematically relevant Desert Palace is centered around the sand Rod where you create Bridges to navigate higher floors since you have to merge with the pillars you create there always has to be a safe place for link to drop off at and the rod can only create pillars in a straight line leading to tricky puzzles its boss has you doing that exact same thing creating pillars to wall merge your way past holes in the ground and play a game of whack-a-mole it's easy to accuse dungeon bosses like this of being too simple since you've already been using the Dungeon item you need to beat them it's not exactly a mystery what you need to use I understand why that can feel underwhelming but I think it really only applies when the actual boss isn't Fun to fight on its own like sure the way to beat Dark stare is to throw fire at him but he's also encasing you in weird triangles that you have to dodge on slippery terrain even though you kinda already know how to beat him it's still hard to reach that point and he gets more aggressive as the fight goes on the gamasor king is weak to bombs and you need to light torches that much is fairly obvious but when he turns the room pitch black and starts sprinting around everywhere yeah it does feel like a pretty intense fight in this way I feel like a link between worlds maintains the intensity of the boss fights and a link to the past while also managing to make them fit in with the dungeons there at the end of after all the Final Bosses usually feel the traditional boss roll fairly well Yuga Ganon is a straight up duel reminiscent of the Ganon fight in A Link to the Past where you have to avoid his Trident throws and Magic though there's a unique twist with the wall merging mechanic where you need to shoot him in the back through the cylinder and I always thought that was a clever use of the gimmick I guess it's worth discussing the Crux of this game's progression in more detail considering it was such a huge deal at the time after a series had so thoroughly explored the realm of of linearity and tightly focused narratives returning to the style of the original Zelda was pretty refreshing past Zelda games of course had their elements of exploration through side content like heart pieces and upgrades but the main stories were rarely if ever deviant a lot of your exploration would be done outside the context of the main story in A Link Between Worlds you are essentially asked to explore everything at once with virtually zero roadblocks this can affect both a first playthrough and a repeat play through differently on your first playthrough the main progression is less a question of where you have to go and more a question of where you want to go it's a tight balance since you have to make everything in the world worth doing for that exploration to feel gratifying on such a small screen I think breath of the wild gets away with a lot of filler content due to the size and scope of its World there is so much Wonder packed into every crevice and you'll be spending such an insane amount of time in it that stumbling across a dud here and there won't register as strongly in your mind as it would in A Link Between Worlds where the size of the world is comparable to other Zelda releases oddly enough I think the wall merging mechanic is a genius way to get more mileage out of the world this is a mechanic that feels distinct from other Zelda items they usually feel like a key for a world lock where you simply fire an arrow or light a torch to open the way to a secret wall merging though often asks you to consider every single interactable wall and where it might lead there are secrets hidden atop Ledges or my mice stuck where the camera wouldn't usually illuminate and clever wall merging is the secret to them all since you can technically have every tool at your disposal using ravio it loses that feeling of a metroidvania that past titles championed and instead is more about sharding your path and remembering points of interest which you can mark on your map if you it's a more fundamental shift than you might initially imagine since it makes the player feel more like they're exploring Uncharted Territory rather than hunting for a series of locks that you might be able to exploit later neither approach is inherently better than the other but I believe the approach of Something Like A Link Between Worlds fits an open air progression much better again breath of the wild would also give the players all of the necessary tools to explore the world as they saw fit however that game also had a sense of difficulty and adaptive scaling on its side to create areas that players might save for later like a Coliseum with a particularly difficult Lionel or a camp full of high-level enemies A Link Between Worlds disregarding the fact that it's a pretty easy game on the surface is still built to be like a Zelda of old so although there are some tough puzzles here and there about the only time you'll be ignoring a challenge is when you don't have the correct item from ravio enemies are pretty rudimentary and since they scale with your story progress you'll be running up against a pretty consistent level of difficulty no matter where you explore when you do revisit the game though it becomes a whole different Beast since you're allowed to tackle each dungeon in an order that makes sense to you you can plan out what items to rent for which stretches of game time since you'll have that information to work with you can decide which dungeons you want to tackle first do you want to get the risky ones out of the way or do you want to stockpile a ton of items and play it safe in The Dungeons you know best I know it sounds kinda silly but even just the ability to pick whichever dungeons you want to visit first as someone coming back to play this game again for the first time in several years it felt like such a fresh experience since that initial playthrough was unpredictable so was a revisit later down the line where I carved out an entirely New Path through the world in fact since the scaling isn't super in-depth it potentially means that you can make your own difficulty by picking dungeons that might have been easier to brute force with more heart containers and do them first on another playthrough I would still like to see a more thorough scaling system for future games of this type but it's perhaps an underappreciated byproduct of not having one kinda reminds me of how Pokemon handles its gyms I do Wonder in that sense just how effective its free-form nature is when compared to breath of the wild only between worlds in many ways is far more of a compromise than the newest 3D Adventure it builds story dungeons Overworld and items in basically the exact same way except it tweaks those past elements to fit in an open progression breath of the wild completely uprooted the previous formula leading to dungeons that were constructed very differently a completely new way to Traverse the world and a new set of physics-based items that set it far apart from previous games to the point where not all long time fans were big on the changes personally there are parts of both approaches that bother me a bit A Link Between Worlds was very special at release since it was really the only game since the first Zelda that allowed for such a wide degree of freedom and I'm willing to bet a lot of its Acclaim was based on that long-held desire from fans to see a more open Zelda title nowadays however I think it's easier to see that without a more fundamental shift you'll run into issues trying to balance difficulty in the same way or create interesting dungeons for as solid as the dungeons are in A Link Between Worlds their locations are still signposted by the game and at the end of the day they are recycling the same bag of tricks that Zelda had been using for years up to that point meanwhile breath of the wild was a game that went a little too far in some places in abandoning so many Zelda Traditions there are only a handful of Dungeons and those dungeons pale in comparison to the best of Siri's past even though they try to feel unique in the free-form approach that's required to solve them it has an incredible grasp on freeform puzzle solving with physics-based movement and multiple approaches to many of its problems but in an effort to fill out the world a lot of those puzzles will be solved in very small increments and you don't get that same feeling of conquering an incredibly tough series of puzzles all at once one approach feels like a half step and the other feels like a step too far both are admirable in the ways they attempted to switch up the formula but I feel like a middle ground between them would be ideal it is still refreshing to play A Link Between Worlds for as rudimentary as it might feel it does still feel like Zelda at its core since it doesn't abandon absolutely everything that made the series great in this sense A Link Between Worlds is a solid Zelda title I had a lot of fun with it no doubt but there's also a little more going on here especially when compared to a link to the past the original game is as iconic as it gets frankly it was an influential game loved by Zelda fans the world over and has been cemented as a true classic in the eyes of many I have my own thoughts on that which I've already expressed and it's safe to say a that not many people were fond of what I had to say I think maybe by praising A Link Between Worlds I can try to get across what I was saying in that video better A Link to the Past was the progenitor of many ideas that the series would expand upon in future titles it is a fairly standard Zelda Adventure where you're trying to stop Gannon and hunting for Magical macguffins across Hyrule in my view Ocarina of Time was an evolution of this and so was Twilight Princess Ocarina of Time in my opinion made each dungeon more memorable from a mechanical individual standpoint three dimensions gave Zelda a unique atmosphere that A Link to the Past never quite managed it also told a more interesting story it had themes of growing up Ganon took over the world and you had to stop him in the post-apocalypse it wasn't without its own set of extensive problems but the way I see it it took what a link to the past established into the next level Twilight Princess was another step in that line for me telling a story that is entirely unique with a set of dungeons drenched in visual variety and atmosphere and delivering a true epic the likes of which are linked to the past and Ocarina of Time could never quite reach so yeah when I go back to play A Link to the Past it does feel underwhelming I recognize that Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess would not exist without a link to the past but that doesn't make the game any more fun to play in a world where it has been outdone in my opinion oh isn't it fun that I have to keep qualifying every single statement I make with in my opinion so no one gets the wrong idea and thinks I'm trying to objectively quantify my opinions on a video game which by their very nature are subjective hmm sorry I feel like the reason it didn't really go over well is because I was approaching the argument backwards which people don't tend to do usually someone will look at a sequel and say this was better than the original which is basically what I was saying except I approached it from the angle of this game isn't as special anymore because it has been outdone by its sequels if that isn't an argument you're fond of let's look at it like this A Link Between Worlds sets out to do many of the same things A Link to the Past did but in ways that I find to be more effective The Narrative is more intriguing the game utilizes the dark and light World concept to get more mileage out of its world and characters it has a set of visually interesting and mechanically Rich Dungeons and has a lower focus on combat overall likely due in part to its lower difficulty A Link Between Worlds achieves a similar set of goals in a more successful fashion is that a fine thing to assert maybe not who knows I really don't have any agenda towards the link to the past I just think that it was such a solid springboard for the future of the series to jump off of that I have very little reason to travel back anymore while I'm no longer fond of saying that remix can replace an original A Link Between Worlds is such an ambitious project that it almost transcends into the realm of a reimagining one that I happen to prefer to that original while also acknowledging that it wouldn't exist without the original acknowledging that it was important but never lying to anyone and saying that I enjoy playing a game that I really just don't have much passion for [Music] looking back at these games again it's tough not to get a little sentimental Zelda is undergoing a transformation right now and it's unclear if these older more Antiquated titles are going to see a continuation our 2D Zelda games on the cards for Nintendo anymore with the 3D games leaving this formula behind I can't help but think that the 2D style is the perfect way to complement Zelda's New Direction by sticking closer to the series roots metroidvanias are a dime a dozen but there's something about the Zelda take on the genre that keeps me coming back for more I really hope A Link Between Worlds wasn't the end of 2D Zelda but hey I suppose if it was I'm certainly glad we ended on a high note [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: KingK

Views: 490,140

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Id: WcE2B-i-mLc

Length: 205min 8sec (12308 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 30 2023