The Zelda Project Part 2: A Link To The Past

Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past was a game I had never heard of until long after it's release. Despite the Super Nintendo being the first console I ever played, this kind of game was beyond what my family was buying. My Grandma liked games like Super Mario and Donkey Kong Country. My Mom liked fighting games like Mortal Kombat and Killer Instinct. And when I got the chance to get a game, it was something about super heroes or a Power Rangers game. We frequently rented games, but even then I mostly just kept renting Metal Warriors and Super Metroid.

Does anyone remember that screen in Donkey Kong Country 2 where you show the hero coins to Cranky Kong?

Hey look! Sonic's shoes and Earthworm Jim's gun!

Well, that was the first time I had ever seen Link. At the time, all I could think is "Who's the loser in the green dress? He's not even as good as Yoshi!" Yeah, three year old me had some sick insults. So this was all I knew about Link until I got Super Smash Bros. And even then, all I knew was that little bio they put with each character. He wasn't even in the commercial, so I had no visual. For one of the most popular Nintendo mascots of all time, he was a total mystery for most of my life.

I had some resentment for this game leading up to actually purchasing it. You see, once the internet started existing and I began my addiction to Top 10 lists, this game here was rated above MY favorite games on the SNES. Like, you're going to tell me this game with a kid in a green dress is better than Super Metroid?! I'm calling bullshit. 

When I actually bought the game and sat down to give it a shot, I thought it was kind of fun. But I only made it through the second pendant dungeon before I got bored and moved onto something else. And that's not the games fault, I have commitment issues sometimes with games. But this time, I buckled down and pushed through, and here are my thoughts.

The game starts similarly to the original. This time, that sweet start up screen comes in and is quickly swept away as the story is presented. An evil wizard named Agahnim has captured six of the descendants of the Seven Sages, who hold the power to the barrier keeping the Dark Lord Ganon in the Dark World. You are awoken to a telepathic message from Princess Zelda telling you she needs help. When you wake, your Uncle tells you to stay put. Being the rebellious kid you are, you go anyway. You make it to the dungeon of the castle, save Zelda, and are told to find three pendants to unlock the Master Sword, the sword of evils bane!

And so you do that, beat the Wizard and beat the game.

Except you don't. Agahnim captures Zelda, kills her keeper, and sends you to the Dark World to leave you for dead. When you arrive, you're told by your guide to defeat the dungeons of the Dark World to free the sages, and then to defeat Ganon himself to save both the Dark World and Hyrule! From this point you fight, explore, and quest to save the Princess and reconfigure the Tri-Force. You build up this huge arsenal of weapons and open up more and more of the world, in a similar vein to Metroid.

This game includes a lot of items and mechanics that have stayed in the series all the way to today. The two biggest ones in my mind are the Hook Shot and the Pieces of Heart. The hook shot changes the way rooms are laid out and overcome. There are a lot of clever puzzle rooms where you can use the hook shot to clear gaps. The best example is the treasure cave in the Death Mountain section, where you have to hook onto the chests and vases to get to all of the treasure and make it back alive. It's a fun little room that rewards you for going though it. 

The pieces of heart were an innovation that did two things in my eyes. One, it made the world seem more full. In the original, you would occasionally find a cave or a section you could boat to that would have a full heart container. But, despite the map being large, there were only five containers that were hidden in the world. The rest you just got by going through the dungeons. In Zelda 2, you just used experience points to extend your health meter. In Link to the Past, The map was bigger; much bigger. So it needed more items to fill the world with to make it seem alive. So, the containers were split into fours. And instead of just being found, sometimes they are prizes for mini games. Sometimes you have to solve a puzzle to get them. It was more than just bombing the right wall. The hearts were cleverly hidden or blocked off by a puzzle. Or required a specific item to get.

The other thing this did was make the world worth exploring. I finished the original Legend of Zelda without two of the heart containers because I accidentally chose a potion instead of one of them. The other I just didn't bother finding it. When finding one fills the whole thing, it just seems less exciting. It's not worth it. But when you have to do four times the work to gain a heart container, it seems more worth it. I NEEDED these hearts in this game, so I ventured out, scanning everywhere. And that led me to find a bunch of items that ended up being important to the quest. I found the invincibility staff thinking that the spiked hallway leading to it secretly lead to a heart container. The bottle under the bridge I found for the same reason. I found the quake medallion thinking it was going to be a heart container. All of the exploration I did for hearts kept me from getting stuck later and made the game flow a lot smoother. The incentive of hearts kept me going. That said, I still ended up without two full containers, so there is even more of this game that I STILL haven't seen.

The bosses in this game are a VAST improvement from the original. Before, the boss fight basically consisted of hitting the boss with your sword until it died. Unless it was a dodongo, then you just fed it bombs until it died. This time around, Link can dispatch the bosses in a multitude of different ways. Sometimes the bosses have weaknesses a la Mega Man. Sometimes your arrows can vanquish something in one hit that would take you four hits with the swords. Sometimes you need to expose a weakness with an item. It's a trope that is common in the series now, but this was the first time it was seen. 

The final boss fight is excellent as well. Last time around, Ganon just sort of warped around the map being invisible and you had to hope you hit him so you could shoot him with the light arrow. This time around, he has an actual fight. With an actual pattern. And it's awesome. Everything about the fight is awesome. I don't want to give too much away, just in case someone else reading this ALSO waited 25 years to play this game. But I will say I love that instead of having to trek through an entire dungeon to fight Ganon again if you lose, you can just climb back to where you entered the fight and get right back to it.

Now don't let all this positivity fool you. I have some complaints. For one, the game is a little too hand holding. The map is nice for the features, but it labels where all of the dungeons are, which order you're supposed to take them in, and shows the whole route to them. This might just be personal preference, but it just seems a bit much to me, especially in comparison to the original. That's not to say that I mind being pointed in the right direction, but I think it should be a bit more hands off, And to be fair, the game does start doing more of that towards the end of it.

My other complaint, which is definitely personal preference, is that I'm not a fan of the pallet choices in the game. I liked the darker colours and tones of the original game and this one is a bit to bright and shiny for me. Even the Dark World goes for a cooler pallet than it should. It doesn't look so much dark as it does look like the fall season in Stardew Valley. Especially considering the tone of the game as a whole, the colourful environment just soured me a bit. That said, the game DOES look beautiful. The pixel work is stunning; everything is lush with detail. It's just not the direction I would have wanted them to go.

So, there you have it. Arguably the greatest SNES game of all time is, indeed, a great game. It looks great, sounds great, has a great story, and has some of the tightest controls of any 16-bit game ever. I loved every second of this game. I did have some complaints, but they are relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. This game deserves all of the praise it has gotten over the years, and I am going to give it a perfect 10 out of 10. If you have waited as long as I have to played this game, then please, seek it out and play it. It's as close to perfect as you can probably get.