Zeldasages.com Review by Webmaster Bob
It has been years since the destruction of Ganon. The remaining followers are looking to sprinkle the blood of Link among the ashes of Ganon’s dust remains and bring back the dark wizard. On the other hand Link is traveling the world to achieve crystals to give him access to the Great Palace to achieve the Triforce to awaken the sleeping maiden Zelda.
Story
The story of the game is very complex for a NES title. On one end, Link is trying to awaken Zelda from an eternal slumber, on the other, Ganon’s minions are out to take Link down. Not only is Link facing enemies of the dungeon, but enemies in disguise, as well. The story portrays a double edge feel and is, again, so large it takes up five pages of the manual. For this technique and complexity, and that the story works well, we give the story a 10/10.
Gameplay
Well, Nintendo certainly took a huge step in the gameplay department for this game. No longer is this the simple overworld of the previous game, but a combination of such and side scrolling. Dungeons are bigger, enemies are harder, and it contains a leveling system. Yes, Nintendo made the game much more RPG-ish. Now, many fans loved it, however, a great deal more simply hated it. This is very innovative of Nintendo, but it took a bad turn. They made everything so new and complex that the game became very difficult. I think they can say somewhere on record that this is the hardest Legend of Zelda game to ever come from them. If you die, you loose all your experience, if you die in a dungeon, you have to start that dungeon all over again. This is especially bad when fighting a boss. Nintendo included a lives system which helps with this, although not by much. Expect to see Ganon’s ugly face on the game over screen again and again. It is very interesting still that this game plays alot more like Zelda games today. It allows casting spells, transformation, it even has side quests, towns, stories. However this is all put to waste by the challenge of the game.
By the time I finally beat the game it had taken me over the 999 death count. It is nice that like the previous game there is a second play through, however nothing good comes from it. The only difference is you get to keep your level and the sort making the game for a very long time easy, too bad it wasn’t like this the first time through. In light of all of this, despite towns to visit, dungeons, and the works I’m giving gameplay here a 4/10.
Sound
The Sound is very similar to the original Legend of Zelda, although all the tunes are really remixed. I personally believe they used the higher bing noise a bit too much in the songs. Everything really seemed like an early 80s cartoon. The music is well made though and the game includes alot more sounds and songs then the original my personal favorite being the Great Palace. That song made you think to yourself “wow, all that pain I went through to get here is all worth it, even though I’ll be experiencing more pain.”. So, we give the sound quality a 9/10.
Graphics
Believe it or not the graphics in this game are better. With the new side scrolling gameplay Nintendo had to make everything more detailed. From some of the literally gargantuan bosses to the townsfolk and their homes everything is very crisp. However there are a few issues with pixels, etc in some parts of dungeons which look a bit strange. Being a NES game yes these are common, but what I am talking about is there are pixels in the dungeon which look like they are turned off and really are out of place. So, we give the graphics a 9/10.
Overall
Overall, this is not a horrible Zelda game, it is just different, and some of the scores show that. Really, you can see why Nintendo has not repeated an Adventure of Link type of game since, however the game is still fun and interesting. Anyone interested in a real challenge can truly test themselves with this to the point of insanity. So overall, the game is not very good, not the best by far, but still a great buy for a hard core Zelda fan and that only.
*Scores weighed differently, total 100%
