I don't think the term "red-headed stepchild" has ever applied to a videogame more appropriately than this one.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Entertainment System (GCN Collection version reviewed)
Genre: Action-adventure
Nintendo has never been much of a company for adhering to the adage of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Constantly striving to improve, enhance and upgrade the gameplay experience of their properties, Nintendo has always adopted a system of trial, error and recombination. With the original Legend of Zelda, Nintendo had struck creative and structural gold, creating what amounted to a near-perfect title for its time. For the sequel, the big N was not content to simply serve up a refried mishmash of the same old formula. Instead, they decided to take a
drastically different route, and the end result was
The Adventure of Link.
Story
Having defeated Ganon, and laid his demonic warthog form to rest, Link rescued Zelda, re-forged the shattered Triforce of Wisdom and took possession of Ganon's Triforce of Power in the name of all of Hyrule. The enemies of the kingdom were left leaderless, scattered in the wind and easily defeated. Peace began to seep it's way back into the kingdom.
Some time later, Hyrule is back to its old self again. The towns have been re-populated, the damage has been repaired and only stragglers from Ganon's ranks are left to wander the fields. Balance has been restored, and Zelda watches over all the land once again. However, tragedy befalls the kingdom yet again, as one day the Princess of Hyrule falls into a deep sleep state. Her servants, unable to wake her or recieve any response from her still body call upon her protector, Link, to aid them in discovering what ails her.
After much investigation, it is discovered that a curse has been placed upon her by still-loyal servants of the now-dead Ganon. The purpose for such an attack is unclear, and revenge seems unlikely, considering the monster could have just killed her instead of afflicting her. Investigating further, Link learns that the
only way it seems possible to rouse her from slumber is to utilize the power of the final piece of the completed Triforce: the Triforce of Courage. In order to acquire this artifact, however, Link must travel across the farthest reaches of Hyrule and activate six ancient statues by placing six magical gems in the foreheads of each. Doing so will unlock the path to the Great Temple, a massive, mountain fortress sitting thousands of feet above the plains. Within the core of the Great Temple lies the Triforce of Courage, but only one who has defeated his own inner-darkness can claim it. Link gears for battle and sets off on his next quest.
However, lurking in the darkness are the minions of Ganon, and their evil plans. By afflicting Zelda with this curse, they have forced Link into action once again, and it is through this that the demons intend to exert their vile intentions. They plan to capture Link alive, tear him open and spread his blood over the fallen ashes of Ganon's deceased form. By doing so, they will sacrifice Link's life to revive Ganon's, and in the process, eliminate Hyrule's hopes for salvation permanently, damning the kingdom to a millennia of horror.
Pretty gritty for a Zelda game, no?
Gameplay
From the moment you boot up the Adventure of Link, it should become blazingly apparent how different the game is from its predecessor. First and foremost, the original game was a top-down, free-roaming adventure. Zelda II is played primarily from a side-scrolling perspective, with a top-down view when you're on the world map.
On the world map, you move Link in any direction with the D-pad, use your Hammer with the A button, play your Whistle with the B button and pause with the Start button. While on the world map, Link can be attacked by wandering visible enemies, like in an RPG. However, when that happens, instead of entering a standard RPG turn-based system, Link enters a side-scrolling mini-level of sorts and has to fight off a small handful of baddies. It's a cool twist on a basic setup.
In towns and dungeons, you control Link from a side-scrolling perspective. You control his movement with the D-pad, jump with the A button, use your sword with the B button, enter the magic menu with the Start button and cast your equipped spell with the Select Button. This setup provides some particularly cool control abilities for Link. As you progress, Link can learn special attacks like the Down Thrust and the Jump slash that allow him to attack enemies directly above and below him in midair. It's just fun to leap over a pesky Stalfos Knight and come crashing down on top of his head with your sword.
However, some very large differences between the first and second games should already be apparent to you. I didn't mention
anything about how you use your items, like a Bow or Bombs, in the above paragraph. That's because there are none. Link's equippable item selection has been completely replaced in this game with a fairly well-rounded, but fairly dull magic selection. By pressing Start, you can enter the magic menu, which shows you all of your collected spells (there are about 8 in the game), as well as your status (how many statues you've activated, what your stats are like, what permanent items you've acquired, etc). Once you've entered the menu, you can pick a specific spell to map to the Select button. After exiting the menu, every time you press Select while in a dungeon or town, Link will cast the equipped spell.
These spells range from the always handy Life (HP recovery), to Shield (cuts damage to 1/2), to Fairy (which turns Link into a small fairy, capable of flying and traveling to hard-to-reach places, to the mightly Thunder (kills all enemies on-screen). There are three or four that I won't mention, simply to avoid spoiling anything. Heal and Shield prove to be the most useful throughout the game, seeing as how most of the rest are only situationally-useful. Fairy is useful about five times in the entire game, Thunder is nice to have, but a waste of magic power because you could just as easily attack the on-screen enemies with your sword. Each spell costs a certain amount of power to use, and each time you use one, it will deplete your magic meter a small bit.
To be totally honest, the magic system is okay. However, it doesn't have nearly as much character as Link's item inventory from the first game, and constantly having to keep track of your magic meter just gets annoying after a while.
However, that's not to say that Link doesn't find
any items at all. In the first game, Link was capable of finding several "permanent effect" items like the Raft or the Blue Ring that, once found,
always showed their effects. The same applies here. Link can find a candle that permanently brightens all dark caves and rooms, a pair of Hover Boots that allow him to walk over rivers on the world map, a pair of Power Bracelets that allow him to break through dungeon walls, a Hammer that can be used on the world map to break boulders, a Whistle that can be used on the world map for various random effects and a few other items I'll keep secret. Each one enhances Link's overall functionality and makes him a bigger badass as he progresses through the game.
However, that's not the only way in which Link can improve in the game. In the original, Link found Heart Containers to increase his maximum life, and he does the same here. However, he can also find Magic Containers that increase his magic meter as well. Both types of containers are hidden in secret caves and areas on the world map, and it will take some serious exploration to uncover them all. In the original, Link was also capable of finding sword upgrades to improve his attack power and Rings that increased his defense. In Zelda II, the same applies, however the upgrades are not as cool, and getting them is a pain in the ass. Why?
...
*grumbles in irritation*
...
You have to fucking
level up.
That's right, as Link kills random enemies, he gains experience from each monster he fells. After you gain a certain amount of EXP, you can choose whether to level up his attack, defense or magic strength stats. Thankfully, you can only level each one up about 7 times, so the level-cap is pretty low. Unthankfully, however, is the fact that the game doesn't
save extra experience if you turn the game off. What that means is, let's say you just gained a level. Your stats were all at 2, and with that last level you chose to upgrade your attack to 3. After doing so, you decide to fight a few more enemies and gain 1,000 experience in the process. Then, you get hungry, save, quit and go grab somthing to eat. You come back, load your file and lo and behold, that extra 1,000 EXP you gained is gone. You've still got your levels, but that in-between EXP you stocked up on is now missing. What that means is, you can't quit in mid-level. You have to actually
reach the next level-up and then save and quit, if you don't want to lose that EXP. Add to the fact that levelling up in this game is by no means "quick", and you've got an instant headache on your hands.
At this point, you may think that I simply cannot stand this game, and that's not entirely true. For all of the things it did wrong (which there are a few I haven't addressed yet) there are a number of things the game did
right as well. First of all, the world map. The map of Hyrule is pretty damned big. There are at least three separate continents and a smaller island area as well. Spread across this vast expanse of land are a multitude of caves and other side-scrolling passages to make your way through. There are also about ten individual towns scattered across the map, as well as the seven temples to explore. Each of the towns is presented in side-scrolling fashion, each are teeming with busy villagers and are all usually several screens long. The dungeons are, simply put, massive. That can be both a good thing and a bad thing.
The dungeons are very reminiscent of areas from the first Metroid game. Side-scrolling, multi-level labyrinths loaded with secret passages and fierce enemies. The big flaw in these areas, however, is the fact that while Metroid featured varying themes and atmospheres for it's different sections, the seven temples only seem to vary in their general
color, and not so much in the themes or functionality. All of them feature similar hosts of enemies, although they do get stronger and stronger as the game progresses. All of them require you to also map out their structures by hand, because otherwise, you'll never be able to remember which paths you've already taken and which ones you haven't. On top of that, the boss designs are pretty lame. The first two bosses are exactly the same, except that one has a horse-head and the other has a helmet-head. The rest that follow are pretty tame in comparison to those found in the first game, and they don't take much creativity to beat either.
The biggest problem with these dungeons, however, is in their
abhorrent difficulty. In fact, this is an issue that pervades the entire game. The fact is, you are going to
have to map out the temples. You can't do it without a map, and the game doesn't provide one. In addition, these temples are
crawling with enemies. Fast ones. Tough ones. They will be constantly taxing your magic reserves and your reflexes. Now, I'm all for a good challenge, but seriously, this game is just ridiculous. It took me around six months of regular playing to actually beat it. I couldn't beat the first game as a child because I wasn't mentally capable of figuring out the puzzles and tricks yet. However, I wasn't capable of beating the
second game as a child because I could barely beat it as an adult! There's a limit, in my opinion, for the difficulty-level of a game, and Zelda II goes beyond that limit. The lamest part is that it's ungodly tough, plus the dungeons are stale and the bosses are mostly pretty lame. That's not a suitable reward for suffering through such an painfully difficult game.
All in all, Zelda II's gameplay is a mixed bag. On one hand, I really like the side-scrolling element because of the control possibilities it offers up. The game is more action-oriented in these parts, and it's fun to play around with Link. The world-map encounter system is actually a
really cool idea, and its an
obvious influence on the encouter systems from games like Tales of Phantasia and such. In addition, I really like the stucture of the overworld and all of the different places you can explore. The towns are certainly a nice addition, and add a lot more character to the world. Link's permanent effect items are also a nice aspect, adding some cool new abilities and options.
However, then you've got issues with the sterility of the magic system, the irritation of the EXP system, the blandness of the temples, the lameness of most of the bosses and the ridiculously-unfair difficulty level of the entire adventure. It's a fun game, with some great ideas and great enhancements to the overall Zelda experience. However, getting to those great moments requires you to slog through some truly irritating muck.
Graphics
Link's second adventure is certainly a visual improvement over the first game in a
technical sense, but in my opinion, not so much in an artistic sense. Charatcer and enemy sprites are bigger, more detailed and more animated. Environments feature a lot more depth and color. Effects are minimal, but still superior. However, that strange sense of
blandness that haunts the temples is not contained solely therein. That quasi-lifeless quality seeps into the towns and side-areas a little as well, though not as much as the dungeons. The first game didn't seem to have that problem, in my opinion. Hyrule felt alive, and like it had its own unique personality, whereas most of the areas from Zelda II don't feel quite as vibrant.
So, all in all, it's hard to say which game looks better in my opinion. Zelda II is easier on the eyes, but the first game had more character. Regardless, you're still looking at a dated product, only in this situation, Zelda II doesn't have quite as much of that "nostalgia factor" to cushion the fact that it's not a very pretty game.
Sound
Again, this is very much the same story as above. The music in the game
sounds much better, with more depth and more complexity to the arrangements. However, again, the music seems to be missing something vital. The tracks from this game are not quite as memorable as those in the first, although there are more pieces and the individual tracks sound much better than the first.
Flaws
Unlike the first game, Zelda II has some serious issues with the gameplay. The magic system is nowhere near as cool as Link's item system from the first game. The EXP system is just an eyesore, and I would gladly
never see it re-appear in the series ever again. The six temples are pretty bland, and the bosses guarding the statues in each are lame and uninspired for the most part. Most infuriatingly, however, is the difficulty level. I would have enjoyed the game substantially more if I wasn't having to save and quit every five minutes to make sure I didn't
lose that key I found in the Desert Temple after being trampled to death by knife-wielding kangaroo men.
In the technical department, this one suffers two-fold. First, it's an old game, and like the first one, it's not pretty when compared to more contemporary titles. Secondly, it doesn't have as much of the handy "nostaliga factor" to fall back on in order to make up for it's technical shortcomings. The graphics and music
certainly have a good amount of character to them, but not as much as the original, and this hurts the overall strength of the package.
Overall
To be quite honest, I'm glad that Nintendo got this one out of the way so early in the series. They went in a completely different direction with The Adventure of Link and took a good, hard look at what was working and what wasn't. It's clearly obvious that Nintendo was using this game to test the waters and try new things. You can see the ripples throughout the rest of the series. The Hammer, which first appeared in Zelda II has appeared in almost every game since. The towns have been a permanent fixure since this game. Some specific abilities like jumping and magic were carried over into later games, although to a slightly different degree. Some of the bosses were carried into future games, like Volvagia the lava dragon and Shadow Link. Town names like Saria and Darunia were used as character names in later titles. Plus, the game gave us the third Triforce piece, the Triforce of Courage, and who could possibly forget
this guy?
To summarize, Zelda II is without a doubt the worst game in the series, with the exception of those god-awful CD-i abortions that Phillips tried to pawn off on us a decade ago. Zelda II did some great things, but it was mired by a load of pretty bad stuff as well. That's not to say that Zelda II is a bad game. It
is to say that it's a very sub-par Zelda game. If you're a completionist dork like me, you might want to attempt to conquer this one. If you want to see the broad spectrum of games that the Zelda series has to offer, you might want to give it a test run. However, there are twelve other games in the series I'd recommend over this one, and I would
not give my consent towards putting Zelda II in priority over
any of them.
If you find yourself with some time to kill, you might want to give Zelda II: The Adventure of Link a spin. Otherwise, just assume that Link saved the day and Ganon stayed a dead, dead pile of ashes and pig-stink.
Score: 7.5
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
