Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

SNES

In Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, you control young Link (or whatever you want to call him – I recommend “HERPES?!!”), distant descendant of a noble line of knights, a youth bound to save the idyllic kingdom of Hyrule by thwarting the machinations of the evil Gannon, Big fat pig and King of theives.

Looking back, I’ve had such a positive experience with Zelda games that I can remember what was going on in my life when I first played them. Probably because they took up a lot of time and me and my friends had to band together just to beat the stuffing out of the super annoying eye-ball boss, but also perhaps because their totally awesome quotient was pretty high.

What can I say? LttP is no exception – awesome graphics for its time, fun atmosphere . . . More more more.

A variation of the original Zelda game - LttP includes two world maps with dungeons liberally sprinkled through them, a lot of items that you can get to perform different types of tasks, a village, a lake, some zora and, because you couldn’t call the game “Zelda” otherwise, the princess herself.

Being an “action RPG,” It’s what one might call a “less talky talky more slashy slashy” kind of game. There is plot - much more than the original, which gave you a couple of screens of cryptic text and a big shiny triangle - but muuuuuch less than, oh, say, Final Fantasy Tactics . Most of the game is battle and puzzle oriented.

Of course, the puzzles stem from questions like “Gee, which of my fancy weapons should I use to beat the crap out of that thing over there?” but they’re puzzles, I promise.

It’s got good graphics and sound for its time, It requires deepish thought as well as quick thinking, and stands head and shoulders above most dungeon crawlers. But is anyone really surprised? I wasn’t.

What liked: Looks good, sounds good, gives a reasonable challenge, devlivers what you expect in a Zelda game and more.

What disliked: Not terribly different from the original Zelda game. There are a plethora of Dungeons, so that gets a bit old, too. Also, the translation’s just a tiny bit funky.

What to expect: A classic Zelda experience.

What not to expect: too much variation from the first game. And centaurs with sword beams. Don’t even THINK you’ll see them!

What's so different from this and other games of it's genre: TWO world maps, more dungeons, more weapons. Zelda goes the extra mile and adds lots of details and side quests so as to keep you interested. It’s a well made and colorful game.

Awesome name to give Link: HERPES?!!

Ratings on:

Control: 10 (No problems)

Graphics: 8 (Could use a bit more detail, but the fact that there are 2 giant world maps filled with over 10 dungeons makes up for it.)

Sound: 7 (Mmmm. Good old fashioned MIDI goodness.)

Style: 5 (This one’s really hard to rate. The game steals a lot of its ideas, even most of the plot from the first game, but it adds a lot of cool features that the first one didn’t have. It’s a decent trade, just not very original.)

Difficulty: 6 (Perhaps a bit easy for most of the game. However, most of the DarkWorld bosses and the last couple of duengons make up for it.)

1st hour: 8 (Ooh! Nice SNES graphics!)

5th hour: 8 (This is old zelda, but pretty. Whoever invented the dash button deserves ice cream.)

1st week: 9 (This is way better than the first zelda.)

2nd week: 8 (Stuck in Gannon’s tower! Curse his theiving pig face!)

#1 reason why I hate this game: Of all the things they could’ve fixed, of all the things that annoyed me before, of all the things that could’ve been changed, WHY DID YOU KEEP THE “HEALTH IS LOW” BEEPING?!! AAAAAAAAARGHGHGHERHRGHEHRHGH!!!!

by Freeohio, possessor of the triforce of laziness.