Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987)

I had this back in the day as a kid and did not get far before handing it back to my dad. I assume he must have sold it. Many years later I tried to play it blind and ended up in the death mountain maze at very low level without completing any dungeons; it was not a fun time. Now I have finally finished the game. I can't remember if it was the same playthrough where I went to death mountain, but I started off in the first dungeon, at the candle, with a few levels up and 1 hit from death. I referred to a walkthrough as I played after I had completed an area, to see if I missed anything, and a few times to remind me what to do next.

This game was brutally difficult. The default game speed on my emulator was unmanageable so I set a button to toggle slow motion 25 frames per second, which made the combat fun instead of frustrating. I felt quite a lot of satisfaction when I pulled off some badass move, or defeated a powerful enemy without getting hit. I did enjoy the simple combat mechanics: automatic blocking as long as he was not attacking, high and low guard/attacks, dive stabs, jump attacks, and jump upwards thrusts. They really pushed these mechanics to the limit with the enemy design, especially the enemies who could block and attack both low and high. Those battles were very nuanced with the back and forth guarding while trying to sneak a hit in. On one hand they were impressive design but on the other they were annoyingly difficult, especially the late types that threw projectiles or had weapons that could not be blocked. The ones in the final dungeon that jumped around were extremely difficult. I found I really had to take my time and focus on defense; button mashing was a quick way to game over. Early on I fought them toe to toe, while a bit later I mastered the jump attack, though the end game forms were too dangerous to try jumping. The final boss even used this mechanic and I found him too fast even on slow motion mode. The only way I could hit him was by hiding in the corner and low attacking while he jumped. The other bosses had good mechanics and were not too difficult. By the end I was max level and a little over half way to the 9000 to get a free life. I never lost any lives because I made sure to save state scum as needed. A few times I grinded enemies for xp before getting the free level up at the end of a dungeon, or to get magic drops for healing. Shield and heal were my most used spells. Jump, fly and reflect were occasionally used in situations where I did not need to use them, and the offense magic I only used if absolutely required.

I did not mind the side scrolling; it made this game feel a lot like Metroid, Castlevania and Mario, even if Link and platforming do not really go hand in hand. I did not mind the rpg mechanics, random overworld battles, and the arbitrary fetch quests. It felt like they took many features from the most popular games of the time and wanted to see what would happen by combining them. There were 3 major flaws in the game. The biggest flaw to me was the lack of maps for dungeons, though Metroid had the same problem. This game really needed the maps of its predecessor to help with exploration. The second flaw was the difficulty, which I think could have been fixed by allowing any enemy to randomly drop health on defeat. I really liked how powerful enemies did not respawn until after leaving a dungeon, but it would have been nice to have the option the grind weak enemies for hp. Magic drops and the heal magic kind of accomplished this, but not during the early game where it was sorely needed. The third flaw was the penalty for game over and saving, neither of which I had to suffer through. Surely there did not need to be an xp penalty, especially just for having to stop playing. Checkpoints at each dungeon and maybe even each boss would have been good too. Despite the good design for some parts of the game, these flaws really hold the game back.

6.5/10

I was excited to start playing the Redux romhack of this hoping it would make it more playable...and it did, but only for a short while. I completed the first palace and kinda enjoyed it. Then moved onto progessing through the overworld, got stuck, and pulled out a guide. OK, that's fine as long as I don't need to constantly refer to it.

Got to a platforming part and kept falling into the water and eventually restarted at Hyrule Castle. OK, let's just use cheats so I have infinite lives and don't have to go through everything again on game over (didn't feel much like a cheat).

Traveling the overworld comes with many random encounters which are only good for grinding/leveling. Checking the cheats list...ahh yes, disable random encounters.

I get to a cave which leads to another cave which leads to many caves. And of course they're all full of enemies that suck your health away. Roll out the next cheat for infinite health (temporarily). Also using fast-forward feature to zoom through the caves maze, but I still can't find the exit unless I look up the guide.

Do I want to play through the game like this? I think this is one Zelda game I won't beat (sorry, don't got time for it and doesn't feel like I'm playing using all these workarounds). I appreciate that Nintendo tried combining aspects of Zelda, Mario, and RPGs, but I'm not a fan of the mix and prefer my traditional Zelda.

Did you know there are two Zeldas? One that was rescued from Zelda 1, and one that's an ancestor that's been sleeping for many years. Maybe that's why it's called Zelda 2.