The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (2019)

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is, quite literally, a dream. Whereas other games in the Zelda franchise are tied to the game's convoluted and varied timelines, Link's Awakening has always felt different than those other installments due to this game's attempt to break from what we already knew this franchise to be. Despite the name, there's no Zelda. Ganon isn't mentioned. The Triforce is irrelevant. Maybe this was all because Nintendo didn't want people to take a Game Boy game too seriously as part of this franchise, or maybe it was a way for Link's Awakening's team to play around with what this series could be, testing the waters of this series' potential.

In any event, Link's Awakening is the perfect game to remake, a dream that can be reconfigured and reimagined. This has already been a game that Nintendo has played around with before, as the guinea pig for their Game Boy Color, but it's nowhere near as big of a change as what Nintendo has done with the version for Nintendo Switch.

Link's Awakening was my first Zelda game, and as a kid, it always confounded me, despite as an adult realizing this is probably one of the easiest, most straightforward Zelda games ever. But even though I would often get confused about what to do next in this game (use the damn phones, you young idiot!), I would love just exploring Koholint Island. Other Zelda games felt too expansive for me to grasp, but Link's Awakening was just right, a world I could explore with no real purpose and enjoy. I probably spent hours as a kid simply cutting grass, looking for rupees or secret entrances.

Despite playing Link's Awakening as a kid for hours upon hours, this remake felt fresh to me, like a dream I hadn't thought about in years, but came back and hit me with a wave of nostalgia. Often, certain areas of the game would take me a few minutes for me to realize what it's Game Boy version had been, and then I felt completely at home once more.

Maybe the biggest surprise - and worry - for me, was to play this game in a way that wasn't broken up by frames. I sort of love how the original game was frame-by-frame, so I could explore every aspect of each, searching for hidden secrets. Here, it's all one big world and because it's all seamless, I almost felt like the world was smaller than it once was. Especially with the new map - which has the lovely addition of being able to add markers - it becomes harder to break this world down, piece-by-piece. It's the same world I know and love, it just looks and feel different than what I remember.

I actually don't know if people who didn't play the original Link's Awakening would be able to appreciate some of this remake's best changes. Certain items are just always available for use now, rather than taking up the A-B buttons space, and there's far more to do for those who just want to explore the world, which boosts the replayability significantly. I spent far too much time with the Trendy Game, trying to collect Mario characters, fishing for bigger fish and creating my own dungeons - the game's most significant addition, that also feels like a trial run for an eventual "Legend of Zelda Maker".

Link's Awakening is one of the few Zelda games I come back to every few years, and while this remake is prettier, flows better and makes some nice improvements on the game overall, I don't know if this is what I'll now come back to, or if I'll go back to the Game Boy version. There's something quaint and concise about the original version that I think gets lost in translation. For many, I imagine this will be only their second Zelda game, after the expansive Breath of the Wild, and I think maybe Nintendo felt the need to make this game more epic to appease those fans. I don't know why, since it's overall the same world and same story, but this remake feels bigger than it has before. Maybe I'm just biased for the classic, or maybe I'm just misremembering the original, like a dream I can't quite make out anymore.