This was a perfect little transition out of Breath of the Wild world. Honestly, my biggest issue with Link's Awakening for the switch is that they don't have any more old Zelda games for me to play outside of the NES & SNES stuff! Prior to BOTW I had only played The Phantom Hourglass, and now I want to play them all. Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker, Majora's Mask, Twilight Princess, that's easy money right there. While gamers gripe at having to rebuy the same game twice (or thrice), it's usually worth the cost of admission for a remastered game on your current console.

Link's Awakening is an elegant little game and the updated visuals are outstanding. There's almost a claymation quality to the visuals that always made this world a treat to visit. My only quibble with the game proper is that there were a couple of dungeons that were absolutely punishing to the point where it wasn't fun anymore. Actually, I think it was just the penultimate Eagle's Nest dungeon that caused me to put the game away for a week before sucking it up and grinding through the dungeon. Other than that, it's a wonderful game with a surprisingly weighty story. My 6 year old (and gaming co-captain) had a big ol' existential quandary at the end and is still asking questions about the game's conclusion. And while that leads to a lot of grasping at straws in regard to explaining something that's hard to explain, I appreciate an elegant story to go with elegant gameplay. Here's hoping Nintendo realizes the dragon's horde of gold they are sitting on and we get some more Zelda remakes!!

I picked up this game after BOTW. So this is my 2nd Zelda title.

Hmm how should I say it. BOTW made me feel sparks of happiness and confidence whenever I managed to solve a puzzle dungeon in my own way or finally reached those plant flying thingies for korok seeds. However, this game made me feel the opposite.

The gameplay is limiting and I find myself saying like why cant i go this way or why cant i just do this. I spent quite a while to figure things out cause i didn't want to give up. But in the end, i did. 😆 I felt so dumb whenever i looked up solutions on the net or gave my switch to my boyfriend and he figured it out in a short amount of time. Him and people on the internet say it was just easy. Huhu.

Later i found out this is a remake of an old game which explains why it was made that way.

As for the story, it is somewhat short and lacking for me. The graphics are pleasing to my eyes despite me not being much of a fan for chibi games. But overall, this game is still cute and playable.

The remake of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening felt inevitable. I played the original The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening when it first released, and at the time it was extraordinary—especially for a Game Boy title. Its atmosphere, structure, and music made it one of Nintendo’s most memorable handheld entries.

The Switch version takes a clear 3D reinterpretation approach, which makes sense visually, but fundamentally the game remains the same. The quests, structure, and music are largely intact. This raises the familiar question of remake versus remaster. While the visuals were rebuilt, the core experience is unchanged. It is essentially a faithful modernization rather than a reimagining.

Where it falters is performance. The inconsistent frame rate is difficult to reconcile with Nintendo’s usual standards. It feels sluggish at times, which is surprising given the relatively modest visual complexity. Technical instability detracts from what should have been a smooth, polished re-release. That issue became even more pronounced in later titles that built on similar technical foundations.

As a way to experience the game without revisiting original hardware, it is certainly convenient. For newcomers, it remains a strong Zelda entry at its core. However, the technical shortcomings make the release feel less definitive than it could have been.

I guess this is the most modern classical style Zelda game we have, and for that I appreciate it. The high fidelity but toy-like graphics are pleasing to the eye, the exploration and dungeons are fun. But there’s a number of things that make it kinda… meh to me.

Number one - I wish it would just embrace the ideas of modern Metroidvanias. Like Metroid dread - actually track 100% completion! Give us a map upgrade that will help spot missing secrets! I don’t know why Zelda games have always avoided this.

Second, combat. It’s way way way way way too easy. Bosses take like, 5-10 hits. It makes the game never really feel like an “epic” adventure, but more like a children’s toy.

The game starts out promising, but it just fizzles out for me about halfway through. Those 2 things were my biggest issues, but I also don’t think the dungeons are very fun. It’s got some good moments of exploration, visually and musically is great, but it lands at kind of a mid-tier Zelda for me. Pipistrello and the cursed yo-yo, master key, kharon’s crypt - I’ll take these any day over this.

Still a million times better than BOTW, TOTK, and that weird Zelda puzzle game lol.

This is one of the more fascinating Zelda titles. It was developed primarily during after hours by a small group of passionate nintendo employees and without Shigeru Miyamoto initial consent. Tezuka (the director of the game) had ideas for the Zelda series that were shot down by Miyamoto during the development of A Link to the Past. One of which included unequipping Link's sword and using a bow and bombs to fire explosive arrows like Rambo. It was heavily inspired by Twin Peaks (hence the title for the review) and they weren't restrained by the standard Zelda trappings since the game was being developed without anyone executives knowledge. They included numerous Easter eggs (pun intended) including side scrolling platforming, Goombas, Piranha plants, chain comp and even Kirby. They never asked permission to include these beloved characters.

The end result is a fever dream of a Zelda game with the best story (in my opinion) of any entry in the franchise. It's impressive how far they pushed the limited hardware of the gameboy. It had it's baggage. Only having two buttons to map moves to resulted in tediously having to pause and re-equip items. This was compounded by the usefulness of the Roc's feather and how well the game implemented light platforming and jumping. Thus, you almost always wanted the Roc feather equipped leaving you with only one flex slot to use. The switch remake does much to alleviate this problem. Now the power bracers stay equipped the whole time, much like they did in Ocarina of Time, there's a keybinding for the Pegasus boots (a most welcomed addition), sword and shield. Thus you can equip two different items while still having access to all the previously mentioned moves which is a real godsend and significantly reduced the amount of inventory management. I do wish they took this a step further and gave a dedicated button for jumping (as it stands there are two redundant trigger buttons that could have been used). Still, it's changes like these that make a remake worth pursuing.

The dungeon designs may not be the most complicated of any Zelda entry, but they are the most non-linear and encourage exploration like the rest of the game design does. There will be optional rooms and chests that reward the players with rupees, which are useful this time around, and sometimes heart pieces or shells. While I appreciate how little this game holds your hand and trusts your intelligence, it expects you to make a few big leaps to solve puzzles both within and outside dungeons. Some of these puzzles can be tedious to solve, such as killing enemies in a specific order to make a key drop or using blocks, that you need to control, to fill all the holes in a room. The later really stumped me for a time. I had no idea I could change the direction of the moving blocks. There isn't any indication other than the block moving until it hits a floor and stops. I just assumed it moved along a set path. Once I figured out (I cheated and looked it up) I could manipulate the movement of the block, I was able to push forward and complete the dungeon. A few of the puzzles around this mechanic were satisfying to solve. Still, the game is rather unconventional with both its dungeons and puzzles. Be sure to pay mind to the dungeon map and looking for light lines between rooms, it's an indicator for a destructible wall (some of which are hard to spot in game).

I thought the pre-dungeon quests were mostly fair with the exception of the Bird key. You need to navigate a maze, get a song, go back to the main town, uncover a secret catacomb, use the song to revive a blue rooster, then use the rooster to fly across an impassable chasm... the only hint you are given is "Go to the mountains," and that's not true until after you get the blue rooster... still, overall the game does a great job of giving you a vague sense of where to explore next and trusts you to figure it out.

This game also featured the first trade quest sequence, which would be revisited in Ocarina of Time. It is required to complete this quest to beat the game, but I found it enjoyable and feasible to figure out. It's progression is well designed and coincides with the main story progression. The boomerang is more than worth it. That shit is OP AF.

What did the remake get right? The art direction, the revamped music (this is a touchy subject, I'm sure plenty of fans of the original would have preferred to have access to the original sound track and I think there's merit to that), the quality of life changes to items/controls and making a near 1-to-1 remake of the original world and dungeons.

As I mentioned earlier, I wish they took this a bit further by adding a dedicated jump button, but the changes are still all welcomed from my end. The game has performance issues. The frame rate in the over world was constantly tanking which is weird given how highly stylized the graphics were. It's a shame it's not better optimized. It is cool re exploring this game with a constantly scrolling over world which adds a nice dimension and teases things to come in the peripherals. I personally liked the decision to stick with stagnant camera in the dungeon like on the gameboy. They also added a plethora of new collectibles including twice as many heart pieces and shells. This may appeal to some, but not me. I personally don't like tedious collect-a-thons and didn't bother collecting them all. I tried to be thorough with exploration but I didn't stress over it. Some of the new hidden items are also just stupid. For one new shell you need to play a song on the ocarina to get it to spawn... there's no indication that you need to do this to solve a puzzle so it comes off as just obtuse and unfair. I didn't bother with the dungeon creator because of how half-baked it felt. It's a shame they didn't give you more freedom with it and allow you to download community made dungeons. That could have been a blast and given the game longevity. There are other changes, such as tuning bosses to make them more challenging, and most of these were good. I did think the Ganon form was a tad unfair. I had no idea I was suppose to use a spin or charge attack. There aren't any indications that these attacks would work...

In conclusion, a lot of heart went into this remake and it succeeds at what it wanted to accomplish. I wish they took a bit further, but it's still a great product that is worth checking out.