Beat, ending with 46/50 hp, 43/50 gilded falcons, and about 4500 money. This game was a Zelda link to the past clone with some improvements and some shortcomings. A big flaw that I noticed early on was the lack of world or dungeon maps. The overworld was not as big as in link to the past and had signs giving directions, but every open world game should have a world map, even if it is a item found early on. I did refer to a walkthrough to solve numerous puzzles (after giving my fair shot) and read that the fortune teller lady showed the world map after paying her for a hint. Ok but not good enough. I didn't actually check that out because I only learned it near end game. And dungeon maps are a staple of the Zelda series that reinforce exploration and puzzle solving.
Combat was good with satisfying weapons and tricky enemies that had attacks and movements that could be difficult to avoid. Many regular enemies were stunned upon taking damage and could be stun locked with repeated attacks. This worked best with the dagger/sword line of weapons, which were fast close range weapons that swung in a wide horizontal arc. I found it easy to hit enemies with them though often risky to get so close. The charged up attack focused more damage into a narrow slightly longer ranged thrust, but charging took time and was interrupted on taking damage. A minor flaw I noticed as I went from dagger to sword, and no armor to leather, was the complete lack of visual change. Alundra still looked like he was using a dagger and cloth, and the sword didn't have better range than the dagger; huge missed opportunity there. Even link to the past had different graphics for swords, shields and armors. This was most noticable during his little victory pose after beating boss battles; still looking like a peasant scrub despite having metal armor and magic swords later. It also annoyed me how that pose and jingle was unskipable and went on far too long. Same for acquiring life ups and anything from treasure chests, and the obnoxiously slow pace of dialogue. Why is there a button that has to be held down to make text appear at a turtle's pace instead of a snail's? Why can't the full speech bubble appear instantly and allow me to progress along as fast I can read? Wasting my time game.
The 2nd weapon type was the flail, which had narrow medium range in only the 4 cardinal directions, and was used to smash rocks. I found it more difficult to hit enemies with, especially if they were agile. It was also more difficult to stun lock enemies due to slower attack speed, and the added range helped avoid damage. The upgraded flail had a whirlwind style charged attack but I never used it in combat. The bow was my favorite weapon because of its long range, but damage was low and it took forever to kill stuff. The upgraded bow had a piercing charged shot. Arrows knocked back enemies and I found the combo of bow + attack up ring to be the best style of combat, except against enemies that were too small to be hit by the bow, or when the situation forced close range. I even used the upgraded bow to easily wreck most late game bosses, including the final boss. I found it very odd that the holy sword, which was specifically made to counter the final boss, was in fact no better against him than other weapons. According to the walkthrough, the end game bosses were set to take the same damage from most weapons. So why risk using the close range sword at all? The other 2 weapons were the fire and ice wands, which shot a projectile in an arc out to medium range and did bonus damage over a couple seconds. I liked them for hitting enemies at lower elevations. The walkthrough said they also ignored the shields of those annoying lizard warriors but I never had the wands then. It was disappointing that both wands acted exactly the same though. I wished the ice wand had a different effect or attack pattern that would allow it a unique niche with the rest of the well designed weapons. Unlike in Zelda, arrows, wand magic and bombs were infinite. I think it would have made the game more interesting if they were limited; more tactical use, more upgrades to find, more treasures other than the numerous herbs (you could buy them for a pittance so it was not exciting to find 1 in a chest), and more use for money. I used bombs in battle a lot during the early to mid game, and even managed to 1 shot the dream succubus boss with a lucky bomb and thought it was some kind of trick. What, no way she died in 1 hit, there has to be a 2nd phase. One of my favored tactics was to throw a bomb then use attacks to knock enemies into the blast. The walkthrough mentioned 2 ultimate weapons, neither of which I got. There was a legendary sword massively better than the holy sword that was apparently only obtainable after repeatedly dying. Like an easy difficulty for those who suck. I only died once or twice, the game was not hard, especially with being able to carry 9 herbs, 1 half heal potion, 1 full heal potion, and 1 full revive. The other was a wand that gave infinite mana for magic as reward for finding all 50 falcons. Magic did the best damage by far and gave invulnerability during the animation. It was the best way to weaken bosses, but there was not enough mana to kill them, other than the final phase of the final boss, who dropped in seconds after multiple fire spells. I struggled through phase 1 and phase 2, using all of my healing items but still managing to not die. I saved all my mana for the final form and unloaded with fire while hanging on with a sliver of hp. When I died the wonder essence revived me with full hp and mana. I didn't even have to use the mana potion. In phase 2 I used the bow to quickly shoot all 3 or 3/4 of the mirror images. The damn energy balls did a lot of damage to me until I figured out I could kill them, so I put on the attack ring to help and switched between healing and defense accessories otherwise as there was just enough time between boss attacks to stand still to heal 1 hp. Phase 1 with the dragon was more annoying than hard due to not being able to hurt it while it was flying. I used the charm to be immune to fire damage and switched to defense every time he did that long range charge that was almost impossible to avoid. The final boss was the only battle where I actually used all of my healing items. The other bosses were not too difficult, and I kept a list of chests with healing items to restock (except herbs) even though everything was cheap enough to buy at the shops.
The biggest flaw with this game was the platforming. They just had to add a jump mechanic, and most puzzles relied on jumping. Unfortunately, the view perspective was slightly off rather than being purely 2D side view or top down view. This made it very difficult to judge depth and distance, and made some possible jumps seem impossible. Some jumps were easy while others took dozens of attempts. Many of the times I had to check the walkthrough were because of the perspective. I took way more damage from failing at platforming than from normal enemies, and there were many puzzles where I breathed a thankful sigh of relief upon finally completing them. There were only 3 mini games with hp and falcon rewards for mastering them. I only beat the sword game because it was easy. The arrow game was more difficult and I did not deem it worth my effort, while the other was straight up gambling nonsense that would require save states to tolerate. The puzzles were mostly well done and creative but did not live up to the masterpiece that is a link to the past. The story however was a masterpiece and by far the best aspect of this game. It didn't make any sense that the 2 lead characters were elves while everyone else was human, since the world building did nothing to establish these differences. It just felt like they wanted to be like Link and Zelda. Other than that, the entire game took place in and around 1 town with an interesting cast of characters, each of which had significant personality and dialogue. Everyone had something new to say at every point during the game, and it really felt like getting to know and wanting to save these people. This was amplified when they started dying and made for some serious tension and drama. The game killed off characters that I never would have expected, and I had no idea who else would die before the end. Every time I went into someone's dream to try and save them I had no idea if it would work out or not. I did expect there to be more dream dungeons and felt that aspect was a little under utilized. It was odd that I could keep items and money found in people's dreams, but I suppose no more so than finding money inside infinitely respawning grass.
This was a fun game with mostly great design that was held back by the awkward platforming and lack of maps. I would not want to solve some of the puzzles again though. The excellent story propped the game up from its shortcomings to get a solid
8.0/10
