August 28th, 2011
Posted in 
“I am Error”
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| Publisher: Nintendo |
+ Link returns for another epic quest! + Challenging + Introduction of magic |
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| Developer: Nintendo |
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| Genre: Action RPG |
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| Released: 01/14/87 | ||
| ESRB: NA |
- Frustrating – Linear for a Zelda game, What do I do? |
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| Platform: NES |
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What’s the story: The story of Zelda II revolves around Link finding a way to awaken the sleeping princess, who apparently has been cursed by an evil wizard. You see Zelda’s brother had tried to force her into telling him the secrets of their recently deceased father and revealing the location of the last three pieces of the Triforce. Zelda of course refused to do so and her brother had his wizard friend put a spell on her out of rage, which led to Zelda’s current state and the death of the wizard himself. Unable to reverse the spell put on his sister, he locked Zelda away in the castle in hopes that she would one day reawaken. From this point on he also made it so every princess born into the royal family from that point forward would be named Zelda in remembrance of this tragedy.
Several years after the events of the first game, Link notices a strange mark on his hand that resembled the crest of Hyrule. Link seeks out Impa for answers and his led to the castle that has been sealed for generations. Impa then places the back of Link’s hand on the door and it opens, revealing the sleeping Zelda. Link is then told that he has been chosen to be the one to awaken the princess and eventually lead Hyrule as the new King. Impa hands Link a back of strange stones and tablets with instructions that only the future King can read and sends him off to fulfill his destiny. Meanwhile the followers of Gannon are out to kill Link and end his pilgrimage premature to completion. It is said that if they sprinkle Link’s blood over the grave of Gannon, he will return to once again reign terror across the land.
What’s to like: The first thing that stood out to me about this game was how challenging it was compared to the first. In this installment you will once again control an overhead view of Link has he ventures across Hyrule, but there is a bit of a twist. Whenever link runs into an enemy or enters a specific location, the screen will change to a side scrolling style layout. In most cases you can simply kill the enemies in your way and move on but in areas like towns or dungeons you will have some exploring and back tracking to do. Dungeons and such are also pre-layed out you pretty much know what to expect as you make your way through a second time. In the open however the encounters are random and can happen at any given time. The layout of random encounter are pretty much based on your location and the terrain you are standing on at the time of the encounter.
Another interesting aspect of the game is that it is one of the first games ever to imply the RPG element. There are three basic attributes to level up and you will gather experience from killing enemies or finding experience pouches hidden around Hyrule to increase Link’s abilities. The stats you level up are attack, magic, and life. Attack will of course increase the damage Link can due using his sword, magic reduces the magic cost of the spells you can use, and life lowers the amount of damage Link will receive from the enemy. Even though you can technically choose which stat to level up when you have the experience required to do so, they each cost different amounts and the best strategy is to just increase the first one that comes available. Keep in mind that if you have to use a continue, you will lose all unused experience that you have worked for.
Next I will cover the various spells and abilities found throughout the game. In every town there is a wizard that you can learn magic from. Some will give you spells that are used for nothing more than gaining access to new areas, such as Jump and Fairy. Others can aid you in combat like Shield and Life. Whichever the case may be, it always starts with a person from that town giving you a task to complete (usually a missing item). Once you have completed your task, they will let you pass and talk to the wizard. Some towns even have warriors hidden in them to teach Link new sword techniques, such as the ever so useful Downward Thrust. All in all Zelda II delivers when it comes to this aspect of the game.
Whats not to like:Now to cover the ugly part of the game…which also happens to be the bulk of it. Lets start with how frustrating the game is. When you play the game you will always start with three lives. When you lose these three lives, it is game over. There are certain spots throughout Hyrule that you can also gain extra lives from, but they can only be used once. Seeing as how the only thing you lose by continuing is unused experience, there really isn’t much of a point to finding them. It would be different if they were a little more frequent in the land, but as rare as they are it just seems like a waste of time to me. Now this doesn’t just imply to extra lives, but also the various experience pouches you can find. In the beginning it doesn’t take much to level up so you probably won’t notice as much, but later on when you collect these one time pouches and come so close to leveling up just to die and lose it all, it can be very frustrating.
Speaking of frustration, when you continue all enemies you have killed in caves and dungeons will re-spawn. Furthermore you will have to start all the way back at the beginning of the game where Zelda can be seen sleeping in the castle, forcing you to make your way back and re-kill everything in your path. Any keys you acquired for dungeons will remain as well as opened doors that previously blocked you path, so no worries there. However when you finally get to a boss just to die forcing you to fight your way back to it from the start of the game, you most likely aren’t any better off in terms of life and extra lives than you were the first time you encountered him. This kind of frustration is just unnecessary in any game and isn’t really needed to add challenge to an already challenging game. In my opinion, continues should start you off at the start of the dungeon rather than at the start of the game itself.
Another frustrating aspect of this game is how you are always aimlessly walking around. Now I know the first Zelda game didn’t offer much in terms of direction, but there was all kinds of extra stuff to discover along the way and it felt good when you found it. Here you are basically walking around looking for small areas of the map that don’t even stick out to advance the plot. There are maybe one or two hidden areas with a heart container or magic jar, but that’s about it. Sure there are experience pouches, but if you fail to level up before having to continue they are rendered useless. What makes it worse is that Zelda II actually has the resources to offer direction to make things a little more bearable, but it just doesn’t do it. There are several townsfolk walking around that could clue you in, but most of them have nothing useful to say. There are one or two that do offer guidance, but they are hit or miss. Some make it rather simple, others leave you waiting for more info before you go back to randomly walking around till something happens. It is a shame because all of the elements for a complete game are there, it just seems that everything is just thrown together in a very sloppy manner.
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| When it comes to Zelda games, this installment is most definitely the weakest Link (pun intended). Zelda II seems to have everything it needs to be a complete and enjoyable adventure, but it seems that nothing was put together how it should have been. With a much more linear game play and highly frustrating obstacles that are unnecessary in the long run, I can’t recommend this game to anyone other than die hard fans of the series. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t like the game is unplayable nor is it the worst game out there. I will however say that there are much better and more enjoyable games out there to invest your time into. |  |
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Written By: Jason Roberts
Tags: 
Zelda 2 is easily the best game in the series. Not as good as most of the Castlevania and Mega Man series, but easily one of my favorite platformers. In my opinion, Zelda 2 is better than Faxanadu, Battle of Olympus, Magical Pop’n, Sparkster(both,) and Rocket Knight Adventures for a few examples, so that gives you an idea how much I like it.
I think if it wasn’t called Zelda 2, people wouldn’t try and judge it to such extreme standards. First off it gets flack that it’s not similar to any of the other Zelda games. At the time it was only one of two Zelda games so that didn’t happen back then, but most people didn’t play it at that time. The other thing is that Death Mountain is jump up in difficulty and then the game stays about that difficulty the rest of the game.
Faxanadu is an amazing game that people praise, but what if it was Zelda 2 and you were working your way through the world tree to defeat Ganon. The standards of the game would go to such extreme levels as the current Zelda 2 is. It’s unfortunate that people would never get out of the mindset they were in, because it did nothing more than force Nintendo to keep making the same Zelda games repeatedly, rather than going back to something like Adventure of Link and making a sequel with its gameplay that was even more amazing than the first.
If only Nintendo would ever made a 2.5D remake of Zelda 2 Adventure of Link for the 3DS in the style of Dracula X Chronicles. Including the original game as well as a, not only graphically enhanced version, but maybe fix a few things or add more to the game. Day one purchase for me. I don’t own a 3DS but they’d quickly make a sale.
Hey kupomogli, thanks for commenting.
There is no doubt that Zelda II had a lot of potential, there are just a lot of things they should have done differently in my opinion. The game had a solid difficulty, but having to start at the castle with Zelda everytime you have to use a continue is a little extreem. For me this just led to nothing but frustration, especially when dealing with bosses. As I said, they should have just had you start at the dungeon entrance with zero experience instead.
Next would be the lack of direction in the game. For example, to get to death mountain you actually have to walk around and HOPE that you run into the guy in the woods, which present nothing to stand out from the other forests in the game. Lack of direction is one thing I can’t stand in open world games. Just think how bad it would have been when the game first came out. If you didn’t own a strategy guide you were SOL, as the internet hadn’t taken off yet.
What they tried to do with Zelda II was combine an open world experience with linear gameplay, and they had everything they needed to make it work. Townsfolk were a wasted resource for the most part and there wasn’t much to do on the side, which defeats the purpose of open world play. I can understand what they did with the experience pouches, but why make extra lives so rare if they don’t respawn after continue? If this was the case a few more should have been spread through the land to make them more worth looking for. They didn’t fail in this aspect, but it certainly lacked polish.
With that in mind, my issue with this game isn’t the fact that it is different with other Zelda games, but rather how sloppy this new layout was. The gameplay was solid and the difficulty was nice, but how it was all put together in the big picture is was held it back. I would love to see a remake of this game on the 3DS where they fix these issues, because the game does have potential. But as it is right now, I can’t give it a score any higher than what I put above.
Hope this clears some things up for you.
Well. I didn’t mind the starting back at the princess. The only problem I saw with that is that the initial part was hard. You got out of the cave right below where you had to use Jump to get past, and then the game was more difficult from that point to Death Mountain. Once you got past the Death Mountain part though, you had the hammer, and then there was the rock right next to where you started. So starting at the princess you were pretty much right next to everywhere that you needed to go. Atleast until the end of the game where you used the flute to get rid of the spider and go through a few locations there.
I get your point, but if you look at it this way, they were trying to make it like a platformer, so if you were to always start at whatever dungeon that you died in, then why not just give you infinite lives? It would have just made the game too easy then. I think they made the right choice in allowing you to restart at the last temple though(I know I wouldn’t have spent the time to travel to the end of the game as many times as I had to retry the first time I beat it.)
The other thing is that if you talk to everyone in the towns of Zelda 2 they tell you where most of the hidden stuff is like the pit in the graveyard, what you need for this, that, etc. Though I will admit the thing about the lost mirror, you had to randomly check under the table(which most people did.)
Not bashing your opinion though, I was just giving mine. A 6/10 is still a good score, though I score differently. 1(crap,) 2(so/so, not very good but playable) 3(good/worth playing,) 4(very good/must play,) 5(must own.) I honestly believe that most games would fall in the 2/5 category now days.
heh i’m with kupo. zelda 2 and links awakening are my favorite zelda games. don’t care for the rest of them.
also, oddly enough, when I first got a nintendo, and my mom took me to the store to buy my first game, the one I picked out was zelda 2. I actually played and beat it before I ever played the first one, so for me, the dissapointment was backwards, I wanted zelda 1 to be like zelda 2, not the other way around.
anyhoo, fond memories of this game, and it was certainly better than castlevania 2, that’s for sure.
oh, and it pretty much helped invent the action rpg subgenre, so that’s cool too.
Awesome. Link’s Awakening is my second favorite also. I like the original Zelda, Ocarina of Time, and Wind Waker also, though.
I hate Majora’s Mask as the entire first and second parts that I’ve played were long fetch quests and then the clock reset until you got it correct, so I never played anymore of it.
There’s also Link to the Past. I’ve really tried to the like the game, but it just bores me to tears. I think I’ve started a new game atleast five times and always finish up to maybe the first actual dungeon and I just can’t play anymore. The most recent time I’ve played I got bored of it before I even saved the princess at the beginning of the game. The game just doesn’t do it for me.
Honestly, this game does not worth your words. Its riduculuos.
Snes zela is better, twilight princes is better, windwaker is better and the gna ones better.
Arguing which Zelda game is better is like arguing which crap smells the best.
Ocarina of Time sucks! That’s the only Zelda game I’ve played and probably the last. Yuck!
You’re an idiot! I can’t say it any nicer! Ocarina of Time is considered the best game in the history of games for a reason. Its f*ckin incredible, as is the rest of the Legend of Zelda series. I can’t believe you feel like that.
Great review BTW, definitely the “weakest link” lol.
How dare you say Ocarina of Time sucks! Its a fantastic game and the gameplay stills holds up well today as proven by the 3DS remake which I’m currently playing right now.
You clearly have no good taste in games.
Justin Bieber is famous for a reason too. I don’t enjoy games more because other people consider it good, in other words wearing their nostalgia goggles lol. Terrible garbage game.
Meh, Who cares nintendo is garbage.
Without nintendo, and even sony gaming would have never been as it is now.
Doesn’t mean it would have been worse, only different. And games and games companies influences each other, some just do it better. Nintendo is still trash and Sony is better.
I remember when i beat this game a lot of years ago.
It was good but not outstanding. Better games like faxanadu, cristalis, castlevania, astyanax, and battle of olympus Got my attention.
Nice review
I just beat Faxanadu on my hacked PSP.
I just got a free years worth of XBL on my J-Tagged 360 Slim.