The Legend of Zelda–Quick review

A Link Between Worlds.

What a wonderful little game this is.  Over the past few weeks I got a copy and had a play through of this on my 3ds and I thoroughly enjoyed it.



Plot wise it isn’t the most exciting.  Link is tasked to save the world.  There is a twist, but once you see it you can work out what’s going on pretty easily.

It makes some changes to the usual Zelda tropes and these being a good or bad thing is up to your own opinion.  For a start, after the introduction part, all of the gadgets needed for completing the game are immediately available, as opposed to doing a dungeon and getting the thing for the next dungeon.  

It’s too early old man, I know I won’t find her.  She must be in another castle….

This changes the flow of the game quite nicely.  I played my game by exploring the map and then finding the dungeon I wanted to do myself.  It was a nice take.  I essentially chose the dungeon on aesthetics alone.

“This looks like it could be interesting” and off I went.


I needed the wind wand thing for this place.  I think it was the first one I did.

Admittedly it wasn’t the most challenging Zelda game in regards to combat.  It did have some good puzzles, however I didn’t have to put the game down in frustration and take a break to return to any puzzles.   They were mostly pretty well done.  Most of the time you could see what needed to be done, it was just a case of working out how to do it.  Very enjoyable puzzle solving indeed.

The posts tell you what you will need for that section, the rest is up to you.  Also, more depth 3dness looks good!

For the most part the combat was the standard affair.  In this game you are able to upgrade the Master Sword and get new armour, so at the start of the game there are some enemies best avoided and not engaged until later one.   They can kill you in a couple of hits, while taking an incredible amount of sword whacks…  That felt a bit unfair, as it took me a fair while to upgrade the sword.  I did “cheat” and looked to find the dungeons that had the first sword upgrade and hit that one after the third dungeon.

These fire breathing enemies were a real pain until upgrades came along.  Luckily hiding in the wall keeps you safe.

Boss fights are on the whole pretty fun.  Especially the last one.  They mostly use the dungeon themed gadget and Link’s wall-joining picture ability.  Although there was one or two that were not immediately obvious as how to damage them.

One thing that truly impressed me though was the usage of the 3d  in this game.  Not only does the game run smoothly in 3d, but in some areas, you are benefited by being able to judge the distance more accurately with 3d.  I’ve found that games actually using the 3d in this respect are pretty rare.  Most of the time it’s just t make the game look a bit more impressive.  The screen that shifted between worlds was wonderfully trippy in 3d too!

In this volcano section, you have to time your fall from the platform (top centre) to the one below.  It was a long drop!

The gimmick of this game is that link can make himself become a 2d artwork on a wall and move about.  This gimmick is cleverly used throughout the game and can get you by obstacles, as well as revealing previously hidden sections of the game.  For example, a door hidden behind a building.  The normal isometric viewpoint shifts in and changes the angle giving you a lower and deeper look at your surroundings.

Before and after wall joining.

  
These rupees and that odd crack in the wall were hidden from view unless you jumped into the wall.

The game is great fun and I highly recommend it, however, I did come across a couple of issues. 
While being able to get the gadgets as you want them is a good idea, this means that the incentive to explore a dungeon is reduced somewhat.  Usually when in a dungeon, I see a treasure chest and work hard to get what it has (normally, new gadget/weapon/heart/ upgrade/compass etc) however in this game, with the gadgets being freely available, the majority of chests in the dungeons contain rupees.  While renting and buying the gadgets is expensive, I never found myself desperate for money.  So whenever I opened a chest and it just had rupees in it, I was disappointed.


It would, if I wasn’t already loaded!

The touch screen is barely used, it mainly holds the world map, or the dungeon map.  You can leave pins on the world map and that’s about it really.  Oh, you can navigate the gadget and items screen using the stylus.

  

However those niggles were incredibly minor.  Helping out the inhabitants of both worlds, traversing, puzzle solving, nice 3d and great music all combined to make this a wonderful game.   I feel like I could have easily dedicated a couple of days straight to finish this game.  It was really hard to put down!  I even went as far as finding all the Maimai in this game.   There are 100 of those damn things!

Get it and play it!