I was sceptical of Link's first new 3DS outing at first because I have a bad track record when it comes to handheld Zelda's. I start them, but never finish them. To this day I have not completed a single one of the handheld Zelda adventures. I had also read a rather negative review over at Destructoid which stuck with me, even amongst the hundreds of glowing reviews published elsewhere. But I finally took the plunge with Link brand new 3DS debut, because in all fairness; Nintendo has never released a bad Zelda game. Some are better than others, but not one of them has been terrible.
A Link between worlds is set in the exact same Hyrule as A Link to the past. For Nintendo to do this was a bold move, because it is such a highly regarded game and is my favourite Zelda game of all time. I should have been excited at a chance to revisit this world, but I was full of doubt going into this game because I didn't want my memories of the game to be ruined, tainted or desecrated. But Nintendo have done a marvellous job; balancing the sense of nostalgia and familiarity, whilst giving you a lot of newness to the point that you sometimes forget you are traversing the same map you did over a decade ago.
A Link between worlds follows the same ol' Zelda formula. Do 3 dungeons, watch Zelda get kidnapped, carried away, held captive in some magic orb thingy, witness the world plummet into a state of darkness and then do another set of dungeons. But Link's 3DS outing goes about things at a different pace. Nintendo pretty much just throw you into the game from the outset. There is not a hint of a tutorial and at no point do Nintendo make any attempt to hold your hand. You start the game and then it's pretty much a case of Nintendo saying 'Play the damn game and figure it all out'. Nintendo's games often have a habit of holding players hands a little too tight, for a tad too long. This has been a strange stance for them to have taken for so long, given that there is always such a high level of familiarity with their games and that there is a 90% chance that those picking up one of their titles has played at least one of the games in the series. Also, Nintendo's games are so remarkably developed that it is easy for things to click and for you to understand the logic of the world and game-play mechanic of which Nintendo has created. A Link between worlds is Nintendo's realisation of this. They FINALLY get that there is no tutorial necessary. Also the best part of a Zelda game is the discovery. Not just of treasures and items but the nuances of the game itself, all of which Nintendo lay open for you to explore very, very early on in the game.
This new sense of freedom stems from 2 of the biggest changes to the Zelda formula. One is that items are no longer hidden in large treasure chests in dungeons. At the start of the game you will encounter a merchant who sets up shop in your house and allows you to rent every single item. The bow and arrow, the hookshot, bombs, the hammer, everything. The price of renting an item is cheap at just 50 rupees. The only catch is that if you keel over at any point in your quest, he will take all of the items back. You can buy any of the items, but this will set you back by a considerable amount - anywhere between 800 to 1500 rupees. This is an interesting system. It dampens the sense of build up towards receiving an item. A great part of navigating a dungeon was knowing that you were going to acquire a new item and also seeing passage ways and rooms which were cut off to you within in a dungeon and knowing which item would help you access them and that you would be receiving it soon. But then again, most Zelda fans know exactly what items to expect in a Zelda game. And giving the player access to them all from the start allows tooling up like the veteran hero of the series that most of us are. The rent and buy system works well and offers more leeway than it initially appears. Rupees are plentiful in this game and you can hold up to 9999 rupees from the start with no need to wait for upgradable wallets until you can hold more to buy more expensive goods. Renting an item is so cheap and you will probably have enough rupees by the time the merchant rolls around that you can rent everything - which is what is the most advisable thing to do to save you going back and forth to the shop when you stumble upon an area of the Hyrule which requires a particular item for you to progress. The difficulty of the game is not hard. There are some fiendish enemies and bosses who will have you losing hearts quickly, but dying is not a regular occurrence and for some it will be a non-occurrence. So you can make it through the game without dying, therefore negating the need to ever buy an item. Then again, there isn't much else in the game to buy, so you will hit a point where you will just buy items to use up some of your hard earned bush money. There is an option to upgrade items, but this is only made available for items which have been purchased. Overall this is a nice take on item acquisition and it changes the flow of the game considerably. It feels nice and empowering to be able to start the adventure with a bunch of items, instead of being made to slog for items which you know you are going to get anyway. Items now come with a magic gauge, which depletes as you use them. The gauge will automatically replenish, but will take a while to do so - preventing items from being spammed. This gauge is also tethered to Link's brand new ability - merging onto walls.
Link can merge onto a wall and traverse maps on a 2D plane. This is an ability which is granted very early on in the game and is required right through until the final boss battle. This ability requires you to be much more aware of your surroundings than ever before to be able to judge and ascertain where you can use it to get from point a to b. Everything concerning this ability feeds into Nintendo's amazing knack for puzzles and ingenuity. As well as creating a game world which instantly has things click and make sense, without every having to explicitly tell the gamer how to proceed. How to use this new ability is never explicitly explained to you. Nintendo just has faith that you will know when to use it and it's this that makes this feature so brilliant. There are times when it's use is obvious and others where you will scratch your head for ages and ages, until it clicks.
Another feature of this game which is subtle, but used in every dungeon is the use of floors. Most of the dungeons in this game feature multiple tiers which you can catch a platform between, or drop between. With something you do on one floor, affecting something on one of the others. Whether it is the raising of draining of the water levels in the swamp dungeon, the melting of ice in the Ice dungeon or filling up the floor below you with sand. There is a strong emphasis on switching between floors in this game which can be incredibly fiendish. If you are not switched on, it can be very easy to lose track in dungeons and forget what you were supposed to do and where.
The second big change is the dungeons. Once the first 3 dungeons are out of the way, you are free to take on the remaining 7 dungeons in any order you choose. This opens up the game in a way which feels like it needs to be a series mainstay. In previous Zelda's, the necessity for dungeons to be taken on in a particular order was for the purpose of the items you would acquire within them and also the narrative. But with the narrative in this game not being a focal point and items no longer being obtained in dungeons, this frees up the exploration of Hyrule and the way in which gamers make their way to the end game. It hearkens back to the original Legend of Zelda game and also marks a bold move by Nintendo as they make steps to try and shake up the Zelda formula slightly. By offering up the dungeons in any order, it also has an impact on difficulty, because there is no obvious difficulty curve. Some dungeons are more difficult than others, but generally each dungeon is unto itself. This is a testament to Nintendo's design, because no one dungeon is designed on the assumption that you may have done dungeon X before it. Therefore you have to approach each dungeon with a fresh set of eyes. Each dungeon also has a set theme which runs throughout which helps make it identifiable and stand out. Every dungeon makes use of the 3DS graphical capabilities and 3D sense of depth. I won't spoil it for you as to how, but Nintendo (as always) deliver a first party title which shows the ingenious ways in which their hardware capabilities can really enrich a game without throwing it in your face and making it a sole and obvious selling point.
A Link between worlds is as nostalgic as fuck. Many pieces of music and sound effects from the SNES classic are included in this game. EV-UR-EE-THING is exactly as I remembered it 10 years ago, but so much also feels new. Something which is often overlooked about this game is also just how much it pulls in from Ocarina of time. Several incarnations of characters from the N64 classic make re-appearances in this game, as does the Hyrule lore of the sages, along with several pieces of music.
What really makes this game so cool is the little things it does. The dungeons are short and sweet, but feature no shortage of fiendish puzzles and ingenious ways in which to be navigated. The graphics in this game are beautiful. Screenshots and videos do not do this game justice. As you make your way through the game you will encounter areas dungeons and bosses which really show off what the 3DS is capable of. The lighting and water effects are stunning. The character and enemy animation is charming and whimsical. The use of 3D in this game is so well done, that I could not play the game without the 3D slider whacked up to the max. The depth of field and vibrancy of colour brings the entire world of the game to life with the same level of pop and vivacity as The wind waker. The soundtrack to this game is a marvel, featuring some of the best re-arrangements of classic Zelda themes to date and all of the new compositions are brilliant and downright outshine some of the classics.
Nintendo making bold steps with aspects of this game are to be admired. But whilst some aspects of the game feel like fresh directions of the series, there are others which need to be changed. The predictability of the game setup is beginning to wear thin. Nintendo have absolutely nailed the gameplay in this game to a wall. But the story premise feels tired as a result of the over familiarity and direct copy and pasting from Ocarina of time. If this was all done for the sake of nostalgia, then Nintendo have excelled. But for how amazingly warm and fuzzy the familiarity in A Link between worlds made me feel, it was the instances where Nintendo shook things up, honed and deviated which marked the best moments of this game.
A Link between worlds is brilliant. After the dodgy pacing of Twilight princess and Skyward sword, it's nice to play a Zelda game which feels so right. The whole package is so ridiculously tight, that it borders on perfection as a game unto itself. But much like Skyward sword, for every moment that Nintendo pull away from the same ol-same ol' Zelda formula, the result is so amazingly executed that you are sat in a state of wishing Nintendo had just pulled away a little more in other aspects of the game where nothing has really changed since the series' inception. This all said, A Link between worlds is a fantastic game, marking the first Zelda title since Ocarina of time where the pacing felt right, no unashamed attempts at padding out the gameplay were made and you were not left thinking that there should have been an extra dungeon here or there. This game is proof that Nintendo knows it's Zelda formula inside and backwards and how to change elements of it to keep it compelling after so many years. Which in turns raises the bar for the series as a whole and puts some pressure on Nintendo for their next big console Zelda outing.
A must own for every 3DS owner.
A Link between worlds is set in the exact same Hyrule as A Link to the past. For Nintendo to do this was a bold move, because it is such a highly regarded game and is my favourite Zelda game of all time. I should have been excited at a chance to revisit this world, but I was full of doubt going into this game because I didn't want my memories of the game to be ruined, tainted or desecrated. But Nintendo have done a marvellous job; balancing the sense of nostalgia and familiarity, whilst giving you a lot of newness to the point that you sometimes forget you are traversing the same map you did over a decade ago.
A Link between worlds follows the same ol' Zelda formula. Do 3 dungeons, watch Zelda get kidnapped, carried away, held captive in some magic orb thingy, witness the world plummet into a state of darkness and then do another set of dungeons. But Link's 3DS outing goes about things at a different pace. Nintendo pretty much just throw you into the game from the outset. There is not a hint of a tutorial and at no point do Nintendo make any attempt to hold your hand. You start the game and then it's pretty much a case of Nintendo saying 'Play the damn game and figure it all out'. Nintendo's games often have a habit of holding players hands a little too tight, for a tad too long. This has been a strange stance for them to have taken for so long, given that there is always such a high level of familiarity with their games and that there is a 90% chance that those picking up one of their titles has played at least one of the games in the series. Also, Nintendo's games are so remarkably developed that it is easy for things to click and for you to understand the logic of the world and game-play mechanic of which Nintendo has created. A Link between worlds is Nintendo's realisation of this. They FINALLY get that there is no tutorial necessary. Also the best part of a Zelda game is the discovery. Not just of treasures and items but the nuances of the game itself, all of which Nintendo lay open for you to explore very, very early on in the game.
This new sense of freedom stems from 2 of the biggest changes to the Zelda formula. One is that items are no longer hidden in large treasure chests in dungeons. At the start of the game you will encounter a merchant who sets up shop in your house and allows you to rent every single item. The bow and arrow, the hookshot, bombs, the hammer, everything. The price of renting an item is cheap at just 50 rupees. The only catch is that if you keel over at any point in your quest, he will take all of the items back. You can buy any of the items, but this will set you back by a considerable amount - anywhere between 800 to 1500 rupees. This is an interesting system. It dampens the sense of build up towards receiving an item. A great part of navigating a dungeon was knowing that you were going to acquire a new item and also seeing passage ways and rooms which were cut off to you within in a dungeon and knowing which item would help you access them and that you would be receiving it soon. But then again, most Zelda fans know exactly what items to expect in a Zelda game. And giving the player access to them all from the start allows tooling up like the veteran hero of the series that most of us are. The rent and buy system works well and offers more leeway than it initially appears. Rupees are plentiful in this game and you can hold up to 9999 rupees from the start with no need to wait for upgradable wallets until you can hold more to buy more expensive goods. Renting an item is so cheap and you will probably have enough rupees by the time the merchant rolls around that you can rent everything - which is what is the most advisable thing to do to save you going back and forth to the shop when you stumble upon an area of the Hyrule which requires a particular item for you to progress. The difficulty of the game is not hard. There are some fiendish enemies and bosses who will have you losing hearts quickly, but dying is not a regular occurrence and for some it will be a non-occurrence. So you can make it through the game without dying, therefore negating the need to ever buy an item. Then again, there isn't much else in the game to buy, so you will hit a point where you will just buy items to use up some of your hard earned bush money. There is an option to upgrade items, but this is only made available for items which have been purchased. Overall this is a nice take on item acquisition and it changes the flow of the game considerably. It feels nice and empowering to be able to start the adventure with a bunch of items, instead of being made to slog for items which you know you are going to get anyway. Items now come with a magic gauge, which depletes as you use them. The gauge will automatically replenish, but will take a while to do so - preventing items from being spammed. This gauge is also tethered to Link's brand new ability - merging onto walls.
Link can merge onto a wall and traverse maps on a 2D plane. This is an ability which is granted very early on in the game and is required right through until the final boss battle. This ability requires you to be much more aware of your surroundings than ever before to be able to judge and ascertain where you can use it to get from point a to b. Everything concerning this ability feeds into Nintendo's amazing knack for puzzles and ingenuity. As well as creating a game world which instantly has things click and make sense, without every having to explicitly tell the gamer how to proceed. How to use this new ability is never explicitly explained to you. Nintendo just has faith that you will know when to use it and it's this that makes this feature so brilliant. There are times when it's use is obvious and others where you will scratch your head for ages and ages, until it clicks.
Another feature of this game which is subtle, but used in every dungeon is the use of floors. Most of the dungeons in this game feature multiple tiers which you can catch a platform between, or drop between. With something you do on one floor, affecting something on one of the others. Whether it is the raising of draining of the water levels in the swamp dungeon, the melting of ice in the Ice dungeon or filling up the floor below you with sand. There is a strong emphasis on switching between floors in this game which can be incredibly fiendish. If you are not switched on, it can be very easy to lose track in dungeons and forget what you were supposed to do and where.
The second big change is the dungeons. Once the first 3 dungeons are out of the way, you are free to take on the remaining 7 dungeons in any order you choose. This opens up the game in a way which feels like it needs to be a series mainstay. In previous Zelda's, the necessity for dungeons to be taken on in a particular order was for the purpose of the items you would acquire within them and also the narrative. But with the narrative in this game not being a focal point and items no longer being obtained in dungeons, this frees up the exploration of Hyrule and the way in which gamers make their way to the end game. It hearkens back to the original Legend of Zelda game and also marks a bold move by Nintendo as they make steps to try and shake up the Zelda formula slightly. By offering up the dungeons in any order, it also has an impact on difficulty, because there is no obvious difficulty curve. Some dungeons are more difficult than others, but generally each dungeon is unto itself. This is a testament to Nintendo's design, because no one dungeon is designed on the assumption that you may have done dungeon X before it. Therefore you have to approach each dungeon with a fresh set of eyes. Each dungeon also has a set theme which runs throughout which helps make it identifiable and stand out. Every dungeon makes use of the 3DS graphical capabilities and 3D sense of depth. I won't spoil it for you as to how, but Nintendo (as always) deliver a first party title which shows the ingenious ways in which their hardware capabilities can really enrich a game without throwing it in your face and making it a sole and obvious selling point.
A Link between worlds is as nostalgic as fuck. Many pieces of music and sound effects from the SNES classic are included in this game. EV-UR-EE-THING is exactly as I remembered it 10 years ago, but so much also feels new. Something which is often overlooked about this game is also just how much it pulls in from Ocarina of time. Several incarnations of characters from the N64 classic make re-appearances in this game, as does the Hyrule lore of the sages, along with several pieces of music.
What really makes this game so cool is the little things it does. The dungeons are short and sweet, but feature no shortage of fiendish puzzles and ingenious ways in which to be navigated. The graphics in this game are beautiful. Screenshots and videos do not do this game justice. As you make your way through the game you will encounter areas dungeons and bosses which really show off what the 3DS is capable of. The lighting and water effects are stunning. The character and enemy animation is charming and whimsical. The use of 3D in this game is so well done, that I could not play the game without the 3D slider whacked up to the max. The depth of field and vibrancy of colour brings the entire world of the game to life with the same level of pop and vivacity as The wind waker. The soundtrack to this game is a marvel, featuring some of the best re-arrangements of classic Zelda themes to date and all of the new compositions are brilliant and downright outshine some of the classics.
Nintendo making bold steps with aspects of this game are to be admired. But whilst some aspects of the game feel like fresh directions of the series, there are others which need to be changed. The predictability of the game setup is beginning to wear thin. Nintendo have absolutely nailed the gameplay in this game to a wall. But the story premise feels tired as a result of the over familiarity and direct copy and pasting from Ocarina of time. If this was all done for the sake of nostalgia, then Nintendo have excelled. But for how amazingly warm and fuzzy the familiarity in A Link between worlds made me feel, it was the instances where Nintendo shook things up, honed and deviated which marked the best moments of this game.
A Link between worlds is brilliant. After the dodgy pacing of Twilight princess and Skyward sword, it's nice to play a Zelda game which feels so right. The whole package is so ridiculously tight, that it borders on perfection as a game unto itself. But much like Skyward sword, for every moment that Nintendo pull away from the same ol-same ol' Zelda formula, the result is so amazingly executed that you are sat in a state of wishing Nintendo had just pulled away a little more in other aspects of the game where nothing has really changed since the series' inception. This all said, A Link between worlds is a fantastic game, marking the first Zelda title since Ocarina of time where the pacing felt right, no unashamed attempts at padding out the gameplay were made and you were not left thinking that there should have been an extra dungeon here or there. This game is proof that Nintendo knows it's Zelda formula inside and backwards and how to change elements of it to keep it compelling after so many years. Which in turns raises the bar for the series as a whole and puts some pressure on Nintendo for their next big console Zelda outing.
A must own for every 3DS owner.
I know nothing about this game, but that image at the top is awesome!
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