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Okashii's Zelda II: The Aventure of Link (NES)
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| [March 29, 2011 11:07:05 PM]
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Zelda II: The Adventure of Link – Saturday, Mar. 26th (both games)
Zelda II is the sequel to the successful The Legend of Zelda title. Both games are for the Nintendo Entertainment System. This game is similar in play to the side scrolling Castlevania games from the same era.
Genre:
Zelda II is an action game at heart, a role playing game in its execution, and a platformer in practice. The action element stems from the player’s limited inventory. The primary weapon that the player uses is the sword (which looks like and is used like a dagger for whatever reason). The player must be quick at the controls to hit his/her enemy in the weak spots while dodging incoming blows. However, the player has three primary stats that can be leveled which give it an RPG element: health (effectively defense), magic (reduces cost of using spells), and attack. In addition, there are stats which can be modified: defense can be modified with spells that the player may find, and max health and max magic points can be increased by collecting items. Most spells modify the character, such as the Jump spell (which increases the height of Link’s jump). Some spells, however, modify nearby enemies, such as the one that kills all enemies on the screen. Experience points are gained by killing enemies and by collecting EXP bags, and the points can be spent on a stat or saved for a different stat. In the end, though, this game is a platformer. This game is side scrolling like the original Mario and Castlevania games, and because of this, the player must often jump across ravines or traps and must dodge enemies.
Initializing play:
When the player first loads the game, he/she can name his/her game/character and begin the game. The game can be saved via a combination of buttons that will stop the game or by dying and running out of lives which also causes the save screen to come up. A player can resume his/her game on the load screen by selecting it. Unfortunately, he/she will start out at the very beginning of the game with the only differences being that his/her stats will be updated to whatever they were when the player saved, and his/her items/spells will remain as well. However, any experience points used to level up stats disappear, which can be very annoying, so it is best for the player to spend his/her experience points when he/she is about to lose the last life.
The hero/the plot:
The story is not very fleshed out. Supposedly, Link is the same hero from the first Zelda game. In the first game, Link was a traditional hero in that there was really no reason for him to have gone on his journey to save Zelda save that he is just a nice guy and could. His motives in the second game are rather unclear. Zelda has been put into an eternal slumber by Ganon’s followers who remained after his death. They are trying to resurrect Ganon – by using Link’s blood. This introduces a second motive for Link; if he sits around and does nothing, then Ganon’s followers will eventually kill him and succeed.
The world:
The game is spatially segmented with an over world. In this top-down view, Link journeys across the world looking for towns and dungeons, neither of which are necessarily easily discovered. Enemies appear after a certain time period and roam around the screen. If Link comes into contact with an enemy, he enters into an area with the traditional side view. This area is small, but it is filled with whatever types of enemies are native to that location. Once Link makes it to the end of the area (the boundary) on either the left of right side, he returns to the over world.
The over world divides the world up in two major ways. First, it spatially separates towns, dungeons, and caves (and often caves are two-way and divide the over world). Second, various obstacles, such as water or large rocks, separate one part of the map with another, requiring Link to obtain a specific item to continue. This divides the game into some linear pieces, requiring some levels to be beaten before others. Otherwise, any level can be beaten in any order.
Towns in this game have residents, many of which who will talk with you and tell you next to useless information. In addition, some of the younger women will let Link inside of their homes to heal him, and the older women will do the same but restore his magic (and who knows how this is accomplished). Also, a select few inhabitants have items to give, spells to teach, or sword techniques to teach Link so that he can become more powerful/continue on his journey.
Caves generally separate areas of the over world, but they may also contain items (some optional). Heart containers increase max health. Bottles increase max magic. And finally, little trophies shaped like Link increase the player’s number of lives by one. Caves generally contain enemies, and most of them are pitch black unless the player has obtained the candle.
There are many dungeons in this game. All of the dungeon bosses of the first six dungeons (also called palaces) must be defeated to unlock the entry to the final palace. Dungeons are mazes full of enemies and are progressively harder (by type/frequency of enemies and by complexity of maze).
Game play:
In my first session, I played through the first level and part of the second level. My strategy was to primarily level up my attack. Each level up in attack halves the number of hits that it takes for an enemy to fall, and I knew that I would not need as much health if I could kill the enemies quickly. I learned anew that the little blue blobs that are able to lunge at your character are extremely annoying, even if they are easily dispatched. This is due to the mechanics of controlling the game. It is very difficult to jab their small hitbox, especially given the speed at which they jump at you. I remember them being easier, probably due to the ability that the player gets further into the game which allows him/her to jump and stab downwards exactly as Link does for his in the air downward smash in the Super Smash Brothers series.
I have never done well at killing iron knuckles in this game, and this was especially true during this play through given that I am really rusty on the controls. The action element of this game really comes into play fighting these things. I know that there is an easy way to kill them (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9yhg7_zelda-ii-how-to-kill-a-iron-knuckle_videogames), but timing my jumps and strikes is difficult. The alternative though is to watch whether or not it will strike at your head or your gut and to try to block it and attack in the narrow timeframe between attacks, which I certainly cannot do.
My second session was nothing short of a disaster. I finished up level two easily enough, but level three was just too difficult. First of all, there was an abundance of enemies with high health that could jump and throw stuff at you. Second of all, there was an abundance of high health iron knuckles which I have yet to be able to kill easily.
The primary reason for failing at this dungeon, however, was the introduction of the blue iron knuckle. This thing can throw his knives at you at a very fast pace. I just cannot control my character well enough yet to kill these things effectively. What was worse though was that the first blue iron knuckle was placed immediately following a dark red one (similar to the regular iron knuckle, but with more health). Once I did finally manage my way through these enemies, the boss was none other than a supercharged blue iron knuckle. Its first phase is on horseback where it tries to gore you with a lance. Once I made it past this form, I found that it turned into a regular blue iron knuckle which then killed me. Out of frustration, I ended my gaming session.
Overall:
Overall, this game is enjoyable, albeit incredibly frustrating and difficult. I played this game years ago and never could beat the final level because I would lose most of my lives travelling from the beginning (since this is the location on the map it puts you when you load a save) to that level. If the developers had just added a few more spells or reduced the number of enemies, the game would be more enjoyable. As it is, you should not play this game unless you want a real challenge and have the time to overcome the timing issues for executing moves properly. Also, you need some time to level your character’s stats up. Good luck staying alive long enough later in the game to get the number of points necessary to level your stats.
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Okashii's Zelda II: The Aventure of Link (NES)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Saturday 26 March, 2011
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