Part 2, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, NES, 1987

See, I like things to be good and Zelda II wants everything to be terrible

Everybody has days that they just don’t agree with. Maybe you get up on the wrong side of the bed, maybe the café is out of croissants, or maybe the stars just aren’t right. Any way you slice it, sometimes things just don’t work out. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and I did not agree with each other.

I’ll admit that The Legend of Zelda and I had some disagreements, but I learned to appreciate its bold sense of adventure and atmosphere. It was like a snarly dog that just wanted some pets. Zelda II is like a howler monkey that screams at you and throws things whenever you try to get closer, no matter what. Maybe there’s a reason that this game lies in the Oh-I-didn’t-know-that-existed pile.

Like somebody who owns a china shop and sees a fast approaching bull, let’s get the good stuff out of the way first. The combat in Zelda II is innovative for its time. You have two kinds of attack at the beginning of the game and later on you pick an up a third. You can strike high, low, or plunge your sword into an enemy from above. This adds a new dimension to combat and defense.

Suck it, spider and weird tiger spear thing! WHA-PAH.

You have to time your strikes when your enemy is rearing back to strike you, and make sure your shield is at the right height to stop their blow. You can also use the environment to get above an enemy and deliver a punishing blow. You have to study your enemies and learn their movesets to defeat them, which makes combat an actual part of gameplay and not just an afterthought. After you learn the systems, combat can feel very smooth and the whip-like way that Link swings his sword is very satisfying.

It's rare that a game offers you magic that makes you helpless. It's a nice subversion of expectations.

Magic in Zelda II acts like an extension of Link’s abilities rather than overshadowing them. You acquire a number of spells throughout the game as you find new towns Link’s main abilities revolve around sword swinging and world exploring so it’s nice to see a game that uses magic to extend these abilities rather than supersede them. For instance, one spell lets you shoot fireballs when you swing your sword which makes Link more deadly in close combat and gives him a ranged option and another lets you turn into a fairy (complete with flying abilities) to get over otherwise insurmountable obstacles. You’ll be using some of these spells very often and the game does a good job of keeping you stocked with mana, which is definitely a point in its favor.

Where were you, you piece of human garbage!? I had to wade through a goddamn monster infested Forrest because you couldn't live in the town you're evidently in charge of. What is wrong with you!? — Where **were you, you piece of human garbage!?** I had to wade through a goddamn monster infested Forrest because you couldn't live in the town you're evidently in charge of. **What is wrong with you!?**

Now that we’ve got the good stuff out of the way, let’s let the bull destroy the rest. Maybe we'lleven pitch in. Exploration in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is a monumental pain the ass. From a fairly simple start, you’ll quickly become totally lost. Where are all these towns that people are speaking about? How do I get to them? Can you give me any direction at all? You need to speak to all the people in the town on the off chance that one of them has something mildly coherent to say to you, but most will just offer the same lines or incomprehensive non-directions. In one area, you have to get across a bridge, but the guard won’t lower it because he doesn’t know you. You talk to everyone in the town, but nothing seems to be progressing. If you’re crazy like me, you’ll talk to the everybody a bunch of times in hope of them saying anything useful and lo and behold, a bit (a kind of enemy) will tell you that his master, Bagu is in the woods. Where in the woods? Fuck off that’s where. You need to go in and out of every tile in the forest to find Bagu. When you finally do, the river guard will let you pass. Now you get to head through Death Mountain, which is a literal trial and error maze. Exploration is one of the most important parts of any Zelda game, maybe the most important part, so for it to be so poorly executed is sad and aggravating in the extreme.

The RPG leveling up mechanics in Zelda II are pointless and a waste of programming space that could have been used to give useful dialogue to any NPC for once. You gain experience by defeating enemies and finding experience bags that enemies drop. After a certain number of points, you level up and you can choose to upgrade your life, magic, or attack. The thing is, you can only upgrade a stat at a level up and each upgrade costs a certain amount of level points. The 2nd level of health costs 50 experience points, the 2nd level of magic costs 100 experience points, and the 2nd level of attack costs 200 experience points.

Look a this! Who thought that people that loved the adventure and sense of freedom from the first game would love grinding?

You can either level up a stat or decline and wait until you earn the next amount of experience to level up and chose another stat increase. So, if you make it to 50 experience points, but decided that you want to level up attack first, you’ll need to wait until the next time you level up (at 150 experience points). Upgrading your health, armor, and weapons is another crucial part of the LoZ experience, but this leveling up system forces you to grind for increased abilities rather than through exploration. Not to mention that there are some enemies that can literally steal experience from you and death results in all your experience points going back to 0. The whole system is designed to waste your time and extend the game.

This is more a minor niggle, but it’s especially frustrating given how good the combat is. Darknuts are literally the devil in this game. They have the same sword swinging abilities you do, coupled with an AI that always managed to put the shield right where you don’t need it and their sword between Link’s ribs. There’s one in the first temple that is a real and terrible barrier to progression until you either grind for more health/attack or keep trying until luck wins out. God help you if you come across a Blue one, they can throw knives and jump super high, so you have no way to escape them.

I WILL NEVER LEAVE YOU. I WILL ALWAYS BE THERE TO SUPPORT YOU WITH A KNIFE IN THE BACK, LIKE A TRUE FRIEND.

They will pursue you to the end of the earth, throwing knives in your back the entire time. Most of the bosses in the game aren’t as hard as the Darknuts are. Difficulty is all well and good, but give people a chance for pity's sake.

Zelda II: is like a model rocket that sputtered to a few feet off the ground, then fell into a drainage ditch and caught on fire. The combat is fun and innovative, the magic system compliments the gameplay in a really elegant way, but the exploration is like pulling teeth, leveling up is a wasteful mess, and Darknuts can go straight to hell. While I can say I have some fond memories of The Legend of Zelda, all I have for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is dislike that’s bordering on hate.

Tune in next time for The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (the one everybody likes)

and here, and image that is not mine, but sums up my feeling about the game.