Let’s Take a Loooong Look: Legend of Zelda Series, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

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!?

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.

Let’s Take a Loooong Look: Legend of Zelda Series, The Legend of Zelda

Part 1, Legend of Zelda, NES, 1986

We’re changing things up a little here.

This piece is the first in a long series, where I’ll be playing all the major games in the Legend of Zelda series because, to your great surprise I’m sure, I’ve never played any of them. I’ll be going in chronological order, playing only the ones that appeared on consoles up to the Wii U, without a walkthrough. This is going to be a series retrospective, looking at how the games hold up over time and better understand their place in the series, rather than talking about whether they’re “good” or not.

One of the most influential series in all of gaming, The Legend of Zelda has sold over 75 million games since 1986, beginning with Legend of Zelda for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The first game sold over 6.5 million units, and was a revolution in terms of open world games for the NES. Legendary designer Shigeru Miyamoto was inspired to make The Legend of Zelda by his love of exploring cave and forests around his childhood home and this is really clear to see in how you progress through the game.  

The title screen that launched a million ships. Well, sold a million copies. 6 million, actually.

After playing it, I can see why people love Legend of Zelda so much. Still, I was spewing profanity at my screen for minutes on end at times. To start, I think I’m terrible at this game. I died 172 times, (the start screen keeps track of that for some sadistic reason), and I came close to throwing my controller against a wall more times than that. I beat the game without a walkthrough, but it definitely added several hours to my playtime (and several fits of yelling).

Whyyyyy. I don't need to know how bad I am at this game.

The Legend of Zelda has basically no story. You choose your name and then you’re spawned in the middle of a mountain range, with a door above you and your left. You go in and an Old Man (with a suspiciously large number of brothers/clones) appears and says, “IT’S DANGEROUS TO GO ALONE. TAKE THIS” and he gives you a sword. And then, bam, you’re off. Here, I hit one of my biggest issues with this game. You get almost zero direction. You are given a sword, and the screen shows space for items if you hit start, something to equip to the “B” button, but that’s about it. I vaguely knew that I was supposed to collect pieces of the “Triforce”, so I wandered around until I eventually encountered the first dungeon.

Who are you? Why are you giving me a sword? Are we related? How do you know I have any idea how to use this thing? WHAT IS ANYTHING.

A huge portion of this game is exploration, so withholding information adds to the adventure gameplay, but even a little hint of “go find pieces of the Triforce” would have been nice. The game has a clear end state, and the empty Triforce is right there in your inventory, so it’s clear you’re not just supposed to wander around aimlessly, but that’s not passed on to the player clearly enough. Older games were designed a certain way to keep players playing, usually with difficulty, so this may be designed purposely to keep the player in the dark, but I still don’t think it’s was the best choice. I can’t say it’s a bad decision, however, because while it’s frustrating, it also increases the sense of discovery that you feel as your journey around the world.

Speaking of the world, the map in this game is impressive to say the least. I wouldn’t have thought that the NES could handle such an expansive world map. I’m not sure exactly how many screens there are in the overworld, but you can find oceans, rivers, graveyards, mountains, forests, and deserts just by walking around. Given how often I died, I got a really good sense for where everything was and how to get from point A to B, and the designers deserve credit for creating an intuitive game world. There are some screens of the map that repeat a number of times before you “pass” them, which is annoying and confusing. On most screens, there is some kind of secret, whether it be a shop hidden in the mountain wall, a statue that can be pushed away for an a creature that will give you a few rupees, or maybe even an old man who will offer advice, or an improved sword. This makes the world map a lot deeper than it might appear in first glance and pushes you to explore every nook and cranny.

Considering how slow you walk, this is basically Skyrim before that was a thing.

Okay, so we’ve explored the world, found a million copies of the same old man, but what about the rest of the game. Combat is simple, but definitely not easy. You thrust your sword in front of you with “A” and use another item with “B”. There are a number of possible weapons, like arrows, a boomerang, a magic wand, and a candle. All of these have an upgrade that you can buy/find somewhere, which is always nice. Combat is difficult because if an enemy so much as touches you, you’ll lose some health, and your starting shield can’t deflect a lot of the projectile attacks you’ll face. Something that I found really aggravating is how short the invulnerability period is after getting hit. It’s usually enough to get away from a melee enemy, but a number of times you can get hit three or four times before you have time to get away.

You'll be seeing this screen a lot. Or maybe I'm just terrible at this game. Damn octoroks. Who taught you to shoot rocks anyway?

There are also a number of non-combat items that change how you can explore the world, or allow you to access certain hidden areas. Some items do both, like the bombs and the candle, which is a cool merging of combat and world. I love the items in this world because there’s such an amazing sense of discovery that you feel when you find a new one. You immediately try to think of what it might do, or the areas where you could use it. This game might not be great at explanation, but it is great at adventure, and making you feel like you’re on an epic journey.

All the stuff on top of the blue box is an upgrade to another item, or a world-use item. All of them are awesome.

While you’re on your adventure, you’ll encounter a number of different kinds of enemies. Some of them have ranged attacks that you can block with your shield, some have melee attacks that you have to avoid. You can find orange and blue varieties of almost all enemies, with blue being the more difficult variety. Most of the enemies are very well designed and force you to play in certain ways, like the Darknuts who are heavily armored and can only be damaged from the sides or back. Some of the enemies are a bit unfair though, like the Wizrobes. There are two kinds of Wizrobes: one kind doesn’t move except to teleport around you and fire off one shot, and one that walks around and teleports and will keep shooting their spells at you as long as you’re in front of them. The non-moving Wizrobes are easy to deal with, so my gripe is really just with the blue, roaming ones. I got wayyy to much satisfaction from stomping on them, after my million deaths. The variety of enemies is awesome and keeps the game from feeling stale, despite the fact that you’re doing basically the same thing in all the different dungeons. They’re cleverly designed in terms of how they look, and you quickly figure out what they can and can’t do. Brevity is the soul and wit, and Legend of Zelda definitely respects your time, at least with the enemies.

Man, they're cuter here. Wizrobes are the ones on in the from the right on the top row, past the snake. They are not to be trusted.

Dungeons are the most challenging areas of the game. There are 9 dungeons, each with a compass and a map in them. The compass tells you where the Triforce piece of the dungeon is and the map shows you all the rooms. For the beginning dungeons, the map is very useful because you generally move through the dungeon by going room to room via door or bombed out wall. In the later dungeons, it matters a bit less because you’ll do a lot of underground travel, which the map does not show. Dungeons also contain secret items, some of which you need to complete the game and some of which are just useful. Each dungeon also contains one or more bosses, with the later dungeons repeating some of the earlier bosses. Usually, there’s also an old man in the dungeon who will tell you a secret about the dungeon or the boss, which is nice, if garbled. “AIM AT THE EYES OF GOHMA” is a little confusing, but once you see that the boss is a giant spider-eye, it makes more sense.

You again! Where do you come from? How did you get here? Why are you always surrounded by fire? Do you even care that I blew a hole in your wall?!

The dungeons can be hard to find, which is aggravating and can make the game feel like a bit of a slog at times. When you die in a dungeon, you respawn in the beginning of the dungeon with three hearts, no matter what the maximum number of hearts you can have is. This is a little annoying because there aren’t any healing items in dungeons besides the rare hearts (or rarer fairies) that enemies drop. For the most part, I really like going through the dungeons, because each one offers a different experience and hope for new items. They offer a sense of progression, adventure, and difficulty that you don’t find in the overworld.

Welcome to Dungeon 1. This is one of the more straightforward dungeons, but if you're terrible like me, you'll probably die a few times.

The Legend of Zelda starts with a boy getting a wooden sword and ends with you defeating a giant, invisible, teleporting pig-man with silver arrows and the Triforce. You rescue Princess Zelda, and your quest is over; congrats, Link. You’re the hero of Hyrule. This game was an experience for me. I was really impressed by the scale, the sense of discovery and adventure, the world design, the map design, and the clever use of items. I was frustrated by the combat and the lack of direction, but that’s about it. For the most part, this game is incredibly imaginative and innovative. I think there’s a lot of great lessons that modern games could take from this game, especially around discovery and adventure.

Stay tuned for Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, the Legend of Zelda game everybody forgot.