Topic: The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

@Octane "Fully completing the game without a guide isn't fun."

I'm starting to get that impression, yeah. There's a lot to like, once I got out of that dungeon and was able to walk around mostly unhindered, so I think the new plan is to just play, and solve, as much as I can but keep my tablet handy to the IGN guide for when I feel like I'm stuck. B/c when I feel like I'm stuck I'm probably not going to figure it out w/o help. These aren't the kind of puzzles you solve, they're the kind you just keep randomly doing until you get them right. So I'll give them a few tries, then I'll just move on. At least for another dungeon or 3, not sure I can survive all 8.

@Eel "You're gonna love Level 7"

Assuming that's sarcasm, maybe I'll print out those pages from the guide beforehand. 😉

@rallydefault Thanks for the long reply. On fast travel, I don't understand how anybody ever made games w/o it. A 2D Mario platformer doesn't need fast travel, where are you going, but an open world map game, which this is, even if it does kind of play out linearly it's still a fairly big map, fast travel is just expected. I mostly only play JRPG and action adventure games - God of War, Uncharted - and fast travel is what I do whenever possible. Though there is none in Uncharted or the older GoW games, the new one was more open world(s). Thursday night I finished 150+ hours of The Witcher 3 and all it's DLC.

I did find 3 of the Link's Awakening portals last night, that made me happy. Especially the one next to the seashell hut. Those phone booths are stupid though, the old guy never says anything useful, it's just a waste of time. My wife screams at me whenever I go in one, she's watching me play. I do get the feeling they'll be useful at some point, though not fast travel since the game has the portals. Though I'm also a person who spent all of Skyword Sword waiting until I could finally become a night and earn the right to fly at night and see how cool everything looks in the dark and lit up, but we all know that never happened. Still don't understand how you have that landscape and don't allow night travel, seems broken.

So we'll see. Knowing what it is, and isn't, and my limitations, means I may get thru it, I'd like to see Link wake from his coma at the end. My son told me that part yesterday, no escaping the spoilers w/ teens in the house. 😝

@rjejr
Yea, it's definitely a game from the early 90s. I probably sunk well over a hundred hours into it on the GameBoy as a kid. Lots of sections of the game, even outside the dungeons, that are just kind of wandering around hoping for a change, if you were lucky managing to follow a clue that somehow made sense to my gaming brain (there definitely are clues, but most are arcane). I still love it, though, one of my favorite Zeldas.

That bit about the order you need to kill the monsters on, I assume the original game had a monster list in the instructions booklet.

But yeah... How does the switch version expect you to tell what monster is which? I hadn't thought about that.

Also isn't that puzzle required to get the boss room key? I might be confusing it with the tile puzzle dungeons but I think it was required to bead the dungeon.

@rallydefault "I still love it, though, one of my favorite Zeldas"

Ok, sort of off topic, but does this ever actually become a "Zelda" game? Is like Zelda ever even in it? Or Ganan(dorf)? I changed Link's name to rjejr, like I have every game I've ever played since the 90's, and this just feels like some indy Zelda clone like Oceanhorn where the gameplay is similar but it's a different story. Island seems kind of small for Epona to show up either.

You don't have to answer that, I'll find out this week, just not expecting a Zelda game any more than Yoshi's Story is a Mario game but who knows.

@Eel Yes, that was the boss room key. There is an owl statue that tells you the order - Pols voice then skeleton - but doesn't mention the keese, the only 1 I know from BotW. My 16 year old did mock me for not being able to figure it out, saying there was only 1 skeleton and the voice isn't a bat so I should have figured it out. I probably should have, and might have, if I hadn't just spent 3 hours trying everything else I could think of to get the bracelets. Spent awhile fishing, thought the bottle might help, though deep down I think I knew it was the fairy bottle. It's the Shy Guys that really got me stuck, only I didn't realize they got me stuck. From now on, I find a way to kill everything, even if I don't think I'm supposed to kill them. Then fi they don't die, puzzle solving.

Curious how it's all going to play out now that I sort of know what to expect.

Hmm. Not to be that guy at all, because I'm normally not, but I found LA to be one of the easier zelda games out of the bunch. I thought the two games after were twice as hard and cryptic( oracle games)

Having said all of that, I did lightly use a guide when I played the dx version on my first playthrough, as I do with most zelda games( the older ones for sure). Now, having played thru the dx and switch version, I can play through the game in about 12 hours as I remembered a good chunk of it.

Re: the monster order of killing, from what i recall, they die pretty quickly so even if it was trial and error, it's not like it takes too much time out of your Gameplay to get it right.

LA is a top down zelda game thru and thru. I feel like the gameplay is the same as any other that followed ALTTP. 90s design? Yes. But, it's been a series staple that's gotten better over the years and it's exactly what I love about zelda games. The puzzles and combat.

I'd say out of the three GB(C) games, Link's Awakening is the most complicated of them. And I first played it as an adult.

The oracle games decide to focus on one aspect, combat or puzzles, but they never really become cryptic or random. Link's Awakening is a combination of both combat and puzzles, and it wasn't as streamlined.

Funny how we all experience things differently lol. I had a hard time with the oracle games for some reason. I got my rear kicked for a while with the true ending too. I just found myself not knowing where to go next all that often in the oracle games or what to do in trading sequences.

@rjejr No zelda, no epona, and nothing is what you think it is. There's a reason for the specific subtitle. It's not a clone like Oceanhorn because Oceanhorn came decades later. Everyone has their own opinions, of course. But this is a Zelda game. Majora's Mask didn't have Zelda or Ganondorf, and it was a Zelda game. The 'puzzles' are far less obtuse than LoZ 1 & 2, and the contextual interaction with the world is higher than LttP. Zelda game formula; Something something bad omen, little flute man with sword and items, multiple dungeons/areas/bosses, final fight. Watching this play out is like someone saying Tetrisphere isn't a Tetris game.

@HobbitGamer Never heard of Tetrisphere so that isn't helping.

I'm nto saying it isn't a Zelda game, it has Zelda in the title so therefor eit is. And Dr Mario is a Mario game too. So is Mario Kart. And Mario Pinball. And Mario Typing, Mario Paint, well you get the idea.

I was more reacting to someone saying this was 1 of their "favorite" Zelda games. I thought that was odd since most newcomers say BotW and the old timers say OoT. My favorite Zelda game was Hyrule Warriors until I played BotW. I didn't really like Twilight Princes until I played Skyword Sword which was such a lullaby that I realized how great Twilight Princes actually was. I never played OoT b/c after playing TP I kind of felt like I already had. No MM for me, hate the concept of failing until you get it correct.

My favorite Starfox game is Adventure, as my favorite Sonic game is adventure, and my favorite DC movie is Green Lantern, so I'm not one too judge, just thought it odd that a game like this could be among someone's favorite Zelda games, seems like more of an offshoot. Though I get the impression in a couple of months people will be saying New Pokemon Snap is their favorite Pokemon game. That should go over well w/ the competitive crowd. 😂

@rjejr
lol it's fine! No, no Epona; Epona was introduced in Ocarina, I believe, and has become somewhat of a mainstay since then. Zelda 1, 2, Link to the Past, and LA didn't have her. I don't remember if some of the other handheld games had her either because it's been a bit since I played some of them (Oracles, Hourglass, Minish, etc.) And no, literally no Zelda, instead it's kinda/sorta Marin, which made the game pretty different for the time because the absence of Zelda was rather conspicuous.

Again, it's an early Zelda game, but I prefer the earlier ones because those are what I grew up with. For me, "old" means Link to the Past, not Ocarina. Ocarina still feels pretty new for me, strangely.I prefer the 2D gameplay and traditional Zelda formula in general, though Ocarina is a heck of a great game. I'm not a fan of BotW, sadly. I still played it quite a bit, but I'm just not into the new formula they seem to be following. A big bummer for me because I consider Zelda my favorite game franchise of all time.

Those two statements speak volumes about your experience with Link's Awakening. I understand now.

@HobbitGamer Yeah, my son told me that. It bothered me at first, I hate movies and TV shows that do that, but I decided to accept it rather than spending 20 hours trying to figure out how it fits into the official Hyrule timeline.

Re; The old man and the old game -

Since so many of you were helpful just wanted to let you know I'm still playing, did 4 dungeons - 1 each for 4 nights 2-5, then took a night to scrounge the island. Watched Wandaverse last night for a break. So I did wrap my head around what kind of game this is and am playing accordingly. Still feels more like a puzzle game than a Zelda game, but I suppose that's what Zelda games were back then, Zelda wasn't in them. My wife reminded me this isnt' much different than Windwaker, just much less water.

So 2 things. First, does anybody know if this game in 1993 spawned Animal Crossing in 2001? Animal Village sure does feel familiar.

Second, if you liked this game, as most of you seem to, I will recommend Toki Tori 2+. Not sure how it played before the +, and I'm not a big fan of the first, but TT2+ is practically just a 2D version fo this type of game. Overworld is extremely limited, not much more than a map really, but tons of puzzle solving.

https://www.nintendolife.com/reviews/switch-eshop/toki_tori_2...

@rjejr funny that you mention Toki Tori 2. I loved Link's Awakening but I hated toki tori 2 to be honest... Not my definition of fun at all and from my perspective it's a totally different type of game. To each his own of course, glad you enjoyed it!

@rjejr
Yep, the older Zeldas were way more puzzle-heavy. Overworld, dungeon, didn't matter - there were puzzles all over the place. Any Zelda game held next to BotW will seem like a puzzle game, though. But that's really how the older games were.

@toiletduck "it's a totally different type of game"

I'd say TT2+ is a lot closer to Zelda: Link's Awakening than Link's Awakening is to Twilight Princess, Skyword Sword or Breath of the Wild. I do think the order we play games does matter though. It's why I still think Super Mario 64 is utter garbage, b/c I played it right after Jak & Daxter: Lost Legacy, my all time favorite game. I only started Zelda games w/ Twilight Princess.

@rallydefault See above.

@rjejr I'm not comparing Link's Awakening to any other Zelda, I'm just saying that for me personally TT2 didn't feel anything like Link's Awakening.

@rjejr
I've played the Toki Tori games... I gotta go with @toiletduck on this one, I really don't see how TT2+ is similar to LA. They both have puzzles, but so does Tetris and a million other games.

I don't want to sound rude or something, so I apologize if I do. I've found your experience with LA to be very fascinating. You just mentioned that your first Zelda game was Twilight Princess, so that really explains a lot, at least for me. There are so many points of entry in franchises as old as Zelda, and it's incredible to see how people who are new to the franchise react to the old games.

@rallydefault Besides both being puzzle games TT2 and Link's Awakening also have a similar overworld layout for going from place to place - must have missed that in Tetris - a dungeon like layout where you move from screen to screen where each room has a puzzle - again nothing like Tetris - and there is an interesting overarching story moving the game along. I'm not exactly sure what that story was in TT2, flying frog gods or something - but it plays out, and also you learn new tunes in TT2 to do new things, as you learn 3 tunes in Z:LA to be able to do things.

If you're saying TT2 is more similar to Tetris than Z:LA you're really going to have to explain it, b/c I'm not seeing it. Unless you are mistaking TT2 for the original TT, which I only played briefly bc/ I didn't like it, it wasn't very good.

Moving on - thanks to the people who warned me about level 7 (why aren't they called dungeons?) - yeah, that was a thing that happened. I finished level 6 fairly early on in the evening so decided to do 7 as well. Made me miss SNL. I really liked the idea of destroying the 4 pillars, that was clever, but the red & blue barriers were a level of complexity that really wasn't needed. Hadn't we already done them in a previous dungeon? And for a level that took me about 2 hours the final boss was a 60 second breeze. And stronger bracelets in 6? That seemed like a copout from a bunch of guys - did women make game sin 1993? - who ran out of ideas for new tools. Would have preferred finding the rooster itself. Or a fan leaf blowing bellows contraption, I thought all Zelda games had 1 of those? Anyway 6 went well, 7 was a late into the night nightmare that seemed harder than it really needed to be, moving the wrecking ball around was enough.

8 tonight. Then who knows? I'm expecting to have to find 7 map pieces to find 7 pieces of the tri-force or something. 😂 Still havent' found a single display piece for all of those display stands in the houses. Last trade I made was for the magnifying glass. Yes I wrote down the code. I have that little black ball w/ the pink ribbon from the crane game but that's it. So, still going.

@toiletduck Yeah, I suppose it doesn't "feel" like it, the music and vibe aren't the same, it's not quite an adventure, but BotW doesn't feel like Horizon Zero Dawn either yet everyone was comparing the 2 when they released, even Sakurai. Or Zelda and The Witcher 3. But where as those are all labeled "open world" Id' say both LA and TT2 fall under puzzle adventures and LA is more like TT2 than it is like BotW. Doesn't feel the same, b/c it isn't the same, just similar.