The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

2023-04-29
Wow what an amazing game. It singlehandedly has reinvigorated my love of Zelda which I kind of lost interest in after BOTW was so amazing...why would I ever want to go back. The answer is THIS is why you go back. Link To The Past is where everything that would come afterwards is arguably perfected, the Rosetta Stone for why Zelda is awesome. It's insane that I played this for the first time 30 years after it came out and I still loved it. Not as a piece of history but because it's a game that is still better than most games coming out today.

Let's start with the art. Oh my WORD, as a kid growing up on the Game Boy Zelda games the SNES art completely trounces the GB art, which I still think is amazing. It's so vibrant and just perfect. The monsters, all the little different animations for Zelda using different items and pulling things and sprinting and jumping and on and on. The super detailed dungeons, the incredibly detailed bosses. Oh my.

Oh man the bosses are so good. I mean maybe Ganon was a little annoying because I forgot I was supposed to use those arrows but they are all fun and challenging. And we can see here where they perfected dungeons that are designed around the item you get inside of them. The bosses are designed around using it a lot of the time and once you get it you'll realize all those moments you got stuck in the dungeon were because you didn't have it.

And combat is surprisingly good even when it's not against a boss. Hit boxes feel good and Zelda has a surprisingly competent arsenal. Especially for a game that is not entirely designed around combat. It still feels better than a lot of top down or 2D games coming out today.

My main complaints with the game that feels like a product of its time is 1) there are several moments where what to do next is either very hard to guess or impossible to guess (I'm looking at the waterfall you have to somehow know to walk through in the water dungeon) and 2) related to 1, it does feel like you need to just spend time exploring the world just to explore the world. You could argue that's one of its strengths, and especially for a game coming out back in 1991/1992 where people couldn't afford to have a ton of games and you'd expect to play the same game for months and years I'd say this would be a good thing. But as someone who wants to play through the game and see all it has to offer it can kind of trudge along and really forced me to use a guide so I wasn't getting stuck. But those are really minor things, especially because really really good guides exist online now.

What an absolutely wonderful game. I'm really glad I'm playing through all the Zelda games in order before BOTW 2 comes out (I won't be able to finish) and playing this and seeing how good the roots of Zelda are makes me really excited to start the Ocarina of Time soon (after I finish RE8).