Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES) review "One could almost say that the serious gaming world can be cleanly divided into two groups: those who love Zelda games and would be devastated if Nintendo were to make any large-scale renovations, and those who gave up on the series a long time ago because it refused to evolve. I fit pretty firmly into the former category; Zelda is my favorite video game franchise, and while the formula has been repeated endlessly, it’s a formula that almost always works and hasn’t gotten old. Then ..."

One could almost say that the serious gaming world can be cleanly divided into two groups: those who love Zelda games and would be devastated if Nintendo were to make any large-scale renovations, and those who gave up on the series a long time ago because it refused to evolve. I fit pretty firmly into the former category; Zelda is my favorite video game franchise, and while the formula has been repeated endlessly, it’s a formula that almost always works and hasn’t gotten old. Then again, Majora’s Mask is one of my favorite games in the series, and it reduced the dungeon count to a mere four in favor of a real-time clock that had Link interacting with NPCs in their day-to-day lives – who knew that could be fun?

What I mean to say is that I don’t hate Zelda II: The Adventure of Link just because it’s different, especially not considering the context of its release. This was only the second Zelda game, at which point the series formula hadn’t been securely grounded yet. If Nintendo were to pull a stunt like this today, I’d be far more skeptical, though I’m still not convinced that a Zelda-themed side-scrolling action platformer thing could not possibly be pulled off. I’m just saying that Zelda II doesn’t pull it off, and for the moment, that’s all that matters.

Except Zelda II is such a messy mishmash of genres that calling it a “side-scrolling action platformer thing” still seems too vague. Many of the basic fundamentals of its predecessor (the exploration and dungeon-crawling) are here, but the game has a newfound focus on combat and even incorporates some ill-conceived RPG elements, starting with the miniaturized overworld map and ending with an experience system that’s so out-of-place I can’t believe I’m mentioning it. Puzzle solving has been downplayed, presumably because of the limits presented by the game’s side-scrolling perspective, though I’ll note that most of the series’ dungeons really just felt like glorified mazes until Link’s Awakening came along and really got the gears spinning. But until the game’s final act (with such nightmarish excursions as the Great Palace), Zelda II has trouble even replicating THAT, and constantly forces the player to engage in the one area of the game that truly feels developed – the combat.

Note that I said “developed” and not “enjoyable.” Nintendo understands that the side-scrolling perspective gives you more options in combat and that’s great (you can crouch now), but we’re immediately met with two major problems. First of all, Link’s sword… I’m not even going to call it a sword. Link’s dagger gives the player so little range that you’ve almost got to be within hugging distance of an enemy before you can hope to land an attack, which is a problem because Link’s movement is so slippery that there’s a good chance you’ll slam face-first into your target before the little guy can even raise his weapon. I don’t know why so many developers insist on incorporating this control style into their games – you press down on the d-pad, and it takes a second for Link to speed up; then, when you let go, Link continues walking for a moment before coming to a stop. Remember Link’s hover boots in Ocarina of Time? Remember how, whenever you wore them, Link’s movement wouldn’t have any traction, and he’d constantly be sliding around as if he were running on a sheet of thick ice? That’s what Zelda II feels like all the time.

That’s the first thing you’ll learn in Zelda II. The second is that Link’s shield is not functionally reliable. Link allegedly holds his shield at all times, and will automatically block attacks if he isn’t swinging his sword, I'm sorry, his dagger. Link’s Awakening eventually had the idea to make the shield an equip-able item, and thus grant the player direct control over it; before then, we had this, where you’ll be too busy trying to hit your enemies to worry about whether the shield will or will not block incoming attacks. Some attacks can’t be blocked, either, and some attacks come from below, meaning Link must crouch to defend against them, which isn’t always an option thanks to the delay you’ll experience every time you swing your dagger.

I’d ignore my shield altogether, except some enemies are aware of how difficult it is to use the thing properly and are assholes about it. The ludicrously overpowered Iron Knuckle has a shield, too, and can predict (and thus defend against) most of your attacks. And it expects you to do the same – there’s a “tell” just before each of his sword swings that you can use to determine whether the attack will come from above or below, and guard accordingly. The problem is that he’s so good at predicting your attacks that you’ve basically got to hack away at him like a madman if you hope to do any damage whatsoever. It’s such a frantic strategy that there’s little time to worry about blocking his own attacks, and even when you do, Link’s sissy ass is probably still recovering from a swing, meaning you can’t duck, meaning an attack from below will hit you. Frankly, the best strategy against enemies like this is to keep knocking them back until you push them into an obstruction, and then jump over them.

So the game is difficult, and it is too difficult, an issue amplified by the fact that your dagger will occasionally pass right through enemies without registering, and yes, that happens. It’s made even worse by the obsolete (in this day and age) lives system, in which Zelda II gives the player three chances before sending him back to square one – no progress lost, but you’ve got to trek back to wherever you were, and all of the enemies have respawned. Most of the earlier dungeons can’t seem to find a way to make the side-scrolling perspective interesting, while the later dungeons are so enormous that it’s virtually impossible to so much as reach the bosses without dying, let alone kill them. Zelda II is light on platforming and I’m glad; I can only imagine how frustrating the game would have been otherwise.

If you get stuck – and you will get stuck, quite a lot – your only real fallback is the experience system, which, again, is so silly in concept that I hate being forced to rely on it. Defeating enemies awards Link points that can be spent on stat upgrades, boosting either his health, his attack power, or his magic meter. This works fine for a little while, until the experience costs for various upgrades become so high that there’s no way you’ll stay alive long enough, since – this is the killer – if you lose all three lives, you lose your experience, too. There are the semi-random enemy encounters in the overworld to consider, but they offer so little experience that the only way you’ll get anything out of them is to prepare for hours and hours of grinding – which, if you’re playing a Zelda game, you probably don’t want to do. It’s Zelda II’s ultimatum: either buckle to the experience system, or spend an eternity trying to kill the enemies that the game itself doesn’t want you to kill.

Go ahead. Tell me I suck. It won’t make Zelda II any less awful.

Community review by Suskie (May 03, 2009) Mike Suskie is a freelance writer who has contributed to GamesRadar and has a blog. He can usually be found on Twitter at @MikeSuskie.