Zelda II Review

A few months ago, I beat Zelda II: The Adventure of Link again for the umpteenth time, and I decided to write about it. Well... I never did. Until now.


Zelda II is great. It combines the sidescrolling action of a game like Super Mario Bros. with somewhat of a fighting engine, and combines THAT with the open exploration and item collecting that the series has always been known for. Awesome.


When I say "fighting engine", I'm referring to the battle system. In every other Zelda game (up to 'Ocarina of Time' and the 3D era of Zelda games), you go up to a bad guy, you press a button on your controller and voila, the enemy is dead. Simple. Unless of course you're fighting a boss, in which case you have to repeat the process a number of times until the boss has been bested.


However....


In Zelda II, fighting requires intense concentration. Maybe this is where the game loses people. You see... if you just go blazing into battle with your button-mashing fingers blazing.... you're screwed. You're dead. Fade to black. Return of Ganon.






In Zelda II, you actually need to pay very close attention to what the enemies are doing at all times. For example, if a bat flies low to theground...watch out! There's a very good chance he might transform into a bat-humanoid thing that breathes fire at you. It's okay though, If you expect this, you can just put up your shield and it's no problem. Be vigilant. The best example however, would be the Palace Guard knights. These guys have swords which they can use to stab high or low depending on their whim (I'm pretty sure they were programmed to stab high or low randomly. There doesn't seem to be any order to their stabby-stab-stab chaos). They also have a shield which they can use to block high and low attacks, so in order to kill them, you need to watch for when they pull their daggers and then (very quickly) raise your shield (or lower it) to block their attack and then (quickly quickly quickly) stab them in the area that they are not currently blocking. Sounds tough? It is. And as you progress through the game, they take more and more hits to kill, but they also give you more and more experience points......which leads me to something I haven't mentioned yet....This game incororates RPG elements.


That's right folks.... ZELDA II is the one and ONLY game in the series to utilize experience points.

For some reason experience points are gained in the form of money. Instead of cellecting rupees, you collect money bags. So every time you grab a money bag you either get 50, 100 or 500 rupees (if memory serves me correct). You also get money for killing enemies. In later levels, the knights that you slay will give you over 1000 rupees each. These knights (and all other palace enemies) come back to life every time you leave the palace. So leaving and coming back in is a great way to build experience points. Whenever you gain the sufficient amount of experience to gain a level, you are asked to choose from 'health', 'attack' or 'magic'. If you choose 'health', your healthbar increases (that's right, NO heart containers). If you choose 'attack', you get stronger (you don't collect better swords in this game, you just upgrade using experience), and if you pick 'magic', your magic meter raises (similar to the magic bar in Link to the Past, you even fill it up with magic bottles).


The game is generally quite easy until later on, when you might get to an area and you're thinking "what the hell do I do now". In some ways, it's almost as ridiculous as "Castlevania II". Remember that orb that glows and looks really important, but when you try to touch it nothing happens? Do you remember buying the 'oak stake' and throwing it at the orb to open it up? No?!? Of course you don't. Who the FUCK is gonna figure that shit out?


Luckily, Zelda II doesn't really get retardedly hard until the very end of the game, at which point I would highly recommend talking to EVERYONE! Oh, and try walking through every wall in the later dungeons....cause ya never know....


I give Zelda II 8/10 deku seeds