Faults of the Adventure of Link

by DesertDweller

Okay, so I just last week finished beating

 

More like the Torture of Link it seemed

Most of the Zelda games I play mostly for the storyline and sometimes have fun with the gameplay.  The Adventure of Link is unique in that it was the opposite; the gameplay was the main attractor here.

As I discussed before, AoL is an exceedingly difficult game.  It's been rated in the top ten most difficult games to beat in various magazines and websites.  Indeed I found it quite hard, even when checking a walkthrough to make sure I didn't miss anything special like a magic or life container.

The blue versions of that enemy are impossible

Nevertheless, there's something that attracts you to the insane difficult to AoL.  When you die you cringe and (I did) cry sometimes at your huge loss, but you know there's always next time to face that, you know there are some enemies in that game I never actually defeated, but just ran around whenever I came across one?

Anyway, after that quick recap, I think it's true that the Adventure of Link did a lot of things right.  However, one element of the gameplay bugs me and I don't think it should exist in a commercial game.

Whose fault it is when the player dies?

Theoretically, it should always be the player's fault when he dies.  Never should the game just throw three enemies on top of the player when he's not expecting it that will immediately kill him before he has time to react.  This happened a couple of times in AoL, most notably right near the end of the Great Palace.  I'm almost all the way there to the very end, then in a seemingly empty section of a room, a GIANT bot appears out of nowhere (like, a portion in the middle of the screen is empty, then WAM) and falls on Link if he doesn't react within 0.0425 seconds. You kill the bot and he breaks into several normal sized bots.

Totally freaked me out.  Wasn't expecting it.  The spot looked empty from afar, but as soon as you walk into it a giant appears out of nowhere.

Then there's knowing what to do next.  You always have the big idea of "Save the Princess!" or "Find the next temple!" but rarely much more than that.  I had figured out how to get to the last palace, had fought through the whole maze dodging enemies and wasting magic, all the way to where you fight Thunderbird.

And then it happened.  Nothing.

You can't hurt Thunderbird AT ALL unless you have the Thunder spell.  What?  Where'd that one come from?  In your  spell list it looks complete space-wise without it, Thunder sneaks in squished at the bottom; you would think your spell list was complete before then.  Nah.

But where does one get this Thunder spell? Oh, in the abandoned village of course!!!  You see, the abandoned village of Old Kasuto, really isn't entirely abandoned!  Right!

Another case of this is the "Spell" spell.  (okay spell is starting to look weird as a word right now)  What does the Spell spell do?  Oh, right!  It raises a tower up from a seemingly empty and harmless space!  That's it!

Makes no sense.

Finally, I had issues with their save system.  You see, there was an option to save, and there was an option to continue.  However, if you continued each time after dying ten times, your game has not been saved!!!  I found this out the hard way several times after just turning off the game while playing, thinking I'd saved since I knew I had died, when I really had just continued.

If you want to Save and Continue, it's better to just click Save, then reselect your game from the menu screen. :(

So please, if you're making a game, make sure that:

• It's the player's fault when he dies, not some random act of the game
• Puzzles make logical sense, names are properly assigned (when appropriate)
• Save and continue.  Please :D

Now I'm playing

 

Considered one of the best games of all-time

More on that soon.

HLD is almost ready for an update.  More on that soon too.

- Desert

[images, again, courtesy of Zelda Shrine]

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