Tag: ZD

Alright, well here we are. Time to review the last of The Minish Cap’s dungeons before the last hurrah in Dark Hyrule Castle. It’s not my favorite dungeon in The Minish Cap — that award still goes to the Temple of Droplets — but it is my second-favorite and it’s also the only wind-themed dungeon in the series that I like. I’m sure you’ve noticed the trend if you’ve been keeping up with my Dungeon Reflections, how I’ve bashed the…

One of the main things I’ve always wanted to see changed about the Zelda series is the level of detail the worlds in its games have. More so than some other adventure games I’ve played, Zelda has a tendency to have areas that feel… like they’re from a video game. I realize there are multiple confusing elements to that statement. The bottom line is that there’s usually two extreme kinds of video game: Arcade, and simulation. Arcade-style games don’t feel…

In my book Zelda’s kind of a series of archetypes. It’s a fantasy world and story that, initially, was really only that. In the first Legend of Zelda game, the series had just been born and its debut wasn’t a plot-focused game in the slightest, so there wasn’t any lore to build off. What the first game built off, instead, were archetypes! Link himself is the best examples of this, as his character is nothing more than an archetype: He’s…

Almost everyone knows how common it is to see new Zelda games include elements that have become staples of the series. Is there a Zelda fan that sees an arachnid or insect boss with a single eye and doesn’t yell “Gohma!”, or someone who doesn’t recognize the labyrinth of identical forks that was first established with the Lost Woods? For some Zelda fans it seems like it’s seeing these throwbacks to earlier games that define Zelda for them. To a…

Gonna be a short review this time, since, well, we’re reviewing The Minish Cap’s sole mini-dungeon: The Royal Crypt. It’s not really a dungeon to be honest; it lacks all of the hallmarks of one, with no Dungeon Map, Compass, Big Key, or main item, and it has no map screen of its own. That said it functions enough like one with the puzzles and collection of keys to advance that some would count it, and I’m including it for…

Nintendo loves the number three. I can’t say I blame them; it’s a magic number, after all. When we think about sets, about grouping things together, there’s a sort of bizarre, inexplicable attraction to the number three. Movie franchises with only three films are exceptionally common, to the point that we even have a word for a set of three movies: Trilogy (the term “duology,” which is a set of two connected films or similar works, is hardly ever used,…

Before I even played The Minish Cap, I’d heard some of its music online and one track that really stuck out to me was the Temple of Droplets’ theme. I was looking forward this dungeon my entire time with the game, and when I finally reach it, I can’t say I was disappointed. The Temple of Droplets — the game’s fourth dungeon — has been one of my favorite dungeons of the series for some time now. It’s my favorite…

Despite my general opposition to remakes, recent news has even me a bit excited about The Wind Waker HD. Faster sailing, a reworked Triforce quest, increased Pictobox capacity, but mostly a new Hero Mode like that of Skyward Sword’s… Finally this game is confirmed to have some new additions that make me excited about it. That said, there are also a number of things missing from it. The Wind Waker is my least-favorite Zelda game and if I were to…

Last week Djinn wrote about how the state of music in the Zelda series has changed over the many years since its inception, and near the end of the article he spoke briefly of how recently the quality of Zelda music has drastically increased with the orchestrated soundtrack of Skyward Sword. And let me tell you, when I first played Skyward Sword that was the impression I got too: It’s so much higher quality. It would be a mistake in…