Yet Another Stellar A Link Between Worlds Review

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds has been out for a little over a week now, and in that time, we’ve seen all kinds of opinions from all corners of the internet. Our own Brian Scheid, the author of our official review, gave it a perfect score, and editor-in-chief Nathanial Rumphol-Janc went so far as to say it is arguably the best Legend of Zelda game ever created. The game has been given stellar scores by nearly every important gaming website and magazine in the world, with only one slightly mediocre rating at all. As a closing homage to what has turned out as one of the greatest and most perfect games I’ve ever played, I’d like to make one more review about everything that this game does so flawlessly, and everything that sets it over its predecessor, the almighty Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Art Style

First of all, one of the most important aspects of the game is the art style. It features a childish look, where everything in the world resembles dolls and toys. Though it’s been highly critiqued by many, I found it to be one of the most charming things about the game. I may have been doubtful at first, but after five minutes with A Link Between Worlds, I grew to love it strongly. As a top-down Zelda, the game would have had difficulty establishing personality and character distinction, but this new art style truly made it feel like an entirely new experience. It feels so… innocent. So happy and fun, in that trademark Nintendo manner that somehow matches impeccable game design with the minds and innocence of children.

Controls

The controls in A Link Between Worlds make the game a joy to play through, as if it wasn’t already, and make literally everything about it enjoyable. Controlling Link is easier and so much more fun

than it had been in years. Every moment of the game, I deliberately went out of my way to kill everything I saw and uncover every secret, because I couldn’t get enough of it, even after hours and hours of doing absolutely nothing in Hyrule Field. The painting gimmick isn’t at all a gimmick, or at all overused. As Link merges with the wall practically in an instant, and the animation is so pleasing and fun to control, walking on the walls to get everywhere is one of the greatest parts of the game. Doing it so often not only gets you used to it, as well as thinking in three dimensions throughout the experience and improving your ability to solve the puzzles, it doesn’t get tiresome in the least. The overworld has so many secret areas and hidden treasures that you truly feel brilliant every time you manage to find a lost Maiamai or simply a bunch of rupees in a desolate treasure chest. The painting ability adds a layer of puzzling depth to a seemingly empty overworld, in the sense that a hill or a simple wall doesn’t look at all like puzzle, like it’ll yield any kind of reward—yet once you see your prize, you suddenly realize just how much you have to do to claim it. In short,

A Link Between Worlds feels more natural than any other game in the franchise, and playing through it is a joy from beginning to end. Everything—literally everything—has its own special meaning, which adds so much to an already flawless game.

Dungeons and Game Progression

A Link Between Worlds thrives on its dungeons, easily some of the best in Zelda history. Though the first two or three are kind of simplistic, serving as more of an introduction to the game than anything, the game really hits its stride once you arrive in Lorule. Probably the main aspect of this game, what makes it so refreshing and excellent, is that you can do them in any order. Yes, this has been praised and hailed to no end, and some of you may think that it doesn’t really make a difference; I cannot overstate how much of an impact this makes. It provides the greatest freedom in a Zelda game since the original. Not only can you flat-out choose how you want to play the game and in what order you want to do everything, but as if that wasn’t enough, psychologically, it gives you a great feeling of freedom and independence. As the dungeons are presented to you all at once, yet you’re not pushed to any of them—rather, it’s pushed on you rather lightly that you should get going—you’re free to begin to explore Lorule at your own pace. It also makes you feel a lot more powerful than you ever felt. When I first entered Skull Woods, I got hopelessly lost because I am a complete and total idiot, and said jokingly to myself, “Oh, screw Skull Woods.” That’s when it hit me: I could actually, quite literally, simply leave and come back later when I felt more up to it. Instead of turning off the console and doing something else for a while, as would have been my initial motivation in any other game, I could just go do another couple of dungeons and come back, stronger and smarter than before.

Of course, there’s the design of the dungeons themselves. Never have I seen such a spark of creativity in my life. While the most recent games in the franchise had two or three memorable, mind-blowing levels, there is not a single dungeon in this game that I don’t remember fondly and with clarity. The only dungeon I even slightly disliked was Turtle Rock, which, regardless, remains better than about half the dungeons in the series itself. Every level in the game has its own brand of puzzles, enemies, and music, setting them apart completely and making them all amazing. My one and only complaint about A Link to the Past was that the dungeons all seemed the same, all merged together in my head. In that game, with the exception of Ice Ruins and Turtle Rock, they all had pretty much the same drab color scheme and no themed enemies or puzzles.

It seems that Eiji Aonuma and the Zelda team saw this problem, and went absolutely ballistic making sure it wasn’t present in their latest title. Every dungeon in A Link Between Worlds is incredibly unique and now holds a special place in my heart. They were all confusing and enormous, featuring new enemies and puzzles that truly set them apart. Even now, while writing this, I can’t think of which was my favorite, nor do I think I’ll ever be able to choose. The Dark Palace legitimately scared and confused me, the Swamp Palace was the most puzzling and an absolute joy to play through, Ice Ruins looked amazing and played like a dream, Thieves’ Hideout brought the concept of the escort mission to a whole new level, and Skull Woods probably had the most memorable music, as well as that terrifying dungeon master. Good grief, I hate that thing. The biggest and baddest, however, is Lorule Castle, with some of the most challenging puzzles and hidden chests in the game, as well as daunting music that we’d all been anxious to hear since we’d begun to play.

Bonuses

What A Link Between Worlds does best, apart from, well, everything, are its many bonuses. First of all, there’s the monumental Hero Mode: a love letter to any Zelda fans that long for the days when the games were so much more challenging. For the first time in a while, Hero Mode was legitimately terrifying. The prospect of it in itself honestly makes me wonder how I even managed to play through it; it’s a second playthrough, where enemies deal four times the damage. This, in itself, in addition to it featuring some new content, truly adds to the game, almost as much as the Second Quest in the original Legend of Zelda. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

There are also the Maiamai’s, similar in style to the Golden Skulltulas in Ocarina of Time. While some are simply sitting there, waiting to be picked up with ease, others are protected by unbelievably complex puzzles, stemming throughout both Hyrule and Lorule simply for one of the one hundred lost Maiamai’s. They are all, however, absolutely essential, both to the completionist and the casual player. While a new wallet upgrade or a heart piece, the rewards for fetch quests in previous games, may be somewhat useless or underwhelming, item upgrades are incredibly useful and usually pretty cool. Not only does it motivate you to buy the items instead of renting them, which does turn out to be very useful in later stages of the game, but upgrading your gear is simply very, very fun. Yes, they come in handy in their respective dungeons, but nobody really cares about that. A three-way shooting bow, an unbelievably powerful and graphically-awesome fire rod, and enormous, all-powerful bombs that destroy everything in their path are just a few examples. To me, it adds a lot of replayability to the game, and a whimsical wonder to mindlessly killing random enemies in Hyrule Field. Just got a hammer upgrade? Go around squashing everything to death. Just got the Nice Bow? Spend an hour trying to line up enemies in the perfect way, only to kill them all in a single shot and feel awesome. Just got the insanely badass Fire Rod enhancement? Go through an entire dungeon without using your sword, killing everything mercilessly with your flames.

For me, the best bonus was, by far, the minigames. The first one you encounter is the Cucco Run, a simple, yet very fun and challenging minigame where you run from an endless swarm of Cuccos that want you dead. This is probably my favorite, for the reason that its music is, quite simply, one of the most incredible and whimsically hilarious things I’ve ever heard. It somehow mixes the epic sounds of a full orchestra to a homey farm soundtrack, which eventually gets louder and somehow makes you feel both unbelievably hyped and concentrated, yet holding back laughter at every moment. Never have I been more convinced of Ryu Namagatsu’s genius. Then there’s Octoball Derby, a surprisingly complicated and difficult minigame that truly puts your skill to the test… well, sort of. The show stealer is the Treacherous Tower, a multi-tiered free-for-all brawl against floor after floor after floor of enemies, which progressively get stronger and scarier. The most difficult level consists of 50 floors of enemies, topped off by a daunting battle against a purple Moldorm. Simply thinking of a purple Moldorm gives me chills. This threat is simply daunting in Hero Mode. Maybe I just suck, but I’ve yet to beat it entirely.

Music

How do you top of a perfect game? What can you possibly add to a game as flawless as A Link Between Worlds to streamline the experience even further and make it even more memorable? The answer is found in what I believe to be the single best soundtrack of this generation, of any generation, in all of gaming history. Screw Wind Waker. Screw Ocarina of Time. Forget about Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger. The brilliant Ryu Namagatsu has done the impossible, surpassing the series’ own record by making the most awesome and awe-inspiring video game soundtrack of all time. If ever there was a doubt in my mind that this guy was an absolute genius, it’s now completely disappeared. While a few tracks stand out, most notably the second Overworld Theme, Lorule Castle, and the stellar Cucco Run background music, every song in the game perfectly fits its situation in a way that will remain unchallenged for generations. I cannot possibly oversell this. While some tracks are remixes of A Link to

(brilliantly performed, mind you), most of them are entirely new.

Conclusion

If there is one final message, one final thought to make you buy this game if you haven’t already, it is this: I swear to you that it is memorable. That everything about the experience is absolutely unique, perfect, whimsical, and incredibly wonderful in every way. Call me nostalgia-blind, call me over-exaggerated, tell me it’s just my excitement before this game came out that’s making me see it this way, I don’t care. I believe, truly, that this is the greatest Zelda game ever made.

It’s no secret that the latest games in the series have fallen victims to the infamous “Zelda Cycle.” A lot of people (including me)

believe that it doesn’t exist at all. It’s still an overall accepted idea throughout the fanbase, and it is a fact that the last two or three games have been the recipients of some unwarranted negative criticism after their launch. While A Link Between Worlds has been out for little more than two weeks, I’ve seen all kinds of criticisms across the internet, ranging from those who thought it was incredible, to those who thought it a blasphemous excuse for a Zelda title. But way more people seem more than pleased with the game than those who didn’t like it. Could this game “finally” break the Zelda Cycle? Will our fans get over their unbelievable superficiality and finally see the beauty and perfection that is A Link Between Worlds?

As I’m sure I’ll be reminded in the comments section, no game is without hate, and I’m sure that among you are both those who hated the experience and those who loved it as much as I did. So, let us know what you think of Aonuma’s latest achievement in the comments section below! What did you and didn’t you like about it? Which songs and dungeons were your favorites? Where does it rank among your favorites in the series? And most importantly, did anybody love the Cucco Run song as much as I did?