Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

The Good
I was trying so hard to find anything good to say about this game...I re-played it many times trying to find something good but I'm sorry there isn't anything I liked about this game. Other than the cool looking gold box the game came in, this game stinks compared to the first Zelda.

The Bad
First off the music and sound effects drove me nuts. It was like someone took the Mike Tyson's Punch Out sounds effects and put them (like that 'boingy' sword sound) all over the game. Second, the character control for Link was like a throwing around a big sack of potatoes. I just didn't feel like you were in control of Link when he would just float around in the air when you jumped sideways. Then third, there was too much reading! "Go to this house and blabhlablablahblahblah", I go there and get more "blahblahblah" from Old Hag #6. I wish I could of just stabbed these blabber mouths like I used to do to the Old Man in the first Zelda game! Ugh. Playing Zelda II again so recently gave me flashbacks of the anger and disappointment I felt when I first got this game when it came out. I remember seeing this game on the Nintendo poster they gave out when you bought a system and was wondering where the game was while standing in line to buy first classic Zelda game. I really doubt the microchips in the game were that hard to make to delay this game a year! I think Nintendo made that rumor up due to the first Zelda game being so good and wanting to milk the sales. They didn't want people to get confused into buying Zelda II so soon and then loose their sales on both games.

The Bottom Line
The first one was so awesome but this one.. It's just feels like someone took that overhead RPG layout of Final Fantasy and added it to the winning side scrolling action of Super Mario Bros. into one big adventure game. With Zelda II you could just say it is plagued just like movie sequels. First one was great but second one. .ehh.. pass if you can...

The Good
Very, very challenging game. The side-scrolling parts make things much more difficult, especially later in the game; although, by dungeon #2, things have gotten pretty hard. This made for a very enjoyable game, especially when overcoming obstacles and accomplishing various objectives (getting items, raising levels, finishing underworld dungeons).

The Bad
Some parts of the game were just TOO difficult (i.e., Death Mountain -- getting the hammer...took me at least a week). The final dungeon (end of the game) is also very hard. By the time you get to the Thunderbird, you'll be lucky to have any life and magic left. Good luck beating him. I was never able to finish this game on the NES. It took me about 15 years from the time I bought it until the time I used cheat codes on a NES emulator to finish it. Using the original NES controller was almost impossible for this game. The NES Max helped a lot. The music is this game was also a little sub-par. Zelda 1's music was better, I thought.

The Bottom Line
A great sequel for Zelda 1. Play that game first (play it to death, since that is one of the greatest video games of all time), then get a hold of this. A step-up in challenge and graphics. Classic game.

The Good
Ever play Cadash? That's a great game. This is a passable Cadash that predates it by about a year, on an 8-bit system!

The gameplay, as previously mentioned, is sidescrolling, with an overland map interlude for getting from place to place. There isn't much else good to be said about this game, though. It is primitive at best, and is stuck somewhere between Phantasy Star and Cadash, without the horsepower in the NES to pull it off properly.

This kind of side scrolling RPG would become very common in the future. What Zelda 2 has going for it is that it is innovative, it's too bad Nintendo didn't release it with its original characters instead of adding a "touch of Zelda" when the real Zelda 2, which I'm convinced was scrapped, didn't work out.

The Bad
Remember Mario 2? Remember the story of how they took a game that was not Mario and overlaid a bunch of Mario sprites to make a funky game that didn't feel right?

I suspect that isn't the only time Nintendo made that mistake. They did it with Zelda, too.

What you have is a game that was clearly not designed as a Zelda title with Zelda sprites and the first 5 seconds of the overland theme grafted on to make it appear "Zeldaish."

The Zelda overland theme, the really cool one that sticks in your head, plays for about 5 seconds and then immediately and rather crudely dissolves into cheesy uninspired 8-bit kazoo box music. That progression in the music describes the rest of the game. 5 seconds of Zelda and 15 hours of some other game that the box lied about. As you go, it just becomes wildly less and less like Zelda until you start wondering how Link got so tall.

Give me a map, or a compass, or rupees or ANYTHING else from the original game and this criticism becomes invalid, but it isn't there. There's no "nightmare key," no master sword, no heart meter. You can't make a "departure" sequel and ditch nearly everything that made the flavour of the original.

This was the 80's, back when they were plastering Erno Rubik's name on every dumb puzzle they could find, yet none of them were "the cube." This kind of "Brand leveraging" proved to be very damaging to the companies that did it, and so you don't see nearly as much of it any more. Nintendo learned and now jealously guards its brands.

The Bottom Line
Zelda sprites added to a perfectly good RPG to increase sales.

You can play the original Zelda and it's all there, in crude form. Everything that would become the rest of the series.

This game doesn't represent a "departure" as so many apologists will tell you. It's a completely different game. It's very difficult, and by today's standard's not terribly innovative, but okay to play if you like a sidescrolling RPG like Cadash. It's amazing they pulled this off on the 8-bit NES.

So when you hear this game get badmouthed, it's mostly because of people who expected a Zelda title and didn't get one. It's Super Mario Bros. 2 all over again. The good news is that there is a title.

Remember, it predates Cadash by a year, is playing on 8-bit hardware, and is a perfectly good RPG.

(Just watch out for the guy who tells you to get the candle at the palace by going "West." The palace is to the NNE.)

Production standards have improved since these days...

(Reviewer played this off the Zelda Collector's Edition GC disc. There may have been a map showing exactly where the candle palace is in the original.)