Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

The Good
I think I applaud the development team for trying something different. The game has even more RPG elements and some of those things made their way into subsequent releases (some of the named locations, fighting a dark version of yourself, etc..) but largely the concepts and ideas in this game were forgotten.

As much as I despised the combat, I did start to get a kind of Souls-like feeling with it. I would figure out the enemy's patterns and after I had died a few dozen times, I became adept at taking them on. Then another enemy was introduced that I couldn't figure out, so rinse and repeat.

The Bad
Well, the graphics are terrible. Even if you're a retro gaming fan, there's a lot not to like about the visuals. Link's sword, for example, is the same color as his skin. So, it looks like Link has a really messed up appendage. All of the towns look exactly the same except for maybe a color palette swap or a slight shift in position. The overworld map is bland and uninteresting.

NPC dialogue is confusing and provides almost no context or information. All of the NPCs look the same.

None of this would be as bad if the gameplay was any good. After all, the Castlevania series attempted a similar shift in format with Simon's Quest and it wasn't terrible. Unfortunately, Zelda 2 doesn't fare so well. The game is unfair, way more unfair than the original. Link's sword swipe is not very long so therefore you have to be super close to the enemy to hit it. Link's movement is as if he's on ice so when you stop you kind of slide just a tiny bit, which makes platforming a bit more challenging than it needs to be.

The bosses, while visually interesting, are random and seem to have no real connection to one another.

The Bottom Line
The Adventure of Link swings for the fences, I will say that much. They tried to do something different, unfortunately it just didn't work. I don't think the game is without merit, the leveling system is interesting, and a lot of the enemies and bosses looked pretty good. Everything else though was pretty bad. The game honestly felt like it wasn't finished and needed just a little more polish and balancing.