Delightful Games Still Exist | The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Review (Switch)

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening was a collaborative effort between Nintendo and Grezzo, the team best known for the 3DS remakes of the Nintendo 64 Zelda games. Nintendo published the game for the Switch on September 20, 2019.

This marks the second time that the original Game Boy game has been remade in some form. The 1998 version for the Game Boy Color was essentially the same exact game, just with colorized visuals. With this Switch version, we have a complete remake of the game with revised controls, 2.5D visuals reminiscent of the original top-down design, a “Toy Box” art style, and quality-of-life updates to improve on the original game’s shortcomings.

And here is my brief synopsis of the plot:

Some time after the events of A Link to the Past, Link sets off on an adventure to discover ways he can strengthen his power. However, he finds himself caught in a torrential storm in the middle of the sea. He later shipwrecks on Koholint Island, a mysterious little isle plagued with monsters and strange characters. Link is then told by the locals that the only way he can hope to escape the island is by gathering eight magical instruments that can awaken a creature known as the Wind Fish.

This review is the transcribed version of the YouTube review linked above. Regardless of the way you take in my opinion, I hope you enjoy my thoughts on The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening!

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Before going any further in this review, I should give you a few caveats: (1) I am not reviewing this as a remake since I never played the original game, so my thoughts reflect a fresh experience with any version of Link’s Awakening; (2) generally I prefer the 3D Zelda games; (3) my playthrough was done entirely on the game’s Hero difficulty, which eliminated random heart drops.

With all of that being said, I also want to quickly bring up the topic of a video game remake’s value. After all, I think that a game’s price should reflect the value of what you’re bargaining for.

In terms of video game remakes, you either get one of two options. The first is something like the upcoming remake of Final Fantasy VII. Not only are the visuals and audio completely redone from scratch, the gameplay and levels have also been reworked to reflect modern innovations in game design. In that case, a full $60 price tag makes sense since you’re paying for basically a brand new experience.

But then the other option is something akin to Shadow of the Colossus. These kinds of remakes retain essentially the same gameplay mechanics, control schemes, and level design, with the only substantial new material being redone graphics and audio. Typically these kinds of games are $40 retail.

The immediate problem with Link’s Awakening is that despite falling into the Shadow of the Colossus camp, it’s priced at $60 retail. And if you know anything about Nintendo games, you know that price ain’t dropping anytime soon.

Personally, I didn’t have much of a problem with this since my brother sold me his copy for $40. Still, the nature of this game’s development makes it somewhat difficult to recommend since $60 is a lot to ask for a very similar experience to the original that you can download for $6 on the 3DS.

(Photo Source: Nintendo)

Nonetheless, the remake is really, really fun.

After getting the massive open-world version of Hyrule that Breath of the Wild gave us, to return to the traditional format of beating a set number of dungeons and using items to unlock parts of the world might be jarring for some. The fact that the game also reverts to a top-down gameplay style and uses a new art style for the franchise could make it even more difficult for those people. But despite these things the game has a surprising level of depth and satisfaction to its seemingly simplistic design.

Having been quite frustrated by the original Legend of Zelda, this game was a more refreshing experience since the gameplay loop of enjoyable combat, exploring the creative environment, and solving all of the game’s puzzles was more balanced and cohesive. Like any good Zelda game, the world itself is one big puzzle made up of smaller riddles. But thankfully the designers did a good job at making each level challenging without sacrificing player convenience.

Some ways this was achieved was with subtle innovations for the franchise, the map system being a good example. Considering that the relatively small game world is dense with secrets, having a highly detailed map with the ability to add pins made sure that I was almost never at a loss as to where I should go. This mechanic also helped me keep track of where collectibles like Secret Seashells and Heart Pieces were located, making such side quests actually fun instead of tedious chores.

A clever way in which the game also helps the player stay on track with the story was how it implemented hints. For one thing, it allows one to repeat key conversations like how you could recall memories in Breath of the Wild, and makeshift phone booths carved out of tree trunks allowed one to get hints from a villager. The ability to take screenshots on the Nintendo Switch proved to be quite helpful to me too.

Have no fear, though, for these hints generally didn’t come across as the developers holding players’ hands. I just personally appreciated these since it avoided frustrating backtracking while keeping enough of a puzzle for me to solve. And when I got burnt out by just getting to the next dungeon, the game succeeded at providing enough tension-releasing distractions for me to enjoy.

Sometimes I would walk around and be like: “oh yeah, I can get something from the Trendy Game! Oh yeah, I could go fishing and maybe find something at the bottom of the pond. Oh yeah, I can go investigate that pin I dropped earlier in the game and see if I have the right item now.”

(Photo Source: Nintendo)

From beginning to end, Link’s Awakening provided a lot of the simple pleasures the franchise has come to be known for. But that’s not to say that the game is without its shortcomings. In fact, there’s a lot of stuff that bugged me about it.

Link’s Awakening is a game of a few big issues and then plenty of annoyances. For instance, when you die in a dungeon, you get sent back to the entrance, which is actually a pretty fair punishment and forced me to approach situations with greater care; but when you die in the overworld, you just respawn in the exact same spot without any sort of repercussions. All that you lose is time and patience.

Then there are other little things like the fact that you can only move around in 8 directions, the Pegasus Boots only let you sprint in 4 directions, not permanently mapping the Feather to a specific button, and as our blue furry friend Arlo pointed out, the missed opportunity of not letting you use buttons like the D-Pad for more item hot-keys than just two.

I get that the developers didn’t want to stray too far from the original, but since they already refined other aspects of the Game Boy version, I was baffled by some of these other oversights.

An even bigger problem lies in the game’s difficulty, though.

As I said earlier, you should bear in mind that I didn’t play this on the normal difficulty setting. My playthrough was done entirely on Hero Mode, which eliminated heart drops for when you defeated monsters or broke pots. This meant that I was only able to heal myself by visiting the Fairy Fountains and obtaining Heart Pieces. I was fine with this since I went into the game expecting to have this challenge, but it just became irritating to die a whole bunch of times and have it do nothing aside from stalling the game’s sense of pace.

This never-ending barrage of interruptions became insignificant once the game eventually reached a point of laughable ease. I got enough hearts and upgrades to the point where I could practically kill any monster with one hit, and nothing in the overworld ever posed a threat to me after that point. The only way I could realistically die was through my own stupidity. This would be fine if only the game wasn’t so tethered to the original and allowed for scaling difficulties in the enemy AI.

(Photo Source: Nintendo)

Thankfully, this is compensated by the fact that each dungeon progressively gets tougher than the previous. Puzzles became increasingly complicated, and the game forced me to be much more strategic with how I approached combat. It’s just a shame that most of the bosses were very lame. Some had creative designs, but most could be defeated without much effort, with the Angler Fish being particularly pathetic. I defeated that stupid fish so quickly that I actually said out loud “That was it?” after it was dead.

Nonetheless, whatever issues big or small may hinder the gameplay experience of Link’s Awakening, it still left me satisfied as a fan of this franchise. Considering that I don’t care as much for top-down Zelda games, this should hopefully mean something.

Such is especially the case due to how off-brand the art style is for the series, which caught my attention immediately when those first trailers dropped almost a year ago. Art styles have been a huge point of contention among the fandom since The Wind Waker, but I’ve never been one to really criticize Zelda games for that, since the artists have usually managed to do enough creative and aesthetically pleasing things whenever they try something different.

And even though Link’s Awakening may not feature my favorite aesthetic, especially since the game wasted so many opportunities with the gorgeous anime cinematics that literally only constitute the prologue and epilogue, it still works in making sense of the original game’s pixelated sprites in a modern context. The character designs are definitely quirky and are full of charm in the way which the developers pay respect to the Zelda games of old.

But despite this visual adherence to nostalgia, the game feels like a modern production, with crisp images rendering at a usually solid 60 FPS regardless of whether the Switch is being used in handheld mode or when hooked up to a television. This is helped by the fact that the overworld continuously loads instead of forcing you to navigate the environment in pre-determined map quadrants. You still do that in the dungeons but it works in that context. Load times never seemed to be an issue either.

Yet in the end, what really makes a Zelda game tie itself together are two things: the music and the story.

This is interesting since I think this is probably the least emotionally affecting Zelda game I’ve played, but there was something about its off-kilter mood that kept me engaged. It was funny to me that the world of Koholint Island was okay with things such as domesticated animals that talked and acted like humans. On top of that, phones exist in this part of the Zelda universe and enemies from the Mario series make appearances. The story also has perhaps the most ambiguous plotline in the series, at least in the sense that its ending — while satisfying — left me wondering what I just experienced. A sense of bewilderment did and still does cloud my judgment on how I truly feel about the narrative.

(Photo Source: Nintendo)

I guess you could say, then, that Link’s Awakening convinced me to keep going to the end because I simply loved the orchestrated music, found some surprisingly strong replay value in the dungeon creation mode, and enjoyed the gameplay as a whole, despite some glaring issues. This remake is certainly not perfect and its retail value is debatable but you shouldn’t skip it entirely since it stands as one of the franchise’s most idiosyncratic installments. Zelda has been weird many times over, but this one trumps them all with its strange qualities, only to make up for that with a game that fully delivers on providing a compelling adventure.

SCORE: B+

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AGE RECOMMENDATION: Link’s Awakening may contain some fantasy violence but is never intended to be graphic in any way. It’s all cartoonish, and not a sight of blood is ever gleaned. This game is definitely made for gamers of all developmental periods, even though the youngest players may not be able to overcome its challenges. (6+)