The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Nintendo - 2013 - 3DS

See also my Top 10 Zelda Games list

There’s really only two video game franchises I’m a diehard fan of. I've played pretty much every Final Fantasy (except the MMOs) and I've played pretty much every Legend of Zelda game (except the DS ones). As mentioned in my Pokemon review, I have handheld-phobia which is why I haven’t bothered to play Spirit Tracks or Phantom Hourglass yet, but after finishing Pokemon X, I had confidence enough to try A link Between Worlds. My favorite entries in the Zelda franchise have been the 3d ones (Ocarina, Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker), but A Link to the Past is the only other game I've bothered to play through multiple times. So I was excited to play a direct sequel to that game. By the way, as long as Nintendo is doing direct sequels to games in their franchises, can we get a Majora's Mask sequel? Or at least another Zelda game with a weird and dark tone like that game had?

Love that game… Anyway, if you’re a Link to the Past fan, this game is going to feel very familiar. Music, sound effects, locations. Actually, about 5 minutes into the game, I realized they had copy/pasted the world map from the original game. I haven’t gone back to A Link to the Past to see if it was totally 100% copy/pasted but it’s pretty darn close. Your house, Kakariko Village, Hyrule Castle and everything else is right where it was on the SNES. Actually, some of the boss fights are completely copy/pasted from A Link to The Past, which I’m actually okay with. It’s usually not rocket science to take down a Zelda boss. Just stab whatever’s glowing, and if that doesn't work, cycle through all the items in your inventory till you find something that does. So I don’t think it really spoils anything when this game pays homage to the classic game’s bosses. If you've never played A Link to the Past, I still think you’ll get a lot out of this game, but you just won’t get all of the cool references to its predecessor.

What makes this game differ from other Zelda games is that you can rent every piece of equipment from nearly the beginning of the game. But if you die, you lose all of your equipment you had. That is, unless you purchase it, but purchasing equipment is way more expensive that renting it. Also the dungeons in the game can be explored and taken in any order since there’s not a linear progression of obtaining items. This was an interesting change and they definitely pulled it off, but I’m not sure if I personally liked it or not. It’s just different.

Where this game really excels is in the puzzle design in the dungeons. The solutions to the puzzles are almost always “AH HA!” than “What? Really??”. Whereas I felt the opposite to be true in some of the recent entries in the Zelda franchise. Actually, I think this is some of the best puzzle design in any of the Zelda games. The 2d/3d wall painting thing works really well as a puzzle solving mechanic and there are a lot of really good design choices made on all of the mechanics and puzzles found in the game.

Summary:
Overall, I found A Link Between Worlds to be a very solid Zelda game and although I haven’t played Spirit Tracks or Phantom Hourglass, it’s my favorite Zelda since Wind Waker.