Postby Thad » Mon Nov 29, 2021 1:26 pm
Picked up the Link's Awakening remake on sale. The most exciting thing about it so far is that I played it for several hours at a stretch and didn't experience any significant thumb pain. I figured it's kind of an intermediate step between the menu-based games I've been playing for the past year or so and the straight-up action games I've been avoiding; now that I can play this comfortably, maybe I'll try a platformer next.
First thing to say about it is that the game holds up. Link's Awakening is still fucking great. It's an impeccably constructed, wonderfully weird slice of Zelda, and it's an all-timer. The stuff that was great in 1993 is still great. I am a man of simple pleasures, and Bow-Wow eating a moblin will never not be hilarious to me.
As for the remake, well, it's about what I expected from the reviews. I really like the graphical style for the most part, though there are times where it reduces clarity, particularly on the south side of the screen.
Adding scrolling was a mistake. Not only because of the performance issues it causes, but because the game is fundamentally built around a grid and taking the grid design away breaks its continuity. Like, it's fucking weird being able to see Mamu's signposts from the exterior of the first dungeon.
It also fucks up spawn points. Like if you go to the southwest corner of the graveyard, it'll cause the guys who come up out of the ground on what's supposed to be the next screen over to start spawning in the graveyard.
There are some modest but decent QoL improvements. The controls have been revamped to more of a standard Zelda control scheme -- sword is always on B, shield is always on R, bracelet is always on A (I assume Pegasus Shoes are too but I haven't gotten them yet). Of the rest of the items, you can map one each to X and Y as you see fit. It works pretty well, though this is a game with a fair amount of jumping and putting jump on X or Y feels wrong.
(I also wish you could map more shit to more buttons; ZL and ZR are unused, and L is only used on menus. And it's one of those Nintendo games that's like "Nope, we're not gonna let you use the directional buttons to move, even though movement is 8-directional and digital.")
You can put pins on the map for points of interest, which is nice because it's been ages since I played this one and I don't have it memorized as well as, say, LttP. And I'm pretty sure they've added more warp points, and the warp points work better; you can choose which one you want to go to instead of getting shunted to a random location and having to warp over and over until you end up where you wanted to go.
They've revamped the minigames and I hate it. Jesus, Japan, what is with you and fishing and claw games?
They've also added more Pieces of Heart and I hate that too. Link's Awakening was the last game in the series where they struck the right balance with collectible geegaws instead of going completely overboard with them, so of course they had to fuck with that.
On the plus side, they seem to have gotten rid of the missable seashells. Like, in the original version, if you go into the seashell house with 5 seashells, you get another seashell, but it has to be exactly 5; if you pick up a sixth before you go to cash in, whoops, you won't be getting that one. In this version, the rewards look like they've changed -- you get a Piece of Heart for 5 seashells, but you don't lose out on it if you come in with more.
They've also added more unnecessary shit from other Zelda games. Like, there are fairy bottles now, which are redundant; Crazy Tracy's medicine serves the function of a fairy bottle in this game, and also the fairy bottles don't fucking work right and don't automatically activate when you die like they do in every single other fucking Zelda game that has them. It feels decidedly half-assed: let's add this thing from the other games for no reason, but not bother making it work the same way it works in the other games.
The music's mostly great. Link's Awakening had the best soundtrack on Game Boy and for the most part I like the new arrangements. (There are exceptions; the music when the Moblins kidnap Bow-Wow is awful.)
The localization is mostly identical to the original English-language release; what's changed is mostly references to the updated controls and UI (and sometimes even that isn't changed where it should be; the book in the tutorial hut still says that when you restore from a save you'll be at the last door you entered or exited, which isn't true anymore since this version's added an autosave slot that will save in places besides doorways).
I haven't fucked around with the level editor yet but it seems like an interesting idea. And the music in Dampe's shack is fantastic.
All in all: this is a great game, and a pretty-okay update. I paid $40 for it and I think that feels fair; I wouldn't want to pay the full $60.