LogFAQs > #971057937

Last single-player Zelda I hadnt finished, glad to have done it finally. This game is odd since it is comfortably the worst Zelda by a wide margin but also has a lot of things that are clear improvements over LoZ and become series staples. It is the first with proper NPCs you can talk to, towns, some actual coherent storytelling, sidequests, magic, all that stuff. I also think the art hold up which is not the case for the first game at all. The Great Palace is much better than any dungeon in the first game and possibly the first really good dungeon in the series.

Unfortunately, the life system is basically just there to make things take longer, and the game only having a real checkpoint at the very end is odd. It should have been before each dungeon. The random encounters also start to really get in the way as you go back and forth. The guard-based combat is interesting, and led to Skywards Sword combat which is still my favourite in the series but Iron Knuckles are a huge pain to fight if you dont know the trick and I was just running past them by the end. There are a few moments that depend on you knowing where an invisible path through a wall is. It is not nearly as bad as some other games from this generation in this respect but there are definitely a lot of hard in a bad way moments in this game. Although, I knew about the Dark Link exploit ahead of time so it was very funny to go from barely surviving the Thunderbird fight to beating this super hard final boss without getting hit. Overall would definitely benefit from a remake.

Very impromptu single player Zelda ranking:

Breath of the Wild>Ocarina of Time>A Link Between Worlds>A Link to the Past>Twilight Princess>The Wind Waker>Majoras Mask>Skyward Sword>Minish Cap>Spirit Tracks>Oracle of Ages>Oracle of Seasons>Links Awakening>Phantom Hourglass>The Legend of Zelda>Adventure of Link