It’s not an unbroken
record...though I might sound like a broken one. I just don’t particularly
enjoy Zelda games, even if they seem like exactly my sort of thing. Like
so many others, I am a sucker for Link’s design in all its forms. I mained him
in Brawl and I have a T-shirt from Qwerty with a cute grumpy picture of
him after harassing cuccos and suffering the consequences. This game’s retro
design had him looking particularly cute, especially when doing things like
running into walls, and though it was divisive, I enjoyed the gameplay mechanic
of Link’s merging with walls and the dungeon design possibilities it brought
with it.
Yet once again, I just found
no connection with the story or Link’s simplistic characterisation.
In A Link Between Worlds,
a baddie is on the loose turning important people into statues. The
blacksmith’s apprentice seems an unlikely hero, but soon gets involved in the
usual quest to gain the Master Sword, free seven Sages and use a piece of the
Triforce to rescue Princess Zelda – who it should be noted is still formidable
here despite being the damsel in distress. The unique twist here is that Hyrule
has been united with an alternate world, fittingly named Lorule, which is a far
more dangerous and unpleasant place, and can be entered through tears in the
wall in various locations. The princess there, Hilda, assists you in your
quest, as does a strange little cowardly merchant in a fun rabbit-themed
costume, who towards the end in a twist that may be obvious but actually
blindsided me, turns out to have more of a place in this story than might be
expected. Padding this out is the side-quest for Maiamais, annoying little baby
octopus-hermit-crab-things that make plaintive mewls at you from hidden
locations until you save them and take them to their mama.
It took me a while to play
through this short game. I put it on hold in favour of Bravely Default,
and it hasn’t been tugging me back to it desperately, so that I mostly made
progress on public transport. Nothing was really a challenge here, with the
dungeons mostly being a case of going through the motions with nothing very
devious involved, and the only mechanically challenging part being one optional
mini-dungeon where you have to dash through various gates to get a rupee
reward. The idea of Streetpass opponents was quite fun, but the computer AI was
really too predictable and incapable of dealing with boomerangs from behind.
The final boss wasn’t a pushover, either, and his patterns were fun to figure
out, which is testament to good game design.
I’ve played a fair few Zelda
games, now, though I can’t claim they were part of my childhood, which may
account in part for my indifference. But I need a lot more character and plot
to engage with a game, even one of the stature of Zelda. Mute characters
can have a lot of development, but I feel like Nintendo just treat Link
like he’s already fully fleshed-out and doesn’t need new characterisation. Yes,
we know the archetypal story, and yes, gameplay comes first, but this was
nowhere near enough fun to make up for how dull I find lil’ Link’s collection
quests. Yet I’ll probably still keep buying Zelda games and seeing if
the next one will engage me more, or the next, or the next.
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