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Zelda 2 took a few years off my life...

Joined
Apr 11, 2017
Location
Boston
Gender
Male
I've commenced a journey of playing all mainstream Zelda games in the order of their release. After completing LoZ, I finally completed Zelda 2 just a few moments ago.

While absolutely infuriating at times and very different from many other Zelda games, I think it unfairly gets a bad rap. I really enjoyed the exp system, and ability to choose whether to grind it out early on, or play through as is. I reluctantly admit to using the ZD-i guides for the game on numerous (most) occasions due to frustration and lack of any sort of coherent clues from NPCs. (I'm talking about you Bagu! In your little cabin in the woods.)

I also didn't at all understand the concept of Link Dolls. Maybe I just missed something there.

I feel that the general consensus from many fans of the series is that they give it a go, and then don't finish it. I can absolutely understand why, because of the frustrating random encounters, and lack of direction, but all in all, I did enjoy the game. It was a nice evolution of the rudimentary fighting style in LoZ, and added some much needed dimension.

Will I ever touch it again? Heeeeeeck no.

Next up: A Link to the Past. (First play through!)

What are your thoughts on Zelda 2?
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Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
What are your thoughts on Zelda 2?
Zelda 2 is an amazing game that is NOT has hard as most people think it is. With practice you can get quite good at the game. The game is just very niche and an aquired taste.

I also didn't at all understand the concept of Link Dolls. Maybe I just missed something there.
The Link dolls are 1-Up dolls. As in you get an extra life whenever you pick up a Link doll. They are one time only though so if you save your game after you get one you can't even get that one again even if you lose all your lives and re-try that save file. I'll see if I can remember where all the Link 1-Up dolls are in the game. (I am going off memory here).
Outside the medicine cave (needed to gewt the fairy spell)
Near the left side of the bridge that goes to the palace 4 maze island
Inside Palace 6 - if you keep walking over the hole that takes you to the fairy required room just before you boss, you'll see it
Inside Palace 7 - the Great Palace.

You should take a look at my video where I got the hammer before the candle. Ie a dark Death Mountain run through.



Will I ever touch it again? Heeeeeeck no.
You don't have to. There is a reason why ALTTP is like Zelda 1 and not Zelda 2. It's what the fanbase wanted. Even though I really like Zelda 2 as a game, I am glad Nintendo moved away from it. Though Breath of the Wild has many Zelda 2 like elements in it.

There were many many NES games much harder than Zelda 2. Zelda 2 was about average in difficulty for a NES game.
If you died in the Great Palace and chose to continue, he game started you outside the Great Palace again.
Did you abuse the AI of Shadow Link to win? Most people do and it's totally acceptable to do so.
 
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
Zelda 2 has a few huge flaws that make it so difficult that it is nearly impossible to beat. The difficulty level goes way past rewarding and gets deep into throw your controller in a fit of rage difficulty level. The experience system would be ok if enemies did not take away experience points when they hit you. I have never played another rpg game where you get experience points taken away by taking damage from enemies. When I played Zelda 2, it seemed like most enemies were giving like 2 experience points but would take 10 or more away when they hit you. That is stupid and makes it nearly impossible to level up. I put 2 months into that game playing it every single day and grinded for most of that time and only got all my stats up to level 5 or 6. Even so, I could not fight my way beyond the second dungeon. I died over and over again deep inside the 2nd dungeon and finally gave up. You dont find many fairies at all and have to rely on the healing spell when your health gets low. The problem with that is it uses up all of your magic and you end up getting to a point where you have to use another spell to advance further and have to backtrack to find more magic and end up losing all of the health you gained by using the healing spell in the process. So frustrating! I watched video tutorials of the game not too long ago and I saw that there were hidden containers that increased the health and magic bars throughout the world. That made me angry when I saw that. If you can find containers to increase health and life whats the point in even leveling up those stats? As I said, I got all of my stats up to level 5 or 6 and it didnt seem to help me at all. I was taking an insane amount of damage from basic enemies and one use of magic was still depleting my magic bar. That game is illogical and frustrating on so many levels.
 
Joined
Sep 21, 2014
Location
Michigan
Though Breath of the Wild has many Zelda 2 like elements in it.
It is for this reason that I feel very right by playing in the Hero clothing I got from the Amiibo. All the other ones just feel sort of out of place to me, even though they're nice to look at for a short time, but the Zelda II one just... fits.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
Zelda 2 has a few huge flaws that make it so difficult that it is nearly impossible to beat.
That's just not true. Is the game flawed in ways? Sure. No game is perfect. The game however is not near impossiblr to beat. It's about average difficulty for NES games of the day. There is enough harder NES games out there, Battletoads being one famous example.

I got all of my stats up to level 5 or 6 and it didnt seem to help me at all.
Doing this helped me a lot. It allowed me to do a dark death mountain run to get the hammer before the candle. Here's the video of me doing this.



I just think the game is not for you. A lot of people didn't like the game back in the day so that's why ALTTP was top down like Zelda 1.
 

LinksASleeping

The Adventure Of Me
Joined
Mar 13, 2017
Location
Kansas
Zelda 2 has a few huge flaws that make it so difficult that it is nearly impossible to beat. The difficulty level goes way past rewarding and gets deep into throw your controller in a fit of rage difficulty level. The experience system would be ok if enemies did not take away experience points when they hit you. I have never played another rpg game where you get experience points taken away by taking damage from enemies. When I played Zelda 2, it seemed like most enemies were giving like 2 experience points but would take 10 or more away when they hit you. That is stupid and makes it nearly impossible to level up. I put 2 months into that game playing it every single day and grinded for most of that time and only got all my stats up to level 5 or 6. Even so, I could not fight my way beyond the second dungeon. I died over and over again deep inside the 2nd dungeon and finally gave up. You dont find many fairies at all and have to rely on the healing spell when your health gets low. The problem with that is it uses up all of your magic and you end up getting to a point where you have to use another spell to advance further and have to backtrack to find more magic and end up losing all of the health you gained by using the healing spell in the process. So frustrating! I watched video tutorials of the game not too long ago and I saw that there were hidden containers that increased the health and magic bars throughout the world. That made me angry when I saw that. If you can find containers to increase health and life whats the point in even leveling up those stats? As I said, I got all of my stats up to level 5 or 6 and it didnt seem to help me at all. I was taking an insane amount of damage from basic enemies and one use of magic was still depleting my magic bar. That game is illogical and frustrating on so many levels.

There are only a couple of enemies that take away experience points, most take away health. If all of your stats are 5 or 6, you should have no problem beating the second Dungeon. Keep practicing, and you don't have to kill every enemy. There is no shame in running.
 
Joined
Feb 23, 2014
That's just not true. Is the game flawed in ways? Sure. No game is perfect. The game however is not near impossiblr to beat. It's about average difficulty for NES games of the day. There is enough harder NES games out there, Battletoads being one famous example.


Doing this helped me a lot. It allowed me to do a dark death mountain run to get the hammer before the candle. Here's the video of me doing this.



I just think the game is not for you. A lot of people didn't like the game back in the day so that's why ALTTP was top down like Zelda 1.

I have beaten all of the old school Zeldas except Zelda 2. To me, Zelda 1 and ALTTP have a perfect level of difficulty because they are challenging without getting so difficult that it becomes a chore to beat them. Honestly, I wish nintendo would make modern Zeldas as difficult as those games.

I disagree that Zelda 2 is not just for me. J liked some aspects of the game really well and think it would probably be among my favorites if it did not have the annoying flaws I ranted about. The experience upgrade system is just illogical. What is the point of spending hours upgrading health and magic if you can find containers to upgrade those? As I said, I spent hours and hours grinding to upgrade all of my stats and was still dying quickly and using up most of my magic with one spell at level 6.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
To me, Zelda 1 and ALTTP have a perfect level of difficulty because they are challenging without getting so difficult that it becomes a chore to beat them.
Even though I think ALTTP is a touch too easy I get what you mean there. Zelda 1 and ALTTP did have better difficulty curves. Zelda 1's second quest though is quite challenging but after beating the 1st quest, you're ready for that challenge. Zelda 2 did need a better difficulty curve, to ease the player into the game better. You need to realise though, that Zelda 2 is about average in difficulty when compared to other NES games. NES games overall are pretty hard. There is a large number of very hard NES games out there. Many due to bad design and many due to the developer wanting a higher level of player skill to beat the games. In the decades since then, gaming has changed from this skill required to beat games, to something more like everyone can finish a game, just add in different difficulties so everyone can have the challenge or lack of challenge they want.

As I said, I spent hours and hours grinding to upgrade all of my stats and was still dying quickly and using up most of my magic with one spell at level 6.
You don't need to spend hours grinding experience though. There are much more efficient ways to farm experience in the game, if you want to play the game at a higher set of levels earlier on. I will say though the fact that it's even possible to farm experience in Zelda 2 is a bad design choice. Zelda on the whole as an IP is better without most forms of farming or grinding anything. Nintendo only realised this after Zelda 2 though. Farming materials in Skyward Sword should not have been in the game at all, as it was just annoying and hurt what Zelda is. In saying this, farming materials in BotW does not seem that bad though. It's handled much better than SS was. I believe because it ties in well with the exploration aspect of the game. In linear games like SS, farming / grinding anything just ruins the nice linear progression these games have.

As a direct responce to your statement here . . . I don't want to say "git gud" as that is usually quite rude but many NES games were exactly about this. Their gameplay value was based on playing a game over and over or a section of a game over and over getting slowly better at it each time. This had to be a thing because most NES games did not have enough content without this to be worth the purchase cost. This is simply because the technology did not exist to add more content to these games. Zelda 2 has this as well. I know I had to practice at it to get better.
 

LinksASleeping

The Adventure Of Me
Joined
Mar 13, 2017
Location
Kansas
I have beaten all of the old school Zeldas except Zelda 2. To me, Zelda 1 and ALTTP have a perfect level of difficulty because they are challenging without getting so difficult that it becomes a chore to beat them. Honestly, I wish nintendo would make modern Zeldas as difficult as those games.

I disagree that Zelda 2 is not just for me. J liked some aspects of the game really well and think it would probably be among my favorites if it did not have the annoying flaws I ranted about. The experience upgrade system is just illogical. What is the point of spending hours upgrading health and magic if you can find containers to upgrade those? As I said, I spent hours and hours grinding to upgrade all of my stats and was still dying quickly and using up most of my magic with one spell at level 6.

The experience upgrade system isn't illogical, you just don't understand it. Increasing your life levels improves your defense, so you take less damage. It is like getting the blue and red rings in the original Zelda. Getting the heart containers gives you more health, but doesn't improve your defense. Increasing your magic levels makes your spells use less magic to cast, while magic containers gives you more magic to cast with. Increasing your attack levels makes your sword stronger, which makes it take less hits to defeat enemies. This replaces getting the different swords in the other Zelda games. All of these are very important, and cannot be ignored.
 

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