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A Link to the Past without nostalgia goggles

CrimsonCavalier

Fuzzy Pickles
Joined
Mar 27, 2015
Location
United States
Gender
XY
My list of gimmics for each Zelda game would be as follows

Zelda 1 - Overworld/Underworld, 1st/2nd Quest
Zelda 2 - Spells, XP, the most open overworld of any Zelda game to date (in my opinion). Can't really say 2D platforming as that was a directional change for the series that in the long term failed hence Zelda 3 went back to top down.
Zelda ALTTP - Light/Dark World
LA - Jumping with Roc's feather, 2D platforming sequences (was a gimmic here)
MC - Kinstone fusions, the figurne lottery, big and little Link and the 4 Links
OOT - Two Time zones, fishing and the overuse of the ocarina
MM - 3 day cycle and the masks
OOS - Seasons
OOA - More time travel
WW - Sailing, all that damn fishing up junk while on the boat and the Nintendo Gallery
FSA - the 4 Links
TP - The wolf, the normal/twilight areas and those fancy secret sword moves you learnt (and motion controls in the Wii version)
PH - More sailing.
ST - The train.
SS - Grinding/farming all those materials, Above and below the clouds - the two different areas.
ALBW - Two worlds and the merging with walls mechanic

The gimmics just make doing the same core thing over and over in every LoZ game interesting. Most Loz games are completing dungeons/palaces/temples, getting tons of loot to do so, and finally beating an end boss to save someone or something.

Would you consider those gimmicks or gameplay mechanics? I don't think the two words are synonymous.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
Would you consider those gimmicks or gameplay mechanics? I don't think the two words are synonymous.
I would consider them to be gimmicks.

Gameplay to me is how you play the game and how the game inreracted to your control input method. In OOT for example, the giimmics as I said above is the two time zones and the ocarina. The gameplay mechanics are the Z targeting with Navi, the ability to roll and glitch speed run backwards to move faster, the C buttons for all your equipment etc etc.

The gimmicks though = are not bad things, they are just what each game used to progress the plot and keep you hooked no the game.
 
Joined
Aug 28, 2015
I will say that ALttP has some pretty bad controls. But it also has a fun overworld, great dungeons, and its a legit challenge. Sure, half that challenge is the crap controls, but it's one of few Zelda games where I didn't get overly frustrated with the challenge because thats just how it is.
 
Joined
Aug 12, 2015
Watching CrimsonCavalier's playthrough, I feel that I may have just been playing the game "wrong", so to speak. I'm the kind of guy who kills every enemy in sight, which in this game just leads to a quick death unless you're really good I suppose. I like the style shown in the video, of avoiding combat whenever possible, since it gives the game more of an underdog-against-the-odds feeling, so I'm gonna try it like that sometime.
 
Joined
Nov 13, 2015
Gender
Male
I think A Link to the Past has held up very well. It's missing a few aspects of later games (such as warp points within dungeons), but otherwise, it's pretty solid. The atmosphere, pacing, puzzles, wide variety of dungeons and enemies. It gives the player the most amount of freedom they could have in a narrative-driven game.
 
Joined
Nov 14, 2015
I think the main problem here is most people mistake their favorite game with the "best" game. I love A Link to the Past dearly, but it'd be stupid of me if I didn't admit A Link Between Worlds was superior.
 

Dabombster

Do the thing
Site Staff
Joined
Jan 9, 2008
Location
Probably somewhere
I'll probably always have that nostalgia factor for ALttP, but I also really enjoy everything it brought into the series. The Master Sword, hookshot, bottles, two worlds... There's so much it did for the series as a whole. Most newer players to the series won't get the joy the older ones did from ALttP because it was the first game that tried for a solid story. It gave us better controls from the previous two, and made boss fights interesting. Medallions are awesome, bombos in particular. Going from LoZ/AoL to ALttP was just so great. Being able to dash around places was really cool the first few times you do it too. A Link to the Past doesn't really even begin until you reach the dark world. The light world was just the tutorial level. :)

A lot of people have "hit detection" problems with the sword in this game because it's different than most. Smashing that B button is actually really bad in this game, where it isn't on most others. If the full animation doesn't go through on the sword, you don't get the full swing detection on it.
 

DarkestLink

Darkest of all Dark Links
Joined
Oct 28, 2012
The game really doesn't have anything going for it. It's combat is poor, no surprise. It could make up for this with puzzles but....it doesn't. LoZ didn't really have puzzles during this time. The story is meh....something to expect from an LoZ title and a game of this time.

Then there's the exploration....some people enjoy it, but, to me, this is what takes a meh game and turns it into an awful game, mainly for two reasons.

1) It's all but forced if you don't use a walkthrough.

2) It's not compatible with this series. Exploration, in my opinion, just doesn't work with a game with set objectives.

Exploration can be fun if you can reasonably progress with it, but in a game of set objectives this isn't the case. In other games you can explore, find something fascinating, and go along with it, progressing with the game. With LoZ, you can't do this. You need to find something specific and you can't advance until you find it. You might find some other things that make the game easier (like LoZ needs it. =P) but you won't actually progress until you find that specific thing you need. This makes exploration frustrating in general and easily the worst aspect of the series.

I didn't enjoy the game when it came out and I don't enjoy it now. While ALBW suffers from some of the same problems, it at least has puzzles and doesn't force exploration, making it an infinitely better game in my eyes.
 

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