This week's question: A peace offering for
the8thark 
: What is your favorite thing about Zelda 2: AoL?
Thank you sir. I feel honoured.
I think I should explain my choice.
I went the Game World. My reasoning is the overworld of Zelda 2 is really open. There's only map 4 screens/areas. East Hyrule, West Hyrule, Death Mountain and Palace 4 maze. You are not really bound by screens or different areas like in almost every other Zelda game. Sure the game is still mostly linear because of the items you need to progress to other parts of the map (Death mountain excepted as you can beat that before getting the candle. I've done it but you need to be around 6/6/6 for a good shot at doing it.) All the different areas just blend into one massive zone.
This idea of open world is coming back into the Zelda games. Think the WW ocean. Or ZeldaU (if we believe the rumours). Yes Zelda 2 is not the best Zelda game ever (even though it is one of my favourites), it did a the open world amazingly well. You didn't have any quest apart from find 6 palaces and place the stones in each to wake up Zelda. No hand holding. The game didn't tell you where each town was or what was useful about each town. I remember finding the hidden town took me a while originally. This is so refreshing (upon replay) when compared to Fi, Navi and to a lesser extent the Minish Cap that tell you where to go and what to do there.
Imagine ZeldaU, a fully 3D game with only 4 overworld areas. No multiple areas you go in and out of like in every single other Zelda 3D game. Just a few massive open areas. Think Xenoblade Chronicles X like. Where you can go is not blocked off due to the story. You only need more loot to pass into other areas. By other areas I mean other parts of each massive open overworld area. That would be amazing. Zelda 2 tried to do this. But the technology of the time let it down. Now though this can be done in 3D. And if ZeldaU pulls this off it'll be amazing.
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Here is a video of me getting the hammer before the candle.
How to do this is practice a little with the candle so you know what to expect. Then when you do the dark Death Mountain run, remember you can see the enemies feet. So you can use that to judge where they are. Also the orange axe enemies are visible in the dark. THis makes it a lot easier as they would be a pain if you could not see exactly where they are. Lastly listen for the kill sounds. When you hear a bottle drop, search around for it. The magic for healing is really nice indeed. If you time your XP right you can get a free heal via a life level up when you're close to the hammer also.
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There is only one trick I use to beat the game. (Apart from the shadow Link AI abuse. I have beaten him properly but most times I just do not bother). This is vs the red and blue bird knights in palace 7. The ones in the open you just skip, too hard to kill. The ones behind the wall of blocks, you break the high blocks only so his head just pops over the highest block but he can't make it over. Then you just duck and stab it's head each time it jumps at the blocks. This way you can kill the bird knights easy and not take any damage.
Thunderbird for me is Thunder magic (required) then reflect, shield and (I think) jump magic. Reflect is better than life as it keeps you alive way longer. Still a very hard fight but this way it's doable. And with a few lives in hand from 1-up dolls (there are 6 in the game)
- Near medicine cave entrence (required for Fairy magic)
- Desert southwest of West Hyrule graveyard
- Bottom of desert just before the bridge to the palace 4 maze
- North east part of East Hyrule swamp
- Palace 6 - Jump over the hole just before the boss and at the end of the corridor is the 1-up doll.
- Palace 7 - Can't remember exactly where this is but there is one there.
Save all these lives for the trek to palace 7 and beating it, they'll come in handy there and give you a few shots at thunderbird.
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The music is this game is pretty good too actually. I can understand why people voted for that. It's actually pretty good for 8bit chiptune music.
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My final words in this post will be to say Zelda 2 gets away with what it is for the same reason Majora's Mask does. Both are a 2nd main Zelda game on the same console. And both the NES and N64 had more traditional Zelda games as their first on each console. We can't say Zelda 1 was traditional as it was the first but it's style has been the one used for all 2D Zelda games to this very day (AoL excepted). Because each console already had a main Zelda game, the 2nd one could be more experimental. Try things out. See what worked and what didn't, almost nothing to lose. And as we know from Zelda 2 and MM, some parts of the games worked well and others totally didn't.
You can also thank Zelda 2 for making Zelda 3 SNES better. It showed Nintendo what the fans did and didn't want for the SNES Zelda game (and every future 2D Zelda game). Nintendo listened to this. If Zekda 2 was just a top down sequel just like Zelda 1, then all this that Nintendo learnt from Zelda 2 would not have happened. Zelda 2 was not a mistake of a game. It was a great game. It was just the game very few of the fans wanted. I am glad this kind of platforming 2D Zelda was not made again (even though I like it a lot).
I to think Aonuma and ZeldaU can learn a lot from Zelda 2.
- Open world design
- No hand holding and Link has to explore where to go next (ie not be hend held by a follower such as Fi or Navi)
- Not knowing the purpose of the town when you enter it. You have to explore the town and discover it's secrets
- Having loot and not the story be the price of entry to other areas. Open up the possibility of a less linear game (even though Zelda 2 was pretty linear apart from being able to to palace 1 last if you can do the dark death mountain run).
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Thanks for the shotout and giving me a place to talk about this game. Much appreciated. And no hard feelings. We are all passionate about Zelda games. And we all have our favourite ones we like to talk about a lot.
