The Biggest Game Project on this Planet

Legend of Zelda, The.

And thus a long line of Legend of Zelda games began.
This is the first in a line of 8 (!) Zelda games, which should be increasing in length I think. So without further ado I present you the review of Legend of Zelda, since I already finished it.
It took me a little under 6 hours, which was surprisingly long, but I'll get to that.

Now, if you have a weak stomach or are sensitive to subjects like blasphemy and sacrilege, or are generally offended by course language, I advise you to turn away right now.

Because:

I FUCKING HATE THIS FUCKING GAME.

There, I've said it.

Am I insane? Yes, but only after playing this. It drove me to drink and cheat on my imaginary wife. with an imaginary mistress. That's how much this game has left scars all over my brain.
It is the fun-factor equivalent of putting a cactus down the front of your pants and asking a professional soccer player to kick you in the nuts.

"Oh, come on! How can you hate Zelda?" I hear you shout, waving pitchforks and torches. Try this game. Really. Have you ever played the first Zelda or are you just assuming it's great cos the rest of the series is so damn good? Try it, and look at it as a game. Ignore the great legacy it has spawned. Ignore the fact that this game may have been ahead of its time. Ignore the fact that it pretty much set the standards for Action/Puzzle RPGs.
Then tell me with a straight face that you actually really enjoyed this game. You're lying.

And I'm not saying this cos I'm used to better games now. No. Even by old standards this game is frustrating and annoying as hell. I distinctly remember that back in the day, when I played this game for the first time, when it was still relatively new, I hated it too. In fact, this is exemplary of the extreme frustration Nintendo games displayed in the very early days. Super Mario Bros 1 and 2 (the Japanese one, otherwise known as 'the lost levels', Legend of Zelda 1 and 2, the original Metroid, THEY WILL SUCK YOUR BLOOD.
Sure they were innovative and boundary-breaking, but they were still extremely annoying.

But let me get to the point and show you why this game sucks.

First of all, it is too open-ended. I know some people love this, but to me it just indicates a big Fuck You from the creators to the Player, since the game lacks any kind of structure or build up. You are haphazardly thrown into a strange world, and you get NO information whatsoever, no hints no clues, just a HUGE environment and NO map. There's a stupid grid at the top left of the screen, but it only shows you your relative position in the world, no real details. Just a green dot in a grey rectangle.
You have no idea where the next dungeon is, you'll have to look around the entire planet until you find something, by accident, and then there's a big chance you're getting ahead of yourself. Not until the last 4 dungeons or so, do you actually need items acquired in previous dungeons, and you won't know where to find them either.
You do get a decent map in dungeons, but the overworld sadly lacks one, which makes traversing the many plains a real pain.

Secondly, the game is too sparing in its relinquishing of items. Or in more normal words, you hardly get anything when you kill a monster. Later on in the game there will be a huge emphasis on bombing walls to advance in dungeons, or killing dodongo's which take 2 bombs a piece, and they usually appear in groups of 3. Did I mention you can only carry 8 bombs at maximum? At least, until you find the hidden old man who sells you a bigger bomb bag for 100 rupees in the before last dungeon?
More often than not you'll end up in a situation where you're fresh out of a specific item, meaning you have to go out of the dungeon and find a shop, if you can remember where you saw one in the first place, buy what you need (if you have enough rupees) and go back, if you can find the dungeon again. Joy.
But the most painful aspect is that this happens with health items as well. When you die, and die you will, you are thrown back to the very starting point of the adventure, no matter where on the map you were. If you were in a dungeon you get to start at the beginning of it, thankfully, but you'll only be replenished with 3 hearts, which is NOTHING. You'll instantly be killed again, and you hardly EVER get any hearts. You'd need the patience to keep killing and killing until you finally get something after 10000 monsters, IF you were to survive that many battles with only 3 hearts, which you won't. Besides, enemies generally don't respawn, unless you die or leave the dungeon, so it's all moot anyway.
You can buy health potions, but then you're faced with the rupee shortage and finding a shop that sells potions problem again. This makes dungeons a REAL pain in the ass, which sucks, because Zelda games have always been about dungeons in the first place. It's not even as if the dungeons are that much fun anyway, since every room either relies on:

1. Killing all baddies
2. Push a certain block (after killing all baddies)
3. Bomb a specific wall. What, no bombs? Well, then you'll just have to roam around to find some again, and come back.

Enemies become a real pain in the ass later, especially the wizards, which Nintendo starts throwing at you in great groups in almost every room near the end of the game. VERY powerful and they can take a lot of hits. Bosses, on the other hand, are complete pushovers and only take a couple of hits before they go down. Stupid.
Even Gannon is amazingly weak.
It's not like there's any reward for finishing this game either. The ending sucks and, including the amazingly stupid credit sequence (S. Miyahon? Konchan?) only takes about half a minute. And what do you get then? The Master Quest mode, where you can do all 9 dungeons again, only newly arranged. Thanks but no thanks.

THIRDLY, you can't save when you want to. I understand this was the first cartridge game to use a save function, but geez, it doesn't take a lot of thought to realise people will want to save when they want to quit the game, right? Instead, you have to DIE if you want to save, there's no other way, except plugging in the second controller, pressing Up and A in the menu screen to conjure up the continue screen and save, which has the same effect as dying anyway. There's no 'Save and Continue', just 'Save and DIE, BITCH'. Idiots.

I will give this a 6.0, and I'm only rating it this HIGH because I do realise the significance of this game, and how trendsetting it has been. It sucks majorly though, as any intelligent objective gamer will tell you. In fact, I was talking about this game to a good friend of mine just a couple of weeks ago, and he had coincidentally been playing this too, for old time's sake, and he confided in me how much he hated this game too. Funny how age can jade your memory, since the game so clearly sucks, despite the amount of praise it is still getting. Thank you, Patrick.

SO, all in all, stay clear of this one, since it will most likely be your grave, and it is definitely not a good game to start the series with. You know, it's like the original Street Fighter. Sure it was the forefather of a fantastic norm-setting series, but that started with Street Fighter II. This doesn't mean the original SF was also great. No. It sucked Holy Balls.
See also Alone in the Dark as the first Survival Horror, whilst also the worst.
The original Mega Man is as frustrating and suicide-inducing as watching a Seinfeld/Will & Grace Marathon as well, and this is coming from a Gigantic Mega Man fan. It's still heaven compared to Legend of Zelda though.

Start with the SNES Zelda: a Link to the Past, and you'll be perfectly allright.

posted by Ingen! @ 2:19 PM