The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening REMAKE — 20th September 2019

[Jonnas]

Unless they redesigned every dungeon, I don't see how Link's Awakening can be said to have badly designed dungeons. Sure, there are some weird moments of lateral logic, but nothing that would bog the game down to such a degree. And I still stand by the statement that Eagle Tower is one of the best dungeons in the franchise.

[Glen-i]

9 hours ago, Jonnas said:

Unless they redesigned every dungeon, I don't see how Link's Awakening can be said to have badly designed dungeons. Sure, there are some weird moments of lateral logic, but nothing that would bog the game down to such a degree. And I still stand by the statement that Eagle Tower is one of the best dungeons in the franchise.

Yes, I must admit, I am interested in what Mind freak means by his implication that the dungeons aren't fun. They're certainly not my favourite when it comes to top-down Zelda, but there're some great ideas in there (Like Eagle's Tower, that you mention).

The only thing I can think of as a genuine problem for some would be how small each dungeon is, but again, that's due to the limitations of the Game Boy.

Edited September 19, 2019 by Glen-i
Man, I was half asleep, I meant MindFreak, not Tim B. Sorry.

[MindFreak]

11 hours ago, Tim B said:

Did you play it originally on Game Boy, out of interest? Which Zelda game was your first?

This is my first real playthrough of LA. My first Zelda was OoT on the N64 followed by MM and WW. Then I played ALttP and enjoyed it. I've also played Oracle of Seasons and I actually think I played Ages on 3DS at some point, and enjoyed those but I expect the same problems would apply to these if they were remade.

As @Glen-i says, it's really apparent that it's a Game Boy game and they have done nothing to recreate the game as a modern game. Just the fact that they've kept screens and not a fluent overworld and that everything resets all the time is making the game and traversing Koholint Island tedious, you have to take out the enemies again and again and again.

However, I could live with that but the many of the dungeons are just not very good or logical. Not all, though, the first four are fine albeit small. The bosses are really easy, though. Like... After having 10+ hearts, you don't care about damage.

Edited September 19, 2019 by MindFreak

[Ronnie]

4 hours ago, MindFreak said:

Just the fact that they've kept screens and not a fluent overworld and that everything resets all the time is making the game and traversing Koholint Island tedious, you have to take out the enemies again and again and again.

It'd be terrible if you kill enemies in the overworld and they don't respawn. That'd be so boring half way in when you're traversing a ghost town!

Also I thought the overworld was seamless, without any screens.

[MindFreak]

8 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

It'd be terrible if you kill enemies in the overworld and they don't respawn. That'd be so boring half way in when you're traversing a ghost town

If you enter a small cave in a screen, they respawn when you get out. You do that a lot of times just to check the cave out only to find that you can't progress into it. I'm not saying they should respawn but I felt the timer was set way too low.

[Glen-i]

4 hours ago, MindFreak said:

However, I could live with that but the many of the dungeons are just not very good or logical. Not all, though, the first four are fine albeit small. The bosses are really easy, though. Like... After having 10+ hearts, you don't care about damage.

Yes, it appears that there's more pieces of heart in this version. Judging by the series tradition and the look of the HUD, I would guess that you can get a total of 20 hearts. The original had a max of 14. Which meant there was only 12 pieces of heart there.

If I'm right, that would mean that it's very easy to get to a point where your hearts outweigh the damage you could possibly take, what with there being triple the amount to hide in that small Game Boy world. (Not to mention the Blue Tunic from the Colour Dungeon, but no-one chooses blue)

29 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Also I thought the overworld was seamless, without any screens.

It happens less often than in the original, but the screen still does the pause and scroll when you transition to certain areas.

[Ike]

My Nintendo Store order has dispatched yet. Only noticed late last night they couldn't charge my order due to it have old payment details on it. Hope it arrives tomorrow.

4 hours ago, MindFreak said:

However, I could live with that but the many of the dungeons are just not very good or logical. Not all, though, the first four are fine albeit small. The bosses are really easy, though. Like... After having 10+ hearts, you don't care about damage.

Spoiler

Even on hero mode?

 

[MindFreak]

Just now, Ike said:

My Nintendo Store order has dispatched yet. Only noticed late last night they couldn't charge my order due to it have old payment details on it. Hope it arrives tomorrow.

  Spoiler? (Hide contents)

Even on hero mode?

 

Spoiler

Hero mode doubles the amount of damage that you take, nothing more. Most bosses took only a couple of hearts from me even on my first try so that would only be relevant in the beginning. One exception is the final boss which was harder than the rest (combined).

 

[Tim B]

I wonder how this will fare in the UK charts. Could be very close vs. Borderlands 3, which was apparently the highest selling game of this year at launch. Borderlands is multi-format and seems to have been received well, so let’s see.

I imagine it’s a very long time since a Zelda game was No. 1 in the UK.

[S.C.G]

6 minutes ago, Tim B said:

I wonder how this will fare in the UK charts. Could be very close vs. Borderlands 3, which was apparently the highest selling game of this year at launch. Borderlands is multi-format and seems to have been received well, so let’s see.

I imagine it’s a very long time since a Zelda game was No. 1 in the UK.

Personally, I'd say it's no contest, all of the Borderlands titles might as well be one big expansion pack of the same game as far as I'm concerned.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is a timeless classic, of course it will still show some of its design quirks so many years on but I think this remake will be do very well.

[Agent Gibbs]

I just hope this does well so we can get a remake of the Oracles (as one game preferably)

[MindFreak]

Generally, reviews are very favourable and luckily, I'm rather alone in thinking that this is a weak entry in the Zelda-series. I ended on 6 / 10. My issues in list form (contains spoilers to some quests):

Spoiler

- A lot of meaningless wandering about, wondering what the hell you should do now and with no in game help that has any value, I'm just left going around and trying to find stuff. This is really apparent when you have to feed the monkey in order to get over a bridge to the castle - how are you supposed to know that? 

This also applies to the later dungeons (perhaps the last three). The one with the many orange and blue switches was terrible in this regard and the puzzles in it were just... switch here, go there. Nothing too straining but I often couldn't find a way from A to B because it wasn't on the map (the 2D sections connecting two rooms were not clearly marked). Eagle's Tower also had this problem - I kept falling down and couldn't get up again without traversing a big part of the dungeon and then I didn't see that you could crumble the pillars - again, not something that is very clear or logical - why didn't bombs work?

I do enjoy open games that don't hand-hold the player but I feel that the game at least has to do something in order to tell the player that something actually has to be done.

This is my main gripe and the reason for the relatively low score - it just killed the buzz.

- Traversing the overworld became more of a chore later on because you had to do trivial stuff again and again, like killing enemies or moving rocks. It's fine that enemies respawn but I felt that the timer was at a very low level because the Game Boy didn't have enough memory

- Also - moving in screens is too old-school for my taste. A fluently moving overworld would have been preferred.

- This is many people's first encounter with a classic Zelda, and they may have played nothing but BotW - and I feel that this is just not representative of what a Zelda-game is - heck, Zelda's not even in it!

- Many items feel like a waste. The bow is basically not used and only once do you have to shoot an arrow into the eye of a statue to unlock something. Magic Rod is just an upgraded Magic Powder that is used in the very last dungeon - why even have it in the game?

- I also found it frustrating that when you had to use an item, you didn't necessarily know the existence of said item. The Ocarina is a good example of this. You need it to fly across a gap to get to a dungeon, if I recall correctly, but the chain is long in order to get there. Malin's song is also a bit weird. When you have to wake up the Walrus, you can't use your Ocarina but have to fetch Malin - why? Overall, many items are underused throughout the game which is a shame.

I did enjoy much of the game, mind. It's just that as a modern game, I do think it has some frustrating shortcomings that soured my experience.

[Dcubed]

I’m really disappointed to hear that the final version still seems to be suffering from performance issues... really bad that Nintendo are happy to release it in that state...

[drahkon]

1 hour ago, Dcubed said:

I’m really disappointed to hear that the final version still seems to be suffering from performance issues... really bad that Nintendo are happy to release it in that state...

And yet they keep getting showered with praise while other devs get slaughtered when performance isn't spot on.  

[Dcubed]

29 minutes ago, drahkon said:

And yet they keep getting showered with praise while other devs get slaughtered when performance isn't spot on.  

Especially in this case where they really shouldn’t be having performance issues...

 

At least it seems to run better when you have it installed to the Switch’s internal storage...

 

 

... so it seems to be a bug with the way the game handles data streaming; not actually a matter with the Switch’s CPU/GPU not being able to handle the game.

 

Greezo probably shouldn’t have removed the screen transitions from the original game if their engine can’t handle data streaming properly... (come to think of it, that’s probably why they never attempted to remove the segregation of areas in any of their previous Zelda remakes...)

Edited September 19, 2019 by Dcubed

[RedShell]

I've been playing this today (ended up going for a physical copy) and yeah, unfortunately the game doesn't run so well overall. It's incredibly strange though because of how random the issues are. I spent some time revisiting certain areas to cut grass/break pots etc. and the stutters are completely random! It makes me think it'll be smoothed out via a patch though as there seems to be something weird going on rather than the Switch not being able to handle the game. Also, some indoor areas seem to run quite poorly as well, which didn't appear to be the case in any of the footage I'd seen previously.

Anyway, erratic frame rate aside, the game is absolutely wonderful. It looks so good, and the nostalgia is off the charts!

[Tim B]

The technical issues are barely even noticeable with my copy of the game.

I posted about playing it on *Facebook* and the reaction was huge compared with when I usually post about a new game. The nostalgia should carry it to No.1 this week, if not by a massive margin.

[Ronnie]

8 hours ago, drahkon said:

And yet they keep getting showered with praise while other devs get slaughtered when performance isn't spot on.  

Probably because Nintendo don't operate under a 'release broken now, fix later' approach most of the rest of the industry does.

They get "showered with praise" because their games never release broken or buggy.

[Agent Gibbs]

Am i playing the same game as you lot? or have i just been lucky so far?

I played it for a few hours last night and didn't notice any performance issues, its been absolutely brilliant so far. My only gripe is perhaps now seeing it in person i'm not so keen on the doll like designs of characters, or rather link - as pedantic as this is having solid brown dots for eyes makes him souless and its not like every character has been this way, when a crocodile man has whites of his eyes it makes it a bit jarring.

But its a minor gripe

[drahkon]

13 hours ago, RedShell said:

It looks so good

I still can't get over the artstyle  The melancholy from the original is completely lost  

[Ronnie]

Eye candy and that's just the packaging!!

[Aneres11]

I do love the special edition. I love the rupee light too. Did anyone bag one?! 

[Ronnie]

22 minutes ago, Aneres11 said:

I do love the special edition. I love the rupee light too. Did anyone bag one?! 

It's a lovely box, not opened it yet, Rugby World Cup about to start! 

I got the rupee, it's annoying though, there's a green one, they just didn't offer it. Guess they had red/blue stock to shift  

Edited September 20, 2019 by Ronnie

[Aneres11]

4 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

It's a lovely box, not opened it yet, Rugby World Cup about to start! 

I got the rupee, it's annoying though, there's a green one, they just didn't offer it. Guess they had red/blue stock to shift  

Omg I love that. Wish I'd have ordered one ! 

[Dcubed]

You can't set Cuccos and dogs on fire anymore  what's even the point of this remake now!?