The Legend of Zelda: Molly’s Fantastical Retrospectacle!

I’m just going to jump right into this by saying I was sick of the flak I was getting for calling myself a Zelda fan and never having played A Link to the Past, AKA the widely-touted “BEST ZELDA GAME EVAR!”, so I decided to finally give it a try to see what all the hubbub was about. Upon completing this classic action-adventure title I realized I wanted, nay, NEEDED more adventures in Hyrule with my favorite fairy-boy Link, so I eagerly jammed Minish Cap in the GBA slot of my DS so I could stay high on Zelda. But even though I played and beat both games, it doesn’t necessarily mean I was as enthralled with them as I was repeatedly told I would be.

*Warning: The following paragraphs may induce rage if you have a massive hard-on for A Link to the Past.

Let’s start with the beginnings of each game.

A Link to the Past:

One thing I absolutely hate in any game is being dropped off without really knowing what’s going on and expecting to just pick up and go along with everything. I like a nice introduction, a subtle push toward starting out, not an immediate plunge into “OKAY GAME TIME!” That being said, I wasn’t a big fan of the beginning of LttP. Perhaps I’m just more accustomed to games with more cinematic elements, something that the Zelda franchise certainly improved on as the games progressed, but I didn’t like the first couple of hours of this game as little to no direction was given in what you need to do to get further into the story. To be honest, it wasn’t until after I got the Master Sword that I really started getting into things.

Minish Cap:

Now here’s that cinematic opening I do so enjoy. You’ve got your primary cast of characters introduced within the first 20 minutes of gameplay, and you’ve got defined set goals. Zelda is turned into stone, there’s this bad guy that you need to find and defeat, but first you need to look for the Picori in order to find out how to essentially save Hyrule. Not to mention, there are nifty immediately available side-quests that you can partake in that are fairly simple and very comprehensible. I’m talking about Kinstone fusing here. Again, it was an effortless sub-adventure, but it yielded incredible rewards and it got addicting trying to find people to fuse stones with.

Now I’ll touch on overall gameplay and my opinions on the dungeons in both titles.

A Link to the Past:

While the dungeons were pretty fun, I did not like how difficult it was to get through one. Go ahead and call me a wuss or tell me that I don’t know how to play video games, but compared to any other Zelda title, LttP’s enemies were ruthless. I had such a terrible time, especially in the beginning, getting through a dungeon in less than two hours. Having only 3 – 5 heart containers, 1 – 2 weak weapons and a plethora of enemies that were, for lack of a better term, utter dicks, I found it incredibly hard to fight my way through a dungeon. I can’t count the times I died, really. I think the game did for me as the credits rolled after defeating Ganon, and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 70 times. I don’t want to complain about how challenging this game was, because despite my ranting I really DID have a good time playing it, but I just don’t understand how an 8-year-old could have any less of a problem with defeating enemies than I did at 23 years.

With that tangent out of the way, I’d like to talk about how confusing this game’s progression was in total. There were so many times where I found myself completely stumped as to what to do next. And after I completed the first three dungeons and got involuntarily transferred to the Dark World, I had no idea what was going on. Apparently I’d completely missed the Moon Pearl, something essential to getting any further in the game. On more than one occasion, I had to ask a friend or even look up on the internet what I needed to do next, just because I would’ve ended up wandering aimlessly around Hyrule for five hours before eventually getting so frustrated that I end up throwing my DS at my cats. I can’t imagine that I ever would’ve been able to beat this game as a kid, really.

Minish Cap:

Everything was more laid out in this game, and the bad guys weren’t likely to kill me in two hits, thus forcing me to restart each dungeon over from the beginning fifty trillion times. There was little to no confusion on how to progress to the next major area of the game, and you could actually stop and ask someone or press Select and get advice from Ezlo if you weren’t sure what you would’ve been doing anyway. Sure, LttP had a bit of a “Confused? Here’s a hint!” element, but it was a block that enabled you to talk to Sahasrahla, who gave you such terrible advice, such as “The treasure hidden in this dungeon will help you defeat enemies!”

YOU DON’T SAY, SAHASRAHLA. THANKS FOR YOUR IMMENSE HELP! Not. Jerk.

Anyway, to reiterate, Minish Cap’s goals were more clearly defined and the enemies weren’t as impossible to defeat. Another aspect I really loved in Minish Cap was how each character you spoke to had a tiny inflection of human emotion. It didn’t feel like it was pointless to speak to each character like it was in LttP. Yes, I understand that these two games were released nearly a decade apart from each other, and that translation issues are bound to arise, but I didn’t like the feeling of being completely isolated and the only smart person Hyrule has in A Link to the Past. Moving on.

Now onto the conclusions…

A Link to the Past:

This game was through and through traditional Zelda, where you had your three starter dungeons and then several more difficult dungeons, then your iconic fight with the King of Evil himself, Ganon. I love this structure and it’s something I much preferred to Minish Cap’s relatively short story. You just can’t go wrong with this setup, and while I do understand and appreciate that A Link to the Past was the first Zelda game that set the bar for every other title in the series, I think it’s been done better since its inception.

The final boss fight with Ganon took me a few tries, which I don’t really mind, but maybe because there was that lack of cinematic gameplay, I found myself getting upset that I had to keep playing and dying until I eventually figured out the right way to beat the boss. While I should be comparing this final fight with Minish Cap’s, I just can’t because there was no Ganon in that game, so it’s harder to go off of. So instead, I will compare it to Ocarina of Time (still my favorite title in the franchise).

• In OoT, you have a companion, Navi. She explains how to defeat an enemy if you aren’t one hundred percent sure. Whenever you are given an item in this game, they give you a practical explanation on what it should be used for. When you get the light arrows, for example, they specifically state that you need them to defeat Ganondorf. Objective is clearly defined here.
• In LttP, you get an item and have no idea what to do with it. There is no clear explanation as to why you need to use it, you just have to figure it out for yourself. You have no companion that gives you hints. You have an old man who speaks through telepathic titles that gives you the crappiest advice in the history of ever.

It may be because I started with OoT as my first Zelda that I wasn’t pleased with the overall progression of LttP, but that’s really all I have to say on that.

Minish Cap:

Despite me seeming like I have a big boner for it, there were a few problems I had with this game. I wasn’t as big a fan of shrinking down to Minish size as I initially anticipated, and I didn’t like having to clone myself two, three or four times over in order to solve a puzzle or defeat an enemy. I suppose these aspects make Minish Cap truly unique, and I’m not dissing it at all, because what it comes down to is that I preferred Minish Cap to A Link to the Past because it had better weapons, gameplay that was more fun, sub-quests I really enjoyed, and characters and enemies that didn’t seem overly flat.

You heard me right.

In conclusion, I enjoyed most everything more in Minish Cap than LttP. I had a lot of fun playing both games and have a deeper appreciation of Zelda overall since I’ve gotten down to its roots. But to be honest, I think because I didn’t play LttP as a kid, I’m not as partial to it as everyone else is. While it’s a fun and entertaining game, I really don’t see how it’s as amazing as everyone made it out to be. More than likely it’s because it didn’t have more of a story, or a legend (see what I did there?) as its successors, in my opinion.

I’m glad I got to play the first Zelda that really structured everything for every other game to date, but I won’t ever see it as being one of my favorites in the franchise. In fact, I don’t think any 2D Zelda is as good as any 3D console release Zelda. Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker and Majora’s Mask can’t be topped in my eyes. They are perfect games that are fun 100% of the way through. And that may be why I was more entertained by Minish Cap. It had those 3D Zelda aspects without being a 3D game. Capcom did a fantastic job on this title, perhaps even more than Nintendo did when they were first starting out with the series.

So there you have it. I’ve played A Link to the Past. I’ve played Minish Cap. I like Minish Cap and every 3D Zelda game more than LttP, though by no means would I say LttP was a bad game. I plan on running through Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks next, which I’m sure are pretty terrible compared to every other Zelda game (except for the CD-i ones, of course).

If you would like to send hate mail, I can be reached at molly@golgotron.com. Mollbuffet, out!