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The Legend of Zelda Game Review

The Legend of Zelda is a 1986 action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo for the NES. It’s one of the most important games from its decade.

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“It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this“

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Released half a year after ‘Super Mario Bros’, this game kick-started the entire Zelda franchise while also influencing the RPG genre in the process. It was a big deal for sure and one of the most crucial moments in video game history, but it also remains a genuinely enjoyable and strong game on its own decades after its release. It deserves more respect for everything that it did so right and so early.

The plot is simple, but setting up the whole franchise effectively. Link has to collect the eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom in order to rescue Princess Zelda from Ganon. You play as Link, not Zelda, thus the typical confusion was born on who the hero of the game is. Link is a memorable elflike protagonist and Ganon is a cool main villain. The world is enchanting, fantastical and almost fairytale-like. The world building is surprisingly strong for such an old game.

But graphically speaking it of course did not age best. The character designs are strong and the game has a variety of different, unique terrain, but the overall aesthetic is one that is unpolished and rough around the edges. Still, it looked great for the time, so it needs to be viewed in the historical context.

As for the score, it aged much better. This is exceptional music that is eclectic and diverse – the opening theme is iconic, the main world theme is fun and light while the dungeons are accompanied by creepier and more atmospheric tones. The sound is pretty good too. The game is also admirably long for an 80s game and it features some exceptional level design, no bugs and pretty good, simple controls.

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The Legend of Zelda is an action-adventure game, but one that has significant RPG elements, especially for the time. The overhead perspective is particularly reminiscent of that genre and was quite unique for the era. You only have one basic sword at your disposal when you begin your adventure and you gain weapons as you go along, often by buying them from vendors or wizards. The very concept of gradually becoming stronger and stronger as you become better equipped makes me consider this to be more of an RPG. This is why the beginning of the game is hardest to play, but eventually it will become more intuitive and easier to play when you gain stronger weapons.

There are heart containers that refill your life bar and they were essential for me personally. There are even certain pools that will restore your life to the fullest, which was a wonderful element to include. You can gain most items by killing regular enemies, but you can also buy stronger weapons or items at the aforementioned vendors. The rupees are money that you gather from killing enemies too and these are crucial for buying important stuff. The game has a fantastic sense of humor as sometimes there will be guys that would invite you for a challenge to win a certain item if you survive, but if you escape them, they would mock you for being weak.

The overworld features nine dungeons in total that you have to go through to gain a crucial fragment. Each dungeon has a maze layout that makes it puzzling and mysterious. Getting lost is quite common even with a map that you can find, but there is so much charm and joy to be found in the game’s emphasis on adventuring and finding your own way. This has mostly been lost in today’s games that are either too easy or lacking in sheer adventure and magic.

The dungeons have numerous doors, but some rooms have monsters that have to be defeated in order to progress further. The boss fights in this game are quite difficult, but not too hard as their patterns are fixed and mostly easy to predict. The most magical parts of this Zelda to me are those blocks that you have to move to find a secret passage or destroy parts of the wall to create a door to another room. There is no way that you can find these on your own for sure, but still for such an old game to have these lovely secrets was a marvel to behold.

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The enemies are mostly not too demanding with the exception of those horrendous eggplant guys who are very annoying and those frustrating guys that disappear and fire at you rapidly. There are certain rooms in most dungeons that are overfilled with way too many of enemies in total, requiring you to be extremely quick with reflexes. These rooms would be impossible to beat without save states and I wished that wasn’t the case.

Overall, The Legend of Zelda was a very strong start of this franchise. Yes, it is unintuitive and difficult to play these days and its graphics did not age well at all, but the sound and score are excellent and the level design is superb. There is a lot of magic to be had in playing the loop of this game, which is going through each dungeon, finding secret tunnels and eventually gaining an important weapon and becoming stronger in the process. It’s a clunky game at times, but it deserves respect for everything that it did right, including being pretty much a prototype for modern RPGs. It’s a classic for sure.

My Rating – 4.2