As a 40 year old who grew up playing NES games since the 80s, people often ask me how I got so good at platformers, the secret is years of practicing playing Zelda 2, Megaman and Ninja Gaiden series games.
You can add in Kid Icarus, Metroid, TMNT 1 & 2, Demon Sword, SMB 1/2/3, and Contra. Half of our available game selection was basically Dark Souls before good graphics existed.
I roomed with a Chinese guy who was significantly younger than me. When he saw me play New SMB Wii, he said "It's like kung fu skill!" Nah, it's just from grinding hard on 2D Mario back when that was the major thing.
I hate how the internet just collectively agreed one day that "Zelda II is bad". I imagine most of the people saying that never actually played the game because Zelda II is just awesome and one of the best Zeldas in my opinion.
A lot of people hear people say a game is bad and rather than trying for themselves they'll just accept it at face value. We're all guilty of it sometimes. It's a shame, because there's a lot of gems out there that have been written off like this, like Zelda II.
The game struck the uncanny valley with most people who played it, and that collective opinion was formed before the internet was widely adopted. Even Ninja Gaiden was brighter toned and more forgiving. Most of you don't understand that your hindsight opinion was formed BECAUSE the internet made the game accessible through online walkthroughs and reviews. It was clunky, cumbersome, and confusing for most of the kids who were playing it, and the atmosphere was unsettling in contrast to other titles. The dark caves, cryptic hints, the Mt. Doom maze, the constant enemy spawns, the blank black background that existed from memory limitations, the discordant music, those bubble platforming stages, and trying to figure out how to swing around those shields without any help made the game frustrating, which didn't work back then because the game was VERY linear in comparison to the first title, which meant you couldn't explore when stuck, you HAD to power through. So most of us got to Mt. Doom and put the game down shortly before or after to go back to playing Crystalis, Willow, Faxanadu, etc. That game just didn't land in an environment where "games" were synonymous with titles like Kirby and Mario 3. It aged better than it launched. I'll say that much. My favorite final fantasy is 8, and I'm only just recently hearing people talk fondly if it, much like Zelda 2. It wasn't a trend, there was good reason for why it didn't land with its audience. We weren't ready for that style yet until the N64 came out, or until we got a sega genesis and learned to appreciate edgy games.
@Cretaal I guess my brother and I weren't most kids. We got through the game just fine back in 1989. The only thing that gave us trouble was finding the last heart container, which I eventually found well after beating the game.
I played it and the first Zelda games back to back around 1997, after having somehow never heard of them despite their frequent connections to my childhood favorite shows (Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Captain N: The Game Master - I just _somehow_ missed _all_ those episodes). Zelda II has been one of my all time favorite games ever since then, and just in time for Ocarina of Time to come out and give me an interesting side-grade to the technical swordplay on display here.
This game really brings back memories for me. A friend owned it and he came over to my house every evening to play it together. We wasted months on this game, had to call the Nintendo helpline every so often or get information about certain aspects of the game from that one guy in class knew because he completed it already. Then my friend was going to sell his NES including Zelda II so he could buy a SNES without us actually completing it despite being really far into the game. On the day of the sale, I borrowed it and actually managed to complete it. That was such a thrilling moment! If I remember correctly the game doesn't allow you to save the completed file, so I went to his house to return the game and told him about the achievement. We popped the cartridge in his NES and I went through the entire cycle of defeating the final palace again. I managed to beat the game for a second time giving us both a sense of relief and satisfaction. At the end of thet day the NES and Zelda II were sold but we both had the gratifcation of knowing those grueling months playing this hard as nails game were not for nothing.
Zelda II is my favorite of the whole franchise. I replay it at least once or twice per year and can now beat it in about 4 hours. Just a little strategic grinding in the DMGL (Death Mountain Grind Loop) whenever you need an XP top-off before moving on to the next dungeon and it isn't really even that hard. The combat is some of my favorite of any game. (The only better combat being in the FromSoft Souls games.) The back and forth rhythm of the combat produces a real nice flow state and with practice even those Blue Iron Knuckles are very manageable and quite satisfying fights. A 10 out of 10, absolute gem of a game. I love it so much that I even have a Zelda II Tattoo!
@@roberthunter479 I actually liked BotW, it was fun to explore the world and the combat was pretty good if a little hampered by the limited enemy types. However, I think TotK was massively overrated, the whole Zonai powers and crafting system was both clunky and fiddley and also broke the game. Not only did the constant need to be in the menus break the immersion, the abilities that let you go through ceilings or simply fly past everything forced the level design to be extremely one note and unimaginative. TotK is one of the worst of the whole franchise.
@@Dustinisgood Nice to write to someone who loves Z2. I like the open world thing of BotW but they could have put real dungeons and a system where I don't want to use any weapons because they break after 15 hits or so. I've been told there are over 100 dungeons but I don't count those tiny, gimmicky carnival game rooms. I just think of the lost potential. As for Zelda 2, yeah, my favorite of the franchise as well. I think it might be my favorite game of all time, because I will return to it about once a year and play through it. You probably already know this but someone has made a Zelda 2 remake for PC. It covers one of my complaints about Zelda 2, in that I think it's too short. They add more quests and its an interesting playthrough. Sure beats the randomizer, which also isn't bad.
@@HereComesTheGame If you played the first one than you already know that the souls games are amazing and absolutely worth playing every one, I recommend playing in this order: 1. Dark Souls Remastered. 2. Bloodborne. 3. Demon Souls Remastered. 4. Elden Ring (which might be the best game of all time). 5 Sekiro, 6. Dark Souls 3. 7. Dark Souls 2.
I beat this game a few times a year, usually in one sitting. I usually grind XP at the entrance to the third palace- this Ironknuckle statue is the first one that, when struck, either gives a red potion or comes to life as a red one (100XP). I just moved recently, and this video reminds me that I need to play this on my projector. I love this game. Same with SMB2 and RHCP's "One Hot Minute". I love my unpopular opinions lol
The stress will kill you or the flashing lights will. That's why I felt the need to interrupt the video to warn people. I'd hate for something bad to happen to someone.
Always been my favorite Zelda title. Been playing since it was new. I was desperate to rent it in 89. The small rental shop in my town only had one copy. I got on the waiting list for it. But that sad day long ago I left with wizards and warriors. Worth the wait though, two weeks later I got Zelda 2 and Mario 2 for my birthday. Good memories of great times.
That's awesome. Zelda 2 and Mario 2 are great games, although I'll admit I had to beat Mario 2 on All-Stars because the limited continues thing isn't my thing. Although I bet it does make the game pretty interesting when you actually know what you're doing, because of the tension it creates.
@@HereComesTheGame Indeed, the game was hard, but my brothers and I would get a bit farther everytime we played it and we finally beat it together along with some tips from school friends, neighbors, and Nintendo Power magazine. The gameplay just kept me coming back, that and the music, which I argue is the best in the series.
I remembered my cousin came to my house one day in 86 showing off this golden NES cartridge called Zelda. It was the most beautiful thing I seen. A month later I went out with my saved allowance to buy Zelda 1. Passed Zelda 1 in less than a week and was looking for me. Was at a friend's house when drawn to this Nintendo Fan Club magazine showing Zelda 2. He lent me the magazine but it was raining hard so I put the mag inside my backpack and put inside my jacket and ran home a mile away. Got home soaking but at least the mag was dry. As much as I loved Zelda 2, I only borrowed the game from the video rental shop or friends to play it. Same with Castlevania 2. Probably because I was too poor to afford them at the time. Both are great games. Just people didn't like them because they were different than the 1st games. Some of the best music in the series are in these games.
It's funny that people don't like Castlevania 2 because of "need a Nintendo Power subscription for the cryptic stuff", but then Zelda 1 was exactly the same in it's crypticness. Because of my memory, I know exactly what to do, but a friend who didn't grow up with these games found it's lack of direction annoying and it made me realize I took that knowledge for granted.
4:04 In my experience, Zelda 1 is not open ended, most people found the dungeons in order. Veteran players figured out how to play out of order, but that's not the norm. And yes at release, Nintendo did a bit of a social experiment where they expected kids to share rumors and tips with each other to figure out what to do... something that can only be experienced when the game was new. I played the game when it was mostly figured out , maybe a few years after the release, so I know the dungeon order by memory taught to me by older relatives, but when a friend who didn't grow up with it said the game was "NES cryptic" it made me realize how much I took that game knowledge for granted... that the game actually didn't provide much direction or at least funnel you there.
You've perfectly stated just what it is that bothers me about Zelda 1: it's really cryptic on its own, which is something of a problem in general in games back then. The manual helps with a lot of those old games but overall they're just really cryptic. Without either a manual, some sort of guide or somebody who knows the stuff a lot of those games don't really give the information you'd need to really appreciate them. It would have been cool to play in the 80s or 90s with kids playing them because of the social experiment of it all but without that, the absence of info in many games is a major failing. Some games have good design that organically shows without having to tell, but many are designed poorly so they need to tell. I acknowledge needing to cut them a little slack because game design wasn't exactly solved yet, but that doesn't make trying to play the game today any less annoying. People will eagerly criticize someone for pointing this out while taking their own preexisting external game knowledge for granted as if the game actually organically gave it to them instead of them also needing an external tool.
Spot on review! The sword fights with knights is my favorite thing. Thrusting high and low hearing that "twang" sound effect! By the time I made it to the end of the game (long after it's release) I of course knew about the cheese strategy for Dark Link...but I had fight him straight up because that duel was too epic to pass up.
The next time I run through Zelda II I plan on just doing a huge marathon session through the Great Palace. Maybe I'll finally fight Dark Link legit instead of the crouch stab strategy.
My favorite Zelda game. Beat it when I was 8 years old, no guides, no help. I still replay it from time to time. You can actually skip placing the crystal in the palaces when you finish them by jumping over the trigger point. If you do that, then you can run the whole game up through the sixth palace, then come back and use the palaces to get the last six levels you need to max out. You also get an extra life at the same time, so you can head to the final palace at max level, max extra lives, all with no time spent grinding xp. Oh, and when fighting iron knuckles, you can jump, stab your sword forward, and let the blade fall onto their head. Does damage past the shield. Fighting them normally is fun, but if you're trying to move a bit faster, that technique really helps speed the fights up.
I’ve always harbored a wish that Nintendo would take another shot at making another Zelda game in the Zelda II style (or at least remaking it sanding off the rough edges) to remove its stigma and black sheep status.
I'd love if they tried it again. Even if they made a new property for it, I love the sidescroller platformer action-RPG thing and I wish they'd try again.
Dang! I hope one day to beat the whole game without ever using a save state and there's people beating the whole thing without taking damage? I'm impressed! That's no easy feat!
I love it too. It's not the most welcoming game ever, but it's worth the trouble and I felt like I accomplished something when I beat it both times myself.
tl;dr - Game's fine. Jump thrust deserves love, too. For anyone recommending Zelda 2 to someone, a simple idea is to just ignore bosses until the end. The crystals guarantee a level and a player gets more out of them when they're worth thousands of exp later on, rather than for what little you would get out of them initially. Plus, you get to ignore the bosses until you're already stronger than intended. I did that in a recent playthrough on my 3DS just to bully them but I also realized it makes the playthrough that much easier. I went into the great palace with maxed stats and nine lives because I did this... then I wasted the lives exploring the dead ends and learning to better handle the unique enemies inhabiting it. I noticed two things about the great palace. First, the correct path is surprisingly easy. Anyone who grew up with the NES already knows the library is chock full of titles that have a maze-like area or level that simply helps to extend the play time and you'll know that person grew up in this era because they will immediately start drawing a map. Trying to discover the correct path in the final palace is genuinely difficult, but that difficulty is entirely optional. All the dead ends are packed with enemies or require you to waste your magic while the correct route is mostly rooms with basic platforming or a single fokka bouncing around. This leads into the second thing - the jump thrust. I rarely used it in any of my other playthroughs, because the down thrust is just easier, but I wanted to actually fight the enemies in the great palace this time around and realized the jump thrust is not just good to use for the king bubbles or the giant bots who come down at you, but it also just destroys the fokka. Each time they jump, I do the same. Once you got the timing down, those birds are nothing. That's the only genuinely difficult part of reaching the Thunderbird and I now realize I can just cancel out their jumps by stabbing their butts in midair. There's also a room with three tall breakable platforms that look like Ts to the left of where you fell down to proceed to meet the Thunderbird, and you can break the blocks at the bottom to find either red potions or an enemy within them. Just leave and return to that room if it spawns an enemy instead of the potion. It's like what you would do with one of the statues at the entrance of the other palaces until you get your life and magic filled up. I originally thought I had to take a death to refill my magic to cast Thunder until I discovered that. Just one more little reward for exploration provided by the devs. I wish I had the time to make and edit a video about it because there's several little details most people never pick up on highlighting just how good the overall design of this game is. Most are too busy abusing save states to ensure their "perfect run only" mentality on a first (and usually only) playthrough. I joked to one person about how they were going to die to the same enemy later on a dozen times because they will continue to run headfirst into the projectiles, instead of jumping over them, and then proceed to blame the game for it. Hours later, she did exactly that and the look on her face after I told her so was priceless. For an NES title, Zelda 2 is not even remotely difficult... by comparison, that is. It's certainly not easy, but an absolute godsend compared to what I played in the 80s. As you stated, Link feels good to use. He does exactly what you tell him to do. A lot of Famicom/NES games are not that polished which is why they never received half a dozen ports over the years and are now mostly forgotten.
I had it as a kid and played it a bunch and never got much farther than beating the first dungeon. Finally played it again a few years ago and beat the game and i like the game. It's just a weird zelda game.
Save states would have left so many afternoons of my childhood to do other things. I got to Dark Link countless times back in the 80s, coming so close so many times to killing Dark Link in real combat, but nobody I knew was aware of the cheese strat. Kids today think Soulslikes are hard...
I'm glad it exists. It isn't my favorite Zelda by a long shot (That'd be Tunic, obviously) but its a really interesting relic of a time when things were much more in flux. To be honest, I prefer when creators were comfortable to mix things up. Nowadays, big companies seem outright scared of changing THE FORMULA even an inch. And it's a bit sad. Games were exciting when you didn't always know what to expect. Nowadays, you mostly find that with indie games. I'm glad Nintendo tried it again with Breath of the Wild - controversy about it be damned.
My parents tag teamed the game; one was playing as the other took notes and my own first run through was blessed by my lack of vocabulary as I had to try one more time on the F'n Blue horsemen boss... or sea palace boss. I love it for how simple yet challenging it is. Death Mountain... well my parents notes I believe is how I knew the path the first time... but died a lot in order to learn how to work around the many foes properly then finished checking all caves on the way back. Hate the flying eyes most but the minions were themselves all mini bosses when the screen was dank with them.
That's pretty cool! My mom isn't a gamer and wasn't when I was a kid, but that's neat that your parents played the game and then you got to use their notes for it yourself. It's like they passed ancient secrets down to their successor or something!
This was one of many NES games I played as a kid where I found infinitely more enjoyment looking through the game manual than from the actual game. It had a lot of fun art and storytelling, but the game, with its warbley music and rat maze-like exploration was just frustrating
This is my favorite game. So much that I chose to speedrun it. I am not great, but my time is about 92 minutes on 1 continue. My advice to those who want to beat this game without using Game Genie or Save States is to get your levels to 411 out of Palace 1. You can do this by getting to Horsehead with 311 and at least 50XP. Horsehead will give you 50XP which will put you just over the requirement for a Magic level up and when you place the crystal you will get a full level of Attack's worth of XP and hit 411. This attack level will make the rest of the game feel trivial. On the way to Death Mountain and P2, work towards 523 (starting with magic and life). End P2 with 623, then end P3 with 734. End P4 with 737, P5 with 778, and P6 with 788. When fighting the red Daira's in Death Mountain (the lizards that throw unblockable hammers at you), learn their pattern and make multiple leaping attacks where you stab them on the way down. Sometimes they will deviate their pattern a little and throw two hammers instead of just one. As far as navigating your way through GP...you take the first left and then from there always go right until you reach a room with a fairy over a pit of lava covered in breakable rocks. Go down from there once more and then go left, break the blocks on the floor to expose a hidden path, and then after falling down go right again. Once you get to the room with the collapsing bridge, purposely fall down the hole in the middle and go right again to reach Thunderbird. The other hint is the Fokka's in Grand Palace (the jumping bird knights that throw swords at you), generate their randomness based on your controller input, so if you don't move they will just jump back and forth over you, giving you a chance to stab them in the ass with upstab. This is the best way to kill them if you want to kill them safely. When fighting Thunderbird, cast Thunder when he enters the screen, then cast Jump, Shield, and Reflect on yourself (Reflect makes your hit box smaller and absorbs some of the fire he spits at you). Also HereComesTheGame...if you ever want to learn to run the Zelda 2 Randomizer...I am down to teach you. I stream it every Wednesday. We could do a beginner seed (which is actually easier than beating the game normally).
You can skip placing the crystal at the end of any castle by simply jumping over the middle of the screen and exiting. This allows you to grind the level 1 castle over and over (especially since it has that fairy) and use that precious free level-up at the end to get your Attack to Level 4, or even 5 or 6 if you really wanted. And from that point the free level-ups on the rest of the castles are that much more beneficial getting you to level 8 across the board in no time. A little grinding on castle 1 makes all the difference.
14:46 I don't think it's fair to include Final Fantasy II as an example of an experimental outing because the entire Final Fantasy mainline series is known for changing it's systems and gameplay over every entry while not really ever revisiting the first's, as much as I and others want them to. At least there is Renaissance.
That's a fair point and I really appreciate how much FF experiments. My first one was 8 and I was drawn to it BECAUSE it was so experimental. But my point in mentioning it changing things a lot from 1 was more about pointing out that lots of series back then had a game that kinda set a standard only for the follow-up to try something different. Mario 2 USA is different, FF2 is different, Zelda II is different. In the context of the time, FF2 was a huge shift out of left field and none of the FFs after that really went down that road. Instead Square created SaGa and pushed things further into experimentation using FF2 as a jumping off point. That's what I read, anyway.
Zelda II was my first Zelda game, due to parents who didn't really value video games. This year, I tried to go back and appreciate it. Really I did. For my April Fool's Day stream, I jokingly declared that I was becoming a Zelda II speedrunner. But I was serious about replaying it. I have enjoyed such difficult titles as Celeste, Hades, and Breath of the Wild, so I was up for a challenge. The problem is that Zelda II's challenge just doesn't feel rewarding. Link's jump is laughably short (as is his sword), it's nearly impossible to jump over enemies at most heights, and there's too much that can kill you very quickly. The game never should've needed lives, nor should it have had insta-kill water and lava. Death Mountain's difficulty should have been scaled down for early-game, much like Death Mountain was in Ocarina of Time. And EXP should not have been lost upon Game Over. If you want a difficult Zelda title, play Breath of the Wild. Zelda II had some great ideas, but they were all incompletely formed. The Zelda series didn't forget what Zelda II had tried and evolved it all into something better. (Except for the 2D platforming part.)
It's funny to see the next generation discover these old games. We didn't have emulators. We just had to keep dying until we got good and figured out the tricks. Then years later we got the internet and could discover secret secrets. To hear that this is somehow an ugly duckling or a black sheep is a bit confusing. When we first played it, it was a quest for Link and therefore vindication that it was The Adventure of LINK because Zelda was just the damsel in distress. Her character could have been eliminated completely for "Save Hyrule, Link!" Later games created the mythos of the 100 year cycle of Ganon/Link. AoL felt like a more mature version of the original, because Link was more mature. We LOVED this game because we were more mature as gamers and games themselves were maturing with us.
Glad to hear someone else praising Zelda 2! It's actually my favorite Zelda game -- but then, I'm a fan of ambition and chance-taking in game design, so Castlevania 2 and American Mario 2 are among my favorites in their respective series as well. In general, I like any game that gives you a real sense of accomplishment and sets a really good mood -- and Zelda 2 definitely punches above its weight in both of those categories. I assume you've seen it at this point, but if not, there's a fantastic fanmade Zelda 2 enhanced PC remake (called either just that, or "Link Is Adventuresome") that was finally completed and released... just last year, I think? It's a faithful recreation of Zelda 2, but with a TON of additions and rebalances that essentially take everything Zelda 2 did well and improve upon them even further. It's also rebalanced to be quite a bit easier, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective -- and I don't like that in order to see the TRUE ending, find the TRUE last spell, and fight the TRUE last boss, you have to beat the game twice -- but those gripes aside, it's quite literally everything you could possibly ask for in a Zelda 2 remake, and shows a true understanding of and appreciation for everything that made Zelda 2 so great in the first place. Highly, highly recommended for if and when you decide to play Zelda 2 again, as it manages to add just enough to really feel like a new experience, without sacrificing anything that made the original what it is. (My favorite bit is what they did to the fairy spell -- wait'll you see! And be sure to search for the secret hidden fairy spell upgrade, too, as it makes it even better!)
I've heard a lot of great things about that remake, I'll have to try it sometime. I also liked Mario 2 USA (I'll admit I couldn't beat the original version, I had to play the All-Stars version with saves because I suck at the limited continues thing) and Simon's Quest. Simon's Quest was my first NES game and my first Castlevania (thanks, AVGN) and I really liked it when I initially played it but it's been so long it needs a revisit. What a horrible night to have a curse.
@@HereComesTheGame It holds up well! No matter what anyone else may say. ;) I think no other game on the NES has as thick and engrossing an atmosphere as Castlevania 2. Yeah, it's got some obtuse methods for progressing at times, but... I mean, every game in the 8-bit era had that! You just Nintendo Power'd your way through and continued enjoying the game, back then. No biggie! Heheh. Similarly, some of my other favorite NES games include Faxanadu, Goonies 2 (which AVGN also reviewed recently, and tore into, which I found kind of annoying because I absolutely ADORE that game!), Solstice (a highly underrated game, though it got a really nice YT review by HungryGoriya a couple years back), and Legacy of the Wizard (ditto HungryGoriya, and is actually the game that made me discover her as a YT game reviewer). If you're a fan of Zelda 2 and Castlevania 2, I suspect you'd also enjoy those four games as well! Though be prepared to have them absolutely tear you a new one, because they do NOT mess around (particularly Legacy of the Wizard -- one of my favorite games of all time, but few other games are as imposing!).
I also like Hungrygoriya, I need to get back to watching her because it's been a while. And of course AVGN didn't like Goonies 2... because this is Goonies 2. (I just loved that running gag in the video lol). I got Faxanadu but I have had issues with recording the NES (I've owned 3 Retron 5s and all messed up) but I still have an NES clone. That game uses passwords, right? I could totally review it sometime.
@@HereComesTheGame Yep! Faxanadu, Goonies 2, and Legacy of the Wizard all use passwords. Solstice is the only one of the four I suggested there that doesn't -- no passwords, no saving. Gotta beat it in one sitting.
Maybe I'll squeeze Faxanadu in somewhere. I want to do NES reviews but because of how unreliable save batteries are I often have to choose between emulating it with the Retron 5 or buying another/replacing the battery. But with passwords I could still do that one reliably. I love old cartridges but the old hardware is a pain to try to work with.
As someone who played 1&2 around the same time as a kid? I preffered 1. 2 just felt like it was actively wasting my time with the grinding because you lost all your exp when you died and reset, the grinding also took away from the value of exploration. Like you could have some absolutely unproductive sessions with 1&2, but 1 i learned what not to do, while 2 that time really did feel totally wasted. Also the worst thing to young me was the ability to waste things like the castle level ups, and one ups, figuring out that like you wanted to save castle completion to max out, and one ups for the final dungeon, and that i'd wasted those? Absolute last straw as a kid, so i quit 2 and went to finish 1.
I have a lot of love for Zelda II but I've never finished it. I started playing through Zelda II Redux, which adds a bit of quality of life stuff like not going right back to the start of the game when you continue. I enjoyed it but I wonder if I'd get more into it playing the original on original hardware some day though. Take the punishment as intended. I agree the combat is hard but incredibly tight. It never felt unfair except maybe getting knocked back into pits but that was standard in NES games. Cool review!
I have tried giving this game a chance. Especially when I saw the review from AVGN back when I first started watching him in 2011. I can tell from what I'm seeing about this game that it's good but for whatever reason whenever I play this game I get stuck early on and don't really know where to go and I just get frustrated and quit.
It's definitely not a very welcoming game for sure. It's a lot smoother when you know what you're doing. But it's merciless if you don't. Or even if you do, for that matter.
The real challenge of Zelda II is on original hardware and on a good old CRT. Done it myself and finished both quests. Mind you the second quest is much easier than the first. I tend to revisit Zelda II once every couple of years on my NES for fun.
The Zelda 2 Palace theme is, to date, the best "Dungeon" theme song of any Zelda game, and so is the title screen theme. Grew up with this game, and even though it was too difficult for me to be able to finish, I loved the challenge and I loved the gameplay!
It's not "different", it's literally BotW in 2D. If any game is an outlier in the series, it's OoT and its TWO sequels crammed into their own embarrassing timeline splits, and a timeline at all for that matter. But that's exactly what people have to resort to, mental gymnastics when THEY got into the series by a game that wasn't faithful, they have to make up excuses why those games are "the new normal". They aren't even A normal, old or new, because N64 and GameCube struggled in the market. It's the same kind of thing as TMNT 1987 being nonsense made for kids, and comes off like a 4kids dub of the comics, but the "new normal" fandom has to pretend they are the voice of some fandom or whatever and can dictate that's the CORE what the series is about. It's herd narcissism.
It's my favorite in the series. I played too much OoT to want to replay it and I adore Majora's Mask but that one is a "once every few years" kind of masterpiece. Z2 is always fun and could be my favorite NES game. Not too much comes even close to it for me. (I don't care for Zelda 1 I'm SORRRYYYYY)
It was one of the first games I ever owned, my dad brought it home one day and I just loved it. I think the side scrolling swordplay really works out well, I love fighting iron knuckles and the bosses are fun. it was just really hard, and difficult to work out how to proceed in the game, even with all the schoolyard discussions we had going on. Also, the dungeons are boring. If they had a bit more flair, more things to do, perhaps some puzzles, that'd make it all so much better. I still go back to it every once in a while, unlike zelda 1 which I have no nostalgia for.
I played it on NSO during COVID lockdowns and fell in love with it. Used saved states and rewind because it’s hard AF but still so good. Also your black sheep vs ugly duckling comparison is great. 👍
This kind of sums up why although it probably won't crack my top 5, it is still absolutely one of my favorite Zelda's. But then, I grew up with these games and played them when they released and didn't have the same expectations of LoZ that we fans have started to develop over the decades. I'll still put it above windwaker..fuck that one.
Do yourself a favor if you haven't already. Look up the unofficial Zelda 2 fan remake by Hoverbat. Without changing gameplay or wrecking the feel of the game a whole bunch of new content was added and it fits seamlessly into the game.
I never judged Zelda 2 on preconceived notions. I just played it and realized that unlike the first game, which was awesome, Zelda 2 was really bad. I played through the entire game, granted I could never beat the final dungeon, and everything from the grinding system, to the limited magic bar, to having to go back to the beginning and travel all the way across the deadly map to get to dungeons again, Link only being able to poke people while practically kissing them to do damage, or only being able to jump a small height despite the side scrolling setting. I could keep naming things, but it just wasn't a good game. And it is one of the hardest games that I have ever played too, which isn't always a bad thing, but in this case it is.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment even if you and I don't agree about the game. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. I guess that's one of the most wonderful things about Zelda - the games are so different that every game has its fans.
@@HereComesTheGame I totally agree. I'm not one of those people who gets worked up when someone has different preferences than themselves. And if you are able to complete Zelda 2 then you are a better gamer than I am. I could never beat the final boss.
Zelda II is definitely a rough game to play sometimes. I really liked what it had going for it, but I could just as easily see why someone wouldn't like it. The first time I played through it I didn't like it either but that was mostly because of me letting my expectations from Zelda 1 get in my way. But of course everyone has different tastes and that's part of what makes the world interesting. There's lots of variety out there.
I found Death Mountain to be easy, but that's only because I have good navigation skills. I say that because, we need to be honest here, the game sucks before you get Down Thrust, and it isn't a skill issue. I love this game but I dare any die hard fan to look me in the eye and tell me that most of this game's problems wouldn't be solved by having Down Thrust as an innate ability from the start. The beginning of Zelda 2 is an odd action game at the start, but then immediately turns into a game of resource management, trial & error, creating a plan, picking your fights, and deducing a proper combat route as a reward, all thanks to Down Thrust. You enter a room that has 1 Darknut and nothing else behind him? 1. Don't cast Shield. 2. Just pogo-stick over him with Down Thrust. Optimizing your routes via platforming VS necessary combat along with resource management is unique to Zelda 2 but it only starts after getting Down Thrust sadly.
I believe the only thing making this game unreasonable was having you respawn at the game’s starting point on a game over. It’s hard to gain mastery over the harder enemies when you must spend a significant amount of time trecking all the way back to where you last were. I feel this one critical design flaw is overlooked by most people criticizing its difficulty. The game would be perfect if this one issue was fixed, perhaps by having you respawn at previously visited villages.
Generally I agree, but for me I just wish it was consistent. Forced restart at spawn suddenly changing to respawning at the Great Palace is annoyingly inconsistent. I wish the whole game would spawn you at palace entrances like Zelda 1 dungeons did.
Both Zelda games on NES are S-tier in my opinion. Another couple of superb NES games that felt Zelda 2-ish were Battle of Olympus and Faxanadu. As for modern games, I find that the Dark Souls series strangely makes me feel the same way I felt when I was playing these NES games decades ago as a kid.
This video was all just your opinion. But your opinion is right. Most of the people who say Zelda 2 is bad weren't around when it came out and are looking at it through a modern lens and expecting modern quality of life mechanics. All the stuff they complain about like the difficulty, the cryptic quests and expecting all NPC dialogue to have a purpose were complete non-issues for us back then. That was just video games being video games. Plus gaming was such a social activity that a lot of the cryptic stuff you just knew from word of mouth. Like I don't even remember how exactly we found about the false wall in the castle, the random dude you had to talk to in the middle of the woods etc. Somebody somewhere just figured it out and it got passed on to where everybody knew about it. This was how it was for all games. So yeah, of course 30 years later after things have been iterated on countless times, the game is going to show it's age. But it was absolutely a great game.
I wasn't around for Zelda 1 or 2 but Zelda II has improved dramatically on the issues from Zelda 1. Most of the crypticness is gone and the game often hints at stuff, which really helps things. One issue I take with Zelda 1 is the idea that you're supposed to learn the stuff through the social experience. It's great design if you know others who have played it, but if you don't have the social experience with the game then the game just leaves you high and dry. You could definitely figure out a lot of it without talking to people (or looking it up in the modern day) but it's anything but intuitive or straightforward. Zelda II at least works a lot better as a self-contained experience vs one that requires external resources. Basically, I think I can appreciate that the idea of talking to others to learn stuff is really cool but I think it also means that on its own the game ends up lacking and becomes a worse experience. I'm sorry, I'm rambling. Just another of my opinions. I'd like to try to appreciate the NES era more though.
@@HereComesTheGame That's understandable. But it was a different time in the 80's and 90's, people in general were a lot more social and connected before the internet and social media. This was just stuff we discussed on the playground and at school so everybody knew it. But let me clarify it a bit, it wasn't a specific design choice to make so you had to talk to other people to solve things, it's all there for you to solve even if by accident. It was just how we played games back then in general, plus you always had game mags and there was even a Saturday morning show by Game pro magazine that did reviews, previews, cheat codes and how to beat tricky sections of games. The only reason things seem so cryptic now is because gradually people had less patience and so games started spoon feeding information , to now it's just expected that every NPC, piece of dialogue or obstacle serves a purpose, but old games weren't like that. We had to brute force a lot of solutions and we were fine with that , that was part of the fun.I couldn't tell you how many memories I have of all nighters with my siblings , cousins and friends being stuck on one level and having a blast instead of being frustrated and then when you stumbled across solution finally, you couldn't wait to brag to everybody at school the next day, so the info was free flowing. It's hard to really understand without a frame of reference, but remember this was the infancy of video games so there were a lot less rules and expectations for how games were supposed to work, and add to that just the highly social nature of people in general at the time, and it was never an issue, which is why you see it in so many early games.
I appreciate you breaking it down and elaborating on it. I feel like a lot of people who were around back then hear someone my age (26) talk about these games and just want to be snooty about it. "Oh, you don't get it!" But they don't want to have the conversation and maybe help me broaden my horizons so I can "get it". Sometimes I feel like some gamers just want to have the same sort of generation wars we have in other parts of life. Thanks for explaining it more in detail. I appreciate an opportunity to broaden my perspective and learn more about the subject. Thank you.
Nice review of a classic. If folk want to experience a sprouced up version of it I do recommend giving the PC Remake by hoverbat a try, it's also a pretty darn good experience, too.
I still think it’s a good game. I remember getting stuck when I was little and just gave up on the game. The Nintendo power magazine was confusing at the time. I think I was stuck on using the boots to cross the water. Like who the heck does that? Anyway, it wasn’t until I was in 5th grade (Played it when I was in kindergarten I think) that I actually beat the game. Just came back and conquered. All this being said I do have the gold cartridge of the first two and the one without it. It just sits up in a room taking up space but looks neat.
Greetings from the BIG SKY. I was working at NOA when the 1st Zelda game came out and I have this game also in my collection. I was glad I had friends on the game counseling team to call when this game came out. None of the 'propaganda' was ever around Bellevue.
I always wished SNES Zelda Link To The Past , would've been a lot more like Zelda 2 , , , using Golden Axe as a model ,you know 16-Bit era and all that , , oh well what might have been am i right ? ? great video man 😸👍👍
Zelda 2 is my favorite in the series! The gameplay is so much fun. You should really google the Zelda 2 remaster and play it!! It adds a ton of quality of life improvements to fix your complaints. Plus tons of new content to explore! :)
It's a great game. People just try to decide for you. I've completed the game on NES a few times. Once on 3ds. And a couple times on emu. Ive also finished the game fairly quickly as well. I can understand why some people don't like the program. Show my note to river man. And a couple other spots were difficult to figure out on your own. I really like the game. And believe it to be one of the best NES games for sure.
It's a really cool game. I wish more people would try a game for themselves, or at least admit "I heard it was good/bad but I haven't played it so I can't confirm for myself".
I've felt like I was the only one who genuinely loved this game for such a long time! When the original Dark Souls came out and people were like BEST GAME EVER ROARRR all I could think was that it had a lot of similarities to Zelda II
@@HereComesTheGame I definitely wouldn't say that's easy, per se -- more like "medium to medium-hard" maybe, though everyone is different I suppose. It's just strange to me when people say that it's super tough (commonly it's called "NES Hard" though I would flatly disagree with that). I think it's because I don't really think it's difficulty is really *notable* compared to many titles released over the last decade. Like I can cruise through Zelda 2 with relative ease but felt like I fought for every inch of ground in Ender Lilies, for example. Anyway, thanks for saying positive things about it. Zelda 2 was one of my favorite childhood games and it's nice to see someone not griping about it.
Replace "weak" with "adults who have jobs and bills to pay", and your comment would actually be correct, and not just another old-man-yelling-at-cloud remark. You beat it as an 11yo cuz you had nothing else to do with your free time.
They are indeed, horribly weak. Their attention spans are too short. I like to think we had a "gamer sense" to find some of the secrets... Even today, earlier, I saw someone post in Discord "help. Does (this branch of choices) has consequences?" instead of finding out by doing....... Gamers are so afraid to fail, experiment, and try. Disgusting creatures.
You want to beat the game fairly next time? You must be a younger gamer. Back in the day, that's the only way we could beat a game. The first time I'd heard this game was hard was on RUclips, when some "gamer" who grew up with the N64 cried about how unfair it is. I prefer this to "hey, listen", interrupting game play if you stray off the path. Real gamers don't need forced tutorials and way points. I love the game and play through it, at least once a year. i think the game is too short and should have had 2 more palaces in it.
It's better for me to be honest and disappoint with truth than to be dishonest and impress with falsehood, so I admit what I did. I can't please everybody. So it goes. Why bash other generations of gamers? The hobby would be dead without younger gamers. We already fight each other over generational conflicts in everything else. Can we not ruin gaming with that sort of stuff too?
Zelda II is so good. The only dislike I have with it is the overworld. I wish you weee able to fight off the enemies if you didn’t need/want xp and could fight them to keep moving but if you got hit you would then still go into side scroll
If I lived in Japan or was talking about Super Smash Bros... Darn that old Nintendo censorship. Would anyone really have cared about it if they kept them as Temples in the Western releases?
Not going to lie… Zelda 2 > Zelda We (my brother and I) kept our NES turned on for WEEKS the first time we got to Great Palace as we were afraid if we shut it off we would lose the ability to continue from there…and it took us WEEKS to finish that bastard. Also use SPELL spell in Valley of Death instead of FAIRY…
9:07 Haven't heard that one before. I don't mean to be rude, but it is disappointing watching people lose patience and just throw away the experience of the final boss, as well as pretty much the entire game if I'm being honest. You and many other youtubers put all that effort to reach the final palace... and then suddenly you just don't care enough to bother. Then there's the "I don't feel like it" excuse. Yeah, the game is hard, but you knew that going in, and you're at the very end. The whole point is to literally become better at combat. Similarly to how you get better at fighting games. They come with exploits too, but ---wait already you know this because you pretty much said it yourself! Maybe I'm overreacting, but it's just a headscratcher to me that even with the self-awareness and willingness to discuss the game 'objectively.' You and the others who review this can't seem to just finish it normally, and in your case that was on top of save stating to max out your stats. It... kind of defeats the whole point. No different than just playing with game shark codes. Which weirdly makes everything you say harder to hear because you're not wrong about a lot of your points, and you do clearly understand the game. The problem is that you gave up on it, decided to just finish it as a formality once you knew what you were going to say.
Ultimately, the reason why I opted for save states at the end is because at that point I was having issues with my Retron 5 so I knew I better finish soon before I end up unable to beat the game. I also think Zelda II's design is just aggravating once it hits the endgame. So yeah, I took the easy way out. I don't deny it's a copout. In fact, I admit as much. Should I have lied and pretended I did the Great Palace legit? Also, I didn't use the save states to get full stats, I used them to safely farm for magic potions to heal up and go into the fight with full magic and health. I was already max level in all stats because I grinded up before going to the palace. I'd rather be honest about what I did, even if it's going to disappoint some people, than lie to look good.
@@HereComesTheGame I do appreciate you being upfront about it. And I'm probably being nit-picky, but I'm of the opinion that it's worth it to just fight him normally, even at one bar of health. Yeah, you were probably going to get a game over. And you don't need to beat Link's Shadow normally to qualify talking about the game. But because the entire thing is building up to that fight, you really miss out on that feeling of accomplishment by using the exploit. That's all I'm saying.
I’m an asshole when it comes to subscribing. For a newer channel, I give you a pass, more than that. I’m a stickler for vocal fidelity. I cannot stand some channels with good content because their voice sounds rough/uncouth.(too much LOTR, haha). Zeltik partners with some. I root for new channels and speak my mind. U have a smooth voice, cadence and something my 10th grade English teacher always praised. Perhaps you already know. Good on u, man.
This was my first Zelda game. Dad got our NES in 1989 and my Grandma went to the local flea market to get games on the cheap. As a result we got some stinkers, but mostly mid-range to great games. Zelda II was one of them - she bought it because of the gold cartridge thinking it was a limited edition or something while passing over the original not knowing she was buying a sequel - and it quickly became the game I spent the most time on. Years latee (95 or so) I finally got to play the original for the first time and was shocked when running into an enemy on the overworld damaged me and didn't send me to a side-scrolling action sequence. :p
That's a fun story. I wish I found a gold Zelda II at a flea market. Although I did get a N64 with WWF No Mercy, 2 controllers and an expansion pack at one once...
Basically the same thing happened to me, where I got Zelda II before the first game and then played Zelda 1 about 10 years after. I honestly wasn’t that impressed with the first game. Came back to it a couple more times throughout my life and I still don’t like how it plays, despite beating it’s second quest a few times. Zelda II just feels like a much more slick experience.
First Zelda game? Me too! I remember there was a yard sale happening around the neighborhood where I grew up and we picked out Dr Mario and this shiny gold cartridge. Back then the best I could do was the 1st level and enter Midoro Swamp. I didn’t even know there was a save option until I picked up a GBA copy in 2000’s. With the internet’s help in some runaround areas on my GBA SP I did my best and made it all the way to the thunder bird boss. Stupid thunder bird…
"I don't want to go through that again anytime soon" I SINCERLY suggest you try the PC remake! It fixes a LOT of the problems with the original, while subtly updating the graphics, adding widescreen, reimaging some boss fights and adding quite a bit of new content and secrets. There are several youtube reviews out there that recommend it more than I ever could.
I'll have to check it out sometime. To be fair, I loved playing Zelda II, it's just really hard so I don't want to come right back to it, but I bet the remake does make things much smoother! Thanks for the recommendation!
I wish more people would try Zelda II. I think a lot of people hear "Zelda" and then get put off by the game being different because the name sets expectations. Zelda II is a game that really made me think a lot about the danger of going in with baggage, because I initially disliked it for being different too (I had just played Zelda 1, the only other Zelda game I beat so far) and it ruined the experience. Then I thought about how unfair I was and gave it the second chance it deserved. And it blew me away. So, SO great.
Yeah. Not that the formula is bad, but in 1987, there was no formula. And even then, you can see what the developers liked to do: notice that even in Zelda II, the first three temples are relatively easily accessible. You need a raft to go to Eastern Hyrule and access the rest of the game. It's sort of like how in the first game you can get to Levels 1-3 easily, but you need a raft to get to Level 4, and the other Underworld Levels are hidden or blocked by some challenge you have to pass.
@@HereComesTheGame i grew up on this one so it's a looooooot of experience gettin slapped around as a kid. Don't feel bad. Game is unforgiving and they make sure you feel that booklet describing them wantin you dead
The sage who teaches Thunder actually won't teach you unless you have all four magic containers.
The stupid thing is, I wrote that down in my notes but it ended up being overlooked in the end. Oops. I missed something.
@@HereComesTheGame I Want Zelda 2 To Be Remade With Easy Mode
All the spells on the East Continent are like that. But with different requirements.
My favorite NES game. Trying to No Death run it is not easy....especially in the walk leading to the final palace.
@@verygreedy100 Just do event skips =P.
As a 40 year old who grew up playing NES games since the 80s, people often ask me how I got so good at platformers, the secret is years of practicing playing Zelda 2, Megaman and Ninja Gaiden series games.
Those games are training from hell but you'll be an expert playing those.
You can add in Kid Icarus, Metroid, TMNT 1 & 2, Demon Sword, SMB 1/2/3, and Contra. Half of our available game selection was basically Dark Souls before good graphics existed.
Nintendo are the ones who decided it’s bad, by never making one like it again
I'm 32 and I concur, these games really honed my own skills in future platformers since then XD
I roomed with a Chinese guy who was significantly younger than me. When he saw me play New SMB Wii, he said "It's like kung fu skill!" Nah, it's just from grinding hard on 2D Mario back when that was the major thing.
I hate how the internet just collectively agreed one day that "Zelda II is bad". I imagine most of the people saying that never actually played the game because Zelda II is just awesome and one of the best Zeldas in my opinion.
A lot of people hear people say a game is bad and rather than trying for themselves they'll just accept it at face value. We're all guilty of it sometimes. It's a shame, because there's a lot of gems out there that have been written off like this, like Zelda II.
The internet did the same to E.T on the Atari 2600.
The game struck the uncanny valley with most people who played it, and that collective opinion was formed before the internet was widely adopted. Even Ninja Gaiden was brighter toned and more forgiving. Most of you don't understand that your hindsight opinion was formed BECAUSE the internet made the game accessible through online walkthroughs and reviews. It was clunky, cumbersome, and confusing for most of the kids who were playing it, and the atmosphere was unsettling in contrast to other titles. The dark caves, cryptic hints, the Mt. Doom maze, the constant enemy spawns, the blank black background that existed from memory limitations, the discordant music, those bubble platforming stages, and trying to figure out how to swing around those shields without any help made the game frustrating, which didn't work back then because the game was VERY linear in comparison to the first title, which meant you couldn't explore when stuck, you HAD to power through.
So most of us got to Mt. Doom and put the game down shortly before or after to go back to playing Crystalis, Willow, Faxanadu, etc. That game just didn't land in an environment where "games" were synonymous with titles like Kirby and Mario 3.
It aged better than it launched. I'll say that much. My favorite final fantasy is 8, and I'm only just recently hearing people talk fondly if it, much like Zelda 2. It wasn't a trend, there was good reason for why it didn't land with its audience. We weren't ready for that style yet until the N64 came out, or until we got a sega genesis and learned to appreciate edgy games.
@Cretaal I guess my brother and I weren't most kids. We got through the game just fine back in 1989. The only thing that gave us trouble was finding the last heart container, which I eventually found well after beating the game.
I played it and the first Zelda games back to back around 1997, after having somehow never heard of them despite their frequent connections to my childhood favorite shows (Super Mario Bros. Super Show and Captain N: The Game Master - I just _somehow_ missed _all_ those episodes). Zelda II has been one of my all time favorite games ever since then, and just in time for Ocarina of Time to come out and give me an interesting side-grade to the technical swordplay on display here.
This game really brings back memories for me. A friend owned it and he came over to my house every evening to play it together. We wasted months on this game, had to call the Nintendo helpline every so often or get information about certain aspects of the game from that one guy in class knew because he completed it already. Then my friend was going to sell his NES including Zelda II so he could buy a SNES without us actually completing it despite being really far into the game. On the day of the sale, I borrowed it and actually managed to complete it. That was such a thrilling moment! If I remember correctly the game doesn't allow you to save the completed file, so I went to his house to return the game and told him about the achievement. We popped the cartridge in his NES and I went through the entire cycle of defeating the final palace again. I managed to beat the game for a second time giving us both a sense of relief and satisfaction.
At the end of thet day the NES and Zelda II were sold but we both had the gratifcation of knowing those grueling months playing this hard as nails game were not for nothing.
The downward thrust is so good that it's been a staple move in Link's kit since the original Super Smash Bros.
I was going to mention it in the video but I felt it was unnecessary to bring it up - it's fantastic there too. Young Link FTW
Zelda II is my favorite of the whole franchise. I replay it at least once or twice per year and can now beat it in about 4 hours. Just a little strategic grinding in the DMGL (Death Mountain Grind Loop) whenever you need an XP top-off before moving on to the next dungeon and it isn't really even that hard. The combat is some of my favorite of any game. (The only better combat being in the FromSoft Souls games.) The back and forth rhythm of the combat produces a real nice flow state and with practice even those Blue Iron Knuckles are very manageable and quite satisfying fights. A 10 out of 10, absolute gem of a game. I love it so much that I even have a Zelda II Tattoo!
Awesome! I see a lot of folks mention Dark Souls. I only ever played the first one, but I've been meaning to revisit it...
Same. I like it more than BotW and TotK, both of which are super overrated gimmicky games.
@@roberthunter479 I actually liked BotW, it was fun to explore the world and the combat was pretty good if a little hampered by the limited enemy types. However, I think TotK was massively overrated, the whole Zonai powers and crafting system was both clunky and fiddley and also broke the game. Not only did the constant need to be in the menus break the immersion, the abilities that let you go through ceilings or simply fly past everything forced the level design to be extremely one note and unimaginative. TotK is one of the worst of the whole franchise.
@@Dustinisgood Nice to write to someone who loves Z2. I like the open world thing of BotW but they could have put real dungeons and a system where I don't want to use any weapons because they break after 15 hits or so. I've been told there are over 100 dungeons but I don't count those tiny, gimmicky carnival game rooms. I just think of the lost potential.
As for Zelda 2, yeah, my favorite of the franchise as well. I think it might be my favorite game of all time, because I will return to it about once a year and play through it.
You probably already know this but someone has made a Zelda 2 remake for PC. It covers one of my complaints about Zelda 2, in that I think it's too short. They add more quests and its an interesting playthrough. Sure beats the randomizer, which also isn't bad.
@@HereComesTheGame If you played the first one than you already know that the souls games are amazing and absolutely worth playing every one, I recommend playing in this order: 1. Dark Souls Remastered. 2. Bloodborne. 3. Demon Souls Remastered. 4. Elden Ring (which might be the best game of all time). 5 Sekiro, 6. Dark Souls 3. 7. Dark Souls 2.
I beat this game a few times a year, usually in one sitting. I usually grind XP at the entrance to the third palace- this Ironknuckle statue is the first one that, when struck, either gives a red potion or comes to life as a red one (100XP).
I just moved recently, and this video reminds me that I need to play this on my projector. I love this game. Same with SMB2 and RHCP's "One Hot Minute". I love my unpopular opinions lol
I love a good unpopular opinion as well. Life would be dull if we all had the same opinions!
Thanks for the comment.
Smb2 is my favorite as well
zelda ii... the game where dying in the game can actually kill you IRL
The stress will kill you or the flashing lights will. That's why I felt the need to interrupt the video to warn people. I'd hate for something bad to happen to someone.
@@HereComesTheGame or one may just nearly die reading such a concern....;)
LOL.
Zelda II *deserves* a remake, but only as long as they keep it as a platformer.
Would it really be a remake at that point if they changed that? It would be cool to see a Zelda II remake.
This is the game that made me a gamer. I was so in love with the large map and unlockable secrets
It must have been a magical experience. So expansive and rewarding.
Always been my favorite Zelda title. Been playing since it was new. I was desperate to rent it in 89. The small rental shop in my town only had one copy. I got on the waiting list for it. But that sad day long ago I left with wizards and warriors. Worth the wait though, two weeks later I got Zelda 2 and Mario 2 for my birthday. Good memories of great times.
That's awesome. Zelda 2 and Mario 2 are great games, although I'll admit I had to beat Mario 2 on All-Stars because the limited continues thing isn't my thing. Although I bet it does make the game pretty interesting when you actually know what you're doing, because of the tension it creates.
This is one of favorite games of all time. I beat it back when it was new in the 80's and replay it about once a year. Great memories.
That must have been magical getting to see it at the time. I'll never know that experience, but I love hearing about it!
@@HereComesTheGame Indeed, the game was hard, but my brothers and I would get a bit farther everytime we played it and we finally beat it together along with some tips from school friends, neighbors, and Nintendo Power magazine. The gameplay just kept me coming back, that and the music, which I argue is the best in the series.
I remembered my cousin came to my house one day in 86 showing off this golden NES cartridge called Zelda. It was the most beautiful thing I seen. A month later I went out with my saved allowance to buy Zelda 1.
Passed Zelda 1 in less than a week and was looking for me. Was at a friend's house when drawn to this Nintendo Fan Club magazine showing Zelda 2. He lent me the magazine but it was raining hard so I put the mag inside my backpack and put inside my jacket and ran home a mile away. Got home soaking but at least the mag was dry.
As much as I loved Zelda 2, I only borrowed the game from the video rental shop or friends to play it. Same with Castlevania 2. Probably because I was too poor to afford them at the time. Both are great games. Just people didn't like them because they were different than the 1st games. Some of the best music in the series are in these games.
It's funny that people don't like Castlevania 2 because of "need a Nintendo Power subscription for the cryptic stuff", but then Zelda 1 was exactly the same in it's crypticness. Because of my memory, I know exactly what to do, but a friend who didn't grow up with these games found it's lack of direction annoying and it made me realize I took that knowledge for granted.
4:04 In my experience, Zelda 1 is not open ended, most people found the dungeons in order. Veteran players figured out how to play out of order, but that's not the norm. And yes at release, Nintendo did a bit of a social experiment where they expected kids to share rumors and tips with each other to figure out what to do... something that can only be experienced when the game was new. I played the game when it was mostly figured out , maybe a few years after the release, so I know the dungeon order by memory taught to me by older relatives, but when a friend who didn't grow up with it said the game was "NES cryptic" it made me realize how much I took that game knowledge for granted... that the game actually didn't provide much direction or at least funnel you there.
You've perfectly stated just what it is that bothers me about Zelda 1: it's really cryptic on its own, which is something of a problem in general in games back then. The manual helps with a lot of those old games but overall they're just really cryptic. Without either a manual, some sort of guide or somebody who knows the stuff a lot of those games don't really give the information you'd need to really appreciate them. It would have been cool to play in the 80s or 90s with kids playing them because of the social experiment of it all but without that, the absence of info in many games is a major failing.
Some games have good design that organically shows without having to tell, but many are designed poorly so they need to tell. I acknowledge needing to cut them a little slack because game design wasn't exactly solved yet, but that doesn't make trying to play the game today any less annoying. People will eagerly criticize someone for pointing this out while taking their own preexisting external game knowledge for granted as if the game actually organically gave it to them instead of them also needing an external tool.
The Wii U version allows you to use a save state, so it's similar to the Retron 5.
/The 3DS and NES Classic Edition.
Spot on review! The sword fights with knights is my favorite thing. Thrusting high and low hearing that "twang" sound effect! By the time I made it to the end of the game (long after it's release) I of course knew about the cheese strategy for Dark Link...but I had fight him straight up because that duel was too epic to pass up.
I didn't leave my console on (playing as a child in the 90s), I think it was one entire morning session until I got it figured out.
The next time I run through Zelda II I plan on just doing a huge marathon session through the Great Palace. Maybe I'll finally fight Dark Link legit instead of the crouch stab strategy.
My favorite Zelda game. Beat it when I was 8 years old, no guides, no help. I still replay it from time to time.
You can actually skip placing the crystal in the palaces when you finish them by jumping over the trigger point. If you do that, then you can run the whole game up through the sixth palace, then come back and use the palaces to get the last six levels you need to max out. You also get an extra life at the same time, so you can head to the final palace at max level, max extra lives, all with no time spent grinding xp.
Oh, and when fighting iron knuckles, you can jump, stab your sword forward, and let the blade fall onto their head. Does damage past the shield. Fighting them normally is fun, but if you're trying to move a bit faster, that technique really helps speed the fights up.
I’ve always harbored a wish that Nintendo would take another shot at making another Zelda game in the Zelda II style (or at least remaking it sanding off the rough edges) to remove its stigma and black sheep status.
I'd love if they tried it again. Even if they made a new property for it, I love the sidescroller platformer action-RPG thing and I wish they'd try again.
FYI PinkKittyRose beat Zelda II without taking any damage. There's a video of it somewhere. It was an amazing run.
Dang! I hope one day to beat the whole game without ever using a save state and there's people beating the whole thing without taking damage? I'm impressed! That's no easy feat!
It's was tough getting into it, but I liked it so much I played it twice.
I love it too. It's not the most welcoming game ever, but it's worth the trouble and I felt like I accomplished something when I beat it both times myself.
I just remember this game kicking my ass. Never could finish.
It's tough as nails. But at the same time it's addicting. Winning is so satisfying!
@@HereComesTheGame yeah I still thought the game was super cool.
tl;dr - Game's fine. Jump thrust deserves love, too.
For anyone recommending Zelda 2 to someone, a simple idea is to just ignore bosses until the end. The crystals guarantee a level and a player gets more out of them when they're worth thousands of exp later on, rather than for what little you would get out of them initially. Plus, you get to ignore the bosses until you're already stronger than intended. I did that in a recent playthrough on my 3DS just to bully them but I also realized it makes the playthrough that much easier. I went into the great palace with maxed stats and nine lives because I did this... then I wasted the lives exploring the dead ends and learning to better handle the unique enemies inhabiting it.
I noticed two things about the great palace. First, the correct path is surprisingly easy. Anyone who grew up with the NES already knows the library is chock full of titles that have a maze-like area or level that simply helps to extend the play time and you'll know that person grew up in this era because they will immediately start drawing a map. Trying to discover the correct path in the final palace is genuinely difficult, but that difficulty is entirely optional. All the dead ends are packed with enemies or require you to waste your magic while the correct route is mostly rooms with basic platforming or a single fokka bouncing around. This leads into the second thing - the jump thrust.
I rarely used it in any of my other playthroughs, because the down thrust is just easier, but I wanted to actually fight the enemies in the great palace this time around and realized the jump thrust is not just good to use for the king bubbles or the giant bots who come down at you, but it also just destroys the fokka. Each time they jump, I do the same. Once you got the timing down, those birds are nothing. That's the only genuinely difficult part of reaching the Thunderbird and I now realize I can just cancel out their jumps by stabbing their butts in midair.
There's also a room with three tall breakable platforms that look like Ts to the left of where you fell down to proceed to meet the Thunderbird, and you can break the blocks at the bottom to find either red potions or an enemy within them. Just leave and return to that room if it spawns an enemy instead of the potion. It's like what you would do with one of the statues at the entrance of the other palaces until you get your life and magic filled up. I originally thought I had to take a death to refill my magic to cast Thunder until I discovered that. Just one more little reward for exploration provided by the devs.
I wish I had the time to make and edit a video about it because there's several little details most people never pick up on highlighting just how good the overall design of this game is. Most are too busy abusing save states to ensure their "perfect run only" mentality on a first (and usually only) playthrough. I joked to one person about how they were going to die to the same enemy later on a dozen times because they will continue to run headfirst into the projectiles, instead of jumping over them, and then proceed to blame the game for it. Hours later, she did exactly that and the look on her face after I told her so was priceless.
For an NES title, Zelda 2 is not even remotely difficult... by comparison, that is. It's certainly not easy, but an absolute godsend compared to what I played in the 80s. As you stated, Link feels good to use. He does exactly what you tell him to do. A lot of Famicom/NES games are not that polished which is why they never received half a dozen ports over the years and are now mostly forgotten.
I had it as a kid and played it a bunch and never got much farther than beating the first dungeon. Finally played it again a few years ago and beat the game and i like the game. It's just a weird zelda game.
Save states would have left so many afternoons of my childhood to do other things.
I got to Dark Link countless times back in the 80s, coming so close so many times to killing Dark Link in real combat, but nobody I knew was aware of the cheese strat.
Kids today think Soulslikes are hard...
This game is criminally underrated. It’s always been one of my favorite NES games
I'm glad it exists. It isn't my favorite Zelda by a long shot (That'd be Tunic, obviously) but its a really interesting relic of a time when things were much more in flux.
To be honest, I prefer when creators were comfortable to mix things up. Nowadays, big companies seem outright scared of changing THE FORMULA even an inch. And it's a bit sad. Games were exciting when you didn't always know what to expect. Nowadays, you mostly find that with indie games. I'm glad Nintendo tried it again with Breath of the Wild - controversy about it be damned.
can we talk about how the boss music bangs?
Absolutely, it has me on the edge of my seat every time!
My parents tag teamed the game; one was playing as the other took notes and my own first run through was blessed by my lack of vocabulary as I had to try one more time on the F'n Blue horsemen boss... or sea palace boss.
I love it for how simple yet challenging it is.
Death Mountain... well my parents notes I believe is how I knew the path the first time... but died a lot in order to learn how to work around the many foes properly then finished checking all caves on the way back.
Hate the flying eyes most but the minions were themselves all mini bosses when the screen was dank with them.
That's pretty cool! My mom isn't a gamer and wasn't when I was a kid, but that's neat that your parents played the game and then you got to use their notes for it yourself. It's like they passed ancient secrets down to their successor or something!
This was one of many NES games I played as a kid where I found infinitely more enjoyment looking through the game manual than from the actual game. It had a lot of fun art and storytelling, but the game, with its warbley music and rat maze-like exploration was just frustrating
This is my favorite game. So much that I chose to speedrun it. I am not great, but my time is about 92 minutes on 1 continue.
My advice to those who want to beat this game without using Game Genie or Save States is to get your levels to 411 out of Palace 1. You can do this by getting to Horsehead with 311 and at least 50XP. Horsehead will give you 50XP which will put you just over the requirement for a Magic level up and when you place the crystal you will get a full level of Attack's worth of XP and hit 411. This attack level will make the rest of the game feel trivial. On the way to Death Mountain and P2, work towards 523 (starting with magic and life). End P2 with 623, then end P3 with 734. End P4 with 737, P5 with 778, and P6 with 788.
When fighting the red Daira's in Death Mountain (the lizards that throw unblockable hammers at you), learn their pattern and make multiple leaping attacks where you stab them on the way down. Sometimes they will deviate their pattern a little and throw two hammers instead of just one.
As far as navigating your way through GP...you take the first left and then from there always go right until you reach a room with a fairy over a pit of lava covered in breakable rocks. Go down from there once more and then go left, break the blocks on the floor to expose a hidden path, and then after falling down go right again. Once you get to the room with the collapsing bridge, purposely fall down the hole in the middle and go right again to reach Thunderbird.
The other hint is the Fokka's in Grand Palace (the jumping bird knights that throw swords at you), generate their randomness based on your controller input, so if you don't move they will just jump back and forth over you, giving you a chance to stab them in the ass with upstab. This is the best way to kill them if you want to kill them safely.
When fighting Thunderbird, cast Thunder when he enters the screen, then cast Jump, Shield, and Reflect on yourself (Reflect makes your hit box smaller and absorbs some of the fire he spits at you).
Also HereComesTheGame...if you ever want to learn to run the Zelda 2 Randomizer...I am down to teach you. I stream it every Wednesday. We could do a beginner seed (which is actually easier than beating the game normally).
You can skip placing the crystal at the end of any castle by simply jumping over the middle of the screen and exiting. This allows you to grind the level 1 castle over and over (especially since it has that fairy) and use that precious free level-up at the end to get your Attack to Level 4, or even 5 or 6 if you really wanted. And from that point the free level-ups on the rest of the castles are that much more beneficial getting you to level 8 across the board in no time. A little grinding on castle 1 makes all the difference.
14:46 I don't think it's fair to include Final Fantasy II as an example of an experimental outing because the entire Final Fantasy mainline series is known for changing it's systems and gameplay over every entry while not really ever revisiting the first's, as much as I and others want them to. At least there is Renaissance.
That's a fair point and I really appreciate how much FF experiments. My first one was 8 and I was drawn to it BECAUSE it was so experimental.
But my point in mentioning it changing things a lot from 1 was more about pointing out that lots of series back then had a game that kinda set a standard only for the follow-up to try something different. Mario 2 USA is different, FF2 is different, Zelda II is different.
In the context of the time, FF2 was a huge shift out of left field and none of the FFs after that really went down that road. Instead Square created SaGa and pushed things further into experimentation using FF2 as a jumping off point. That's what I read, anyway.
Zelda II was my first Zelda game, due to parents who didn't really value video games. This year, I tried to go back and appreciate it. Really I did.
For my April Fool's Day stream, I jokingly declared that I was becoming a Zelda II speedrunner. But I was serious about replaying it. I have enjoyed such difficult titles as Celeste, Hades, and Breath of the Wild, so I was up for a challenge.
The problem is that Zelda II's challenge just doesn't feel rewarding. Link's jump is laughably short (as is his sword), it's nearly impossible to jump over enemies at most heights, and there's too much that can kill you very quickly.
The game never should've needed lives, nor should it have had insta-kill water and lava. Death Mountain's difficulty should have been scaled down for early-game, much like Death Mountain was in Ocarina of Time. And EXP should not have been lost upon Game Over.
If you want a difficult Zelda title, play Breath of the Wild. Zelda II had some great ideas, but they were all incompletely formed. The Zelda series didn't forget what Zelda II had tried and evolved it all into something better. (Except for the 2D platforming part.)
It's funny to see the next generation discover these old games. We didn't have emulators. We just had to keep dying until we got good and figured out the tricks. Then years later we got the internet and could discover secret secrets. To hear that this is somehow an ugly duckling or a black sheep is a bit confusing. When we first played it, it was a quest for Link and therefore vindication that it was The Adventure of LINK because Zelda was just the damsel in distress. Her character could have been eliminated completely for "Save Hyrule, Link!" Later games created the mythos of the 100 year cycle of Ganon/Link. AoL felt like a more mature version of the original, because Link was more mature. We LOVED this game because we were more mature as gamers and games themselves were maturing with us.
Glad to hear someone else praising Zelda 2! It's actually my favorite Zelda game -- but then, I'm a fan of ambition and chance-taking in game design, so Castlevania 2 and American Mario 2 are among my favorites in their respective series as well. In general, I like any game that gives you a real sense of accomplishment and sets a really good mood -- and Zelda 2 definitely punches above its weight in both of those categories.
I assume you've seen it at this point, but if not, there's a fantastic fanmade Zelda 2 enhanced PC remake (called either just that, or "Link Is Adventuresome") that was finally completed and released... just last year, I think? It's a faithful recreation of Zelda 2, but with a TON of additions and rebalances that essentially take everything Zelda 2 did well and improve upon them even further. It's also rebalanced to be quite a bit easier, which is either a good thing or a bad thing depending on your perspective -- and I don't like that in order to see the TRUE ending, find the TRUE last spell, and fight the TRUE last boss, you have to beat the game twice -- but those gripes aside, it's quite literally everything you could possibly ask for in a Zelda 2 remake, and shows a true understanding of and appreciation for everything that made Zelda 2 so great in the first place.
Highly, highly recommended for if and when you decide to play Zelda 2 again, as it manages to add just enough to really feel like a new experience, without sacrificing anything that made the original what it is. (My favorite bit is what they did to the fairy spell -- wait'll you see! And be sure to search for the secret hidden fairy spell upgrade, too, as it makes it even better!)
I've heard a lot of great things about that remake, I'll have to try it sometime.
I also liked Mario 2 USA (I'll admit I couldn't beat the original version, I had to play the All-Stars version with saves because I suck at the limited continues thing) and Simon's Quest. Simon's Quest was my first NES game and my first Castlevania (thanks, AVGN) and I really liked it when I initially played it but it's been so long it needs a revisit. What a horrible night to have a curse.
@@HereComesTheGame It holds up well! No matter what anyone else may say. ;) I think no other game on the NES has as thick and engrossing an atmosphere as Castlevania 2. Yeah, it's got some obtuse methods for progressing at times, but... I mean, every game in the 8-bit era had that! You just Nintendo Power'd your way through and continued enjoying the game, back then. No biggie! Heheh.
Similarly, some of my other favorite NES games include Faxanadu, Goonies 2 (which AVGN also reviewed recently, and tore into, which I found kind of annoying because I absolutely ADORE that game!), Solstice (a highly underrated game, though it got a really nice YT review by HungryGoriya a couple years back), and Legacy of the Wizard (ditto HungryGoriya, and is actually the game that made me discover her as a YT game reviewer). If you're a fan of Zelda 2 and Castlevania 2, I suspect you'd also enjoy those four games as well! Though be prepared to have them absolutely tear you a new one, because they do NOT mess around (particularly Legacy of the Wizard -- one of my favorite games of all time, but few other games are as imposing!).
I also like Hungrygoriya, I need to get back to watching her because it's been a while.
And of course AVGN didn't like Goonies 2... because this is Goonies 2. (I just loved that running gag in the video lol).
I got Faxanadu but I have had issues with recording the NES (I've owned 3 Retron 5s and all messed up) but I still have an NES clone. That game uses passwords, right? I could totally review it sometime.
@@HereComesTheGame Yep! Faxanadu, Goonies 2, and Legacy of the Wizard all use passwords. Solstice is the only one of the four I suggested there that doesn't -- no passwords, no saving. Gotta beat it in one sitting.
Maybe I'll squeeze Faxanadu in somewhere. I want to do NES reviews but because of how unreliable save batteries are I often have to choose between emulating it with the Retron 5 or buying another/replacing the battery. But with passwords I could still do that one reliably.
I love old cartridges but the old hardware is a pain to try to work with.
As someone who played 1&2 around the same time as a kid?
I preffered 1.
2 just felt like it was actively wasting my time with the grinding because you lost all your exp when you died and reset, the grinding also took away from the value of exploration.
Like you could have some absolutely unproductive sessions with 1&2, but 1 i learned what not to do, while 2 that time really did feel totally wasted.
Also the worst thing to young me was the ability to waste things like the castle level ups, and one ups, figuring out that like you wanted to save castle completion to max out, and one ups for the final dungeon, and that i'd wasted those? Absolute last straw as a kid, so i quit 2 and went to finish 1.
And that's why we need a Remake of this oddball classic.
I have a lot of love for Zelda II but I've never finished it. I started playing through Zelda II Redux, which adds a bit of quality of life stuff like not going right back to the start of the game when you continue. I enjoyed it but I wonder if I'd get more into it playing the original on original hardware some day though. Take the punishment as intended. I agree the combat is hard but incredibly tight. It never felt unfair except maybe getting knocked back into pits but that was standard in NES games. Cool review!
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I have tried giving this game a chance. Especially when I saw the review from AVGN back when I first started watching him in 2011. I can tell from what I'm seeing about this game that it's good but for whatever reason whenever I play this game I get stuck early on and don't really know where to go and I just get frustrated and quit.
It's definitely not a very welcoming game for sure. It's a lot smoother when you know what you're doing. But it's merciless if you don't. Or even if you do, for that matter.
I miss when games were challenging. It used to be bragging rights when you beat a game. Now beating a game just means you put in the time.
One of my favorite NES game. It is difficult, but fair in my opinion. Beat this one as a kid.
I love this game too, and I didn't even grow up with the NES. My first console was the PS2. But Zelda II holds up incredibly well.
This game was hard as shit. I wish they would do a 2.5d remake of it.
That would be awesome! I'd love if they made another game like that.
The real challenge of Zelda II is on original hardware and on a good old CRT. Done it myself and finished both quests. Mind you the second quest is much easier than the first. I tend to revisit Zelda II once every couple of years on my NES for fun.
The Zelda 2 Palace theme is, to date, the best "Dungeon" theme song of any Zelda game, and so is the title screen theme. Grew up with this game, and even though it was too difficult for me to be able to finish, I loved the challenge and I loved the gameplay!
Zelda II's soundtrack is SO good! It always hypes me up to want to play it!
@@HereComesTheGame Maybe some of them exist on Spotify, in some form of version.. 🤔
Probably covers of it but I don't think Nintendo has their music on those apps. I might be mistaken though
@@HereComesTheGame Yeah, covers, exactly! I found some nice ones already :)
yoooooo fellow HPRshredder enjoyer lets gooooo
Love that guy! Such a comfy ride every time I watch him.
What are YOUR thoughts on Zelda II? Let's talk about it!
It's a good game overall, it may be hard and all, but once you get used to it, it gets fun
It's not "different", it's literally BotW in 2D. If any game is an outlier in the series, it's OoT and its TWO sequels crammed into their own embarrassing timeline splits, and a timeline at all for that matter.
But that's exactly what people have to resort to, mental gymnastics when THEY got into the series by a game that wasn't faithful, they have to make up excuses why those games are "the new normal".
They aren't even A normal, old or new, because N64 and GameCube struggled in the market. It's the same kind of thing as TMNT 1987 being nonsense made for kids, and comes off like a 4kids dub of the comics, but the "new normal" fandom has to pretend they are the voice of some fandom or whatever and can dictate that's the CORE what the series is about. It's herd narcissism.
It's my favorite in the series. I played too much OoT to want to replay it and I adore Majora's Mask but that one is a "once every few years" kind of masterpiece. Z2 is always fun and could be my favorite NES game. Not too much comes even close to it for me. (I don't care for Zelda 1 I'm SORRRYYYYY)
It was one of the first games I ever owned, my dad brought it home one day and I just loved it. I think the side scrolling swordplay really works out well, I love fighting iron knuckles and the bosses are fun. it was just really hard, and difficult to work out how to proceed in the game, even with all the schoolyard discussions we had going on.
Also, the dungeons are boring. If they had a bit more flair, more things to do, perhaps some puzzles, that'd make it all so much better.
I still go back to it every once in a while, unlike zelda 1 which I have no nostalgia for.
I played it on NSO during COVID lockdowns and fell in love with it. Used saved states and rewind because it’s hard AF but still so good. Also your black sheep vs ugly duckling comparison is great. 👍
This kind of sums up why although it probably won't crack my top 5, it is still absolutely one of my favorite Zelda's. But then, I grew up with these games and played them when they released and didn't have the same expectations of LoZ that we fans have started to develop over the decades. I'll still put it above windwaker..fuck that one.
Do yourself a favor if you haven't already. Look up the unofficial Zelda 2 fan remake by Hoverbat. Without changing gameplay or wrecking the feel of the game a whole bunch of new content was added and it fits seamlessly into the game.
Sounds really cool! Amazing how passionate people are about Zelda II.
Zelda II was my first LoZ game
Is still one of my favorites to this day
Zelda II has held up incredibly well.
I never judged Zelda 2 on preconceived notions. I just played it and realized that unlike the first game, which was awesome, Zelda 2 was really bad. I played through the entire game, granted I could never beat the final dungeon, and everything from the grinding system, to the limited magic bar, to having to go back to the beginning and travel all the way across the deadly map to get to dungeons again, Link only being able to poke people while practically kissing them to do damage, or only being able to jump a small height despite the side scrolling setting. I could keep naming things, but it just wasn't a good game. And it is one of the hardest games that I have ever played too, which isn't always a bad thing, but in this case it is.
I appreciate you taking the time to comment even if you and I don't agree about the game. Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts. I guess that's one of the most wonderful things about Zelda - the games are so different that every game has its fans.
@@HereComesTheGame I totally agree. I'm not one of those people who gets worked up when someone has different preferences than themselves. And if you are able to complete Zelda 2 then you are a better gamer than I am. I could never beat the final boss.
Zelda II is definitely a rough game to play sometimes. I really liked what it had going for it, but I could just as easily see why someone wouldn't like it. The first time I played through it I didn't like it either but that was mostly because of me letting my expectations from Zelda 1 get in my way.
But of course everyone has different tastes and that's part of what makes the world interesting. There's lots of variety out there.
I found Death Mountain to be easy, but that's only because I have good navigation skills.
I say that because, we need to be honest here, the game sucks before you get Down Thrust, and it isn't a skill issue.
I love this game but I dare any die hard fan to look me in the eye and tell me that most of this game's problems wouldn't be solved by having Down Thrust as an innate ability from the start.
The beginning of Zelda 2 is an odd action game at the start, but then immediately turns into a game of resource management, trial & error, creating a plan, picking your fights, and deducing a proper combat route as a reward, all thanks to Down Thrust.
You enter a room that has 1 Darknut and nothing else behind him?
1. Don't cast Shield.
2. Just pogo-stick over him with Down Thrust.
Optimizing your routes via platforming VS necessary combat along with resource management is unique to Zelda 2 but it only starts after getting Down Thrust sadly.
It would definitely help to have the downward thrust at the beginning. It would make things a lot smoother.
I believe the only thing making this game unreasonable was having you respawn at the game’s starting point on a game over. It’s hard to gain mastery over the harder enemies when you must spend a significant amount of time trecking all the way back to where you last were. I feel this one critical design flaw is overlooked by most people criticizing its difficulty. The game would be perfect if this one issue was fixed, perhaps by having you respawn at previously visited villages.
Generally I agree, but for me I just wish it was consistent. Forced restart at spawn suddenly changing to respawning at the Great Palace is annoyingly inconsistent. I wish the whole game would spawn you at palace entrances like Zelda 1 dungeons did.
Both Zelda games on NES are S-tier in my opinion. Another couple of superb NES games that felt Zelda 2-ish were Battle of Olympus and Faxanadu. As for modern games, I find that the Dark Souls series strangely makes me feel the same way I felt when I was playing these NES games decades ago as a kid.
This video was all just your opinion. But your opinion is right. Most of the people who say Zelda 2 is bad weren't around when it came out and are looking at it through a modern lens and expecting modern quality of life mechanics. All the stuff they complain about like the difficulty, the cryptic quests and expecting all NPC dialogue to have a purpose were complete non-issues for us back then. That was just video games being video games. Plus gaming was such a social activity that a lot of the cryptic stuff you just knew from word of mouth. Like I don't even remember how exactly we found about the false wall in the castle, the random dude you had to talk to in the middle of the woods etc. Somebody somewhere just figured it out and it got passed on to where everybody knew about it. This was how it was for all games. So yeah, of course 30 years later after things have been iterated on countless times, the game is going to show it's age. But it was absolutely a great game.
I wasn't around for Zelda 1 or 2 but Zelda II has improved dramatically on the issues from Zelda 1. Most of the crypticness is gone and the game often hints at stuff, which really helps things. One issue I take with Zelda 1 is the idea that you're supposed to learn the stuff through the social experience.
It's great design if you know others who have played it, but if you don't have the social experience with the game then the game just leaves you high and dry. You could definitely figure out a lot of it without talking to people (or looking it up in the modern day) but it's anything but intuitive or straightforward. Zelda II at least works a lot better as a self-contained experience vs one that requires external resources.
Basically, I think I can appreciate that the idea of talking to others to learn stuff is really cool but I think it also means that on its own the game ends up lacking and becomes a worse experience.
I'm sorry, I'm rambling. Just another of my opinions. I'd like to try to appreciate the NES era more though.
@@HereComesTheGame That's understandable. But it was a different time in the 80's and 90's, people in general were a lot more social and connected before the internet and social media. This was just stuff we discussed on the playground and at school so everybody knew it. But let me clarify it a bit, it wasn't a specific design choice to make so you had to talk to other people to solve things, it's all there for you to solve even if by accident. It was just how we played games back then in general, plus you always had game mags and there was even a Saturday morning show by Game pro magazine that did reviews, previews, cheat codes and how to beat tricky sections of games. The only reason things seem so cryptic now is because gradually people had less patience and so games started spoon feeding information , to now it's just expected that every NPC, piece of dialogue or obstacle serves a purpose, but old games weren't like that. We had to brute force a lot of solutions and we were fine with that , that was part of the fun.I couldn't tell you how many memories I have of all nighters with my siblings , cousins and friends being stuck on one level and having a blast instead of being frustrated and then when you stumbled across solution finally, you couldn't wait to brag to everybody at school the next day, so the info was free flowing. It's hard to really understand without a frame of reference, but remember this was the infancy of video games so there were a lot less rules and expectations for how games were supposed to work, and add to that just the highly social nature of people in general at the time, and it was never an issue, which is why you see it in so many early games.
I appreciate you breaking it down and elaborating on it. I feel like a lot of people who were around back then hear someone my age (26) talk about these games and just want to be snooty about it. "Oh, you don't get it!" But they don't want to have the conversation and maybe help me broaden my horizons so I can "get it". Sometimes I feel like some gamers just want to have the same sort of generation wars we have in other parts of life.
Thanks for explaining it more in detail. I appreciate an opportunity to broaden my perspective and learn more about the subject. Thank you.
Nice review of a classic. If folk want to experience a sprouced up version of it I do recommend giving the PC Remake by hoverbat a try, it's also a pretty darn good experience, too.
Glad you enjoyed it! A lot of people would probably enjoy the PC version.
I still think it’s a good game. I remember getting stuck when I was little and just gave up on the game. The Nintendo power magazine was confusing at the time. I think I was stuck on using the boots to cross the water. Like who the heck does that? Anyway, it wasn’t until I was in 5th grade (Played it when I was in kindergarten I think) that I actually beat the game. Just came back and conquered.
All this being said I do have the gold cartridge of the first two and the one without it. It just sits up in a room taking up space but looks neat.
They should remake the game with a hard mode.
It's one of my favorite games of all time and deserves more.
This game was hardcore to the bone, and i loved it. I'm still fighting knights in my sleep.
Greetings from the BIG SKY. I was working at NOA when the 1st Zelda game came out and I have this game also in my collection. I was glad I had friends on the game counseling team to call when this game came out. None of the 'propaganda' was ever around Bellevue.
What exactly do you mean by propaganda?
@@HereComesTheGame Greetings from the BIG SKY. Any thing negative about Nintendo considered 'propaganda'.
Play Hoverbat’s Zelda 2 mod, it feels like the version of Zelda 2 we should have gotten. Still very challenging however it feels complete.
I always wished SNES Zelda Link To The Past , would've been a lot more like Zelda 2 , , , using Golden Axe as a model ,you know 16-Bit era and all that , , oh well what might have been am i right ? ? great video man 😸👍👍
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. Now I want to play some golden axe lol
Think the black sheep may be sega cd zeldas
Well, this is the black sheep (or ugly duckling) of the good Zeldas lol
I'm convinced that Demon's Souls is the spirtual successor to Zelda 2.
Zelda 2 is my favorite in the series! The gameplay is so much fun. You should really google the Zelda 2 remaster and play it!! It adds a ton of quality of life improvements to fix your complaints. Plus tons of new content to explore! :)
I've heard many good things about the remaster! I'll have to try it sometime.
great video, but some of the clips are hard for me to watch because it looks like the game is legit beating you up lol.
That's because the game IS legit beating me up lol
Zelda II is such a polarizing game I love it
It's a great game. People just try to decide for you. I've completed the game on NES a few times. Once on 3ds. And a couple times on emu. Ive also finished the game fairly quickly as well. I can understand why some people don't like the program. Show my note to river man. And a couple other spots were difficult to figure out on your own. I really like the game. And believe it to be one of the best NES games for sure.
It's a really cool game. I wish more people would try a game for themselves, or at least admit "I heard it was good/bad but I haven't played it so I can't confirm for myself".
I've felt like I was the only one who genuinely loved this game for such a long time!
When the original Dark Souls came out and people were like BEST GAME EVER ROARRR all I could think was that it had a lot of similarities to Zelda II
Maybe the epilepsy warning should have been at the beginning of the video
I never really understood the claims of high difficulty for this game. Many modern games are much harder, imo.
Maybe I just suck at it but I thought it was really tough, especially trying to reach the Great Palace.
@@HereComesTheGame I definitely wouldn't say that's easy, per se -- more like "medium to medium-hard" maybe, though everyone is different I suppose.
It's just strange to me when people say that it's super tough (commonly it's called "NES Hard" though I would flatly disagree with that). I think it's because I don't really think it's difficulty is really *notable* compared to many titles released over the last decade. Like I can cruise through Zelda 2 with relative ease but felt like I fought for every inch of ground in Ender Lilies, for example.
Anyway, thanks for saying positive things about it. Zelda 2 was one of my favorite childhood games and it's nice to see someone not griping about it.
I see what you're saying now. I appreciate your thoughts and I'm really grateful you took the time to watch and comment. It means a lot to me.
0:39 The game's reputation taints its reputation?
You know what I mean, even if I apparently can't write without being really redundant sometimes lol
People need to understand back in a day you did not have save states😊😊
I slew Death Mountain as an 11 year old. Unaided by guides. Today's gamers are weak.
Replace "weak" with "adults who have jobs and bills to pay", and your comment would actually be correct, and not just another old-man-yelling-at-cloud remark. You beat it as an 11yo cuz you had nothing else to do with your free time.
They are indeed, horribly weak. Their attention spans are too short. I like to think we had a "gamer sense" to find some of the secrets...
Even today, earlier, I saw someone post in Discord "help. Does (this branch of choices) has consequences?" instead of finding out by doing.......
Gamers are so afraid to fail, experiment, and try. Disgusting creatures.
You want to beat the game fairly next time? You must be a younger gamer. Back in the day, that's the only way we could beat a game. The first time I'd heard this game was hard was on RUclips, when some "gamer" who grew up with the N64 cried about how unfair it is. I prefer this to "hey, listen", interrupting game play if you stray off the path. Real gamers don't need forced tutorials and way points.
I love the game and play through it, at least once a year. i think the game is too short and should have had 2 more palaces in it.
It's better for me to be honest and disappoint with truth than to be dishonest and impress with falsehood, so I admit what I did. I can't please everybody. So it goes.
Why bash other generations of gamers? The hobby would be dead without younger gamers. We already fight each other over generational conflicts in everything else. Can we not ruin gaming with that sort of stuff too?
Zelda II is so good. The only dislike I have with it is the overworld. I wish you weee able to fight off the enemies if you didn’t need/want xp and could fight them to keep moving but if you got hit you would then still go into side scroll
Great video 👍🏻
So you conquer the Great TEMPLE.
If I lived in Japan or was talking about Super Smash Bros... Darn that old Nintendo censorship. Would anyone really have cared about it if they kept them as Temples in the Western releases?
thank you for the video. zelda ii is my favorite zelda game
Not going to lie…
Zelda 2 > Zelda
We (my brother and I) kept our NES turned on for WEEKS the first time we got to Great Palace as we were afraid if we shut it off we would lose the ability to continue from there…and it took us WEEKS to finish that bastard.
Also use SPELL spell in Valley of Death instead of FAIRY…
Zelda 2 is one of my favorites
9:07 Haven't heard that one before.
I don't mean to be rude, but it is disappointing watching people lose patience and just throw away the experience of the final boss, as well as pretty much the entire game if I'm being honest. You and many other youtubers put all that effort to reach the final palace... and then suddenly you just don't care enough to bother. Then there's the "I don't feel like it" excuse. Yeah, the game is hard, but you knew that going in, and you're at the very end. The whole point is to literally become better at combat. Similarly to how you get better at fighting games. They come with exploits too, but ---wait already you know this because you pretty much said it yourself!
Maybe I'm overreacting, but it's just a headscratcher to me that even with the self-awareness and willingness to discuss the game 'objectively.' You and the others who review this can't seem to just finish it normally, and in your case that was on top of save stating to max out your stats. It... kind of defeats the whole point. No different than just playing with game shark codes. Which weirdly makes everything you say harder to hear because you're not wrong about a lot of your points, and you do clearly understand the game. The problem is that you gave up on it, decided to just finish it as a formality once you knew what you were going to say.
Ultimately, the reason why I opted for save states at the end is because at that point I was having issues with my Retron 5 so I knew I better finish soon before I end up unable to beat the game. I also think Zelda II's design is just aggravating once it hits the endgame. So yeah, I took the easy way out.
I don't deny it's a copout. In fact, I admit as much. Should I have lied and pretended I did the Great Palace legit? Also, I didn't use the save states to get full stats, I used them to safely farm for magic potions to heal up and go into the fight with full magic and health. I was already max level in all stats because I grinded up before going to the palace.
I'd rather be honest about what I did, even if it's going to disappoint some people, than lie to look good.
@@HereComesTheGame I do appreciate you being upfront about it. And I'm probably being nit-picky, but I'm of the opinion that it's worth it to just fight him normally, even at one bar of health. Yeah, you were probably going to get a game over. And you don't need to beat Link's Shadow normally to qualify talking about the game. But because the entire thing is building up to that fight, you really miss out on that feeling of accomplishment by using the exploit. That's all I'm saying.
One day I'll try to go back and do it all for real. It would be pretty nice.
Zelda II is the first Dark Soul. Change my mind.
You should try Zelda 2 remastered.
I bet it's awesome! It'll probably still kick my butt, I assume?
It’s a fan love song. I highly recommend.
Some of your requests are answered.
I like Zelda II better than Zelda 1
They Zelda 2 gameplay reuse in Zelda 3,4 & 5
I’ll stick to Dark Souls if I want to play this game
I bet From Software spent a lot of time learning from Nintendo. Zelda II'S influence on DS is very noticeable.
I’m an asshole when it comes to subscribing. For a newer channel, I give you a pass, more than that. I’m a stickler for vocal fidelity. I cannot stand some channels with good content because their voice sounds rough/uncouth.(too much LOTR, haha). Zeltik partners with some. I root for new channels and speak my mind. U have a smooth voice, cadence and something my 10th grade English teacher always praised. Perhaps you already know. Good on u, man.
You value your own opinion way too much.
I don't think you even know what "uncouth" means. Because it has nothing with voices.
Thanks for the kind words. I've been working hard to get better and I guess now it's starting to pay off.
i think im doing a playthrough this year
on cart, but i might bust the gamegenie out for infinite health/magic 😅
My favorite NES game ever.
Praise thean who came up with save state for emulators. Great if only have limtied time to play and place to save unreachable.
Aahhh yes Zelda 2 the only one in the franchise I have never beat 😅 without cheating on the switch
You ever get the sense you're watching a video made by someone who learned this stuff from other RUclips videos and is less than 22 years old?
You're wrong on both counts.
Zelda 2, the dark souls of zelda.
one of the best games on nes
This was my first Zelda game. Dad got our NES in 1989 and my Grandma went to the local flea market to get games on the cheap. As a result we got some stinkers, but mostly mid-range to great games. Zelda II was one of them - she bought it because of the gold cartridge thinking it was a limited edition or something while passing over the original not knowing she was buying a sequel - and it quickly became the game I spent the most time on. Years latee (95 or so) I finally got to play the original for the first time and was shocked when running into an enemy on the overworld damaged me and didn't send me to a side-scrolling action sequence. :p
That's a fun story. I wish I found a gold Zelda II at a flea market. Although I did get a N64 with WWF No Mercy, 2 controllers and an expansion pack at one once...
Basically the same thing happened to me, where I got Zelda II before the first game and then played Zelda 1 about 10 years after. I honestly wasn’t that impressed with the first game. Came back to it a couple more times throughout my life and I still don’t like how it plays, despite beating it’s second quest a few times. Zelda II just feels like a much more slick experience.
First Zelda game? Me too! I remember there was a yard sale happening around the neighborhood where I grew up and we picked out Dr Mario and this shiny gold cartridge. Back then the best I could do was the 1st level and enter Midoro Swamp. I didn’t even know there was a save option until I picked up a GBA copy in 2000’s. With the internet’s help in some runaround areas on my GBA SP I did my best and made it all the way to the thunder bird boss. Stupid thunder bird…
Finally someone that appreciates Zelda II for what it is!
"I don't want to go through that again anytime soon"
I SINCERLY suggest you try the PC remake! It fixes a LOT of the problems with the original, while subtly updating the graphics, adding widescreen, reimaging some boss fights and adding quite a bit of new content and secrets. There are several youtube reviews out there that recommend it more than I ever could.
I'll have to check it out sometime. To be fair, I loved playing Zelda II, it's just really hard so I don't want to come right back to it, but I bet the remake does make things much smoother! Thanks for the recommendation!
Love the remake/remaster, aka "Link is Adventuresome". Took all the things I loved about the original and built upon them.
Amazing video, Zelda II is a misunderstood game in a formulaic franchise
I wish more people would try Zelda II. I think a lot of people hear "Zelda" and then get put off by the game being different because the name sets expectations.
Zelda II is a game that really made me think a lot about the danger of going in with baggage, because I initially disliked it for being different too (I had just played Zelda 1, the only other Zelda game I beat so far) and it ruined the experience.
Then I thought about how unfair I was and gave it the second chance it deserved. And it blew me away. So, SO great.
Yeah. Not that the formula is bad, but in 1987, there was no formula. And even then, you can see what the developers liked to do: notice that even in Zelda II, the first three temples are relatively easily accessible. You need a raft to go to Eastern Hyrule and access the rest of the game. It's sort of like how in the first game you can get to Levels 1-3 easily, but you need a raft to get to Level 4, and the other Underworld Levels are hidden or blocked by some challenge you have to pass.
Seemingly unknown tip: you can tell what villagers will transform based on their eyes. The hurty ones will have a red pixel in their eyes
I didn't know that. I'll have to remember that for the next run. I didn't show it in the video but during the playthrough one of them killed me...
@@HereComesTheGame i grew up on this one so it's a looooooot of experience gettin slapped around as a kid. Don't feel bad. Game is unforgiving and they make sure you feel that booklet describing them wantin you dead
It's so hard to see. Good luck actually seeing that on a CRT.