Fun Fact. Certain enemies only being killable by fire was exclusive to the US and PAL release. In the original Japanese release, fire does pretty much nothing. In fact, the enemies that could only be killed by it in the US/PAL version are immune to it.
@@Kryxx07 what do i put on my resume to get a job if i have no job experience, i'm still in highschool, and i have absolutely zero skills in doing anything worth while.
Nintendo is a Japanese company, and I can assure that they didn't give a rats ass about their Western audience when they designed their games in the 80s.
@@snetmotnosrorb3946 Nintendo Power Magazine was a combined production between Nintendo and Japanese publiser Tokuma Shoten, who published Family Computer Magazine for the Japanese NES, most of what Nintendo Power had was already been published overseas, so it's not all about the western audience.
John PS Pretty sure that was Howard Lincoln’s decision actually, as he playtested a lot of games that they sent him piecemeal from Japan and he made the final call. I’m also inclined to believe this was the standard course of action, as it gels with Yamauchi’s unilateral approach to video games. As the President of Nintendo wasn’t a fan of video games himself, he trusted only his own instincts on what would actually be released on the system, and from little but intuition. So a stack of games was just that to his leadership style; a stack of games. So that naturally leads to this idea that he would just have them sent off to international distributors, seeing as he had already made the decision of production himself, so he likely saw his job as done.
Every one I heard mention the "'I can restore your health' lady" joke also the old woman and they maintain the notion that Link is getting his freak on in both instances.
@@MogofWar hes like these other bitch new gamers. If you can't easily beat it then it sucks. This game is hard as shit. But that doesn't mean it's bad. It actually set a big standard setter for future zelda games.
@@The_Bad_Guy. Not just that, unlike most haters of Zelda 2, he at least acknowledged the good parts of it, even though it's outshadowed by the many, many, flaws. Kinda like my hate for Paper Mario Color Splash I guess. I admit it had funny writing, which was good, but the battle system was still heavily flawed and was basically a clone from the previous game for the battle system. Let this be a reminder that no game is perfect, there's always a flaw in each game of various degrees of size, no matter how good or how bad a game is.
A lot of this game feels like when you stray realllllyyyyy far from where you're supposed to be in a fallout game and end up fighting super op shit LOL
The thing with Zelda 1 is that it had the honor of being something that had never been done at the time. If you just compared the game to what existed at the time it came out you might better understand why it was so well loved.
This reviewer lacks the ability to even think of these games on that level....because it's something he CAN'T know. He wasn't there....and apparently he doesn't know anyone who was there. lol He uses terms like AI when discussing enemies in original NES games. ....and he acts as if guys had the ability to design full blown 3D games w/ open worlds & 87 different game mechanics on the NES. Game carts that're so small you can legitimately put the console's 1,000+ library of games, homebrews & hacks onto a single CD-r. I genuinely don't know wtf this little boy is expecting when he plays these games. Does he think Zelda 2 should morph into Dark Souls or Skyrim upon entering Death Mountain? Does he not realize these ppl were doing things that had NEVER been done before? Is this boy capable of critical thought at all? He doesn't have a fuckin' clue what he's talking about....and it's obvious. He's not gonna have a large following on youtube, so it doesn't matter. This isn't good content & it doesn't deserve the handful of viewers it does have.
I'm not sure "it was first" is an adequate defense. Many of the trendsetting games from the 80s and early 90s lacked direction. "Here's a world, now go explore". Zelda 2 is better in this respect, but still pretty garbage. Some games lead you through the world design, others try to lead you through dialog and events. Some masterful examples do both. Let's take your first visit to Zora's Domain in Ocarina of Time as a prime example. The way they designed that level along with the events in it naturally lead you to the letter in a bottle found in Lake Hylia.
@@stephenh8225 No, not really. I would have made the same argument if this had been a half dozen other games. The guy was acting as if an NES game from like 1987 should have been designed the way a game was designed in 2020. I was spot on.
I got this game for my birthday when I was like 6. By this time i already had a link to the past so i was pretty excited to try it. It ended up being this thing in my life that I would pick up for a weekend every 6 months and make *some* progress every time. I think you said it best though, it just wasn't fun. eventually you hit a point where you just dont know where to go and its like....ok i guess im going to stop now. lol EDIT: the worst part, the absolute worst part. is that after seeing your video i actually want to play it again.
I love this game, the challenge, the autonomy in choosing what skill I level up (very ahead of its time in 1989), the gameplay, discovering secrets, the music, the atmosphere, etc. I understand the gripes of the person who made this video but I think many of the points he made added to the satisfaction I received once I beat the game. I am old enough to have played it when it first came out so I know nostalgia needs to be factored in but I loved it back then too. Good video though as it makes me want to play it again soon!
There was such a great social aspect to this game end it reminds me of the excitement that you felt on being the first in your circle of friends to figure out the Blood code or a Mortal Kombat fatality. So many things won’t be relatable to those who never got to experience a time without the Internet. I remember spending hours trying so many random things in those games just to see what would happen. Somehow the modern world has greatly eroded my tenacity and persistence for such things. I am glad that you made the video.
7:55 This is technically not true. In one home in Saria town, there is a slime sleeping on a bench. Talk to him a few times and he'll say something like "master is in woods up North". Most things are just a matter of trial and error (though finding the mirror under the table is just retarded. I don't know how I managed to figure that out). Also, the reason the game is so cryptic is due to limited space in the speech bubbles. You can convey far more with Japanese characters than English text, so the translation had to be very bare-bones to still get the message through. I agree that it's not the best game in the series, but I've warmed up to it over the years, so I don't hate it, either.
Also in that forest where Bagu is, there's a few random spots where when you step into them it takes you to a side scrolling screen. I actually remember first stumbling upon those areas as a kid and getting the hint that something was special there and continued to look around and found Bagu.
So I've been watching a couple of reviews of Zelda 2 in order to get multiple opinions and solutions for the game. Why? Well, I'm trying to remake the game from the ground up, keeping the mechanics, enemies, and aesthetics (updated to a 16-bit pallet, rather than 8) generally the same. Just made this comment because this is a review for the game, and I'm trying to get a little bit of attention over it. Unfortunately, I have pretty much no idea how to code; that's the thing that I'm really struggling with at the moment. Computer code is a lot different than the old TI-83's... I really enjoyed the review, by the way. Recommendations were useful for once!
Death Mountain isn't that difficult once you realize duck+attack is a faster attack. For an NES game there is quite a bit of nuance to the combat system really. The game tries to clue you in on this through the level design. 14:09 shows one of the Death Mountain caves with ledges that block the axe guys, encouraging the player to duck+attack them. Unfortunately, subtle nuances are often missed by players, which is why modern games just blatantly tell you how to do everything, even if it's obvious.
@@DuoStuff just because it's hard doesn't mean it sucks. Typical new gamer though. Wanting it to be easy and to have unlimited continues and basically have your hand held to the end of the game. And if you fail then it's the games fault.
@Mike Werley He never said he wants the game to be super easy, have unlimited continues, and hold your hand until the end. Games can still be both hard and fun at the same time. A good hard game allows you to get up on your feet and learn the ropes before seriously challenging you. A bad hard game just makes you bang your head against the wall until you can brute force your way through. An example of a good hard game would be Donkey Kong Country. It starts off easy in the first world while teaching you the basic mechanics and giving room for error. Then the challenge goes up as the player’s skill goes up. Then when you finally finish the game, you get a feeling of satisfaction and feel like you really earned it. In Zelda 2, you just breathe a sign of relief that you were able to get through it at all. I don’t know about you but I prefer having a difficultly curve that steadily goes up rather than having to immediately climb a difficultly cliff in order to get good.
Top sound track on NES in my opinion and one of my top 3 NES games to go back to, more then the first one. People hate on it because it’s not like other zeldas but at the time it just wasn’t like the first zelda
Really enjoyed the video. I love this game and I'll always defend it but at the same time I can understand the people who don't like it. Different strokes it's not for everyone. What I love about it is the way it challenges you to keep getting better and better, the controls are tight thankfully and the combat is enjoyable. Where others may see frustration (like Death Mountain which I'm glad they put so early on) I see it as a really fun challenge to overcome and get better while doing it. Hope to have a deathless run one day.
Zelda 2 and Castlevania 2 had some amazing ideas that were ahead of their own time in a lot of ways... but then they were also made during a time when they were trying to sell you nintendo power guides and hotline tips. So they ended up incredibly tedious if not impossible to progress in at times if you were trying to play them just based on the information given in-game. Especially CV2. I cannot tell you how frustrating it was to own games like these games as a kid. My parents were not about to let me call a tip hotline, so I would be pulling my hair out, trying to decipher some hidden meaning in the villager dialog that just wasn't there. We just wanted action, not all this obtuse bullshit. It's extremely hard for modern players to understand why these games were so universally hated, because they're so used to looking up guides on the internet. I can totally understand that mindset, but when you need to find the correct unmarked pixel on a huge map with absolutely no direction from the game and bend down or do whatever for a specific amount of time just to make it to the next part of the game, that's horrible design and makes the game practically broken for people who can't look up what to do from an outside source. You can't just squat on every block or patch of grass in the game until you get lucky, though I can assure you many of us tried.
in the good old days, someone poor like me had to git gud or stop playing. i didnt have the money to buy guides or call hotlines(didnt even have a phone). so my only choice was to git gud, which is what i did. and thus i spend a lot of time mocking these noobs who cry at a game that doesnt hold your hand.
I enjoyed games like this as a kid. Its these games that gave us alot to talk about in school. I remember the group of friends I had would generally get a game around the same time, so we'd compete with each other to find stuff and share what we found with anyone that needed help.
I genuinely adore Super Paper Mario, and I feel like it was treated really unfairly when it came out. I'm planning to make a Paper Mario version of this series down the road, and I can't wait to talk about Super specifically.
Damn I totally LOVE it, it's just awesome, the level desing is very varied and fun, like in Francis's battle, before it you have like a dating stimulator with him, it has very good story and it had also some serious topics, like the world that is basically... Hell and the heaven, that game creeped me out, not gonna lie, finding luigi at the bottom of a lake made by the tears and hands of sinners while crying on a rock isn't something I would wish to anyone
Zelda 2: some of the best ideas I’d love for them to revisit, some of the most ICONIC new tracks, introducing NPC’s and towns, but falling flat for so many reasons. All based in gameplay. I’ve heard there are rom hacks to improve the game, but I haven’t explored them yet.
I love it. Though I played it as a kid and it provokes a certain nostalgia I can't get from anything else. Though so do a lot of games but I don't enjoy them like this. You should play with nintendo power issue 4 whatever issue part 2 is in, for a more authentic 80s type experience. Also put on an NTSC filter so it looks like on a TV, which is how it looked for everyone until emulator. Pirate bay has NP issue 1-50 thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=8709177
Whenever I hear the line "It's super linear! Not that I have a problem with linear games, but...", to me it sounds like "I'm not linearist, some of my best friends are linear!"
Well no but it's legit true. I love Super Mario 3D World, all the linear 3D Zeldas, 3D Sonic, and many more. Zelda 2 just screws up a couple of things that makes it feel less good.
I absolutely love this game, and it saddens me a little when people say they hate it, once the game clicks, it just works and becomes amazing. It's not super cryptic and you can actually find stuff, just actually talk to the townsfolk. The combat too is fun, and extremely tight except maybe enemies that shoot sword beams, those are kinda bs. Difficulty, ya kinda, but not that bad, just don't play it on a digital tv, you want it on CRT, digital tv's have to convert the analogue signal before displaying it, making it a little delayed, that in itself can make alot of older games feel harder.
I mean you still have to remember that this is HIS opinion. I also very much like the game but you have to remember that people may not like the same thing you do.
@@NicolasPruitt No I get that, but his complaints like wrong, lol. Just talk to the townsfolk, the game seriously tells you where things are, or otherwise gives you a clue something might be somewhere with odd tiles or w/e. It's not like Zelda 1's nearly zero direction with ingame dialogue so vague it might as well not have been there. Zelda 2 sections you off mostly for an area with 1 or 2 dungeons you can reach and towns with each having a spell to find, and an item to return. He can still hate it all he wants if that's what he wants to do, but it's leaps and bounds less cryptic bs than many other NES games or that he tries to make it out to be.
I had Zelda 1 and 2 as a kid. Never beat either. Part 1 I came close using a guide, part 2 I just hated. Watching your videos is all the revisiting I'll ever need for these titles.
I can tell a lot of people in this comment section are very nostalgia blind (and are bad at make good arguments) it really shows a difference when we see none nostalgia blind people like you
@@platinumskulls4490 people seem to forget that a lot of things age, and while there may have been justifications back in the day, nowadays you can't really enjoy these types of games without a pair of nostalgia glasses
In the original Zelda, Link is a 10 year old boy. In Zelda 2, he is 16 years old. It makes sense that he "looks like a Munchkin" in the first and not the second.
The flipside on the difficulty and the lack of health pickups, particularly things like Death Mountain, is that unlike Zelda 1, Link has multiple lives. In Zelda 1, dying is dying, but Zelda 2 offers multiple lives, and extra ones scattered around as well that can be picked up (And I think they reset with each Game Over but I could be wrong on that). Also, Death Mountain has multiple red magic containers and the player should have already learned Life by this point, so you realistically should have at least 3 lives plus multiple heals throughout each one. Additionally, progressing through the game gives 'checkpoints' in a way to get back after a Game Over. Once the hammer is obtained, you can easily get to the Southern area after a game over within seconds. Once the raft is obtained, getting to the other area is just as easy. Only the final area after the whistle is semi-hard to have to go through over and over with the Dino/Lizalfos throwing rocks, but even that isn't too bad.
The difficulty is due to not using big brain strats to level up properly. Yes dungeon 1 might be rough for beginners, but once you learn that XP is used to level up AND the gem fills your XP to the next highest level, it's easy
I never got past Death Mountain. Never cared enough to feel obligated to grind endlessly to be strong enough to get past it. It is still, to this day, the only main Zelda game I haven't finished. It is also the hardest and most frustrating game I've ever played in my life. By the way, that was the first video of you I've watched and it's very well done and interesting. Great stuff! You've got yourself a new suscriber :)
Back in the early Nintendo days people would talk about a game and share information on the playground i had my zelda map from the original game and put marks on every secret I found and my friends would show me other secret so I'd mark it.
This is the most accurate review of this game even down to the final sentences. First Zelda game, I've gone back to it a few times and beaten it every time. This game... I'm basically torturing myself to beat it and I'm not having fun at all.
This game could have been fixed in a few easy steps. 1. Keep the sword beam on all the time and have it do the same amount of damage as the regular sword attack. 2. Take shields away from the Darknuts until at least the 3rd dungeon. 3. Have NPCs with concise and clear instructions of where to go and what to do (like after talking to someone, load the overworld map and highlight where to go for the player.) That lowers the overall difficulty, flattens the difficulty curve, especially in the beginning, and removes the ambiguity of what to do. Your health being that easy to get rid of and so hard to get back is justified if the game encourages you to play defensively and keep your distance instead of forcing you to charge the enemies and exploit their behavior patterns as soon as you take 1 hit.
Spending 10 hours on a game that isn't enjoyable in order to get enjoyment out of it is like watching a TV show that supposedly gets good in the third season but behind it is 2 seasons worth of rubbish.
Played this game when I was 8 and I couldn't read english at that time. It took me months to finally get to the final castle, and then my brother kicked the NES to annoy me and I lost my save file... We don't talk anymore.
@@Teknanam I never completed it those first few times. I only completed it after realizing I had been playing it wrong all these years. I treated it like a traditional Zelda and failed. Eventually I realized you need to grind out to improve your skills. After I worked that out the game was easier and more enjoyable.
@@Teknanam this question is better suited for me. who didn't like the game, beat it..then played it again. I was born in '84. Didn't really start to understand what I was doing in games till like 1990or '91. And playing whatever game was laying around. I was smart enough to only rent games like Megaman or punchout from Blockbuster. Short games for fun that can be enjoyed on a weekend from school. doesn't require passwords and any real storytelling. Anyhow after beating the first Zelda game..getting into this was something i had to do. And I kinda hated it. took forever. But..I started to get older and understand games more. So being bored with the 10 random nes games and maybe 5 snes games, and like 3 sega games I had at the time, I tried Zelda II again when I was like 9. that's like in 1993. The reason dates are important..to understand there was really NO other options back then. No cellphones. Internet, as compared to today, was just non existent. You kinda just HAD to deal with what you had. This is where the hotlines and guides made sense. We had NO OTHER options back then. Learn to play and love it..or hate it..but still play it cause..what the fuck else you gonna do about it? Plus..you're not in an era of "let's make everything as real as possible". So there's no expectation for it to be any different than what it is. A lot of times, back then, you didn't hear people complain about the controls or level design or any of that. It was just...as it is. So when you didn't win..you blamed yourself for not being good enough. Not the game for being made poorly. So, figuring it out means you did well...and therefore, you now, kinda, like the game. the better you are, the more you like it. And playing games back then was ALSO like reading a good book. Anything that looked bad visually...was adjusted in your own imagination. and there wasn't much options of other games that you could compare to, that made you feel wrong for justifying that which you saw. You just accepted it as that's how it is. So, in your mind, you were going on an epic adventure. YOU had to learn to be better. It was never the game's fault. it was your lack of understanding..and when you finally learned what to do, you were the epic adventurer. Pride. Now, my cousin who's about 7yrs younger..he got his start in SNES games. He can't understand one thing about me loving nes games. even the ones people swear are the worse lol
@@agonleed3841 I was born early into the 90s, but my parents cheaped out and got me an NES regardless which was all I played until they got me an N64 years later. I know about that feeling of those games being all you had to play. I KINDA get that whole thing of blaming yourself for not being able to complete games, but I had limits for how much I'd blame myself vs. the game. Probably because I had a bunch of games (the Mario trilogy, Dirty Harry, Spyhunter, Bad Dudes) and a lot of my friends had more modern systems like the SNES and Genesis which showed off better design choices. Still, I would go back to my NES and eventually beat games. But Zelda II always pissed me off because it gave the illusion that it should be better than the other non-Nintendo sidescrollers with its better controls and a save system. But having to lose all my progress on the 2nd dungeon would just piss me off too much. That time thing does make sense. By the time I went back and finally beat Zelda II, my tolerance for questionable old design was way less than it was as a kid even though I knew enough to power through the game anyway. But in the end, I didn't gain any new appreciation for the game like I did when I played through and beat Metroid 1when it was part of Metroid Prime 1.
You may not care for Zelda II but not only is it a favorite of mine but it was the first game I ever owned. Sure, we had other games in the house but this one was mine. So yes it's a bit nostalgic to me. I happen to like the difficulty level that comes early. I agree that it has flaws, what game doesn't? Now and then I still play it. I still remember where everything is and can finish the game for the most part in a afternoon. As NES games go, I would recommend Willow for a fun challenge.
My main gripes with this game is the lives system, which is silly for a Zelda game, and the lack of checkpoints/decent save system. Most of the problems would be at least tolerable if saving and quitting didn't reset my EXP or send me back all the way back to the beginning. Like if I at least started at the last town I visited or the current temple I'm on when I open a file that'd be great! And whenever I died, I at least spawn at the start of the temple or a tile away from the last temple I beat. And with modern hardware, I don't see how we couldn't have a quick save feature.
Wow....I don't even know what to say. Basically take everything you said and reverse it, and that's how I feel. I guess this is all going to boil down to an age difference. I respect your opinion of course, but you couldn't be more wrong. The best thing about Zelda 1 and 2 is that there is a secret world lurking around every corner. This is what we talked about lining up for elementary school in the morning. Is Zelda in Zelda 2 the real Zelda or a different Zelda? If you read the manual, it is actually a different Zelda, but I had several friends who argued differently. We theorized about stuff way before there was the medium of the theory video. It was just a different time. We loved the way the worlds were created. I get that you think these games are hollow, but to me they are still the most grandiose of all of the Zelda games. I love Wind Waker and Majora's Mask and Breath of the Wild, but they don't have anything on Zelda 1 and 2 in terms of total game play time during the first run and overall enjoyability. There isn't anything satisfying about having everything handed to you on a silver platter. It has nothing to do with "good" and "bad" game design. You are holding a late 1980s game to the standards of 2020. Yes, nowadays, if you don't show the player how something works before having them use it then that is poor game design. Back in the 80s we just figured it out, and I was a kid at the time. I beat Zelda 1 and 2 before the age of 10. I did it without strategy guides, I did it without cheating the Dark Link fight by ducking in the corner, and I did it on sheer will and determination. That is what it took to beat these games back then, sweat and tears. It made us who we were. The entire way you talk about this game just makes me sad. I understand why you feel the way you do, but it still just makes me sad that an entire era of video games is being rejected because the ethos behind playing video games has completely changed. I love this game. When people ask we what my favorite Zelda game is, I always say "the first three, hands down." These games were hard. I have beaten the last three main platform Zelda titles (TP, SS, BOTW) without dying! That is ridiculous. I can now beat every Zelda title without dying, including Zelda 1 and ALTTP, but I still can't beat Zelda 2 without dying. The difficulty is what keeps bringing me back, over and over, year and after year.
Great comment! I have bookmarked it. @@TheGreyPodcast369 Games have become mainstream and are meant to give an experience rather than a challenge. Neither is inherently bad.
@@ytk2508 Appeal to novelty, ad hominem. Oh I thought you wanted me to explain to you what logical fallacies you used for your comment. Sorry, I guess I am just a boomer.
Way back in 1988, I thought original legend of Zelda was the best game ever. I was looking forward to this sequel so much. There was actually a delay in the release due to some unexpected manufacture or distribution problem. 1988 was functionally pre-internet, so we had no good way to know when the release would happen. I got my mother to take me to various game shops, but it wasn’t there. Employees who had no idea told me “tomorrow” or “next week” just to get me to leave them alone. Eventually I was calling the stores almost every day. Finally (months later)it arrived and I got a copy. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I didn’t think of it as a disappointment, and it was a pretty quality title in the NES era. I agree that it hasn’t held up well and was a step in the wrong direction for the series. But back then there were tons of garbage games and this was far above average. I once actually saved up lunch money for months in order to buy Deadly Towers, a game that looked like a Zelda concept but is now known as one of the worst games of all time.
When I got Zelda 2 back in '88, I had asked Santa for Zelda 1 for Christmas. Imagine my confusion Christmas Day when I opened it up, saw the gold cart, and started playing wondering when it would turn into the Zelda game I was playing at my friends house. My parents asked for Zelda at the store and the store clerk sold them Zelda 2 when it was really hard to find (ROM chip shortage). When my friends found out I had it then it wasn't so bad because we spent a lot of afternoons playing it as a group trying to figure it out...because it was so fricken odd compared to the original game. It took me 2 years to get through Death Mountain and get the damn magic hammer. Then the game opens up because at that point you've basically maxed your attack, life, and magic stats out.
I'm part of the minority of people who like Zelda 2 I don't know why but I play this game at least once or twice a year it's fun for me though and ya I know it has flaws but I still find fun in the so called black sheep Zelda game
I'm in the same boat, one of my favorite NES games.This and Faxanadu. The "cryptic" part as a previous poster said didn't seem to hard compared to other games, also the first game sort of set me up for what to look for.
This can out when I was a kid and I played it over and over until I got good. I didn’t give up and that’s what made the game satisfying when I did beat it. That’s what gaming back then was like. No tutorials, no marked locations, and vague hints. I like SMB 2 as well!!
Actually, Zelda 2 can be really fun, if you end up using fan-made patches, that is. And the road to the final dungeon? It's Death Mountain: the Sequel. The only perk is that you respawn at the palace entrance if you die. :3
I was one of the poor souls that actually bought this new when it was released in North America back in the day. Naturally, I felt obligated to get my 'money's worth' and slogged my way through the whole thing, but boy was it a disappointment in retrospect, once I no longer felt so heavily invested.
One of the poor souls? Dude this game was so popular when it was released you couldn't even buy it because it was sold out the second a shipment came in. It was one of the highest ranked nes games for years.
I don't think he realizes the first two Zelda games were made in 1986 and 1987. Let me repeat that.... 1 9 8 6 and 1 9 8 7. These games were classics for their time, judging them by modern game design standards is like judging a Ford Model T to a Lexus.
That's... That's the whole point of doing a series like this? There are plenty of people that can tell you how they were judging them by the standards of the time they released in. I can't. I judge every game in a series I cover by the standards from today. If I didn't, I might as well go look up the Nintendo Power review from 30 years ago and just read it verbatim, because that's how much value a video like you want would be worth.
6:47 - 6:53 "...but they also always fail to mention that the old lady does the same for you magic. Wow! Why don't people ever mention that?" Shit me and my friends made that joke too. Link likes 'em young and he likes 'em old.
Zelda game’s are pretty cryptic. But I think 2 was the least cryptic of them all. OOT making you shoot an arrow through a torch in the water temple without even telling you that was possible was criminal.
Different strokes for different blokes. I personally enjoy Zelda II, despite all its shortcomings both back then, and retroactively looking at it from a modern perspective. EDIT: Also, the Zelda that's asleep is not the Zelda from LoZ 1. It's an ancient Zelda that's been asleep for ages. Two different princesses.
Both games where released when I was a kid, and I found both of the fun back then and I beat both of them. But revisiting them as an adult, I actually find Zelda 2 more fun than Zelda 1. I don't know why, but when ever I play Zelda 1 I usually stop playing after the first dungeon, while I've finished Zelda 2 several times as an adult.
to be honest, I prefer Zelda 2 over Zelda 1 I guess it might be because I could beat Zelda 1 in about a day while with Zelda 2 might take me a week or two idk i definitely came back to it more than zelda one but would like to hear your thoughts on a link to the past
When i was a kid-my teens i tried so hard to beat this game and i did get up to the end. Wasn't until i was an older gamer that i did beat it and grew to love it. It does, for what it is worth set up the established lore of there being 3 pieces of the Triforce. It's difficulty spike is terrible, Death Mountain is the worst. This Zelda is in a Dark Souls kinda pattern.
I agree with this video almost entirely. The original Zelda was a true tour de force of graphics and sound unlike anything we had ever witnessed before. You may not know this but when Zelda released in Japan it was made for the Famicom Disk System and do you know why? Nintendo of Japan hit a veritable brick wall with the Famicom. You see, Super Mario Brothers was designed to take full advantage of everything the stock Nes has and can do. Zelda was far too large and graphically intensive for the stock hardware to pull off. Thankfully, programmers started messing with bank switching and Memory Manager Chips *MMC that more than doubled the carts available programmable space. This also gave the Famicom/Nes capabilities it was never designed to have and opened up the aging hardware like never before. What's funny is the little MMC chips together with bank switching made Nintendo's brand new Famicom Disk System obsolete. So yes, Zelda 2 does look more graphically pleasing than the first game but it's not at a great margin. It's not Ninja Gaiden vs. Ice Climbers bad and I think the first Zelda game had better sound effects.
This may shock some people but I hated these 2 games back when I had an NES in the 80's. I always thought they had terrible graphics. I mostly preferred pretty platformers like Little Nemo and Rescue Rangers. I did get into Metroid and Battle of Olympus a lot though.
The reason for Zelda being under a sleep spell is in the manual. Look up the story, dude. It helps understand the game better. Still, there are a lot of issues with this game. It really shows how it wasn't even originally developed to be part of the Zelda series.
Little kids like this guy don't know that manuals used to have a lot more information because all that story and other things didn't fit in the memory space of the cartridges
Just cheese the floating skulls in the first palace for exp and pump your attack up. They give 50 exp each. Keep pumping your attack and you can max attack in the first palace no sweat. Or get to 7 and get enough exp to skip magic and health, kill the first boss for lvl 8 attack then get enough to skip health and magic for the 2nd palace boss. Bam. Max attack, the grind ain’t that bad.
2:50 Hidey-ho neighbor. I had these games as a kid and always found Zelda II to be grindy, immensely hard, and more boxy than it's predecessor. GAME OVER RETURN OF GANON o_O "BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK"
Man does this make me glad Twilight Princess was my first Zelda game. Sure it has it's issues but this sounds like smth I'd end up breaking my controller to
Oh yeah Twilight Princess is a much better start to the series. (Though that's because Twilight Princess is freaking amazing.) I wouldn't recommend checking this one out unless you're REALLY interested.
I'm seeing way too many people here in the comments proclaiming that this analysis is empty of any criticism as it just sounds like "a youngster whining and complaining about why the game is too hard". If a lot of you actually watched the video, he actually says the game becomes pretty easy after the Death Mountain portion. I also don't understand how putting a large maze with extremely tough enemies in the first hour of the game is good or challenging design when all it does is just create a really unfair barrier between one portion of the game and the next. Not only this, but Duo actually made it to the end of the game. He didn't just quit after the first dungeon, he actually pulled himself all the way through, and he even complimented the game on the stuff it got right. The fact that someone who hasn't grown up playing NES games in the era in which these were the biggest games on the market even decided to play this game in the first place should show you how dedicated they are in making their comments about it.
This was my very first personal Nintendo game. Too bad you are too young to understand the concept of networking to get through these games back in the day. It was rad experiencing this again with Breath of the Wild.
I liked zelda 2. even finished it and never did the same with zelda 1. the game is more fun and easy with the playtrought and even so is chalenging in the gameplay aspect. also it inspires the super smash bros link and the temple of the same game that even have a locked dor and in the melee box used to have a elavator. they removed before launching
Zelda 2 is like “the difficult second album” in video game form. U could imagine Nintendo execs at the time ordering the design team to make it more like Super Mario Bros or something and the devs failing to do that or deliberately failing out of spite. Thankfully the subsequent Zelda games have been masterpieces, although - full disclosure - I’ve not played Majora, and do we count the Philips games? No. The main problem with Z2 I guess is that it can be lousy in terms of difficulty
I love this game! Easily one of my favorites. I always think it's funny that I can play this game no problem, but can't beat alttp or the gameboy color games.
Zelda 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. I think you have fair reasons to criticize it. Most people just hate on it to hate on it. I enjoyed the video.
Just came across your channel for the first time today, enjoyed the reviews of Zelda I & II. I feel similarly about Zelda I (overrated) but I've always liked Zelda II. I think it's more fun than Link's Awakening or OoT. Link's Awakening has way too much running around, and OoT... ugh... so overrated imo. (Majora's Mask was more enjoyable) For me, the "fun" in Zelda 2 comes from the combat and leveling up, and I really dig the feel of the game and the music. I understand a lot of the enemies are unexpectedly punishing, but once you develop a strat to beat those tougher enemies, I think they're fun to fight and they reward a lot of XP. I do resort to using a walkthrough/maps when I start to feel lost to keep things moving. Back in the day, it was more common for people to make their own maps, write notes, and word-of-mouth tips spread fast, especially at school. I think the Magic is also satisfying to use. A helpful trick in Zelda 2 is to cast heal while your MP is on the rise after picking up a red magic bottle. The bosses are solid, action-packed as opposed to most adventure/Zelda games w/ gimmicky phases that you have to wait out. FWIW, definitely an NES game that's best played w/o any input lag. It feels like a slog even on emulator because the tight controls really help.
It's not so bad if you just abuse save states to get past death mountain, and looking stuff up when you realize you're completely stumped how to move forward.
I grew up with this game, and I loved it. But... it’s realllllly flippin’ hard, especially back then when you didn’t have all the walkthroughs you could want with a type of a finger.
Eh.... I’m still pushing myself to finish Triforce Heroes. It’s the only Zelda game I haven’t beat yet. Zelda 2 was by far the most difficult for me but I did beat it 11 years ago. One and done. Didn’t hate it but man it did piss me off a lot.
I think it is a bit too difficult on its own just because of some weird poverty difficult design choices, but the redux mod fixes these problems. I beat both versions and I love them both, redux more though as it ages better. This game was a gem and I'm sad to hear people hate on it, it's exactly why we will never see a sequel to it. I wish we could see the hero of hyrule again.
Honestly I think the idea that games would be made intentionally cryptic in order to encourage people to use the hotline might have some merit to it. If the game is designed in a way that it's possible to figure out what to do without someone telling you, there probably wouldn't be enough people using the hotline for it to be profitable. I'm not saying that the entire game was designed around the hotline, but it's easy to see why Nintendo might ask its developers to maybe make that building or item just a _little_ harder to find, increasing their revenue from the hotline with basically no effort. That would also explain why the secrets aren't as cryptic as the stuff you need to progress in the game: nobody is going to call the hotline asking where to find something they don't even know exists, so there's no point in making them unfindable.
Nintendo is long due to remaster the first two Zelda games. In the case of Zelda 2, there's a strong need for a complete overhaul of various aspects of the game's progression. I agree with you completely that it has a lot of good qualities. As you said though, they are overshadowed by not-so-great game design. I suppose we can sort of give the developers of the time a pass as it was a relatively new form of entertainment. But because it is a staple game in the Zelda canon, it needs a proper remaster. Zelda 2 simply has not aged well. Even when I played it for the first time as a 12 year old from 2003, it didn't age well even then!
I'm afraid too many people will look at this review and take it as fact without playing it. It's more than apparent a lot of younger people feel entitled to easy introductions and obvious cues when it comes to challenges in games. You have to try to see it from the perspective of what things were like in the late 80's/early 90's when playing video games. It was typical that you would only own a few games. If you compare prices with inflation, systems and games were expensive. People wanted a challenge because they were going to spend a lot of time playing it. There wasn't much else in terms of spending your time in comparison today. There wasn't distractions like social media. At home there was TV, talking on the phone, reading and whatever hobbies were. Zelda II isn't unforgivingly difficult. In fact, it's comparable to a lot of other games at the time. The review has the tone of someone who only really experienced Super Mario Bros and not much else for the NES. When I was a kid I played it a lot, but I didn't beat it. I beat it on Wii's virtual console without any guides or walkthroughs. It was challenging, and I needed to seek out where things were on the map, but it certainly wasn't impossible. The first dungeon will be hard if you don't do the work to upgrade and level yourself up. The end result of beating it was very rewarding. Compare it to Rygar, or other similar titles for the time, and you will see Zelda II probably did it a lot better. It's a superb game. As for the lack of cues in the game, you have to consider they had very little amount of space on these cartridges, and they needed to recycle a lot. They couldn't add a custom image on the map for every secret. Plus, what fun is it finding something with so many obvious clues? It should also be recognized that a lot of things were done first in Zelda II in the entire Zelda franchise. Towns for one (and their names used in other games). Also Breath of the Wild has no health pickups like Zelda II. More lively, and interactive NPC's that walked around were done first on Zelda II. This game also has the first Dark Link. I really hope they bring back the 2D platform gameplay in a future game. If you played Super Mario Maker 2 with the Link update, you'll know how much potential this has.
Zelda 2 is a different game. I played it on original hardware first and got about halfway through without a guide after A LOT of frustration. I’ve been playing it on the switch and by lightly using a guide to know where things are and the rewind feature make the game MUCH more manageable. The combat is annoying but the controls are tight.
Good analysis but I think it's important to remember the state of gaming back then. The NES brought a lot of new people to gaming, Atari had been around for a good bit but this console was groundbreaking for its time. The sequel to the classics were often times much different because developers took an experimental approach. Games today can be quite cookie cutter since there's a set formula to what sells. Zelda 2, Simon's quest, even Mario 2 (Doki Doki Panic with a Mario skin) is way different than the originals because they were encouraged to try new things. Sure Zelda 2 is a black sheep now but when it came out, it was only comparable to Zelda 1 which was at the time of release, probably thought of as the best game ever made to that point. I force myself to neat Zelda 2 one time and that was enough for me. No desire to replay it. Didn't hate it but just don't want to deal with it ever again
"if all else fails, use fire" thanks zelda 2, now i know what to do when my application for a job is rejected!
@TurboCMinusMinus 2020 feels like Majora's Mask
Fun Fact. Certain enemies only being killable by fire was exclusive to the US and PAL release. In the original Japanese release, fire does pretty much nothing. In fact, the enemies that could only be killed by it in the US/PAL version are immune to it.
@@andrew1435 oh wow
Yeah, burn your resume and make a better one.
@@Kryxx07 what do i put on my resume to get a job if i have no job experience, i'm still in highschool, and i have absolutely zero skills in doing anything worth while.
Nintendo made their old school games cryptic on purpose to 1: make the game feel longer, 2: have a reason to sell Nintendo Power magazine
My friends and I all had Nintendo Power. We definitely learned all the ways around the cryptic parts due to it.
Nintendo is a Japanese company, and I can assure that they didn't give a rats ass about their Western audience when they designed their games in the 80s.
@@snetmotnosrorb3946 Nintendo Power Magazine was a combined production between Nintendo and Japanese publiser Tokuma Shoten, who published Family Computer Magazine for the Japanese NES, most of what Nintendo Power had was already been published overseas, so it's not all about the western audience.
@@snetmotnosrorb3946 That's why they didn't launch the Japanese Super Mario II in the West..........
John PS Pretty sure that was Howard Lincoln’s decision actually, as he playtested a lot of games that they sent him piecemeal from Japan and he made the final call.
I’m also inclined to believe this was the standard course of action, as it gels with Yamauchi’s unilateral approach to video games. As the President of Nintendo wasn’t a fan of video games himself, he trusted only his own instincts on what would actually be released on the system, and from little but intuition.
So a stack of games was just that to his leadership style; a stack of games. So that naturally leads to this idea that he would just have them sent off to international distributors, seeing as he had already made the decision of production himself, so he likely saw his job as done.
Every one I heard mention the "'I can restore your health' lady" joke also the old woman and they maintain the notion that Link is getting his freak on in both instances.
Zelda II is one of the most unfairly hated games of all time.
Its cause they are weak fakgots
That is true, but I feel this guy hates it fairly, and I wouldn't lump him in with all the other haters.
@@MogofWar hes like these other bitch new gamers. If you can't easily beat it then it sucks. This game is hard as shit. But that doesn't mean it's bad. It actually set a big standard setter for future zelda games.
@@The_Bad_Guy. Not just that, unlike most haters of Zelda 2, he at least acknowledged the good parts of it, even though it's outshadowed by the many, many, flaws. Kinda like my hate for Paper Mario Color Splash I guess. I admit it had funny writing, which was good, but the battle system was still heavily flawed and was basically a clone from the previous game for the battle system. Let this be a reminder that no game is perfect, there's always a flaw in each game of various degrees of size, no matter how good or how bad a game is.
@@zigazav1
he's still a weak bitch like all the others.
fuck them!
A lot of this game feels like when you stray realllllyyyyy far from where you're supposed to be in a fallout game and end up fighting super op shit LOL
Yep, but the difference is in Zelda 2, that IS where you're supposed to be. XD
I agree, kind of
7:55 The little blip blob thingy in one of the houses tells you his master is in the woods to the north of town. So you are given a clue.
The thing with Zelda 1 is that it had the honor of being something that had never been done at the time. If you just compared the game to what existed at the time it came out you might better understand why it was so well loved.
This reviewer lacks the ability to even think of these games on that level....because it's something he CAN'T know. He wasn't there....and apparently he doesn't know anyone who was there. lol
He uses terms like AI when discussing enemies in original NES games. ....and he acts as if guys had the ability to design full blown 3D games w/ open worlds & 87 different game mechanics on the NES. Game carts that're so small you can legitimately put the console's 1,000+ library of games, homebrews & hacks onto a single CD-r. I genuinely don't know wtf this little boy is expecting when he plays these games. Does he think Zelda 2 should morph into Dark Souls or Skyrim upon entering Death Mountain? Does he not realize these ppl were doing things that had NEVER been done before?
Is this boy capable of critical thought at all?
He doesn't have a fuckin' clue what he's talking about....and it's obvious. He's not gonna have a large following on youtube, so it doesn't matter. This isn't good content & it doesn't deserve the handful of viewers it does have.
It technically had been done before (an Atari game did it), just with way more limitations of course.
I'm not sure "it was first" is an adequate defense. Many of the trendsetting games from the 80s and early 90s lacked direction. "Here's a world, now go explore". Zelda 2 is better in this respect, but still pretty garbage. Some games lead you through the world design, others try to lead you through dialog and events. Some masterful examples do both. Let's take your first visit to Zora's Domain in Ocarina of Time as a prime example. The way they designed that level along with the events in it naturally lead you to the letter in a bottle found in Lake Hylia.
@@dizzle1119 damn dude u really stan zelda2
@@stephenh8225 No, not really. I would have made the same argument if this had been a half dozen other games. The guy was acting as if an NES game from like 1987 should have been designed the way a game was designed in 2020. I was spot on.
I got this game for my birthday when I was like 6. By this time i already had a link to the past so i was pretty excited to try it. It ended up being this thing in my life that I would pick up for a weekend every 6 months and make *some* progress every time. I think you said it best though, it just wasn't fun. eventually you hit a point where you just dont know where to go and its like....ok i guess im going to stop now. lol
EDIT: the worst part, the absolute worst part. is that after seeing your video i actually want to play it again.
I love this game, the challenge, the autonomy in choosing what skill I level up (very ahead of its time in 1989), the gameplay, discovering secrets, the music, the atmosphere, etc. I understand the gripes of the person who made this video but I think many of the points he made added to the satisfaction I received once I beat the game. I am old enough to have played it when it first came out so I know nostalgia needs to be factored in but I loved it back then too. Good video though as it makes me want to play it again soon!
There was such a great social aspect to this game end it reminds me of the excitement that you felt on being the first in your circle of friends to figure out the Blood code or a Mortal Kombat fatality. So many things won’t be relatable to those who never got to experience a time without the Internet. I remember spending hours trying so many random things in those games just to see what would happen. Somehow the modern world has greatly eroded my tenacity and persistence for such things. I am glad that you made the video.
7:55 This is technically not true. In one home in Saria town, there is a slime sleeping on a bench. Talk to him a few times and he'll say something like "master is in woods up North". Most things are just a matter of trial and error (though finding the mirror under the table is just retarded. I don't know how I managed to figure that out). Also, the reason the game is so cryptic is due to limited space in the speech bubbles. You can convey far more with Japanese characters than English text, so the translation had to be very bare-bones to still get the message through.
I agree that it's not the best game in the series, but I've warmed up to it over the years, so I don't hate it, either.
The translation is still bad.
Also in that forest where Bagu is, there's a few random spots where when you step into them it takes you to a side scrolling screen. I actually remember first stumbling upon those areas as a kid and getting the hint that something was special there and continued to look around and found Bagu.
My guy looks like a fusion dance between William Osman and Michael Reeves with the brain of The peanut butter gamer
So I've been watching a couple of reviews of Zelda 2 in order to get multiple opinions and solutions for the game. Why? Well, I'm trying to remake the game from the ground up, keeping the mechanics, enemies, and aesthetics (updated to a 16-bit pallet, rather than 8) generally the same.
Just made this comment because this is a review for the game, and I'm trying to get a little bit of attention over it. Unfortunately, I have pretty much no idea how to code; that's the thing that I'm really struggling with at the moment. Computer code is a lot different than the old TI-83's...
I really enjoyed the review, by the way. Recommendations were useful for once!
If so, this is your chance to get things right. Don't be afraid to really overhaul something if you should, even if it ends up completely different.
Death Mountain isn't that difficult once you realize duck+attack is a faster attack. For an NES game there is quite a bit of nuance to the combat system really. The game tries to clue you in on this through the level design. 14:09 shows one of the Death Mountain caves with ledges that block the axe guys, encouraging the player to duck+attack them. Unfortunately, subtle nuances are often missed by players, which is why modern games just blatantly tell you how to do everything, even if it's obvious.
always gotta dumb everything down for the lowest common denominator
The real world doesn't come with a player's guide or with explanations. It was the 90s, we weren't coddled.
Games aren't supposed to be like the real world. They're supposed to be fun.
@@DuoStuff just because it's hard doesn't mean it sucks. Typical new gamer though. Wanting it to be easy and to have unlimited continues and basically have your hand held to the end of the game. And if you fail then it's the games fault.
@Mike Werley He never said he wants the game to be super easy, have unlimited continues, and hold your hand until the end. Games can still be both hard and fun at the same time. A good hard game allows you to get up on your feet and learn the ropes before seriously challenging you. A bad hard game just makes you bang your head against the wall until you can brute force your way through. An example of a good hard game would be Donkey Kong Country. It starts off easy in the first world while teaching you the basic mechanics and giving room for error. Then the challenge goes up as the player’s skill goes up. Then when you finally finish the game, you get a feeling of satisfaction and feel like you really earned it. In Zelda 2, you just breathe a sign of relief that you were able to get through it at all. I don’t know about you but I prefer having a difficultly curve that steadily goes up rather than having to immediately climb a difficultly cliff in order to get good.
I love this game. It's always been a favorite of mine. To each his/her own.
And the Soundtrack. OMG! Sooo good!
Top sound track on NES in my opinion and one of my top 3 NES games to go back to, more then the first one. People hate on it because it’s not like other zeldas but at the time it just wasn’t like the first zelda
Same ^^
Matthew Flynn Facts about the soundtrack; possibly my fav video game soundtrack ever 🔥
Really enjoyed the video. I love this game and I'll always defend it but at the same time I can understand the people who don't like it. Different strokes it's not for everyone. What I love about it is the way it challenges you to keep getting better and better, the controls are tight thankfully and the combat is enjoyable. Where others may see frustration (like Death Mountain which I'm glad they put so early on) I see it as a really fun challenge to overcome and get better while doing it. Hope to have a deathless run one day.
I couldn't finish this game for these exact reasons amazing video Duo
Glad you enjoyed it regardless. =D
Zelda 2 and Castlevania 2 had some amazing ideas that were ahead of their own time in a lot of ways... but then they were also made during a time when they were trying to sell you nintendo power guides and hotline tips. So they ended up incredibly tedious if not impossible to progress in at times if you were trying to play them just based on the information given in-game. Especially CV2. I cannot tell you how frustrating it was to own games like these games as a kid. My parents were not about to let me call a tip hotline, so I would be pulling my hair out, trying to decipher some hidden meaning in the villager dialog that just wasn't there. We just wanted action, not all this obtuse bullshit.
It's extremely hard for modern players to understand why these games were so universally hated, because they're so used to looking up guides on the internet. I can totally understand that mindset, but when you need to find the correct unmarked pixel on a huge map with absolutely no direction from the game and bend down or do whatever for a specific amount of time just to make it to the next part of the game, that's horrible design and makes the game practically broken for people who can't look up what to do from an outside source. You can't just squat on every block or patch of grass in the game until you get lucky, though I can assure you many of us tried.
in the good old days, someone poor like me had to git gud or stop playing. i didnt have the money to buy guides or call hotlines(didnt even have a phone).
so my only choice was to git gud, which is what i did.
and thus i spend a lot of time mocking these noobs who cry at a game that doesnt hold your hand.
I enjoyed games like this as a kid. Its these games that gave us alot to talk about in school. I remember the group of friends I had would generally get a game around the same time, so we'd compete with each other to find stuff and share what we found with anyone that needed help.
7:54
wrong, there's a NPC on the village that talks about his "master being in the forest at the north of the village".
YES thank you for giving Super Paper Mario some love!
I genuinely adore Super Paper Mario, and I feel like it was treated really unfairly when it came out. I'm planning to make a Paper Mario version of this series down the road, and I can't wait to talk about Super specifically.
DuoStuff
Awesome!
I was scrolling through the comments and hadn't heard that Paper Mario joke yet and thought you were calling Zelda 2 Super Paper Mario as a joke
Damn I totally LOVE it, it's just awesome, the level desing is very varied and fun, like in Francis's battle, before it you have like a dating stimulator with him, it has very good story and it had also some serious topics, like the world that is basically... Hell and the heaven, that game creeped me out, not gonna lie, finding luigi at the bottom of a lake made by the tears and hands of sinners while crying on a rock isn't something I would wish to anyone
by guanguer ;; I totally agree, the variations in gameplay are awesome! And Luigi is a precious soul who needs to be protected
Zelda 2: some of the best ideas I’d love for them to revisit, some of the most ICONIC new tracks, introducing NPC’s and towns, but falling flat for so many reasons. All based in gameplay. I’ve heard there are rom hacks to improve the game, but I haven’t explored them yet.
I love it. Though I played it as a kid and it provokes a certain nostalgia I can't get from anything else. Though so do a lot of games but I don't enjoy them like this. You should play with nintendo power issue 4 whatever issue part 2 is in, for a more authentic 80s type experience. Also put on an NTSC filter so it looks like on a TV, which is how it looked for everyone until emulator. Pirate bay has NP issue 1-50 thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=8709177
Whenever I hear the line "It's super linear! Not that I have a problem with linear games, but...", to me it sounds like "I'm not linearist, some of my best friends are linear!"
Well no but it's legit true. I love Super Mario 3D World, all the linear 3D Zeldas, 3D Sonic, and many more. Zelda 2 just screws up a couple of things that makes it feel less good.
DuoStuff yeah I agree. Also 3d world > odyssey like if you agree!
I absolutely love this game, and it saddens me a little when people say they hate it, once the game clicks, it just works and becomes amazing. It's not super cryptic and you can actually find stuff, just actually talk to the townsfolk. The combat too is fun, and extremely tight except maybe enemies that shoot sword beams, those are kinda bs.
Difficulty, ya kinda, but not that bad, just don't play it on a digital tv, you want it on CRT, digital tv's have to convert the analogue signal before displaying it, making it a little delayed, that in itself can make alot of older games feel harder.
I mean you still have to remember that this is HIS opinion. I also very much like the game but you have to remember that people may not like the same thing you do.
@@NicolasPruitt No I get that, but his complaints like wrong, lol. Just talk to the townsfolk, the game seriously tells you where things are, or otherwise gives you a clue something might be somewhere with odd tiles or w/e.
It's not like Zelda 1's nearly zero direction with ingame dialogue so vague it might as well not have been there. Zelda 2 sections you off mostly for an area with 1 or 2 dungeons you can reach and towns with each having a spell to find, and an item to return.
He can still hate it all he wants if that's what he wants to do, but it's leaps and bounds less cryptic bs than many other NES games or that he tries to make it out to be.
I had Zelda 1 and 2 as a kid. Never beat either. Part 1 I came close using a guide, part 2 I just hated. Watching your videos is all the revisiting I'll ever need for these titles.
As an 39-year-old with no nostalgia for this game, I've never found it to be the least bit enjoyable when I've tried to play it.
I can tell a lot of people in this comment section are very nostalgia blind (and are bad at make good arguments) it really shows a difference when we see none nostalgia blind people like you
@@platinumskulls4490 people seem to forget that a lot of things age, and while there may have been justifications back in the day, nowadays you can't really enjoy these types of games without a pair of nostalgia glasses
People do mention the old lady sex thing, that's what makes the "what're they doing in there??" thing even funnier.
It takes a woman with experience to replenish magic with her services.
In the original Zelda, Link is a 10 year old boy. In Zelda 2, he is 16 years old. It makes sense that he "looks like a Munchkin" in the first and not the second.
he is 12 in zelda 1
Keep in mind this was built in 1986...Released in Jan 1987. Not perfect, but a good game for the time for sure.
The flipside on the difficulty and the lack of health pickups, particularly things like Death Mountain, is that unlike Zelda 1, Link has multiple lives. In Zelda 1, dying is dying, but Zelda 2 offers multiple lives, and extra ones scattered around as well that can be picked up (And I think they reset with each Game Over but I could be wrong on that). Also, Death Mountain has multiple red magic containers and the player should have already learned Life by this point, so you realistically should have at least 3 lives plus multiple heals throughout each one.
Additionally, progressing through the game gives 'checkpoints' in a way to get back after a Game Over. Once the hammer is obtained, you can easily get to the Southern area after a game over within seconds. Once the raft is obtained, getting to the other area is just as easy. Only the final area after the whistle is semi-hard to have to go through over and over with the Dino/Lizalfos throwing rocks, but even that isn't too bad.
The difficulty is due to not using big brain strats to level up properly. Yes dungeon 1 might be rough for beginners, but once you learn that XP is used to level up AND the gem fills your XP to the next highest level, it's easy
I never got past Death Mountain. Never cared enough to feel obligated to grind endlessly to be strong enough to get past it.
It is still, to this day, the only main Zelda game I haven't finished.
It is also the hardest and most frustrating game I've ever played in my life.
By the way, that was the first video of you I've watched and it's very well done and interesting. Great stuff! You've got yourself a new suscriber :)
Back in the early Nintendo days people would talk about a game and share information on the playground i had my zelda map from the original game and put marks on every secret I found and my friends would show me other secret so I'd mark it.
This is the most accurate review of this game even down to the final sentences. First Zelda game, I've gone back to it a few times and beaten it every time. This game... I'm basically torturing myself to beat it and I'm not having fun at all.
This game could have been fixed in a few easy steps.
1. Keep the sword beam on all the time and have it do the same amount of damage as the regular sword attack.
2. Take shields away from the Darknuts until at least the 3rd dungeon.
3. Have NPCs with concise and clear instructions of where to go and what to do (like after talking to someone, load the overworld map and highlight where to go for the player.)
That lowers the overall difficulty, flattens the difficulty curve, especially in the beginning, and removes the ambiguity of what to do. Your health being that easy to get rid of and so hard to get back is justified if the game encourages you to play defensively and keep your distance instead of forcing you to charge the enemies and exploit their behavior patterns as soon as you take 1 hit.
Its a great game. Get good at it.
I wish I could like this comment more than once.
That is not a valid argument for cryptic design.
Take your nostalgia glasses off and look at the game for what it is.
@@snowmanman4508 I played it in 88 and I played it 2 months ago. It's a great game. Get good at it.
I race it every couple months...and I still, after 30+ years, try the fairy glitch everywhere I can!
Spending 10 hours on a game that isn't enjoyable in order to get enjoyment out of it is like watching a TV show that supposedly gets good in the third season but behind it is 2 seasons worth of rubbish.
This game is close to my heart. Being a kid around the age of 8-9, I clearly remember renting this game and mike Tyson’s punch out.
I didnt even notice how good the music in this game is since I was to busy getting mad.
Played this game when I was 8 and I couldn't read english at that time. It took me months to finally get to the final castle, and then my brother kicked the NES to annoy me and I lost my save file... We don't talk anymore.
I like this game and have completed it many times. However, the first few times I played it I didn't. It is definitely a game that grows on you.
I'm curious. Why did you replay the game after completing it once and not liking it, let alone completing it a few times and still not liking it?
@@Teknanam I never completed it those first few times. I only completed it after realizing I had been playing it wrong all these years. I treated it like a traditional Zelda and failed. Eventually I realized you need to grind out to improve your skills. After I worked that out the game was easier and more enjoyable.
@@Teknanam this question is better suited for me. who didn't like the game, beat it..then played it again.
I was born in '84. Didn't really start to understand what I was doing in games till like 1990or '91.
And playing whatever game was laying around. I was smart enough to only rent games like Megaman or punchout from Blockbuster. Short games for fun that can be enjoyed on a weekend from school. doesn't require passwords and any real storytelling.
Anyhow after beating the first Zelda game..getting into this was something i had to do. And I kinda hated it. took forever.
But..I started to get older and understand games more. So being bored with the 10 random nes games and maybe 5 snes games, and like 3 sega games I had at the time, I tried Zelda II again when I was like 9. that's like in 1993.
The reason dates are important..to understand there was really NO other options back then.
No cellphones. Internet, as compared to today, was just non existent. You kinda just HAD to deal with what you had. This is where the hotlines and guides made sense. We had NO OTHER options back then.
Learn to play and love it..or hate it..but still play it cause..what the fuck else you gonna do about it?
Plus..you're not in an era of "let's make everything as real as possible". So there's no expectation for it to be any different than what it is.
A lot of times, back then, you didn't hear people complain about the controls or level design or any of that. It was just...as it is. So when you didn't win..you blamed yourself for not being good enough. Not the game for being made poorly.
So, figuring it out means you did well...and therefore, you now, kinda, like the game. the better you are, the more you like it.
And playing games back then was ALSO like reading a good book. Anything that looked bad visually...was adjusted in your own imagination. and there wasn't much options of other games that you could compare to, that made you feel wrong for justifying that which you saw. You just accepted it as that's how it is.
So, in your mind, you were going on an epic adventure. YOU had to learn to be better. It was never the game's fault. it was your lack of understanding..and when you finally learned what to do, you were the epic adventurer. Pride.
Now, my cousin who's about 7yrs younger..he got his start in SNES games. He can't understand one thing about me loving nes games. even the ones people swear are the worse lol
@@agonleed3841
I was born early into the 90s, but my parents cheaped out and got me an NES regardless which was all I played until they got me an N64 years later. I know about that feeling of those games being all you had to play. I KINDA get that whole thing of blaming yourself for not being able to complete games, but I had limits for how much I'd blame myself vs. the game. Probably because I had a bunch of games (the Mario trilogy, Dirty Harry, Spyhunter, Bad Dudes) and a lot of my friends had more modern systems like the SNES and Genesis which showed off better design choices. Still, I would go back to my NES and eventually beat games. But Zelda II always pissed me off because it gave the illusion that it should be better than the other non-Nintendo sidescrollers with its better controls and a save system. But having to lose all my progress on the 2nd dungeon would just piss me off too much.
That time thing does make sense. By the time I went back and finally beat Zelda II, my tolerance for questionable old design was way less than it was as a kid even though I knew enough to power through the game anyway. But in the end, I didn't gain any new appreciation for the game like I did when I played through and beat Metroid 1when it was part of Metroid Prime 1.
You may not care for Zelda II but not only is it a favorite of mine but it was the first game I ever owned. Sure, we had other games in the house but this one was mine. So yes it's a bit nostalgic to me. I happen to like the difficulty level that comes early. I agree that it has flaws, what game doesn't? Now and then I still play it. I still remember where everything is and can finish the game for the most part in a afternoon. As NES games go, I would recommend Willow for a fun challenge.
My main gripes with this game is the lives system, which is silly for a Zelda game, and the lack of checkpoints/decent save system. Most of the problems would be at least tolerable if saving and quitting didn't reset my EXP or send me back all the way back to the beginning. Like if I at least started at the last town I visited or the current temple I'm on when I open a file that'd be great! And whenever I died, I at least spawn at the start of the temple or a tile away from the last temple I beat. And with modern hardware, I don't see how we couldn't have a quick save feature.
Having trouble with cryptic NES games? Well sir you just need to:
🎶 “get the powerrrr, Nintendo powwweeerrrr” 🎵
I'll throw a minor point out....Zelda II has new game plus, where you can start from the beginning with 8-8-8. It's probably more fun that way.
Sounds like your type of game is a walking simulator. This game is not very difficult
Wow....I don't even know what to say. Basically take everything you said and reverse it, and that's how I feel. I guess this is all going to boil down to an age difference. I respect your opinion of course, but you couldn't be more wrong. The best thing about Zelda 1 and 2 is that there is a secret world lurking around every corner. This is what we talked about lining up for elementary school in the morning. Is Zelda in Zelda 2 the real Zelda or a different Zelda? If you read the manual, it is actually a different Zelda, but I had several friends who argued differently. We theorized about stuff way before there was the medium of the theory video. It was just a different time. We loved the way the worlds were created. I get that you think these games are hollow, but to me they are still the most grandiose of all of the Zelda games. I love Wind Waker and Majora's Mask and Breath of the Wild, but they don't have anything on Zelda 1 and 2 in terms of total game play time during the first run and overall enjoyability. There isn't anything satisfying about having everything handed to you on a silver platter. It has nothing to do with "good" and "bad" game design. You are holding a late 1980s game to the standards of 2020. Yes, nowadays, if you don't show the player how something works before having them use it then that is poor game design. Back in the 80s we just figured it out, and I was a kid at the time. I beat Zelda 1 and 2 before the age of 10. I did it without strategy guides, I did it without cheating the Dark Link fight by ducking in the corner, and I did it on sheer will and determination. That is what it took to beat these games back then, sweat and tears. It made us who we were. The entire way you talk about this game just makes me sad. I understand why you feel the way you do, but it still just makes me sad that an entire era of video games is being rejected because the ethos behind playing video games has completely changed.
I love this game. When people ask we what my favorite Zelda game is, I always say "the first three, hands down." These games were hard. I have beaten the last three main platform Zelda titles (TP, SS, BOTW) without dying! That is ridiculous. I can now beat every Zelda title without dying, including Zelda 1 and ALTTP, but I still can't beat Zelda 2 without dying. The difficulty is what keeps bringing me back, over and over, year and after year.
People these days need so much handholding it’s ridiculous. I pay 80$ for a new game and beat it in three days... games today are just money pits
Great comment! I have bookmarked it.
@@TheGreyPodcast369 Games have become mainstream and are meant to give an experience rather than a challenge. Neither is inherently bad.
Okay Boomer
@@ytk2508 Appeal to novelty, ad hominem. Oh I thought you wanted me to explain to you what logical fallacies you used for your comment. Sorry, I guess I am just a boomer.
Way back in 1988, I thought original legend of Zelda was the best game ever. I was looking forward to this sequel so much. There was actually a delay in the release due to some unexpected manufacture or distribution problem. 1988 was functionally pre-internet, so we had no good way to know when the release would happen. I got my mother to take me to various game shops, but it wasn’t there. Employees who had no idea told me “tomorrow” or “next week” just to get me to leave them alone. Eventually I was calling the stores almost every day. Finally (months later)it arrived and I got a copy. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I didn’t think of it as a disappointment, and it was a pretty quality title in the NES era. I agree that it hasn’t held up well and was a step in the wrong direction for the series. But back then there were tons of garbage games and this was far above average. I once actually saved up lunch money for months in order to buy Deadly Towers, a game that looked like a Zelda concept but is now known as one of the worst games of all time.
When I got Zelda 2 back in '88, I had asked Santa for Zelda 1 for Christmas. Imagine my confusion Christmas Day when I opened it up, saw the gold cart, and started playing wondering when it would turn into the Zelda game I was playing at my friends house. My parents asked for Zelda at the store and the store clerk sold them Zelda 2 when it was really hard to find (ROM chip shortage). When my friends found out I had it then it wasn't so bad because we spent a lot of afternoons playing it as a group trying to figure it out...because it was so fricken odd compared to the original game. It took me 2 years to get through Death Mountain and get the damn magic hammer. Then the game opens up because at that point you've basically maxed your attack, life, and magic stats out.
I never beat this game because my parents refused to let me call the hotline, lmao.
I'm part of the minority of people who like Zelda 2 I don't know why but I play this game at least once or twice a year it's fun for me though and ya I know it has flaws but I still find fun in the so called black sheep Zelda game
All the internet does is talk crap on stuff people in real life actually like. I was surprised to hear people don’t like this game. But internet
I'm in the same boat, one of my favorite NES games.This and Faxanadu. The "cryptic" part as a previous poster said didn't seem to hard compared to other games, also the first game sort of set me up for what to look for.
This can out when I was a kid and I played it over and over until I got good. I didn’t give up and that’s what made the game satisfying when I did beat it. That’s what gaming back then was like. No tutorials, no marked locations, and vague hints. I like SMB 2 as well!!
Actually, Zelda 2 can be really fun, if you end up using fan-made patches, that is. And the road to the final dungeon? It's Death Mountain: the Sequel. The only perk is that you respawn at the palace entrance if you die. :3
I was one of the poor souls that actually bought this new when it was released in North America back in the day. Naturally, I felt obligated to get my 'money's worth' and slogged my way through the whole thing, but boy was it a disappointment in retrospect, once I no longer felt so heavily invested.
One of the poor souls? Dude this game was so popular when it was released you couldn't even buy it because it was sold out the second a shipment came in. It was one of the highest ranked nes games for years.
@@The_Bad_Guy. Yes but... those axe-throwing shits that would hide behind a high wall on your way to Death Mountain though.
@@CSGraves oh they suck for sure. But thats just the games way of letting you know you better rank up if you're going to go any further.
@@The_Bad_Guy. Ranking up is one thing... cheap-ass enemies are another! :-(
I don't think he realizes the first two Zelda games were made in 1986 and 1987. Let me repeat that.... 1 9 8 6 and 1 9 8 7. These games were classics for their time, judging them by modern game design standards is like judging a Ford Model T to a Lexus.
That's... That's the whole point of doing a series like this? There are plenty of people that can tell you how they were judging them by the standards of the time they released in. I can't. I judge every game in a series I cover by the standards from today. If I didn't, I might as well go look up the Nintendo Power review from 30 years ago and just read it verbatim, because that's how much value a video like you want would be worth.
6:47 - 6:53 "...but they also always fail to mention that the old lady does the same for you magic. Wow! Why don't people ever mention that?" Shit me and my friends made that joke too. Link likes 'em young and he likes 'em old.
Zelda game’s are pretty cryptic. But I think 2 was the least cryptic of them all. OOT making you shoot an arrow through a torch in the water temple without even telling you that was possible was criminal.
NES came out in a time when most kids like me had like 3 or 4 games and you were happy that it took so much time to play.
it was cryptic back in the day because it sold magazine subscriptions for Nintendo Power.
Different strokes for different blokes. I personally enjoy Zelda II, despite all its shortcomings both back then, and retroactively looking at it from a modern perspective.
EDIT: Also, the Zelda that's asleep is not the Zelda from LoZ 1. It's an ancient Zelda that's been asleep for ages. Two different princesses.
20:24 That's how i feeleded playing this game, i never had fun with this game
Both games where released when I was a kid, and I found both of the fun back then and I beat both of them. But revisiting them as an adult, I actually find Zelda 2 more fun than Zelda 1. I don't know why, but when ever I play Zelda 1 I usually stop playing after the first dungeon, while I've finished Zelda 2 several times as an adult.
to be honest, I prefer Zelda 2 over Zelda 1 I guess it might be because I could beat Zelda 1 in about a day while with Zelda 2 might take me a week or two idk i definitely came back to it more than zelda one but would like to hear your thoughts on a link to the past
When i was a kid-my teens i tried so hard to beat this game and i did get up to the end. Wasn't until i was an older gamer that i did beat it and grew to love it. It does, for what it is worth set up the established lore of there being 3 pieces of the Triforce. It's difficulty spike is terrible, Death Mountain is the worst. This Zelda is in a Dark Souls kinda pattern.
I agree with this video almost entirely. The original Zelda was a true tour de force of graphics and sound unlike anything we had ever witnessed before. You may not know this but when Zelda released in Japan it was made for the Famicom Disk System and do you know why?
Nintendo of Japan hit a veritable brick wall with the Famicom. You see, Super Mario Brothers was designed to take full advantage of everything the stock Nes has and can do. Zelda was far too large and graphically intensive for the stock hardware to pull off. Thankfully, programmers started messing with bank switching and Memory Manager Chips *MMC that more than doubled the carts available programmable space. This also gave the Famicom/Nes capabilities it was never designed to have and opened up the aging hardware like never before. What's funny is the little MMC chips together with bank switching made Nintendo's brand new Famicom Disk System obsolete.
So yes, Zelda 2 does look more graphically pleasing than the first game but it's not at a great margin. It's not Ninja Gaiden vs. Ice Climbers bad and I think the first Zelda game had better sound effects.
This may shock some people but I hated these 2 games back when I had an NES in the 80's. I always thought they had terrible graphics. I mostly preferred pretty platformers like Little Nemo and Rescue Rangers. I did get into Metroid and Battle of Olympus a lot though.
Wait a minute. People hate Metroid Fusion? Sure, the tacked on story was dopey, but it's a solid Metroid game.
The reason for Zelda being under a sleep spell is in the manual. Look up the story, dude. It helps understand the game better. Still, there are a lot of issues with this game. It really shows how it wasn't even originally developed to be part of the Zelda series.
Little kids like this guy don't know that manuals used to have a lot more information because all that story and other things didn't fit in the memory space of the cartridges
Just cheese the floating skulls in the first palace for exp and pump your attack up. They give 50 exp each. Keep pumping your attack and you can max attack in the first palace no sweat. Or get to 7 and get enough exp to skip magic and health, kill the first boss for lvl 8 attack then get enough to skip health and magic for the 2nd palace boss. Bam. Max attack, the grind ain’t that bad.
Search Arcus Zelda 2 speed run for an epic speed run at just under 1 hour 20 minutes.
2:50 Hidey-ho neighbor.
I had these games as a kid and always found Zelda II to be grindy, immensely hard, and more boxy than it's predecessor.
GAME OVER
RETURN OF GANON
o_O
"BARK BARK BARK BARK BARK"
That’s not the same Zelda from the first game. It’s her ancestor who was put to sleep by a evil wizard years prior to the first game.
Man does this make me glad Twilight Princess was my first Zelda game. Sure it has it's issues but this sounds like smth I'd end up breaking my controller to
Oh yeah Twilight Princess is a much better start to the series. (Though that's because Twilight Princess is freaking amazing.) I wouldn't recommend checking this one out unless you're REALLY interested.
skip the first two zeldas
ocarina for a start to 3d and link to the past for the first good 2d
Zelda 2 is one of my favorite NES games
i like it, even though it is the black sheep of the franchise, with one of the hardest final boss in the game,
I'm seeing way too many people here in the comments proclaiming that this analysis is empty of any criticism as it just sounds like "a youngster whining and complaining about why the game is too hard". If a lot of you actually watched the video, he actually says the game becomes pretty easy after the Death Mountain portion. I also don't understand how putting a large maze with extremely tough enemies in the first hour of the game is good or challenging design when all it does is just create a really unfair barrier between one portion of the game and the next.
Not only this, but Duo actually made it to the end of the game. He didn't just quit after the first dungeon, he actually pulled himself all the way through, and he even complimented the game on the stuff it got right. The fact that someone who hasn't grown up playing NES games in the era in which these were the biggest games on the market even decided to play this game in the first place should show you how dedicated they are in making their comments about it.
This was my very first personal Nintendo game. Too bad you are too young to understand the concept of networking to get through these games back in the day. It was rad experiencing this again with Breath of the Wild.
i.ytimg.com/vi/755BDwzxv5c/hqdefault.jpg
I believe NES games were so cryptic so you would call the hotline. They made a ton of money and the hotline was open till the 2000s
15:39
Thanks I didnt need eyes.
I liked zelda 2. even finished it and never did the same with zelda 1. the game is more fun and easy with the playtrought and even so is chalenging in the gameplay aspect. also it inspires the super smash bros link and the temple of the same game that even have a locked dor and in the melee box used to have a elavator. they removed before launching
It sucks because this game genuinely interests me. I don't know its just something about it, I hope they remake this game one day and make it fair.
Millions of 9-year-olds have played this game for over 30 years
Zelda 2 is like “the difficult second album” in video game form. U could imagine Nintendo execs at the time ordering the design team to make it more like Super Mario Bros or something and the devs failing to do that or deliberately failing out of spite. Thankfully the subsequent Zelda games have been masterpieces, although - full disclosure - I’ve not played Majora, and do we count the Philips games? No. The main problem with Z2 I guess is that it can be lousy in terms of difficulty
Ummm... we do joke about the old woman and her "handy".
Lol I was just playing this yesterday having a fun time lol 😂
I love this game! Easily one of my favorites. I always think it's funny that I can play this game no problem, but can't beat alttp or the gameboy color games.
a link to the past was easier, in my humble opinion.
@@sabin97 alttp has less bullshit and no "death mountain-like" areas. Also you know the game better than I do.
@@travisshute5838
i think the platforming of zelda 2 made it significantly more difficult.
@@sabin97 Really? Which parts?
Zelda 2 is one of my favorite games of all time. I think you have fair reasons to criticize it. Most people just hate on it to hate on it. I enjoyed the video.
Just came across your channel for the first time today, enjoyed the reviews of Zelda I & II. I feel similarly about Zelda I (overrated) but I've always liked Zelda II. I think it's more fun than Link's Awakening or OoT. Link's Awakening has way too much running around, and OoT... ugh... so overrated imo. (Majora's Mask was more enjoyable) For me, the "fun" in Zelda 2 comes from the combat and leveling up, and I really dig the feel of the game and the music. I understand a lot of the enemies are unexpectedly punishing, but once you develop a strat to beat those tougher enemies, I think they're fun to fight and they reward a lot of XP. I do resort to using a walkthrough/maps when I start to feel lost to keep things moving. Back in the day, it was more common for people to make their own maps, write notes, and word-of-mouth tips spread fast, especially at school. I think the Magic is also satisfying to use. A helpful trick in Zelda 2 is to cast heal while your MP is on the rise after picking up a red magic bottle. The bosses are solid, action-packed as opposed to most adventure/Zelda games w/ gimmicky phases that you have to wait out. FWIW, definitely an NES game that's best played w/o any input lag. It feels like a slog even on emulator because the tight controls really help.
It's not so bad if you just abuse save states to get past death mountain, and looking stuff up when you realize you're completely stumped how to move forward.
I grew up with this game, and I loved it. But... it’s realllllly flippin’ hard, especially back then when you didn’t have all the walkthroughs you could want with a type of a finger.
Eh....
I’m still pushing myself to finish Triforce Heroes. It’s the only Zelda game I haven’t beat yet. Zelda 2 was by far the most difficult for me but I did beat it 11 years ago. One and done. Didn’t hate it but man it did piss me off a lot.
The intro is still the best one in the series!
I think it is a bit too difficult on its own just because of some weird poverty difficult design choices, but the redux mod fixes these problems. I beat both versions and I love them both, redux more though as it ages better. This game was a gem and I'm sad to hear people hate on it, it's exactly why we will never see a sequel to it. I wish we could see the hero of hyrule again.
I busted my butt back in the day to buy this game. So I learned to conquer it and love it.
Imagine if this game gets a sort of metroid samus returns style remake.
Dude that'd be super neat actually. I'd like to see what they would re-interpret it as.
Honestly I think the idea that games would be made intentionally cryptic in order to encourage people to use the hotline might have some merit to it. If the game is designed in a way that it's possible to figure out what to do without someone telling you, there probably wouldn't be enough people using the hotline for it to be profitable. I'm not saying that the entire game was designed around the hotline, but it's easy to see why Nintendo might ask its developers to maybe make that building or item just a _little_ harder to find, increasing their revenue from the hotline with basically no effort. That would also explain why the secrets aren't as cryptic as the stuff you need to progress in the game: nobody is going to call the hotline asking where to find something they don't even know exists, so there's no point in making them unfindable.
Nintendo is long due to remaster the first two Zelda games. In the case of Zelda 2, there's a strong need for a complete overhaul of various aspects of the game's progression.
I agree with you completely that it has a lot of good qualities. As you said though, they are overshadowed by not-so-great game design. I suppose we can sort of give the developers of the time a pass as it was a relatively new form of entertainment. But because it is a staple game in the Zelda canon, it needs a proper remaster. Zelda 2 simply has not aged well. Even when I played it for the first time as a 12 year old from 2003, it didn't age well even then!
I am currently trying to play through this game, and it is absolutely rage inducing. I hate it so much.
Yep. That's basically how it is for a newcomer
I cannot express how painful this experience has been.
I'm afraid too many people will look at this review and take it as fact without playing it. It's more than apparent a lot of younger people feel entitled to easy introductions and obvious cues when it comes to challenges in games. You have to try to see it from the perspective of what things were like in the late 80's/early 90's when playing video games. It was typical that you would only own a few games. If you compare prices with inflation, systems and games were expensive. People wanted a challenge because they were going to spend a lot of time playing it. There wasn't much else in terms of spending your time in comparison today. There wasn't distractions like social media. At home there was TV, talking on the phone, reading and whatever hobbies were.
Zelda II isn't unforgivingly difficult. In fact, it's comparable to a lot of other games at the time. The review has the tone of someone who only really experienced Super Mario Bros and not much else for the NES. When I was a kid I played it a lot, but I didn't beat it. I beat it on Wii's virtual console without any guides or walkthroughs. It was challenging, and I needed to seek out where things were on the map, but it certainly wasn't impossible. The first dungeon will be hard if you don't do the work to upgrade and level yourself up. The end result of beating it was very rewarding. Compare it to Rygar, or other similar titles for the time, and you will see Zelda II probably did it a lot better. It's a superb game. As for the lack of cues in the game, you have to consider they had very little amount of space on these cartridges, and they needed to recycle a lot. They couldn't add a custom image on the map for every secret. Plus, what fun is it finding something with so many obvious clues?
It should also be recognized that a lot of things were done first in Zelda II in the entire Zelda franchise. Towns for one (and their names used in other games). Also Breath of the Wild has no health pickups like Zelda II. More lively, and interactive NPC's that walked around were done first on Zelda II. This game also has the first Dark Link.
I really hope they bring back the 2D platform gameplay in a future game. If you played Super Mario Maker 2 with the Link update, you'll know how much potential this has.
Zelda 2 is a different game. I played it on original hardware first and got about halfway through without a guide after A LOT of frustration. I’ve been playing it on the switch and by lightly using a guide to know where things are and the rewind feature make the game MUCH more manageable. The combat is annoying but the controls are tight.
Good analysis but I think it's important to remember the state of gaming back then. The NES brought a lot of new people to gaming, Atari had been around for a good bit but this console was groundbreaking for its time. The sequel to the classics were often times much different because developers took an experimental approach. Games today can be quite cookie cutter since there's a set formula to what sells. Zelda 2, Simon's quest, even Mario 2 (Doki Doki Panic with a Mario skin) is way different than the originals because they were encouraged to try new things. Sure Zelda 2 is a black sheep now but when it came out, it was only comparable to Zelda 1 which was at the time of release, probably thought of as the best game ever made to that point. I force myself to neat Zelda 2 one time and that was enough for me. No desire to replay it. Didn't hate it but just don't want to deal with it ever again