Game news This Zelda is one of the most forgotten episodes today, and yet, it changed everything!

Game news This Zelda is one of the most forgotten episodes today, and yet, it changed everything!

I remember the commercial like it was yesterday. The iconic theme of the saga, the circular attack against two blobs, the climbing of Hera’s tower with mallets and suddenly, Link that turns into graffiti, passing between bars and going around a protuberance of the tower to catch up with a platform at the last second… The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is here, two years after Skyward Sword and the excellent 3D “remake” from Ocarina of Time. My parents, keen sleuths, deduce from my wide eyes that this is a title that interests me to the highest degree. Its sublime golden box (whose cover is reversible, a fact that I have just learned almost 11 years after the release) is in my hands and I am preparing to live an extraordinary new adventure.

See The Legend of Zelda: Tears of Kingdom on Amazon

A real new game…

The first thing that pleasantly surprised me while making this Zelda, it’s his universe. However, at the time, it was sold by the press as a kind of remake from A Link to the Past, a episode that I find a little bland (especially compared to Ocarina of Time). Nice, because it laid the foundations that I had found in the other games in the license and still very beautiful visually, with a delicious soundtrack, but nothing more.

Still, during my first moments on A Link Between Worlds, it’s a real breath of fresh air. Gone is the semi-realistic design of Ocarina of Time and the cel-shading of the latest portable episodes, here is a curvy herowith an appearance that I had never seen anywhere else except on old artworks from Hyrule Historia. And second surprise, Link was no longer woken up by his uncle in a stormy night. This time, it was a little man who brought him out of his nightmares, telling him to quickly go to the local blacksmith, for whom the hero seemed to work. “But it has nothing to do with the old game” I said to myself as I continued the adventure. And that was the key word of my first hour of play.

The title introduces a lot of new characterswhether it is Celes the priest’s daughter, Gulley the blacksmiths’ son, the captain of the guard, Igor, Yuga or even the best of all: Lavio! The characters in the game are really campy and all share a more or less important history with Linkwhich allows you to really become attached to them (it makes a changeA Link To The Past). It is also Lavio who introduces the main mechanics of the adventure: rental of objects. Yes, here, no more linearity falsely justified by Miyamoto and welcome to the land of free will. The objects necessary for accessing the dungeons and their completion are now for rent… From Link, whose little character has transformed the house into a shop. And that’s the whole point of my discovery: I am given a choice and I am incapable of making one.

Imagine, a Zelda that gives you all its items from the start (like Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom) it’s a real call to adventure. On top of that, the system encouraged me to really think about my level of play, since item rental, while it allows you to take everything from the start, also risks making you lose everything at once in the event of premature death. The rental system is indeed aptly named, because if you fall in battle, Shiro, Lavio’s little feathered companion, will come and collect the items you rented from his master. And to find them, you have to go to the checkout again! As saying that the desire to rent all your items at once is extremely punitiveespecially if you don’t really know how to gauge your skill.

… With its own identity!

If I was often frustrated by the linearity of certain Zelda released after Ocarina of Timewhich already left choices for the order of completion of the temples, in A Link Between Worlds, the dungeons can be explored in the order that suits us. This feature pushes you to explore Hyrule the way you really want. To comply with this new system, the difficulty has been lowered so as not to mark out the player’s path too much. If this seems like a bad point, it allowed the game to focus more on the puzzle part which is one of my favorite mechanics, where other opuses overuse combat. Temples develop real precise and original mechanics, like the Palace of Darkness which is plunged into darknessor in the Desert Palace with puzzles around the sand. The graffiti mechanic is really exploited and it’s a real pleasure to try it everywhere, only to finally discover that the developers had thought of this possibility.

If history takes up the shackles of its ancestor (three medallions, Master Sword, Hyrule Castle, new world and its 8 dungeons), it is enriched. Finished the Golden Land transformed by Ganon, simple reflection of the overworld and hello Lorule. Parallel world of Hyrule, it is a land where the Triforce was destroyed by the royal family to put an end to the wars that were gnawing away at the kingdom.

Lorule is the prism of what Hyrule could have become if it had sunk. Indeed, the destruction of the relic of the goddesses caused the decrepitude of the lands of the parallel world, digging large faults lacerating the kingdom. Survivors, traumatized, live consumed by fear, indulge in a mysterious cult of masks, supposed to allow them to be reincarnated as monsters and escape the surrounding madness. They are even guided by a guru who is the equivalent of the wise Sahasrahla for Lorule… Everything really depends on the context which truly anchors Lorule in minds as a world in its own rightjust like Termina in Majora’s Mask, Holodrum in Oracle of Seasons and Labrynna from Oracle of Ages.

Luigi, public enemy number 1

Sold over 4.26 million copies, with a Metacritic score of 91/100, the game is the 14th best-selling on the 3DS but remains, in Europe, one of the least known episodes, although it is easily one of the best in the series. All the lights were green. Although the portable episodes are, for some, considered “inferior” versions of the home console opuses, given its quality, its general forgetfulness is for me a real bug in the matrix. A few elements can partly justify such collective disinterest, especially its year of release.

A Link Between Worlds was released in 2013, two years later Skyward Sword and the remake ofOcarina of Time which pulled the cover of the license on 3DS. Two months before, the HD remake of The Wind Waker had just been released on Wii U. The game found itself stuck between two behemoths and had difficulty really establishing himself, particularly with his identity regularly confused with A Link to the Past. In addition to this, we must not forget that 2013, for Nintendo, was the year of Luigi. The Japanese company relied heavily that year on games from the Mario series, whether Super Mario 3D World, Luigi’s Mansion 2, Mario Party: Island Tour or Mario & Luigi: Dream Team Bros., relegating almost the Zelda series to the Wii U remake. As a fan of the series, this is really hard to swallow..

If the game is forgotten today, it is in no way due to its content. The title is absolutely exceptional and fully deserves its place in the Pantheon of the series, no offense to fans of home consoles and retro game purists. I simply can’t forget it, it’s a game that leaves a lasting impression and is still just as enjoyable even more than 10 years after its release. If you snubbed it or simply missed it, give it a chance and you will discover a real jewel ruby.