I finally got around to one of the few Zeldas I’d never played through properly. And it’s good!
Link’s Awakening has been on my list for a while. I even bought it on the 3DS Virtual Console. I ended up using my Raspberry Pi emulator though, so I could apply some nice quality of life fan patches: font improvement, removing intrusive text popups, etc. What got me to finally bite the bullet though was my friend kindly lending me his copy of the remake, so I decided to play them simultaneously, doing each phase and dungeon in the original then repeating it to closely compare the two.
As for the game, I’m very impressed. I grew up on the Oracle games, Capcom’s successors to LA, and while it’s a little simpler the world has so much charm and life to it. I think it also compares very favourably to its direct antecedent, A Link to the Past (which I always found awkward and bland), especially for a handheld game made initially on the sly. Koholint Island is a vibrant place, with lots of oddball characters including its village of talking animals and the guest cameos from other games, and the dungeons often have quirky ideas to them. The game also innovates with fun items like the Roc’s Feather that enables a jump, which helps in the occasional side-view segments (which are more fun than even when Zelda 2 based the whole game around them), and was the first to introduce a trading sequence.
The game’s story takes an unconventional tone of ambiguity, with the bosses taunting you as you question the ethical implications of your potentially destructive quest. The occasional eerie undertone is offset by the offbeat humour in the script, and your connection with the female lead Marin. In a memorable sequence she accompanies you across the island, following in your footsteps and occasionally commenting on locations (I also enjoyed the feeling of being accompanied by the other temporary followers, like the chain chomp, ghost, or flying chicken).
It’s really an accomplished game, only held back by the limitations of the system ie. only two buttons means lots of opening the menu to swap items, and things like this. So the remake then. It does go a long way to improving on these factors, with dedicated buttons for sword, shield, dash, and lift in addition to two item buttons; plus the enhanced warp system and greatly improved map with much more detail, waymarkers, a history of events, even marking collectibles you’ve found; and bigger screen areas means fewer transitions. It also adds a handy secret seashell detector, extra shells and heart pieces, and a rudimentary fairy bottle mechanic.
A headline feature of the remake (which by the way, stupidly does not have a distinct title) is the art style, where characters are styled to look toy-like, and a tilt-shift effect has been applied (too strongly if you ask me) to the edges of the screen. It’s a nice idea; I always love for a game to aim for a coherent and striking visual theme, but I can’t help missing the lovely pixel art of the Game Boy. Furthermore, I’m baffled by the poor performance of this remake,with stuttering and frame rate drops a common occurrence. I was also frustrated by the combination of mandatory analogue control and locked 8-directional movement, which felt very strange after A Link Between Worlds.
Apart from all of these highs and lows, I can’t help being ambivalent about the remake in the first place. It’s so painstakingly faithful to the original that it does little to justify its existence. I didn’t even mention the new dungeon-“designing” with Dampé feature (actually just slotting existing rooms into a grid), because I found it tedious and unfun, plus it replaces the adorable mouse photographer, a crime in itself. I cannot in good conscience recommend paying the full Nintendo-tax $80 for the remake when the GBC version is just as good, and can be had for $9 on Virtual Console or substantially less if you’re emulation savvy. Either way, I’m very glad to have played this landmark title in the series: as far as I’m concerned, it’s the first really great Zelda game.