 Sl... I'm drunk! There are few games throughout gaming history as polarizing as Zelda II The Adventure of Link, and why is that? Because it's the goofy misfit of the Zelda series, it's a 2D side-scrolling action RPG instead of the top-down puzzle-solving adventure variety most of the other games are. But here's something I did not know about the early Zelda series. Legend of Zelda was released for the Famicom Disk System in Japan in February of 1986. Zelda II The Adventure of Link, meant to be a direct sequel, was released for the same system in Japan in January of 1987. That's six months before the release of the first Zelda in North America, so Nintendo had both games completely finished before Zelda 1 was even made available to the public here in the US. Now, there's a lot of conclusions that could be drawn from that fact. Maybe the Zelda series was originally meant to cover all sorts of different genres. Maybe Link was intended to branch out in other ways as a character. Nintendo even made a point to bring in a completely different team of people to create Zelda II, according to producer Shigeru Miyamoto. The point is, there was clearly no set Zelda formula yet. There were trying all sorts of different stuff to see what worked, and well, we all know what ended up working. The Legend of Zelda got its North American release in July of 87 and became a ginormous success. But interestingly, Zelda II also got the green light, as is, for a North American release in December of 88, and while that game sold 4.5 million copies worldwide, it wasn't perceived as much of a success as its predecessor. According to the April 2003 edition of Super Play Magazine, Miyamoto is even quoted as saying in an interview that he considered Zelda II as quote-unquote sort of a failure, saying that while development went as expected, it was too much of a departure from his original vision, hence why Link to the Past went back to how the first game was structured. There's still a ton of unanswered questions regarding the ideas behind Zelda II. Maybe there was pressure to make the series more like Mario, maybe the North American sales numbers had something to do with it, who knows. So Miyamoto evidently didn't think too highly of Zelda II, at least as part of the Zelda series, but how is it as a game just on its own, and how does it hold up today? Starting with the overall structure, Link starts the game with six crystals that he has to put into six different palaces, in addition to completing a final dungeon, the Great Palace. And to do that, he'll need to investigate where to go and what to do. See, from a story standpoint, this may be a direct sequel, and yeah, it's the same Link as the first game, but according to the manual, it's not the same Zelda. This gal has been in a sleeping spell for hundreds of years, turns out Zelda's just a name they gave every Hyrule Princess. In the meantime, while you're trying to resurrect this particular Zelda, there are evildoers out there trying to resurrect Ganon. Remember at the end of the first game, how we just kind of disintegrated into a pile of ash? Well, apparently, if you mix a drop of Link's blood into those ashes, then presto chango abracadabra, you've got a new Ganon. As I said earlier, Zelda 2 is an RPG complete with a leveling system where you earn points by defeating enemies and completing dungeons. Once you bypass the experience threshold in the upper right there, you have the opportunity to level up a skill, whether it be your attack, your magic, or the amount of damage you can take. You can level up whatever is available right away, or you can cancel and wait for something that requires more points. You wander around in an overworld, running into random battles that warp you into a side-scrolling battle mode. Most of the time, you don't even need to defeat any enemies, you just gotta make it to the edge of the screen to move on. What's kind of interesting here is that the overworld has clear pathways leading you where to go, and if you fall into a random battle while on the path, there's no enemies there, you can just walk off the screen. If you want to grind for experience, you can always veer off the trail and go find enemies. So how's Link supposed to figure out where to go and what to do? You gotta visit towns and complete little side quests in order to meet the town wise men, who will grant you a new magic spell that'll help you with the upcoming dungeon. What I find surprising here is that the NPC dialogue is actually helpful. Yeah, it's limited, but it's not friggin' broken and useless like it is in a game like Castlevania 2, which is funny since that game came out nearly a year after this one. In fact, what I found interesting is that the I Am Error guy actually isn't an error, because there's a guy you find later in the game named Bagu, which is Japanese for bug. Error and bug? Get it? Programming jokes? Eh? Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty of cryptic nonsense you gotta manage and it can be maddening at times, but maybe it's just because I was approaching this part of the game with low expectations and I didn't find it to be all that frustrating, all considered. Anyway, you get your spell from the wise man, you learn some tips and tricks from the villagers, you learn a new attack along the way, you gotta love that down thrust, one of the best attacks in any game ever, and you find the palace and find a helpful item in the palace and defeat the boss and put the crystal where it needs to be, and you repeat five more times before you get to the brutally difficult final dungeon. As with most RPGs, this is a game of management, so you sew throughout your quest, you gotta manage your health, your magic spells and your magic meter throughout the game, as well as several different items you find along the way. What really sets Zelda II apart is the combat, and it's a big part of what makes this game so polarizing. I'll start with the positives. Fighting certain enemies in this game really feels like a battle, like a real one-on-one sword fight. Your enemy can strike or block high and low, and it really makes for a fun challenge. This part of the game is just exhilarating. I also enjoy that there's different varieties of combat here, the sword fights are just one part of it. You gotta approach each enemy a different way. The problem with this variety is that sometimes the difficulty becomes absurdly unbalanced. For instance, in sections like this, I mean, this is essentially a horizontal scrolling shoot-em-up at this point, and Link is just not equipped to deal with the sheer amount of stuff coming at him. It certainly doesn't help that his sprite is so big, either. There's these infamous sections here. I mean, how on earth are you supposed to dodge all this? It just ends up being equip the best defense spells you got, grit your teeth and just plow ahead, and hope you have enough health and magic to deal with what comes afterward. And spoiler alert, you rarely do. The worst part of Zelda II isn't even anything exclusive to Zelda II. It's the old bounce back you get anytime you're hit by an enemy or a projectile. Same as Ninja Gaiden or Castlevania. You involuntarily bounce backward when you're hit by something, and seemingly 99 times out of 100, there's a bottomless pit right behind you. I should also mention that you have three lives here. When you die, you start near where you left off, but if you lose all three lives, which will happen often, you start all the way back at the beginning, where that stupid sleeping princess is hanging out. Now, normally, a game that has that big of a time-wasting flaw like that will get a thumbs down across the board no matter what. It's just too big of a deal breaker, because you waste so much time walking all the way back to the dungeon that you get to the point that you're wondering what the hell you're doing with your life. However, in the case of Zelda II, this game is available on the NES Classic, so you can utilize save states, and that allows the player to make sensible decisions like, say, create a save state at the beginning of the dungeon, like this game should have originally. One other thing I want to quickly point out regarding Zelda II is the music. What an immensely tall order this game had to try and live up to the soundtrack of the first game, but I'll be damned if there aren't some awesome, memorable tunes in this game as well. The town theme is so peaceful, and the palace theme is so good that it's still used to this day in the Super Smash Bros. series. What's even more impressive is that Zelda II's music was composed not by Kojo Kondo, but by Akira Nakatsuka, and yet somehow it still sounds like the next album from the same band, if that makes sense. So yeah, Zelda II is definitely outdated in a number of ways. The combat can really be unfair, the maze and death mountain can get extremely annoying, and having to wander all the way back from the princess to where you last died is a deal breaker for many people, but thankfully there are modern solutions available to fix that last problem. I don't recommend playing this one on original hardware, but on the NES Classic? Hell yeah, this game still has a ton of great qualities. I especially love the one-on-one sword fights, and the final boss here, Dark Link or Shadow Link, is one of the best final boss fights in any game ever. It's the kind of fight so intense you can't help but notice the sound of your controller creaking because you're squeezing it so hard. There are few games that can match that kind of tension. I mean, as long as you don't do the thing where you crouch in the corner and beat them that way. So despite all its flaws, I still think Zelda II is worth playing today. Just make sure it's on a device that supports save states, because it'll not only save your progress, it'll save you tons of time, and your sanity. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.