The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening Review
This is a full review of the game and as much as I will try to be vague and avoid major plot points, it is inevitable that spoilers will be present.
Sometimes you wake up from sleeping only to remember bits and pieces of your dream. Many times these parts don’t add up and can feel disjointed from one another. They can feel like a puzzle but the pieces aren’t from the same puzzle. Links Awakening feels like a great 2D Zelda game at times when things fit together as the same puzzle. Other times, the pieces aren’t meant to be together at all and this is where the game loses its magic.
As someone who never got to play the original Links Awakening on the Game Boy In 1993, I was excited at visiting another piece of curated Legend of Zelda history. Trying to place myself back in 1993, the world in which you awake in feels very weird. Even today this world seems strange in a way that can’t be explained. It’s a world that feels familiar yet unknown as you’ve seen everything before but not in a Zelda game. Link wakes up on the shores of Koholint Island after being shipwrecked and has no idea of the event. The whole island feels weird and out of place and since I never played the original, I don’t have any memories about the game. I am instantly in unknown territory and confused just like Link.
Links Awakening can be frustrating at times due to the lack of a classic Legend of Zelda formula. You need to find x to get y and then get z. In this game, it can be a challenge figuring out what you are supposed to do with a pineapple and why someone is asking you for a broomstick. In almost every other Legends of Zelda it’s clear that you require a certain item or need to reach a certain area to find what you need. This seems to value your time unlike Links Awakening that features a large island that is slow to traverse and no common sense can tell you where to start looking for honey.
Visually the game is beautiful with an adorable, top down art style, however in certain areas the game can struggle technically with noticeable frame rate drop. It can be jarring, especially for a first party Nintendo title and not something you would expect from one of the most revered Nintendo franchises. The good news is that most of the technical issues arise around some of the earlier areas in the game that you must explore. Since you often don’t need to travel back through them, things get better in the latter parts of the game.
The dungeons are often the strength of The Legend of Zelda series. Even in Breath of the Wild, the shrines were still some of the most challenging, creative and rewarding parts of that game. The same statement can be said for Links Awakening, however all of the dungeons seem to lacking cohesion between the story and each other. They are all very fun and you always feel great when you figure out the puzzles but it feels something along the lines of a Zelda Maker instead of a curated Nintendo experience. The other issue I had with the dungeons was the difficulty curve was all over the place in terms of both enemies and puzzles. You never know what to expect going in, which made some of the later dungeons in the game easy as you often felt overpowered and some of the earlier dungeons were very tough.
Links Awakening is similar in the way that your favourite band tried an experimental sound for their new album. It’s still many of the key elements you know and love but they aren’t quite arranged the way you have become accustom to. In Links Awakening, you still have most of the components that make a great Legend of Zelda, just not laid out in the way that makes most of the entries in this series a masterpiece. Links Awakening is still very worthy of being part of your collection and even an experimental Legend of Zelda is better than most games. Many things in Links Awakening don’t make sense and don’t add up but I guess that might be exactly what the developers are trying to accomplish.
8/10