Format: Advance
Genre: Action platformer
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

A fairly casual playthrough of a classic bad game, also known as zelda II. That's aye-aye as in buttpirate territory of bad design. It almost feels criminal giving this classic game such a low score considering how many great games are in the series, yet, anyone that's played this game probably full well understands that this game is emphatically the worst in the entire series. Zelda II is the black sheep of the zelda franchise and for good reason, the hitboxes suck, the controls are clunky, and the design is frantic at best. The original Zelda was a top down affair, whereas this one takes place in side-scrolling action. It was... ambitious?.. of nintendo to try and make link's adventure into a sidescroller but due to extremely bad design choices, it simply didn't pan out until the Ocarina of Time days. A dollar too early and a hookshot too late, is how you'd describe their ambitions. You play as Link in this game who just turned 16 (which is legal in japan for you female pedophiles out there), and discovers that the real princess zelda has been asleep for like.. decades or something. I guess you rescued zelda's great granddaughter or something in the last game??? Plot doesn't make sense, whatever, but then you're met with the gameplay which can only be described as classically bad. So as Link, you start off only able to stab a short range forward, and ducking. IRONICALLY this is also the first, and only game for a while, where link can jump without some sort of special device. This sounds great but then you quickly realize enemies are much faster than you. To further stab the point in, your range of attack is close range as well. This means that you have to position yourself for EVERY SINGLE ENCOUNTER to be able to hit things without getting destroyed yourself. What's crazier though is that this game has EXPERIENCE in it, upon defeating enemies. As far as I know, no other zelda game ever brought this concept back or even attempted it. Upon getting a set # of exp, you get the option to level up one of your stats (attack, magic, or health) or to cancel and wait till you hit the next benchmark. Each stat has different benchmarks, in other words, just save it all for attack. Additionally when you beat a dungeon you get automatically boosted to the next benchmark. In other words, put everything into attack, and just keep going attack until it's 8(maxed). The plot of this game is questionable and almost seems like a fanfic. You travel around the world to put magic jewels in statues.. which the game never explains why?? Maybe it does, I never saw any explanation. If you game over then ganon gets revived, which makes the most sense I guess. Going through each dungeon often requires tact and sometimes understanding or abusing one of your spells as a gimmick. For example, one dungeon might have pits you need to use the JUMP spell to jump over, or the FAIRY spell to fly over. As you advance the game, you can find more spells and acquire 2 special sword techniques known as "downstab" and "upstab"... amazing...

Most of the spells in the game are little more than tricks to get you from point A to point B, but a few of them like SHIELD and HEAL are actually fairly useful. Shoutouts to the SPELL spell which had 1 single use in the entire game and was a complete waste solely existing to make sure you had magic upgrades. Zelda II's only saving grace, imo, is probably that the music isn't absolute garbage. It's nostalgic in a way, surely not the best soundtrack I've ever heard, but it's fair. The art was decent enough to not get lost or have eye-piercing mayhem on the screen. It's truly that gameplay that wrecks this game. The bosses are often easier than some of the basic enemies, so it's got a real Final Fantasy 2 syndrome going at that. Oh yeah and you restart from the start of the game every time you game over. To all those that managed to read through this entire review and are angry, take off your rose-tinted glasses and look over games like this again, nostalgia ain't gonna save this one.

Hot Tips: The max of any levelup stat is 8. all 4 hidden magic upgrades are -REQUIRED- to beat the game.

All in All, I decided to go with a 3.2 because despite the fact that the game design straight up defined the flow of the game, that there are a few secrets hidden to aide the player. Bad Hitboxes, Frantic Designs, Horribly Enemy Placement, Unfair Enemy Gauntlets, Bad Direction, Constant Life Loss, and many other things define this game, dragging it down to the 3 range. There isn't a single or multiple things I could think of that would make this game better because the original design of it is just bad.