Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

[Dracos]

Zelda has always been famous.  One of the crown jewels of the Nintendo empire, the brainchild of Shigeru Miyamoto and arguably the homeplace of some of the best puzzle and secret design the gaming world has ever seen.  Always an easy yet delightfully fun adventure, short yet possessing of tons of things to explore.  These were the hallmarks of a Zelda game.

The last one I played before this was Wind Waker.  It caused me to kill a man by severing his head with the broken mini-disc.  To call me disappointed would be an understatement of criminal intent.  Zelda: The Minish Cap was just barely on my scanner at all.

That said, I'm glad I got a chance to sit down and play it, for it is a beauty to behold.  It is for the Game Boy Advance, what A Link to the Past was for Super Nintendo.  It isn't perfect.  Hell, it has Tingle in it, which is like putting a fifty ton weight on its shoulders to begin with.  Overall though, it kicks ass.  It is a creative piece of work that is intuitive, entertaining, cleverly built, and fun.  It could come right off a classic child's storybook, so perfectly did the art style used blend with what they were telling.  The music nicely overlaid it without being imposing (though I've yet to be impressed with any GBA music really).  It had a simple, coherent, and well conveyed storyline.  I love that really.  So often they stuff themselves full of contradictions or cheap one liners.  Fuck the one liners. No one will ever quote this game for their stupid quote books.  The game's story does exactly what it is supposed to do...provide a nice support narrative for what the game is about:

Truly Awesome Gameplay.

This game has maybe twenty to thirty percent of it required to beat.

Lemme say that again.  It allows you to IGNORE seventy percent of the game and finish it if you so choose.

But no one would ever do that.

Because the game is beautifully designed to make exploring its hundreds of tiny side quests easy and fun.  The world is small, but at the same time, between the use of their miniturized link mechanic and level design that simply deserves to be saluted for the artistry of it.  I mean, sure, the art of it is beautiful.  But the folks who designed these levels KNEW what they were doing.  This sort of thing doesn't happen by accident.  There was a careful and considering hand behind every little placement in the game.  Every area skillfully designed to start seemingly small but reveal more and more stuff until it becomes simply impressive how much was fit in this apparently empty space.

Some game designers love talking about Japanese gardens.  Most of the time, they come across as borderline weird with it, even if they are right.

In this game, you'll find such a natural blend of that philosophy displayed in game form that it becomes truly hard to contest in any manner.  Truly, something worth seeing.

The game isn't entirely perfect though.  For one it has Tingle in it.  Tingle is, for those who do not know him, the sign that god doesn't love this world.  He is an adult man character who dresses up as a farie.  Luckly he has a very small role here, but still...he and his THREE BROTHERS are in the game.  Which inherently puts points against it.

For another bit, it does border being too easy for everything save the last boss...which was poorly designed rather than being any test of reflexes, cleverness, or skill.  I didn't die once through the whole course of the game.  That said, it really just brings out the puzzle design that makes the game shine...in all parts but the last boss.  The last boss is hard, to be sure, but it isn't hard because it is well designed.  It is hard because it is a game of 'you versus the designer'.  At any point in his system, pretty much only one specific attack will work at all.  Not 'one attack is the best and others kinda slightly start doing the job if they hit some specified weak point'.  If you fail to guess the intended method of doing damage, then you don't do any damage.  Fun, yeaaah, but I'm not a big fan of 'guess which of your twenty moves is the one that works this time?"

It does, admittingly, have a few moments like that in other spots as well.

But faults included, it really is a stellar game that easily devoured three full days of my life doing nothing but playing it.

Dracos

[Shroudie]

DRACOS

[Rezantis]

SLEDGEHAMMER!

Woo! I've been wanting an excuse to use it!