Zelda: The Minish Cap
Nov. 3rd, 2011 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroHave you ever wondered why the pots, rocks and bushes in Hyrule are always full of money, bombs and arrows? Turns out there are tiny people called the Minish who hide things to help out humans. But one of them, called Vaati, was feeling evil and got ahold of more magic than he should have. So it’s up to a young green-tunic-wearing hero and his magic talking Minish Cap to save the day.
Important first things first: It’s a 2D Zelda game, with everything that entails. Sword, shield, bow, bombs, boots, heart containers and specialty items for solving puzzles. Surprisingly few dungeons-with-macguffins (only four!) but plenty of secrets to find. It’s very obviously influenced by A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening, but with a bit more emphasis on interacting with NPCs.
The world isn’t that large (I think it’s smaller than Link’s Awakening, actually, though I’m not certain), but it’s pretty densely packed, particularly with Kinstone secrets. That would be the game’s biggest innovation, the Kinstone-fusing mechanic: You can press L to talk to certain NPCs and fuse the kinstone pieces you find (in chests and from enemy drops) with the ones they have to unlock secrets, usually chests or paths to chests, but sometimes subplot events. Several of the dungeon areas rely on this mechanic for the puzzles. It seems to be ill-received by reviews, but I thought it was pretty cool, and after the first dungeon I never found myself lacking for kinstones to fuse.
Unusual also for a Zelda game is that there are missables—there are several items you can’t get if you advance the plot too far. The Light Arrows (hardly necessary to win, as Ganon never appears) are one such item.
Among the puzzle-solving items are a cane that flips things over, claws to dig with, a jar that can suck or blow air, and the “four sword” which your sword gets upgraded to. By charging up and standing in certain spots, you can create duplicates of Link who’ll move along with him and can step on switches or hit things. They vanish if any of you are hit or if you run them into a wall, so there’s a lot of maneuvering to get them where you need them. (You can also “work together” with them to push extra-large stones out of your way).
The system (and the game) could have benefitted from another couple of buttons. The addition of R as a “do stuff” button (lift, throw, pull, roll, talk) was an improvement over previous portable titles, but they really needed the control scheme from ALttP (which the DS has the buttons to match, but the GBA didn’t).
They’re very good about saving—you can save pretty much anywhere and restart from the beginning of that area; and there are multiple warp points in the dungeons that allow you to stop and immediately pick up from there.
(I played the first third of this on my GBA, which is one of the original non-backlit models, and is one of the best things for playing in natural light. The backlit screens tend to get washed out by sunlight. Unfortunately, the power switch has gotten fidgety with age and it will occasionally spontaneously reset itself. So I was saving very often.)
There are a couple of spots where the event flags are onerous, though—particularly when you know the next destination is the library, but the damn place won’t open until you’ve talked to a specific minish near the lake.
There’s a ton of stuff to collect, which makes me wonder how much they crammed in to lengthen he game. The figurines you can collect are particularly ridiculous, as you can only get them from the lottery when wagering secret seashells (which are frighteningly plentiful) and there don’t really seem to be benefits to getting them besides having them.
It’s not a terribly difficult game (it wasn’t until the 4th dungeon that I needed to use a healing item), especially since most monsters with special defenses have several ways to disable them, and though there’s no armor upgrades, many monsters only do ¼ heart of damage per hit, and some bosses don’t inflict collision damage. If you’ve played other 2D Zeldas, you probably won’t have any trouble with this.
Overall: Liked it, glad I got it, and wish they had kept a cross-key-and-buttons control scheme for Phantom Hourglass and later titles. Recommended for Zelda fans.
Important first things first: It’s a 2D Zelda game, with everything that entails. Sword, shield, bow, bombs, boots, heart containers and specialty items for solving puzzles. Surprisingly few dungeons-with-macguffins (only four!) but plenty of secrets to find. It’s very obviously influenced by A Link to the Past and Link’s Awakening, but with a bit more emphasis on interacting with NPCs.
The world isn’t that large (I think it’s smaller than Link’s Awakening, actually, though I’m not certain), but it’s pretty densely packed, particularly with Kinstone secrets. That would be the game’s biggest innovation, the Kinstone-fusing mechanic: You can press L to talk to certain NPCs and fuse the kinstone pieces you find (in chests and from enemy drops) with the ones they have to unlock secrets, usually chests or paths to chests, but sometimes subplot events. Several of the dungeon areas rely on this mechanic for the puzzles. It seems to be ill-received by reviews, but I thought it was pretty cool, and after the first dungeon I never found myself lacking for kinstones to fuse.
Unusual also for a Zelda game is that there are missables—there are several items you can’t get if you advance the plot too far. The Light Arrows (hardly necessary to win, as Ganon never appears) are one such item.
Among the puzzle-solving items are a cane that flips things over, claws to dig with, a jar that can suck or blow air, and the “four sword” which your sword gets upgraded to. By charging up and standing in certain spots, you can create duplicates of Link who’ll move along with him and can step on switches or hit things. They vanish if any of you are hit or if you run them into a wall, so there’s a lot of maneuvering to get them where you need them. (You can also “work together” with them to push extra-large stones out of your way).
The system (and the game) could have benefitted from another couple of buttons. The addition of R as a “do stuff” button (lift, throw, pull, roll, talk) was an improvement over previous portable titles, but they really needed the control scheme from ALttP (which the DS has the buttons to match, but the GBA didn’t).
They’re very good about saving—you can save pretty much anywhere and restart from the beginning of that area; and there are multiple warp points in the dungeons that allow you to stop and immediately pick up from there.
(I played the first third of this on my GBA, which is one of the original non-backlit models, and is one of the best things for playing in natural light. The backlit screens tend to get washed out by sunlight. Unfortunately, the power switch has gotten fidgety with age and it will occasionally spontaneously reset itself. So I was saving very often.)
There are a couple of spots where the event flags are onerous, though—particularly when you know the next destination is the library, but the damn place won’t open until you’ve talked to a specific minish near the lake.
There’s a ton of stuff to collect, which makes me wonder how much they crammed in to lengthen he game. The figurines you can collect are particularly ridiculous, as you can only get them from the lottery when wagering secret seashells (which are frighteningly plentiful) and there don’t really seem to be benefits to getting them besides having them.
It’s not a terribly difficult game (it wasn’t until the 4th dungeon that I needed to use a healing item), especially since most monsters with special defenses have several ways to disable them, and though there’s no armor upgrades, many monsters only do ¼ heart of damage per hit, and some bosses don’t inflict collision damage. If you’ve played other 2D Zeldas, you probably won’t have any trouble with this.
Overall: Liked it, glad I got it, and wish they had kept a cross-key-and-buttons control scheme for Phantom Hourglass and later titles. Recommended for Zelda fans.
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-03 09:21 pm (UTC)Minish cap was definitely the last Zelda game I enjoyed playing.
Thinking about re-playing Link to the Past, actually.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-03 11:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-04 02:18 am (UTC)Have you played Four Swords Adventures? Was it worth the time? (It occured to me there was one more 2D game on a system I own.)
If you liked Oracle of Seasons, you'll like Oracle of Ages. New puzzles and a few more items, basically otherwise the same game.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-04 03:46 am (UTC)