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chuckroLink, savior of Hyrule, is caught in a storm and washed ashore on mysterious Koholint island. It’s like it’s 1993 again, and oh, what a delight this is.
The big change is the graphical upgrade. Everything is in a pseudo-3D angle that 3D Dot Game Heroes also used, and the screens are much more continuous rather than having transitions. (Which means that dungeon rooms are effectively larger and occasionally more enemies can attack you at once.) Sprites are almost claymation-style, and the animation is smooth. Maps (in both the overworld and dungeons) are much more detailed and useful. Taking advantage of the significant increase in available buttons, they’ve mapped the Sword, Glove, Boots and Shield to their own dedicated buttons and still have two open for other items. This is a pleasant change. They also sped up the ubiquitous text messages you get from pickups and interacting with objects.
They’ve added more heart pieces (20 more, up to 32 total) and more secret seashells (from 20-someodd to 50), and changed the prizes in Seashell Manor (20 shells gets you get a detector that chimes near others; 40 gets you the sword upgrade). The Trendy Game and Fishing minigame are slightly more complicated, but only slightly.
There’s a “dungeon building” minigame where you can arrange pieces of dungeons you’ve visited into a new dungeon and then fight through it to collect extra rupees. This is the major “new content” segment, as a bunch of the shells and heart pieces are only accessible through these challenges.
I recently commented on exactly how linear and lockstep Oracle of Seasons was, and hadn't realized how much it was following in Link's Awakening's footsteps and (like with many other aspects) turning it up to 11. I don't think there are any dungeons you can do out of order in this game, and even "dipping" to get the item is generally insufficient because plot flags need to trip to let you reach the next dungeon. (I did the southern shrine before Catfish Maw, but I think that's as out-of-order as you can go.) Also, I'd forgotten how many times you end up retreading the same segment of Tal Tal Mountains—that one nook by the egg gets retread to reach three different dungeons with multiple setbacks.
Some monsters have more complicated patterns; deflecting shield-using Moblins or Stalfos with your shield stuns them and opens them to attack. The stone slabs in dungeons are owl statues, which I believe was the case in the original Japanese release—but the translation is pretty much identical to the Game Boy translation. They changed the chess knights in the Face Shrine. Instead of trying to get them to land facing up, you need to get them to land correctly on certain plates. (Which makes sense, I guess.) The Evil Eagle battle seems different, too--I remember killing it with the hookshot originally, and that did nothing here, I needed to wait until it was in sword range. On the other hand, falling off drops you on spikes but doesn't restart the battle, so that's a fair trade.
They kept the Color Dungeon from Link’s Awakening DX, which you can do for either double attack or double armor as soon as you have the boots. They kept the boomerang as the final prize from the trading game (along with directions through the final dungeon), but now you can pay 300 rupees to get your shovel back, too.
And overall, while the original wasn’t exactly the hardest game, this is even easier. In addition to the Color Dungeon boosts and more heart containers, you can get three fairy-catching bottles (from the fishing game, the ghost and the custom dungeons) and it gives you additional backup health, on top of Crazy Tracy’s medicine. (I think they added another medicine or two into the later dungeons—I found three, and I don’t remember that many.) The new “Hero Mode” removes heart drops, and I can see how that would create a significant challenge.
Overall: I borrowed this from Wavilyem and blew through it over a long weekend. The game remains solid and these upgrades fix a lot of the restrictions from the Game Boy era that modern gamers can’t stomach.
The big change is the graphical upgrade. Everything is in a pseudo-3D angle that 3D Dot Game Heroes also used, and the screens are much more continuous rather than having transitions. (Which means that dungeon rooms are effectively larger and occasionally more enemies can attack you at once.) Sprites are almost claymation-style, and the animation is smooth. Maps (in both the overworld and dungeons) are much more detailed and useful. Taking advantage of the significant increase in available buttons, they’ve mapped the Sword, Glove, Boots and Shield to their own dedicated buttons and still have two open for other items. This is a pleasant change. They also sped up the ubiquitous text messages you get from pickups and interacting with objects.
They’ve added more heart pieces (20 more, up to 32 total) and more secret seashells (from 20-someodd to 50), and changed the prizes in Seashell Manor (20 shells gets you get a detector that chimes near others; 40 gets you the sword upgrade). The Trendy Game and Fishing minigame are slightly more complicated, but only slightly.
There’s a “dungeon building” minigame where you can arrange pieces of dungeons you’ve visited into a new dungeon and then fight through it to collect extra rupees. This is the major “new content” segment, as a bunch of the shells and heart pieces are only accessible through these challenges.
I recently commented on exactly how linear and lockstep Oracle of Seasons was, and hadn't realized how much it was following in Link's Awakening's footsteps and (like with many other aspects) turning it up to 11. I don't think there are any dungeons you can do out of order in this game, and even "dipping" to get the item is generally insufficient because plot flags need to trip to let you reach the next dungeon. (I did the southern shrine before Catfish Maw, but I think that's as out-of-order as you can go.) Also, I'd forgotten how many times you end up retreading the same segment of Tal Tal Mountains—that one nook by the egg gets retread to reach three different dungeons with multiple setbacks.
Some monsters have more complicated patterns; deflecting shield-using Moblins or Stalfos with your shield stuns them and opens them to attack. The stone slabs in dungeons are owl statues, which I believe was the case in the original Japanese release—but the translation is pretty much identical to the Game Boy translation. They changed the chess knights in the Face Shrine. Instead of trying to get them to land facing up, you need to get them to land correctly on certain plates. (Which makes sense, I guess.) The Evil Eagle battle seems different, too--I remember killing it with the hookshot originally, and that did nothing here, I needed to wait until it was in sword range. On the other hand, falling off drops you on spikes but doesn't restart the battle, so that's a fair trade.
They kept the Color Dungeon from Link’s Awakening DX, which you can do for either double attack or double armor as soon as you have the boots. They kept the boomerang as the final prize from the trading game (along with directions through the final dungeon), but now you can pay 300 rupees to get your shovel back, too.
And overall, while the original wasn’t exactly the hardest game, this is even easier. In addition to the Color Dungeon boosts and more heart containers, you can get three fairy-catching bottles (from the fishing game, the ghost and the custom dungeons) and it gives you additional backup health, on top of Crazy Tracy’s medicine. (I think they added another medicine or two into the later dungeons—I found three, and I don’t remember that many.) The new “Hero Mode” removes heart drops, and I can see how that would create a significant challenge.
Overall: I borrowed this from Wavilyem and blew through it over a long weekend. The game remains solid and these upgrades fix a lot of the restrictions from the Game Boy era that modern gamers can’t stomach.
