First of all I would like to apologize for the lateness of this review but really if you are a regular reader of my blog you are probably used to it by now. The reason for the timing issue is because before I played this game I set a mental rule that I would not play another 3ds game until I completed Pokemon Y. So, you may be asking yourself, why am I not reviewing Pokemon Y? Because I have almost nothing to say about it. It was good. It was fucking long but it was good. But let's move onto another Smash Bros. character, Link.
In this adventure, the inspirational, disabled mute hero we all love so much is a blacksmith's apprentice. He lives a quiet life (ha mute, quiet) in a home not far from the Blacksmith's. A strange homeless man named Ravio who dresses like a rabbit has asked to move in with Link and Link is totally cool with it. I just went back and read this paragraph and realized how fucking weird the plot of the early game is. Anyway, Ravio gives Link a bracelet as thanks for the food and shelter and no expectation of rent which is totally fair right guys?!
Link's boss gives him the job of bringing the Captain of the guard's sword to him. He is eventually found in the castle squaring off against a wizard named Yuga. The Captain is grateful to have his sword but it doesn't do him much good when Yuga turns him into a painting. Princess Zelda is there and mentions that Yuga is trying to summon Ganon. Boom painting! Link grabs the Captain's sword and tries to attack Yuga but guess what, BOOM PAINTING! Yuga, feeling confident strolls out of the castle and presumably into somewhere evil. Link's wrist then pops out of the painting first quickly followed by the rest of his body. It seems Ravio's bracelet saved Link's life.
Now it's Zelda so at this point you have got to get the Master Sword. But how do you do that, Link may have asked if he wasn't a poor disabled mute forced to play charades whenever he feels compelled to speak. Well the game gives you some stupid convoluted answer involving pendants but the point is go do dungeons until you're able to get the sword. Now you have the master sword HOORAY THE DAY IS SAVED! So go to the castle which is big and evil and guess what Yuga is inside. CALLED IT! Link confronts Yuga and Yuga flees through a crack in the wall. Thanks to Ravio's bracelet, Link is able to follow. He pops out in the dark world of Lorule (I see what you did there) and Yuga summons Ganon and forms this weird pig monster thing. Just look.
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So Links dead right? Wrong. This chick Princess Hilda (I see what you did there) shows up and imprisons Yuga/Ganon. She also quickly explains that there are seven sages that protect the tri-force but Yuga has imprisoned them in paintings. Now go get 'em tiger. To make a short story even shorter, Link goes out and saves all seven sages and comes back to confront Ganon/Yuga. You may expect him to still be imprisoned but instead, all we find is Princess Hilda. She informs you that in Lorule the tri-force was fought over so viciously that it was decided that it needed to be destroyed. Her land was then plunged into darkness and chaos. When she learned of another world with another tri-force she needed to have it. She sent Yuga to take the sages and use their power to steal the tri-force. This left Link speechless (HA!). Time to fight Yuga/Ganon. After he/they are defeated, Princess Zelda is freed but Princess Hilda still has the tri-force. She is going to use it to remake Lorule and leave Hyrule to fend for itself. It was at this this moment that I was thinking to myself, 'If there is a Zelda Lorule counterpart, why isn't there a Link Lorule counterpart?' As soon as I had finished my thought, Ravio entered the scene. My next thought was, 'Why can he talk?' Anyway Ravio takes off his hood and reveals that he looks just like Link but with black hair. He talks some sense into Hilda and stops her from committing genocide. Hilda gives Link and Zelda the tri-force to do with what they would like and they use their power to bring Lorule back to it's former glory. Everyone has a happy ending... Except of course for Yuga who was just following orders from her princess and was then killed.
Let's get into how the game plays shall we? Something that bothered me in the early stages of the game was Ravio's shop. You do not acquire items in dungeons like you did in classic Zelda. Instead, you went to Ravio's shop, which is just your house, and he would allow you to rent items. This is all well and good but whenever you die, you lose your items and have to make the trip back to his shop to get the necessary items to complete the dungeon. This can be a real pain in the ass until you get to the point where he allows you to buy items. The prices to buy items are pretty high compared to the rental prices, but I was never low on money and I never rented an item after that point. Something I highly recommend is buying the hookshot and upgrading it as soon as possible. Yes, there is also an upgrade system that surprisingly has nothing at all to do with Ravio. In the North-East corner of the map in Hyrule, you can find a friendly squid monster who lost her babies. For every ten of her babies you find scattered throughout the world, she offers to upgrade one of your owned items. The hookshot is the best buy I've found although there are some items, like the boomerang, that I had no need to use at all.
I have heard a lot of people criticizing the game for being too easy but I don't think that's true. A hardcore gamer could breeze through this game rather quickly but he would also want all the collectibles. And the difficulty certainly ramps up at the Yuga/Ganon boss fight. The bottom screen of the 3ds is only used to manage items and can be used in the pause menu, which is the way it should always be. Instead of focusing on making a neat gimmick for a specific system, game developers should focus on making a solid game and then make it work for that system. It's nice to see Nintendo doing that.
