When I first acquired this Nintendo Switch, my game choices were dictated by what my local friend had for me to borrow and when I saw he had multiple Zelda games, I asked him to give me the most simple one. After having completed Link's Awakening in less than a week I can say for certain that this game is definitely that, and for many it might be a bit too simple.
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As I mentioned many times before, this is a re-release of the same game that was released initially on Game Boy to much critical acclaim. The graphical changes are a definitive plus and it must have taken some time.
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I enjoy graphics like this with simple games but I am aware of the fact that this might not have the same appeal with younger gamers. To me, this is what would have absolutely blown our minds in the early 90's because the graphics on the left were impressive to us back then. Despite it's intentionally cartoonish nature, the graphics on the right are just so crisp that those of us that were alive and gaming back in the 90's this is a wonderful throwback to good times early in gaming but with graphics and sound that nobody could even conceive of at the time. For the nostalgic reason alone, I think this game is worth playing. However, I believe that younger gamers who have always had graphics and sound of this magnitude that the game might seem too simplistic or dare i say, even boring.
The next aspect of the game that I enjoyed but others, especially younger players, might not enjoy, would be the difficultly level: This game is exceptionally easy. I only died on maybe 6 occasions and half of those were because I didn't have the right gear and the game was attempting to make this evident to me by kicking my ass in a fight that I am not supposed to win.
In what is meant to be considered the most difficult dungeon of the game where you revisit and have to fight multiple sub-bosses that you have already faced, I easily swept through all of them while taking minimal damage. At no point in time did I feel as though I was in danger of dying.
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While this might have taken you a bit by surprise the first time you encountered it, it is remarkably simple the 2nd time
This appealed to me because I was looking for something casual to play but for others, especially the people that are really into games by companies such as FromSoft, this will seem like a game for kids and will be quite boring to them because honestly, there isn't a great deal of challenge here.
I feel as though the dungeons are well-designed in a sense that they were simply a more advanced version of late 80's and early 90's maps. None of these dungeons are particularly difficult to navigate except for one of them which has many switches and blocks that would be activated accordingly throughout sections of the map that you aren't able to look at while you are hitting the switches.
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This wasn't "difficult per se, but it was more tedious and annoying to hit a switch and then realize after you walked 10 rooms away that you hit the wrong one. I suppose they needed to kill some time because without this delay the game is actually quite short. It's quite short even with it built in actually. It may sound like I am complaining about this but that's not really the case, I enjoyed it but understand that others might just walk away in frustration because this is the only really "difficult" aspect of the game. You aren't going to die because of it, it is just going to involve a ton of walking around over and over again.
One thing that took me a second to figure out was these chess pieces that you encounter in the dungeons. They are knights and I think that most people already understand how the knight moves in a chess game.
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The reason why all of this didn't make sense to me when I was playing it is because even though I know how a knight works in chess, the game has them moving 3 places forward and one place to the side, which if you play chess you know that it is only 2 forward and 1 to the side. No matter though, because I eventually accidentally tried it in a way that I though was wrong but it turned out to be right.
Now I want to talk about the one and really only thing that I really didn't like about this game. It is called the "Trading Sequence" and it involves running into random NPC's around the board and having some sort of item that they are interested in. They will then give you something in return for that item and you continue to trade it up and up until eventually you end up with an item that is essential and required for you to complete the game.
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The above is a small spoiler and sorry about that but trust me when I say that this sequence moves on MUCH further than just the 3 trades. There is only one point in the game until the end that it seems as though it is required for you to do this. Then, I think most people likely forgot about it and just moved on. If we didn't have the internet, and they didn't for the most part when this game was released in the early 90's, this must have been absolutely maddening to the people that were playing the game. The people or creatures that you need to bring the various items to are located all over the map and very forgettable. They do prompt you when you encounter them about needing a specific item, but since you haven't yet encountered said item by the time you do, if you do, you have likely forgotten about where that person was on the map. This results in potentially a TON of otherwise pointless exploration and if you are like me you just stopped fighting anything and were just running around.
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The end result of all of this trading is to acquire the magical looking glass that as far as I remember was never mentioned at any point in the game and once you have it, the reason for having it is so that you can go to a room that I'm pretty sure that nobody that played the game ever even considered revisiting and finding a book there that you couldn't see before. Without reading this book the game is impossible to complete since it give you a random set of directions to use in the final dungeon. I wonder how many people just aimlessly wandered this dungeon in the 90's for hours on end and then just gave up on the game because the internet was not an option for them.
Again, I think that Nintendo stuck this in there in order to give the game the appearance of being much longer than it is when in reality the entire island map is quite small in comparison to other games. I will admit that despite the fact that the actual combat of this game is very simplistic, I think that most people would experience great frustration in completing the game since when you are at the final chapter, it give you no indication of what it is that you are missing to complete it. The magical looking glass isn't so much as even mentioned at any point in the game by anyone, so attempting to go after it is something that you couldn't possibly know about.
There are a lot of hidden things in this game for completionists out there but since I had already run around the map so many times by the time I achieved the only ending I have seen (I don't know if there are more of them) I wasn't going to wander aimlessly looking for the collectible shells that are sometimes hidden in really odd locations.
For casual players, and I think that Switch is definitely geared intentionally towards such an audience, this game is brilliant especially if you are an older gamer like I am that remembers how wonderful the NES, Super Nintendo, and Game Boy were back in the day. I will reiterate what I have said before though and say that I do not think it is worth what they are charging.
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Nintendo is probably the only company that can get away with prices like this on a very short game and this is especially true with Zelda that manages to sell a ton of copies of just anything that they make. I do not think this game is worth the $60 they are charging for it so if you want to play it, and I think you should, find a friend that already owns it and borrow it.
Man, I had no idea they remade Link's Awakening on the Nintendo Switch. If I had a Switch I would be tempted to get this but turned off by how short it is. That is a big price tag for little game in my opinion. A big reason I stopped eating at McDonald's and other fast food places - prices went up and the amount of food you got was smaller.
Sadly, Nintendo knows enough gamers will buy this and that is good enough for Nintendo. They have no interest in lowering the price on these things - why should they? They make a decent return on investment and are happy with it.
Something like this is more of a $29.95 release, if not $19.95 at least for the digital. $59.95 is just too high for many gamers.
Nintendo has a very unique grasp on the gaming market. They are kind of in a world of their own because there are some people that ONLY play Nintendo and don't even contemplate getting anything else because of, I dunno, just because that is what they have always done.
$20 would be a good price point for this game but Nintendo knows that Zelda is one of the most revered franchises of all time and they can get away with selling 1 million of them at $60 instead of 3 million at $20 and still make the same profits.
$60 is too much for me for any game. I am only playing the games that my frivolously-spending friend purchased physical copies of.
I definitely agree, Nintendo has a unique position in the world of gaming.
Of the console manufacturer's, only Sony can touch that nostalgia but they don't have that fan support, nor titles on the level of Zelda that could support such a move as Nintendo did here.
I mean, early on, Sony did not bother with in house game development of characters or anything so they relied on outside companies to make exclusives. This leaves Sony with the heritage but nothing to show for it.
Crash Bandicoot is multiplatform, now owned by Microsoft, same for Spyro the Dragon. They have run Twisted Metal into the ground and their sports titles have never been all that amazing to me.
Sega, if they had played their cards right with Sonic could probably have gotten away with something similar but they have done one thing over the years that Nintendo hasn't.
They devalued their own properties too much.
I don't necesarily mean cost to fans but the quality on offer with Sonic - seemingly the only nostalgia icon they are willing to give new games to.
Nintendo has kept many of their classic IPs alive in some way, if not new games they have included them in things like Super Smash Bros. Something to tug at those nostalgia heartstrings.
One of my favorite gameboy games, glad to see and updated version on the switch. But that price though... I don't know if $60 is justified! Black Friday sales?
Nintendo is pretty steadfast in their prices. They don't really have any competition because most people hold them in a different "field" so to speak as far as gaming is concerned. Their business model is one of if they sell enough consoles they can sell the games for however much they want.
but I agree, this game is fun and good but it is NOT worth $60
Put it on hold at the local library and enjoy it free for a few weeks. :-)
wait... libraries have games you can check out ? This is news to me but great news if true.
Why is it that nintendo games are always expensive and less challengable
Nintendo thrives on our nostalgia with these games. They know fans of the originals are probably parents now and want to give their children a similar experience with games.
They make a lot of money with this scenario. Treating gaming like Apple does cell phones has worked well for Nintendo.
I was just thinking of comparing their business model to Apple. It works well for them but I don't think anyone else would be able to pull this off. Nintendo has history on their side when they were the only game in town and established legendary titles such as Mario, Metroid, and Zelda as their own. It is almost exclusively because of these titles that they refuse to port to any other system (wise) that they will always be able to remain relevant in the gaming industry.
Oh yeah, Nintendo knows they not only hold the ball but own the court to play on when it comes to gaming IPs that gamers want. They marketed themselves nearly perfectly in the mid to late 80s with the NES. It helps they held back competition with anti-competitive practices but seriously, what competition did they have?
The Atari 2600, still supported by Atari, was WELL beyond capable of producing games with graphics and sound that gamers demanded. The Atari 7800 was much better off in the graphics department but Atari messed over developers with the same audio capabilities as the Atari 2600 (then waiting years to release the console didn't help because they didn't want to pay outstanding development costs).
Sega was at the will of Tonka as far as getting the Sega Master System into gamers hands. Obviously Tonka was more interested in keeping their dwindling marketshare with their metal work vehicles and other endeavors to stay afloat - Sega was a 5th thought at best for them.
Sega was fighting not only Tonka's lack of experience in marketing a gaming console (they sucked at marketing action figures years before too) but also the anti-competition practices of Nintendo and well, Sega's HORRIBLE box art didn't help. If I remember correctly, SMS games were also $5 to $8 higher than NES games (about the same price as Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy on NES but it was a shooter game on SMS - not the same perceieved value).
Halcyon never got out of the starting gates, maybe a few prototypes were available around the time the NES hit.
Computers were prohibitively expensive, even a Commodore Amiga 500, with monitor was STUPID expensive.
Nintendo's true competition during this time was Commodore's 64, an aging computer that they were able to get lowereed in price over the years to be competitive. It being a computer it was not considered competition to Nintendo so they were able to get in stores alongside Nintendo products without any problem.
Commodore suffered the same thing Sony would with the PSOne though. No inhouse creations to sway gamers over and relying nearly 100% on others to make games for the computer (I don't think Commodore ever released a game themselves, choosing to pull a business approach like Microsoft did with Windows and Office suites).
We as gamers really only had one affordable option - Nintendo.
Now that competition is much higher, they can fall back on nostalgia and keep those high price tags for very little game going that no other company can.
For me, they are simply out of my price range and my tastes in games have changed. I find more enjoyment with slower paced adventure titles like Maniac Mansion or King's Quest now than my skills will allow me to enjoy something like the latest Mario platformer.
I guess they stop giving values that is why their value is very low
There are a lot of very challenging Nintendo exclusives. The Metroid games are notoriously difficult and are only on Nintendo. Also, Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom, both of which are Nintendo-only games, are extremely complicated open-world games that will have most users referring to YouTube on a regular basis.
Complication is what i dislike i diffinantly cant crack my head for nintendo levels the way you sound it will be darn hard passing over one
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