The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

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North American box art.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is an action adventure game developed and published by Nintendo on the SNES on 1991-11-21. It is the third release in the Zelda series.

I first played this game after my brother stole the cart from his friend and deleted his completed save file, and pretended it was his own. We played it quite awhile before he was caught and had to return it, without the original save file. Having fallen in love with the game, I got a used copy at some later date and played the game getting all the way to level 7 before becoming frustrated with end boss and giving up. Shortly there after, I sold my SNES, and didn't play the game for quite awhile. I played the game off and on through an emulator, and, after many years, decided to beat the game properly from the start. I played it all the way through, defeated the level 7 boss, and finished the entire game on 2006-12-27.

Status

I own this game, have beaten it with 100% completion, and am very familiar with it.

Review

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10 10 10 10 10

Best Version: 100%

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

  • The graphics and animation are all stunning.
  • Koji Kondo's music and sound effects are especially good and make great use of the SNES's stereo sound.
  • The game engine is solid and functions like a well-oiled machine.
  • The story is a big jump up from previous games, and the frequent interactions with NPCs early in the game keep it flowing nicely. I'm certainly tired of saving princesses, but there is thankfully a lot more to it.
  • The game play is both challenging and exciting throughout the entire game.
  • The large amount of items really keep the game interesting, and several are used in novel ways. In addition to the classics like the boomerang, bombs, and bow, we now get the hookshot, pegasus boots, and bug-catching net which are fantastic additions.
  • There are tons of hidden things in the game to keep it exciting, and most of them are hidden in a clever way and useful in the game. The pieces of heart scattered all over the map was a great addition. The bottles are also very useful and one is expertly hidden. The good bee is an especially interesting find. The Chris Houlihan room is also interesting.
  • The scene where you find out the boy with the ocarina has turned himself into a tree by going into the dark world, and then have to tell his old father that he's gone is really sad.
  • The game manual is top-notch. Lots of beautiful art and a detailed explanation of the game.

Bad

  • The game is pretty linear. In the first game, almost all of the over world and several underworlds can be explored from the get-go. But in this one, large sections of the game are off-limits until you get specific items. This is certainly helpful to keeping you on track the first time through, but it also guarantees every subsequent play-through will be identical.
  • The bosses are indeed a step up in complexity, but most of them can be killed just by hitting them with the sword over an over again, unlike in the first game, where most of them required you determining which weapon they were weak to.
  • Several of the items are unimportant, either by being entirely unnecessary to beat the game, too awkward to be useful, or they exist only for a single use. The magic cape, the cane of Byrna, and the Bombos spell are the worst offenders.
  • The difficulty of the dungeons isn't quite orderly. I find that 1 is harder than 3, 5 is harder than 6, etc. Though, this might be my play style.

Ugly

  • Nothing really, this game is a work of art.

Media

Box Art

Documentation

Maps

Fan Art

Videos

Titles

Language Native Transliteration Translation
English The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Japanese ゼルダの伝説 神々のトライフォース Zeruda no Densetsu: Kamigami no Toraifosu Legend of Zelda: Triforce of the Gods

Links

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