Zelda Review - Part One

[The Blackangel]

Ok, here we go, this is my first ever review so bear with me. I'm reviewing The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past on SNES.

    

    The game has a lot of interesting traits for a 16 bit game, and some serious differences from other entries in the series.

Prologue
    To start with it is the first one where Zelda calls out telepathically for a hero. Your uncle, (whom you apparently live with despite there only being one bed in your house) is heading out, sword and shield in hand expecting to save her telling you to wait at home and that he will be back in the morning. You instead head out, having all paths blocked by castle soldiers except your path to the castle. Along the eastern side of the castle, all the way to the north there is a bush you can pull up to reveal a way in. You find your uncle there, defeated. He gives you his sword and shield, and thus begins the story.
    As you enter the castle, you need to start making your way down through the lower levels. You will encounter a lot of guards down there, but they are not particularly hard to defeat. The blue boomerang is down there, which is a very helpful item at least at this point in the game, and one of my personal favorites in the game as a whole. There are floors on the way down that are a single room that will make you think the scripters were drunk when writing the game. They have absolutely no logical purpose, but I digress.
    At the bottom floor, you will see Zelda locked in a cell being guarded by a gray ball and chain trooper. Stunning him with the boomerang is pointless as he instantly starts waking up. So wait for him to swing his chain then go in for a strike and back out before he starts swinging again. If I remember correctly it takes eight hits to kill him. He drops the big key which unlocks the cell so you can get Zelda out.
    On the way here you will have encountered 3 chests. One in your house, one in the room right after you got your sword from your uncle, and one in Zelda's cell. The first one you open will have the lamp, the others a blue rupee. If you didn't get the lamp you will not be able to go any further from here.
    The two of you must then make it to the throne room on the main floor, to escape the castle to get to what Zelda calls "sanctuary", but is simply a church. It takes the two of you pushing the shelf behind the throne from the left to open the secret passage. You enter a darkened room with only your lamp to guide you. There are a lot of rats and keese on your way so you'll have to deal with that. The good thing is that for some reason that even I can't figure out, rats tend to have a lot of money on them.
    Once you make it through the lower rooms and sewers, you will come through a sliding display in the sanctuary. The priest is there. After a bit of discussion you can open the chest there and get a heart container. You can then continue on with your quest.

Part One
    The game is very straight forward in its objectives, like pretty much any other Zelda game, not counting some of the spinoffs and ROM-Hacks. Your objective as always is to save Zelda and defeat Ganon.
    If you have never played the game before, the map is your best friend. It always has something marked on it, telling you where you need to go. So there's that. Another good thing, is that once you know your path, you don't have to follow the map if you don't want to.
    There are a few things you can do prior to attacking your first dungeon. I would recommend collecting some heart pieces to give yourself a little more life. These are easy to find. There is one in the cave on the east side of Kakariko village. Another is in the hedge maze just to the southwest of the village. South of Link's house, there is a ruin. If you go inside of it and pull the lever to let the water through you will reveal a heart piece in the dry waterbed outside with a few fish flopping around. If you pick up a fish and go one screen up and throw it in the water it will give you 20 rupees. Or you can carry the fish to town and sell it to the bottle guy for a lot of goodies. There is another in the Lost Woods in the thieves hideout. You need to drop down from the bushes just above the entrance. One more that you can get now, is in the desert. If you go north just after entering the desert you will find a small cave. Follow it into the room with the old man. Most would easily miss this, but the bottom wall is bombable, and inside is a chest with a heart piece.
    Another item you should pick up is the mushroom in the Lost Woods. If you take it east, to the witches hut and give it to her, then leave the screen and come back in, her assistant will have the magic powder for you. It has no real use, except for one time later in the game, but it is comical if you sprinkle it on Buzz Blobs. Doing so will turn it into a Cukeman. You can talk to them, but they will still hurt Link if you touch them. If you freeze them with the ice rod or Ether, then hit them with the hammer, they will turn int regular Buzz Blobs again.

[Crazycrab]

You said in the tags you wanted constructive criticism so, I think there is a point to be made here.

 

A review is a critical analysis of the game, where you present your opinions on wether you like dislike a certain aspect then explain why.  What you've written here is more like a walkthrough or a guide, where you talking through each step of game giving advice on strategy and what you should be doing.

 

Let me explain what I mean.  Reviews generally don't need this much detail on how the game functions at every stage. You can use specific moments in the game to make specific points or criticisms like you did here.

 

4 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

If you have never played the game before, the map is your best friend. It always has something marked on it, telling you where you need to go. So there's that. Another good thing, is that once you know your path, you don't have to follow the map if you don't want to.

 

This was making a point about how important the map is and then explain why you feel it's well designed and fit for purpose.  This is somewhat like the type of writing I would expect in a review.  The next section however, and most of the rest of the text....

 

4 hours ago, The Blackangel said:

There are a few things you can do prior to attacking your first dungeon. I would recommend collecting some heart pieces to give yourself a little more life. These are easy to find. There is one in the cave on the east side of Kakariko village. Another is in the hedge maze just to the southwest of the village. South of Link's house, there is a ruin. If you go inside of it and pull the lever to let the water through you will reveal a heart piece in the dry waterbed outside with a few fish flopping around. If you pick up a fish and go one screen up and throw it in the water it will give you 20 rupees. Or you can carry the fish to town and sell it to the bottle guy for a lot of goodies.

 

....reads a more like a set of instructions.  Your not really presenting any opinions or illustrating why something is good or bad, works or doesn't work.  This is perfect for a walkthrough but for a review it's not needed.  As part of a review it might even be counterproductive for some readers since they might want to figure out some of this stuff for themselves.  On the flip of the coin in a walkthrough a reader just wants the information and likely doesn't really care if you like it or not.

 

With that being said though, looking at it as a walkthrough, I think it's very well done.  You explain things very clearly, it's obvious that you have plenty of expertise on this game and it's nicely paragraphed making it easy to follow if I want to get to a certain point. This is very useful should I want to come back to this later.  You've got a knack for this, just think you need to focus a bit on more on what your actually trying to do here.  Do you want it to be an informative piece of writing where you explain how to play the game or a review where you explain why you like (or dislike) this game and illustrate why you feel the way you do about it.

[The Blackangel]

I had been wondering if I was getting more into walkthrough territory, than review. I’ll try to do another article and try aligning it more as a review, but I’m also going to continue with this one as a walkthrough. There may never be anyone interested in using it, but I’ve had fun writing it. So I’m going to continue it.

Thanks. I appreciate all the constructive feedback I can get from everyone willing to offer it.

[The Blackangel]

Would this post that I made back in May be a pass as a review? I went over several Zelda games and gave my thoughts on them.

Edited October 28, 2021 by The Blackangel

[StaceyPowers]

@Crazycrab already said just about everything I would. Reading this was enjoyable, but functionally, it is a walkthrough (and hey, I really could've used this type of thing back in the days when I was failing utterly at Zelda II as a kid).

What you linked to with your short overviews of the different games is definitely more like mini-reviews. You shared your thoughts about different aspects of the games (and made me lol a few times - "Link looks like a penis with gangrene" hahah).

Along with opinions, in a review, you can also comment on other peoples' opinions, or on how a game fits into the context of a cultural landscape, what technological leaps it has made, how it compares to related games, what the experience of playing it felt like, etc. The main thing really is just to share your unique perspective.