I know I might piss off a lot of you, but it's better than not being honest. Again, I'll just say that there are dozens of videos that can validate you if you're looking for that. I hope you enjoy!
Every game has its flaws, but I'm sorry ALTTP was a masterpiece for the console generation that it belonged to. Yes, it was a fairly linear game, but at least it HAD dungeons compared to BOTW which had copy/paste shrines and 4 very forgettable "dungeons" to explore and conquer. Hell, ALTTP even had boss variety which once again BOTW was severely lacking in. I love every Zelda game for one reason or another, but this game was what BOTW should have been, and what every Zelda game since its release aspired to be. All that said, I respect your opinions, but vehemently disagree with them in this instance.
Much as I love this game, I can't argue with any of your points when looked at in a retrospective sense. The game set the formula, but every element that made it so good has been done better in later games. As the prototype for nearly the entire series, it's a testament to both its own quality and the continued quality of the series that it has been so firmly surpassed while still being the basis for the series core for a very long time.
th-cam.com/video/IS1W9vhK_l0/w-d-xo.html This is a bit of a nitpick, but Link's uncle doesn't die. After you defeat Ganon, you get a Mario-esque pan over the areas you visited and people you meet. At the end, it shows Link standing next to his uncle. Link has his tunic/shield/sword that he earned and his uncle has the fighter's sword that he initially gives to link in Hyrule Castle. He probably only has the sword because the player is not forced to upgrade the fighter's shield, so Link could have had it at the end and they likely wanted to avoid continuity errors. I, like you, didn't play LttP until after playing many other Zelda games. Not as late as you, but still pretty late (I was a Sega kid in the 90s, so no SNES for me). While your points are quite valid, I'd argue that it is a masterpiece because it set the foundation. If a LttP wasn't made, or even not made as well, the Zelda series would likely be vastly different. Likely no where near as successful. When I first played it a few years ago, I never could quite look at OoT the same. OoT lost a lot of it's magic to me because of how much it took from LttP. Also, playing LttP made me come to realize that TP is more like LttP than it is OoT. Many people try to make the argument that TP is just a remake of OoT. I disagree and often point to the fact that Link takes a different form in the Dark World, until he gets the Pearl, he transitions between the Light/Dark world far more often than players have to time travel in OoT. Also, similar how you point out, Zant is a (drastically) more refined version of Aghanim. OoT has no puppet, Ganondorf is the premier and only antagonist.
Is it sensible to look at a game that came out 28 years ago and hold it to standards that didn't exist when it was made? Is it sensible to look at an old game and say it doesn't hold up because it doesn't tell a tale as epic as a newer game even though that was unheard of in its genre in 1991? Is it sensible to criticize a game's design for not using design philosophies that were not know during its making? Is it sensible to say a game lacks uniqueness because most of its sequels have been doing what it did and adding over nearly 3 decades? Not to say that you're wrong, but you don't think saying ALTTP doesn't hold up that well today because it didn't tell a tale as epic as Twilight Princess in 1991 on an SNES cartridge while delivering on the gameplay it did sounds even a little unreasonable? You don't think not being able to see uniqueness in ALTTP because most of the sequels used it's formula isn't a case of you taking what was unique about ALTTP for granted due to overexposure to the Zelda formula? I'm not saying I disagree with your take here. It's actually good to dust off an old game hailed as a masterpiece and see how gaming standards have changed since then. I just think it's more sensible to look at the "Does this old game hold up?" question from the angle "Is this still entertaining to play?" It's certainly not going to be as revolutionary as it was in 1991, that should never be up for debate (it'd be a terrible sign for the game industry if it was, we're supposed to improve after all).
Edward Evans ALTTP could not be more different from BOTW, how could BOTW have been like ALTTP, when one has a massive open world with an open ended story, and one has a ridged story.
Am I the only one who thinks that the linear nature of this game isn’t a negative? I love how the dungeons increase in complexity and how the later ones need multiple key items that make the puzzles more and more difficult. In A Link Between Worlds I got bored because the “do the dungeons in every order” gimmick meant they were all the same difficulty
That kind of thing is WHY I prefer the more linear Zelda games. Link's Awakening does a fantastic job of making each dungeon item stay relevant the entire game, mixing them in ways like combining the Pegasus boots with the roc's feather. A Link Between Worlds was boring because each dungeon only required one specific item, so you just spam it the whole time.
@@thelastwindwaker7948 I 100% agree. This even was kind of the case in Breath of the Wild. I LOVE that game, but I have to admit that the only difficulty curve is in the strength of the enemies, which is fun, but I want increasing puzzles. The shrines are good and fun, but they basically have one puzzle per and the divine beasts were really lame.
that, and that i never knew what items i might nee so i ended up bringing EVERY item to EVERY dungeon... becuase ONLY when you get to the dungeon do you see what it requires i also dont like how the difficulty never increased either, same with its puzzles... no difficulty increase
No, there are basically 2 schools of thought on the Zelda games. Free and open games that allow the character to explore and find things on their own. Games like the Original LoZ or A Link Between Worlds. On the other end, you have the more Linear LoZ games that focus on an epic storyline like Ocarina of Time and Skyward Sword. I don't think either is necessarily right or wrong. Both types of games have their merit. I love both types honestly, but they offer two different play styles.
The Zelda games I enjoy, and replay often, are all linear. It’s no coincidence that the better, more enjoyable gameplay is in a linear form. Admittedly, that’s just my opinion, but it appears I’m not alone in that opinion.
I finished playing through it with my 5 year old daughter recently. Her first time, my 5th or so. She loved every minute of it and so did I. All she asked for for Christmas were Link and Zelda plush dolls, which she sleeps with every night. It has withstood the test of time.
My dad did the same thing when I was in third grade! I loved every minute and it still is one of the happiest days of my life when we finally beat Dark Beast Gannon.
@@QuintaFeira12 not the point of the thread but, Breath of the Wild does the 3D equivalent of a screen wipe with Urbosa's ability which does break the combat system when you have it.
The original zelda had the bow, boomerang, magic rod, bombs, sword, shield, power glove, and flute. The only items that are in this game that have become standard since are the hammer, hookshot, and bottles.
I think its fair. Too often are retro games praised way too hard with modern games getting critiqued way too hard for similar flaws, with the two never really directly compared. Its refreshing to see retrospectives that consider the progress made instead of judt looking with rode tinted glasses and shitting on modernity like some videogame boomer.
I think the flaw doesn't necessarily come from your comparison points so much as your premise. If we define a masterpiece the way you have, a piece to compare to future iterations, removed from its historical importance and instead pitted against its descendants, then we're saying that a game's masterpiece status is temporary and fleeting. All things will be surpassed by their descendants in time, and a relatively short time in such a young medium as video games. The issue I have with this definition is that it says more about the games that come after than it does about the games that come before. The reason we involve historical context in the decision of what makes a masterpiece, the ways in which it influenced its contemporaries and descendants, is that by defining a masterpiece under these guidelines we can establish a piece of media's importance and contributions. Your video, working under the premise that a comparison to games that came after, hits all the right notes and you did a fantastic job at that. But I think where people disagree with you, whether they can articulate it or not, is that premise of how you define a masterpiece.
Yeah, it's like saying chess sucks cause the strategy games that came after it are better and more refined in certain elements that are present in chess.
Yup, I love KingK's content, but I disagree on his reasoning here. I guess what he wanted to test, is how he feels about this game - he in particular has no connection to it, but he's played all the other Zelda games, so he is in a special position (as mentioned in the beginning). While I personally always add something along the lines of "But for its time, this game was a forerunner", to at least acknowledge the impact it had on gaming, I can't fault him for choosing a particular path. THAT SAID, I still enjoyed this retrospective a lot and it was super interesting. I have never played aLttP, so in my eyes, I can just conclude that it's a master piece for its time, but it doesn't hold up that well in comparison to the other titles.
@@ddh-o8s but I never said "A Link to the Past sucks" I said "I don't like A Link to the Past as much as other Zelda games" If I said "I don't like Chess because I like this other future strategy game more" that would be totally valid. People just assume my statements are "objective" even though opinions can't even be objective.
Listening to the video, I was having this feeling like "I understand what you're saying, but it feels like you're inherently missing the point" or something like that. You did a pretty good job putting it into words, although I feel that might not be all there is to it.
Playing LttP as your first zelda game especially as a CHILD - is magical and is a completely different feeling altogether than playing as a hardened grown man.
100%, thinking you had beaten the game and get sucked into the dark world was pure magic at the time(Nintendo was on another level back then). Personally my favorite Zelda game.
LTTP actually has two dungeon themes, Light and Dark dungeons have different music. Not that that gets it much closer to the variety of the later ones, but it's an increase of 100% for what it's worth.
@@papermario2006 Weird thing is, I'm a huge fan of LTTP, and I didn't actually realise the Light World and Dark World dungeons had different music until I played a LTTP randomizer and it started playing the wrong music in a Light World dungeon.
"The CDI games get a lot of shit for what they manage to accomplish. This is a retrospective on why Wand of Gamelon, Faces of Evil, and Zelda's Adventure are truly the best games in the Zelda franchise."
20:12 "Dungeons like Turtle Rock . . . almost tries to goad you into wasting all of your magic power so that you can't defeat the boss at the end." There is literally a full magic pickup right before the boss room in TR.
Still my favorite Zelda game. I never got into the ocarina of time at all. If you played this game when it first came out, when you were in the castle and you could hear the rain hitting the castle outside… Your mind was blown
@@nickforsythe6379 I played this masterpiece of a game when I was 4 on the snes. And I am 17 now at its still one of my favorite games, and i prefer it wayyy more than the new zelda games. Honestly it still holds up so well today, I wish they would make another topdown zelda game in this kinda way, especially with the 16bit graphics. That would just be amazing.
@@txt_error9098 botw and totk are really good lmao i grew up w oot and it's definitely my favourite game of all time but you sort of have to acknowledge that botw and totk are amazing games
I think part of why this game is held so high is that, while it didn't do anything overly outstanding or special, it also didn't do anything really bad or drug out. Every other Zelda in this style, I can always point to one part I dread dealing with, while this one, I just go from point to point, doing my thing. There's nothing I dread to have to do again.
0:00 Opening 0:20 Beginning Introduction 7 years older than King K + Introduced The Hookshot 1:51 Key Question: Does _A Link To The Past_ Hold Up Today? 3:50 The Call To Action 7:27 No Story Triggers. Some Item Triggers. Meaning you can complete dungeons out of order 10:00 Characters. 12:03 _Ocarina of Time_ vs _A Link To The Past_ 12:50 + You can set your own level of difficulty 15:00 + Good Combat Control 16:20 + Dungeons seem Enemy and Trap Heavy. 18:20 One Dungeon Theme *Dungeons* 19:00 Swamp Palace 19:29 Thieves Town 20:07 Turtle Rock 20:34 Ice Palace *The Overworld* 21:02 Light and Dark 24:00 _Oracle of Ages_ 25:03 It Laid Foundation, but doesn't have a special strength. Still Impressive 26:24 Thanks to The Patrons
I couldn't disagree more. I think ALttP is such a rock solid game. It literally set the standard for the entire zelda series. Everyone thinks Ocarina did that, but ALttP did it first. The introduction of the Master Sword and many other items that have been series staples ever since. The absolute best dungeons in the series, a full and engaging map with plenty of secrets, great bosses. Its still my favorite game in the series and I struggle to find a single issue with the game. Best game on the snes, hands down. I replay it every year around Christmas. I just wish I could get that magical feeling of playing it for the first time. With that being said, it's such a good game, I still enjoy every replay just as much as the last.
Yeah I don’t agree with his definition of a masterpiece and that the game has to compare to later games in series. I think he 100% needs to consider when the game was released and the influence it had
TheKiss *Looks at da Vinci painting* *Looks at something a graphic designer made in 20min* “Man this da Vinci guy sucked, why do people make a big deal about him lol”
@@Syrupstorm painting is an art, not a technological feat. Technology is always improving. Art is a human cultural creation that adapts and changes but never "improves."
@@jacobmonks3722 You totally missed the point and you're wrong to boot. Art is culture, yeah. But it is also/utilizes technology, which has always been a part of our culture. I.e. DaVinci used the technology he had at the time (oil paints, for example) and created art.
@@ouroboros5793 I don't see how that makes my statement wrong in any way. All I said was that unlike technology, art can never objectively "improve." It only adapts to cultural patterns. It isn't something that can be measured in dollars, efficiency, etc. Even if it was done with more modern technology, does that make it "better" than a Da Vinci? And I get the point of the comment. The point is that we shouldn't say older things are immediately dated just because things are easier or better nowadays. To which I somewhat disagree. If something nowadays is better thanks to modern improvements, does that not by definition make the old thing dated? There's a reason nobody uses rotary phones or hourglasses anymore. Cell phones and watches are far more convenient, practical, and versatile. I also don't think this argument applies as well to video games, because video games are art.
As a new LttP fan who only just recently got to the endgame, I will say the feeling of growth and progression in this game is some of the best in the series. The comparison between early game, where combat is dishearteningly difficult, versus the last few dungeons where you're hevaily rewarded with spectacular optional equipment by managing to survive the first few dungeons is really fun to look at, and really satisfying to play. I did not have much fun at first, but the more I explored and discovered the more fun I had. I didn't want it to really end, and I feel the exploration is a lot more rewarding than in Between Worlds. While the Maiamais are fun to collect, there isn't really a lot to plan out because you have the capability to start with most every item. LttP rewards you for keeping track of unobtainable secrets. I did kind of ignore the order of dungeons, as I tackled them based on the difficulty I was having. Stuff like, "I wanted to try Ice Palace, but Skull Woods is a bit too bullshitty atm so I'll just grab the Fire Rod and dip." And multiple later dungeons early lol. I feel like playing aLBW kinda ruined some surprises for me like the Super Bomb, upgraded sword and Mail, and navigating Hyrule to find the right entrances to the Dark World. I would have loved to experience the game completely blind, but back when we still had our family copy I was much too dumb to navigate 2D Zelda. I'm so glad I was able to nab a SupaBoy to play this, as getting closer to the end of the game really made me recognize why it was so influential, why it's considered one of the most important games of all time(Think this was a Game Informer rating?) And why it's still a masterpiece and holds up really well. Even then I still agree with most of what you said, but I feel like a Retrospective shouldn't compare the game to the newer ones, it should look at the game. . . Well, in Retrospective on its merits at the time.
This is probably the first time I've had a major disagreement with you, but I enjoyed your video and understand your viewpoint. You said something at the end that really resonated with me and made me think deep. You said there where other Zelda games you could go to if, say, you wanted challenging dungeons or a meaningful story. I actually really agree with that sentiment, but for me A Link to the Past is on my top 5 Zelda games because it's such a complete package. It might not be the standout dungeon or open world or epic story game in the franchise, but it is the defining one.
In 18:26: mentions that A Link to The Past only has ONE dungeon theme, while the Light World Dungeon theme plays in background. Then, to proof his points, he plays the SECOND Dark World Dungeon Theme! :D It made me laugh
I can answer your opening question. Yes, Link to the Past holds up all these years later, and with its nice, colorful 2D graphics holds up well on the eyes too, not to even mention the music, the Light World - Dark World mechanic....just a A+ game....honestly one of the best of all time, period.
The first time I played this was basically when it came out. I was 7. The moment I beat the “boss”, only to then be sent to the dark world’s page amid top with the epic dark world music, and realize I had only just started the game, is a core memory. It’s probably going to remain my favorite moment in all of gaming, walking down the pyramid for the first time.
Yes!!! I was 8 when I first played it, and I still remember how I felt when I beat the wizard the first time and I thought that was it. Then I get transported, and I’m like, okayyyy, one more level I guess. Then seeing the level diamonds on the map pop up after beating level 1 in the dark world, and I was like WTF?! but the feeling of finally beating the whole game is something I would never forget…a true accomplishment for an 8 year old lol
I spent a lot of time dicking around on death mountain as a rabbit so I was always pulling up the map and wondering what the fuck else was out there, so I knew the game was just beginning; even at a young age
My favorite game of al time. I would of been about 8 when this game came out, renting it at the video store for the weekend (when i could get it, it was rented out ALLOT). I remember the moment you speak of and thinking "holy shit, there's a whole second world?". The moment in the game that i remember most fondly was getting the shovel and figuring out the mystery of the ghost boy playing the ocarina. i felt accomplished because there was a hint dropped from an NPC somewhere that said the instrument was there in the meadow somewhere where he is playing and left it up to me to figure it out. For this guy to say that oracle of ages or seasons were better games is laughable, and i do believe that link's awakening is a very good zelda game which these games are based on, but they have not aged nearly as well as A Link to the Past. Millennials....
SERIOUSLY tho. That was a pivotal moment for me in the game also. The second I realized the "challenges" actually begin, I was overwhelmed with both a sense of fear, yet excitement, but the 5th, 6th, and Final (Death Mountain) Temple were a damn nightmare. This game has some of the most challenging dungeons I've ever faced in the entire franchise to date. I don't remember any other title leaving me "stuck" so many times in each Dark World Temple, but beating Ganon was such a breath of fresh air. This game definitely did it's job right.
@@Trigger200284 I agree. Seasons & Ages were unique but surprisingly they don't have the fame that ALTTP has and probably because people complain and state they couldn't find themselves bothering with the "Gameboy" titles. I'm sorry but you can't call yourself a die hard Zelda fan if you let that type of excuse prevent you from exploring the other titles. Just saying. I loved Seasons. Yet, ALTTP is the one Zelda game where it's temples left me wanting to bang my head against the wall as a kid (the dark world ones). No other title to date has given me such a nightmarish challenge...and headache😵💫
As someone who grew up on the 3D Zeldas i was impressed by just how foundational LTTP was. There’s no added fluff, just fundamentals. I was really blown away by how densely packed with content the over world is. There doesn’t seem to be any wasted space and you can seriously spend hours just digging into it when you aren’t doing the dungeons: I’m not sure if I would call it the best Zelda game but i think it’s probably the most definitive. I mean has there even been another zelda game since where you actually get the tri force at the end?
Me: "He's going to say my favorite game of all time isn't the best game of all time" **braces myself** "I think I can handle that" KingK: "I think it's weakened with ti--" Me: "F*** you!"
“Why isn’t this gameboy game from 1991 as good as a GameCube/Wii game from 2006?” Is what this video felt like. Absolutely ignoring any evolution of Zelda as a franchise, major improvements to game console tech, and how decades of experience helped shape stories and presentations. It’s not just an unfair take, it’s asinine.
"Ignoring any evolution of Zelda as a franchise." The evolution of the franchise is the entire point of the video. He compares LTTP favorably to NES Zelda to illustrate what a major leap forward it was, and compares it to later entries to demonstrate how they built on its foundation. He doesn't act like LTTP should be as refined as the later games just to be considered "good" or "important." He's saying that, in his opinion, a "masterpiece" should be a standout even when compared with its successors, and that's a bar that he feels is too high for LTTP to reach.
It's interesting hearing the opinions of someone who wasn't born when this game was released. I'll never forget in 1991 my mother taking me to a local pharmacy (some pharmacies doubled as video game rentals in those days) to rent it and after one day she decided to buy it. I think I still have our original copy. Over the years we would dust off the SNES to play it and those are some of the fondest memories I have of my mother before she died of cancer in 2014. Despite the various flaws, this game was and is a masterpiece. I hope one day it gets a proper remake.
Yeah, I was surprised as well, and it's seven years older than me too xD I've noticed that it's quite coincidental because then that would be the same year Ocarina of Time came out, in which you go through time seven years.
I'd call A Link to the Past a Jack of all Trades, but definitely not a King. Still, for everything it does well, the most impressive part to me is its consistency. It has consistently fun combat, a consistently interesting world, and consistently engaging dungeons. So few Zelda games have that down, and if it weren't for Majora's Mask, I think A Link to the Past would be my all time favorite Zelda game. At the very least it's the one I replay most often.
Precisely this. ALTTP is the most consistent in terms of overall package. All the other Zelda games have had a much harder time having a consistent quality between all the parts of its core. It's why i find the portion where he's saying that if he wants an engaging story he'll play Twilight Princess or if he wants more difficult dungeons, he'll play Oracle of Ages (which is absolutely ridiculous, Ages's dungeons aren't more complicated than ALTTP's) to be kind of ridiculous. I love both of those games but the overall package of those two is much more inconsistent in terms of overall quality. The overall consistency of the game is what matters the most, not portions of it.
@@okagron yeah its consistently the most annoying zelda game apart from wind waker. I'd rather play twilight princess and I haven't played that game in 10 years.
@@fenixchief7 What is annoying about A Link to the Past? It has nice music, very easy to handle controls, and a varied selection of dungeons. It's not too repetitive and not too difficult, so you should have some explanation.
this game is 16 years older than me, but i'm having so much fun playing it for the first time with the switch online service! really glad the zelda community doesn't gatekeep when it comes to enjoying older entries.
One somewhat unique feature that I found regretfully absent in subsequent installments is the way it hints at unique and alternative dungeon designs. Specifically, Hyrule Castle, Skull Woods, and Thieves' Town. Owing somewhat to the simplistic 2D graphics and the design choice in early zeldas to have combat-heavy overworlds, these dungeons feel less like contrived puzzle/fight spaces and more like believable features of the environment. The presence of enemies and locks in Hyrule Castle feels natural and aesthetic (rather than just a gameplay necessity) because these features would naturally be present in a castle. The enemies aren't just monsters, but guards, and the locks are of an iron, medieval design. While many successive dungeons use this aesthetic, most of them are linear and aren't designed to be realistic spaces. Breath of the Wild's Hyrule Comes the closest, which is why I think it's regarded as the games best (and perhaps only "real") dungeon. My personal biggest gripe against it being its lack of unique enemy types; it would have been the perfect space to introduce darknuts as endgame enemies. Skull Woods having multiple entrances makes less of a contrived, linear space. More importantly, the fact that these entrances reside in an enemy-laden, maze-like overworld integrates said overworld into the dungeon structure. The stark line between dungeon and field is blurred as the underground dungeon sections feel like part of the forest, and vs versa. Breath of the Wild had the biggest opportunity to revive and improve upon this design, with it's unprecedented emphasis on traversing the environment. It did this with it's two overworld mazes and somewhat with the pitch-black forest, but only superficially. Picture a "dungeon" that's simply a volcano. The only goal is to reach the top and fight the boss living in its caldera, but getting there requires solving puzzles to make a path up the mountain, fighting enemies along the way. Alternatively, imagine a large, open-ended forest full of giant trees. The boss lives at the top of the highest tree, but you have to find a viable path up the giant branches to get there. There need not be a single route either, as different items can help traverse the space in different ways: climbing gloves, hookshot, hang-glider to name some. Whereas Skull Woods blurred the distinction between dungeon and field, Thieves Town hints at doing so between dungeon and village. Its tiered walkways and furnished rooms give it the impression of functional compound or prison. Most of the enemies are armor wearing bipeds, portraying them as the sapient denizens of an underground city. Even the boss encounter is structured as a rescue mission, rather than a race to the kill. I hoped Twilight Princess's City in the Sky would recapture this magic, and it seemed to at first containing friendly NPCs and even a shop in its early sections. It just didn't seem developed past that point. What I'd like to see is a 'dungeon' set inside a town, wherein NPC interaction is key to progression. For example, an occupied village where enemy guards patrol the streets and serve as the main enemy encounters. The goal would be to confront the evil lord commanding them, but he's stowed away in a locked stronghold. By helping the town's denizens, they could show you secret rooftop and/or sewer paths that you would use to sneak in. Shopkeepers could charge you a premium rates or even rat you out, leading to optional fights based on your dialogue choices.
@@thelegendofthem6120 no, Aghanim was what you might call an avatar, a physical representation of a being that is actually somewhere else. ganon could not leave the sacred realm, so he created a puppet that he could control in hyrule. aghanim was ganon. he says as much when you finally face him in the pyramid, calling aghanim his "alter-ego", and after you defeat aghanim in ganon's tower, ganon's spirit rises from him.
Same here. I think that the Snes had some of the best gaming soundtracks on its system (Super Castlevanina IV, Contra III, Chrono Trigger, Donkey kong Country, Star Fox and many many more).
Seriously though! I remember playing this on my dad’s SNES when I was a kid, and now I have nostalgia for a game that came out 8 years before I did. Such an amazing game.
I mean it’s fine if you want to criticize it that way. Just know that there’s a reason classics aren’t evaluated this way. They often revolutionized something in their medium that became a building block of said medium allowing it to progress forward. Citizen Kane isn’t judged by today’s film standards, that would be ridiculous. Like I said you’re free to do you, but people might be justifiably confused when the title of this video is “Retrospective”. Which implies a more nuanced historical perspective than what it is, a “does this compete and hold up with games today” opinion piece.
This channel does a lot of hot takes like that imo, helps get views. Of course it is fine to criticise a cherished game, but you can’t mark Goldeneye 64 down for what Halo did better
Still the greatest Zelda game of all time. Especially if you were playing when it release as a kid. Some of my earliest childhood memories are with this game in the early 90’s
Agreed. Also yes I find it to be a cleaner, more fun experience than OOT. OOT was great and all but it suffered from early 3D limitations whereas LttP was a master class 2D experience.
@@elliottvaughn700 thats exactly what me and my best friend say. Oot is amazing but it doesnt gold up as well performance and gameplay wise because it was part of that first 3d era. Snes games like lttp aged great
Consistently, your main problem with going back to these older games seems to be your age. You judge a lot of seminal titles unfairly because they were the ones to invent ideas you experienced already in later games. Of course younger iterations did all these things better. Poor is the student that cannot exceed his master, after all. Not that you can't view things within a vacuum - that has its merits as well. It would be interesting to compare Link to the Past, in context of its modern contemporary failings, with its contemporary remake, Link Between Worlds. It's the only title you can really do that with, as the 3DS remakes were direct remakes rather than faithful reinterpretations. Did LBW resolve the story issues, or the limitations of a linear experience? Well... sort of.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! You said everything I was thinking! You have to have played this game when it was NEW to really understand WHY its such a masterpiece. Unless you're going to spend time with this game like those of us did before we knew anything about an Ocarina or A Mask and certainly A Breath. You can't really compare this game to its children and grand children, to me they dont compare! The only one you can start to make a real comparison with of today is A Link between worlds!! Its set in the same world! Its pretty much a sequel. Talking about anything else, doesn't make any sense to me. Its just an opinion on a game, that really you can't really see as a masterpiece it really is because your first zelda game was its grandchildren's grand children. This game for what it was, IS STILL one of the greatest of ALL TIME!!! so much love and passion was breathed into the making of it! Its perfect to me. SORRY
Im sorry, but just because a game was great in its time doesnt mean it is the best. Sequels usually improve upon its predecessors, especially when it is on a more advance console. A LtTP and the original LoZ might have been great for their consoles, but almost every single game after them improved in every aspect.
Super Mario World: Exists. Super Metroid: Exists. Earthbound: Exists. Super Mario RPG: Exists Kirby Super Star: Exists I don't like A Link to the past...
@@septimus5202 Super Mario RPG is more like a proto-N64 game. It's okay not to like LttP but it came out a good 4 years before SMRPG which was at the end of the system's life cycle and had extra hardware built into the cart that wasn't widely available for cheap during LttP's development cycle.
@@septimus5202 What are you talking about? FF IV-VI (III and IV in the USA) and Mystic Quest along with the Romancing Saga games and Mana games as well as a slew of other games came out before SMPRG. Square was very experienced with both making RPGs and programming for the SNES by the time they started development on Mario RPG, it's the reason Nintendo chose to have them help develop it. In fact I think Square only released 1 or 2 more games for SNES after SMPRG and those were in development at roughly the same time, after that they started work on FFVII.
SMW was great but didn't change that much on the formula SMB3 introduced which was still NES. Super Metroid was good but the Gameboy Metroid had already improved the formula a lot. Kirby Super Star was nice but again there was Kirby's Adventure on NES. But LTTP was a major step forward for Zelda so I think his statement was spot on. It showed how much farther you could take the game on 16 bit.
Link to the Past created the formula for all future superior Zeldas to follow. That's its legacy above everything else. The fact that Nintendo has been able to improve their franchises over time and gaming generations speaks layers about the power of the gaming company and its ability to evolve with the times.
Not really sure why you would say that. A Link To The Past is just a polished up and slightly nerfed version of Zelda 1. IT's formula is nearly abandoned by the follow up game Ocarina Of Time. Very little of ALTTP remains in Ocarina. The combat is entirely different, the challenge is gone, Ocarina invents new story elements, the items are drastically different, the dungeons play entirely differently and, most of all, the bosses play ENTIRELY differently, relying on gimmicks to beat instead of well executed combat like ALTTP. It's Ocarina that set up the template for the subsequent Zelda games. Even Nintendo says as much. Miyamoto demanded that the Zelda team stop rehashing Ocarina when they went back to the drawing board and come up with Breath Of The Wild.
I will admit, there is one standout sequence for me in Link To The Past - the assault on Hyrule Castle after obtaining the Master Sword. After finally obtaining your goal, the means of victory is snatched from underneath you. You charge the enemy stronghold, the music is different from the dreary and dull dungeon theme, you fight through the army that's been chasing you the whole game after being branded a criminal, fight significantly stronger foes when you yourself have just been powered up... and you fail. You see Zelda presumably die. And I know that's nothing with player agency and is scripted, but it's a really cool sequence and a really solid way to introduce the Dark World - and I'd say one with a bit more of a punch than Ocarina aping the exact same situation with its two different time periods. But for the most part, I agree with you. Link To The Past was a game I found consistently enjoyable, but only on its very solid foundation and few charming efforts. It is certainly a complete game, and a textbook critical darling, but it lacks a lot of the weight that future - and even previous, I would argue, but I like Zelda 1 to an unreasonable degree despite its archaic playstyle - titles would bring through gameplay or story. This is a really nice and nuanced take as to why that ends up being a problem, really enjoyed seeing the development of the series FROM this game as opposed to it being BECAUSE of this game. As for the debate of a game's "quality" versus its time period, I do like comparing it to its contemporaries from its time period more than I do future entries, and I do admit there were few things like A Link To The Past at the time. Stuff like Dragon Quest V and Final Fantasy IV were kicking its rear story-wise, but the fluidity of exploring a (kind of) open world was pretty incredible for LttP. It's one of those games where if people call it the greatest of all time, I go "yeah, I get that. It meant a lot to you, huh?". And then I give it a 6/10 and call it 'good but not standout' and kinda feel bad because they think it's a D and I'm like "nono, that means I have a positive feeling toward it, just not a strong one" and suddenly I'm not allowed to talk about Chrono Trigger anymore. I like making 'Best of x year' lists and then comparing the top games from each of those lists when making favorites, it ends up making for a neat take on just what makes games good for me in the time periods that they were made in, while still letting me put my favorites up top. As always, a pleasure to watch.
Huh. I find that to be such a weird perspective just because it's so different from mine. For me, as a guy who started playing Zelda with the first game, I find A Link To The Past to be the last great Zelda game before the series plunged into the darkness that was the 3D games. Right up until Breath Of The Wild came out, I was ready to write off Zelda entirely as being a has-been series. My favorite series turned to garbage. As a day 1 purchaser of Ocarina Of Time, and someone who had been on the edge of his seat waiting for it and re-watching the VHS preview over and over again, I found Ocarina to be mostly BAD and an abandonment of everything that made Zelda, Zelda. While I was admittedly 17 when I played the game, I felt like the "advances" in storytelling were actually massive regressions that forced me to admit that Nintendo was for children. I had been defending it for so long, but the bizarre and annoying sound effects, the child-like writing, the terrible animations all pointed to a game that was made for elementary school kids. Navi was annoying, the art design was actually ugly (Great Fairy, Impa, Graveyard guy, etc.), the game was incredibly linear (which was a massive betrayal of everything Zelda had been up until that time), the bosses were gimmicky and terrible, the challenge was gone... ugh. I get worked up thinking about it even now. I still want to go back to it at some point in time and see if I will like it more now that I know that BOTW EVENTUALLY returns Zelda to what it once was, in some form, but my dislike of the game hasn't worn off enough yet to give it a fair shot. Maybe when the re-release it again.
@@JazGalaxy Hrm, see as one of those children who OoT was targeted toward (I was about 5 when it came out - forgive me for being a comparative baby), I bounced off of it because I found the 3D navigation awkward and ultimately unrealized compared to Mario, and found its linearity to be a detriment as I just wanted to explore and enjoy levels nonlinearly as I could in games like Mario 64 or Banjo or the almighty Tomba 2. And I can definitely see that feeling of disappointment in the game shifting so drastically from the core principles established by Zelda 1. But I think the main thing is, I like my favorite Zelda games (Majora, Link's Awakening, and Zelda 1) for entirely different reasons - atmosphere, dungeon/puzzle and world design, and exploration respectively. As the first three Zelda games weighed heavily on the exploration element (and slowly downsized it as time went on), can definitely see how that would cause the series to turn sour for you. But I find that Zelda has always been mutations of a core formula, with certain aspects highlighted or certain gimmicks or perspectives added in, while others are taken away. And that core has always been LttP, ever since Link's Awakening was built off of the engine and ideas it presented. So that core just holds less appeal to me compared to the mutations with the elements I like more, or the Wild West that is Zelda 1.
As someone who's first zelda was breath of the wild (I've played all of them now) I feel alttp was the oldest zelda I could fully enjoy. For me it wears its heart on its sleeve and though I didn't grow up with the snes and prefer other zelda titles my appreciation is huge for this game.
I find it weird that people say Ocarina was a betrayal of the nonlinear structure, but Zelda 2 exists. The dungeons really can't be done in any order other than the order they give you, and the world has so many roadblocks like boulders and oceans and cliffs. And Link's Awakening was about as linear as Zelda 2 in both aspects as well. So when you say Ocarina of Time is a betrayal of Zelda tradition, you're kidding yourself. Half the games up to that point were linear and half of them were nonlinear. You can like one style over the other, but you can't act like nonlinearity defines the Zelda series more cleanly, when they are pretty balanced. Hell, you could probably argue that today the series is mostly based on linear progression instead of open world. Edit: Did I say half of them were nonlinear? Because KingK makes the case that A Link to the Past actually shows an attempt at being linear, but doesn't fully dedicate itself to that and so it exists in some middleground. So in that case it just proves my point even further.
@@jacobmonks3722 I disagree. I read a thing years ago where a kid was like, "Why do older gamers care so much about nonlinearity!?! You can only be in one place at a time anyways! So if you beat level 2 before level 1, it's still level one and level 2 to you!" He was EXACTLY RIGHT... from the perspective of a modern gamer. See, the thing that makes non-linear games non-linear is CHALLENGE, which is a concept that barely exists in modern games if at all. What makes Zelda 1 nonlinear is only partially because you can find the dungeons in any order. In reality, many players had to abandon certain dungeons that they couldn't complete until they could either solve a puzzle that was sticking with them or become powerful enough to complete challenges that were blocking their way. So while Zelda 2 may appear more linear on the surface, most of the people I knew playing it when it was new completed the dungeons in crazy orders based on what they could do at the time. Ocarina Of Time was the first Zelda game who's linearity was assured because the design pretty much forced the player to commit to one act at a time. If you committed to a dungeon, you were basically going to play that dungeon until you beat it. Even starting from the beginning if you died would be annoying more than fun because the dungeons are so big and they are meant to be explored at such a relatively slow pace. Mario 64 is actually the perfect example of how challenge creates non-linearity. When you face a challenge that you can't complete, you move on and then come back. You explore things at your own pace and at a level that matches your skills at the time.
@@Sputterbug Yep, the hardware has its limitations, but one look on the Final Fantasy / Fire Emblem / Shin Megami Tensei series among other and you see there's no shortage of great stories on the system, and some of these series have been telling them since the NES
For me, Link to the Past is the one video game I really enjoy replaying over and over. I never like redoing (single player) games, normally, but this is the one game I keep coming back to. I just love it that much lol.
The thing about A Link to the Past..... In my opinion, in some ways, it’s the best game in the series. It sets out to achieve what the original could not, making the game a wonder to explore and fight enemies, it strikes the perfect balance between non-linearity and a story, IMO. I never thought a story was important in a Zelda game, though. The items are all used over and over, there are many optional upgrades to attack, defense, magic power, and others, the dungeons are challenging, but not unreasonably so, and overall, it is just a fun, fun game to play, and, I think, the most replayable in the series, barring A Link Between Worlds. I get what you’re saying, but my only real issue with the game is the blandness of the dungeons. The game is exactly as nonlinear as it needs to be. Once you leave the Sanctuary for the first time, you can explore most of the world, and it still takes several different steps to reach each dungeon. This is nothing to do with nostalgia, by the way. I’m younger than you, and I played this game for the first time just 2 years ago.
"The items are all used over and over, " THIS is one of the main things that I hate about modern Zelda games. There is a difference between a power-up and a "key". A "key" is a thing that you need purely to progress. A key can look like whatever. It can be a metal key or it can be a grappling hook. It can be a jewel or it can be a gun. If it's only purpose is to allow you to progress, and you can't use it in any other way or in any other place, it's just a key. I feel like Zelda power-ups should be power-ups, not keys. Keys should be keys. Every item in your inventory should be able to be used as a weapon or a tool. It shouldn't just allow you to progress. And simply allowing you to progress includes using it to beat bosses.
The only thing I truly dislike about ALttP is the perception that it's somehow the best Zelda game, that no Zelda game can possibly be better. ALttP is a great game, and a monumentally important one - but it's also a game that's been iterated and built on in important ways since.
I have the same mindset, I love ALttP but everything it did has been done better in one game or another. For some Yes it has the right balance of everything, but that is going to be entirely subjective. Past that it's a grate game but isn't one that is truly a master of everything it sets out to do.
Of course. It's closer to 30 years old by now. At the same time, there's a reason why one can prefer it over other Zeldas. I'd like to have a lot of what ALTTP did with a bit more sequence breaking potential, as well as some real puzzles (La Mulana style), and I'd have my favorite Zelda, probably.
You can exploit the magic mirror to jump off death mountain and skip dungeon 3, Lightside Hyrule castle, and the master sword, every time you enter a dungeon rabbit link reverts to normal link if you save and quit from there. There's a lot of sequence breaking in Alttp if you can execute all of the glitches and exploits.
19:40 calling that artificial difficulty is a stretch imo. The game introduces obstacles and enemies to you and then mixes them together more and more to test how well you can handle them. That's about as natural as you can escalate the difficulty in a game. Constantly introducing and abandoning new stuff would feel less organic if you ask me.
Exactly. It's not artificial difficulty, it's actual difficulty. I believe the purpose is that you're SUPPOSED to be getting better. This was a common design element of games of the time. Many games would feature the first level boss as a common enemy later in the game. The idea was that you were suppose to have grown more competent and could handle them more easily than you could in your earlier adventures.
I don't think they are inherently bad obstacles, but I do think later in the game they throw maybe a bit too much at you all at once. It borders on feeling cheap.
@@JazGalaxy TBF I have never seen the 'a boss from earlier is a generic now!' thing actually work out well as anything other than, "than why the hell were they a boss in the first place?" Dark Souls is especially bad about this.
It was really interesting for me to watch this knowing we hold almost polar opposite opinions about the game. To introduce myself first, I'm a long time speedrunner of the game and helped pioneer the randomizer for it (and continue to do so). It's safe to say it's one of my favourite games and I know it inside out. I do agree with some of the criticism you mentioned (average but functional story, limited dungeon music, a very boring swamp palace...) but some things you said I vehemently disagree with. However the main reason I wanted to post a comment wasn't to try and change your mind about the things you did say, but because the main reasons I love the game you never mentioned at all and neither do any of the comments I've read so far. I wanted to highlight some of these things as I don't think a full and fair picture of the game was painted in your review. Without further ado, here are some of the reasons why I think this game is so good: 1) Difficulty. It's a hard game. Enemies (both in the overworld and dungeons) actually pose a challenge. Dark World enemies in particular can inflict significant damage. Bosses are interesting and difficult. The game expects you to master control of Link and his abilities and if you don't, you will die (a lot). The game's design understands this and rewards optional exploration with items which help boost offense and defense (e.g. hearts, bottles, magic powder, shield and boomerang upgrades, sword upgrades etc). This difficulty never feels unfair (unlike in Z1) and this has a lot to do with how masterful the game mechanics are (more on this later). Link can use his wealth of items to gain the upper hand in combat (stun enemies with the Boomerang, block their path with the cane of Somaria, deal with them from afar or get up close...). Contrarily, the difficulty in (almost) every subsequent Zelda game is essentially absent. There was rarely ever any urgency to my control of Link. It barely mattered if I ran head on into enemies with one hand on the controller and slashed my sword relentlessly. I'd still succeed through attrition regardless without sustaining any notable damage. I didn't feel like there was any incentive to tackle enemies strategically or think of clever ways to use my items to help me gain an advantage. Enemies tend to deal 1/4 or 1/2 a heart's worth of damage which is, in my opinion, laughable. Newer games are so much more boring to me to play simply due to how over-the-top easy they are! 2) Game mechanics: how fast and fluid controlling Link is. One big aspect of this is the Pegasus Boots. The game expects you to master their use and as such they introduce these right near the beginning of the game. Two extremely pertinent points here: 1) they put dash on a separate button and made them a passive item instead of requiring you to equip them (e.g. as in LA); 2) they don't limit their use with stamina. These choices have such a huge positive impact on the gameplay that it baffles me they never get mentioned. You can zip around the overworld exploring everything at speed without things feeling tedious (unlike in a lot of future Zelda's). They're also hugely useful in combat since you can escape awry situations by running away, or inflict damage while moving to a more strategic, safe position. Things are fast-paced and fun. And that is an amazing thing! Another aspect here is Link's responsiveness in combat. Z1 is a fantastic example of when this doesn't work. ALTTP is a fantastic example of when this does work. Careful movement of Link matters and you have incredible control over him with micro-movements. Learning how to properly move Link and utilize his sword attacks (poke, slash, spin, dashpoke, dash) is incredibly gratifying. There's a big sense of achievement when you improve your control of Link which is absent in most other Zelda games (especially in 3D games due to targeting systems). There is a much higher skill ceiling when it comes to combat in ALTTP than compared to most (all?) others. 3) The overworld. Specifically how regions have branching paths to get there with differing items required. For example, you can reach East Death Mountain by scaling the west side and using the Magic Mirror and the Hammer; or you can take the lower route with the Hookshot. After beating the first dark world dungeon, at first glance, you're stuck in the east/south regions of the Dark World. However to the savvy explorers they'll find a new route opened up to them in the Light World which lets them get to the west region of the dark world. After acquiring the Titan's Mitts you further find there are multiple other paths you can now take connecting different overworld regions. I feel like you really undersold this aspect of the game and its impact on creating an interesting and open world to explore. No other Zelda game executes this branching-paths to access overworld regions nearly as well as ALTTP does. This is in my opinion why the randomizer is so popular and works so well. One thing I want to point out which I felt was unfair criticism was how you mentioned the game didn't have enough items to find outside of dungeons. I completely disagree here since all of these are found in the overworld: shovel, flute, boots, mushroom, magic powder, tempered sword, gold sword, fire shield, silver arrows, ice rod, red boomerang, flippers, ether, bombos, quake, 4 bottles, bug net, book of mudora, magic mirror, magic cape, cane of byrna, heart pieces, bomb and arrow capacity upgrades. Granted some of these are optional items, but a decent number of them are required items. This is why I think that was unfair negative criticism. Anyway, I hope if you read this it might help improve your opinion of ALTTP! Your videos are fantastic (found your channel tonight and subbed) and I've been enjoying them a lot. Thanks for making them!
Great points. I played this game at least once a year basically since it came out but didn't know just how branching the overworld was until I started the Randomizer. And you're right about the boots. Best item. Don't disagree with OP about plot simplicity. I don't play this game for the plot, but he's right that it's basic.
Some of this might just be repeating stuff you said, but: Yeah, there are multiple identifiable strengths of Zelda 3. Your arsenal and, up until breath of the wild came out, the physics being somewhat beyond its time. You could do some cool shit with bombs and pegasus boots jumps for example. That's the extent of it, but the only other game you can casually do cool shit like that in is Link's Awakening. Everything you could do since, again up until Breath of the Wild, felt pretty hard-coded and rigid. The items that serve as glorified keys aren't actually glorified keys unlike many subsequent entries. They're almost all multi-purpose, have an actual use in combat, and the game also adds cool optional items on top of that. The medallions make Link feel like more of a beast than he has ever felt like since. I miss the magic meter to be honest. I feel like my ideal Zelda game has some combination of cooldowns and magic meter. You can use a magic meter to offset cooldowns or something like that, and you could have magic containers similar to stamina and hearts. Most importantly though, the dark world and magic mirror make for the BEST implementation of the multiworld design by a COMFORTABLE margin.There's a reason subsequent entries force you through their multiworlds with temples of time and tree stumps. These are not items but specific locations where you can swap worlds. Not saying that's a terrible thing per se but it's certainly not as good as Zelda 3. I can't think of a single game past Zelda 3 that hasn't had those bottlenecks to exploration. Its dark world is also way less forgiving than subsequent entries, making it actually feel like a dark world.
Keep in mind that you, as a speedrunner are 100% comfortable with the mechanics and movements and all that, it is a completely different story for people playing it the first time around. Yes, if you master every item and fighting techniques etc, the game might feel 100% fluent and well-made. It basically becomes your second reality. But for people beating it one time and goes on to a different game, it becomes a totally other experience.
3:56 "The call to action is the murder of your Uncle..." Nitpick: He's not actually dead. He's there at the end of the game, living with Link. I only point this out because it never sunk in with me until I just. beat it recently, 20-something years after I beat it the first time. I always thought he was dead, too. That's Nintendo for you.
Nah he totally died. The King was a frickin' skeleton in the opening scene, but at the end Link uses the Triforce to "restore" him, and Link's uncle comes back too.
I think the problem with your review is that you aren’t looking at these games in their context. Link to the Past basically invented the Zelda formula and perfected it at the same time. All these Zelda games you’ve reviewed is ONLY because LttP was so great. What you should have done is play all the Zelda games in the order they were released. If you’d played Dread before Super Metroid you’d probably also have missed the significance Super made to not just the franchise but video game design in general, and that’s what you’ve missed with this review
Saying that ALTTP is too linear is just a bizarre criticism. It's tied with ALBW (which, let's be real, was largely a copy of ALTTP) for the third most open-world Zelda after BOTW and the original.
I think this guy has an issue and wants to hate this game for some reason he constantly complains about it being so linear but then also talks about how several parts can be done in any order
@@BryanM86 Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. That's KingK for ya though. I like his videos, but he has an obsession with wanting games to be needlessly complex. I can see how an open world presented in a streamlined, intuitive way would grind his gears
@@ddsjgvk I mean, sure, they could have gotten rid of the numbers on the dungeon labels to avoid suggesting a linear progression to the player. But that's really a distinction without a difference. Those numbers are there to signal the relative difficulty of the dungeons. At the end of the day, if you can disregard the label and complete the dungeons in pretty much any order, they aren't very linear
When you're a jack of all trades and a master of none, you tend to fall short of a masterpiece. The strongest point of this game is when it came out and what it did.
The fact this game is a Masterpiece is not up for debate. It has been widely considered one of the best video games of all-time for decades. It is on every list. The innovation in this game is astounding.
I personally disagree to say that masterpieces cannot be tarnished by time, especially in such a technology-heavy medium as the video game industry. Every game, no matter how amazing, will one day be outclassed or tarnished in some way due to improvements made to the medium, it's unavoidable.
I don't see it that way. I feel like "Masterpieces" should be compared to the entire library of their respected platform. Comparison to all video games, I would agree with your opinion 100%.
I disagree. I personally feel like gamers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between technology and design. TECHNOLOGY changes and improves. It always will. But design is design. It never changes, even though trends do. Zelda 1 is a phenomenally designed game. it's technologically dated by today's standards, and it's game design is not trendy based on current tastes. But it's still a masterpiece. In comparison, very few people listen to classical music these days. But almost anyone and everyone would admit that classical composers have a grasp on the design of music that dwarfs almost anyone alive in the modern era. Those works are masterpieces even if modern music uses better technology or is more trendy to our culture.
@@JazGalaxy Design changes with technology. Look at the Star Wars prequels. For better or worse, Lucas claims to have held off on filming them for 15+ years because the technology of the mid 80s wasn't in line with the design of the films that he had in his mind, and he didn't want to compromise the design because of tech limitations. The design of a game like LttP wouldn't be what it is if the game was made 5 years later, or even five years earlier.
Weirdly, I've grown to appreciate Link to the Past way more in its randomized versions than in the standardized form. It really helps to emphasize its lock-and-key structure and how well designed the world and dungeons truly are mechanically... but overall, I definitely agree with you, future games in the series improved on it and as mechanically solid and well designed as the game is... it's missing a lot of the uniqueness, style, and flavor that future games in the series would have. In a lot of ways, I feel like ALttP cemented how a Zelda game PLAYS, but Link's Awakening cemented how it FEELS, if that make sense, and the feel matters way more to me as a player. There's an ineffable charm to the way Zelda tends to present its world - the mysteriousness, the sense of weird whimsy, the various distinct characters and races, that sets it apart, and A Link to the Past hadn't QUITE gotten there just yet. I'll take bringing a singing farm girl to wake up a walrus so you can enter a desert over grabbing three macguffins to unlock another macguffin any day.
Most memorable NPCs in alttp are the ones that do stand out more (and the ones that give you stuff) like the hobo under the bridge, the sign guy, the lumberjacks, flute boy, etc. I think Link’s Awakening did better at this making the NPCs all have personalities than what limited ability Alttp did. Most of these characters were done after your initial encounter with them, but in Link’s Awakening you will come back to a lot of them either for story beats or for the trading sequence
Hoytful You can actually set a bunch of parameters, but at its core the randomizer shuffles around every treasure chest and item in the game (with the exception of dungeon maps, compasses, and keys remaining in their respective dungeons for convenience and to prevent softlocks) which changes the order in which you can complete dungeons and essentially changes the entire progression of the game. So, like, while you’d normally find the bow in Eastern Palace, instead you might find the hookshot, or the magic mirror, or five rupees. Meanwhile the bow could be in pretty much any other chest in the game, including just in a random cave somewhere. It really tests your knowledge of the game’s geography and layout and kinda makes navigating Hyrule into this giant logic puzzle/scavenger hunt, where you think things like “Okay, I have the hammer, which means I can now go here, here, and here, but not here because I’d need the flippers and I don’t have them yet.” It’s a wonderful way to replay the game and I highly recommend tracking it down if you can. Also if you REALLY want to get nuts, you should also try the Super Metroid x ALttP crossover randomizer, which throws the entirety of Super Metroid and it’s item pool into the mix (so now Eastern Palace might contain the grapple beam while the bow could be in Norfair. Yes, really. It’s madness.)
When Link Between Worlds came out, I realized it pretty much had everything I wished in retrospect LttP had. Better nonlinearity, more memorable cast of characters, dungeons that feel more distinct from each other, plus the bonus of possibly the best-implemented gimmick of any Zelda game (loved how clever the use of wall merging got at many points, without necessarily spelling out what you're supposed to do; much like how Portal teaches you to start thinking with portals, LBW eventually has you thinking with walls to solve problems, and it feels like such a natural progression). One thing I will say LttP has going for it is something about its aesthetic --- dunno how to properly describe it, but the graphics, the music, the feel of the Dark World, all of it lends a certain flavor of fantasy that the rest of the series moved in a different direction from afterward. Even if these days I'll probably reach for LBW or the Oracles first as far as 2D Zeldas go, I have to say that LttP's atmosphere is the thing I still remember the most, and remains what sets it apart for me, in a good way.
LTTP had the best tone to it of all the Zelda’s in my opinion. It had a seriousness and dark aspect that started to slowly go away starting with OoT when they start making things more childish at parts, to the point where entire games became like that. LBW took it too far by adding all the extra sound effects, music and voices to everything
I love how every dark world dungeon is unique in its own way. The palace of darkness has a open ended structure and it is an introduction to the dark world as a whole The swamp palace is the only dungeon with water based puzzles The skull woods uses the overworld to enhance dungeon navigation and exploration Thieves town sets up a mystery with the empty boss room and maiden locked away that is the main puzzle of the dungeon other than others which is mostly navigation puzzles The ice palace has a strong and confusing central puzzle and has a maze like structure while having to traverse that maze multiple times Misery mire has a more open ended structure than any other dungeon which allows you to solve the dungeon any way you want, for example there are 6 keys in the dungeon when you only need to use 2 Turtle rock uses moving platforms to navigate the dungeon unlike any other dungeon and also heavily relies on magic usage more than any other dungeon And Ganons tower is a gauntlet of everything you’ve learned so far and every enemy you’ve seen so far that provide a challenge while making you feel strong at the end of your journey.
I have a strong bias towards this game. I'm 33. I remember playing it as a kid. Its the game that REALLY got me to fall in love with video games. Ya I played Mario and other games but this game was the one. When I think Zelda this game pops into my head. Its my favorite Zelda game and probably my favorite game of all time. I say that knowing I have a strong bias and have a lot of emotions mixed into it.
I'm 34and yes this is how I feel too! I still have my same cartridge and the game was saved for 20 years and I went back and beat it last year! I dont expect someone who is 21 to understand what that means. You have to live in a world where this was the NEWEST zelda game to understand it. You cannot compare it to its children and grand children. How to speak retrospectively about something you wasn't there for?? Lol The game is older than him lol. OK I just feel some type of way lol. So I'll stop. Its more than just nostalgia tho, THE GAME IS A MASTERPIECE and one of the greatest of ALL TIMES in my book. I'll never change that. It was created with so much passion and love that you could feel it while playing it!!! Thats all Im saying. There a many games that just dont do that for me.
@@JeMone exactly man. Unless you played it when it 1st came out there's no way to understand. Comparing it to games now is kinda dumb. They SHOULD BE better. Its been decades. The game aged beautifully. I just did a playthrough about 6 months ago. Its still looks good sounds good and plays good. I still felt a little emotional when I beat it.
I love how it's called "A link to the past" but contrary to Ocarina of Time or Oracle of Ages which do have a time travelling theme, in AlttP is actually more about travelling between a parallel dark world and the real world.
From what I recall reading somewhere before it was released (probably in Nintendo Power), they chose "A Link to the Past" to signify that it was a prequel to the first two games. Relative to the Link who starred in those games, this was literally a Link from Hyrule's past, rather than the future. This was way before any sort of official timeline was ever established, so it being a prequel was a novel concept for the series.
Didn't think you had the time to watch other youtubers right now, with breaking grounds probably being already in your library and needing to be thoroughly broken before release. ;)
While I could be that guy that rants and raves about your opinion because I don't agree with all the points you made. I won't do that in the slightest. As someone who grew up playing this game, it holds a special place in my heart (along with Mega Man X, Super Mario World, Sonic 2 and Ecco The Dolphin). The newer Zelda games are good, and built upon what ALTTP started, but to me, they don't hold a candle to the memories and the feelings I get whenever I pick up the game to play again. I recently did a playthrough of ALTTP with a randomizer and it brought back the nostalgia of how it was when I was trying to find secrets, beat bosses and explore the world. ALTTP will always be in my top 10 list of games and as a developer today, it still inspires me in how I flesh out mechanics and world design.
There was an absolute geniusness behind game design at the time. They did way more with the hardware at the time than was even thought possible. I feel like even modern games can still learn a lesson from the SNES and Genesis days. Truly a golden era for video games imo.
@@EmilyRose900 "They did way more with the hardware at the time than was even thought possible." I feel like a nod to Final Fantasy VI is obligatory. Still one of the most impressive uses of sound and music in any videogame ever, and that goes towards storytelling, atmosphere, and character development. They proved in a 16-bit game that one song can do all of that and do it damn effectively.
@@jacobmonks3722 Totally. I feel sad that Final Fantasy started to lose the fact that music was so heavily involved in what made Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy. And not just the audio music by Uemetsu. Musical theatre is actually written into the scripts by Hironobu Sakuguchi like the famous Opera scene or the Tantalus scenes in 9. Not to mention the fact that pretty much all the storytelling techniques from the 16 bit FF games are taken from stage productions and musical theatre. Such a great series it used to be.
Completely agree! I LOVE this game. I 1st played it as a kid many moons ago and its the game that made me fall in love with games. I have such fond memories of playing this game
Criticizing a video game for the limits of technology at the time it was made is like criticizing the Beatles or Zeppelin for using outdated production tools. Criticizing art requires the perspective of time.
A Link to the Past is a very precious game to me. It's the first game I've ever played and as a toddler I had my grandma to help me figure out where to go. She passed away when I was around 12 but playing with her helping me is one of my favorite memories. Therefore I'm very happy to hear another review on this game, and it was refreshing to hear a more critical take on it. Thanks for this video, it was nice to listen to.
While KingK was wrong, you also have to consider what Zelda was at the time. It was not an indepth story telling. Manuals provided information prior to this. This had much more of a story in the game than Z1 or 2 did. This is where the story telling truly began, but it didn't break away from its focus, which was action/adventure/puzzle... and not a JRPG.
@Starscream91 This is especially funny in retrospect because he considers Chrono Trigger and Donkey Kong Country some of his favorite games in their respective genres. He doesn't hate the SNES, or games of that era. He judges them as pieces of art. Art is subjective. Some games have things he likes and other don't. There's no need to insult him just because he didn't love something that you do.
Those might be spelled the same in Japanese... and then when translated, changed up so the American copyright laws don't have an aneurysm, like the origin of Balrog/Vega/M. Bison.
Yup agreed, for me the overworld is just a means to get to one dungeon to the other and occasionally stopping at a shop for potions or some heart pieces if I get stuck. This game doesn’t waste your time with this huge world that you have to dredge through. The map in ALttP isn’t actually that big but it feels big because every screen is packed full of stuff to do. It feels full but is also very easy to get around in which is exactly what I like. The flute also makes it even easier then it already is.
I think you already mentioned in another video, but if not I will mention here, the first set of temples being linear and second set being less linear mirrors the monomyth, where the hero start having no agency, being dragged to the adventure, and by the end being the master of his world. I personally consider this great gaming storytelling, specially because this is not told trough text or visuals, but by the gameplay itself. Specially the Master of Two Worlds stage, that literally becomes a gameplay feature. There is a reason why this formula for Zelda temples works so well, and almost all games try to replicate it.
It's really hard to put my finger on, but for me this game just has fantastic atmosphere and satisfying progression at every turn. It's just interesting, hard, and fun, with many memorable puzzles, enemies, and "aha!" moments.
On the meat comment in the NES Zelda. That was from an era when things were hidden in the instruction manual that came with the game, it told you what it did in there.
Yes but the game also has hints in-game given to you by old men. They could have easily had a hint that says "Hungry goriya like meat." By no means is that a very good method of conveyance, but anything is better than nothing.
@@jacobmonks3722 i'm not a native english speaker, but even as a child, playing zelda in english i was able to figure it out. there's really no excuse, just bad players.
I would like to know what your thoughts are then concerning this game now that you have finished it as I have always put this game as my top spot in any list I made to do with the Zelda game series that was until I played ocarina of time and now that is at number one and this is now at number two so can you tell me what you thought about the whole of this game and what you liked and maybe did not like about this game if you could do that I would be really happy. XX
I don't really feel like you're giving ALTTP the proper judgement it deserves on it's own merits. The entire video is littered with quips about what future games did, which I don't feel should impact what this game did on its own right. To me, it will always be a masterpiece that has a special place in my heart. Does that mean that all the Zelda games that came after are worse, or less deserving of praise? No, of course not. I judge those games by their own merits as well. I think it's something to keep in mind for future videos.
I kind of agree with him, despite having experienced it in a similar way. If I'd played it right after Zelda I/II on NES, I'd definitely have preferred those games based purely on feel.
@@Sputterbug I despise the argument "you've just got nostalgia goggles on" when faced with a player preference different from one's own. It's pretentious. I like the first two games because they feel big, mysterious, and dangerous. ALTTP feels really small to me, and the graphics are weirdly rounded in a way that I don't find appealing. As far as gameplay goes, I actually found it more slow and awkward at times that the original; at least with the original I could chalk it up to system limitations. Plus it takes forever to actually open up in a meaningful way. And the story is pretty bare-bones, even compared to contemporary games like FFIV.
And all of those game fall on the back of this one! This game was created with so much LOVE!!!!!!! You can feel the passion in the game that the creators had while creating it. ITS LITERALLY A MASTERPIECE!
@@JeMone a game being made with love has nothing to do with it's quality. It's not a masterpiece, because literally every game after improves in every aspect
Inept antisocial dude explains why he feels ALTTP did jack shit for the series even though every video after explains every point about games which directly take from this one.
Great video. You did a great job of explaining your point of view and I can respect it, even if I disagree. What I will say though is that we play Zelda games for different reasons. I personally don't go play a Zelda game because I want one really good thing. I play a Zelda game for the sum of it's parts, I want my Zelda games to be good at everything. If I wanted a really good story, I wouldn't be playing a Zelda game. If I only cared about freedom I wouldn't play any Zelda games. I play them because they offer it all to me. I don't have the mentality "I want to play a Zelda game with a good story" or that "I want to play a Zelda game with a lot of freedom" I usually just want to play a Zelda game that's good at everything and that's why LTTP is one of my favorites. i think fundamentally what you want out of playing Zelda games is different from myself, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as we recognize it for what it is. I actually agree with all your main specific points about the game, but it just leads me to an entirely different conclusion. You might see it as LTTP doesn't have any serious standout qualities but the way I see it, it's almost the only Zelda game without any serious glaring flaws that gnaw at me. That's why it relaxes me to play it. I never have to be frustrated. Most every other zeda game has something in it that at some in the game frustrates me. Funny enough the other game in the series I feel this about is Twilight Princess.
I've enjoyed each and every one of your LOZ retrospectives. There were certain game mechanics that I had never noticed before and you allowed me to see them in a different light. It's better to understand fully on what makes a game great and what has been blinded from nostalgia. Thanks!
@@JazGalaxy My grandparents gave me a choice between an SNES and an N64 when I was around 5. I always wanted this game after playing it at a relative's house so I chose the SNES as my first console.
@@faulmccarttney965 I certainly did. Ocarina wasn't out at the time and when I did get an N64 later it cost $40 brand new and used games were everywhere dirt cheap. SNES games were already hard to find by that point. I wouldn't have been able to build up the collection of both if I had gone the other way.
Ive watched your entire Zelda Retrospective series and for the most part, agree with where you're coming from on each of them due to the sheer amount of arguments and logic and reason you've used. But this one feels rushed and lacks the same care you gave the other ones. Honestly it feels like its nothing more than a "eh i didnt really care for it" video with some weak justifications attached. The types of things you've considered nitpicks in other titles, you consider major faults in this one. It really feels like this video isn't about the game, its merits or its criticisms, but about making a meta statement about whether classic games hold up and using this title as the sacrificial lamb to make your case.
Thank you for putting my feelings into words. The overall logic in this video seems to be that a game can't hold up if its descendants are more refined; how then can the game be considered such a solid foundation? Holding up is its entire job! Still, I liked the video and mostly agree with the points made. My one major disagreement is that this game (and Ocarina, actually) isn't a masterpiece.
Also, I wanted to point out something that may or may not (probably not) adjust your perspective on this one. As you know, Oracle of Seasons and Ages were meant to be part of a trio of games, with each game's mechanics and narrative being symbolic of a specific piece of the Triforce. Seasons being representative of the Triforce of Power and that being expressed in the linear and combat-heavy nature of the game, while Ages represented Wisdom with that being expressed in the puzzle-heavy nature of the game. If a title represented Courage, it would be LttP, with that being expressed in the exploration-heavy nature of the game. There are a total of 9 official dungeons, a dungeon-like castle/sewers, a mini-dungeon in Zora's domain, and a strong dungeon philosophy given to both the dark and light world versions of Death Mountain with all the winding caves and drop-down ledges. there are also a ton of secrets and side-stories that are discovered and played through very organically. The game keeps you talking to NPCs to complete these stories and side quests, and theyre done masterfully in such a way that they feel optional but are almost all mandatory. And even more impressive is how many of them are entirely optional, like the invisibility cape, the level 3 and 4 swords, the bottle you get for bringing the treasure chest to the silent man. Flipping between the light and the dark world to find extra goodies, finding all the dark world portals, figuring out what the big bomb is for, experimenting with what items you can give the two upgrade faeries, the excitement of gradually burning rupies in the pond of wishing to find out what it does, seeing heart containers or other items outside of your reach that you cant get to until much, much later in the game... the list goes on and on. the game is literally jam packed with secrets and optional quests and anticipation, it's astounding. All of this underscores and strengthens its main thematic principle of Exploration and is one of the earliest examples of a perfectly tuned Metroidvania. It's not obtuse like the original Zelda, and it doesnt hold your hand every step of the way telling you what to do like most of the sequels. It strikes a beautiful balance and absolutely holds up today, and given its vintage, that makes it even more impressive. I agree that it would be a stronger thematic choice to hide the locations of the dark world dungeons on the in-game map, but as most experienced game designers know, you have to design around the audience's expectations and at the time, the metroidvania genre was still in its infancy. Most FPS games dont open with a "here's how to use both analog sticks" anymore, but Halo did it and it was the right choice, because it was designed for the audience at the time. The same is the case with displaying thee dungeon icons on the map in LttP. At the time, the original Zelda and first Metroid both got criticism for being obtuse, and im sure that criticism factored into this decision.
I respect what you're saying, but I really don't see how this is any different than my other videos. This is what I genuinely think of the game, there's nothing more to say.
@@KingKlonoa Essentially all I'm saying is I disagree with your specific definition of "masterpiece" even though I have very similar feelings towards each game.
I find the review and comments are coming from the point of view of gaming standards of today. As a 10-year-old when this game was released, it was the most complex, in-depth, adventurous game to date. There was nothing like this before this game. A polished version of the original Zelda on the NES, maybe? I can see that for sure. A link to the past definitely had a more linear vibe/story than did the original Zelda, as it was more open ended and I was never able to finish it until the Internet came along. A link to the past, I was able to finish within a few weeks. I feel it set the groundwork for the next few Zelda games. There would’ve been no Zelda 64 without A link to the past.
Great video as always! I’m only about a year younger than you and it’s always so enjoyable to see you analyze a game through a similar perspective to mine. Our age brings in a lot of different thoughts to games than a lot of the standard opinions held by older gamers, and I love how eloquently you put those perspectives in video form! Thanks again for a wonderful video!
What I love about your videos is that, even when I disagree with what you're saying, I can totally see where you're coming from and still be entertained! You do an excellent job of presenting your ideas and perspective!
ALTTP I've always described as "The perfect template for Zelda". There couldn't have been a better base for other Zelda games to build upon. Honestly, the ALTTP combat also felt a bit off and wonky to me. It may have been the fact that you can't turn while slashing, so when you get surrounded by enemies you are kinda screwed. The GBC games and Minish Cap felt loads better in this aspect. Still miles better than in Zelda 1 though. What a terrible experience that was. Favourite dungeon? Misery Mire, I love that one.
Maybe is better in general terms than Zelda 1. But I prefer it, because I like how its overworld exploration is, its non-linearity and its absolutely difficult combat, even with that technical problems. It feels for me like Dark Souls 1. In fact, the opposite: Dark Souls was for me like a new-generation Zelda 1, it's basically the same base, but with lots of improvements. All depends in what do you like the most in a game. I prefer Zelda 1, but I was also fascinating with ALttP, are just awesome games
@@adrianrivero6104 Hmm I can kinda see the comparisons between Dark Souls and Zelda. However, Dark Souls (one of my all time favourites) made me feel that every step had meaning. Knowing an area's layout or finding items (which you keep upon dying) helps hugely. Not so much in Zelda 1, which honestly I despise. Awkwardly moving behind Darknuts and all. I think I quit in Dungeon 5. The biggest issue for me was how you restart with 3 hearts once you die (and honestly that still is a big issue in later Zeldas, as I found out in Majora's Mask's final boss arena), and in the first game, there's no pots or vases to get some back. Your only saving grace is a Potion, which was expensive.
@Jaden Frostwolf most of people that don't like Breath of the wild it's because don't like as much exploration as the game's priorities. I love exploration, and BotW has probably the best exploration mechanics and set up. For people like me, the balance in exploration worth it, even losing epicness, narrative and puzzle-challenge. I have played 300 hours and still wanting to explore, maybe you didn't spend too much time on that because you don't enjoy exploration as much, but for those like me, that game is awesome. The only problem for me is that the combat gets easy after around 100 hours, and I have to limit myself in order to keep the combat as a part of the exploration balance
@Jaden Frostwolf I hugely enjoyed Breath's exploration and even its dungeons (which I expected to dislike). The combat felt like some of the worst in a Zelda game, with strange random attacks killing you in one hit. It felt like a complete failure after experiencing the masterful combat in Dark Souls.
@@Moo_Nieu Lots more I disliked about Zelda 1 haha. I got away by beating a hacked version of the Super Famicom version (Satellaview) of BS Zelda. That game was way easier and the hack allows you to play it like a normal Zelda game (Satellaview was some Japan-only system for the SNES that allowed players to play games during special 'broadcast' times). I actually remember trying a fan remake on Zelda Classic. It's called Origins (had to look it up). It felt like a great one but the base controls and combat were still hampering it for me.
I also was in a similarly weird position when I played LttP the first time... As far as what was available, only TP, WW (and it's descendants), and SS were left, with BotW not being out yet (not that it matters, it doesn't look that appealing to me sadly). And yet, despite the adage of "the first Zelda you play defines your favorite style"... THIS is my favorite of the bunch. Maybe the thing you ended off of in a negative is why: the game is in a weird middle ground on a lot of aspects other Zeldas focus on. I can see how that may be a negative, but another way of looking at it is that it's the most balanced mix of ALL of it, so that no one piece can lose my interest before another takes its place.
4:08 That's the point. It's the whole reason he's named Link. He is the link from the player to the world. He needs to be an empty vessel that the player can fill with themselves. It's the same reason Link doesn't speak.
I feel like you've misunderstood the point. I am saying that the link he provides to the player is not a particularly strong one when compared to other games.
When comparing this one, keeping in mind it’s the third one, so they’ve been able to adjust since then Also with the Randomizer community, the game is still very active. The rando takes linearity out (of course story isn’t the focus here) Some say ALTTP aged better than OOT, at least with how the graphics look today
I used to dislike this review but upon replaying Link to the Past, i must say you were right. AlttP is a great game but has long been surpassed even by it's handheld sequel. There is no reason for the the game to be this linear and restrictive. It does many things right and is the best of the trilogy no question. But as soon as you enter the Dark World the overworld becomes a large puzzle in and of itself where you know where you're supposed to go but don't know how to get there. Some dungeons are only accessible after you get the Hammer or Mitts but even upon completing the dungeons in the games designed order, it doesn't show any story or character progression other than Link gaining new items and abilities which sure, most Zelda games work with this formula but they also have storytelling or a smaller overworld for you not to endlessly waste your time exploring because you're not playing the game how the devs designed you to play. Clearly, this is Miyamotos doing, as soon as Koizumi got on board we got an even more linear game yet a more personal and memorable experience which is Links Awakening and then with Aonuma we got the best Zelda games ever made Ocarina and Majora. Despite Aonuma falling into the formulaic design of OoT until SS he understood that there's no reason for large open worlds if you're going to restrict the player from choosing his own path and make them play the game how you designed it. Alas the fans got tired of the OoT formula and now they're tired of the Breath of the Wild formula as well, which shows that what Zelda needs is a balance of non-linear and linear game elements.
Just want to say, I disagree with you on large amount of the things you've said about a number of Zelda games but Im going to continue to watch every retrospective you do and I hope you continue to make these because we need more people who give their honest opinions.
Great analysis! There is one stand-out thing LttP has, it's just a thing doesn't seem to grab you - the silent protagonist and "lack"of character building allows me to inhabit LttP Link and make it MY adventure more than any of those later Zelda games you mentioned, except maybe the GameBoy ones (which are honestly the best 2D Zeldas in every way except graphically). Love your work!
With all due respect to Miyamoto-san... TLOZ: "If the player had too much choice, it would be a programming nightmare for the narrative to stay consistent" Chrono Trigger: "AMATEURS"
I just live for the moments when you get pissed and drop an eff bomb 😂 I appreciate this alternate point of view on this classic game. You got me thinking about it in new ways.
The music in this song makes me wanna cry from nostalgia, this and ocarina of time have soundtracks that stand the test of time and bring you away to a magical place
I know I might piss off a lot of you, but it's better than not being honest. Again, I'll just say that there are dozens of videos that can validate you if you're looking for that. I hope you enjoy!
Every game has its flaws, but I'm sorry ALTTP was a masterpiece for the console generation that it belonged to. Yes, it was a fairly linear game, but at least it HAD dungeons compared to BOTW which had copy/paste shrines and 4 very forgettable "dungeons" to explore and conquer. Hell, ALTTP even had boss variety which once again BOTW was severely lacking in. I love every Zelda game for one reason or another, but this game was what BOTW should have been, and what every Zelda game since its release aspired to be.
All that said, I respect your opinions, but vehemently disagree with them in this instance.
Much as I love this game, I can't argue with any of your points when looked at in a retrospective sense. The game set the formula, but every element that made it so good has been done better in later games.
As the prototype for nearly the entire series, it's a testament to both its own quality and the continued quality of the series that it has been so firmly surpassed while still being the basis for the series core for a very long time.
th-cam.com/video/IS1W9vhK_l0/w-d-xo.html This is a bit of a nitpick, but Link's uncle doesn't die. After you defeat Ganon, you get a Mario-esque pan over the areas you visited and people you meet. At the end, it shows Link standing next to his uncle. Link has his tunic/shield/sword that he earned and his uncle has the fighter's sword that he initially gives to link in Hyrule Castle. He probably only has the sword because the player is not forced to upgrade the fighter's shield, so Link could have had it at the end and they likely wanted to avoid continuity errors.
I, like you, didn't play LttP until after playing many other Zelda games. Not as late as you, but still pretty late (I was a Sega kid in the 90s, so no SNES for me). While your points are quite valid, I'd argue that it is a masterpiece because it set the foundation. If a LttP wasn't made, or even not made as well, the Zelda series would likely be vastly different. Likely no where near as successful. When I first played it a few years ago, I never could quite look at OoT the same. OoT lost a lot of it's magic to me because of how much it took from LttP. Also, playing LttP made me come to realize that TP is more like LttP than it is OoT. Many people try to make the argument that TP is just a remake of OoT. I disagree and often point to the fact that Link takes a different form in the Dark World, until he gets the Pearl, he transitions between the Light/Dark world far more often than players have to time travel in OoT. Also, similar how you point out, Zant is a (drastically) more refined version of Aghanim. OoT has no puppet, Ganondorf is the premier and only antagonist.
Is it sensible to look at a game that came out 28 years ago and hold it to standards that didn't exist when it was made? Is it sensible to look at an old game and say it doesn't hold up because it doesn't tell a tale as epic as a newer game even though that was unheard of in its genre in 1991? Is it sensible to criticize a game's design for not using design philosophies that were not know during its making? Is it sensible to say a game lacks uniqueness because most of its sequels have been doing what it did and adding over nearly 3 decades?
Not to say that you're wrong, but you don't think saying ALTTP doesn't hold up that well today because it didn't tell a tale as epic as Twilight Princess in 1991 on an SNES cartridge while delivering on the gameplay it did sounds even a little unreasonable? You don't think not being able to see uniqueness in ALTTP because most of the sequels used it's formula isn't a case of you taking what was unique about ALTTP for granted due to overexposure to the Zelda formula?
I'm not saying I disagree with your take here. It's actually good to dust off an old game hailed as a masterpiece and see how gaming standards have changed since then. I just think it's more sensible to look at the "Does this old game hold up?" question from the angle "Is this still entertaining to play?" It's certainly not going to be as revolutionary as it was in 1991, that should never be up for debate (it'd be a terrible sign for the game industry if it was, we're supposed to improve after all).
Edward Evans ALTTP could not be more different from BOTW, how could BOTW have been like ALTTP, when one has a massive open world with an open ended story, and one has a ridged story.
Am I the only one who thinks that the linear nature of this game isn’t a negative? I love how the dungeons increase in complexity and how the later ones need multiple key items that make the puzzles more and more difficult. In A Link Between Worlds I got bored because the “do the dungeons in every order” gimmick meant they were all the same difficulty
That kind of thing is WHY I prefer the more linear Zelda games. Link's Awakening does a fantastic job of making each dungeon item stay relevant the entire game, mixing them in ways like combining the Pegasus boots with the roc's feather. A Link Between Worlds was boring because each dungeon only required one specific item, so you just spam it the whole time.
@@thelastwindwaker7948 I 100% agree. This even was kind of the case in Breath of the Wild. I LOVE that game, but I have to admit that the only difficulty curve is in the strength of the enemies, which is fun, but I want increasing puzzles. The shrines are good and fun, but they basically have one puzzle per and the divine beasts were really lame.
that, and that i never knew what items i might nee so i ended up bringing EVERY item to EVERY dungeon... becuase ONLY when you get to the dungeon do you see what it requires
i also dont like how the difficulty never increased either, same with its puzzles... no difficulty increase
No, there are basically 2 schools of thought on the Zelda games. Free and open games that allow the character to explore and find things on their own. Games like the Original LoZ or A Link Between Worlds. On the other end, you have the more Linear LoZ games that focus on an epic storyline like Ocarina of Time and Skyward Sword.
I don't think either is necessarily right or wrong. Both types of games have their merit. I love both types honestly, but they offer two different play styles.
The Zelda games I enjoy, and replay often, are all linear. It’s no coincidence that the better, more enjoyable gameplay is in a linear form. Admittedly, that’s just my opinion, but it appears I’m not alone in that opinion.
I finished playing through it with my 5 year old daughter recently. Her first time, my 5th or so. She loved every minute of it and so did I. All she asked for for Christmas were Link and Zelda plush dolls, which she sleeps with every night. It has withstood the test of time.
Cute
legendary dad
My sons the same way
My dad did the same thing when I was in third grade! I loved every minute and it still is one of the happiest days of my life when we finally beat Dark Beast Gannon.
I can relate to that. I played it with niece nepgew and little cousins and they had a blast.
16:35 *"a hostage that is disguised as a boss"*
Funny, I always thought it was the other way around. I guess her boss costume wasn't very convincing!
PsychOsmosis haha I caught that too!
Is this saying that Link is a murderer of an innocent girl trying to play a prank?
@@byronlyons3548 It was a "social experiment".
@@PsychOsmosis Your comment made me audibly laugh/snort in public, thanks bro
Funny, a hostage disguised as a boss is a perfectly fitting description for Nabooru from OoT
“Along with the standard Zelda item set”
Ah yes, the tedium of the standard Zelda item set featuring in the game that standardised it
Yeah, this one falls VERY flat. The concept of screen wide nukes was never even revisited due to how badly it meshes with the rest of the set.
@@QuintaFeira12 not the point of the thread but, Breath of the Wild does the 3D equivalent of a screen wipe with Urbosa's ability which does break the combat system when you have it.
Much the same with Din's Fire.
The original zelda had the bow, boomerang, magic rod, bombs, sword, shield, power glove, and flute. The only items that are in this game that have become standard since are the hammer, hookshot, and bottles.
I think its fair. Too often are retro games praised way too hard with modern games getting critiqued way too hard for similar flaws, with the two never really directly compared. Its refreshing to see retrospectives that consider the progress made instead of judt looking with rode tinted glasses and shitting on modernity like some videogame boomer.
I think the flaw doesn't necessarily come from your comparison points so much as your premise. If we define a masterpiece the way you have, a piece to compare to future iterations, removed from its historical importance and instead pitted against its descendants, then we're saying that a game's masterpiece status is temporary and fleeting. All things will be surpassed by their descendants in time, and a relatively short time in such a young medium as video games. The issue I have with this definition is that it says more about the games that come after than it does about the games that come before. The reason we involve historical context in the decision of what makes a masterpiece, the ways in which it influenced its contemporaries and descendants, is that by defining a masterpiece under these guidelines we can establish a piece of media's importance and contributions.
Your video, working under the premise that a comparison to games that came after, hits all the right notes and you did a fantastic job at that. But I think where people disagree with you, whether they can articulate it or not, is that premise of how you define a masterpiece.
Yeah, it's like saying chess sucks cause the strategy games that came after it are better and more refined in certain elements that are present in chess.
Yup, I love KingK's content, but I disagree on his reasoning here. I guess what he wanted to test, is how he feels about this game - he in particular has no connection to it, but he's played all the other Zelda games, so he is in a special position (as mentioned in the beginning). While I personally always add something along the lines of "But for its time, this game was a forerunner", to at least acknowledge the impact it had on gaming, I can't fault him for choosing a particular path.
THAT SAID, I still enjoyed this retrospective a lot and it was super interesting. I have never played aLttP, so in my eyes, I can just conclude that it's a master piece for its time, but it doesn't hold up that well in comparison to the other titles.
100% agree with this definition.
@@ddh-o8s but I never said "A Link to the Past sucks" I said "I don't like A Link to the Past as much as other Zelda games"
If I said "I don't like Chess because I like this other future strategy game more" that would be totally valid. People just assume my statements are "objective" even though opinions can't even be objective.
Listening to the video, I was having this feeling like "I understand what you're saying, but it feels like you're inherently missing the point" or something like that. You did a pretty good job putting it into words, although I feel that might not be all there is to it.
Playing LttP as your first zelda game especially as a CHILD - is magical and is a completely different feeling altogether than playing as a hardened grown man.
100%, thinking you had beaten the game and get sucked into the dark world was pure magic at the time(Nintendo was on another level back then). Personally my favorite Zelda game.
@@gazb2740 I will never forget going to dark world and being that pink rabbit. It was so strange and interesting.
That feeling is called Nostalgia.
@@damienthonk1506 How is it nostalgia if that's just how we felt AT THE TIME?
@@damienthonk1506 it works with new kids too. Ask my little cousins.
LTTP actually has two dungeon themes, Light and Dark dungeons have different music. Not that that gets it much closer to the variety of the later ones, but it's an increase of 100% for what it's worth.
Three, technically, since Hyrule Castle has it's own theme as well!
But still, only having 3 is too little.
@@Alpha-kt4yl Agreed, but why miss out on a chance to be needlessly pedantic?
@@AntiPseudo That's why i made the initial comment, after all. Only fitting I'd be corrected as well.
@@papermario2006 Weird thing is, I'm a huge fan of LTTP, and I didn't actually realise the Light World and Dark World dungeons had different music until I played a LTTP randomizer and it started playing the wrong music in a Light World dungeon.
"There is not a single Zelda game I dislike"
Wand of Gamelon and Faces of Evil Retrospective when
"The CDI games get a lot of shit for what they manage to accomplish. This is a retrospective on why Wand of Gamelon, Faces of Evil, and Zelda's Adventure are truly the best games in the Zelda franchise."
check his patreon
but where is RIPENED Tingle's Balloon Trip of Love?
@@Chad_Eldridge Why am I getting "It's a good game, just not a good [insert franchise title here] game" feeling from you...?
i have a friend who unironically likes them
20:12 "Dungeons like Turtle Rock . . . almost tries to goad you into wasting all of your magic power so that you can't defeat the boss at the end." There is literally a full magic pickup right before the boss room in TR.
dude was trying to damage the boss full time with the rod instead of rod then sword so...🤷♂️
Just for likes my dude!
bruh is really mad at the game that he couldnt manage his magic lmao
Still my favorite Zelda game. I never got into the ocarina of time at all. If you played this game when it first came out, when you were in the castle and you could hear the rain hitting the castle outside… Your mind was blown
Kids these days dont know what it was like before these days. I remember playing link to the past before I could read.
@@nickforsythe6379 I played this masterpiece of a game when I was 4 on the snes. And I am 17 now at its still one of my favorite games, and i prefer it wayyy more than the new zelda games. Honestly it still holds up so well today, I wish they would make another topdown zelda game in this kinda way, especially with the 16bit graphics. That would just be amazing.
@@txt_error9098 botw and totk are really good lmao i grew up w oot and it's definitely my favourite game of all time but you sort of have to acknowledge that botw and totk are amazing games
@@nickforsythe6379 you were able to play LttP at 2 years old? Thats very impressive tbh.
@@cthonos.BOTW maybe but TOTK is debatable.
I think part of why this game is held so high is that, while it didn't do anything overly outstanding or special, it also didn't do anything really bad or drug out. Every other Zelda in this style, I can always point to one part I dread dealing with, while this one, I just go from point to point, doing my thing. There's nothing I dread to have to do again.
0:00 Opening
0:20 Beginning Introduction
7 years older than King K
+ Introduced The Hookshot
1:51 Key Question: Does _A Link To The Past_ Hold Up Today?
3:50 The Call To Action
7:27 No Story Triggers. Some Item Triggers. Meaning you can complete dungeons out of order
10:00 Characters.
12:03 _Ocarina of Time_ vs _A Link To The Past_
12:50 + You can set your own level of difficulty
15:00 + Good Combat Control
16:20 + Dungeons seem Enemy and Trap Heavy.
18:20 One Dungeon Theme
*Dungeons*
19:00 Swamp Palace
19:29 Thieves Town
20:07 Turtle Rock
20:34 Ice Palace
*The Overworld*
21:02 Light and Dark
24:00
_Oracle of Ages_
25:03 It Laid Foundation, but doesn't have a special strength. Still Impressive
26:24 Thanks to The Patrons
Wait? Even here?
Thank you Michael, very cool!
Should pin this
KingK should really pin this.
I couldn't disagree more. I think ALttP is such a rock solid game. It literally set the standard for the entire zelda series. Everyone thinks Ocarina did that, but ALttP did it first. The introduction of the Master Sword and many other items that have been series staples ever since. The absolute best dungeons in the series, a full and engaging map with plenty of secrets, great bosses. Its still my favorite game in the series and I struggle to find a single issue with the game. Best game on the snes, hands down. I replay it every year around Christmas. I just wish I could get that magical feeling of playing it for the first time. With that being said, it's such a good game, I still enjoy every replay just as much as the last.
I'd argue that Super Metroid is better SNES game
Yeah I don’t agree with his definition of a masterpiece and that the game has to compare to later games in series. I think he 100% needs to consider when the game was released and the influence it had
@@austinsinger7565 I got bored of it compared to ALTTP. Sorry, not sorry.
I’d play ocarina 5 times over if it meant I didn’t have to play AlttP again
"Future Zeldas did this better, with the benefit of 5-30 years of experience and technology at their disposal"
*shocked Pikachu face*
TheKiss
*Looks at da Vinci painting*
*Looks at something a graphic designer made in 20min*
“Man this da Vinci guy sucked, why do people make a big deal about him lol”
Hindsight is always 20/20 huh haha
@@Syrupstorm painting is an art, not a technological feat. Technology is always improving. Art is a human cultural creation that adapts and changes but never "improves."
@@jacobmonks3722 You totally missed the point and you're wrong to boot.
Art is culture, yeah. But it is also/utilizes technology, which has always been a part of our culture.
I.e. DaVinci used the technology he had at the time (oil paints, for example) and created art.
@@ouroboros5793 I don't see how that makes my statement wrong in any way. All I said was that unlike technology, art can never objectively "improve." It only adapts to cultural patterns. It isn't something that can be measured in dollars, efficiency, etc. Even if it was done with more modern technology, does that make it "better" than a Da Vinci?
And I get the point of the comment. The point is that we shouldn't say older things are immediately dated just because things are easier or better nowadays. To which I somewhat disagree. If something nowadays is better thanks to modern improvements, does that not by definition make the old thing dated? There's a reason nobody uses rotary phones or hourglasses anymore. Cell phones and watches are far more convenient, practical, and versatile.
I also don't think this argument applies as well to video games, because video games are art.
As a new LttP fan who only just recently got to the endgame, I will say the feeling of growth and progression in this game is some of the best in the series. The comparison between early game, where combat is dishearteningly difficult, versus the last few dungeons where you're hevaily rewarded with spectacular optional equipment by managing to survive the first few dungeons is really fun to look at, and really satisfying to play. I did not have much fun at first, but the more I explored and discovered the more fun I had. I didn't want it to really end, and I feel the exploration is a lot more rewarding than in Between Worlds. While the Maiamais are fun to collect, there isn't really a lot to plan out because you have the capability to start with most every item. LttP rewards you for keeping track of unobtainable secrets. I did kind of ignore the order of dungeons, as I tackled them based on the difficulty I was having. Stuff like, "I wanted to try Ice Palace, but Skull Woods is a bit too bullshitty atm so I'll just grab the Fire Rod and dip." And multiple later dungeons early lol. I feel like playing aLBW kinda ruined some surprises for me like the Super Bomb, upgraded sword and Mail, and navigating Hyrule to find the right entrances to the Dark World. I would have loved to experience the game completely blind, but back when we still had our family copy I was much too dumb to navigate 2D Zelda. I'm so glad I was able to nab a SupaBoy to play this, as getting closer to the end of the game really made me recognize why it was so influential, why it's considered one of the most important games of all time(Think this was a Game Informer rating?) And why it's still a masterpiece and holds up really well.
Even then I still agree with most of what you said, but I feel like a Retrospective shouldn't compare the game to the newer ones, it should look at the game. . . Well, in Retrospective on its merits at the time.
This is probably the first time I've had a major disagreement with you, but I enjoyed your video and understand your viewpoint.
You said something at the end that really resonated with me and made me think deep. You said there where other Zelda games you could go to if, say, you wanted challenging dungeons or a meaningful story. I actually really agree with that sentiment, but for me A Link to the Past is on my top 5 Zelda games because it's such a complete package. It might not be the standout dungeon or open world or epic story game in the franchise, but it is the defining one.
In 18:26: mentions that A Link to The Past only has ONE dungeon theme, while the Light World Dungeon theme plays in background. Then, to proof his points, he plays the SECOND Dark World Dungeon Theme! :D It made me laugh
Optimalst Optimalst he meant that it only has one good one, not one dungeon theme in the game.
@@RyyuuXZnot what he said though and what what I understood him as saying
I can answer your opening question. Yes, Link to the Past holds up all these years later, and with its nice, colorful 2D graphics holds up well on the eyes too, not to even mention the music, the Light World - Dark World mechanic....just a A+ game....honestly one of the best of all time, period.
The first time I played this was basically when it came out. I was 7. The moment I beat the “boss”, only to then be sent to the dark world’s page amid top with the epic dark world music, and realize I had only just started the game, is a core memory. It’s probably going to remain my favorite moment in all of gaming, walking down the pyramid for the first time.
Yes!!! I was 8 when I first played it, and I still remember how I felt when I beat the wizard the first time and I thought that was it. Then I get transported, and I’m like, okayyyy, one more level I guess. Then seeing the level diamonds on the map pop up after beating level 1 in the dark world, and I was like WTF?! but the feeling of finally beating the whole game is something I would never forget…a true accomplishment for an 8 year old lol
I spent a lot of time dicking around on death mountain as a rabbit so I was always pulling up the map and wondering what the fuck else was out there, so I knew the game was just beginning; even at a young age
My favorite game of al time. I would of been about 8 when this game came out, renting it at the video store for the weekend (when i could get it, it was rented out ALLOT). I remember the moment you speak of and thinking "holy shit, there's a whole second world?".
The moment in the game that i remember most fondly was getting the shovel and figuring out the mystery of the ghost boy playing the ocarina. i felt accomplished because there was a hint dropped from an NPC somewhere that said the instrument was there in the meadow somewhere where he is playing and left it up to me to figure it out.
For this guy to say that oracle of ages or seasons were better games is laughable, and i do believe that link's awakening is a very good zelda game which these games are based on, but they have not aged nearly as well as A Link to the Past.
Millennials....
SERIOUSLY tho. That was a pivotal moment for me in the game also. The second I realized the "challenges" actually begin, I was overwhelmed with both a sense of fear, yet excitement, but the 5th, 6th, and Final (Death Mountain) Temple were a damn nightmare. This game has some of the most challenging dungeons I've ever faced in the entire franchise to date. I don't remember any other title leaving me "stuck" so many times in each Dark World Temple, but beating Ganon was such a breath of fresh air. This game definitely did it's job right.
@@Trigger200284 I agree. Seasons & Ages were unique but surprisingly they don't have the fame that ALTTP has and probably because people complain and state they couldn't find themselves bothering with the "Gameboy" titles. I'm sorry but you can't call yourself a die hard Zelda fan if you let that type of excuse prevent you from exploring the other titles. Just saying. I loved Seasons. Yet, ALTTP is the one Zelda game where it's temples left me wanting to bang my head against the wall as a kid (the dark world ones). No other title to date has given me such a nightmarish challenge...and headache😵💫
As someone who grew up on the 3D Zeldas i was impressed by just how foundational LTTP was. There’s no added fluff, just fundamentals. I was really blown away by how densely packed with content the over world is. There doesn’t seem to be any wasted space and you can seriously spend hours just digging into it when you aren’t doing the dungeons: I’m not sure if I would call it the best Zelda game but i think it’s probably the most definitive. I mean has there even been another zelda game since where you actually get the tri force at the end?
Only Zelda 2 now that I think of it. You complete the Tri-Force at the end
Me: "He's going to say my favorite game of all time isn't the best game of all time"
**braces myself**
"I think I can handle that"
KingK: "I think it's weakened with ti--"
Me: "F*** you!"
Underrated comment!
ALttP is the best top-down game. It hurts my soul to hear him not appreciate it
@@TheMadisonMachine I kind of prefer its 3DS successor, if the difficulty weren't so low for the most part, it would be perfect
Has the best art style too.
@@TheMadisonMachine link's awakening is objectively better and more fun
“Why isn’t this gameboy game from 1991 as good as a GameCube/Wii game from 2006?” Is what this video felt like. Absolutely ignoring any evolution of Zelda as a franchise, major improvements to game console tech, and how decades of experience helped shape stories and presentations. It’s not just an unfair take, it’s asinine.
"Ignoring any evolution of Zelda as a franchise."
The evolution of the franchise is the entire point of the video. He compares LTTP favorably to NES Zelda to illustrate what a major leap forward it was, and compares it to later entries to demonstrate how they built on its foundation. He doesn't act like LTTP should be as refined as the later games just to be considered "good" or "important." He's saying that, in his opinion, a "masterpiece" should be a standout even when compared with its successors, and that's a bar that he feels is too high for LTTP to reach.
This game effected my entire life. It's the best video game ever made. 28 years....I feel old.
20 years from now, Link to the Past will still be the benchmark.
It's interesting hearing the opinions of someone who wasn't born when this game was released. I'll never forget in 1991 my mother taking me to a local pharmacy (some pharmacies doubled as video game rentals in those days) to rent it and after one day she decided to buy it. I think I still have our original copy. Over the years we would dust off the SNES to play it and those are some of the fondest memories I have of my mother before she died of cancer in 2014. Despite the various flaws, this game was and is a masterpiece. I hope one day it gets a proper remake.
Thats beautiful man. Glad you have those memories with her. Cheers man.
"It is 7 years older than I am."
Shit we might as well call you PrinceK, YA TINY BABY MAN!!
I honestly thought this dude was like 35 😅
@@UndeniableOctopus he's probably lying lol. This sounds like a Man not a dude.
I was 4 when this came to the states.
He has the smooth voice of a 45 year old jazz radio host, I honestly did a spit take when I heard him say that.
Yeah, I was surprised as well, and it's seven years older than me too xD I've noticed that it's quite coincidental because then that would be the same year Ocarina of Time came out, in which you go through time seven years.
I'd call A Link to the Past a Jack of all Trades, but definitely not a King. Still, for everything it does well, the most impressive part to me is its consistency. It has consistently fun combat, a consistently interesting world, and consistently engaging dungeons. So few Zelda games have that down, and if it weren't for Majora's Mask, I think A Link to the Past would be my all time favorite Zelda game. At the very least it's the one I replay most often.
Precisely this. ALTTP is the most consistent in terms of overall package. All the other Zelda games have had a much harder time having a consistent quality between all the parts of its core.
It's why i find the portion where he's saying that if he wants an engaging story he'll play Twilight Princess or if he wants more difficult dungeons, he'll play Oracle of Ages (which is absolutely ridiculous, Ages's dungeons aren't more complicated than ALTTP's) to be kind of ridiculous. I love both of those games but the overall package of those two is much more inconsistent in terms of overall quality. The overall consistency of the game is what matters the most, not portions of it.
the dungeons aren't really engaging imo
@@okagron yeah its consistently the most annoying zelda game apart from wind waker. I'd rather play twilight princess and I haven't played that game in 10 years.
You like majoras mask too!!!
@@fenixchief7 What is annoying about A Link to the Past? It has nice music, very easy to handle controls, and a varied selection of dungeons. It's not too repetitive and not too difficult, so you should have some explanation.
7 years older than you... You're only 21?!? Based off your voice, I always thought you were like 35
Same, plus now I feel TREMENDOUSLY OLD for playing this when I was, like... 10.
Yeah, me too
People are aging faster. In many ways my younger brother by 10 years is already more mature than I am.
this game is 16 years older than me, but i'm having so much fun playing it for the first time with the switch online service! really glad the zelda community doesn't gatekeep when it comes to enjoying older entries.
@@anotheridentitycrisis354 The Zelda community is incapable of gatekeeping, the games aren't meant to be hard, they're meant to be fun.
One somewhat unique feature that I found regretfully absent in subsequent installments is the way it hints at unique and alternative dungeon designs. Specifically, Hyrule Castle, Skull Woods, and Thieves' Town. Owing somewhat to the simplistic 2D graphics and the design choice in early zeldas to have combat-heavy overworlds, these dungeons feel less like contrived puzzle/fight spaces and more like believable features of the environment.
The presence of enemies and locks in Hyrule Castle feels natural and aesthetic (rather than just a gameplay necessity) because these features would naturally be present in a castle. The enemies aren't just monsters, but guards, and the locks are of an iron, medieval design. While many successive dungeons use this aesthetic, most of them are linear and aren't designed to be realistic spaces. Breath of the Wild's Hyrule Comes the closest, which is why I think it's regarded as the games best (and perhaps only "real") dungeon. My personal biggest gripe against it being its lack of unique enemy types; it would have been the perfect space to introduce darknuts as endgame enemies.
Skull Woods having multiple entrances makes less of a contrived, linear space. More importantly, the fact that these entrances reside in an enemy-laden, maze-like overworld integrates said overworld into the dungeon structure. The stark line between dungeon and field is blurred as the underground dungeon sections feel like part of the forest, and vs versa. Breath of the Wild had the biggest opportunity to revive and improve upon this design, with it's unprecedented emphasis on traversing the environment. It did this with it's two overworld mazes and somewhat with the pitch-black forest, but only superficially. Picture a "dungeon" that's simply a volcano. The only goal is to reach the top and fight the boss living in its caldera, but getting there requires solving puzzles to make a path up the mountain, fighting enemies along the way. Alternatively, imagine a large, open-ended forest full of giant trees. The boss lives at the top of the highest tree, but you have to find a viable path up the giant branches to get there. There need not be a single route either, as different items can help traverse the space in different ways: climbing gloves, hookshot, hang-glider to name some.
Whereas Skull Woods blurred the distinction between dungeon and field, Thieves Town hints at doing so between dungeon and village. Its tiered walkways and furnished rooms give it the impression of functional compound or prison. Most of the enemies are armor wearing bipeds, portraying them as the sapient denizens of an underground city. Even the boss encounter is structured as a rescue mission, rather than a race to the kill. I hoped Twilight Princess's City in the Sky would recapture this magic, and it seemed to at first containing friendly NPCs and even a shop in its early sections. It just didn't seem developed past that point. What I'd like to see is a 'dungeon' set inside a town, wherein NPC interaction is key to progression. For example, an occupied village where enemy guards patrol the streets and serve as the main enemy encounters. The goal would be to confront the evil lord commanding them, but he's stowed away in a locked stronghold. By helping the town's denizens, they could show you secret rooftop and/or sewer paths that you would use to sneak in. Shopkeepers could charge you a premium rates or even rat you out, leading to optional fights based on your dialogue choices.
great comment
something you may have missed, aghanim is not his own person, but is Gannon himself.
What are you implying? Wasn't Aghanim his own person?
@@thelegendofthem6120 no, Aghanim was what you might call an avatar, a physical representation of a being that is actually somewhere else. ganon could not leave the sacred realm, so he created a puppet that he could control in hyrule. aghanim was ganon. he says as much when you finally face him in the pyramid, calling aghanim his "alter-ego", and after you defeat aghanim in ganon's tower, ganon's spirit rises from him.
@@jasonhughes3513 your right, Ganon flies as a bat out of Aghanim after you defeat him
it 100% holds up, and your definition of what makes something a masterpiece makes it so that nothing can ever be a masterpiece once it's old.
I still get chills every time I hear the LTTP opening tune. Nostalgia's a powerful thing.
Same here. I think that the Snes had some of the best gaming soundtracks on its system (Super Castlevanina IV, Contra III, Chrono Trigger, Donkey kong Country, Star Fox and many many more).
Whenever I hear the opening track of this game, all I can think about is the opening scene from "Scott Pilgrim vs the World".
Its my favorite Zelda game ever. It was the first zelda game i ever beat. Granted i was pretty young when the first 2 came out.
The old school music hits hard man.
Seriously though! I remember playing this on my dad’s SNES when I was a kid, and now I have nostalgia for a game that came out 8 years before I did. Such an amazing game.
I mean it’s fine if you want to criticize it that way. Just know that there’s a reason classics aren’t evaluated this way. They often revolutionized something in their medium that became a building block of said medium allowing it to progress forward. Citizen Kane isn’t judged by today’s film standards, that would be ridiculous.
Like I said you’re free to do you, but people might be justifiably confused when the title of this video is “Retrospective”. Which implies a more nuanced historical perspective than what it is, a “does this compete and hold up with games today” opinion piece.
Well said
Exactly!!! Makes no sense at at!!
This channel does a lot of hot takes like that imo, helps get views. Of course it is fine to criticise a cherished game, but you can’t mark Goldeneye 64 down for what Halo did better
Still the greatest Zelda game of all time. Especially if you were playing when it release as a kid. Some of my earliest childhood memories are with this game in the early 90’s
Nope OOT is, The internet says so so it must be true.
Agreed. Also yes I find it to be a cleaner, more fun experience than OOT. OOT was great and all but it suffered from early 3D limitations whereas LttP was a master class 2D experience.
@@elliottvaughn700 thats exactly what me and my best friend say. Oot is amazing but it doesnt gold up as well performance and gameplay wise because it was part of that first 3d era. Snes games like lttp aged great
Consistently, your main problem with going back to these older games seems to be your age. You judge a lot of seminal titles unfairly because they were the ones to invent ideas you experienced already in later games. Of course younger iterations did all these things better. Poor is the student that cannot exceed his master, after all. Not that you can't view things within a vacuum - that has its merits as well. It would be interesting to compare Link to the Past, in context of its modern contemporary failings, with its contemporary remake, Link Between Worlds. It's the only title you can really do that with, as the 3DS remakes were direct remakes rather than faithful reinterpretations. Did LBW resolve the story issues, or the limitations of a linear experience? Well... sort of.
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!! You said everything I was thinking! You have to have played this game when it was NEW to really understand WHY its such a masterpiece. Unless you're going to spend time with this game like those of us did before we knew anything about an Ocarina or A Mask and certainly A Breath. You can't really compare this game to its children and grand children, to me they dont compare! The only one you can start to make a real comparison with of today is A Link between worlds!! Its set in the same world! Its pretty much a sequel. Talking about anything else, doesn't make any sense to me. Its just an opinion on a game, that really you can't really see as a masterpiece it really is because your first zelda game was its grandchildren's grand children. This game for what it was, IS STILL one of the greatest of ALL TIME!!! so much love and passion was breathed into the making of it! Its perfect to me. SORRY
@@JeMone calm down
@@sp1194 you calm down. 👋🏽
Ok, but a normal person doesn't consider a game for "what it invented".
He/she considers a game simply for what it is
Im sorry, but just because a game was great in its time doesnt mean it is the best. Sequels usually improve upon its predecessors, especially when it is on a more advance console. A LtTP and the original LoZ might have been great for their consoles, but almost every single game after them improved in every aspect.
One of the best games to show the transition from the NES era to the SNES era. Great job!
Super Mario World: Exists.
Super Metroid: Exists.
Earthbound: Exists.
Super Mario RPG: Exists
Kirby Super Star: Exists
I don't like A Link to the past...
@@septimus5202 Super Mario RPG is more like a proto-N64 game. It's okay not to like LttP but it came out a good 4 years before SMRPG which was at the end of the system's life cycle and had extra hardware built into the cart that wasn't widely available for cheap during LttP's development cycle.
@@septimus5202 What are you talking about? FF IV-VI (III and IV in the USA) and Mystic Quest along with the Romancing Saga games and Mana games as well as a slew of other games came out before SMPRG. Square was very experienced with both making RPGs and programming for the SNES by the time they started development on Mario RPG, it's the reason Nintendo chose to have them help develop it. In fact I think Square only released 1 or 2 more games for SNES after SMPRG and those were in development at roughly the same time, after that they started work on FFVII.
SMW was great but didn't change that much on the formula SMB3 introduced which was still NES.
Super Metroid was good but the Gameboy Metroid had already improved the formula a lot.
Kirby Super Star was nice but again there was Kirby's Adventure on NES.
But LTTP was a major step forward for Zelda so I think his statement was spot on. It showed how much farther you could take the game on 16 bit.
@@septimus5202smw is a terrible example. Yoshis island is a way bigger leap
Link to the Past created the formula for all future superior Zeldas to follow. That's its legacy above everything else. The fact that Nintendo has been able to improve their franchises over time and gaming generations speaks layers about the power of the gaming company and its ability to evolve with the times.
Not really sure why you would say that. A Link To The Past is just a polished up and slightly nerfed version of Zelda 1. IT's formula is nearly abandoned by the follow up game Ocarina Of Time. Very little of ALTTP remains in Ocarina. The combat is entirely different, the challenge is gone, Ocarina invents new story elements, the items are drastically different, the dungeons play entirely differently and, most of all, the bosses play ENTIRELY differently, relying on gimmicks to beat instead of well executed combat like ALTTP.
It's Ocarina that set up the template for the subsequent Zelda games. Even Nintendo says as much. Miyamoto demanded that the Zelda team stop rehashing Ocarina when they went back to the drawing board and come up with Breath Of The Wild.
I will admit, there is one standout sequence for me in Link To The Past - the assault on Hyrule Castle after obtaining the Master Sword. After finally obtaining your goal, the means of victory is snatched from underneath you. You charge the enemy stronghold, the music is different from the dreary and dull dungeon theme, you fight through the army that's been chasing you the whole game after being branded a criminal, fight significantly stronger foes when you yourself have just been powered up... and you fail. You see Zelda presumably die. And I know that's nothing with player agency and is scripted, but it's a really cool sequence and a really solid way to introduce the Dark World - and I'd say one with a bit more of a punch than Ocarina aping the exact same situation with its two different time periods.
But for the most part, I agree with you. Link To The Past was a game I found consistently enjoyable, but only on its very solid foundation and few charming efforts. It is certainly a complete game, and a textbook critical darling, but it lacks a lot of the weight that future - and even previous, I would argue, but I like Zelda 1 to an unreasonable degree despite its archaic playstyle - titles would bring through gameplay or story. This is a really nice and nuanced take as to why that ends up being a problem, really enjoyed seeing the development of the series FROM this game as opposed to it being BECAUSE of this game.
As for the debate of a game's "quality" versus its time period, I do like comparing it to its contemporaries from its time period more than I do future entries, and I do admit there were few things like A Link To The Past at the time. Stuff like Dragon Quest V and Final Fantasy IV were kicking its rear story-wise, but the fluidity of exploring a (kind of) open world was pretty incredible for LttP. It's one of those games where if people call it the greatest of all time, I go "yeah, I get that. It meant a lot to you, huh?". And then I give it a 6/10 and call it 'good but not standout' and kinda feel bad because they think it's a D and I'm like "nono, that means I have a positive feeling toward it, just not a strong one" and suddenly I'm not allowed to talk about Chrono Trigger anymore. I like making 'Best of x year' lists and then comparing the top games from each of those lists when making favorites, it ends up making for a neat take on just what makes games good for me in the time periods that they were made in, while still letting me put my favorites up top.
As always, a pleasure to watch.
Huh. I find that to be such a weird perspective just because it's so different from mine. For me, as a guy who started playing Zelda with the first game, I find A Link To The Past to be the last great Zelda game before the series plunged into the darkness that was the 3D games. Right up until Breath Of The Wild came out, I was ready to write off Zelda entirely as being a has-been series. My favorite series turned to garbage.
As a day 1 purchaser of Ocarina Of Time, and someone who had been on the edge of his seat waiting for it and re-watching the VHS preview over and over again, I found Ocarina to be mostly BAD and an abandonment of everything that made Zelda, Zelda. While I was admittedly 17 when I played the game, I felt like the "advances" in storytelling were actually massive regressions that forced me to admit that Nintendo was for children. I had been defending it for so long, but the bizarre and annoying sound effects, the child-like writing, the terrible animations all pointed to a game that was made for elementary school kids. Navi was annoying, the art design was actually ugly (Great Fairy, Impa, Graveyard guy, etc.), the game was incredibly linear (which was a massive betrayal of everything Zelda had been up until that time), the bosses were gimmicky and terrible, the challenge was gone... ugh. I get worked up thinking about it even now.
I still want to go back to it at some point in time and see if I will like it more now that I know that BOTW EVENTUALLY returns Zelda to what it once was, in some form, but my dislike of the game hasn't worn off enough yet to give it a fair shot. Maybe when the re-release it again.
@@JazGalaxy Hrm, see as one of those children who OoT was targeted toward (I was about 5 when it came out - forgive me for being a comparative baby), I bounced off of it because I found the 3D navigation awkward and ultimately unrealized compared to Mario, and found its linearity to be a detriment as I just wanted to explore and enjoy levels nonlinearly as I could in games like Mario 64 or Banjo or the almighty Tomba 2. And I can definitely see that feeling of disappointment in the game shifting so drastically from the core principles established by Zelda 1. But I think the main thing is, I like my favorite Zelda games (Majora, Link's Awakening, and Zelda 1) for entirely different reasons - atmosphere, dungeon/puzzle and world design, and exploration respectively. As the first three Zelda games weighed heavily on the exploration element (and slowly downsized it as time went on), can definitely see how that would cause the series to turn sour for you. But I find that Zelda has always been mutations of a core formula, with certain aspects highlighted or certain gimmicks or perspectives added in, while others are taken away. And that core has always been LttP, ever since Link's Awakening was built off of the engine and ideas it presented. So that core just holds less appeal to me compared to the mutations with the elements I like more, or the Wild West that is Zelda 1.
As someone who's first zelda was breath of the wild (I've played all of them now) I feel alttp was the oldest zelda I could fully enjoy. For me it wears its heart on its sleeve and though I didn't grow up with the snes and prefer other zelda titles my appreciation is huge for this game.
I find it weird that people say Ocarina was a betrayal of the nonlinear structure, but Zelda 2 exists. The dungeons really can't be done in any order other than the order they give you, and the world has so many roadblocks like boulders and oceans and cliffs. And Link's Awakening was about as linear as Zelda 2 in both aspects as well. So when you say Ocarina of Time is a betrayal of Zelda tradition, you're kidding yourself. Half the games up to that point were linear and half of them were nonlinear. You can like one style over the other, but you can't act like nonlinearity defines the Zelda series more cleanly, when they are pretty balanced. Hell, you could probably argue that today the series is mostly based on linear progression instead of open world.
Edit: Did I say half of them were nonlinear? Because KingK makes the case that A Link to the Past actually shows an attempt at being linear, but doesn't fully dedicate itself to that and so it exists in some middleground. So in that case it just proves my point even further.
@@jacobmonks3722 I disagree.
I read a thing years ago where a kid was like, "Why do older gamers care so much about nonlinearity!?! You can only be in one place at a time anyways! So if you beat level 2 before level 1, it's still level one and level 2 to you!"
He was EXACTLY RIGHT... from the perspective of a modern gamer. See, the thing that makes non-linear games non-linear is CHALLENGE, which is a concept that barely exists in modern games if at all. What makes Zelda 1 nonlinear is only partially because you can find the dungeons in any order. In reality, many players had to abandon certain dungeons that they couldn't complete until they could either solve a puzzle that was sticking with them or become powerful enough to complete challenges that were blocking their way.
So while Zelda 2 may appear more linear on the surface, most of the people I knew playing it when it was new completed the dungeons in crazy orders based on what they could do at the time.
Ocarina Of Time was the first Zelda game who's linearity was assured because the design pretty much forced the player to commit to one act at a time. If you committed to a dungeon, you were basically going to play that dungeon until you beat it. Even starting from the beginning if you died would be annoying more than fun because the dungeons are so big and they are meant to be explored at such a relatively slow pace.
Mario 64 is actually the perfect example of how challenge creates non-linearity. When you face a challenge that you can't complete, you move on and then come back. You explore things at your own pace and at a level that matches your skills at the time.
"It's hard to tell stories on the Super Nintendo"
*Laughing in FFVI language*
@@Sputterbug Yep, the hardware has its limitations, but one look on the Final Fantasy / Fire Emblem / Shin Megami Tensei series among other and you see there's no shortage of great stories on the system, and some of these series have been telling them since the NES
For me, Link to the Past is the one video game I really enjoy replaying over and over. I never like redoing (single player) games, normally, but this is the one game I keep coming back to. I just love it that much lol.
The thing about A Link to the Past.....
In my opinion, in some ways, it’s the best game in the series. It sets out to achieve what the original could not, making the game a wonder to explore and fight enemies, it strikes the perfect balance between non-linearity and a story, IMO. I never thought a story was important in a Zelda game, though.
The items are all used over and over, there are many optional upgrades to attack, defense, magic power, and others, the dungeons are challenging, but not unreasonably so, and overall, it is just a fun, fun game to play, and, I think, the most replayable in the series, barring A Link Between Worlds.
I get what you’re saying, but my only real issue with the game is the blandness of the dungeons. The game is exactly as nonlinear as it needs to be. Once you leave the Sanctuary for the first time, you can explore most of the world, and it still takes several different steps to reach each dungeon.
This is nothing to do with nostalgia, by the way. I’m younger than you, and I played this game for the first time just 2 years ago.
"The items are all used over and over, "
THIS is one of the main things that I hate about modern Zelda games. There is a difference between a power-up and a "key". A "key" is a thing that you need purely to progress. A key can look like whatever. It can be a metal key or it can be a grappling hook. It can be a jewel or it can be a gun. If it's only purpose is to allow you to progress, and you can't use it in any other way or in any other place, it's just a key.
I feel like Zelda power-ups should be power-ups, not keys. Keys should be keys. Every item in your inventory should be able to be used as a weapon or a tool. It shouldn't just allow you to progress. And simply allowing you to progress includes using it to beat bosses.
JazGalaxy This is exactly it, and something that A Link to the Past never does, at least, not with its dungeon Items.
Nope.
@@JazGalaxy Breath of the Wild solve this problem. But it is better when the items are both keys and power ups like Super Metroid did.
@@felipetartas5434 I'd argue that BotW less solves the problem and more just avoids it completely.
The only thing I truly dislike about ALttP is the perception that it's somehow the best Zelda game, that no Zelda game can possibly be better. ALttP is a great game, and a monumentally important one - but it's also a game that's been iterated and built on in important ways since.
I have the same mindset, I love ALttP but everything it did has been done better in one game or another. For some Yes it has the right balance of everything, but that is going to be entirely subjective. Past that it's a grate game but isn't one that is truly a master of everything it sets out to do.
Of course. It's closer to 30 years old by now.
At the same time, there's a reason why one can prefer it over other Zeldas. I'd like to have a lot of what ALTTP did with a bit more sequence breaking potential, as well as some real puzzles (La Mulana style), and I'd have my favorite Zelda, probably.
@@fy8798 sequence breaking? like skipping all dungeons? It's already there ;)
@@theravenmonarch9441 i dont think he was referring to the walk through walls and beat Zelda in 5 mins glitch lol
You can exploit the magic mirror to jump off death mountain and skip dungeon 3, Lightside Hyrule castle, and the master sword, every time you enter a dungeon rabbit link reverts to normal link if you save and quit from there.
There's a lot of sequence breaking in Alttp if you can execute all of the glitches and exploits.
19:40 calling that artificial difficulty is a stretch imo. The game introduces obstacles and enemies to you and then mixes them together more and more to test how well you can handle them. That's about as natural as you can escalate the difficulty in a game.
Constantly introducing and abandoning new stuff would feel less organic if you ask me.
Exactly. It's not artificial difficulty, it's actual difficulty.
I believe the purpose is that you're SUPPOSED to be getting better. This was a common design element of games of the time. Many games would feature the first level boss as a common enemy later in the game. The idea was that you were suppose to have grown more competent and could handle them more easily than you could in your earlier adventures.
I don't think they are inherently bad obstacles, but I do think later in the game they throw maybe a bit too much at you all at once. It borders on feeling cheap.
@@KingKlonoa That's why they give you medlaions,red armor and golden sword.
Which is a very good game design.
@@JazGalaxy TBF I have never seen the 'a boss from earlier is a generic now!' thing actually work out well as anything other than, "than why the hell were they a boss in the first place?" Dark Souls is especially bad about this.
It was really interesting for me to watch this knowing we hold almost polar opposite opinions about the game. To introduce myself first, I'm a long time speedrunner of the game and helped pioneer the randomizer for it (and continue to do so). It's safe to say it's one of my favourite games and I know it inside out. I do agree with some of the criticism you mentioned (average but functional story, limited dungeon music, a very boring swamp palace...) but some things you said I vehemently disagree with. However the main reason I wanted to post a comment wasn't to try and change your mind about the things you did say, but because the main reasons I love the game you never mentioned at all and neither do any of the comments I've read so far.
I wanted to highlight some of these things as I don't think a full and fair picture of the game was painted in your review.
Without further ado, here are some of the reasons why I think this game is so good:
1) Difficulty. It's a hard game. Enemies (both in the overworld and dungeons) actually pose a challenge. Dark World enemies in particular can inflict significant damage. Bosses are interesting and difficult. The game expects you to master control of Link and his abilities and if you don't, you will die (a lot). The game's design understands this and rewards optional exploration with items which help boost offense and defense (e.g. hearts, bottles, magic powder, shield and boomerang upgrades, sword upgrades etc). This difficulty never feels unfair (unlike in Z1) and this has a lot to do with how masterful the game mechanics are (more on this later). Link can use his wealth of items to gain the upper hand in combat (stun enemies with the Boomerang, block their path with the cane of Somaria, deal with them from afar or get up close...). Contrarily, the difficulty in (almost) every subsequent Zelda game is essentially absent. There was rarely ever any urgency to my control of Link. It barely mattered if I ran head on into enemies with one hand on the controller and slashed my sword relentlessly. I'd still succeed through attrition regardless without sustaining any notable damage. I didn't feel like there was any incentive to tackle enemies strategically or think of clever ways to use my items to help me gain an advantage. Enemies tend to deal 1/4 or 1/2 a heart's worth of damage which is, in my opinion, laughable. Newer games are so much more boring to me to play simply due to how over-the-top easy they are!
2) Game mechanics: how fast and fluid controlling Link is. One big aspect of this is the Pegasus Boots. The game expects you to master their use and as such they introduce these right near the beginning of the game. Two extremely pertinent points here: 1) they put dash on a separate button and made them a passive item instead of requiring you to equip them (e.g. as in LA); 2) they don't limit their use with stamina. These choices have such a huge positive impact on the gameplay that it baffles me they never get mentioned. You can zip around the overworld exploring everything at speed without things feeling tedious (unlike in a lot of future Zelda's). They're also hugely useful in combat since you can escape awry situations by running away, or inflict damage while moving to a more strategic, safe position. Things are fast-paced and fun. And that is an amazing thing! Another aspect here is Link's responsiveness in combat. Z1 is a fantastic example of when this doesn't work. ALTTP is a fantastic example of when this does work. Careful movement of Link matters and you have incredible control over him with micro-movements. Learning how to properly move Link and utilize his sword attacks (poke, slash, spin, dashpoke, dash) is incredibly gratifying. There's a big sense of achievement when you improve your control of Link which is absent in most other Zelda games (especially in 3D games due to targeting systems). There is a much higher skill ceiling when it comes to combat in ALTTP than compared to most (all?) others.
3) The overworld. Specifically how regions have branching paths to get there with differing items required. For example, you can reach East Death Mountain by scaling the west side and using the Magic Mirror and the Hammer; or you can take the lower route with the Hookshot. After beating the first dark world dungeon, at first glance, you're stuck in the east/south regions of the Dark World. However to the savvy explorers they'll find a new route opened up to them in the Light World which lets them get to the west region of the dark world. After acquiring the Titan's Mitts you further find there are multiple other paths you can now take connecting different overworld regions. I feel like you really undersold this aspect of the game and its impact on creating an interesting and open world to explore. No other Zelda game executes this branching-paths to access overworld regions nearly as well as ALTTP does. This is in my opinion why the randomizer is so popular and works so well.
One thing I want to point out which I felt was unfair criticism was how you mentioned the game didn't have enough items to find outside of dungeons. I completely disagree here since all of these are found in the overworld: shovel, flute, boots, mushroom, magic powder, tempered sword, gold sword, fire shield, silver arrows, ice rod, red boomerang, flippers, ether, bombos, quake, 4 bottles, bug net, book of mudora, magic mirror, magic cape, cane of byrna, heart pieces, bomb and arrow capacity upgrades. Granted some of these are optional items, but a decent number of them are required items. This is why I think that was unfair negative criticism.
Anyway, I hope if you read this it might help improve your opinion of ALTTP!
Your videos are fantastic (found your channel tonight and subbed) and I've been enjoying them a lot. Thanks for making them!
Nice post, but do you REALLY know the game inside and out?
Great points. I played this game at least once a year basically since it came out but didn't know just how branching the overworld was until I started the Randomizer. And you're right about the boots. Best item.
Don't disagree with OP about plot simplicity. I don't play this game for the plot, but he's right that it's basic.
I strongly agree on all of these points, where the difficulty and fluidity of gameplay and combat in particular is what keeps me playing
Some of this might just be repeating stuff you said, but:
Yeah, there are multiple identifiable strengths of Zelda 3.
Your arsenal and, up until breath of the wild came out, the physics being somewhat beyond its time. You could do some cool shit with bombs and pegasus boots jumps for example. That's the extent of it, but the only other game you can casually do cool shit like that in is Link's Awakening. Everything you could do since, again up until Breath of the Wild, felt pretty hard-coded and rigid.
The items that serve as glorified keys aren't actually glorified keys unlike many subsequent entries. They're almost all multi-purpose, have an actual use in combat, and the game also adds cool optional items on top of that. The medallions make Link feel like more of a beast than he has ever felt like since. I miss the magic meter to be honest. I feel like my ideal Zelda game has some combination of cooldowns and magic meter. You can use a magic meter to offset cooldowns or something like that, and you could have magic containers similar to stamina and hearts.
Most importantly though, the dark world and magic mirror make for the BEST implementation of the multiworld design by a COMFORTABLE margin.There's a reason subsequent entries force you through their multiworlds with temples of time and tree stumps. These are not items but specific locations where you can swap worlds. Not saying that's a terrible thing per se but it's certainly not as good as Zelda 3. I can't think of a single game past Zelda 3 that hasn't had those bottlenecks to exploration. Its dark world is also way less forgiving than subsequent entries, making it actually feel like a dark world.
Keep in mind that you, as a speedrunner are 100% comfortable with the mechanics and movements and all that, it is a completely different story for people playing it the first time around. Yes, if you master every item and fighting techniques etc, the game might feel 100% fluent and well-made. It basically becomes your second reality.
But for people beating it one time and goes on to a different game, it becomes a totally other experience.
This game is so good. You made me want to play it again, even while complaining about it.
3:56 "The call to action is the murder of your Uncle..."
Nitpick: He's not actually dead. He's there at the end of the game, living with Link. I only point this out because it never sunk in with me until I just. beat it recently, 20-something years after I beat it the first time. I always thought he was dead, too. That's Nintendo for you.
Nah he totally died. The King was a frickin' skeleton in the opening scene, but at the end Link uses the Triforce to "restore" him, and Link's uncle comes back too.
@@thelastwindwaker7948 Ooooohhhh. Is that what's going on? I was like, where was the uncle supposed to BE the whole time?
@@JazGalaxy Link's wish was the reverse all of Ganon's wrong doing.
I think the problem with your review is that you aren’t looking at these games in their context. Link to the Past basically invented the Zelda formula and perfected it at the same time. All these Zelda games you’ve reviewed is ONLY because LttP was so great. What you should have done is play all the Zelda games in the order they were released. If you’d played Dread before Super Metroid you’d probably also have missed the significance Super made to not just the franchise but video game design in general, and that’s what you’ve missed with this review
Yeah K really missed the mark on this one even though I appreciate the honesty.
Saying that ALTTP is too linear is just a bizarre criticism. It's tied with ALBW (which, let's be real, was largely a copy of ALTTP) for the third most open-world Zelda after BOTW and the original.
I think this guy has an issue and wants to hate this game for some reason he constantly complains about it being so linear but then also talks about how several parts can be done in any order
@@BryanM86 Yeah, it doesn't make any sense. That's KingK for ya though. I like his videos, but he has an obsession with wanting games to be needlessly complex. I can see how an open world presented in a streamlined, intuitive way would grind his gears
7:31
@@ddsjgvk I mean, sure, they could have gotten rid of the numbers on the dungeon labels to avoid suggesting a linear progression to the player. But that's really a distinction without a difference. Those numbers are there to signal the relative difficulty of the dungeons. At the end of the day, if you can disregard the label and complete the dungeons in pretty much any order, they aren't very linear
When you're a jack of all trades and a master of none, you tend to fall short of a masterpiece.
The strongest point of this game is when it came out and what it did.
The fact this game is a Masterpiece is not up for debate. It has been widely considered one of the best video games of all-time for decades. It is on every list. The innovation in this game is astounding.
Oh okay, if you say so it must be fact 🤡
@@DS3Enjoyermany ppl say so though. Like majority of the ppl familiar with the series and video games would say so...
@@DS3Enjoyer
you might wanna play the game and find out for yourself.
zelda 3 is not just the best zelda, but one of the best games ever.
I personally disagree to say that masterpieces cannot be tarnished by time, especially in such a technology-heavy medium as the video game industry. Every game, no matter how amazing, will one day be outclassed or tarnished in some way due to improvements made to the medium, it's unavoidable.
I don't see it that way. I feel like "Masterpieces" should be compared to the entire library of their respected platform. Comparison to all video games, I would agree with your opinion 100%.
@@EmilyRose900 I think that's very fair. "Masterpiece" is a subjective concept as it is, but your method of thinking that out is better than most.
I disagree. I personally feel like gamers sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between technology and design. TECHNOLOGY changes and improves. It always will. But design is design. It never changes, even though trends do.
Zelda 1 is a phenomenally designed game. it's technologically dated by today's standards, and it's game design is not trendy based on current tastes. But it's still a masterpiece.
In comparison, very few people listen to classical music these days. But almost anyone and everyone would admit that classical composers have a grasp on the design of music that dwarfs almost anyone alive in the modern era. Those works are masterpieces even if modern music uses better technology or is more trendy to our culture.
@@JazGalaxy Design changes with technology. Look at the Star Wars prequels. For better or worse, Lucas claims to have held off on filming them for 15+ years because the technology of the mid 80s wasn't in line with the design of the films that he had in his mind, and he didn't want to compromise the design because of tech limitations. The design of a game like LttP wouldn't be what it is if the game was made 5 years later, or even five years earlier.
Weirdly, I've grown to appreciate Link to the Past way more in its randomized versions than in the standardized form. It really helps to emphasize its lock-and-key structure and how well designed the world and dungeons truly are mechanically... but overall, I definitely agree with you, future games in the series improved on it and as mechanically solid and well designed as the game is... it's missing a lot of the uniqueness, style, and flavor that future games in the series would have.
In a lot of ways, I feel like ALttP cemented how a Zelda game PLAYS, but Link's Awakening cemented how it FEELS, if that make sense, and the feel matters way more to me as a player. There's an ineffable charm to the way Zelda tends to present its world - the mysteriousness, the sense of weird whimsy, the various distinct characters and races, that sets it apart, and A Link to the Past hadn't QUITE gotten there just yet. I'll take bringing a singing farm girl to wake up a walrus so you can enter a desert over grabbing three macguffins to unlock another macguffin any day.
Most memorable NPCs in alttp are the ones that do stand out more (and the ones that give you stuff) like the hobo under the bridge, the sign guy, the lumberjacks, flute boy, etc. I think Link’s Awakening did better at this making the NPCs all have personalities than what limited ability Alttp did. Most of these characters were done after your initial encounter with them, but in Link’s Awakening you will come back to a lot of them either for story beats or for the trading sequence
Randomized is the only way I can come back to this game. Love that it forces you to rely on your knowledge of the game and pure logical reasoning.
What does the randomizer do? Sounds like fun I just have never tried it and don't know exactly what it is.
Hoytful You can actually set a bunch of parameters, but at its core the randomizer shuffles around every treasure chest and item in the game (with the exception of dungeon maps, compasses, and keys remaining in their respective dungeons for convenience and to prevent softlocks) which changes the order in which you can complete dungeons and essentially changes the entire progression of the game.
So, like, while you’d normally find the bow in Eastern Palace, instead you might find the hookshot, or the magic mirror, or five rupees. Meanwhile the bow could be in pretty much any other chest in the game, including just in a random cave somewhere.
It really tests your knowledge of the game’s geography and layout and kinda makes navigating Hyrule into this giant logic puzzle/scavenger hunt, where you think things like “Okay, I have the hammer, which means I can now go here, here, and here, but not here because I’d need the flippers and I don’t have them yet.”
It’s a wonderful way to replay the game and I highly recommend tracking it down if you can.
Also if you REALLY want to get nuts, you should also try the Super Metroid x ALttP crossover randomizer, which throws the entirety of Super Metroid and it’s item pool into the mix (so now Eastern Palace might contain the grapple beam while the bow could be in Norfair. Yes, really. It’s madness.)
@@FlackNCoke Where would I go look to find it? I would love to play this with the randomizer.
When Link Between Worlds came out, I realized it pretty much had everything I wished in retrospect LttP had. Better nonlinearity, more memorable cast of characters, dungeons that feel more distinct from each other, plus the bonus of possibly the best-implemented gimmick of any Zelda game (loved how clever the use of wall merging got at many points, without necessarily spelling out what you're supposed to do; much like how Portal teaches you to start thinking with portals, LBW eventually has you thinking with walls to solve problems, and it feels like such a natural progression). One thing I will say LttP has going for it is something about its aesthetic --- dunno how to properly describe it, but the graphics, the music, the feel of the Dark World, all of it lends a certain flavor of fantasy that the rest of the series moved in a different direction from afterward. Even if these days I'll probably reach for LBW or the Oracles first as far as 2D Zeldas go, I have to say that LttP's atmosphere is the thing I still remember the most, and remains what sets it apart for me, in a good way.
LTTP had the best tone to it of all the Zelda’s in my opinion.
It had a seriousness and dark aspect that started to slowly go away starting with OoT when they start making things more childish at parts, to the point where entire games became like that.
LBW took it too far by adding all the extra sound effects, music and voices to everything
I love how every dark world dungeon is unique in its own way.
The palace of darkness has a open ended structure and it is an introduction to the dark world as a whole
The swamp palace is the only dungeon with water based puzzles
The skull woods uses the overworld to enhance dungeon navigation and exploration
Thieves town sets up a mystery with the empty boss room and maiden locked away that is the main puzzle of the dungeon other than others which is mostly navigation puzzles
The ice palace has a strong and confusing central puzzle and has a maze like structure while having to traverse that maze multiple times
Misery mire has a more open ended structure than any other dungeon which allows you to solve the dungeon any way you want, for example there are 6 keys in the dungeon when you only need to use 2
Turtle rock uses moving platforms to navigate the dungeon unlike any other dungeon and also heavily relies on magic usage more than any other dungeon
And Ganons tower is a gauntlet of everything you’ve learned so far and every enemy you’ve seen so far that provide a challenge while making you feel strong at the end of your journey.
I have a strong bias towards this game. I'm 33. I remember playing it as a kid. Its the game that REALLY got me to fall in love with video games. Ya I played Mario and other games but this game was the one. When I think Zelda this game pops into my head. Its my favorite Zelda game and probably my favorite game of all time. I say that knowing I have a strong bias and have a lot of emotions mixed into it.
I'm 34 and right there with you! This one and Chrono Trigger are still my top favorites and will remain the rest of my life
I'm 34and yes this is how I feel too! I still have my same cartridge and the game was saved for 20 years and I went back and beat it last year! I dont expect someone who is 21 to understand what that means. You have to live in a world where this was the NEWEST zelda game to understand it. You cannot compare it to its children and grand children. How to speak retrospectively about something you wasn't there for?? Lol The game is older than him lol. OK I just feel some type of way lol. So I'll stop. Its more than just nostalgia tho, THE GAME IS A MASTERPIECE and one of the greatest of ALL TIMES in my book. I'll never change that. It was created with so much passion and love that you could feel it while playing it!!! Thats all Im saying. There a many games that just dont do that for me.
@@JeMone exactly man. Unless you played it when it 1st came out there's no way to understand. Comparing it to games now is kinda dumb. They SHOULD BE better. Its been decades. The game aged beautifully. I just did a playthrough about 6 months ago. Its still looks good sounds good and plays good. I still felt a little emotional when I beat it.
I love how it's called "A link to the past" but contrary to Ocarina of Time or Oracle of Ages which do have a time travelling theme, in AlttP is actually more about travelling between a parallel dark world and the real world.
That's because it's not actually called a link to the past. The real name of the game is "Triforce of the Gods".
Past is always darker.
From what I recall reading somewhere before it was released (probably in Nintendo Power), they chose "A Link to the Past" to signify that it was a prequel to the first two games. Relative to the Link who starred in those games, this was literally a Link from Hyrule's past, rather than the future. This was way before any sort of official timeline was ever established, so it being a prequel was a novel concept for the series.
Been looking forwards to this one! Excited to watch it :)
Didn't think you had the time to watch other youtubers right now, with breaking grounds probably being already in your library and needing to be thoroughly broken before release. ;)
Glad you enjoy king k, Mr. Lowne
While I could be that guy that rants and raves about your opinion because I don't agree with all the points you made. I won't do that in the slightest.
As someone who grew up playing this game, it holds a special place in my heart (along with Mega Man X, Super Mario World, Sonic 2 and Ecco The Dolphin). The newer Zelda games are good, and built upon what ALTTP started, but to me, they don't hold a candle to the memories and the feelings I get whenever I pick up the game to play again.
I recently did a playthrough of ALTTP with a randomizer and it brought back the nostalgia of how it was when I was trying to find secrets, beat bosses and explore the world.
ALTTP will always be in my top 10 list of games and as a developer today, it still inspires me in how I flesh out mechanics and world design.
There was an absolute geniusness behind game design at the time. They did way more with the hardware at the time than was even thought possible. I feel like even modern games can still learn a lesson from the SNES and Genesis days. Truly a golden era for video games imo.
@@EmilyRose900 "They did way more with the hardware at the time than was even thought possible."
I feel like a nod to Final Fantasy VI is obligatory. Still one of the most impressive uses of sound and music in any videogame ever, and that goes towards storytelling, atmosphere, and character development. They proved in a 16-bit game that one song can do all of that and do it damn effectively.
@@jacobmonks3722 Totally. I feel sad that Final Fantasy started to lose the fact that music was so heavily involved in what made Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy. And not just the audio music by Uemetsu. Musical theatre is actually written into the scripts by Hironobu Sakuguchi like the famous Opera scene or the Tantalus scenes in 9. Not to mention the fact that pretty much all the storytelling techniques from the 16 bit FF games are taken from stage productions and musical theatre.
Such a great series it used to be.
Completely agree! I LOVE this game. I 1st played it as a kid many moons ago and its the game that made me fall in love with games. I have such fond memories of playing this game
Criticizing a video game for the limits of technology at the time it was made is like criticizing the Beatles or Zeppelin for using outdated production tools. Criticizing art requires the perspective of time.
A Link to the Past is a very precious game to me. It's the first game I've ever played and as a toddler I had my grandma to help me figure out where to go. She passed away when I was around 12 but playing with her helping me is one of my favorite memories.
Therefore I'm very happy to hear another review on this game, and it was refreshing to hear a more critical take on it.
Thanks for this video, it was nice to listen to.
"It's hard to tell stories on the Super Nintendo"
Really? This was the golden console for JRPGs. I'm not sure that's something that's entirely correct
Flarezap Then I guess ALTTP must have been really bad at it 😂 At least to KingK
While KingK was wrong, you also have to consider what Zelda was at the time. It was not an indepth story telling. Manuals provided information prior to this. This had much more of a story in the game than Z1 or 2 did. This is where the story telling truly began, but it didn't break away from its focus, which was action/adventure/puzzle... and not a JRPG.
@Starscream91 This is especially funny in retrospect because he considers Chrono Trigger and Donkey Kong Country some of his favorite games in their respective genres. He doesn't hate the SNES, or games of that era. He judges them as pieces of art. Art is subjective. Some games have things he likes and other don't. There's no need to insult him just because he didn't love something that you do.
I always look forward to your vids, you have such a pleasant voice and are so well-spoken! Keep up the good work. LTTP is my favorite classic Zelda.
Agreed! Though my favorite 2D zelda, in general, is A Link Between worlds
Deuce Moncura honestly he might have a real shot at it.
17:26 I think someone has Godzilla on their mind, calling the boss Mothra instead of Mothula =O
Whoa, I didn't even notice that
Those might be spelled the same in Japanese...
and then when translated, changed up so the American copyright laws don't have an aneurysm, like the origin of Balrog/Vega/M. Bison.
17:25 You know, I've never realized that he calls Mothula "Mothra" here; I had to rewind and check the wiki to make sure I wasn't going crazy! Lmao XD
I personally never gave a crap about the open worlds in Zelda. Dungeons and puzzles were my favorite aspect
Yup agreed, for me the overworld is just a means to get to one dungeon to the other and occasionally stopping at a shop for potions or some heart pieces if I get stuck. This game doesn’t waste your time with this huge world that you have to dredge through. The map in ALttP isn’t actually that big but it feels big because every screen is packed full of stuff to do. It feels full but is also very easy to get around in which is exactly what I like. The flute also makes it even easier then it already is.
I think you already mentioned in another video, but if not I will mention here, the first set of temples being linear and second set being less linear mirrors the monomyth, where the hero start having no agency, being dragged to the adventure, and by the end being the master of his world.
I personally consider this great gaming storytelling, specially because this is not told trough text or visuals, but by the gameplay itself. Specially the Master of Two Worlds stage, that literally becomes a gameplay feature.
There is a reason why this formula for Zelda temples works so well, and almost all games try to replicate it.
It's really hard to put my finger on, but for me this game just has fantastic atmosphere and satisfying progression at every turn. It's just interesting, hard, and fun, with many memorable puzzles, enemies, and "aha!" moments.
On the meat comment in the NES Zelda. That was from an era when things were hidden in the instruction manual that came with the game, it told you what it did in there.
Yes but the game also has hints in-game given to you by old men. They could have easily had a hint that says "Hungry goriya like meat." By no means is that a very good method of conveyance, but anything is better than nothing.
@@jacobmonks3722
i'm not a native english speaker, but even as a child, playing zelda in english i was able to figure it out. there's really no excuse, just bad players.
This is the only Zelda game I've played from beginning to end
I would like to know what your thoughts are then concerning this game now that you have finished it as I have always put this game as my top spot in any list I made to do with the Zelda game series that was until I played ocarina of time and now that is at number one and this is now at number two so can you tell me what you thought about the whole of this game and what you liked and maybe did not like about this game if you could do that I would be really happy. XX
I don't really feel like you're giving ALTTP the proper judgement it deserves on it's own merits. The entire video is littered with quips about what future games did, which I don't feel should impact what this game did on its own right. To me, it will always be a masterpiece that has a special place in my heart. Does that mean that all the Zelda games that came after are worse, or less deserving of praise? No, of course not. I judge those games by their own merits as well. I think it's something to keep in mind for future videos.
I kind of agree with him, despite having experienced it in a similar way. If I'd played it right after Zelda I/II on NES, I'd definitely have preferred those games based purely on feel.
@@Sputterbug I despise the argument "you've just got nostalgia goggles on" when faced with a player preference different from one's own. It's pretentious.
I like the first two games because they feel big, mysterious, and dangerous. ALTTP feels really small to me, and the graphics are weirdly rounded in a way that I don't find appealing. As far as gameplay goes, I actually found it more slow and awkward at times that the original; at least with the original I could chalk it up to system limitations. Plus it takes forever to actually open up in a meaningful way. And the story is pretty bare-bones, even compared to contemporary games like FFIV.
And all of those game fall on the back of this one! This game was created with so much LOVE!!!!!!! You can feel the passion in the game that the creators had while creating it. ITS LITERALLY A MASTERPIECE!
@@JeMone a game being made with love has nothing to do with it's quality. It's not a masterpiece, because literally every game after improves in every aspect
@@Mqstodon I bet you’ve never even played it. But hey it’s your opinion. You’re entitled to it. That game is one of the best ever made. Old and new.
Inept antisocial dude explains why he feels ALTTP did jack shit for the series even though every video after explains every point about games which directly take from this one.
Why am I almost in happy tears? Thanks for the video. ❤️
Great video. You did a great job of explaining your point of view and I can respect it, even if I disagree. What I will say though is that we play Zelda games for different reasons. I personally don't go play a Zelda game because I want one really good thing. I play a Zelda game for the sum of it's parts, I want my Zelda games to be good at everything. If I wanted a really good story, I wouldn't be playing a Zelda game. If I only cared about freedom I wouldn't play any Zelda games. I play them because they offer it all to me. I don't have the mentality "I want to play a Zelda game with a good story" or that "I want to play a Zelda game with a lot of freedom" I usually just want to play a Zelda game that's good at everything and that's why LTTP is one of my favorites.
i think fundamentally what you want out of playing Zelda games is different from myself, and there's nothing wrong with that as long as we recognize it for what it is. I actually agree with all your main specific points about the game, but it just leads me to an entirely different conclusion.
You might see it as LTTP doesn't have any serious standout qualities but the way I see it, it's almost the only Zelda game without any serious glaring flaws that gnaw at me. That's why it relaxes me to play it. I never have to be frustrated. Most every other zeda game has something in it that at some in the game frustrates me. Funny enough the other game in the series I feel this about is Twilight Princess.
Well said
I've enjoyed each and every one of your LOZ retrospectives. There were certain game mechanics that I had never noticed before and you allowed me to see them in a different light. It's better to understand fully on what makes a game great and what has been blinded from nostalgia. Thanks!
Saw the thumbnail, and the music immediately played in my head. Thank you so much for including the intro as your intro.
That intro theme...the first bit of video game music I ever heard. Picked an SNES over an N64 for this game. Worth it.
Huh. That's interesting. Why was that even a choice? I'd like to hear that story.
@@JazGalaxy My grandparents gave me a choice between an SNES and an N64 when I was around 5. I always wanted this game after playing it at a relative's house so I chose the SNES as my first console.
You made the correct choice.
@@faulmccarttney965 I certainly did. Ocarina wasn't out at the time and when I did get an N64 later it cost $40 brand new and used games were everywhere dirt cheap. SNES games were already hard to find by that point. I wouldn't have been able to build up the collection of both if I had gone the other way.
*escourting a BOSS that's disguised as a HOSTAGE
Nah
Ive watched your entire Zelda Retrospective series and for the most part, agree with where you're coming from on each of them due to the sheer amount of arguments and logic and reason you've used. But this one feels rushed and lacks the same care you gave the other ones. Honestly it feels like its nothing more than a "eh i didnt really care for it" video with some weak justifications attached. The types of things you've considered nitpicks in other titles, you consider major faults in this one.
It really feels like this video isn't about the game, its merits or its criticisms, but about making a meta statement about whether classic games hold up and using this title as the sacrificial lamb to make your case.
Thank you for putting my feelings into words. The overall logic in this video seems to be that a game can't hold up if its descendants are more refined; how then can the game be considered such a solid foundation? Holding up is its entire job!
Still, I liked the video and mostly agree with the points made. My one major disagreement is that this game (and Ocarina, actually) isn't a masterpiece.
Also, I wanted to point out something that may or may not (probably not) adjust your perspective on this one.
As you know, Oracle of Seasons and Ages were meant to be part of a trio of games, with each game's mechanics and narrative being symbolic of a specific piece of the Triforce. Seasons being representative of the Triforce of Power and that being expressed in the linear and combat-heavy nature of the game, while Ages represented Wisdom with that being expressed in the puzzle-heavy nature of the game.
If a title represented Courage, it would be LttP, with that being expressed in the exploration-heavy nature of the game.
There are a total of 9 official dungeons, a dungeon-like castle/sewers, a mini-dungeon in Zora's domain, and a strong dungeon philosophy given to both the dark and light world versions of Death Mountain with all the winding caves and drop-down ledges. there are also a ton of secrets and side-stories that are discovered and played through very organically. The game keeps you talking to NPCs to complete these stories and side quests, and theyre done masterfully in such a way that they feel optional but are almost all mandatory. And even more impressive is how many of them are entirely optional, like the invisibility cape, the level 3 and 4 swords, the bottle you get for bringing the treasure chest to the silent man. Flipping between the light and the dark world to find extra goodies, finding all the dark world portals, figuring out what the big bomb is for, experimenting with what items you can give the two upgrade faeries, the excitement of gradually burning rupies in the pond of wishing to find out what it does, seeing heart containers or other items outside of your reach that you cant get to until much, much later in the game... the list goes on and on. the game is literally jam packed with secrets and optional quests and anticipation, it's astounding.
All of this underscores and strengthens its main thematic principle of Exploration and is one of the earliest examples of a perfectly tuned Metroidvania. It's not obtuse like the original Zelda, and it doesnt hold your hand every step of the way telling you what to do like most of the sequels. It strikes a beautiful balance and absolutely holds up today, and given its vintage, that makes it even more impressive.
I agree that it would be a stronger thematic choice to hide the locations of the dark world dungeons on the in-game map, but as most experienced game designers know, you have to design around the audience's expectations and at the time, the metroidvania genre was still in its infancy. Most FPS games dont open with a "here's how to use both analog sticks" anymore, but Halo did it and it was the right choice, because it was designed for the audience at the time. The same is the case with displaying thee dungeon icons on the map in LttP. At the time, the original Zelda and first Metroid both got criticism for being obtuse, and im sure that criticism factored into this decision.
I respect what you're saying, but I really don't see how this is any different than my other videos. This is what I genuinely think of the game, there's nothing more to say.
@@KingKlonoa
Essentially all I'm saying is I disagree with your specific definition of "masterpiece" even though I have very similar feelings towards each game.
I feel the same.
man this retrospective got some of y’all HOT
I find the review and comments are coming from the point of view of gaming standards of today. As a 10-year-old when this game was released, it was the most complex, in-depth, adventurous game to date. There was nothing like this before this game. A polished version of the original Zelda on the NES, maybe? I can see that for sure. A link to the past definitely had a more linear vibe/story than did the original Zelda, as it was more open ended and I was never able to finish it until the Internet came along. A link to the past, I was able to finish within a few weeks. I feel it set the groundwork for the next few Zelda games. There would’ve been no Zelda 64 without A link to the past.
Hearing all the praise for my favorite games (Oracles, Link’s Awakening, Twilight Princess) makes me really happy.
This came out on my birthday! What a gift! Thanks KingK~
Happy birthday
Happy Birthday! 🎂
A Link to the Past is my first Zelda game and therefore holds a special place in my heart
Great video as always! I’m only about a year younger than you and it’s always so enjoyable to see you analyze a game through a similar perspective to mine. Our age brings in a lot of different thoughts to games than a lot of the standard opinions held by older gamers, and I love how eloquently you put those perspectives in video form! Thanks again for a wonderful video!
What I love about your videos is that, even when I disagree with what you're saying, I can totally see where you're coming from and still be entertained! You do an excellent job of presenting your ideas and perspective!
ALTTP I've always described as "The perfect template for Zelda". There couldn't have been a better base for other Zelda games to build upon.
Honestly, the ALTTP combat also felt a bit off and wonky to me. It may have been the fact that you can't turn while slashing, so when you get surrounded by enemies you are kinda screwed. The GBC games and Minish Cap felt loads better in this aspect.
Still miles better than in Zelda 1 though. What a terrible experience that was.
Favourite dungeon? Misery Mire, I love that one.
Maybe is better in general terms than Zelda 1. But I prefer it, because I like how its overworld exploration is, its non-linearity and its absolutely difficult combat, even with that technical problems. It feels for me like Dark Souls 1. In fact, the opposite: Dark Souls was for me like a new-generation Zelda 1, it's basically the same base, but with lots of improvements.
All depends in what do you like the most in a game. I prefer Zelda 1, but I was also fascinating with ALttP, are just awesome games
@@adrianrivero6104 Hmm I can kinda see the comparisons between Dark Souls and Zelda. However, Dark Souls (one of my all time favourites) made me feel that every step had meaning. Knowing an area's layout or finding items (which you keep upon dying) helps hugely.
Not so much in Zelda 1, which honestly I despise. Awkwardly moving behind Darknuts and all. I think I quit in Dungeon 5. The biggest issue for me was how you restart with 3 hearts once you die (and honestly that still is a big issue in later Zeldas, as I found out in Majora's Mask's final boss arena), and in the first game, there's no pots or vases to get some back. Your only saving grace is a Potion, which was expensive.
@Jaden Frostwolf most of people that don't like Breath of the wild it's because don't like as much exploration as the game's priorities. I love exploration, and BotW has probably the best exploration mechanics and set up. For people like me, the balance in exploration worth it, even losing epicness, narrative and puzzle-challenge. I have played 300 hours and still wanting to explore, maybe you didn't spend too much time on that because you don't enjoy exploration as much, but for those like me, that game is awesome. The only problem for me is that the combat gets easy after around 100 hours, and I have to limit myself in order to keep the combat as a part of the exploration balance
@Jaden Frostwolf I hugely enjoyed Breath's exploration and even its dungeons (which I expected to dislike). The combat felt like some of the worst in a Zelda game, with strange random attacks killing you in one hit. It felt like a complete failure after experiencing the masterful combat in Dark Souls.
@@Moo_Nieu Lots more I disliked about Zelda 1 haha. I got away by beating a hacked version of the Super Famicom version (Satellaview) of BS Zelda. That game was way easier and the hack allows you to play it like a normal Zelda game (Satellaview was some Japan-only system for the SNES that allowed players to play games during special 'broadcast' times).
I actually remember trying a fan remake on Zelda Classic. It's called Origins (had to look it up). It felt like a great one but the base controls and combat were still hampering it for me.
KingK: "Does this game still hold 28 years after its release?"
Me, watching while playing a randomized run: Yeah I think so
I also was in a similarly weird position when I played LttP the first time... As far as what was available, only TP, WW (and it's descendants), and SS were left, with BotW not being out yet (not that it matters, it doesn't look that appealing to me sadly). And yet, despite the adage of "the first Zelda you play defines your favorite style"... THIS is my favorite of the bunch.
Maybe the thing you ended off of in a negative is why: the game is in a weird middle ground on a lot of aspects other Zeldas focus on. I can see how that may be a negative, but another way of looking at it is that it's the most balanced mix of ALL of it, so that no one piece can lose my interest before another takes its place.
4:08 That's the point. It's the whole reason he's named Link. He is the link from the player to the world. He needs to be an empty vessel that the player can fill with themselves. It's the same reason Link doesn't speak.
I feel like you've misunderstood the point. I am saying that the link he provides to the player is not a particularly strong one when compared to other games.
When comparing this one, keeping in mind it’s the third one, so they’ve been able to adjust since then
Also with the Randomizer community, the game is still very active. The rando takes linearity out (of course story isn’t the focus here)
Some say ALTTP aged better than OOT, at least with how the graphics look today
I used to dislike this review but upon replaying Link to the Past, i must say you were right.
AlttP is a great game but has long been surpassed even by it's handheld sequel. There is no reason for the the game to be this linear and restrictive.
It does many things right and is the best of the trilogy no question. But as soon as you enter the Dark World the overworld becomes a large puzzle in and of itself where you know where you're supposed to go but don't know how to get there. Some dungeons are only accessible after you get the Hammer or Mitts but even upon completing the dungeons in the games designed order, it doesn't show any story or character progression other than Link gaining new items and abilities which sure, most Zelda games work with this formula but they also have storytelling or a smaller overworld for you not to endlessly waste your time exploring because you're not playing the game how the devs designed you to play.
Clearly, this is Miyamotos doing, as soon as Koizumi got on board we got an even more linear game yet a more personal and memorable experience which is Links Awakening and then with Aonuma we got the best Zelda games ever made Ocarina and Majora.
Despite Aonuma falling into the formulaic design of OoT until SS he understood that there's no reason for large open worlds if you're going to restrict the player from choosing his own path and make them play the game how you designed it.
Alas the fans got tired of the OoT formula and now they're tired of the Breath of the Wild formula as well, which shows that what Zelda needs is a balance of non-linear and linear game elements.
Just want to say, I disagree with you on large amount of the things you've said about a number of Zelda games but Im going to continue to watch every retrospective you do and I hope you continue to make these because we need more people who give their honest opinions.
Great analysis! There is one stand-out thing LttP has, it's just a thing doesn't seem to grab you - the silent protagonist and "lack"of character building allows me to inhabit LttP Link and make it MY adventure more than any of those later Zelda games you mentioned, except maybe the GameBoy ones (which are honestly the best 2D Zeldas in every way except graphically). Love your work!
Havent seen your content in forever. Saw a couple retrospectives, and now i remember why i liked your content so much.
With all due respect to Miyamoto-san...
TLOZ: "If the player had too much choice, it would be a programming nightmare for the narrative to stay consistent"
Chrono Trigger: "AMATEURS"
I just live for the moments when you get pissed and drop an eff bomb 😂
I appreciate this alternate point of view on this classic game. You got me thinking about it in new ways.
"Its seven years older than I am"
YOU'RE BARELY 21?? YOU SOUND OLDER THAN I DO.
This is weird and I feel old
lololololol
Playing it right now and I think it’s instantly my favorite. It is just SO satisfying to look at.
The music in this song makes me wanna cry from nostalgia, this and ocarina of time have soundtracks that stand the test of time and bring you away to a magical place