The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

How awesome is this game? I really can't deem it as good as Link to the Past yet, but I will when I finally finish it. But just know, I think link to the past might be my favorite Zelda of all time. Right next to Ocarina and the original LOZ. If you like the top down games in the Zelda universe, this is what Zelda is all about. Spirit Tracks was a bit of a let down and this one is their "sorry letter to you". This game pays a homage to classic Zelda. Anyone who played Link to the Past will recognize the music, the combat techniques and the awesome story. The 3DS touch screen is perfect for navigation and working through our items in a jiffy. It makes Link to the Past seem second rate from that standpoint. The 3D works and looks pretty good. I'm not a big fan of 3D, but if you like it, you'll like the 3D effects this game has. I personally play it with the 3D off. The graphics are colorful, bright and spriteful! Is that a word? lol. I think it's much prettier than Link to the Past. Mind you, that game came out in 92. (I think). And the enemies are more plentiful and more creative too. But you'll see some classic enemies make their triumpahnt return. The soundtrack is fantastic. Lots of new music and lots of the original soundtrack has returned but remixed in 3DS glory. Im actually amazed how good music can sound on the 3DS when it's really pushed. Nintendo went all out on everything here. The gameplay is rock solid. The control stick works nearly perfect for the precision that you'll need walking around walking narrow platforms and deadly dungeons. The puzzles are tough, but nothing too tough for most Zelda guys out there. If you get stuck, you can hints along the way if you get into a jam. Kinda like letting you look into the near future on what you need to do next. The dungeons are plentiful and filled with life. I'm a bit disappointed that the maps automatically point you out to the maps automatically in the game instead of letting you find them yourself. One of the few flaws this game has. IF that could be turned on in a patch, I think that'd be better for people who like to search every nook and locale the game has to offer. Old school, new school, it's a grand game for all and IMO, it would be a good enough reason to get a new 3DS for someone. This might be the best Zelda game ever made. Check it out friends!

Oh man. As soon as you turn it on - it's like your childhood went full-tilt insane. Those of us who played Zelda: Link to the Past as kids (or young adults, what have you) will have your minds blown the second the game queues up. It's the Link to the Past overworld, reimagined and presented in some of the cleanest 3d i've seen yet on the 3ds. It's mindblowing that Nintendo can get such great visuals out of its largely-crap hardware - while other studios struggle to maintain 30fps with crap visual fidelity, this game pulls a solid 60fps at almost all times and looks great while doing so. Why, again, was the Ocarina of Time remake so hideous looking, at 30fps nonetheless? /sigh. Biggest change to this game is that you have almost immediate access to all subweapons. Rather than lock each subweapon to each dungeon as a treasure - they require heavy use of one subweapon PER dungeon. You rent them from a rather hilarious NPC - and can later buy them (so you don't lose them if/when you die). Tons of good collection mechanics, including age-old heart pieces and these new little snail-looking guys that allow you to power up your subweapons. The game claims you'll have a lot more to do with your Ruppees than ever before, but I still found myself hopelessly overloaded with money the entire game long with little to use it on. I still think the best Ruppee-vs-buyable-crap balance was in Zelda: The Minish Cap. My main dislikes are that there's almost too much content. There's a veritable cornucopia of puzzle devices, enemies, etc. - but each one gets used once or twice, then abandoned. It's really a shame they didn't reuse more devices - as the game feels like it could've been bigger. Still - without spoiling any enemy types / plot devices, this is the current gold standard for Zelda games. It'll make you realize how subpar every Zelda has been since Link to the Past - you go back and play Ocarina again and it's a slow-paced ugly looking snoozefest with entirely too much dialogue and combat you can fall asleep during and still win.

While I bemoan remakes of games that are just straight ports from their original system, I can appreciate remakes that add a little something to make it worth playing the same story over again. That was definitely the case with The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds. Basically a 3D re-skin of A Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds modifies the mechanics and story just enough for me to consider it a moderately unique entry in the Zelda series. In fact, I think I like this game more than I do the game it was originally based on. This game’s stereoscopic effect really adds to that top-down visual style that defined the earlier Zelda titles. So, while everything looked gorgeous in its reimagined 3D form, the game already lent itself to this technological feature. I also appreciated how open this game was, as it allowed me to acquire all the items that would have normally been trapped in dungeons whenever I wanted, thus giving me the freedom to explore the world of Hyrule the way I wanted to. Plus, the new mechanic introduced in this game had plenty of clever little uses throughout the play-through. Partly because of the openness of its exploration, there was never a point where I really felt stuck or at a loss of what to do next. If I came across a stumbling block, I’d warp over to a different part of the map or tackle another one of the many dungeons and see if it was any easier. Being able to upgrade the items the way I wanted to was also just as nice as having them be easily accessible on the lower touchscreen. Overall, Nintendo took a classic from their Super Nintendo inventory and improved it more than I thought could be possible. A superior adaptation of a Nintendo classic, I give The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds 5.0 stars out of 5.

This game feels like a really good fan-made sequel to Zelda: A Link to the Past and I hope this title eventually makes it onto other Nintendo platforms.

This is NOT a simple remake. Don't expect it to be. What this game is better described as would be a nostalgic game set partly in the world that was made for Zelda (3) A Link to the Past. The overworld is similar but not carbon copy. Even some dungeons have slight similarities, but I feel this was for the sake of nostalgia and not any bit of laziness on Nintendo's part. My biggest compliment to Nintendo? NO MORE STYLUS!!! If you played the previous DS Zelda games, you probably got sick of controlling the entire game with the stylus. In this game you use the circle pad to move and the D-pad moves the camera slightly. The music is based on LTTP and Ocarina of Time (OOT) but it is slightly tweaked and improved. Control is amazingly fluid. Much improved over the old SNES and DS versions. It really feels like you have good control. You don't really stop on a dime, instead there is a bit of momentum. It makes the game tough at times because you WILL fall off ledges. And you do have a bit of bounce back if you strike things with your sword! Other great changes/improvements? Well the fact that after the first big dungeon, the game is wide open (for the most part) is really interesting. You rent or buy the items such as the bow and mallet. It's expensive and you lose them if you rent them then die, but it makes for a decent challenge. Oh, and rupees are easier to find - but you still have to balance your budget! There is a lot of backtracking due to treasure chests and pieces of heart that require certain tools or multiple tools, but with the witchy warp system, it's a breeze. Also with the item system - gone is the inventory of arrows and such. Instead you have a magic meter which depletes when you use tools (or turn into a painting - more on that in a sec!). It refills slowly, or with little magic vials found in jars. The most interesting little facet of this game is the ability of Link to turn into a 2-D wall painting. It opens up a lot of areas and allows you to travel to Lorule - the reverse world (not the same as the dark world in LTTP). Magic slowly depletes when using this power, so you can run out of magic, pop out and fall to your demise. True story. Speaking of story! A lot of game magazines said there isn't much story, but I would say that the story is on par with Ocarina. Not too fleshed out, just a little overview. Early on you are privy to a lot of the history and story line, and since the game is more or less non-linear, a bit more is filled in along the way. Interactions with other characters are quite fun and add a little comedy or drama. I won't spoil anything, but it seems that this game is set after LTTP since early on in the game, Impa tells you about the history of the last hero that sealed Ganon and found the Triforce of Courage. Again, nothing you don't know 5 minutes into the game. I only have one little qualm and that is that the maps in dungeons are provided when you enter them. Of course you need the compass to see the chests, but also that makes it easier to find all of the hidden items. Difficulty is variable. At times I feel I'm just powering along, other times I just get my rear end handed to me. All part of the more open nature of the game I guess. But with the open structure I felt that maybe a bit of a difficulty reading would help, something saying that particular dungeons would be tougher, so you might want more heart containers... Nitpicking though! What Nintendo just did though was cement the fact that the 3DS is THE Nintendo system to buy - not Wii U - at least not yet. And if you own a 3DS (or 2DS) you MUST buy this game. It is the golden stamp on a terrific year for this system!

A Link Between Worlds is a solid entry in the Zelda franchise, and a welcome return to the top-down roots of the series. Nintendo has done an excellent job translating the world of Link to the Past into 3D, and this new title offers plenty of welcome changes to the aging Zelda formula for a fresh new experience. I originally wasn't excited about the star feature - the ability to merge into walls - but Nintendo nailed it, and puzzles that make excellent use of this new mechanic are found throughout the game. While progression in Zelda games has traditionally been a bit rigid, Nintendo has really opened things up in A Link Between Worlds. After completing the first few dungeons, players can play the remaining dungeons in any order. Most of the classic items - bow, hookshot, fire rod, boomerang, etc - are not unlocked by beating dungeons, but rented or purchased (with rupees, no IAP!) from an eccentric shop-owner (who looks more than a little like a purple Rabbid...). The shop opens up very early in the game, also giving players a lot more freedom than they've had in previous Zelda games. I welcome this new mechanic - hasn't Link found the hookshot in a dungeon enough times by now? This also eliminates the rather silly aspect of previous games that bosses were inevitably hiding in the same dungeon as the one item necessary to defeat them. However, the new approach does make the bosses themselves a bit less memorable - several of them can be defeated with just the sword. The overworld is packed with tons of content to keep players engaged outside of the central story. Puzzles and treasure are densely scattered everywhere. Link can collect little sea urchins to upgrade his weapons, and with 100 of them hidden around the world, you'll be challenged to find them all! There are also a large number of rupee-winning minigames, each of which awards the player with a piece of heart when he or she scores well enough. A Link Between Worlds places a much greater emphasis on rupees than previous titles in the series. You can carry (at least) 9,999 rupees from the start, and you'll certainly be needing them. In addition to the usual, you've got weapons to rent or buy, potions to purchase, fortune tellers to pay, and of course the entry fees on the many games. Rupees are plentiful and you'll never run low, but you'll also need plenty of time to earn enough to purchase *everything*! Finally, a Zelda game where money doesn't become meaningless after the first act. It doesn't quite have as much heart as Link's Awakening, and a few of the bosses and dungeons are less than memorable, but overall A Link Between Worlds is a fantastic and much-needed title in this long-running series. A must-have for any fan of classic Zelda. Now, let's hope they make a 3D remake of Link's Awakening... HINT HINT

As Zelda games go, this is another good one. It brought back a lot of the things I loved about A Link to the Past, with many aspects - the design of the overworld and location of areas in particular - being a nod to the game. It also pulled in little aspects from the later games, mostly Ocarina of Time. Don't go into this one thinking you're getting something brand new and innovative. It's also a little short - if you're really grinding through it, you can finish the game in less than a day. Gameplay is similar to the DS-era games blended in with problem-solving closer to Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time. Some of the enemies can be a touch difficult if you're not aimed in the right direction or you're not used to action-adventure games, but overall it's very playable. I loved that you can actually get all of your items for all the dungeons early, and that you can use those items in creative ways to move on. Sometimes there's only one real answer, but often you'll find yourself able to use more than one method to pass obstacles and challenges (for instance, you can either blow out fire with wind or freeze it). It also has a lot less item-grinding to get everything in the game - even with the 100 Maiamai to be found, it doesn't feel frustrating. A little ingenuity in the dungeons, and you can also get the best weapons in the game without a whole lot of trouble. As a story goes, it's a little bit predictable, but I think that's sort of something to be expected with Zelda games. If you've played Link to the Past, you'll be able to anticipate a lot of what happens in the early half of the game, and they do telegraph the twist(s) pretty heavily. That didn't hurt my love for the game any. The music is sort of a blend of Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time along with some new music, which I loved for the nostalgia feel. A lot of that is something to keep in mind: nostalgia is a HUGE part of this game. If you're playing it for something brand new, you'll be disappointed. If you liked the older games and you like seeing nods to those games, you'll probably really enjoy this.

Let me start by saying this is the first game I ever played on my 3ds. When I bought it, I broke out all my back issues of game informer and read in depth reviews of all the highest rated 3ds games. I narrowed it down to luigi's mansion, mario and luigi, and link between worlds. Link between world won. I'm quite the retro enthusiast, and, when I read that link between worlds was an indirect sequel the snes classic link to the past, that sold me. The story was great, for a Zelda game. Of course you start out as a normal kid, as in most Zelda games, and gradually make the transition to hero. The game is also quite long, around 17 hours and defiantly worth the current price tag. The world is doubled in size from the last game but I'd rather keep this spoiler free so I won't go into that. There are so many collectables in the kingdom that you can easily get distracted from the story and focus solely on finding them. The characters are as Kwirky and lovable as ever and will certainly grow on you. The soundtrack is great. A real nostalgia trip for longtime fans of the series. The gameplay is also a good throwback to classic Zelda titles, with some improvements. You have the opportunity early on to rent most of the weapons right out of the gate getting the opprotunity buy them outright later in the game. Graphics at good, they could be better but I think nintendo was going for a retro feel. It has a top down perspective like the old games as well. In closing a link between worlds is indeed worth the hype and is a great game for anyone with the skills and patients to enjoy it.