The new Legend of Zelda game, A Link Between Worlds, came out on Friday. The craziest thing is, I wasn’t really all that excited about it. Normally Zelda games are the things I go the most crazy for, but there was no hype inside me this time around. I simply worked all day as usual, went home and had a nap wile waiting for my wife to get home from work, and then proceeded to the store to pick it up.
I didn’t even start playing in earnest until Sunday.
No, nothing is wrong with me. I’m not gravely ill. It was just a weird coincidence, because now that I have spent some time in the game world, I am finding it incredibly hard to put down. This is because A Link Between Worlds is quite possibly the best Zelda game.
If you weren’t already aware, A Link Between Worlds is a direct sequel to 1991’s A Link To The Past, which is considered by most of my peers to be the very best Zelda game. While it is a sequel, it’s also a first for the series, as it uses the same overworld map that you know and love from LttP. Well, a very similar world map anyway. It’s not a 1:1 reproduction, but that’s quite alright.
Worlds also steals its story pacing from its older brother: you go through a short introduction, then three dungeons to earn your Master Sword, then Hyrule Castle to the alternate world, in which there are seven dungeons and then a final showdown. It’s cut-and-pasted wholesale, but I’d say it’s a good enough structure that it’s worth repeating.
You may have noticed that I said “alternate world” up there instead of Dark World. That’s because in LBW, you don’t visit the Dark World again; you visit Lorule instead. That may be giving it too much credit though, because Lorule is totally the Dark World, just with a different map and a castle instead of a pyramid. The scenery is the same, the enemies are the same, and the dungeons are all even in the same places. Well, the dungeon locations are the same anyway. Somehow Turtle Rock is now in the lake where the Ice Palace used to be.
Speaking of Turtle Rock, all the dungeon interiors are completely different, too. Because you wouldn’t want to climb the old Tower of Hera when you could play around in the completely awesome new Tower of Hera, right? Right. Re-using a world map creates continuity, but re-using dungeons would just be lazy. And, like I said, the new Tower of Hera was a really great dungeon.
All the dungeons are great, in fact! I think it helps that all of the ones I’ve played have been fairly compact, and that it’s more about solving the dungeon as a whole than solving each room for the next key. But there are still locked doors and keys. I’m not really smart enough to explain exactly what it is that makes me enjoy these dungeons so much, but I can tell you that they are very fulfilling the solve, and I really appreciate that they aren’t huge and more complicated than they need to be.
And this kind of ties in with LBW’s main gimmick: having access to most of Link’s inventory after completing the first dungeon. Of course, you aren’t just given all the stuff: you have to pay to rent each item. But they come fairly cheap and I had more than enough cash to rent out everything as soon as Ravio opened his item shop. Later on, you’re able to purchase them permanently for a much higher cost, but owning an item allows you to upgrade it and means you won’t have to pay to rent it again if you die.
What the item rental shop does for the game is allow you to take it at your own pace. Like I said, I rented everything out at once and then immediately went off to explore as much of the overworld as I could, because normally that’s something you have to do incrementally as you get new items. Of course, not everything opens up to you right away; the game still hands out a few power-ups at predetermined points, like the flippers, power gloves and pegasus boots. An important note is that at no point in the game are you given or tasked to find a shield: you have to go out and buy one all by yourself.
What makes the item rental system stand out to most people is that it lets you play through the Lorule dungeons in any order you choose. Dungeons are still built around a single item, but you no longer have to get halfway through to earn that item. Now the big dungeon treasure is a permanent power-up, like a new tunic or an upgraded shield, which is helpful but not necessary to complete the game. Since you don’t have to muck around finding the dungeon item first, you could conceivably head straight for the boss if you know the way, meaning LBW will likely be a big hit with the speedrunning crowd.
The freedom of being able to explore the world right away is a wonderful change for the Zelda series, and stirs things up just enough to make it feel fresh again. The dungeons are great fun, and there isn’t even a hit of the traditional handholding that had soured many gamers on the Zelda series. I’m still only about halfway through, but I am looking forward to that second half like nobody’s business. A Link Between Worlds is the renaissance that the series needed, and I can only hope that the next game is as fresh and fun as this one.
