As someone who has never really read video game reviews or posted about video games at all, they are still something that has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. And Zelda has always been a big part of my experience with them. In fact, the first game I ever recall playing (at least, at home on a console) was a Zelda game. So in a lot of ways it makes sense for me to do my first video game review of any kind on this series. Specifically the first one, released in 1986 -- which incidentally also brought us the first titles in both the Metroid and Castlevania serieses. What a year!
The game starts out with this amazing title screen, with the iconic theme playing in the background. I can only imagine how exciting this must have been to plug in when it was brand new. But what is probably most surprising about this game from the very beginning is how you're given a single block of text for backstory and stating your ultimate goals (recovering the fragments of the Triforce, defeating Ganon, saving Hyrule), and that's it. You're thrown right into the overworld without any direction whatsoever. You can go north, west, east, or into a cave nearby, and without a detailed map at your disposal, there's really no knowing whether you'll be able to find your way back again with any ease. Just...start. It's a pretty bold way to start off a game, but that's part of the charm of both old games and this series in general: willingness to disregard conventions.
Having only seen brief clips of the game play up until recently, I made it my goal to go into this game with as little preexisting knowledge as possible. Not an easy task, considering it's one of the most influential games ever developed, but I gave it a shot. I knew that caves could be blown out of certain walls, secret areas could be found after burning certain bushes, and of course I was familiar with the concept of keys, dungeons, treasures, bosses, etc. But for this game specifically, I was still flying mostly blind. The controls, while not perfect, were still easy to manage, and didn't fall victim to the grid as much as I thought would be the case. You can only move in 4 directions, sure, but your movement isn't totally locked in, allowing you to finesse your way past and around enemies easily. Once you get your first sword, the combat is also pretty simple to grasp, though you need to have better aim than in future Zelda titles -- instead of sweeping motions, he stabs straight forward. Not that it's too difficult to manage, but it takes some time to get used to.
But this is all background stuff. So now I'm going to single out the following aspects and how well I feel the game manages within each of them. I already briefly touched on a couple, but I'll go into some more detail in a bit.
- Controls
- Level Design
- Music
- Visuals
- Atmosphere
- Story
- Impact
I feel in some way or another, pretty much anything I might have to say about any video game could be covered under those 7 areas. So let's begin with them, shall we?
Controls
I already touched on this a little bit earlier, but the controls in this game are pretty great for the time. It's smooth, and with the overhead view you have a good field of vision, making every hit you take feel like something you could have avoided if only you were more talented. The hit detection is fair, not forcing you to be completely precise, but each swing does have to be planned out for optimum effect. Any major issues with the controls in this game could easily be chalked up to system limitations. But all things considered, the control is rock solid.
Level Design
As basically everyone in the world knows, a majority of Zelda games is broken into two basic areas: overworld and dungeons. The overworld in this game is vast and mostly able to be explored in its entirety without needing to progress in the game. The dungeons (or "underworld") can be accessed through specific locations found on the overworld map, and within them are increasingly difficult and labyrinthine mazes, sets of rooms filled with enemies, treasure, and boss fights. The game doesn't lead you by the nose, but because of this it becomes very difficult to find out where you're going or what you're doing at any point. The dungeons aren't the best around, without many interesting puzzles, the largest challenges generally being dodging enemies attacking you from every direction. The level design is a bit rough, but manageable and very original for the time.
Music
What can really be said about the music from Zelda that wouldn't just be redundant and obvious? While later games in the franchise would improve on and add to the wonderful theme and adventurous, mysterious dungeon soundtracks, this first game still had some pretty amazing music. The dungeons all share the same track, and the overworld keeps the theme playing for most of the time as well. But even with a relatively small overall tracklist the music never feels too repetitive, and the triumphant theme is still exciting and simply fantastic. Great, great music.
Visuals
This is a tricky one, because it's both obvious and difficult to judge a 30+ year old game based on the visuals, but here goes. Yes, it's outdated, but it still looks pretty good. There are some creative animations and some of the creature/boss designs are pretty cool. There are still some clunky backdrops and undetailed characters (the old man and old woman are very simple), but there's a good variety in color and scenery, which definitely helps separate the game from others on the NES. It isn't a visual masterpiece, but it's still good looking enough to hold up.
Atmosphere
This is a very off-beat game for its lonely atmosphere and adventurous (but also somewhat scary) tone, giving you an open world with almost no other friendly characters to ease you on your journey. Every non-enemy character you encounter is found either in pre-existing caves, or in secret areas uncovered by blowing crap up or setting things on fire. The fact they keep so many NPCs hidden like this makes you feel a certain amount of unease as you play. What's with these people hiding in secret doors under trees? It definitely has an odd atmosphere, but I kind of love it.
Story
Probably one of the biggest aspects of most more modern games, and certainly an important part of most future Zelda titles, but this time around...not so much. As I mentioned earlier, you get a brief screen telling you a little about the Triforce, Ganon, Zelda, etc. but most of the specifics are left relatively unmentioned. But there's something sort of wonderful about that. I hate when a game feels the need to shove a story in to pad the games length, making this the perfect antidote for that. Granted, most older games lacked too much history and story, but for an RPG to just drop you into the world and let the story play such little part to the whole thing is pretty refreshing. Not much of a story, but its vagueness led to some wonderful moments in later games. Minimalism can be a great thing.
Impact
Here's another no-brainer segment, but when I say "impact" I don't just mean culturally or historically, but also the way it impacted me personally. As a video game, this left quite the impact indeed. Moving on. While I still prefer the Zelda games I grew up with, this game surprised me in a lot of ways and left me mostly quite satisfied with the experience. There was a sweet spot around the 3rd and 4th dungeons where I was loving it, finally having gotten the hang of it, but I lost interest by the end, finding the later dungeons far too repetitive and overall unsatisfying. Very cryptic and confusing at many points, I found myself frustrated when I got stuck but that made the times when I solved something all the more rewarding. I probably let out more satisfied "@#$& YEAH!"s while playing this game than I had in years. So, while it isn't my favorite or what I would call the best Zelda title, I was very pleased by it.
And there you have it, my first ever video game review. Hopefully I made my thoughts on the game pretty clear, but just to make it even more clear, I'm going to assign it an arbitrary number that might help people to better understand how I felt about it. Let's call it an...
8/10
Thanks for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment