Let’s say we take a series like Halo. Pretty great FPS, but what if 343 released a Halo puzzle game? It could be a great game, but going by the rest of the Halo franchise, that makes it a poor Halo title because it doesn’t fit with the rest of the series.
Zelda 2 doesn’t really reflect the rest of the series, and most likely would have sold just as well(possibly better) if it didn’t share the title with the first installment in the series. Zelda 2 could have been a different title with a different name and characters, but with the same gameplay, it even could have become it’s own sidescrolling franchise. If you really think about Zelda II, the only thing it really brought to the table was the magic meter and “crouch to shield.” The game didn’t really play like a zelda game, it had a leveling system and it even had a life counter and if you ran out you had to start over. No other Zelda title had done that.
It honestly didn’t play like the rest of the zelda franchise, making it a poor zelda title.
So let’s go over all the reasons this post is silly:
On Zelda 2’s release, the Zelda “series” officially had one game to its name: Zelda 1. There was no franchise to fall in line with – or out of line with. So the whole idea of Zelda 2 being the odd man out is monstrously dumb. Especially when even the mildest of scrutiny reveals a game that’s totally like Zelda: exploration, item finding to progress, dungeons to conquer, enemies from past/future games (Ironknuckles, Dairas, Bubbles, Lizalfos, etc. etc.), sword fighting, shield blocking, etc. Link got magic; whoopdee-fucking-doo, this is a fantasy universe where magic is the norm, and other Links have used magic, albeit from gear. Big whoop; none of that makes Zelda 2 an odd man out and believing otherwise is, yup, monstrously dumb.
And it’s made even dumber by the fact that being the odd man out means fuck all. This idea that “game X is a great game but a poor Y series game” has been a reasonably backed idea approximately never. If that hypothetical Halo puzzler was well-made, well-designed, sold well, played well, etc. it would have been a great game AND a great Halo game. There’s no codex stating Halo has to be a set way, nor Zelda, nor anything.
Think about it: if true, then Ocarina of Time should have been the worst game in the franchise, considering it was nothing like Zelda 1, Zelda 3, or Link’s Awakening. Whoops, not like the others! Bad Zelda game! That’s fucking retarded. If OoT is good, or bad, it can be judged on its own merits. “Is it like other Zelda games” is about as much a merit like the mustard stain on my red shirt is reasonably useful anymore; that’s criteria that means jack squat in the history of nothing.
Zelda 2 played like Zelda, felt like Zelda, and hell plays way better than most Zeldas released in the last decade. And even if Zelda 2 truly wasn’t “like Zelda,” that wouldn’t make it a bad Zelda game. Judge games based on their merits or downfalls; to do otherwise is pretentious at best.
It was the only other game in the series at the time, that doesn’t necessarily mean that other ideas hadn’t existed. See the ridiculously massive Zelda timeline where everything falls into order, there was a franchise, it just hadn’t been established in the marketplace. Enemies in your argument? Fair, but remember what I said, it probably would have been better suited as a different game with different characters. There’s a reason why Super Mario Bros 1, 2, 3, and World all retained the fact that they were 2d platformers. Shield Blocking? I mentioned that point as one of the few things it did introduce for the series, as did I also said with magic. Sword fighting? OK, but lots of games had that. I won’t lie about many things, but does a series have to be established to make it the odd game out? I would say no. The series has clearly ignored the sidescrolling mechanics used in this title for a reason.
People don’t buy Halo as a puzzle title. Let’s say this game was hypothetically released under the title of Halo 5, just as was done with Zelda 2. It didn’t play the same as the others in the series, and if you look at it as a whole that makes it the odd one out. And a relatively bad title of the series. If a title doesn’t characterize the series that it stands for, it most likely does a relatively poor job as being a part of the series. When you hear Final Fantasy, you may not have played all the games, but you know it’s going to be a RPG. Or when you hear “Call of Duty” you know you may not have played all of the games, you know it’ll be a FPS.
Really? Last I checked, you just said this earlier in your post:
That just made OoT a Zelda title. It’s about adventure, exploration, and sword fighting. What it did differently was what made it new. We were told “This isn’t like any other adventure you’ve had before.” It was a differently made world with immerse dungeons, and the third person view makes it very close to that of a top down game. Even though it wasn’t top down such as Zelda I or aLttP, it still played like it. ALttP was also three dimensional in a way due to the top down movement(2 dimensions l/r + u/d), and multileveled floors within dungeons making it physically a 3d universe. OoT just made the camera non-static to increase the depth and immersion. It felt like Zelda and it plays like Zelda. That’s why we have Majora’s Mask, Wind Waker, TP, and Skyward Sword. Out of every other zelda title, how many are sidescrolling(aside from Zelda CDi)?
Looking Back Retrospectively, Zelda II is the odd one out. Those mechanics were abandoned because they just didn’t feel like zelda should to the developers. The other titles define the series, Zelda II just added in a few choice elements. It wasn’t an adventure game anymore, it was a platformer, and they decided that a sidescroller just wasn’t right for the zelda vibe. It’s the same with Super Paper Mario, a wonderful game, but it was a bad Paper Mario game. It threw the traditional mechanics out the window and people didn’t really like it because of that, it’s why Sticker Star went back to the old 3d-all-the-time world with a turn based battle system. Super Paper Mario would have been much suited to being on it’s own with different characters than added to the Paper Mario universe.
I’m just going to say that I felt Halo Wars was a relatively generic (but decent) RTS with the Halo name tacked on. I bought it because I thought “Console RTS that might not suck because MS is publishing it” and it turns out most people bought it because “New Halo game?”… It didn’t follow the main story either, it was a spinoff title, unlike Zelda II. Also, Halo Wars wasn’t necessarily a title done in the same sense as say, a random puzzle spinoff. Halo was originally going to be an RTS title, but was later changed to a third person shooter, and that finally became an FPS later in the dev cycle to best suit the gaming masses. Halo was built to be an RTS at first, so an RTS title is only fitting. Anyway, that wasn’t the point of my argument, it was the idea of an awkward change in mechanics that I was getting at. It’d be like the next Starcraft being a FPS or the next street fighter being a RPG. It’d just be weird.
Semantics. You’re doing a ton of leg work to make your logic fit. Does Halo Wars do a good job of representing Halo? Yes. Does Zelda II do a good job of representing Zelda? Yes.
Zelda IIs mechanics where abandoned because they where done by completely separate teams. There is nothing anywhere that says anyone at Nintendo thought Zelda II was a bad representation of the series or a bad direction for it to go in, what we do see this is the series went back to Miyamoto when the SNES rolled around and he made the game he wanted to make, as he always does. Zelda Ii being frequently referenced through the series shows that it clearly has a lot of love, I mean hell they went to the trouble of programing the roads in at night and naming all the Forest kids after every town in Zelda II.
You don’t really reference things you dislike, you treat it like Capcom does DMC2. You pretend it doesn’t exist.
Something else to consider, would the Metroid Prime trilogy be considered as in-line with the series? It made one of the more drastic changes in perspective going from a side-scroller to an FPS.
You know I never have. I thought it would be interesting to try and play some of them and maybe even make some of them but I never got around to it. Maybe i should look into it again.
Trying out Lost Isle right now. Looks good so far. In case you start, to save, it’s F6 which exits the game, but lets you save as you exit.
Oh yeah and I think you said you had an ipod touch or something right? Try Swordigo. Decent side-scrolling adventure game. Like Specs mentioned, Cave Story is another option and is a fun game.
I pre-ordered the Hyrule Historia a few months ago and it was delivered today. Unfortunately I moved and forgot to update my address on the order. FML.
Someone posted this gif on Gaf in response to someone else saying that they wanted to see the game in motion to judge and I loled
First Four figures put out some expensive Zelda figurines for Ganondorf, Darunia, and Zant
if I was rolling in money I’d totally grab Ganondorf. That is a nice amount of detail and work that went into that…Twilight Ganondorf is my favorite design for him…very close second being WW Ganondorf.
I got my book today and I did a quick flip through before I started to dig into it. Skyward Sword had more little things in it that I would have never known like the Sage symbols from Ocarina that got split in half when the Goddess statue got taken up. I love this book.
Someone #Capcom was telling me earlier today that Demons Souls and Dark Souls are more similar to the original Zelda than the 3D Zeldas. Like OG Zelda the souls games boil down to cautious movement and attacks and don’t give the player direction on where to go or what to do while the 3D Zeldas boil down to “go here and get this item to progress”.
Finished replaying MM a couple of days ago. Collected all the masks before I finally reached the credits. I still needed a little bit of outside assistance to figure out some parts, but absolutely nowhere near as much as when I first played the game in 2000. I even learned and tried out a couple of glitches as I have been pretty addicted to watching speedruns (cosmo, runnerguy, swordlesslink, etc.) of the 3D titles as of late. Pretty cool (and broken) things can be pulled off if you have the time and effort to learn them.
I have a much better understanding of the game, especially the story. The time/day system is really engaging when you look at it. Having various events happen throughout the city and between different characters gives surprising life to the overworld (anything involving Sakon… ). And the amount of possible outcomes based on your actions is pretty impressive. It’s quite rewarding solving the puzzles of the Bomber’s Notebook.
I also realized that the Fierce Deity’s Mask could have been SO much better.
Anyway, 3 things that surprised me while replaying the game:
That the Deku Mask is basically the spirit of the Deku Butler’s dead son. I never knew that. Pretty messed up, especially during the credits.
And lastly, this moment in the game. I don’t think I ever saw it as I probably never went back into the room after you get kicked out. There should be no argument about the darkest Zelda title after watching that. As the person in my av would say… “LAYIN’ THE SMACKDOWN ON THAT MONKEYASS!!!”
). And the amount of possible outcomes based on your actions is pretty impressive. It’s quite rewarding solving the puzzles of the Bomber’s Notebook.