The Gaming Experience
Shaun InguanzoLegend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (Review)
December 16th 2006 05:05
Players: 1
Genre: RPG
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: SNES
Year: 1992 (USA), 1992 (PAL)
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening was an RPG I enjoyed when I first bought my Gameboy. When I received a SNES one year for Christmas, A Link to the Past was the first game that I played (after Super Mario All Stars as it was included in the bundle).
Story: In the past, the Dark Lord Ganon was sealed away in an alternate dimension. With the aid of an evil wizard, Ganon attempts to break free of his prison and take over the Light World. You play the young hero, Link, who must travel between the Light and Dark World to rescue maidens (including Princess Zelda) from 7 dungeons in the Dark World.
Battle System: Zelda is an action RPG, so all combat is conducted in real time. Link can use his sword, shield and various other tools such as bombs to give him an edge during battle. There's no experience in this game, so the only way to make battles easier is to obtain Heart Containers or Pieces of Heart (4 of which make a complete container).
Graphics: Decent for the time, but nowhere near as good as the SNES can get.
Sound: Heroic. That's the best I can describe the soundtrack for Zelda.
Replayability: Low. A Link to the Past leans towards the dungeon crawling side of RPGs. There isn't much in the way of dialogue and complicated stories, but there's plenty in the way of adventuring, killing monsters and navigating puzzles.
Overall: After playing Link's Awakening, I found A Link to the Past to be rather limiting in some abilities (such as not being able to dive when swimming). Nevertheless, I found more of the same enjoyment as I did in the Gameboy game.
Score: 7/10
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Comment by Justin
While other older games are probably technically superior, this game is still a classic than can still compete with other SNES rpgs.
Wow, I've unintentionally just outed myself as a Link fanboy.
Comment by Sword Serenity
A Female Gamer
I can say what it was that stopped me from giving Link to the Past a 10/10:
What tends to add to my enjoyment the most in the RPG genre is the story and character depth and development. This loses 2 points on the scale. The other part is that the battle system is rather basic and can get a bit stale later on in the game, so you can say that loses a bit more enjoyment for me while playing through -- I like some more variety.
And that pretty much puts it down to 7/10. 8/10 is usually a great game with a few major failings or various minor failings, 9/10 a pretty damn good game but still having something 'missing', and 10/10 a real classic/"time of my life" type of game. If the game has something really special, then sometimes I just don't care about the lacking aspects in other areas. It really depends on the game.
Something else about the scores is that I didn't want to end up rating everything a 9 and 10 since I have particularly fond memories of SNES games. It'd be pointless to have an overall score if it didn't have some meaning.
Hope that cleared up the "score" field a bit. ^^
(Man... I loved those fairies. I think I spent a good 5 hours in game just catching them. Good rupee earning)