Link: The Faces of Evil

released on Oct 10, 1993

Link: The Faces of Evil was the product of a compromise between Nintendo and Philips following their failure to release a CD-ROM based add-on to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The Faces of Evil differ from most conventional Zelda games as it is a platformer with a side-scrolling view, similar to The Adventure of Link. Stages are accessed from a world map, with more becoming available as Link clears an area or defeats a boss. The game have been subject to much criticism and Nintendo does not recognize it as part of the series.


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Buen juego de plataforma, mas allá de loa cinemáticas no se puede negar que es un buen juego, buenas dinámicas y buen control.

A rather enjoyable time, feeling more like a condensed Zelda experience in a lot of respects as opposed to the shoddy knockoff it's always touted as. Link: The Faces of Evil certainly is quite rough around the edges, with a couple of odd puzzles and controls that regularly work against you being the most prominent issues, but I feel like this is far from enough to entirely detract from the game's good qualities. Despite the infamous nature of the cutscenes here, I'm quite fond of the two sides of the art direction for this game overall, albeit for different reasons. The background art is frequently really pretty in particular, often being very colourful and packed with detail, and while it makes actual platform visibility less intuitive than it should be, you'll naturally hit a point while playing where the visual language clicks and makes this a small inconvenience at worst. To build on this, the game covers a wide range of location themes within its tiny runtime as well, further contributing to providing the world with a sense of scale and stopping things from ever feeling too repetitive, since you'll always be thrown into something new within a couple of minutes, with the quest structure feeding into this sense of loose interconnectivity thanks to the backtracking. The cutscenes are really funny as well to me with the way that there's this constant need to make the smallest thing be expressed in the most exaggerated manner possible, with everyone strangely distorting with each word accompanied by voice acting equally ridiculous. People already harp on the cutscenes being incredibly funny, but as someone who'd never seen any of the YTPs that so heavily used these, it was all new and surprising to me and felt like a reward in itself whenever I was able to see a new one. A bite-sized, largely painless game that made me smile whenever it played a cutscene or made me feel smart when I was able to figure out the vaguely obtusely presented puzzle hints, looking forward to playing Wand of Gamelon soon.

played in preparation for arzette. remaster, but with the remastered mode quality of life improvements disabled. the biggest revelation genuinely is that theres a perfectly useable template for a 2d action game here...a mostly nonlinear world explored in little action segments, populated with memorably bizaare and colorful characters, with a managably small take on the interlocking quests and item progression of a typical zelda game. in its best moments it feels less like a bootleg zelda and more like a Condensed zelda, with many expected beats and experiences hit in a couple hours. obviously there are many well documented rough edges in the moment to moment play (which i again, intentionally aggravated for myself by playing without the qol improvements) but theres plenty of oozing charm to more then cover for it...not just in the cutscenes where every word no matter how insignificant is paired with a big expressive gesture, but the general fantasy vhs aesthetic (the backgrounds can be surprisingly lush, if problematic for platforming). theres a wonderfully likable heart to both the play and presentation that reveals why someone would earnestly want to make a spiritual successor, far more then any callous mocking appreciation for silly cutscenes