This is the second LoZ game I've completed after the NES original. I didn't like this one as much! I'd heard really good things but I actually prefer the original to this one. A lot more open-endedness and non-linearity. The sequence of events in Link's Awakening is very linear by default. Every item you get allows you to progress in each successive dungeon. Some people might like that constant upgrade drip feed, slowly building an arsenal of helpful tools and gadgets to solve more and more puzzles – I wasn't feeling it here.

For the first few hours I was really into it. The monochromatic, hazy Gameboy visuals really do contribute to the surreal, dreamlike feeling of playing the game, to great effect. The Overworld theme is legendary, genuinely surprised at the quality of music in a Gameboy game of all things.

There was a few dead ends, at first; then, even as I started to make progress through some dungeons, I started running into more and more dead ends. More and more areas where progress would be halted by items I didn't have yet (hundreds of textboxes worth of "come back when you find this item, idiot"). This wasn't annoying until I'd walk into a dungeon or something only to learn that I needed another item that I didn't have yet. Don't even get me started on the trading sequence. It's relatively inoffensive if you complete it in the right order, but if you don't, you're kinda left traveling across the world map to figure out who needs what and where and it was very tedious.

Probably not a terrible experience if you're playing with a walkthrough pulled up, but like, where's the fun in that?

I spent weeks, sometimes months, where I wouldn't pick this game up, and by the time I'd get back to it, the whole island was completely foreign to me again. There's a map that helps sometimes, and Ulrira's hints do give you some direction as the story continues, but...

For me, and what I believe is the main problem, is that Link's Awakening doesn't play like a Gameboy game, for better or for worse. It's not a pick-up-and-play experience. It's a long, sprawling adventure across an island! This one took me forever. By the time I was finished, I was more than ready to put it down.

There are a hundred little gripes I have with this game. Gripes like, for instance, how many times I softlocked myself by picking up an object too fast (playing this on the original Gameboy, I expected some amount of glitches but this was always so annoying); the bow and arrow becoming useless as soon as you get boomerang; there's a boss that sends you back to the start of the dungeon when he hits you once (!!!); and a hundred even more granular little gripes that are neither here nor there but, at the end of the day, man, I guess this just wasn't for me.

I liked this one feeling more compacted in comparison to Link to the Past still had lots of depth to it and the story it had from the few lines and little cutscene is cute and compelling. I liked how this one has Mario and to an extent Kirby's enemies and had similar functionality in the gameplay like jumping on Goombas to get hearts like hey that's pretty neat also new power-ups and items were cool the roc feather was great, my boy Link got hops now. In conclusion, the Ballad of the Wing Fish song is goated.