Honestly I really had no intention of doing a review because it's Zelda II. Even when originally wanting to play the FDS version. This wouldn't change my mind but I do wanna say that despite all the struggles the past decade never beating this game. I finally did it and I ended up playing the whole thing on the NES. Why? Well, honestly it's because I played a hack of the game that let's you play as Marisa from Touhou and for some reason that was enough for me.

This game still has flaws but it's fun and I'm glad I finally beat it. It's a shame the concept of a Zelda RPG has never happened. I'm on the boat of this is the only entry in the series that's actually an RPG but I'm sure that'll annoy some people, sorry. I hope one day the game gets a remake seeing as I've seen multiple people wanting to do so, I'd give it a try if they did.

An actually competent action-adventure marred by tedium and the odd asinine piece of "adventure-game-bullshit".
Once again, Zelda II is rather smooth sailing with only ingame hints until lategame. Wherein you have to "just know" that your hammer can clear these very specific unmarked forest tiles, one of which hides a village. Turns out the manual does actually mention this ability. Still obnoxious since every other hidden tile in forests so far has only required happening to walk over them.
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As it turns out it's even worse than I thought. You are completely blockaded from completing the game if you can't learn the Enigma spell in New Kasuto. Which you can't learn if you haven't scoured the entire map for Magic Containers. One of which I've missed because I've not been methodically walking over every single fucking tile in the game. It's one, ONE, tile in the labyrinth I never walked over. If you do not walk over this non-descript tile you cannot finish the game.
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Playtime is heavily padded out by mandating players perform a walk of shame back to each dungeon if they run out of lives. When Zelda II isn't pissing me off I found the moment to moment gameplay to be more engaging than that of its predecessor. If only there were an enhanced remake that refined the solid basegame into something less irritating.
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Believe it or not, being made to play through the same stretches of level over. and over. and over. and over. and over. and over. and over. and over. Is not fucking fun.

Yeah I can’t bring myself to finish this one.

Really, really loved the original Legend of Zelda when I played it a few years ago but this one doesn’t do anything for me. It took a few hours and one palace before I started getting into the groove of things, but it’s just so punishing and unforgiving that it really started to drag.

Kudos to anyone that can/has beat this without save states. I accepted death gracefully for a while but honestly the death mountain maze broke me. It’s like the least fun version of the lost woods maze ever conceived, the trial and error made all the more frustrating by the ridiculous combat.

For some reason, each enemy feels as though they’re conveniently one or two pixels out of Link’s reach – but Link is, somehow, ALWAYS one or two pixels within an enemy’s reach. No matter how many times I pushed forward it never felt like I could consistently hit some enemies. Couple that with the overwhelming amount of enemies on screen at any given time, and it becomes impossible to prioritize or react to enemy attacks unless you’re playing in the most methodical, boring way possible, or cheesing hardcore.

There’s like ten other reviews that put this into better words than I could.

I don’t think I’m coming back to this unfortunately. Genuinely unpleasant experience.

I was aware of Zelda II's reputation for being an odd duck going into this, but even that did not prepare me. This is a weird game. The leveling system is really strange. How combat is initiated in the overworld is kinda goofy. There's nothing really wrong with the side scrolling action, other than it being punishingly difficult. So it's really different from the first game, which is admirable since the spirit of the first one is still kinda in there.

What really knocks this down is how punishing it all is. Dying brings you back to the shrine at the start of the game, initiating a trek through the ENTIRE overworld to get back. And boy did I die a lot. It's brutal and got so tiring. Mele combat is clunky. Come to mention it, all the actions are rather clunky. It's just not all that fun to actually play.

I commend the game for trying many new things, and I'm aware aspects of it were kind of groundbreaking at the time. But the parts here do not gel into a whole, and there are some just plain bad ideas in the mix (the aforementioned leveling and backtracking, chief among them). This is one of those, glad I experienced it, but will never revisit kind of games. Going by how Nintendo pivoted the series from here, they seemed to feel the same.

Played on NES Classic.

I'm still not sure if I kinda like it or absolutely hate it. Zelda 2 has some really nice ideas, a consistent world map, okay dungeons, and is definitely much less cryptic than the first game even though I still believe it's impossible to complete without looking at least some stuff up. Combat and especially the magic system are good for the most part. Spells are fun to use and spice up the combat. I'm also happy it has an actual leveling system, it gives the sense of progression better than the first game does. That's about it for the nice stuff, the rest is pretty mixed. I want to love this game and I actually did for a decent chunk of my playtime. So why don't a lot of people like it? Because it just had to go and be laughably, absurdly, unbelievably, ridiculously annoying and unfair.
Enemies are definitely harder than the average Zelda game to begin with, and they're usually very unpredictable with their movement and attacks in a way that feels unfair rather than challenging. Especially some enemies in later dungeons I think are just not worth the XP. When they're in cramped corridors randomly jumping around throwing projectiles that kill in like 4 hits every second, using the jump spell and running past them hoping to take the least amount of damage is the best way to beat them. It also doesn't help when the game mixes platforming and combat in terrible ways, very often placing unpredictable enemies hopping around at the edges of platforms you're supposed to jump on. All of this leads to a game that feels really tiring at times, and you know what? I can deal with that. I kinda enjoyed the difficulty and chaos of this game, until I lost all my lives in the first palace and had to respawn for the first time.
Link starts the game with 3 lives in the main castle. Going out, you're met with the world map, you can traverse this map and get into random enemy encounters, enter caves, villages and palaces. Every time Link dies, you lose a life and start again in the same screen you died in. But when you run out of lives, (unless you were in the final palace) you respawn back in the main castle you started the game in. Doesn't matter if you were in a random encounter next to the castle, deep into a cave, fighting the boss of the fifth palace on the other side of the map, you are sent to the beginning. You have to go back out, fight through all the random encounters again, enter the palace again, go through all the stuff in the palace again to get like one or two more tries on the boss because you probably don't have three lives after all that. I just cannot comprehend why anyone thought this was okay. The first game already respawns you at the beginning of dungeons when Link dies, why is it the literal beginning of the game this time?
I have a rule of not using save states in these kind of games, this game is the only exception so far. I used save states a few times at the end of a palace to beat the boss. And honestly, I don't think I used them enough. I planned on saving at the beginning of every palace though that also doesn't solve the problem because obviously your progress is reverted when using them after exploring a palace, collecting keys, opening doors and whatnot. The game needs to have checkpoints at the beginning of every palace, maybe at random places on the world map in the form of campfires, and maybe even before the palace bosses. Save yourself the annoyance and just use savestates whenever you want.
That's about it. Zelda 2 is indeed one of the games of all time. It would be as good as, if not better, than the first game if it wasn't trying this hard to lengthen its playtime. I beat it in 20 hours and It did not deserve this much of my time.

I cannot express how good the Redux version is. If you like Zelda 2, or at least can see it's potential, try playing the hack because it is the definitive way to do so. It is actually pretty fun and do-able without save states, the good elements of the original version, suchs as towns, bosses, ambience and overall feeling of progress are top notch when the unfair parts are toned down. If the fanbase has scared you off in giving Zelda 2 a chance, ignore the OG NES version and find a way to play the mod.

I FOUND A
MIRROR
UNDER THE
TABLE.

This was the one game in the franchise that I was dreading coming back to. I got to the area just before the 2nd dungeon and genuinely just couldn't take anymore of it. I played this using the NES switch thing and eventually switched to the "SP" version which gives you most upgrades off the bat.

Due to me not finishing it I cant really talk about it in full detail but from what I played, the world design is horrific. I really did not like the top down world view especially with enemies popping out every 3 seconds and being impossible to dodge. Some enemies are designed really poorly, having to be frame perfect with attacks in order to do damage, also similarly to the first game, when Link has full health he shoots a sword beam, in this game it doesn't damage half the enemies so its totally pointless.

The impression that I got was that if you want to be appropriately levelled their would be a lot of back tracking and with a game as slow as this I just couldn't bring myself to keep at it.

I do have a couple positives. I really like the music, there is a decent diversity in tracks as supposed to the first game. Also you can see a lot of the framework that goes into the future games come around here with towns and villagers, i think a large issue for this game is it was too ambitious with the hardware it was on.

I may come back to it but I highly doubt it and if I do it will be out of pure spite just to finish it.

3/10 (Bad… for me)

It’s one thing to be a hard game and it’s another to be a poorly optimized game. Despite me finishing Zelda 1 in just 3 hours this took me 3 weeks to finish due to how boring, monotonous, and downright unplayable it is despite my runtime only being around 4 hours with the game. While I think the weapons and locations are pretty cool it’s the unfair difficulty that really makes me boil due to the fact it’s not hard because it’s hard, it’s hard because of the awkward placement of enemies because their attacks have a reasonable pattern and such but they’re placed in tight places making it more difficult than it should.
The NES Zelda games aren’t a good impression for me. My friend has told me that once we get to the SNES games it gets better and boy do I hope so.

I was surprised how much fun I had playing Zelda II. I'd heard a lot about how punishing and unforgiving it is - and that's true, but the game feels excellent to control. Link is responsive and mobile, and getting through a tough encounter with minimal damage makes you feel very slick indeed.

It's impressive how much you can achieve with just a d-pad and 2 buttons. Obviously, you have attack and jump. When link isn't attacking, he is blocking - either high or low depending on whether you're ducking. As the game progresses you also unlock the iconic down and up stabs from the Smash games - these expand your options greatly as there is a great deal of verticality in the movement.

The magic system also works well, although only 3 of them (shield, jump, life) see a lot of use. The rest are only really useful in specific situations (some of them only need to be used once). Jump is great, and even when not required can make difficult platforming sections much easier. It can throw off your combat timings, as well as using up precious magic, so it's an interesting trade-off!

Zelda II also has an excellent soundtrack, some of which will be familiar to many people. The dungeon theme in particular is incredible, but the whole score is very pleasant and catchy. Which makes the incessant beeping at low health in this game all the more torturous!

Now, don't get me wrong, the game can be very cruel, especially the lives/continue system. You get 3 lives, and after a game over you continue from the starting location of the game. It's not all that bad though, you keep your level (but lose all exp on your current level, which can be a lot in the late game) and any items you've picked up. It can be emotionally draining to respawn at Zelda's side. However, the world is very quick to navigate as you unlock new shortcuts throughout - so I don't think it's quite as severe as it feels.

Although Link gets stronger through the adventure, the enemies do also and appear in increasingly awkward situations. Still, by the endgame you can tank quite a lot of hits and restore your health somewhat frequently if you manage your magic meter well. Although I did struggle in places and get frustrated, in reality even with retries and a couple minutes of extra walking after a continue I was back in action fairly quickly. The game is still rather short by modern standards, so having to replay some sections a few times isn't all that big of a deal.

Zelda II is truly a worthy member of the Zelda lineage, and I think it gets a bit overlooked! Honestly I enjoyed this game more than the original, simply due to the feel of the movement and combat. The soundtrack will stick with me for a long time. Strongly recommended for those with the patience to put up with this game's minor annoyances!

First playthrough of the game is with the Redux which improves QoL aspects of the game. I dreaded playing this one for a while as I am traumatised by paying so much money for this as a kid and being stuck in the first 5 mins. But having a retro hand-held + hearing about this hack was a perfect time to revisit this. Zelda 2 is honestly not too bad for the first half at least. Everything is balanced just right and you feel more powerful as you collect new items and level up. It's the latter part of the game where the quality falls badly. Pretty much everything is coming at you and sometimes it's straight up unfair. I would definitely recommend using a map guide for this game. There's some value to playing this game however as a lot of the series' roots stem from this game. And it's cool seeing all the things established here that were referenced in the later games.

The second entries in a lot of series get a bit experimental, but usually they're not too big of a departure from what the first one does. I usually lump this game in with Super Mario Bros. 2 (USA) and Fire Emblem Gaiden since they're all NES games by Nintendo that do this. But Zelda 2's so different that I would not blame someone for outright saying it's not a Zelda game. The game design has a completely different foundation, what with it being developed by a near-completely fresh team save for three members (Miyamoto, Tezuka, and Nakago). So, players picking it up later on after playing a number of the other Zelda games (themselves much more uniform with each other) likely don't agree with its very unusual structure. But hey, it was rather popular when it initially came out. It apparently sold out in many stores across the US, and critics ate it up too; praising the unique action-RPG elements. Everyone was happy then I suppose. But now, flashforward some number of years, no more than 36, and no one is happy. Zelda 2 is spooky, and Death Mountain makes everyone wet their beds. But now that I've played through it twice thrice actually, it's a little addicting, I can say for sure that I have a lot of appreciation for this game.

Said "unusual structure" does refer to a handful of things. For one, while the game does use an overworld map, it switches to 2D platformer movement for enemy encounters, towns, palaces, and the like. Just about any time you need to act on something. It's a simple idea that I don't think has really been played with in the same way outside of one of Wayforward's Adventure Time games and a few others I'm forgetting. But, it's fun! Link also has movement mechanics that manage a nice balance of technicality and simplicity. Just like in his Smash Bros. appearances, he can block most projectiles with his shield simply by facing the direction of the attack; with the option to block low by crouching on top of that. His sword doesn't have the most range to it, but the timing for the animation always feels nice and snappy. Couple that with a midair downward and upward strike you can get later on, and I'd say that the mileage from Link's melee kit is surprisingly fleshed out. This is helped by a rather hefty number of enemies with distinct and intricate movement patterns, and often, a variety of strategies needed to approach defeating them. I seem to recall Shiggy Miyamoto referring to a methodology he had once in an old interview that describes a good hand-eye-coordination feeling between what you see on the screen and controller inputs that feel natural with them. This game is awesome at doing that.

There are eight town on the map, mostly filled with numerous NPCs to give hints, but also with residents to restore Link's life and magic. The handiest thing to keep in mind is that each town has a wise elder that will teach Link a spell. Some of the spells aren't a must, like Fire, which is mostly used to kill a few enemies, but most of them can help in a pinch or be useful with some prior planning. Shield and Life are more self-explanatory, but weirder ones like Fairy turn Link into one, and let him fly freely around the screen. It's required in some parts, but also lets you fly through locked doors. Not to mention that it gives some handy bacon-saving utility if you cast it right before falling into water or lava. I say a lot of the spells are nifty in this sense since skilled and careful play lets you be very economical with them. Understandably, like health, magic is limited and though grinding refill potions from enemies is doable, it's rather time-consuming.

The leveling system is also really cool. Link gets experience points for defeating enemies, and upon leveling up has the choice to either spend them on one of his stats, or holding off the upgrade to save up for the next tier. By the end of the game, you'll likely be maxed out on levels (after which any additional levels will give you an extra life), but it's nice to have the option of prioritizing health, magic, or attack power. Especially since the former two of those refill their respective meters; good in a pinch. The implementation of this system is also a nice improvement over the original Japanese version. There are a few small regional differences between the games overall, some more jarring than others. However, leveling up was completely revised. You're able to choose whichever stat to upgrade, although when you get a game over (yes, the game has lives like-a Mario), your stats are reset to whichever the least upgraded one was, rather than being permanent upgrades. For example, ATK-8, MAG-8, and LIFE-2 would become level 2 for everything. I find this takes a lot of the strategy away in favor of a riskier format with less payoff.

I think the biggest hurdle this game has in its design is with finding out what to do at times. Yes, the game does manage to fix a lot of the cryptic nature seen in the first by making progression much more linear. Many key items are required to make progress, for example. And yes, it does also confine clues dropped to the word of NPCs found across the eight towns on the map. Though, I do think some things are left slightly obtuse. It could be worse though; I found the mirror needed to get the Life spell by accident during exploration (didn't remember it being there), and I could very easily see that being something completely confounding another player. Biggest offender of this is the whereabouts of Bagu's house I would say. But yes, seeing as how you get tips for every required item, spell, and even several magic and heart containers, it's not bad at all. The only things that are fully unguided secrets are the Link dolls which act as single-use 1-UPs that don't respawn (leave them where they are until you go to the last palace!). So, given it is a nearly forty-year-old game, I'd say patience is needed. The same can be said for combat. Most encounters require you to stop and focus on the enemy. I think this is cool in a way, but at times when I'm trying to run somewhere quickly, it requires me to mentally shift gears. Especially the case with flying fish and the wolf heads, which are plain annoying.

This is not to also mention the difficulty, which is pretty high even if you know the location of everything. A big reason for this is due to the game sending you back to North Castle (the starting location) after getting a game over. The exception to this is the last dungeon, Great Palace, which is good at least. This is definitely a symptom of the era this game was made in, and arguably the biggest justification for any sort of remake. Though, if you were just able to start back up at the room you game over-ed in, it would make the game way too easy and short in my opinion. It would also encourage more brute-force approaches to overcoming its challenges instead of having to adopt strategies to better player skill and timing. So, at the very least, game overs probably should have let you restart from palaces when you die in them. Getting back to one isn't the hard part; it just becomes a hassle after dying enough times. But again, it's a product of its time. Besides that though, palaces are rather easy to traverse. I never got lost in any of them despite the tricks they threw. Their layouts are more like tree diagrams and rarely have crossing paths and cyclical routes. Just remember that there's always an item to find outside of fighting the palace guardian.

And though this game is very linear, I do think it still encourages a little bit of experimentation. You don't have to get every item (an interesting minimum percent challenge perhaps), and you certainly don't have to place a crystal in the palaces immediately after beating their bosses. In fact, the latter's a pretty good way of farming lives in the endgame, since using the crystals always gives you a free level up. One cool thing I didn't know until recently is that you can actually bring up the save menu without a game over by hitting Up+A on the 2P controller while in the start menu. Neat if you're trying to play this as vanilla as possible.

Despite some songs being better on the FDS/Japanese version with its funky wavetable synth, this game has a great score. I usually remember Akito Nakatsuka for his wonderful compositions in Sutte Hakkun, but the songs here are great as well. Not even including the classic Temple theme, all of the other songs are pretty memorable. The battle theme in this version is also an entirely different song from the original release and I prefer it. Moreover, the angle taken with the story is cool. Having a secret, sleeping Princess Zelda that was there during the events of the first game is interesting. And for what it's worth, it lent itself pretty well to being factored into the fictional timeline.

Moreover, this game's also unintentionally funny. Supposedly the Zelda 2 Redux mod retranslated the NPC text, but I'm not too sure I would want that. I do quite like them saying "I am much too busy to talk to a stranger," before moonwalking away. It's good. Personal favorites would likely be "You are a hero for saving my child.Come" and "With boots I could walk on the water." I also really love how the developer credits use pseudonyms, as was the case with the first game. Same goes for the "Thanks a million". They give a nice arcade game-y charm to the games you don't really get much from Nintendo.

But yes, while this game is sometimes antiquated, it's often filled with forward-thinking genius. A remake of this game could make it perfect, and reusing some of its gameplay features in later Zeldas would not be a bad idea. Zelda's a very puzzle-focused series, but it does lend itself well to more diverse combat potential. Though even without that, the legacy of this game is pretty pervasive, and I think that's pretty nice.

They really weren't lying when they said this game is difficult and sometimes tedious. The combat on paper is a pretty good concept such as high/low blocking and the different sword moves being introduced in this game. But once you fight enemies like Wizzrobes, Fokka, or Darknuts (Without getting used to the combat) you will absolutely get demolished.
The dungeons are pretty unique, but with the amount of invisible walls and holes is absurd, you'd think they would've learned considering the first game had lots of problems with invisible bomb-able walls.
Other than that, the level system is nowhere as bad as I thought it would be, but I found I prioritized increasing life way over magic due to how easy death can come in this game.
This game does have some legitimate pros and things I could enjoy seeing in a future Zelda game (Not happening) but the cons really overpower it, if you're good at this game. I just know you didn't get there without some measure of anger along the way.