It's hard to fully appreciate what the Oracle games are doing until you've played both of them in a linked game. Whilst each exists as its own entity in many ways with very different focal points in terms of level design, they are also simultaneously separate halves of a larger whole. I played Oracle of Ages second meaning this was the game where I finally met and rescued Zelda after having only heard her name in Oracle of Seasons, this was the game that both continued the story and got an actual climax associated with it, and a ton of characters would refer back to happenings in the previous game also. It's not a perfect system, the notion of having to note down a code, boot up the previous game and go exploring to reap the rewards of the interlinked nature of these seemed laborious enough to me that I just couldn't really be bothered, but it is both very cute and oddly ambitious in its own way, both the final swan song for the Game Boy Color and a dramatic evolution upon what Pokémon Red and Blue had been attempting five years earlier.
I will say that playing through a second game of this made me realise how much a lot of the secondary systems and such in this duology just don't really click with me. Gasha seeds get planted in suitably obscure locations that it's easy to forget to ever go check on them, I had little motivation to ever really experiment with rings, and the aforementioned code entry system whilst very cool in context of when this game existed is sadly archaic enough that I never actually used it outside of the initial linking of Oracle of Ages to my completed Oracle of Seasons playthrough.
This is definitely a part of where Ages stumbles for me more so than Seasons, as whilst Seasons had a very clear focus on streamlined, fun dungeon-based gameplay, Ages makes you spend an awful lot more time doing everything else in-between them and that content, whilst charming, would often fall flat. The low-points in that regard for me were the Crescent Island, which lands halfway between a trading quest and a scavenger hunt, and the Goron minigame village which locks the next dungeon behind not only a fully fledged trading quest but also the worst minigame in either Seasons game, a deeply frustrating rhythm game that costs heaps of rupees to attempt and repeatedly fail.
That all said, Oracle of Ages is very much more of the same and a pretty good time overall. The dungeon design is largely really engaging and fun, the item set is a touch worse than Seasons but the Switch Hook is still among the better Zelda items out there (though the Mermaid Tail is among the all-time worst Zelda items for making your movement feel actively worse from the moment you get it), and honestly the bosses might actually be better here than in Seasons as the increased focus on puzzles in Oracle of Ages allows for some really creative boss designs (but, just like with Oracle of Seasons, the final boss here felt excessively challenging compared to the rest of the game). Not the best Zelda game, but a perfectly solid entry.
I will say that playing through a second game of this made me realise how much a lot of the secondary systems and such in this duology just don't really click with me. Gasha seeds get planted in suitably obscure locations that it's easy to forget to ever go check on them, I had little motivation to ever really experiment with rings, and the aforementioned code entry system whilst very cool in context of when this game existed is sadly archaic enough that I never actually used it outside of the initial linking of Oracle of Ages to my completed Oracle of Seasons playthrough.
This is definitely a part of where Ages stumbles for me more so than Seasons, as whilst Seasons had a very clear focus on streamlined, fun dungeon-based gameplay, Ages makes you spend an awful lot more time doing everything else in-between them and that content, whilst charming, would often fall flat. The low-points in that regard for me were the Crescent Island, which lands halfway between a trading quest and a scavenger hunt, and the Goron minigame village which locks the next dungeon behind not only a fully fledged trading quest but also the worst minigame in either Seasons game, a deeply frustrating rhythm game that costs heaps of rupees to attempt and repeatedly fail.
That all said, Oracle of Ages is very much more of the same and a pretty good time overall. The dungeon design is largely really engaging and fun, the item set is a touch worse than Seasons but the Switch Hook is still among the better Zelda items out there (though the Mermaid Tail is among the all-time worst Zelda items for making your movement feel actively worse from the moment you get it), and honestly the bosses might actually be better here than in Seasons as the increased focus on puzzles in Oracle of Ages allows for some really creative boss designs (but, just like with Oracle of Seasons, the final boss here felt excessively challenging compared to the rest of the game). Not the best Zelda game, but a perfectly solid entry.