‘Surely you must be some noble maiden.’
Played with BertKnot, in preparation for our Zelda Marathon podcast.
Capcom's The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords is a title caught in a peculiar situation: it is located between the development of the Oracle games (2001) and that of The Minish Cap (2004). So much so that efforts on the latter had to be suspended to free up resources on Four Swords – and the porting of A Link to the Past (1991), contained in the same cartridge. This state of affairs let the game feel like the addition of a still immature multiplayer concept for the GBA version, under the pretext of using the Link Cable. This is certainly the reason why some thematics and objects are shared between Four Swords and The Minish Cap, as Hidemaro Fujibayashi was working on both games' designs simultaneously. The result is a disparate gathering of elements, which struggle to find a general coherence: if the Zelda games have always been carried by pairs of antagonistic concepts (Light/Chaos, Past/Future), Four Swords, in that it blends cooperation and competition, never really manages to shine in one or the other.
Players embody reflections of Link, created from the Four Sword, in which Vaati was imprisoned. Vaati captures Princess Zelda and the various Link shards must then go to her rescue. To do so, they have to successfully collect three Silver Keys, which unlock the final dungeon, where Vaati is hiding. Each dungeon is a mostly linear succession of puzzles, with no interconnection between them. To progress, players need to reach a pressure plate on which everyone must stand, or obtain a Small Key from the room's challenge. This unusually linear progression hardly emphasises cooperation. The most players have to do is to pull two levers at the same time or throw their partner over a chasm. While it is possible to switch items, there is no reason to have an eclectic combination – one player keeping a bow and the other taking the Roc's Cape, for example. Given that the game can be played with two or four players, it might have been too difficult to create organic challenges, requiring emergent methods of solving. Only the mechanics around colours allow some freedom, but are still disappointingly unpolished.
With little cooperation allowed, competition prevails. Throughout the rooms, players can accumulate astronomical quantities of rubies. These are used to pay for a player's resurrection or to rank players at the end of a dungeon. Thus, the title creates a pseudo-incentive to play aggressively to collect as many Rupees as possible. This would not be a concern if the game were not, at its core, a cooperative adventure. Since there's no point in pushing one's partner around, the ranking is meaningless, a sort of award for being luckier than one's companion. Halfway between the two concepts, the title doesn't know where to stand: when one player sets out to solve a bonus room, filled only with Rupees, the other just has to watch them without doing anything. This asynchrony in the progression completely breaks the rhythm of the adventure, although it is still brief enough to allow fatigue to set in. While there are three variants for every dungeon, it takes just over an hour to complete the game in a straightforward fashion.
Beyond these elements, Four Swords displays the iconic grammar of Zelda games, yet without understanding its construction. The game provides items, but makes no effort to highlight them. The Gnat Hat is present, but it's more of a cameo prefiguration to The Minish Cap, as it is barely used. The Bow, the Bombs or the Boomerang remain too gimmicky and disjointed from any exploration to seem really useful. Moreover, some parts of the game don't really work with the gameplay of a 2D Zelda. The Rupees-giving bumpers cause unpleasant chaos, while the combat action is very weak, especially when it involves striking back an orb of one's own colour: the poor readability of the GBA screen prevents players from being effective. It's a real communication failure that permeates Four Swords, the game being bound to explain through text bubbles how each boss must be fought, since the visual design is insufficient to guide organically towards the solution.
Admittedly, the game has some rather cute ideas and some of the animations are joyfully playful, with a very endearing cartoon touch. But they still clash with the reality of the gameplay, which doesn't quite mesh with them. Having the screen go black when a player throws a pot at another's head is amusing, but does very little for the game. Similarly, when a Link catches fire, he runs very quickly, but the stunlock lasts far too long. These missteps illustrate the general lack of care and remind that Four Swords was only a minor addition to a cartridge that already contained A Link to the Past. If the dream of a multiplayer Zelda was a rich idea, Capcom's execution here is a disappointment. At best, the game is a forgettable title; at worst, it points to the structural issues of transposing an inherently single-player experience to a multiplayer environment, without a radical change to the gameplay philosophy.
Played with BertKnot, in preparation for our Zelda Marathon podcast.
Capcom's The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords is a title caught in a peculiar situation: it is located between the development of the Oracle games (2001) and that of The Minish Cap (2004). So much so that efforts on the latter had to be suspended to free up resources on Four Swords – and the porting of A Link to the Past (1991), contained in the same cartridge. This state of affairs let the game feel like the addition of a still immature multiplayer concept for the GBA version, under the pretext of using the Link Cable. This is certainly the reason why some thematics and objects are shared between Four Swords and The Minish Cap, as Hidemaro Fujibayashi was working on both games' designs simultaneously. The result is a disparate gathering of elements, which struggle to find a general coherence: if the Zelda games have always been carried by pairs of antagonistic concepts (Light/Chaos, Past/Future), Four Swords, in that it blends cooperation and competition, never really manages to shine in one or the other.
Players embody reflections of Link, created from the Four Sword, in which Vaati was imprisoned. Vaati captures Princess Zelda and the various Link shards must then go to her rescue. To do so, they have to successfully collect three Silver Keys, which unlock the final dungeon, where Vaati is hiding. Each dungeon is a mostly linear succession of puzzles, with no interconnection between them. To progress, players need to reach a pressure plate on which everyone must stand, or obtain a Small Key from the room's challenge. This unusually linear progression hardly emphasises cooperation. The most players have to do is to pull two levers at the same time or throw their partner over a chasm. While it is possible to switch items, there is no reason to have an eclectic combination – one player keeping a bow and the other taking the Roc's Cape, for example. Given that the game can be played with two or four players, it might have been too difficult to create organic challenges, requiring emergent methods of solving. Only the mechanics around colours allow some freedom, but are still disappointingly unpolished.
With little cooperation allowed, competition prevails. Throughout the rooms, players can accumulate astronomical quantities of rubies. These are used to pay for a player's resurrection or to rank players at the end of a dungeon. Thus, the title creates a pseudo-incentive to play aggressively to collect as many Rupees as possible. This would not be a concern if the game were not, at its core, a cooperative adventure. Since there's no point in pushing one's partner around, the ranking is meaningless, a sort of award for being luckier than one's companion. Halfway between the two concepts, the title doesn't know where to stand: when one player sets out to solve a bonus room, filled only with Rupees, the other just has to watch them without doing anything. This asynchrony in the progression completely breaks the rhythm of the adventure, although it is still brief enough to allow fatigue to set in. While there are three variants for every dungeon, it takes just over an hour to complete the game in a straightforward fashion.
Beyond these elements, Four Swords displays the iconic grammar of Zelda games, yet without understanding its construction. The game provides items, but makes no effort to highlight them. The Gnat Hat is present, but it's more of a cameo prefiguration to The Minish Cap, as it is barely used. The Bow, the Bombs or the Boomerang remain too gimmicky and disjointed from any exploration to seem really useful. Moreover, some parts of the game don't really work with the gameplay of a 2D Zelda. The Rupees-giving bumpers cause unpleasant chaos, while the combat action is very weak, especially when it involves striking back an orb of one's own colour: the poor readability of the GBA screen prevents players from being effective. It's a real communication failure that permeates Four Swords, the game being bound to explain through text bubbles how each boss must be fought, since the visual design is insufficient to guide organically towards the solution.
Admittedly, the game has some rather cute ideas and some of the animations are joyfully playful, with a very endearing cartoon touch. But they still clash with the reality of the gameplay, which doesn't quite mesh with them. Having the screen go black when a player throws a pot at another's head is amusing, but does very little for the game. Similarly, when a Link catches fire, he runs very quickly, but the stunlock lasts far too long. These missteps illustrate the general lack of care and remind that Four Swords was only a minor addition to a cartridge that already contained A Link to the Past. If the dream of a multiplayer Zelda was a rich idea, Capcom's execution here is a disappointment. At best, the game is a forgettable title; at worst, it points to the structural issues of transposing an inherently single-player experience to a multiplayer environment, without a radical change to the gameplay philosophy.