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.