This is a continuation of “The Great Zelda Binge”, a series where I review all of the mainline single player games in the Zelda series. My friends Quent, Reyn, Steinco, and Luna are all taking part in their own Zelda review marathons, and it’d be great if you’d be willing to check them out and support them as well.
Zelda II has always been considered the black sheep of the mainline games, to the point where even Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the Legend of Zelda series amongst other famous Nintendo IPs, considers it to be “sort of a failure” and the closest thing to a bad game that he feels he has made. It’s easy to see why this game is not held in high regard, both amongst fans of the series, and in general. Zelda II plays almost completely differently from both the original as well as every other game in the series. It’s still an exploration-based action adventure game, but there’s more of a focus on action. The game also heavily utilizes a sidescrolling perspective during combat, as well as while exploring towns occupied by NPCs and Palaces, the game’s equivalent to the Labyrinths from the original Zelda. The top down perspective is still there, but only used when traversing the overworld. While I think that Zelda II’s core ideas are solid, the entire experience is greatly hindered by poor physics, frustrating level and enemy design, progression that’s even more cryptic than its predecessor, and the technical limitations of the NES. Playing through this game even while using a guide and an emulator was a burdensome chore, and it is genuinely one of the worst games I’ve ever played to completion.
A few years have passed since Link: the Hero of Hyrule, defeated the Prince of Darkness: Ganon, and rescued Zelda: Hyrule’s Beloved Princess. One day, a marking that resembled a Triforce, one of the mystical golden triangles blessed with magic power by the gods, appeared on the back of Link’s hand. After showing Zelda’s attendant Impa the marking, Impa takes Link to the North Castle and reveals to him Princess Zelda lying in a comatose state. She explains to Link that alongside the Triforces of Wisdom and Power, there was a secret third piece: the Triforce of Courage. Years ago, the King of Hyrule had hidden it away in the Great Palace, in order to keep it out of the hands of anyone with evil intent. After the King’s death, his son, Princess Zelda’s brother, searched for the missing Triforce, but its location was only told to the Princess. Angered by this, the Prince sought the power of a Magician to force its location out of Zelda, and when she refused, the Magician cast a spell on her that put her into an unwakeable sleep, which also caused the Magician to die on the spot. Impa tells Link that the only way to break the Magician’s spell is to retrieve the Triforce of Courage and unite it with the other Triforces. However, the Great Palace is protected by a magical seal, and before Link can enter it, he needs to place six crystals given to him by Impa inside of statues in six other palaces that can be found throughout Hyrule. Link sets off on a new journey to once again rescue the Princess. Meanwhile, the forces of Ganon, still loyal to their fallen master, have begun to rise up from the Underworld once again. They believe that killing Link and spilling his blood on their master’s ashes will resurrect him, and so Ganon’s loyal army sets out to track Link down and use him to revive the fallen Prince of Darkness.
Despite being a numbered sequel, Zelda II was not initially conceived as a sequel to the original Legend of Zelda. It’s existence sprouted from an idea Shigeru Miyamoto had for creating “a side-scrolling action game that made use of up and down movements for attacks and defense”. It retains a similar structure to the original, but its approach towards pretty much every aspect of its gameplay is radically different. I would describe the game as a cross between a classic turn-based JRPG and a Metroidvania. There is still an overworld that you traverse through in a top-down perspective, but the overworld is a lot more zoomed out than before. It now resembles an overworld from the original Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy titles that were also released on the NES. Enemy encounters are similar to a random encounter in a JRPG. As you make your way through the overworld, there are two different sprites of monsters that indicate an easy or difficult battle that will randomly appear and start zig zagging across the overworld towards your location. Once one of these monster sprites touches you, you’ll be taken to an “action scene”, where the game will transition to the sidescrolling view, and you’ll be forced to either engage in combat with the monsters or avoid them by exiting either the left or right side of the screen. You will also shift to the sidescrolling perspective in the various towns you can visit. Like those in a JRPG, they’re generally a safe location you can visit and speak to NPCs in, as well as recover lost health and other resources. Finally, there’s the Palaces, which are the aforementioned equivalent to the Labyrinths from Zelda 1 and the dungeons across the rest of the series, and is also played through in the sidescrolling perspective.
Whenever the game transitions to the sidescrolling view is where the Metroidvania comparisons come in. This sidescrolling view is what makes Zelda II so different from every other game in the series. You have 2D combat that’s similar to that of a Castlevania title, in addition to the Palaces, which are structured like mini Metroidvania maps. They have unique platforming challenges and require certain abilities, such as the magic spells Link can learn over the course of the game, as well as specific items Link can find in order to progress in them. Over the course of the game, you’ll be transitioning back and forth between the top-down and sidescrolling perspectives, traveling all across Hyrule, battling monsters and stopping at towns along the way during your quest to find the six Palaces. Once they’ve been completed, you can then enter the Great Palace, the final area of the game, and the last challenge you need to clear before you’re deemed worthy of the Triforce of Courage.
I won’t sugarcoat it. Combat in this game is awful. Conceptually, it’s easy to understand. Link can attack and defend from either a high or low position, and you transition to the low stance by simply holding down on d-pad. You need to attack depending on the size or position of the enemy. The core controls and concept for combat aren’t bad, in fact I’d even go so far as to say that they’re great. What makes combat as bad as it is are three primary issues. The first issue is the range of Link’s sword. It’s smaller than it looks, and requires you to get extremely close to an enemy in order to damage it. I have seen the tip of Link’s sword go through enemies countless times without damaging them over the course of my playthrough, and it was upsetting every single time. The second issue is the game’s physics. Link feels really slippery to control. After jumping, if you’re still holding left or right on the d-pad, Link will slide forward a little bit when he lands, which can lead to you accidentally colliding with the enemy and taking damage. It’s difficult to keep this from happening since you need to get really close to an enemy in order to hit it with Link’s sword (this is why the Belmonts use whips). Both of these problems tie into what I believe to be the biggest issue with combat: how the enemies are designed. There are a lot of enemies that sporadically move relative to how you move. Depending on the layout of the area you're in, as well as if there are other enemies or hazards on screen, it’s difficult to even get close enough to attack them.
The absolute best examples of this are the Iron Knuckles. I think the Iron Knuckles have got to be one of the most aggravating enemies I’ve ever had to deal with in a video game, primarily because neither the game nor the (poorly translated) instruction booklet properly explains how to deal with them! They’re armored knights that will constantly move towards or away from Link, and they will automatically block all of Link’s attacks no matter whether it’s high or low. The best way to deal with them is to jump towards them and then swing your sword when you’re at the apex of your jump. When Link lands after jumping towards them, they’ll always block low before switching back to high, so you can exploit this and consistently damage them this way. Again though, the game doesn’t explain this! And neither does the instruction booklet! I had to look this up myself! Once you learn this method of beating them, they’re not nearly as bad as before, but there will be times when you encounter an Iron Knuckle in a narrow corridor that doesn’t leave you much room to jump in, and it’s when you encounter them here that combat was at its most… infuriating, and that’s putting it lightly. Especially when it comes to the Blue Iron Knuckles, which shoot beams of light at you whenever they swing their sword. You can try manipulating their movement pattern and getting them to follow you into a more open area, but the Blue Iron Knuckles in particular tend to back away from Link more frequently, so trying to do this almost never works out. It ultimately just leads to these frustrating as hell scrambles where I’m constantly abusing the rewind feature of the emulator trying to get into a position where I can actually land blows on them. I don’t get angry at video games very often these days, and these things have made me the most angry I’ve felt in recent memory.
Towns are a very important element of the game. There’s a lot of emphasis on them, and they definitely seem like they’re held back by the game’s hardware. The townspeople don’t really feel like real people, as they only speak in simple (and a lot of times, cryptic) phrases, with dialog boxes that can take a little bit to fully appear on screen, which I’m sure is a result of the NES' hardware limitations. There will almost always be an NPC in a town that can restore your life and magic gauges, and each town contains a wise man that will teach Link one of the magic spells he can use during combat and in the Palaces. The spells that they provide are all required in order to either progress or survive in the Palaces.
The instruction booklet does explain that the wise men exist, but it doesn’t specify that you need to do specific things in order to meet with the wise man in each town. These can range from simply walking into an open house, to speaking with a specific NPC in a specific part of town, to finding an item in the overworld and bringing it to another NPC. This is where you can run into problems with the game’s progression, as you’ll have to talk to almost every NPC in town in order to even get a vague clue about what you’re supposed to do so that you can speak with the wise man. I also don’t think that the instruction booklet places enough emphasis on the importance of the wise men either. There are also two swordsmen Link can find in specific towns that teach him the upward and downward thrusts, which you perform by holding up or down when you jump during combat. Funnily enough, the instruction booklet DOES place emphasis on them by giving them their own textbox with a red background that specifically says “There are swordsmen hidden in some towns. Learn the jump thrust and the downward thrust from those swordsmen. There are places you can’t go if you don’t.”. Even a message like that is still a little vague, but it’s better than nothing, and I think they should’ve done something like that for the wise men to really emphasize the fact that you need to find them.
I actually kind of enjoyed the Palaces to a small extent. I liked picking out the specific spells I needed to use in order to progress through them, as well as debating when to use them and when to conserve my magic. I liked some of the platforming challenges they had as well. Overall, I found them to be a bit easier to explore compared to the Labyrinths in the first game, but some of them still have some silly bullshit that can impede your progress. There are specific pits that you need to jump into that resemble ones that you would lose a life falling down in, as well as fake walls that you need to walk through, and you have no way of knowing they are there without using a guide.
Palaces are also where the game is at its most enemy and combat heavy, and I’ve already talked about how awful that is. The game’s most frustrating enemies typically appear in Palaces, like the aforementioned Iron Knuckles, but there’s also the Wizards and the Magos that will randomly teleport all over the screen shooting projectiles at you. Since you have no way of knowing where they’ll teleport to, it’s easier to just block their attacks and avoid them as opposed to trying to actually fight them head on. The Doomknockers who throw maces at you, only the maces are actually boomerangs that circle around to hit you from behind after they’re thrown (which is as crazy and stupid as it sounds). Fire Moas, who drop fire from above while you’re fighting other enemies, and are almost always out of reach. The list goes on and on, man.
It’s presentation is a marginal step up from Zelda 1 at the very least. Environments, characters, and enemies all have a lot more illustrated detail to them. I especially liked the look of the Palaces in particular, as they all give off the vibe of unwelcoming ancient ruins that are no home to trespassers. The music for the game was composed by Akito Nakatsuka instead of Koji Kondo, and it’s… okay. The themes for the overworld and towns are honestly quite meh and forgettable. The battle theme is pretty decent, but by the end of the game, I got sick of hearing it. I initially liked the Palace theme, in part because I love the rendition that’s used in Super Smash Bros, but the more I played the game, the more I began to associate the theme with pain and frustration, so I eventually got sick of it too.
I hate this game. I really do. After playing and reviewing it for this retrospective, I never want to play it again. That being said though, despite all of my hate for it… I don’t think its core design is bad at all. In fact, I think that a game made in the vein of Zelda II on modern hardware that learns from Zelda II’s mistakes could actually work out really well. The closest thing I’ve seen are the towns in Shovel Knight, which were clearly inspired by the ones here in Zelda II, but I’d like to see an entire game dedicated to being a spiritual successor to Zelda II. One that has towns with NPCs that feel more lively and have better dialog, with exploration that’s far less cryptic, with a sword or weapon that can actually reach enemies, with physics that aren’t so slippery, and with enemies that weren’t designed for the sole purpose of reducing your irl life expectancy. If an indie developer out there is willing to take a crack at making a modern game inspired by Zelda II that fixes all of its problems, much like how Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore was inspired by the CDi Zelda games, I genuinely think I’d love to play that one day.
As it stands though, Zelda II is one of the worst and most painful games I've ever played. If I wasn't using an emulator, I never would’ve finished this game. Upon finishing it, I felt no sense of triumph or satisfaction. All I felt was relief, like a great burden had finally been lifted from my shoulders. You might think I’m being comedically hyperbolic for the sake of giving this overall negative review some levity, but I genuinely sleep better at night knowing that for the rest of my life, I will never, ever have to play Zelda II again.
Zelda II has always been considered the black sheep of the mainline games, to the point where even Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the Legend of Zelda series amongst other famous Nintendo IPs, considers it to be “sort of a failure” and the closest thing to a bad game that he feels he has made. It’s easy to see why this game is not held in high regard, both amongst fans of the series, and in general. Zelda II plays almost completely differently from both the original as well as every other game in the series. It’s still an exploration-based action adventure game, but there’s more of a focus on action. The game also heavily utilizes a sidescrolling perspective during combat, as well as while exploring towns occupied by NPCs and Palaces, the game’s equivalent to the Labyrinths from the original Zelda. The top down perspective is still there, but only used when traversing the overworld. While I think that Zelda II’s core ideas are solid, the entire experience is greatly hindered by poor physics, frustrating level and enemy design, progression that’s even more cryptic than its predecessor, and the technical limitations of the NES. Playing through this game even while using a guide and an emulator was a burdensome chore, and it is genuinely one of the worst games I’ve ever played to completion.
A few years have passed since Link: the Hero of Hyrule, defeated the Prince of Darkness: Ganon, and rescued Zelda: Hyrule’s Beloved Princess. One day, a marking that resembled a Triforce, one of the mystical golden triangles blessed with magic power by the gods, appeared on the back of Link’s hand. After showing Zelda’s attendant Impa the marking, Impa takes Link to the North Castle and reveals to him Princess Zelda lying in a comatose state. She explains to Link that alongside the Triforces of Wisdom and Power, there was a secret third piece: the Triforce of Courage. Years ago, the King of Hyrule had hidden it away in the Great Palace, in order to keep it out of the hands of anyone with evil intent. After the King’s death, his son, Princess Zelda’s brother, searched for the missing Triforce, but its location was only told to the Princess. Angered by this, the Prince sought the power of a Magician to force its location out of Zelda, and when she refused, the Magician cast a spell on her that put her into an unwakeable sleep, which also caused the Magician to die on the spot. Impa tells Link that the only way to break the Magician’s spell is to retrieve the Triforce of Courage and unite it with the other Triforces. However, the Great Palace is protected by a magical seal, and before Link can enter it, he needs to place six crystals given to him by Impa inside of statues in six other palaces that can be found throughout Hyrule. Link sets off on a new journey to once again rescue the Princess. Meanwhile, the forces of Ganon, still loyal to their fallen master, have begun to rise up from the Underworld once again. They believe that killing Link and spilling his blood on their master’s ashes will resurrect him, and so Ganon’s loyal army sets out to track Link down and use him to revive the fallen Prince of Darkness.
Despite being a numbered sequel, Zelda II was not initially conceived as a sequel to the original Legend of Zelda. It’s existence sprouted from an idea Shigeru Miyamoto had for creating “a side-scrolling action game that made use of up and down movements for attacks and defense”. It retains a similar structure to the original, but its approach towards pretty much every aspect of its gameplay is radically different. I would describe the game as a cross between a classic turn-based JRPG and a Metroidvania. There is still an overworld that you traverse through in a top-down perspective, but the overworld is a lot more zoomed out than before. It now resembles an overworld from the original Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy titles that were also released on the NES. Enemy encounters are similar to a random encounter in a JRPG. As you make your way through the overworld, there are two different sprites of monsters that indicate an easy or difficult battle that will randomly appear and start zig zagging across the overworld towards your location. Once one of these monster sprites touches you, you’ll be taken to an “action scene”, where the game will transition to the sidescrolling view, and you’ll be forced to either engage in combat with the monsters or avoid them by exiting either the left or right side of the screen. You will also shift to the sidescrolling perspective in the various towns you can visit. Like those in a JRPG, they’re generally a safe location you can visit and speak to NPCs in, as well as recover lost health and other resources. Finally, there’s the Palaces, which are the aforementioned equivalent to the Labyrinths from Zelda 1 and the dungeons across the rest of the series, and is also played through in the sidescrolling perspective.
Whenever the game transitions to the sidescrolling view is where the Metroidvania comparisons come in. This sidescrolling view is what makes Zelda II so different from every other game in the series. You have 2D combat that’s similar to that of a Castlevania title, in addition to the Palaces, which are structured like mini Metroidvania maps. They have unique platforming challenges and require certain abilities, such as the magic spells Link can learn over the course of the game, as well as specific items Link can find in order to progress in them. Over the course of the game, you’ll be transitioning back and forth between the top-down and sidescrolling perspectives, traveling all across Hyrule, battling monsters and stopping at towns along the way during your quest to find the six Palaces. Once they’ve been completed, you can then enter the Great Palace, the final area of the game, and the last challenge you need to clear before you’re deemed worthy of the Triforce of Courage.
I won’t sugarcoat it. Combat in this game is awful. Conceptually, it’s easy to understand. Link can attack and defend from either a high or low position, and you transition to the low stance by simply holding down on d-pad. You need to attack depending on the size or position of the enemy. The core controls and concept for combat aren’t bad, in fact I’d even go so far as to say that they’re great. What makes combat as bad as it is are three primary issues. The first issue is the range of Link’s sword. It’s smaller than it looks, and requires you to get extremely close to an enemy in order to damage it. I have seen the tip of Link’s sword go through enemies countless times without damaging them over the course of my playthrough, and it was upsetting every single time. The second issue is the game’s physics. Link feels really slippery to control. After jumping, if you’re still holding left or right on the d-pad, Link will slide forward a little bit when he lands, which can lead to you accidentally colliding with the enemy and taking damage. It’s difficult to keep this from happening since you need to get really close to an enemy in order to hit it with Link’s sword (this is why the Belmonts use whips). Both of these problems tie into what I believe to be the biggest issue with combat: how the enemies are designed. There are a lot of enemies that sporadically move relative to how you move. Depending on the layout of the area you're in, as well as if there are other enemies or hazards on screen, it’s difficult to even get close enough to attack them.
The absolute best examples of this are the Iron Knuckles. I think the Iron Knuckles have got to be one of the most aggravating enemies I’ve ever had to deal with in a video game, primarily because neither the game nor the (poorly translated) instruction booklet properly explains how to deal with them! They’re armored knights that will constantly move towards or away from Link, and they will automatically block all of Link’s attacks no matter whether it’s high or low. The best way to deal with them is to jump towards them and then swing your sword when you’re at the apex of your jump. When Link lands after jumping towards them, they’ll always block low before switching back to high, so you can exploit this and consistently damage them this way. Again though, the game doesn’t explain this! And neither does the instruction booklet! I had to look this up myself! Once you learn this method of beating them, they’re not nearly as bad as before, but there will be times when you encounter an Iron Knuckle in a narrow corridor that doesn’t leave you much room to jump in, and it’s when you encounter them here that combat was at its most… infuriating, and that’s putting it lightly. Especially when it comes to the Blue Iron Knuckles, which shoot beams of light at you whenever they swing their sword. You can try manipulating their movement pattern and getting them to follow you into a more open area, but the Blue Iron Knuckles in particular tend to back away from Link more frequently, so trying to do this almost never works out. It ultimately just leads to these frustrating as hell scrambles where I’m constantly abusing the rewind feature of the emulator trying to get into a position where I can actually land blows on them. I don’t get angry at video games very often these days, and these things have made me the most angry I’ve felt in recent memory.
Towns are a very important element of the game. There’s a lot of emphasis on them, and they definitely seem like they’re held back by the game’s hardware. The townspeople don’t really feel like real people, as they only speak in simple (and a lot of times, cryptic) phrases, with dialog boxes that can take a little bit to fully appear on screen, which I’m sure is a result of the NES' hardware limitations. There will almost always be an NPC in a town that can restore your life and magic gauges, and each town contains a wise man that will teach Link one of the magic spells he can use during combat and in the Palaces. The spells that they provide are all required in order to either progress or survive in the Palaces.
The instruction booklet does explain that the wise men exist, but it doesn’t specify that you need to do specific things in order to meet with the wise man in each town. These can range from simply walking into an open house, to speaking with a specific NPC in a specific part of town, to finding an item in the overworld and bringing it to another NPC. This is where you can run into problems with the game’s progression, as you’ll have to talk to almost every NPC in town in order to even get a vague clue about what you’re supposed to do so that you can speak with the wise man. I also don’t think that the instruction booklet places enough emphasis on the importance of the wise men either. There are also two swordsmen Link can find in specific towns that teach him the upward and downward thrusts, which you perform by holding up or down when you jump during combat. Funnily enough, the instruction booklet DOES place emphasis on them by giving them their own textbox with a red background that specifically says “There are swordsmen hidden in some towns. Learn the jump thrust and the downward thrust from those swordsmen. There are places you can’t go if you don’t.”. Even a message like that is still a little vague, but it’s better than nothing, and I think they should’ve done something like that for the wise men to really emphasize the fact that you need to find them.
I actually kind of enjoyed the Palaces to a small extent. I liked picking out the specific spells I needed to use in order to progress through them, as well as debating when to use them and when to conserve my magic. I liked some of the platforming challenges they had as well. Overall, I found them to be a bit easier to explore compared to the Labyrinths in the first game, but some of them still have some silly bullshit that can impede your progress. There are specific pits that you need to jump into that resemble ones that you would lose a life falling down in, as well as fake walls that you need to walk through, and you have no way of knowing they are there without using a guide.
Palaces are also where the game is at its most enemy and combat heavy, and I’ve already talked about how awful that is. The game’s most frustrating enemies typically appear in Palaces, like the aforementioned Iron Knuckles, but there’s also the Wizards and the Magos that will randomly teleport all over the screen shooting projectiles at you. Since you have no way of knowing where they’ll teleport to, it’s easier to just block their attacks and avoid them as opposed to trying to actually fight them head on. The Doomknockers who throw maces at you, only the maces are actually boomerangs that circle around to hit you from behind after they’re thrown (which is as crazy and stupid as it sounds). Fire Moas, who drop fire from above while you’re fighting other enemies, and are almost always out of reach. The list goes on and on, man.
It’s presentation is a marginal step up from Zelda 1 at the very least. Environments, characters, and enemies all have a lot more illustrated detail to them. I especially liked the look of the Palaces in particular, as they all give off the vibe of unwelcoming ancient ruins that are no home to trespassers. The music for the game was composed by Akito Nakatsuka instead of Koji Kondo, and it’s… okay. The themes for the overworld and towns are honestly quite meh and forgettable. The battle theme is pretty decent, but by the end of the game, I got sick of hearing it. I initially liked the Palace theme, in part because I love the rendition that’s used in Super Smash Bros, but the more I played the game, the more I began to associate the theme with pain and frustration, so I eventually got sick of it too.
I hate this game. I really do. After playing and reviewing it for this retrospective, I never want to play it again. That being said though, despite all of my hate for it… I don’t think its core design is bad at all. In fact, I think that a game made in the vein of Zelda II on modern hardware that learns from Zelda II’s mistakes could actually work out really well. The closest thing I’ve seen are the towns in Shovel Knight, which were clearly inspired by the ones here in Zelda II, but I’d like to see an entire game dedicated to being a spiritual successor to Zelda II. One that has towns with NPCs that feel more lively and have better dialog, with exploration that’s far less cryptic, with a sword or weapon that can actually reach enemies, with physics that aren’t so slippery, and with enemies that weren’t designed for the sole purpose of reducing your irl life expectancy. If an indie developer out there is willing to take a crack at making a modern game inspired by Zelda II that fixes all of its problems, much like how Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore was inspired by the CDi Zelda games, I genuinely think I’d love to play that one day.
As it stands though, Zelda II is one of the worst and most painful games I've ever played. If I wasn't using an emulator, I never would’ve finished this game. Upon finishing it, I felt no sense of triumph or satisfaction. All I felt was relief, like a great burden had finally been lifted from my shoulders. You might think I’m being comedically hyperbolic for the sake of giving this overall negative review some levity, but I genuinely sleep better at night knowing that for the rest of my life, I will never, ever have to play Zelda II again.