This is one of those NES games where the consensus seems to be that it's an interesting historical piece that's almost unplayable from its obscure puzzles. However, the first Legend of Zelda was much more manageable and engaging than I expected for my first full playthrough. The game keeps a great deal of information initially hidden but it all works out well with the focus on exploration. Any mandatory secret rooms or entrances were concealed in ways that were cleverly "hid in plain sight", whether it involved trees that blocked a potential shortcut or dungeon walls that suggested a hidden room when viewing the map. It's a bold move to not make these destructible objects stand out with cracks or a different shade of leaves, but the game gives just enough clues to discover the path forward in the most satisfying way possible. One downside is that once you've done most of your exploring, the last few dungeons recycle so much in terms of enemies, puzzles, and aesthetics. It's almost unfair to compare two games that came out over 30 years apart, but The Breath of the Wild is the entry that really perfected the joy of discovery with all the variety in its world. Despite the open-world blueprint being improved upon so much as gaming as evolved, the original Legend of Zelda is still worth checking out for that unique secret-solving experience.

Part of the Glitchwave Top 100 Project (#70/100 - The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition)