My favorite 2D Zelda so far. It's reasonably short and straight forward, which some people may dislike coming from entries like Link to the Past. However, I think the linearity of the game lends to its biggest strength: the dungeons. Because the game is very linear, the dungeons take into account what items you will have at that point and design puzzles and bosses and enemies around using specific items that you've gathered up to that point, rather than just focusing on whatever the dungeon item is. Between dungeons, you'll usually get an item or two as well, and this allows the dungeons to incorporate a wide array of items prior to even getting the dungeon item. The story is roughly the same as other entries: Zelda is in a bad way, go beat up an evil sorcerer to save her.
I vastly prefer the combat in this game to ALttP, even if I tend to think Zelda has fairly barebones and boring combat. The semi-circle swing as opposed to the quarter-circle swing feels much more natural to me, although I will admit this was the first Zelda I ever beat so that may be why I feel that way. From early on the game you're introduced to multiple enemies that you have to disarm using the wind sucker thing, or some you just can't fight yet because you don't have the boomerang or bow. I'm a big fan of these types of enemies because it makes the combat feel like a bit of a puzzle, however trivial, instead of just "Mash Sword For X Hits."
The minish gimmick is fine. It isn't intrusive and adds a layer of challenge to traversing dungeons, specifically the earth dungeon where you have to go through parts you've already explored, but tiny. The overworld parts of being tiny kinda sucked, but it was still fun to explore the world within the world provided.
The kinstone pieces are...definitely in the game. They serve as a way to elongate the game and remind me of the treasure charts in Wind Waker, except in Wind Waker sailing around could actually be fun sometimes. Walking around Hyrule was pretty boring for me, so I very rarely went back to actually locate whatever my kinstone reward was unless I was trying to figure out how to progress and stumbled across it. I've heard mixed opinions on kinstones in the past, but they didn't really make my experience any better or worse since I didn't engage with them in "100%ing Minish Cap" kind of way.
Overall, pretty solid game that I can see myself returning to in another few years. Ezlo is cool.
I vastly prefer the combat in this game to ALttP, even if I tend to think Zelda has fairly barebones and boring combat. The semi-circle swing as opposed to the quarter-circle swing feels much more natural to me, although I will admit this was the first Zelda I ever beat so that may be why I feel that way. From early on the game you're introduced to multiple enemies that you have to disarm using the wind sucker thing, or some you just can't fight yet because you don't have the boomerang or bow. I'm a big fan of these types of enemies because it makes the combat feel like a bit of a puzzle, however trivial, instead of just "Mash Sword For X Hits."
The minish gimmick is fine. It isn't intrusive and adds a layer of challenge to traversing dungeons, specifically the earth dungeon where you have to go through parts you've already explored, but tiny. The overworld parts of being tiny kinda sucked, but it was still fun to explore the world within the world provided.
The kinstone pieces are...definitely in the game. They serve as a way to elongate the game and remind me of the treasure charts in Wind Waker, except in Wind Waker sailing around could actually be fun sometimes. Walking around Hyrule was pretty boring for me, so I very rarely went back to actually locate whatever my kinstone reward was unless I was trying to figure out how to progress and stumbled across it. I've heard mixed opinions on kinstones in the past, but they didn't really make my experience any better or worse since I didn't engage with them in "100%ing Minish Cap" kind of way.
Overall, pretty solid game that I can see myself returning to in another few years. Ezlo is cool.