ah. there's the bad. we don't go to tolemac.
After being actually thoroughly impressed by how not-actually-shit the animation magic zelda CD-i games were, I went into this one with meager standards. Not as many people talk about this game, which I presumably thought was just because it didn't have the funny uncanny animation that the animation magic games had. In actuality it might just be because not many people can actually stomach playing something like this.
Zelda 1 is the main source of inspo for this game, which is a much more logical game to source from than the castlevania/ghosts n goblins beats that the animation magic games were trying to go for. There's a big overworld with 7 dungeons scattered with various NPCs that say various clues/directions to where to go. Even things like the sound that plays when you die and the misspelled enemy names mirror zelda 1. I think you can do the dungeons in any order but the game is kind of structured in a particular way that emphasizes a specific order to go through things in, I didn't try to sequence break in my journey. The overworld in this game is significantly larger than zelda 1s, and is in a much more fragmented shape than the big block that was the zelda 1 map. There also aren't that many secrets locked to items like bombs or fire that zelda 1 had, most items in the overworld are just usually lying there or in a cave or smthn. Moving through the large overworld is incredibly slow, as it takes roughly 3-4 seconds for the CD-i to load the next map space. It makes getting anywhere a real patience tester and given how you spawn near the bottom left corner of the whole map, hopefully there isn't anything you need to do in the top right corner if you die. Hopefully it gets a PS5 port, it could really benefit from that SSD. I did discover that the compass items work as fast travel buttons WAY too late in the game, so don't be me and use that shit should you choose to play this.
The gameplay is also kinda wack. My biggest complaint with the game boy zelda games was the constant item swapping due to the system only having 4 usable buttons, and this game laughs in the game boys face and halves the amount of usable buttons. There's an item button and a menu button. If you want to do anything you need to load up the menu and switch to the appropriate item, which even includes equipping yourrupees rubies for the instances where you want to buy anything. Considering the fact this game has an assload of different items and WEAPONS to equip, the one button does get in the way quite frequently. There are also various enemies in the game that are only weak to one specific arbitrary weapon in the game that you may or may not even have at that point in time, so do yourself a favor and play with a guide to know who is weak to what instead of swapping around every weapon you have constantly to hopefully find out what actually does damage. Oh, and using weapons outside of your sword wand costs money so make sure to collect all those rubies!!!! Or don't anyways because the hitbox for the wand is broken and can hit things a mile away when positioned properly!!! The dungeons are also very strange. They start out very okay-ly with basic puzzles and confusing non-Euclidean design, but very very quickly just become linear hallways of fighting enemies. It's as if they wanted to make more interesting dungeon designs, but for some reason couldn't past the first like two.
But all that I've talked about above isn't the real interesting thing about this game. Aesthetically this shit is fucking strange, man. It goes for the pre-rendered-real-people approach that a solid amount of games of this vintage do (especially on CD systems), but just how uncanny it all looks for this game specifically is the real icing on the cake. There's pretty much no music in the game, with ambient noises and sound effects taking up most of the soundstage. Rather than communicating through text boxes, all the NPCs voice their dialog to you with writing and vocal performances that skirt the line between making the characters seem "real" and continuing to make them be video game NPCs, and the enemies make realistic snarls when around and unfittingly grunt when attacked. The worlds look less like real photos and more like an uncanny collage of real assets photoshopped together in a way that make the game look like those photorealistic minecraft texture packs, or like those bizarre spot what books I had as a kid. It reaches its absolute peak in uncanniness with the second dungeon taking place in this fucked up circus tent with all sorts of weird rooms that look like close-ups of a sand castle surrounded in cardboard, and seeing the Wallmasters as giant photorealistic severed green hands is horrifying. All of it just leads to make a game that feels incredibly unnerving to play, as you are isolated in this soundless, fucked up realm of "nature". I haven't played it, but I'd imagine virtual hydlide has a similar aesthetic feel. The visuals also cause a lot of directional problems, as it's not ever entirely clear what's in the foreground and what isn't, what terrains are traversable and what isn't, and what dark spots are just shadows rather than enterable caves. Despite the uncanniness and lack of visual clarity, it still is an aesthetic I quite enjoyed due to its bizarreness. Maybe I just have a thing for uncanny photoshop hodgepodges, who knows. It's certainly more unnerving than any goofy off-model cutscene the animation magic games had, that's for sure.
Anyways, yeah. A super bizarre experience through and through. I don't really regret having played it but definitely wouldn't recommend. My CD-i has a cooked save battery so I actually had to rush a bit through this, and even still had to leave it on overnight to play in two sessions without losing my progress. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had I been able to save and take more of my own time, but thems the brakes sometimes when it comes to using 30+ year old hardware. The bizarre aesthetics and charitably-described-as-lukewarm gameplay and design definitely line up with the CD-i, alright. If a fucked up bizzaro zelda game sounds like something you'd enjoy, then go off, but otherwise you might want to just stick to the funny meme games if you want to play a CD-i zelda.
But hey! I finished all the CD-i zelda games!!! They were more interesting than bad!!! Do I at least get a T-shirt or something?
After being actually thoroughly impressed by how not-actually-shit the animation magic zelda CD-i games were, I went into this one with meager standards. Not as many people talk about this game, which I presumably thought was just because it didn't have the funny uncanny animation that the animation magic games had. In actuality it might just be because not many people can actually stomach playing something like this.
Zelda 1 is the main source of inspo for this game, which is a much more logical game to source from than the castlevania/ghosts n goblins beats that the animation magic games were trying to go for. There's a big overworld with 7 dungeons scattered with various NPCs that say various clues/directions to where to go. Even things like the sound that plays when you die and the misspelled enemy names mirror zelda 1. I think you can do the dungeons in any order but the game is kind of structured in a particular way that emphasizes a specific order to go through things in, I didn't try to sequence break in my journey. The overworld in this game is significantly larger than zelda 1s, and is in a much more fragmented shape than the big block that was the zelda 1 map. There also aren't that many secrets locked to items like bombs or fire that zelda 1 had, most items in the overworld are just usually lying there or in a cave or smthn. Moving through the large overworld is incredibly slow, as it takes roughly 3-4 seconds for the CD-i to load the next map space. It makes getting anywhere a real patience tester and given how you spawn near the bottom left corner of the whole map, hopefully there isn't anything you need to do in the top right corner if you die. Hopefully it gets a PS5 port, it could really benefit from that SSD. I did discover that the compass items work as fast travel buttons WAY too late in the game, so don't be me and use that shit should you choose to play this.
The gameplay is also kinda wack. My biggest complaint with the game boy zelda games was the constant item swapping due to the system only having 4 usable buttons, and this game laughs in the game boys face and halves the amount of usable buttons. There's an item button and a menu button. If you want to do anything you need to load up the menu and switch to the appropriate item, which even includes equipping your
But all that I've talked about above isn't the real interesting thing about this game. Aesthetically this shit is fucking strange, man. It goes for the pre-rendered-real-people approach that a solid amount of games of this vintage do (especially on CD systems), but just how uncanny it all looks for this game specifically is the real icing on the cake. There's pretty much no music in the game, with ambient noises and sound effects taking up most of the soundstage. Rather than communicating through text boxes, all the NPCs voice their dialog to you with writing and vocal performances that skirt the line between making the characters seem "real" and continuing to make them be video game NPCs, and the enemies make realistic snarls when around and unfittingly grunt when attacked. The worlds look less like real photos and more like an uncanny collage of real assets photoshopped together in a way that make the game look like those photorealistic minecraft texture packs, or like those bizarre spot what books I had as a kid. It reaches its absolute peak in uncanniness with the second dungeon taking place in this fucked up circus tent with all sorts of weird rooms that look like close-ups of a sand castle surrounded in cardboard, and seeing the Wallmasters as giant photorealistic severed green hands is horrifying. All of it just leads to make a game that feels incredibly unnerving to play, as you are isolated in this soundless, fucked up realm of "nature". I haven't played it, but I'd imagine virtual hydlide has a similar aesthetic feel. The visuals also cause a lot of directional problems, as it's not ever entirely clear what's in the foreground and what isn't, what terrains are traversable and what isn't, and what dark spots are just shadows rather than enterable caves. Despite the uncanniness and lack of visual clarity, it still is an aesthetic I quite enjoyed due to its bizarreness. Maybe I just have a thing for uncanny photoshop hodgepodges, who knows. It's certainly more unnerving than any goofy off-model cutscene the animation magic games had, that's for sure.
Anyways, yeah. A super bizarre experience through and through. I don't really regret having played it but definitely wouldn't recommend. My CD-i has a cooked save battery so I actually had to rush a bit through this, and even still had to leave it on overnight to play in two sessions without losing my progress. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more had I been able to save and take more of my own time, but thems the brakes sometimes when it comes to using 30+ year old hardware. The bizarre aesthetics and charitably-described-as-lukewarm gameplay and design definitely line up with the CD-i, alright. If a fucked up bizzaro zelda game sounds like something you'd enjoy, then go off, but otherwise you might want to just stick to the funny meme games if you want to play a CD-i zelda.
But hey! I finished all the CD-i zelda games!!! They were more interesting than bad!!! Do I at least get a T-shirt or something?