I’ve been determined to finally beat Zelda II and determine that I would do it without save states and without a guide.
I know Zelda II is considered a black sheep somewhat but I really think in some ways it’s more fun than the original although I’d still pick Zelda 1 over II.
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That game is impossible. I can’t believe how many people in the comments say they’ve beaten it. I never beat it as a kid, and when I tried it again on the switch a couple of years ago, I still couldn’t make it very far.
I never beat it as a kid either. I barely played it. I thought it was cryptic and punishing, although 9-year-old me wouldn’t have used those words. Just a simple “This game is dumb.” worked.
In fact, I thought it was pretty universally reviled. I’ve since learned that this is due the to fact that a child’s gaming social-sphere in the 90s could be quite limited.
About 5 years ago, glancing across a bookshelf, a certain game cart happened to catch my eye. I couldn’t tell you why it was this particular game cart that my attention ;) but I really started to think about it. I don’t actually know anything about Zelda 2 (other than “This game is dumb.”). So then I thought, maybe it wasn’t for kids. Nine-year-olds are pretty ego-centric. The NES was one of our toys. No adults were playing these things. Did I mention my social-sphere?
It then occured to me: I’m a blank slate. I know next to nothing about the progression, the map, or anything. Of course along the way, I found things familiar, and I knew things like >!Shadow Link was the final boss!< but I didn’t know >!how to cheese the Shadow Link fight!<.
So I gave it an honest, no-help-other-than-the-game’s-original-manual playthrough. Yadda-yadda-yadda, Zelda 2 is one of the best games on the NES, and in my book, that makes it one of the best games ever.
In hindsight, Zelda 1 is cryptic af. “The 10th enemy has the bomb”, “gumble gumble”, “shaka when the walls fell”, wtf? If you’d like to know what the 10th enemy thing is: >!hopefully someone below explains drop counts because I’m sure as fuck not going to!<. How was a kid or adult going to figure that out?
My Z2 playthrough took days, maybe 10, but my memory is fuzzy. I got pretty stuck >!looking for the mirror!< and I wondered around for a full day with no progress although I felt like I understood where the game wanted me to go. About halfway through the next day, I read the manual. I didn’t actually think when I started that I was going to do a no-help-other-than-the-manual playthrough. I thought of as a no-internet-on-an-80s-game playthrough. After the realization that the manual wasn’t outside help, I did use the internet for that. Well as soon as I learned >!hammers can chop down trees!<, I was on my way. The rest of the playthrough went smoothly, apart from being hard as fuck.
Same. I played it on the switch maybe a year ago, and at first I didn’t understand the reputation for being tough, but after a half hour I was too frustrated to keep playing.
I beat it when I was 10
One of my proudest moments as a child was beating this game. Incidentally, fighting the end boss was the first time my parents caught me swearing.
i am error
(but for real congrats!!) ❤️
By the way, fans of Zelda 2 may well adore Star Tropics. it has a similar feel. Although it’s prettier, linear, and has more story, it also has challenging, rewarding combat. Your movement (and some but not all enemy movement) is on a grid and you can only move up/down/left/right and you can only face in those directions too, enemies deal contact damage, and you have mostly melee attacks so combat is a question of mastering a grid-based dance as you attack whilst avoiding damage. The soundtrack is wonderful too.
You really are a hero. I got stuck in Death Mountain and just haven’t gone back. That is not an easy game.
I could never find Bagu and get Riverman to open the bridge to get that far as a kid. I actually found the hint accidentally trying kill the blue blob in town. Lol.
Zelda II definitely was one of those games where they made it hard on purpose to lengthen the game. I’m doing some research for my review of this game and the director admits as much.
There was a lot of that in that era. Arcade games had financial incentive to be hard as players would tolerate to eat as many quarters as possible. The home ports carried this difficulty over, and many console originals picked up on it. (See Battletoads.)
Battle toads can eat a schlong. Actually good games like kid icarus, etc were just as hard but actually fun to play.
For the home market, there was an incentive to make the game hard to beat before you had to return it to Blockbuster.
Death mountain is the hardest part of the game by a wide margin, weird that it’s like 1/3rd of the way through
Congrats! I know how brutal some of those hallway fights can be.
I still like that dumb game. Congrats!
“I love this dumb game” is the experience in a nutshell. Every time I’d get a game over and Ganon would do his stupid laugh I’d think I’m done and then go right back to grinding it out some more!
I did this too, on the GameCube collector’s edition. It’s hard but the difficulty didn’t feel unfair! It was so satisfying when I made progress. Honestly this is such an excellent game.
You have proved to be a real Hylian bean and a real hero!
why would you pick Zelda 1 over Zelda 2 if you think 2 is more fun
Zelda 1 had better music, the second quest after you master it, and is still really solid.
What I was trying to say is, that at its highs, Zelda II is more fun at the original but considering from minute 1 to the end of the game, I would still take the first game as the better experience overall.
Congratz!!!
I was startled by how dated Zelda 1 is. I know, obviously it’s very old, but people talk about it as if it still holds up today… It doesn’t. Maybe I could try Zelda 2 now.
Check out Golvellius: Valley of Doom. It was a Zelda clone, but I think it’s more fun than the original.
Zelda II is very much a product of its time. It lacks modern sensibilities even more-so than LOZ. I think the platforming and combat is more fun than the original but if you don’t like or have nostalgia for the way games used to be made, Zelda II will just get frustrating
Okay, perhaps not then. Thanks for the reply
It’s obviously nothing like a modern title but I don’t think that’s quite fair - it holds up in the sense that it’s fun, it has good combat challenge and exploration, honestly it does. You do have to overlook lack of QoL features and the fact that you basically have to read the manual, but I don’t think it’s fair to mark a game down for lacking those things. It lacks the puzzles, NPCs and stories of later Zeldas but it doesn’t try to have those.
Zelda 2 siimilarly lacks QoL features but it has excellent combat that’s actually challenging, but fair, so yeah if you’re open to it you could have a good gaming experience there.
the fact that you basically have to read the manual
This is no joke and deserves a bit of emphasis. NES games expect you to read the manual.
I did my first play of Zelda 2 about 5 years ago. I didn’t like it as kid, but I loved my adult playthrough. I will note that this was one of the games that I got stuck until I read the manual.
Another Z2 pointer, to anyone that wants to give it a go, is that you can logically “soft lock” the game with bad key management. It’s unlikely, but if you like to look for unintended orders to do game goals, it could happen.
If you do mess up and miss a key, you can always use fairy to pass through the door. This is actually how I got the cross because I couldn’t figure out how to get the magic key until I could see the ghosts in old Kasuto. And search the houses for the clue
I would be careful with the word “always”. A softlock can occur by entering a later dungeon to steal some of its keys. You can use the surplus keys to beat an early dungeon without collecting its item. This locks the item in the dungeon. Hope you didn’t need that later.
But couldn’t you go to where the alternative dungeon’s keys are, get those and come back to get the earlier dungeon’s item that way?
I can’t see how you can softlock?
It has the stories, but back in those days they were in the form of books and shit. Remember the original Warcraft like half of the lore was in the extra shit they released with it.
I beat it a couple years ago and had to use so many save states running up to the last castle.
Congrats, that’s a major accomplishment. I’d put it on my resume.
I’ve been meaning to play both Zelda and Zelda II on Switch Online, maybe I’ll take a crack at them over Xmas break; they’re a couple of blind spots that I’ve had for no good reason and I need to fix that
how long exactly is your christmas break
I only ever saw the ending to this on a real NES because it was on a demo machine at Toys R Us (never owned it myself) and someone had a save right at the final dungeon. All I had to do was beat 1 dungeon and I won the game! 😋
Damn… I made myself sad because that’s not an experience you can have anymore. You can’t go rent a game and have someone else’s save to mess with. Shit, can you even rent a game period? 🤔😥
There are game subscription services like Nintendo’s emulator, which is kinda the same thing except you’re renting many games at once.
![[Zelda II]I did it!](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b2d83137-baad-4c98-b321-04ee815ea041.png){kind=link}