11 ‘Bad’ Games We’ll Die Defending

I’ve spent a lifetime hearing people mean Zelda II: The Adventures of Link as “objectively the worst Zelda game” or made other similarly disparaging statements. (OK, occasionally they will make concessions ghost tracks worse.) Well, I’m here to say you’re all wrong. Zelda II is both a great game in its own right and one of the best zelda games.

Zelda II represents a time when great developers were still sometimes willing to take big risks, with Zelda II, Nintendo ditched the original game’s top-down action for side-scrolling combat and exploration. Part of what made it so exciting, though, was that these side-scrolling sections were interspersed with traversals that happen top-down on a map. It’s a choice that both help convey the vastness of Hyrule (the overall setting of the first game is just a small part of it Zelda II‘s world) and that forces us to calculate for the first time with Hyrule as a three-dimensional space that we look at from several perspectives. It was bold, innovative and exciting.

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Furthermore, the combat itself is tight and engaging with its high and low blows, downward sword thrusts and shield blocking, its palaces were wonderfully challenging, and the way Link gained experience and strengthened as he progressed was an early example of action-RPG mechanics that are pretty commonplace today. From my point of view it is zelda Series later reached a point epitomized by games like Twilight Princesswhere the formula had become so rigid and lifeless, where freedom was illusory and you were just a cog performing movements designed for you by the designers. Zelda II stands head and shoulders over these games as a lively, risky adventure, and I sometimes wish more developers today were still willing to make swings that big with their flagship franchises.