A nostalgic game for long-time Zelda fans, but that's about it.
GAMEPLAY - For those of you who have played the Zelda games on the NES, SNES, and Gameboy (excluding the 2nd Zelda game), this is pretty much the exact same thing. Running around, finding secrets, going through castles, getting items (which nearly all are identical to those used in the Zelda franchise), and defeating bosses make up this game's adventure. It's not a bad experience, by any means, but nothing about it separates itself from the classic Zelda games. You could easily slap the Zelda name on this game and it would pass as such. There are some minor tweaks, like how your sword is huge rather than shooting beams when at full health and how you can design your own character. Still, this is a game for fans of the older Zelda games, plain and simple. - 8/10
STORY - Unlike Zelda, this game doesn't really have a great story. You play the descendant of a great hero who has to save the kingdom from the same evil monster that your ancestor fought. There's a princess and a king, but there isn't really much of a backstory or much of an explanation on much as you go along. It's almost like this game tries to make fun of itself and fails. You'll see dead game developers in dungeons, people complaining about the poor graphics distorting their real appearances, and people referring to a certain other game. This might sound humerus to the long-time Zelda fan, but for me it was more of a reminder that I was playing a clone rather than the real thing. - 6/10
GRAPHICS - I am not a fan of the graphics. You'll find out that at the beginning of the game that the king decided to turn the world from 2D to 3D, thus the "dots" that make up everything come into being. If you ask me, this game would have looked better if they stuck to 2D. - 3/10
SOUND - The sound is actually quite good, even though, like the franchise it borrows just about everything else from, it sounds like it was borrowed or re-used. No real major complaints to say besides that, but it would have been nice to see more originality here. - 9/10
LENGTH/REPLAY VALUE - I've read that this game takes upwards of 20-30 hours to complete, which is pretty good considering modern standards, but about average compared to other games of its kind. Being a trophy collector, one of the worst trophies in this game is the one that you get for going through the game and not dying. First of all, this game is hard enough to go through when I feel like I've already done so in my childhood. Secondly, there's not much incentive to play through again at all, except for another ending, which also deals with trophies as well. Somehow I get the feeling that this one will be sitting on the shelf collecting dust if I ever get around to beating it. - 6.5/10
BOTTOM LINE - If you're a sucker for old-school games like the classic Zelda franchise, then this is your game. I grew up during that time, and to be honest this wasn't really the great adventure I was expecting. It's sort of like how Sonic Racing is to Mario Kart or how Dante's Inferno is to God of War; it's just as good a time, but lacks the classic feel of the original game. That's what I felt here, and even moreso I felt like this game should have been released a console generation ago. Most people don't want to play these games anymore, let alone pay a $50 price tag for them. If they want to impress me, Sony should make a deal with Nintendo and re-release the old Zelda games on the PSN, because this game doesn't really cut it. And a lot of it does have to do with the graphics for me, which are tolerable but far from impressive. This is a fun game for what it is, but it's nothing you're going to want to spend a lot of money on. Either because you've never touched the older Zelda games or because this game doesn't really do those games justice. All this game is, is a nostalgic look back at what people were playing 15-20 years ago. As long as you don't expect a lot out of it, you shouldn't be disappointed. - 6/10