Fortuntly not the last 2d zelda
Format: Gameboy Advance
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Nintendo
Multi-Link: No
GC Link: No
Save: 3 files, back-up battery
2D Zelda games have pretty much left the earth in favor of the 3D incarnations, but after playing the Minish Cap I feel a little sad about this. The Minish Cap is a top-down view Zelda game which is largely puzzle based, even the classic exploring elements of Zelda games have been removed. Considering that this game has been produced 3rd party by Capcom I think that Zelda fans and non-fans alike are going to be surprised to find something that they can all dig into.
As with most Zelda games, the Minish Cap has the story take a backseat to the coregame, if you come expecting a more puzzle focused game you’ll find something nice here. The story is a little strange in that it isn’t even a true Zelda story; it’s almost as if it is a cheap knock-off like Zolda or something. The starts in Hyrule (where else) and you play as child Link, in this game princess Zelda is already a close friend and it becomes apparent she is a tomboy. You escort her to Hyrule Castle so she can attend a ceremony that happens every year called the picori festival which celebrates the event of small mouse like people (the Minish) delivering the four-sword to a hero who used it to defeat evil (foursword, not mastersword) and also gave humans the lightforce (not Triforce). Anyway, there is a tournament of fights and one man wins easily, he is called Vaati, a strange cloaked villain who uses opens the breaks the seal on the foursword releasing evil upon the world (again…), anywho Zelda gets turned into stone, and it is your job to gather the elements and save her-to arms Link! I didn’t exhibit the usual ‘ohh you stupid cow! I have to save you again’ behavior, Zelda gets turned into stone by an attack that is meant for you…so it is your fault that she is the way she it, with that in mind Link sets off on yet another quest.
The best way to describe the Minish Caps’ graphical performance is extraordinary, Link is only yeigh pixels high (this works better if you can see my hands…) anyway, despite the characters being so small they have a lot of character to them, one of the most adorable actions is when Link wakes up in a bed and has to wake up Ezlo by patting him…awww….makes you want to have kids… (Slaps self). The GBA version of A Link to the Past looked ok, but this is really nice, everything is clear and defined even on a small screen, there are nice effects like the smokey explosions when you destroy an enemy which look Windwaker-ish. The enemies such as walking boars look like those from the windwaker also, it looks good, and add to that some parallax scrolls, and overlays like fog and rain combined with the nice rounded look (no unnatural straight lines to architecture) and you have a game that looks almost as good as the Golden Sun itself. Link even lights and shades correctly when he passes under and out of the shadows of overcast clouds. The characters themselves look good, you’ll recognize some from the other games like OOT, the carpenters from that game and Ingo the cold hearted range owner are here and they are just as recognizable as they were on the N64 games. No complaints here.
The sound in the Minish Cap is largely recycled-that may sound like a criticism, but it’s actually a compliment. The GBA is typically sub-16 bit when it comes to sound, and here we have a game that sounds better than the SNES ‘A Link to the Past’. The tunes that fans have come to expect like Zelda’s theme are all there. The sound here is really good. The quality is played back at a good bit rate, although the loop time is a bit short it is forgivable considering how good it all sounds. I normally don’t condone recycling but there are a lot of remixes here too, and that fact alone that the quality is almost as good as it’s big console counter-parts is truly astonishing. When Link slashes his sword, jumps or falls of a cliff he’ll even grunt or scream, the voice bites don’t come out with a delay and sound as clear as they do on the Gamecube…wowza…
The gameplay is similar to the older Zelda games but only with a bit more ease to it. You travel around the map using a top-down view. You can set your items to the a and b buttons and the R-Trigger is an all purpose action button which handles operations like pulling, rolling and talking to people.
Early on in the game you meet up with a talking cap called Ezlo who rides around on your head, he too shares the common goal of trying to stop Vaati (who is miles cooler than Ganondork ever was), by pressing the select button you can get some hints off him, his clues aren’t as precise as those in something like Paper Mario 2 but they aren’t vague cryptic hints or so obvious you want to strangle the bird-cap (who talks in a posh upper class style). So using the clues he provides to progress Link must battle through 5 main dungeons and save Zelda. At the start of the game the puzzle elements rule the gameplay, you’re looking at a lot of what has been done before, finding keys to doors, pushing blocks through mazes (slidey ice block puzzles also), and hitting multiple switches and so on. What made this game really special though was that the level design is brilliant, and the puzzles provide a decent challenge without becoming trial-and-error processes, there is always a logical solution if you put your mind to it. During the course of this game I only got stuck 3 times (4 if you count the last boss) and the reason is because this game doesn’t suffer from a problem I like to call Zelda-itus, you don’t get stuck in stupid ways and then kick yourself when you fluke the way forward, nor are there moments when you know what to do but can’t for the life of you figure out where that place was.
Yes, the Minish Cap is more of the same, but that isn’t all it is, some new and interesting items and puzzle mechanics have been added. The use of the foursword is probably the most interesting addition. All you do is hold down the sword button on special coloured panels and walk over them to create up to 3 extra Links. These Ghost Links move around with you and perform the actions you do, they are often needed to depress multiple switches or push an object one elf can’t move. The thing that makes it interesting is that if one of these ghost Link’s passes through a solid object they disappear, I found that this can make some puzzles more than just a case of figuring out what to do, but also a case of racing against the clock and precise navigation (don’t want to walk them into walls) which stops the puzzles from becoming too slow. Link has also been granted access to some items that (as far as I know) have never been seen the Zelda universe before and are pretty interesting in and of themselves, you’ll get the ‘Molemitts’ which let you dig through walls, the ‘Cane of Pacci’ which lets you use flip items and enemies over, and the Rocs cape which let’s you jump! It is really strange being able to jump and glide is a game like this, but it works, and being able to jump over enemies has been done so as not to feel like cheating. The overarching structure is much the same as before, the game starts mostly closed off, gaining more items gives you access to more areas and those in turn new items and even more areas. What is clever about the Minish Cap is that revisiting areas reveals places to use items that you never considered, and there is incentive to revisit areas; Kinstones.
Kinstones are basically a half of a medallion; these half-pieces can be found around the world in chests, as rewards for helping people or just from searching grass, these stones come in about 10 main forms and just about every person in the game has another half. The aim is to ask people to fuse kinstones by talking to them (using the L trigger), fusing the stones will make a new event occur such as clearing a previously obstructed area or creating a chest in a certain spot, these are then marked on your map. If you check these spots you can get the items, which are normally a large number of rupees (the games’ currency) or a piece of a heart-as with all Zelda games you start with 3 hearts of health and getting 4 pieces results in you getting a whole extra heart health piece. To flesh this aspect of the game out a bit Capcom have made it impossible to fuse with certain people until you have reached a certain point in the game, so there is always someone to fuse with and more than a enough fusion items to go after but never too many. Some of the fusions are non-item based; a few affect the inhabitants of the world, for example, by giving them the inspiration to do something like set up a new shop. It’s definitely worth getting these items as towards the end of the game things become very difficult, you’ll end up being swarmed by enemies from all side and having to frantically hammer attack whilst changing directions to meet your attackers, beating the last boss is particularly difficult. Although the difficulty gives you incentive to try all the side quests (an area where the windwaker fell down) it can be very off-putting, it might not be the difficulty per se, but the severity of how it becomes so hard so fast. Talking about the difficulty it can still make some of the later areas action packed and lend some of that much needed pace to the puzzles.
The boss battles in the game are the main source of the action, there aren’t many of them but I can safely say that they are some of the best boss battles in a Zelda game to date. One has Link fighting a kind of…dragonfly thing. The fight is done in the clouds and everything is flying by, there is a smaller dragon fly and the fight requires you to jump back and forth between the insects and beat them up and then move again before you get swatted.
A common theme in Zelda games is duality, Light and Dark, Land and Sea, Child and Adult. The Minish Caps’ approach to this is fairy tale inspired, at certain points Link can shrink himself down to the size of the Minish people and interact with them. This element is used pretty well, the fact that you are small puts you in situations that you’d expect to see in the Borrowers or Honey, I shrunk the Kids. Link will be attacked by pet cats, have to avoid boulder sized rain drops and find ways new ways to get around the game world seeing as how even the smallest step is too tall for him to climb. The whole shrinking thing is clever in that what would be a straight walk from building A to building B for big Link is a puzzle of how to move between different areas and which paths and items should be moved as a human in order for an opening as a Minish.
The Minish Cap doesn’t have as many dungeons as other Zelda’s, its only about 10-12 hours long on first play through and the sidequest could take up another 8 hours, but it really is a short but sweet affair.. If you happen to have a long drive or plane ride to your holiday destination this summer then I wholeheartedly recommend this.