Check with your doctor to see if your heart is healthy enough to play Zelda II.
Sure the graphics have had some polishing done, but they also tried to change what made the first game great. The over the head view that is so iconic with Zelda games is stripped away in Zelda II.
The side scrolling seems neat at first but then gets tiresome, especially coupled with the bad play control.
This game is also incredibly hard and not for the right reasons. It's ok to have a challenging game but the challenges in this game are just to annoy you.
When you get a game over you lose all the experience points you've earned, unless you just gained a level, then you get to keep that. (Luckily).
Then if you get a game over you get sent back to the very start of the game, where the Princess has been sleeping the whole time, so if you were at a far away palace... expect to have a long walk back if you are having trouble with it.
Some of the difficulty of monsters in the game are out of wack too. I ran into some regular monsters that were harder than some of the bosses in the game. This should never be the case. There also needs to be a better way of getting health back right before a boss fight so you don't have to fight a boss with 1 bar of health and 1 bar of magic and with 1 life left before you have to walk a thousand miles to get back to the palace you were in.
So as you can see, I obviously have some complaints. What was good about the game? I would say the RPG element of leveling up. I wouldn't be against a current Zelda game bringing this back and actually making you fight every enemy you see to level up. So that is very cool. I also liked the random encounters, even though some of them popped up too fast to avoid anything.
BEST MOMENT: Killing Dark Link with one life, one bar of health and one bar of magic to end the game.
WORST MOMENT: Getting to the Grand Palace. It was pathetically hard and I think I've cursed enough to fill a jar or two up with quarters.
FINAL JUDGEMENT: Play this only if you are a completionist and want to beat all the Zelda games, otherwise this game makes you want to blow your freaking head off with anger. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.