Philips CDI review: part 5 Better than the other 2 Zelda CDI games....but not by a lot....
Unlike Link:faces of evil, Zelda:wand of gamelon or Hotel Mario , this one doesn't use crappy animation for the cutscenes. This time, they use digitized actors which i guess is ok but sometime they don't even move at all, they just cross-fade but apart from that, it's ok.
As the you may have already guessed, this is the only other game where you play as Zelda. The plot involves Link getting captured by Ganon and you being sent by this old guy to rescure Link.
This one follows the real zelda game more closely being that it's an overhead perspective which means you don't have to press up to jump, crouch to bring up the inventory or any crap like that so thats alright. You also don't have to attack rupies or anything to pick them up but you have to wait for them to touch the ground first which is confusing since it's an overhead game. But the first major problem is waiting for the screen to load: i enter a new area, i wait 4 seconds, then the screen moves and when the screen stops moving, which takes 2 seconds, then you can carry on playing. So overall, to get to another area, you have to wait 6 seconds! Why? Just compare it to the original: how fast it is on the original! And that was on an old 8-bit console!!!! F***ing CD load times!!!!!
There's not really a lot music in game so just listen to the sounds of the outdoors.
You main goal is to find dungeons and find 3 triangular stones, sorta like the triforce in the original. Thats cool, at least it tried to be like the original.
Unlike all the other zelda games where the dialogue is all text, this one uses bad voice acting.
The sound effects aren't really appropriate, why do the bats have human grunts?
The graphics are ok i guess, but still, there is room for improvement. For example, theres a part where you have to go into a cave but with all the rock patterns, you'd think it was part of the scenary. Also, there's this part which is right past where you need a ladder to cross a hole in the floor which at first i thought was a hole as well but then i find out that it's actually just part of the foreground!
The inventory menu sucks. First of, you can only hold one item and that includes a weapon, like a wand or a sword or any item. In the original Zelda, you always have a sword and can carry an additional item. But of course, the CDI only uses two buttons so when you want to use something in particualar, you gotta bring up the menu! Also, to select somthing thats not on screen, you gotta scroll the the items. Not by pressing left or right, but by dragging the cursor over to the arrows and clicking until you see the item you want.
What about the map? In any good Zelda game, the map is avaliable at the press of a button but in this game, the map is inside the inventory menu so you have to open the inventory, select the map, look at the map, go back to the inventory and finally back to the game. Bringing up the inventory is also the only way to pause the game like the other 2 Zelda CDI games.
You always have to select s***. For example, how do you buy items in any other Zelda overhead game? You just walk into the item you want to buy and it's that simple! But in this one, you have to stop, bring up the item screen, select the rupie and there! Remember the ladder from the original? Remember how to use it? You just walk accross the water! But in this one, you come to a ledge, you go to the item screen, select the ladder and finally you can cross! And those were just 2 examples!
To get treasure, you don't walk up and open the chest, the chest starts talking! Then it spits out the treasure and the game doesn't even say you got it which is a problem if you were standing where it spits out the treasure like i was so first time that happened, i didn't know what happened!
The biggest problem that kills this game is this: IT'S JUST SO BORING!!!!!!!
So overall, it's better than the other Zelda CDI games but it still sucks! Just don't play it...ever...
Final score:
Graphics: 3/5
Sound: 2.5/5 (a 0.5 was taken from the orignal mark of 3/5 due to some unfitting sound effects)
Gameplay: 1/5
Entertainment: 0/5
Overall: 6.5/20
Click on my profile for my conclusion on the entire system!