A great game in the series that goes back to the golden days...
The story actually doesn't revolve around you saving Zelda, which is a welcomed addition to the game as the rest of the games boil down to saving the capture-prone Zelda from Ganon. This time you have to save the oracle of the ages from her kidnapper, who wants the power of time control all to herself so she can mess up both the past and the present by building a tower of immense proportions. Give yourself a minute to soak all that in...got it yet? Ok.
The graphics, for a GBC game, are great. The characters don't have the slightest symptoms of blockitus and the environments are also clean and crisp. The environments show plenty of diversity as you can visit the woods, towns, deserts, and various dungeons scattered throughout the land of Hyrule. The enemies show a slight hint of diversity as there are some specific monsters for certain areas, but most of them just appear again and again and then just tend to get in the way. The cutscenes are decent as well. Most of them take place in-game, but some of them use a still screen, which is a nice touch.
The gameplay for this handheld title is a throwback to the good old days of Zelda. You have the classic top observing camera and the environments scroll as you reach the boundaries of each screen. You can equip weapons on both the A and B buttons.
You also have the choice of having rings that give you special powers. Some of these are very helpful, such as reducing the damage you take or increasing the amount of damage you give to the enemy. Others are just useless, such as downgrading stats and not boosting any at all or making you sluggish. Some of them are nice little additions, such as being able to turn into certain enemies and even gaining the ability to turn into Link from the NES era.
The main point of this game is the time travel. You can use different songs on the harp of time to go between past and present, and the different songs that you acquire along the way effect how and where you can be able to travel. You can change things in the past so that in the future new paths will be available and dungeons can be accessed. This gimmick has been seen in the Ocarina of Time, but its not that big a deal.
There's a few things to do when you beat the main game and they involve the link cable. You can hook up with another friend who has the Seasons version of the game and you'll be able to fight against new bosses in new dungeons, and even Ganon himself will be available for another whooping. You can also use codes you come accross while linked to gain access to new weapons and other items. Other than that, there's nothing much to do in the game other than start a new one altogether.
Overall, this is a solid game for the series and it should be given a try. If you've run out of Zelda games to play, try this one, it'll satisfy your itch.