The legend of zelda review (NES)
User Rating: 5 | The Legend of Zelda NES
The game that started the legendary series (no pun intended), and was considered very revolutionary for its time, with its non linear style of progression and being one of the first games to use save states. The original legend of zelda set a lot of standards that later games would follow, but unfortunately, time has not been too kind to zelda 1. Its not terrible today by any means, but as the years have passed, more and more of the game’s flaws have started to show. The biggest problem in the game is trying to figure out where heck to go. The game gives you NO help in the navigation department, and unlike in something like breath of the wild where its actually really fun and fairly simple to find and discover new things on your own, here its confusing and frustrating. If I hadn’t used a walkthrough, I probably would have never found half the stuff I needed to beat the game, since most of this stuff is hidden behind bushes and rocks that look NO DIFFERENT than the normal one. If your playing this game with the intention of beating it, you are pretty much required to use some kind of map or guide to find all the secrets and items you need to beat the game, because again, the game itself tells you nothing about where this stuff is. Not even a vague hint. But even with a guide to help you, this is still one of the hardest games in the series. I’m honestly kind of shocked at how much crap people give zelda 2 for being too difficult when the original is just as hard, if not harder! (EDIT: at this time I have played through about half of zelda 2, and I can honestly say that claiming zelda 1 is harder than zelda 2 was a very premature statement. I don’t take back what I said about zelda 1 beinghard, but I do take back what I said about it being harder than zelda 2.) Its a number of things: the design of some dungeon rooms, annoying enemy combinations, link’s tank-like control in combat, all these factors make for a number of instances where I wanted to pull my hair out! But with all that said, I still don’t think zelda 1 is bad. Not at all. The graphics are pretty good, the combat, when the enemy placements aren’t bulls*it, is pretty enjoyable, and the music is really freakin good! So overall, the legend of zelda gets a 5 out of 10. It is still the game that started the legend of zelda series, so I do respect it for that, and there were times where I did really enjoy the game, but it hasn’t aged very well, and I definitely wouldn’t recommend this as someones first zelda game. If you are already a fan of the legend of zelda and are curious to see how the franchise started, I’d say $5 to get the game from the wii-u or 3DS virtual console is fair enough. Just remember to keep a guide on you at all times.
