I always find it interesting to see how a development team can show clear sings of improvement as their games get sequels.

This is a top-down action adventure game, in the vain of A Link to the Past. You start off exploring an overworld, fighting enemies and collecting money, and there are dungeons in certain areas that require certain items in order to enter. Once inside the dungeons, you’ll be defeating enemies and pushing switches until you find the dungeon’s main item which can be used to get past the new obstacles that were introduced in said dungeon. Sometimes, the game provides decent hints on what you need or where you have to go (occasionally telling you this outright), but just like the game this is most inspired by, there are a few vague parts that you might need a walkthrough to get past (either that or you use the point-and-click strategy of “try everything on everything”).

First of all, I want to mention the combat because it’s really well done. Combat is something that all canon Zelda games do well (even Skyward Sword, for the most part), and this game is no exception. As usual, the controls are responsive and enemies have decent conveyance before attacking, which is pretty crucial when your main method of attack is short-range. You can’t move while attacking, but your attack animation only lasts a few frames, so you won’t end up trapped in an animation, unable to dodge an enemy. You also stand perfectly still while attacking, so you won’t end up accidentally stepping forward into hazards like in Dicing Knight. With that said, a successful hit usually results in either you or the enemy being knocked back, which is a little bit annoying.

However, beyond the mechanics of combat being good, the game also manages to have a decent variety of enemies, especially compared to the last Adventure Time game I played. For example, in Hey Ice King, when the hypno-worms stop and emit waves, that’s just them becoming easy targets (which is what most enemies do in that game), but in this game, attacking them while they’re emitting waves causes you to take damage. Sure, it’s annoying to have to wait for them to stop before you have the boomerang item and can simply stun them, but waiting-for-a-few-seconds is also as annoying as the combat gets.

The exploration parts are pretty hit-or-miss, though. The map of the Nameless Kingdom is quite detailed (even moreso than A Link to the Past’s map), so you can see which paths go where before you make it to those areas. Plus, the mugshot of the princess you’re supposed to rescue next will bob toward and away from the camera slightly, so you won’t end up going to the wrong castle at the wrong time and having to turn back. Also, while you’re in a dungeon, key items are in red chests, so you know which ones to prioritize (although keys are still found in the ordinary green chests, which can also contain consumable items or money). There’s no running ability, though, so it can take a while to get from one end of the map to the other.

However, beyond that, you’re on your own, and some of the things the game expects you to figure out on your own aren’t exactly intuitive. For example, the first part I got stuck was midway through the first dungeon: there’s a small room with bomb people on one side of a staircase and a cracked wall on the other side. Obviously, you have to blow up the cracked wall, but while you can pick up bomb people, you can’t carry them up the stairs or throw them up there, either. After looking it up, I saw that you have to use the slap move that you learn in the dungeon, and this stores the bomb people in your bag (this game’s equivalent of the bottles).

That one may not seem so bad, but near the end of the game, there’s a room where you have to defeat all the enemies to unlock the next door, but when you do this, the door won’t open. There’s a diagonal moving enemy in the room, but this enemy has shown up multiple times before and couldn’t be harmed then. Of course, it turns out there is a way to defeat this enemy, and it involves using a power that didn’t imply you could do this that you got from a previous unmarked (on the map, at least) dungeon that only opens up if you make it to an arbitrary point in the trading quest (this game has one of those, too). Oh, and that’s the only time you have to kill that particular enemy, too. I feel like the game could be improved just by slight modifications to convey these mechanics right after you get the items: For the bag storage system, have bomb people be available in the store right after you buy the bag so players can read their description and know they can be stored (and tweak the description of the slap attack to say that it can store things in bags). I don’t remember if the bottle descriptions in A Link to the Past ever hint that you need the bug-catching net to put stuff in them, but I know that it was the last game to make bottle storage a two-step process, and I know for a fact that it wasn’t mandatory. For the previously unkillable enemy, the doors could lock and spawn exactly one of them the moment the player gets the move that can kill them so the player can intuit what to do even without a description.

Speaking of the trading quest: in other Zelda games, the trading quest will usually net you an optional Piece of Heart if you complete them, but this game’s trading quest is required to unlock the final dungeon. Once again, you’re left on your own to find where everyone is, and one of the first characters you need to find is under a single bush hidden away in a corner of a wide section, so it can easily be missed. Plus, even if you know where everyone is, a few item descriptions don’t give decent hints on who needs the items (although the “give this item?” prompt always shows up if you have the correct item when you talk to the character, so there’s that at least). For example, Mind Games’s description should have said something like “Includes tips for getting a date.” instead of just “Jake said this book’s advice is iffy at best.” I wouldn’t mind this so much if it were optional, but I guess the devs felt the need to pad out their short little game, and this is the result. It wouldn’t even take much effort to make the trading quest optional since the item you get at the end of it already offers bonus details in the form of being able to read the stone slabs scattered around the kingdom. Heck, you wouldn’t even have to remove the new lock on the central castle; just have the player use the secret entrance he/she used at the beginning of the game (which, by the way, it makes no sense that that detail was removed in the first place).

I should also mention the game’s performance issues. Notably (in the Vita version, at least), it isn’t uncommon to see the seams between the grass textures and the green part of the stair models or mountain models, and the WayForward logo’s frame-rate is noticeably low, but beyond that, there’s a surprising amount of lag. Some rooms will be fine unless you equip the fire elemental (used to light torches, etc.), but there are a surprising number of rooms that lag just fine on their own, with the fire elemental making the lag worse. I swear, like, half of the rooms in the final dungeon have lag, and quite a few rooms in the second dungeon lag as well (and I’m sure there’s more that I’m forgetting). There’s apparently a 3DS version, and IIRC that system has lower specs than the Vita; does that version have lag, too?

The game also has 3 endings (you pick which princess should rule the kingdom). It’s a neat detail, but you have to beat the final boss again to see another ending, which is rather annoying. Also, for the Nightmare Princess’s ending, there was a part where the screen went grey and the game’s title popped up in a generic font, making me think the credits were gonna scroll, but then it suddenly cut to another cut-scene, interrupting the new track that had just started playing. I don’t know if that’s a Vita issue or if the rear touch screen is used to skip that part or what.

So, would I recommend this game? Well, overall, I had fun. The vague parts were really annoying as always, but the combat was well done, with a decent variety of enemies and gimmicks. The price was probably the best part: only one (1) dollar! Even I can recommend it at that price. However, there is one major issue I haven’t mentioned, one that you may already be aware of: the game was removed from digital stores. At the time of this writing, the cheapest you can get a physical copy is at Gamestop for ten times the price! And it’s the 3DS version, so I don’t know how it’s performance is; maybe the devs fixed it to run well on the weaker hardware, or maybe it has even worse lag, I don’t know.

Regardless, I don’t understand how this game gets mixed reviews while the Zelda games get consistent 9/10s. This game really isn’t any different from them; if you liked A Link to the Past, you’ll enjoy this game, too (although this game is pretty short (only four dungeons), especially when compared to ALttP, so don’t pay too much for it).