The Legend of Zelda: Now We Have a Dark Haired Zelda Named Hilda!: Finished!
Died only once officially, got over 20k rupees throughout the course of the game. Could not get the ultimate sword because finding the last hint was me smacking my head against the wall repeatedly and didn't want to FAQ it, at least not until I completed the game. Also, only 2 hearts away from full gauge, though, dunno how many heart pieces. Found 84 of the 100 Maimais, and I wasn't even looking THAT hard (oh, I did some actual searching make no mistake), so I guess that qualifies as a well done world-wide treasure hunt. Only thing I didn't upgrade was the Hookshot.
This game is really good. I discussed this in chat, but the thing I think what this game did exceedingly well was just managing to find the perfect balance of "Familiar" and "New." By making it an ALttP sequel with ALttP fanservice all over the place, it hits every nostalgic chord well, and you definitely have a sense of familiarity with what you're doing as a result. Yet, with the new gameplay ideas (rentals, wall-art, etc.), it gives a new feel to the game. The ability to do dungeon sets in almost any order you want was nice, and the game doesn't feel like it's holding your hand either. Simply goes "here's the dungeon, now figure it out."
While Dungeons did eventually become gimmicked around an item, a big difference is that because you have the item BEFORE going into the dungeon, the dungeon starts off with item related puzzles from the outset. Normally, Zelda dungeons will start with a bunch of general switch hitting, key finding, etc. until you find the token treasure in the dungeon halfway in. Then it takes a huge shift and now is focused entirely on that item to reach all the unreachable areas. At least, the Zelda games I played were like this, and seeing what little my brother played, it didn't seem to shift from this (and Oracle Games certainly followed this route too.) This leads to dungeons being highly repetitive, and being both larger and taking way longer than they need to. Its fine at first, but by the 4th dungeon out of like 10, it starts to feel very samey.
ALBW, however, because of it's style, it basically cuts out the entire first half of the dungeon, and it doesn't force a lot of filler. So dungeons are just long enough to feel fulfilling, and don't overstay their welcome. This makes the game way shorter as a result. ALBW is a very short game by modern Zelda standards, but honestly? It's really fun from start to finish, so I can't complain. I'd rather a game be a brief, enjoyable experience the entire way through than a long adventure that rollercoasters between "fun" and "tedious" which many modern adventure games and other similar things (like jRPGs) stumble into. The game has only as much as it needs, and being short, it's replay friendly, which is complimented by Hero Mode.
The other thing this game does well is it's story. No, it's not a highly original story. No, it's not even a particularly stand out story. What I praise about it, however, is the game doesn't waste your time with it. It tells the entire story in only a handful of scenes, which for a story as simple as this, gets the point across. No needless exposition, no in-depth backstory talks, just straight and to the point. I respect that they were able to just cut out the bullcrap, and give you only the essentials, and the game is all the more enjoyable for it. It also deserves props for having a half-decent sympathetic villain. From my understanding, they tried this with Ganondorf in The Wind Waker, but ultimately it was "dude, you're still trying to murder everyone because you're angry" which uh, yeah, you can't make someone be super evil then try to make them appear sympathetic. ALBW's villain, it has an understandable motive, and while there is a "going too far", feel (they're the villain after all), you do feel bad for the character by the end and it makes the situation all the better that the game actually finds a sensible way to make Hilda and Ravio have a happy ending too, rather than simply leaving them to rot, which honestly, the game could have gotten away with. I'm not kidding either; it's nice to see a game, in this era of over cinematic, highly dialog driven scenes, to be able to tell a full, complete and satisfying story in as few scenes and time as ALBW did.
This also has the benefit of the game taking about 5 minutes to start with actual gameplay. You wake up, walk a bit on the overworld, get Not!Sword, walk to location, get sword, do tutorial dungeon, watch cutscene, and now the game actually begins. This is done within a 5 minute time frame, I'm not joking. Even ALttP didn't begin this fast, as ALttP had a considerably longer "tutorial" dungeon (Hyrule Castle), and ALttP was by no means a game slow starting game either. It's stuff like this that really shows they really captured the charm of older games, that you can start a new, fresh game and not have to worry about all the intro stuff.
Yeah I could go on singing this game's praises, but really, it earned it's high marks from all those reviewers. If you liked ALttP, and have a 2/3DS, I can't recommend this game enough. I know, I don't usually hype Zelda games like...ever , but I did grow up playing a lot of ALttP on the SNES, so being able to go back to a new Zelda game that brings back that nostalgic sense and is legitimately fun is something that feels great.
I kind of want to replay ALttP now after playing this, and it was just put on the Wii U VC, so maybe I will! Though I did just Download 4 Swords for free on 3DS, so maybe I'll try that because...free game?
