Once upon a time, there was a lame commercial rap that currently resides in my brain in the place where I ought to be able to remember things that were actually happening to me in junior high school.
It’s the Legend of Zelda, and it’s really rad
Those creatures from Ganon are pretty bad
Octoroks, tektites, leevers too!
But with your help, our hero pulls through
And then, presumedly, there were record scratchings, rap breathing, and so forth. And the game sounded incredibly cool, despite my lack of interest in rap and my lack of knowledge as to what, exactly, a tektite was. And in the fullness of time, I found it actually was incredibly cool. And then it had a sequel, which I liked well at the time though it kind of annoys me now. And then it had another sequel which was incredibly awesome, and then even more, and all of them bottomed out at really good, with several of them maintaining brilliance. So, y’know, yay franchise. And now we have the Wii, which is like a video game system, except that instead of purposefully wiggling your fingers, you purposefully flail your whole upper body. Which translates for your average Zelda fan into actually aiming the bow, or swinging the Master Sword, or taking Princess Zelda into your arms and… okay, maybe that part doesn’t happen. Fair enough. Still, though, even without creepy video game fantasies, Twilight Princess is a good game. In fact, despite that it’s a retread of two out of the last three Zelda games with only about 20% obviously new content, it’s pretty much a great game.
Of course there are bombs, boomerang, and bow. I mean, that’s the way it goes. Except for the motion control differences, really, the gameplay is unchanged in the last five years or more. The story has a fair amount of new to it. After starting out as the young man that everyone relies on to keep the village going, Link is quickly caught up in momentous events when a band of goblins steals all of the other children out of the village and, in the same evening, a mysterious twilit fog falls, transforming him into a wolf and leaving him stranded in a world of warped and powerful beasts intent upon his destruction. (And, Princess Zelda is in danger.) Naturally, therefore, Link sets out on a quest to retrieve certain artifacts that might enable his new friend Midna, who originates from the same twilight world that is now threatening Hyrule, to save her people from that threat.
Also, there’s fishing.
I have for thee, these pointes three… er, two:
1. Wow, I’d totally forgotten that rap, yet as soon as you mention, it all comes flooding back. What a horrible, horrible ad campaign.
2. Zelda II is massively under-rated. Nobody likes it these days, but why?!? It still had the mystery-centric overworld, PLUS it had ten times as much character interaction, plus WAY more interesting dungeons, PLUS more character development (by e.g., forcing you to kill bit-bots for 10 hours before continuing on the main plot). I think it was the rare sequel that’s much better than the original. Of course, I also think the American SMB2 was better than Super Mario Bros, so I realize I’m in a minority here. (But it was, goddammit!)
2. See, that’s crazed. Don’t get me wrong, I definitely liked it the first time. But upon recent attempted replay, that “character development” thing you mentioned was so grating, I couldn’t stand it after just a few hours of contemplation.
More so, though, I’m astonished at you, since that’s exactly the part you seem to like the least about Final Fantasy. (It’s for damn sure the part I like the least, which may be coloring my perception of your dislike.)
That complaint out of the way… yeah, the character interaction is awesome, as were the dungeons. It’s stronger in most ways over Zelda one, though without the novelty factor. But far weaker than any of the sequels since, and novelty factor makes up a lot of ground in my memory.
Well, keep two things in mind:
1. I played it when I was a kid, and the idea of spending ten hours killing things in the plains did not strike me as raw tedium, but instead as inexplicably fascinating. You may be right about how playing it now would suck more.
1a. The encounters weren’t RANDOM, though. You could stay on the road, and not have to fight, so you KNEW that if you went off, you were going to get drilled, and that was a challenge. It’s like walking on lava rocks!
1b. Also, I tend to forget about that part a lot, and focus on the side-scrolling towns and dungeons as the big difference between 1 and 2.
2. I didn’t play any Zelda between II and Ocarina, because I basically just got out of console gaming for a while there. Back now!