The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past

The legend of zelda is a retro action RPG set in a medieval world where a kingdom has been taken over by a wizard who killed the king and Prisoned princess Zelda in the dungeons. The player’s job is to save the princess from the dungeons by fighting off all who gets in the way.The game had 16 bit music playing in the background and with each action done by the player. Also had fluid movement 8 way control wise and fighting mechanics was not bad for the time it came out and the console it came out on. I not being a retro gamer still liked the gameplay mechanics and the controls. It had 16 bit colours in the world with weather effects like heavy rain with thunder a lighting which was amazing for the time it was released. The game difficulty was pretty high looking at finding things such as secret doors. Comparing to the older Zelda games this game had so much life to it, from the environmental effects to textures in the bushes and trees. The best aspect of the game I liked the most was the exploration aspect of the game, the map was a lot bigger than the older Zelda games which gave this game a more open world aspect to and the sense of exploration which had never been matched before or in my opinion, since. The game had some amazing weapons and items such as bow and arrow, boomerang and the bombs, this also had some secret weapons such as the magic cape which you didn’t even have to get to complete the game but it make the gameplay a bit easier.

In the end I played the Zelda game for the story within the game itself, the link to the past is considered a prequel to the first Zelda game, the game story is a little more sophisticated that the last two Zelda games. The game starts off with Zelda giving link a distress call telepathically .Zelda is the princess of high rule who is locked up in a castle meaning to be rescued. The one responsible for this is a wizard called aghanim. His goal is the break the seal of the sacred realm and in order to do that he casted spells on many soldiers and kidnapped the young maidens who are descendants of the seven sages. With all of this happening link’s uncle goes ahead to the castle telling link that he should not go to the castle. So link goes to the castle and finds out that his uncle has been slain, then he passes down his sword and shield to link ordering him to rescue princess Zelda. So from here on out Zelda’s job was to rescue princess Zelda and take her to place for safe keeping. Then he takes her to sanctuary where he leaves Zelda to go defeat aghanim. Later link finds out that he needs to acquire the master sword to defeat aghanim. After he acquires the master sword he finds out the sanctuary he left Zelda in was infiltrated by guards and she has been taken again. Because of this

link has to go rescue her again, but unfortunately Zelda for in aghanim hand and she gets teleported to the dark world. To get Zelda backlink gets transported to the dark world too. After theis point in game out main mission is to defeat aghanim and rescue princess zelda.

Looking at the game-play mechanics of link to past after playing the older zelda games,There are many game-play mechanics that legend of zelda burrowed from the original zelda game and improved them in many aspects. Link's sword attack from the original zelda for an example is a stabbing motion that only affects the enemy in front of him, but in link to the past however the sword attack is more of a swinging motion giving the attack a wider area of affect. Same thing thing with link's movement as well before he could only move in four direction but in link to the past its 8 directions. Simple changes like these two gives link to the past a much more open feel comparing to it's predecessors'. In order to progress through the game you have to navigate your way though  dungeons, fight your way though hordes of enemies, defeat bosses and acquire items. The most important thing of all this is the item aspect because without items you wouldn't be able to anything else in the game. The entire game is beautifully designed to around progression to the means of items that you discover in each dungeon. if you ever find something in this game you'll know that it will be an important piece of a puzzle that you may run into in the near future. While this game is pretty challenging its never too easy or too difficult, the game does a great job of always having the right amount of enemies to deal with in each area. so the game creates a great balance between action and exploring.

Power attack

Secret roooms

Enemies

Even though I am not a big fan of the other Zelda games, I enjoyed playing this game a lot because its fun.To me its not necessarily the story and setting that make me come back to this game its the game play and the atmosphere that is really appealing to me. Everything feels so smooth in this game compared to the Zelda games. Zelda is a part of a series where every game is different and each game fits a different kind of gamers and personalities. Link to the past just happens to be the one Zelda game that fits me perfectly in the series.