リンクの冒険

Good Golly Miss Molly, this was excrutiating. Zelda II's reputation preceeds itself and if you fall into it blindly knowing only the parlance of other Zeldas, you'll immediately be thrown towards ruthless enemies and introductory segments that just make no sense: To get to the first dungeon you're meant to go through caverns with no immediate source of light(as said by walking townsfolk), and you struggle immensely as you try to find this would-be light source without resorting to actually passing one of the caves, when in fact, you actually have to in order to find the damn candle. I feel like this one objective represents Zelda II in microcosm.

A lot has been written for the level of obtuseness that permeates old NES games, and the first Zelda wasn't stranger to it. Zelda 1 was a schoolyard game where kids were meant to exchange advice and collaborate on beating it(and also a game that's stoked by strategy guides provided by gaming mags), but even so its essential components were often telegraphed in some semblance, like spotting that one tree that looks weirdly alone, or bombing that blank spot that appeared in your explored portion of the dungeon map. It was a gaming equivalent of sentence completion, and with careful reasoning it was still a game that could be beaten without a walkthrough, which I can't say the same for Zelda II. Fortunately the dungeons themselves are really straightforward, but it's how you find these locales and get to these spots that's really deeply tucked and hidden(such as finding essential NPCs or items - or WHOLE CITIES by chance). The essential pathways to completion are barred without walkthroughs which is a big strike for me.

Even so this game would still be enjoyable without the immensely difficult foes you have to deal with. The combat and magic systems are both neat, but the way you utilise them are way too scarce for their own good. The most iconic combat move of the game, the downward thrust, can be gained at only about 60% inside the game, and way too many magic spells drain out on your resources that you're often left without juice for utilitarian spells. You're out of luck for the high jump and the fairy transformation spells, since you need to use magic to heal yourself constantly, and the screen nuke spell comes way too late and it's way too expensive for it to ever be useful. If you're meticulous, you can grind blobs inside dungeons to farm for magic points, but there are no clearcut grinding spots to make things easier like there was in Metroid, and you're essentially left eternally starving for both magic and health, as the low-health beeper works behind as a constant reminder of this hell you've entered.

The enemies are so relentless. Dark nuts will be your worst nightmare because you can't beat them through traditional means(immediately from dungeon 1), but have to resort to exploits such as jump-attacking that I don't think was the intention by the inexperienced developers who made this. I played Zelda II with the rewind system on and even then it drained me and made me lose lives cos sometimes I'd run out of magic at points where it was essential that I jump high or transform into a fairy. There are way too many bottomless pits that will nullify your entire progress and make the extra lives you pick up worthless, and it's too easy to fall into them. Zelda 1 didn't have bottomless pits or insta-kill obstacles like that. But in Zelda II you always have to be on edge, all the time, and you're not even safe in the villages you enter to heal all of the time.

In a weird way it's a really drowsy, barren world that's suitably apocalyptic. It follows on the story of Zelda 1 that didn't have much in line of settlements or NPCs either, and, as it's later been established, the two original Zelda games pick up in the "bad" timeline where Ganon had won. There's a certain amount of artistic aspiration in making the Zelda II world feel so hopeless and horrible, and that's the one thing the developers got correctly. Undergoing such tremendous difficulties, I guess it makes sense why so many players would eagerly headcanon the health-replenishing women as being the village whores. It's Zelda-meets-George R. R. Martin, and Nintendo says just too little enough that the player is miraculously allowed to place their own interpretation of this desolate, dark, mesmerising world.

Just why does the final palace have so many Egyptian and Babylonian motifs?

What is happening behind this and who is the entity calling for Ganon's return?

Just who is Shadow Link?

It's brilliant how none of these questions are ever really answered. It's truly a bleak, mysterious game that leaves the player searching for their own conclusions, and this is perhaps this game's strongest factor. It's so different. Way too different a Zelda for me than I'd like to be comfortable with, but I'm still very glad and fulfilled I managed to play and beat this, especially on the FDS version which has a richer sound palette, a more benevolent fighting experience, and a translation hack.

Just please, do yourself a favour and either use the rewind function, or better yet - play the ROM hack called "Zelda 2 Redux". It does so much to rebalance the game and give the player a much fairer shake along with other quality improvements, and I think it's closer to the difficulty that Miyamoto himself would consider fair. You'll need all the help you can get with this.