Thursday, February 21, 2019

Link's Awakening Remake: Keep the Power!


With a remake like Link's Awakening it's easy to come up with new ideas, but at the same time you're also worrying that certain things simply will be lost in translation. As a Zelda game, Link's Awakening was unique with its way of letting Link become very powerful. Some of it has never been replicated by the rest of the series, where Nintendo might consider these abilities as "overpowered"... It would still be a loss, if they didn't make it back into the remake, so let's go over them.


Piece of Power


Link's Awakening is one of the few Zelda games, where enemies can drop temporary power-ups: the Guardian Acorn and the Piece of Power. Those could be a little annoying with their text boxes and change of music, but ideally the remake will simply fix these issues instead of removing them entirely. And if they still get removed, in the very least these abilities should remain with the Blue and Red Tunics, because they were quite handy and in case of the Piece of Power / the Red Tunic also lots of fun.


It was extremely satisfying to smash enemies all over the screen with a single blow. Sadly, it doesn't seem like the sound effects for hitting enemies and bosses are any similar to the original, but at least the sound of this powerful blow needs to replicated in the remake. There's just nothing like it in the rest of the Zelda series and it would be a shame to lose it.


Seashell Sword


Similar to getting a Piece of Power, getting the Seashell Sword felt extremely powerful. It feels even better and stronger than the Master Sword in the Oracle games...


It's perfectly demonstrated by the moment, where you leave the Seashell Mansion with it. Suddenly, you can kill the Moblins that used to take two hits with a single hit. From a distance. The Sword Beams of the Seashell Sword are really fast and as powerful as the sword itself, something the Zelda series has never done afterwards – usually the Sword Beams are weaker. Only Fierce Deity Link came close to this power. And the Master Sword dreams of being the Seashell Sword.


Powerful Items


Thing is, you don't even need the Seashell Sword to become really powerful in this game. Many of the items are as good and there is a reason for that. Link's Awakening was the first Zelda game to let you freely swap and combine two items. This was a necessity due to only having two action buttons on the GameBoy, but it also lets you de-equip both Sword and Shield, which is unusual in the series.

But with that they've made other items more versatile and deadly than they normally would be in other Zelda games. The best example is the Boomerang. Most Zelda games give you the Boomerang early on, where its main purpose is to catch distant items and to stun enemies. The Boomerang in Link's Awakening, however, is hidden behind a lengthy trading sequence and can't be gotten before the fifth dungeon. It also is one of the most powerful weapons in the game, which kills many of the enemies in a single hit and even enemies that normally can't be destroyed like the Sparks.

It's also an awesome combination with Flying Rooster, where it keeps circling you, which basically makes you invincible. You can fly around, while the Boomerang takes care of all the enemies around you.

The Hookshot is also quite deadly, killing many foes in a single hit as well. It is your best way of dealing with Helmasaurs and can also be quite effective against various mini bosses, which makes the Hookshot feel like a significant upgrade to your fire power.

And another ridiculously powerful weapon is gotten at the end with the Magic Rod...


It burns almost everything, which includes Cuccos and Mutts, which would normally can't be killed and even fight back when you attack them. The Magic Powder also lets you burn many things right from the beginning of the game, but the Magic Rod can do so from a safe distance and without limitations in use.


Bomb Arrows


The free assignment of items to the A and B buttons also lets you combine certain items for crazier effects. Combine Pegasus Boots and the Roc's Feater for longer jumps... Combine Bow and Bombs for Bomb Arrows. Those almost feel like a glitch and are super powerful and fun to use.

They also provide various shortcuts, many of which are inside the Turtle Rock dungeon. Which leads us to the final topic:


Non-Linear Dungeons


While the overall course of your adventure on Koholint can be rather linear, the dungeons are certainly not and allow for many different routes through them. Later Zelda games would limit more and more the choices of where to proceed inside a dungeon. And if they give you choices, it's usually a mandatory set of rooms that can be done in any order. The Divine Beasts in Breath of the Wild for example are all very open, but in the end you still have to visit all the terminals.

The dungeons in Link's Awakening give you both freedom and optional parts for exploration, which despite their short size turn them into memorable experiences. The best example of how far this can go is the Turtle Rock dungeon, where with the clever use of keys and the help of Bomb Arrows you can skip more than 50% of the rooms:

map of Turtle Rock with only half the rooms visited

You got the Instrument of the Siren, but there is still so much to explore! That's quite impressive and a more maze-like dungeon design seems like a lost art, which empowers the players to go their own way. Luckily, Hyrule Castle in Breath of the Wild does exactly that as well, where a less scripted dungeon design might be in the cards for future Zelda games.

Right now we've only seen three dungeon rooms of the Link's Awakening remake, but they all seemed to be accurate translations of the same rooms from the original GameBoy version. So, there is hope that at least this aspect of Link's Awakening won't change with the remake and that the new old dungeons provide the same level of freedom and exploration.

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