Thursday, June 13, 2019

Link's Awakening Remake: Guardian Acorn & Piece of Power

Link's Awakening stands out in many different ways, when it comes to the Zelda series. And one of theses oddities are certainly the two temporary power-ups, the Guardian Acorn and the Piece of Power. And they could be a little bit annoying, because you get a text message every single time you pick one of them up and the music changes from the nice overworld and dungeon tunes to a repetitive jingle.

screenshot of Link picking up a Piece of Power inside the Tail Cave

And this will return in the remake the way it was, for the most part. You still get a text every time, where it would have been an improvement if it only does this the very first time, but at least it's a little bit faster now. You also have the classic tune, but this time these power-ups are on a clock. They only last exactly 30 seconds now.

This makes a good difference, because in the original those effects could potentially stay forever, as long as you don't switch between overworld and caves or dungeons and as long as you don't get hit. So, the little power-up music could last for the rest of a dungeon, if you're skilled enough. (Sometimes I would even hurt myself on purpose to get the dungeon music back.)

But with the timer it makes them feel a lot more like traditional power-ups, where you want to make the best out of the effects as long as you have them, where you even might seek confrontations as quickly as possible. The 30 seconds timer makes a big difference from the original, where these power-ups feel more valuable and less annoying, despite the fact that they actually got less useful.

The other big change is that they leave a notable visual effect, some sort of aura. It's blue for the Guardian Acorn and red for the Piece of Power, matching the two tunics from the Color Dungeon with the same effects. Those look really cool and give a nice visual indicator that you're using the power-ups:

screenshot of Link surrounded by a blue glow in the Koholint Prairie

However, using the Piece of Power doesn't feel as powerful as in the GameBoy original, mainly because the enemy hit sounds aren't as intense. Throwing an enemy over the entire screen with an intense sound effect was absolutely satisfying... Now, it just makes them go "poof".

You can watch both effects in action in this video by IGN. The screenshots in this post were also taken from there.

No comments: