The previews for The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening are out today and the biggest news came from GameXplain. They have posted a preview and a video with 12 big changes, where in both they mention the new Hero Mode feature...
Like with Master Mode in Breath of the Wild you get a small icon in the bottom left corner of the screen, which always shows that you're playing in Hero Mode:
This icon is also next your save file and the death counter is back, so you might want to be careful here, if the conditions for the best ending are still the same, where you weren't allowed to ever die in the original. Otherwise the Hero Mode in Link's Awakening seems to be pretty straight-forward and only changes the following things:
It's kind of surprising that Nintendo didn't advertise this themselves, like they usually do. When they had added Hero Mode to both The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD they made a big selling point out of it... However, GameXplain didn't make it clear whether you have to unlock this mode by beating the normal game first or not. It could be that it's not available from the start and was meant to be a small surprise.
In any case it's not a real 2nd Quest, so they didn't change the dungeons or anything else. But knowing Grezzo's skills when it comes to level design it's probably a good thing that they left the re-arranging of dungeons to ourselves with the Chamber Dungeon feature. The original dungeons from Link's Awakening were all really well done and if they try to do something else here the quality might suffer. This way you can enjoy the original game under some tougher conditions, which is nice to have.
For veterans it would also be nice, if this mode was available right from the start. But I personally will play the normal mode first in any case, because I want to re-experience the game like it used to be for better comparisons. Plus, it's kind of weird how with the apples Hero Mode will drop an entire new feature altogether.
Update: the Spanish website 3djuegos confirms that Hero Mode will indeed be available right from the beginning. Thanks to Lankelink for the link!
PS: Notice how the Signpost Maze area has changed a bit in the above screenshot!
Like with Master Mode in Breath of the Wild you get a small icon in the bottom left corner of the screen, which always shows that you're playing in Hero Mode:
This icon is also next your save file and the death counter is back, so you might want to be careful here, if the conditions for the best ending are still the same, where you weren't allowed to ever die in the original. Otherwise the Hero Mode in Link's Awakening seems to be pretty straight-forward and only changes the following things:
- You take double damage.
- You won't find any hearts or apples.
- Mini bosses don't leave fairies any longer.
It's kind of surprising that Nintendo didn't advertise this themselves, like they usually do. When they had added Hero Mode to both The Wind Waker HD and Twilight Princess HD they made a big selling point out of it... However, GameXplain didn't make it clear whether you have to unlock this mode by beating the normal game first or not. It could be that it's not available from the start and was meant to be a small surprise.
In any case it's not a real 2nd Quest, so they didn't change the dungeons or anything else. But knowing Grezzo's skills when it comes to level design it's probably a good thing that they left the re-arranging of dungeons to ourselves with the Chamber Dungeon feature. The original dungeons from Link's Awakening were all really well done and if they try to do something else here the quality might suffer. This way you can enjoy the original game under some tougher conditions, which is nice to have.
For veterans it would also be nice, if this mode was available right from the start. But I personally will play the normal mode first in any case, because I want to re-experience the game like it used to be for better comparisons. Plus, it's kind of weird how with the apples Hero Mode will drop an entire new feature altogether.
Update: the Spanish website 3djuegos confirms that Hero Mode will indeed be available right from the beginning. Thanks to Lankelink for the link!
PS: Notice how the Signpost Maze area has changed a bit in the above screenshot!
It seems that the hero mode is unlocked from the start, according to some Spanish sites. Here is a picture:
ReplyDeletehttps://i11a.3djuegos.com/juegos/16437/the_legend_of_zelda_link__039_s_awakening__2019_/fotos/avances/the_legend_of_zelda_link__039_s_awakening__2019_-4968079.jpg
Source: https://www.3djuegos.com/juegos/avances/34029/5348/0/the-legend-of-zelda-links-awakening/
Thanks a lot, this is nice to know and have!
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