The Zelda tune was something that I always carried with me from childhood, like most of the Castlevania and Mario BGM music, I hummed the tune from Zelda in high school whenever I was feeling down, it had the ability to ensorcell me with magical delight, as if it teleported me instantly to the fantasy Hyrule. It was as memorable as the Xmas Carol, more so. There was a long gap, almost a decade after I played the 2nd Zelda title — the Adventure of Link, till the SNES A Link to the Past, which I got much much later when I was in college. I never could get my mind off Legend of Zelda, and I yearned for every new title since the first game. Despite its unpopularity, Zelda 2 was my favorite title — indeed just because of its insane difficulty and its RPG-like interface married with tough action gameplay — I remembered the battle with shadow Link as one of the most intense battle ever in the history of the franchise — there wasn’t anything you could do if you couldn’t beat him — you only had your own skill to rely on; unlike newer Zelda titles that every boss fight was just a puzzle, figure out the pattern and the weapon to use, and you can practically beat them blindfolded. Not so with Shadow Link from the Adventure of Link, and not so with any of the other bosses in the game, what you were equipped with — was skill alone. Then there was Ocarina of Time, the game I bought the N64 just to play, and pretty much discarded the machine after. I fell in love all over again. Ocarina of Time was the perfect game — it brought the gameplay of the first Zelda into a flawless transitional world of 3D, and it brought the intensity of playing the adult Link in Zelda 2 also into the game, granted it wasn’t even half as difficult as Zelda 2, but just the nostalgia it sparked within my soul was priceless.
Fast forward another decade or so, just this holiday season I finished the latest title Spirit Tracks, and had intended to write a review on it. I had tried to begin to review many times and I realized I had writer’s block. Well that isn’t entirely true, it is because I really have nothing to say about it at all. It wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t great, it was as good as any other Zelda title and it was probably the best it could be, but it just wasn’t remarkable. And I realized this — the Zelda formula isn’t timeless, it is as old as I am now and I am feeling pretty aged, but I am not really doing the same thing everyday like I was when I was a child, sure I still played all the damn good games out there, but I also have to work, I have to read, I have to strategise, I have to procrastinate, I have to procreate, I have more than a mouth to feed. The main problem with Zelda isn’t entirely the same gameplay over and over again, sure anything Bioware churns out also have to same gameplay for the past decade or so, what the Zelda franchise can’t get away from, is always telling the same tale. Sure Link is the representative hero with a thousand faces, but the Zelda franchise has given us, is the hero with 1 face, in 1 land, fighting 1 foe, saving the same 1 princess all the same damn time. I am tired of it, and I am sure I am not the only one.
Twilight Princess tried to be exciting — and arguably it was a better game than Ocarina of Time — but the end result was that it wasn’t. It was still the same damn thing over and over again, dressed in prettier garments. Then there was the DS’s Phantom Hourglass, a first core handheld entry (and by core I mean it’s no longer a side story like from the ones from gameboy and GBA), a direct sequel to Windwaker. I couldn’t for the life of me like Windwaker, but I felt content with Phantom Hourglass, for the kiddy toon-shaded graphics finally felt at home on the tiny screen of the DS, and Phantom Hourglass felt refreshing, like playing Zelda 1 all over again with the control mechanism of Diablo, with the stylus as the mouse. It did away with the complex 3D dungeons and returned to the bare basics of 2D Zelda overhead gameplay, and it was enjoyable even though I hated repeating the challenges from the Temple of the Ocean King over and over again, yes I know, you are supposed to be able to bypass the traps quicker every time you returned with new gear, and it was ingenious design in a way, but no — try putting the game away for a week and come back to it, you will find the temple unbearable — and off you go in search for a solution in GameFaqs.com.
And there was Spirit Tracks, a game so uninteresting that I am trying to spend another paragraph to simply not talk about it. I will probably never talk about it the rate this is going. Yes, the game did away with the insane tediousness of everything that was Phantom Hourglass, and it added in Zelda as your active companion (even though that does nothing for me). It gave you a whip (yeah Castlevania!) and a handheld fan you have to blow into the damn DS microphone to activate, yeah try playing that on the train and see who won’t look at you like a lunatic — maybe for a little kid it is acceptable behavior, but not for a 30 year old. Some of the puzzles felt new (like the phantom possession puzzles, and raising sand columns for platforming), but not truly new — they felt distinctly Zelda — so familiar that they felt simply old (not entirely in a bad way). There were trains as the means of travel but to some it just feltlike another layer of tediousness. And there were some pretty cool puzzle-solving boss fights that figuring out the pattern was 90% of the battle. And the story tried to be so different that it ended up feeling like the same old crap — sure you are not fighting Ganondorf, but hay you are still trying to save Zelda. I have used the word many times to describe this game and I will use it one more time – simply unremarkable.
This is probably a sign of old age, or wisdom — that I have played too many games in my life, which means my brain is filled with a database of games — nothing feels new and refreshing to me, and especially not a Zelda title. It simply feeds on my nostalgia. What can a Zelda title do to improve it, well the inherent problem with it is calling it the Legend of Zelda — which means it cant tell a radically different story, and it has to try to awe us with its gameplay, which it can’t either because it has to stick with its award-winning Zelda formula which every game developer has tried at least one in his lifetime to draw inspiration from. What it can do is either retire for good, which isn’t likely, being the cash-cow that it is, or draw its inspiration from the 2 most radical titles in the series, the first being my most favorite Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link, making it combat challenging, forget the puzzle boss fights — make it difficult, make it Shinobi PSX married with Ninja Gaiden XBOX kind of challenging, make it RPG like — make you grind for your goodies but never grow too powerful for your foes, make difficult platforming sections which will make Megaman feel like a helpless school girl. The other title it can draw inspiration from is Majora’s Mask, the 2nd N64 title which storytelling was structured so radically that it never failed to impress, following a Groundhog day formula that everything resets whenever the day is done, you constantly felt the pressure to complete your task, and that’s innovation.
Until the Zelda franchise get its things together and its gear in motion, I am quite unlikely to be excited about the series again. And that is all I have got to say for the day. Zelda, I am over you.
