Review: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past/Four Swords (GBA)

What defines a good adventure? Exploring the unknown? Making discoveries? Facing powerful foes, and going up against staggering odds? Perhaps all of these, perhaps more. But Link's legendary epic journey through the land of Hyrule is probably a good place to start. Revived for the new generation, the Gameboy Advance version represents a link to our hero's past, and anyone familiar with just the later episodes of the Zelda series will immediately feel right at home, if not a little overwhelmed.

Though two-dimensional, the relative top-down simplicity doesn't make the game particularly easy. With only a puny little sword to defend yourself, you must survive the hordes of nasties and projectiles flung your way whilst you travel onwards through the game's multi-sectioned sprawling map. Given the quantity and variety of the enemy types, and the complexity of some of the environments, the combat is overly simplistic - almost to the point of hopelessness. Enemies will come at you from all directions, and yet your attacks will only go in four. No matter how 'right' those angles may be, they are often just 'wrong'. A hit by some of the faster enemies will sometimes result in your being swamped - completely covered over, and forced to retreat, spin around, and take a mighty swipe at your foe to see them off. It's unintentionally messy at times, with only extra weapons (such as the boomerang) to provide some much needed extra defence.

But negativity regarding the combat aside, Zelda: A Link to the Past is structurally perfect, more or less. The game world is one huge all-inclusive environment. A tap of the left shoulder button will bring up the semi-3D map screen, and allow you to scroll around it. Displayed as one huge world, you traverse it in small segments that scroll onto the next part once the perimeter is reached. Cleverly, the game will restrict what and where you can access not by basic 'lock-and-key' puzzles, but by your own inherent capabilities. An upgrade to Power Gloves will allow you to effortlessly cast aside giant stones, whereas a projectile grapple weapon called the Hookshot will enable you to pull yourself over to previously unreachable high areas. Over the course of the entire game you are becoming more of the hero you are destined to be, as you 'upgrade' yourself in typical Nintendo adventure style.

The life meter is improved by collecting heart-pieces; various upgrades to your sword and shield occur, as well as opening up one or two special moves. Whilst these things aren't essential to victory, they do assist you in the boss fights that end each of the game's dungeons. The true essential items need to be found to progress, often in the very dungeon where it will become needed. This makes every dungeon open up like a puzzle; seemingly impossible-to-access areas will soon become a breeze once the new equipment is released from its wooden chest prison and then mastered, and you begin to fill up the squares on your dungeon map.

And this puzzle-based nature doesn't stop at the dungeons alone. The entire game world is structured into one, huge, all-encompassing puzzle. Once Link has opened up the gateway to the Dark World (a mirror of the Light World), the terrain around him will change - in some places subtly, in others totally. But the passage to the Dark World is one-way. A Magic Mirror will transport you back from any location, but the only way to the Dark World is from very scarce portals. Uncovering these via upgrades is the only way to reach areas of both worlds that seemed impossible before.

The satisfaction of exploring new areas - finding the right path - is only set back by the amount of wandering that needs to be done to achieve this. A Link to the Past is not pick-up-and-play friendly, thus not entirely suited to the way most of us will be playing it (ie. on the move). Often you are left without a clue as to where to go, or more accurately, you are shown the way but not the means. And far be it from Gamestyle to complain about the amount of dedication needed to set you on the right path, but frankly some of the key items are ludicrously placed in illogical locales, with nothing but one obscure 'tip' from a rather (un)helpful NPC. Several hours of wandering can still lead you in the wrong direction, and if you don't know WHAT it is you are searching for, then working out HOW is twice as hard. However in fairness, sections like these are relatively few, and thankfully a Sleep mode has been included to make the 'restart-after-reset' nature of the dungeons more forgivable.

Now, as is becoming common with these types of reworkings, Nintendo have got Capcom on board to flesh out the package with a multiplayer experience. While this is an admirable endeavour, the sheer logistics of setting up are far beyond the abilities of most gamers - as indeed they are beyond those of Gamestyle. Four friends, each with a copy of the same game, each with a Gameboy Advance, and three link cables between you are needed. The relevance of such an inclusion, Gamestyle considers minimal (especially in light of Nintendo's GBA connectivity plans for the Gamecube). But should you manage the epic feat of setting up such a play session, you will undoubtedly uncover a mix of teamwork, puzzles and even rivalry, through some much-improved 32-bit locales. What a treat!

Although A Link to the Past represents some of the most fabulous game designs you're ever likely to see, it also suffers from some criminally unforgiving sections that today's gamer-on-the-go is likely to scoff at. Not quite the vision of perfection that it once seemed to be; in fact Gamestyle even came across one or two bugged sections where progress was hindered and a restart was unavoidable. In the final analysis, however, such a well-designed, beautifully crafted game should be at the top of every adventurer's collection. The trouble is, for many of us, it was there years ago.

Rating: 9 / 10

Words by Daniel James