The Legend Of Zelda Link’s Awakening received a remake recently on Switch, and while that was good, there were places where it could have been better. Today I team with Indie Gamer Chick ( who previously reviews the game here) to look at 4 areas where the Link’s Awakening remake could have been improved immensely.
Content
More new content was needed first and foremost. Link’s Awakening is an excellent game, but the remake doesn’t change much after decades of the original existing. There are some nice mechanical changes and quality of life tweaks that are decent, but the end result is still a 1:1 recreation. That fact has turned many off the game, because they feel that a new look aside, that do not feel they will get anything new out of this. Yes, the color dungeon is included, but that doesn’t really matter for many. That dungeon was itself a gimmick and doesn’t really fit here in the HD remake.
The sole new content, the chamber dungeons, are themselves are almost an afterthought really considering how they are done. Nintendo should have considered changing some things here and there in the game and not just mechanically. Perhaps they could have changed a dungeon or two’s layout , or even added a true extra dungeon instead of the chamber a dungeon feature. Something like that would have thrown players off in a good way and given them a desire to keep playing and see something new. Nintendo could have even added a new town into the overworld and given us more to explore. Expanding the minigames in the overworld was nice, but adding to the overworld itself would have been mindblowing. There doesn’t need to be a lot of change, but at least some change.
Indie Gamer Chick says:
Make no mistake, Link’s Awakening has some brilliant dungeon work. I especially love Eagle Tower’s primary mechanic of working a giant ball through the level to collapse the level. I have no problem with the overall design of Awakening at all. The problem is the dialog from 1993 is carried-over word-for-word as well. I don’t get why they did that. Gaming has come so far, yet Link’s Awakening still reads at a third-grade level.
I wish Nintendo had retained the same story elements but with a whole new script. It would have allowed for a deeper exploration on character motivations and the nature of the Koholint’s awareness that they’re figments of a disco whale’s imagination. For what little was already in Awakening, the puppy-love vibrations between Marin and Link work. But Link apparently has no issue with blinking her out of existence. Shouldn’t the burden of his task weigh on him more? A sharper script and a deeper exploration into morality was warranted here. Hell, this could have been Nintendo’s Undertale and made players of all ages question the very notion of good and evil. But no, Link simply wakes up the Windfish and smiles contently knowing he just murdered every person who just helped him out. The end. What a hero.
Replay content/Additional Quests/Refined Dungeons
In addition to some sort of new content, or perhaps in a variation on it, there could have been some sort of second quest mode. This would not be a hero mode where things are just harder because that doesn’t add anything new. I am speaking more along the lines of a master quest mode or the second quest from Zelda 1. Gamer have played through Link’s Awakening multiple times, but if things were laid out differently, it would excite players a lot more.
To go even further on this matter, we can look to the Internet once again. Randomizers are a big thing now with Lets Play channels, and some are made of Link’s Awakening. A randomizer mode of sorts, done with Nintendo’s usual polish would have really made this game stand out. It would have made the experience feel new to people and there wouldn’t be a worry of the glitchiness that comes from online romhacks. It could have kept players coming back for months.
Indie Gamer Chick says:
The really bizarre thing about what Nintendo did add to Link’s Awakening is that it nerfed what was already a fairly breezy 2D Zelda. Nintendo’s best solution (besides the graphical overhaul) to add content to Link’s Awakening’s main game was to just dump more Pieces of the Heart and Secret Seashells. There’s so many of them now that before even starting the first dungeon, I’d found eight Pieces of the Heart and had five hearts total. It was comical how often I’d find one in mundane places. Meanwhile, they did bring back the half-assed, throwaway color dungeon from Link’s Awakening DX on the Game Boy Color, maybe the worst 2D dungeon in Zelda history.
Forget a second quest: why didn’t they add more dungeons? Hell, why didn’t they fix the dungeons they already had? Some of them have extra keys because they’re so haphazardly constructed that players can soft-lock themselves in them. I’m not sure a second quest is necessarily a great idea when the first quest, fun as it was, wasn’t exactly perfect to begin with. It had the potential to be perfect, and since you’re remaking an old game, those flawed mechanics could have been polished out with nothing of value lost. Dungeons 3 – 7 are among the best in Zelda’s history, but you have to slog through the boring first two getting there. Clean those two up and polish Turtle Rock up while you’re at it. And hell, throw in more minibosses in the main world. There’s a lot that could have been done.
Making something of the Chamber Dungeons/Online Play
The chamber dungeons are viewed as a weak addition to the game by many. When it was introduced, it was believed to be Zelda’s equivalent to Mario Maker, yet feels like more of an afterthought. That is actually partially the case, as I have been made aware that this mode is the leftover remains of a failed Zelda maker game. The mode could still have been a welcome addition to Link’s Awakening, but the issue is that it is too limited, and dungeons can only be shared via amiibo. This essentially killed whatever draw this mode could have had for the game, and renders it as wasted potential.
If there was any sort of online mode for the chamber dungeons, they could have been a bigger deal. Even limited as they are in terms of design, the replay value for how people arranged the dungeons would have been fun to play if they could have been shared with a wide audience. People would have pushed the concept to the limit, arranging however they could. As it is though, the chamber dungeons are not that appealing and are just kind of there. They do not add much to the game, and instead end up dragging the experience down.
Indie Gamer Chick says:
Dungeon Maker is one of the worst ideas Nintendo has actually gone through with releasing. What little is here is so limited that it feels like the laziest of ROM hacks. The best Mario Maker stages thrive on creativity and reworking conventional level concepts in fresh ways. You can’t do any of that in Link’s Awakening’s build mode. Hell, you can’t even rotate or re-theme rooms. It feels exactly like what it is: playing old rooms in different orders. And, on the off-chance you somehow manage to make something worth-playing with this mess, there’s no way to enjoy it with your friends. I don’t buy Zelda games for online play, so nothing of value was lost of me by requiring Amiibos to share this. But I wish they did include something like a remake of Four Swords. I’m going to guess that’s being saved for another day.
Controls and Camera
The Link’s Awakening remake has more issues than just the overall game design and layout though. While a lot of the controls were reworked to take into account modern systems and button layouts, there are still some issues. The dpad does nothing in this game, and that is a issue considering how the movement works in the game.
Moving Link feels awkward and if the dpad was available to be used, it would have allowed for more options as variations on the classic 8 way directions. Link needs some more freedom of movement and that ties into the other issue I have. The game does not need to be one continuous open world if nothing new is added. It throws off the movement of Link and the camera, which also caused other issues such as the slowdown. A compromise could have been reached, but the game as it is just feels wonky. A tighter grip on the camera system, more segmented movement and a divided map, would have made all the difference in the world.
Indie Gamer Chick says:
I guess I’m in the minority because I was never once bothered by slowdown or frame-rate drops. My biggest problem with the combat was the camera made it hard to see the angles you’re supposed to attack enemies at. During the final boss’s phase where it looks and behaves like Link to the Past’s Ganon, it was overly difficult being able to maneuver into the correct angle to inflict damage upon it. The camera positioning made it impossible to judge angles. This pops up time-to-time with normal enemies as well. It’s one of those “I can’t believe this didn’t come up in play testing” things. Strangely enough for a remake of a twenty-six year old game, Link’s Awakening on Switch feels.. well.. kind of rushed.
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We would like to thank Indie Gamer Chick for collaborating with us today. You can follow her on twitter @indiegamerchick and here website is here and a spinoff site IndieGamerTeam is here.