GAME CLEAR No. 312 -- Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987, NES/FDS)

Developer: Nintendo R&D4
Publisher: Nintendo
Clear Version: NES
Clear Platform: Game & Watch
Clear Date: 8/19/26

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Why should I care?
Zelda II is a ripping action RPG, and you should play it precisely because there’s no other Zelda like it.

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Thanks a million!

Boy, oh, boy. Zelda II. If you were born in the early-to-mid-nineties like me, developed an early retro obsession, and came of age on aughts internet, this was a game you could not avoid hearing takes about. It makes sense. Zelda II is an unusual game in one of the most popular series of all time. It was a natural topic of forums and early YouTube. I recall no shortage of Gen Xers telling me it was weird, confusing, too hard, and generally something to be avoided. Well, they were wrong. Zelda II is sick, and I’m so happy to have played it. I think any fan of classic action games should give it a shot with an open mind.

To be truthful, I’m exaggerating a bit. Zelda II always had its advocates as well, but it was unambiguously the most controversial of the Zelda games that existed by the time I was doing my own research on video games. It was a side-scrolling platformer instead of a top-down affair, its townspeople gave vague and terse hints, it introduced experience points and RPG-style growth, and it could be fairly tough at the outside if you didn’t understand how to grind some early levels. I certainly gave up quickly on it when I finally got my hands on it in my early teens. After all, I’d been told I wouldn’t be missing much.

Still, I always felt I owed it another shot. Like its Disk System counterpart Super Mario Bros. 2, it was eventually rereleased on a little collectible but ultimately frivolous Game & Watch device. Since I already owned it in multiple formats, I made the same deal with myself to justify purchasing it: I had to go back and beat the somewhat-maligned second entry.

After picking the device up secondhand at MAGWest and getting it home, I blasted through the game with laser focus. I basically couldn’t get enough. I probably liked it more than the first Legend of Zelda!

The key to it is that the actual action portion of this action-RPG feels so good. Link’s movement is swift and silky smooth, and the signature slowdowns of the NES are infrequent. His sword comes out with a pleasing timing relative to the button press and has nice, chunky impact with bad guys (when not clinking alarmingly but informatively off of enemy shields or walls). Link must make prudent use of his own shield to survive as well. A battle with an Iron Knuckle in the first Palace (the substitute for Dungeons in this one) is an early skill wall for many players. You must master stabbing him where his shield is not while simultaneously protecting yourself from his incoming blade. It’s a tricky tango, but this precise type of swordplay defines many encounters throughout the game and must be mastered.

How great it feels to do all that stuff really carries the load for a game that is admittedly let down in other ways. The introduction of towns to the series is great, but the pointers you are given by the folks that live there can often be lacking. While I generally believe that almost every puzzle and quest in the game can be sussed out with enough thinking and time, I’m not terribly ashamed to admit I looked up a couple things to avoid having to, for example, manually step over every forest tile in a given area to eventually stumble upon the unmarked one where the NPC I need to talk to lives because a sleeping slime in town, who must be spoken to thrice to awaken (despite no other NPC in the game ever giving a different response when spoken to more than once unless a relevant quest item has been acquired), told me he lived in the woods and nothing else. That kind of thing. I think there has been an overcorrection to this in a lot of modern games, to be clear. I don’t wish there had been a big arrow pointing me directly at the next thing I needed to do at all times, but a little firmer guidance wouldn’t have hurt. Contemporaries like Dragon Quest managed it just fine.

Backtracking is a huge pain too. You start the game by Zelda’s bedside. She was cast into perpetual slumber by an evil magician after the events of The Legend of Zelda. Link must track down the Triforce of Courage, his birthright, to bring her back. He must first return crystals to six palaces around Hyrule to be granted passage into the final one that contains the Triforce. The first one he must traverse is located conveniently close to the Palace Zelda sleeps in, the North Palace. Get used to this place, though, you will respawn here every time you get a Game Over, no matter how far across Hyrule you’ve trekked.

It’s an NES game, though. It ain’t that fuckin’ big, so “a huge pain” is a bit of an overstatement. Any walkback I endured couldn’t have been more than a few minutes total. It just feels bad and needlessly punishing.

The leveling system is… okay. Dragon Quest has taught me to enjoy the zen of grinding levels, and it’s definitely advisable to grind a number of them early on in this game. The investment of time pays off quickly in what can otherwise be a punishing experience for a low-level Link. That up-front cost of wailing mindlessly on enemies was definitely a deterrent to younger me, though, and I can understand why it would be to anyone, really. More fun than the incremental HP/MP/DPS gains is acquiring spells and special moves in the towns throughout the game. They are all absolutely clutch and make Link precipitously more versatile each time he finds one. From cutting damage in half to turning all enemies into slimes to granting the power of flight, they are not to be missed. If a townsperson makes a small ask of you, don’t ignore them. They are likely to reward you handsomely.

Those spells are put to their greatest use in the Palaces, which are the meat of the game, and which I cannot stress enough just kick ass. One of the all-time Nintendo bangers plays throughout them. When you’re running around, bouncing off slimes, slicing up skeletons, and dueling with Iron Knuckles while that bop plays on loop, you’ll forget all about whatever mildly annoying hoops you had to jump through to get there. The bosses therein all have unique and challenging-but-fair patterns you’ll enjoy mastering. Also, in contrast to the way some of the overworld navigation and quests can be a bit vague and confusing, the dungeons are generally intuitive and comprehensible. Even without the maps present in other games of the series, I seldom found myself getting lost. The downside, such as it is, is that there isn’t really a ton of puzzle solving per se. I didn’t miss it much. What can I say? I’m an action gamer at heart. :)

There’s no doubt this game is flawed and occasionally obtuse. It’s still an absolute blast at its best. If you’ve heard that it maybe isn’t so good but, like me, have a reasonable appetite for meeting imperfect games where they’re at, please give it a look. I want to talk to folks that love it.