The Legend of Linkle
On finishing an RPG
I don’t finish a lot of games, I’ve noticed. This didn’t use to be a problem, on account of growing up with non-narrative games, but as the unfinished RPG saves have piled up in more recent years it’s become undeniable—so it’s important to mark when one is completed.
For the last few months I’ve been playing The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past for the Super Nintendo, on my definitely real SNES with my definitely real cartridge. Of course, if I were emulating I’m sure my sync scripts would have been very useful for shuttling saves between my TV and handheld, but of course I would never do such a thing officer. Regardless of hardware though it’s been a fun time, they should make more of these.
I did have some things to put down though (minimal spoilers). First: I’m still bad at boss fights, even in this game not known for its difficulty. I used a walkthrough fairly extensively when it came to the bosses, which meant I only had to get help with the Moldorm, but watching someone who actually knows what they’re doing just pick up the controller and ace it (and then apologising, not realising that was exactly what I wanted them to do after my better part of an hour of struggling) was enlightening. I’m not picking up a Souls game any time soon, give me an all-puzzle Zelda instead.1
I can’t help comparing it with the only other game in this series that I’ve ever actually finished, which was Link’s Awakening sometime last year. I missed the more flexible saving and the miniboss teleporters from that game, but the SNES game is just more. I’ve also played maybe half of Breath of the Wild but famously that’s very different. Stunning vistas are cool and all but I found I was just messing around after a while (the same problem I had with Skyrim—a total disregard and in that case ultimately contempt for the plot, in favour of playing it as a camping simulator). This game was pretty but not distractingly so.
I’ve never played Hyrule Warriors, or any other game with Linkle in it, but they did give me the option to name my character and who am I to say no?
I don’t really want to know the lore, when it comes down to it, but I really don’t understand what the difference between Ganon and Ganondorf is supposed to be. Is one of them a pig for some reason? Which one was I even fighting? And for that matter, is the Dark World also the Past in the title of the game? Shouldn’t Oracle of Ages be called that instead? Mysteries abound. Maybe I should have paid more attention in the cutscenes.
Next up on Petra Actually Finishes Old Games: a completely different kid-saves-the-world RPG, which I may or may not talk about when I’m done. But I felt this one was important.
That said, I used the walkthrough on puzzles too from time to time, I’m not going to claim to be good at videogames in any form.↩︎