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squeakytoydeath's The Legend of Zelda (NES)
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| [January 24, 2007 09:15:24 PM]
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After playing an additional hour of Zelda I was amazed at how difficult it could be. I only made it through one more dungeon in all of that time and I was just beginning the third dungeon when I decided to write about it.
It is a good thing that I was playing the second quest because if this was the first quest it really wouldnt be ok. All of the tasks on the overworld are very vague and must be achieved without any real instruction. Some of it must simply be remembered from playing through the first quest while other parts require massive amounts of time to comprehend. This kind of design would not be acceptable in a modern game because the average player is not expected to spend large amounts of time wandering around with no clear objective. All this having been said the game is meant to be hard so I am not suprised, all I am suprised by is how much easier and more logical the zelda games have become.
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| [January 24, 2007 08:35:22 PM]
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I spent over an hour playing the second quest on the original zelda now and I have found many examples of excellent level design. In the second quest (accessed by either beating the game or naming the main character "ZELDA") is the same overworld but with reworked dungeons. Instead of the dungeons being the shape of the name of the dungeon they are shaped like the letters of the word zelda. The difficulty in these new dungeons is extremely high, as is the difficulty in getting too them, since they are in a different order then the original quest.
The level design within the extremely difficult dungeons is quiet genius. Many of the rooms are intentionally made in such a way as to maximize difficulty without making it unachievable. Many of the rooms I have had to play through over a dozen times to master. Though this is far to difficult for a normal game I can accept it considering the fact that it is intentionally designed for experienced players.
The simplicity of the levels is indeed a strong point, when compared with some of the later zeldas. Instead of having to worry about how to switch floors the focus is more on how to get through the individual rooms and how the dungeon is shaped. This simplifies the game making it more managable, since it is so difficult. The later games make the individual rooms harder but instead focus on puzzles, which is in fact a more enjoyable experience and should be considered when analyzing the zelda series.
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