I’ve been determined to finally beat Zelda II and determine that I would do it without save states and without a guide.
I know Zelda II is considered a black sheep somewhat but I really think in some ways it’s more fun than the original although I’d still pick Zelda 1 over II.
That game is impossible. I can’t believe how many people in the comments say they’ve beaten it. I never beat it as a kid, and when I tried it again on the switch a couple of years ago, I still couldn’t make it very far.
I never beat it as a kid either. I barely played it. I thought it was cryptic and punishing, although 9-year-old me wouldn’t have used those words. Just a simple “This game is dumb.” worked.
In fact, I thought it was pretty universally reviled. I’ve since learned that this is due the to fact that a child’s gaming social-sphere in the 90s could be quite limited.
About 5 years ago, glancing across a bookshelf, a certain game cart happened to catch my eye. I couldn’t tell you why it was this particular game cart that my attention ;) but I really started to think about it. I don’t actually know anything about Zelda 2 (other than “This game is dumb.”). So then I thought, maybe it wasn’t for kids. Nine-year-olds are pretty ego-centric. The NES was one of our toys. No adults were playing these things. Did I mention my social-sphere?
It then occured to me: I’m a blank slate. I know next to nothing about the progression, the map, or anything. Of course along the way, I found things familiar, and I knew things like >!Shadow Link was the final boss!< but I didn’t know >!how to cheese the Shadow Link fight!<.
So I gave it an honest, no-help-other-than-the-game’s-original-manual playthrough. Yadda-yadda-yadda, Zelda 2 is one of the best games on the NES, and in my book, that makes it one of the best games ever.
In hindsight, Zelda 1 is cryptic af. “The 10th enemy has the bomb”, “gumble gumble”, “shaka when the walls fell”, wtf? If you’d like to know what the 10th enemy thing is: >!hopefully someone below explains drop counts because I’m sure as fuck not going to!<. How was a kid or adult going to figure that out?
My Z2 playthrough took days, maybe 10, but my memory is fuzzy. I got pretty stuck >!looking for the mirror!< and I wondered around for a full day with no progress although I felt like I understood where the game wanted me to go. About halfway through the next day, I read the manual. I didn’t actually think when I started that I was going to do a no-help-other-than-the-manual playthrough. I thought of as a no-internet-on-an-80s-game playthrough. After the realization that the manual wasn’t outside help, I did use the internet for that. Well as soon as I learned >!hammers can chop down trees!<, I was on my way. The rest of the playthrough went smoothly, apart from being hard as fuck.
Same. I played it on the switch maybe a year ago, and at first I didn’t understand the reputation for being tough, but after a half hour I was too frustrated to keep playing.
I beat it when I was 10
i am error
(but for real congrats!!) ❤️
One of my proudest moments as a child was beating this game. Incidentally, fighting the end boss was the first time my parents caught me swearing.
I’ve never beaten the game, but I recently, FINALLY, completed Death Mountain. And I’m pretty happy about that.
You’re gitting gud. Keep going!
I only ever saw the ending to this on a real NES because it was on a demo machine at Toys R Us (never owned it myself) and someone had a save right at the final dungeon. All I had to do was beat 1 dungeon and I won the game! 😋
Damn… I made myself sad because that’s not an experience you can have anymore. You can’t go rent a game and have someone else’s save to mess with. Shit, can you even rent a game period? 🤔😥
There are game subscription services like Nintendo’s emulator, which is kinda the same thing except you’re renting many games at once.
Congrats! It’s good to see some Zelda II love. It took me years to beat this as a kid, and you bet your ass I got some tips from Nintendo Power lol. To this day it’s still one of my favorite NES games.
Wow, I finished it with my SO last year - but in the last temple, we needed a guide (the map is wtf levels of traps and dead ends) and save states to retry the boss combo. We wouldn’t have been able to finish it
Yeah the great palace is a crazy labyrinth. I spent my first set of lives just wandering and game-overed without making any headway, happened to fall through the floor on my second set of lives and lucked into finding the right way.
I remember playing this as a kid and English not being my native language it was hard to decipher the text in the games.
Didn’t understand what they ment with: “if everything else fails, use fire.” Or something like that. I only understood fire and the rest was a mystery to me.
Played this for weeks and felt so victorious when I finally had beaten the game!
Hard as nails but such a great game.
I did this too, on the GameCube collector’s edition. It’s hard but the difficulty didn’t feel unfair! It was so satisfying when I made progress. Honestly this is such an excellent game.
Congrats! I’ve beaten most of the Zelda games and this is one of my favorites. (I tend to like the quirky first sequels where they tried something different, even if it doesn’t quite work: Zelda 2, Mario 2 (USA), Final Fantasy 2 (Japan), Castlevania 2…)
This is one of the few Zelda games I haven’t completed yet. Someday.
Congrats!
why would you pick Zelda 1 over Zelda 2 if you think 2 is more fun
Zelda 1 had better music, the second quest after you master it, and is still really solid.
What I was trying to say is, that at its highs, Zelda II is more fun at the original but considering from minute 1 to the end of the game, I would still take the first game as the better experience overall.
I’ve been meaning to play both Zelda and Zelda II on Switch Online, maybe I’ll take a crack at them over Xmas break; they’re a couple of blind spots that I’ve had for no good reason and I need to fix that
how long exactly is your christmas break
jesus christ man well done. I tried again on the switch about 6 months ago and just fuckin cant do it
Now I’m a child of the GameCube generation so i was never raised on any NES games. But man i really enjoyed Zelda2 after i used codes to mainly just reduce the damage dealt. That said i did also save state the hell out of it and have no regrets.
But funny enough i find myself thinking about Zelda 2 all the time and i wish they would take a crack at a Zelda game in its style with modern sensibilities
![[Zelda II]I did it!](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/b2d83137-baad-4c98-b321-04ee815ea041.png){kind=link}