With the massive success of A Link to the Past, where could Nintendo possibly take The Legend of Zelda? Well, because A Link to the Past is now 28 years old, we know that they were heading towards 3D Zeldas. But, before we make it there, Nintendo decided to make the first handheld Zelda, The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Link’s Awakening not only successfully transferred the Zelda formula to the Gameboy, but it did it in masterful fashion. Everything is here: an incredible story, wonderful gameplay, great dungeons, interesting bosses, and most importantly, one of the best soundtracks of any Zelda game ever. Honestly… Link’s Awakening is a perfect experience from start to finish.
With that said, let’s look a little more into what makes this game so incredible. First, I’m going to talk about the story. Link finds himself washed up on an island after a severe storm sinks his ship. Yeah that’s right, Link was sailing for some reason and ends up grounded. This is so different than anything we’ve seen in the Zelda franchise at this point. The other three games were all in Hyrule and really the only water we had seen was Lake Hylia in A Link to the Past. But apparently Link was sailing on an ocean! This, of course, sets the tone for The Wind Waker much much later in the Zelda franchise. This also means that Link is NOT in Hyrule for this game. He is actually on an island named Koholint Island. This drastically changes the scenery for Link’s Awakening. There’s beaches and palm trees! It’s just an incredible setting.
But this is not where Link’s Awakening stops being unique. The game also DOES NOT have Ganon, the triforce, or even princess Zelda! It’s almost like Nintendo decided to take the Zelda formula and remove all the mainstays. It is a Zelda game with almost none of the Zelda stuff. I love this. In fact, it is still one of the few Zelda games without Ganon as the final boss. But we’ll cover those later.
So, what do you do in the game? Link quickly realizes that he must save Koholint Island because it is going to disappear. Link must wake a sleeping beast called “the Windfish” in order to save the island. He must collect eight instruments in order to play a ballad for the Windfish. This is where the traditional Zelda stuff is. You work your way through dungeon after dungeon, fighting bosses, in order to receive each instrument. After waking the Windfish, however, we find out what is Really going on with Koholint Island. I’ll leave that spoiler free, however, because the game is incredibly written and the story is just so so good. You just have to experience it yourself. Plus, this is one of the few Zelda games that has a completion bonus (sort of a completion bonus I guess?). What I mean is, there is a secret cutscene at the very end of the game if you never die on your adventure. This secret ending is incredibly sweet and opens up an alternative reality for Koholint. It’s totally worth the effort of making sure you don’t die.
There is no reason not to play this game. There is a recent remaster for the Switch that makes everything bright and beautiful. For this review, I went through and 100% BOTH the original Gameboy game AND the remaster. I loved both so so much. The Gameboy version is wonderful on the go, and the remaster could not be any more beautiful on the big screen. Either version will bring you plenty of joy. Which, speaking of how long these games are, I found something very interesting. BOTH the remaster AND the Gameboy version took me longer to 100% than it took me to 100% A Link to the Past. A Link to the Past feels like such a huge game in my mind. But it only took seven hours and forty six minutes to 100%. Link’s Awakening, on the other hand, took eight hours, thirty three minutes on the Gameboy and thirteen hours, fifty four minutes on the Switch (mostly because of the Dampé dungeons). So, I honestly would say that Link’s Awakening has just as much, if not more, content that A Link to the Past.
I can sit here and tell you all day about how amazing this game is. But, I have to stop somewhere. Please do yourself a favor and play this game. This game is amazing. I give Link’s Awakening a 4 out of 4. Giving this anything less would feel wrong. This Zelda game is unlike any other. It is one of the few games that seriously strays from the Zelda formula and it does it perfectly. I love the little oddball Zelda games and this is one of them. Please play this game if you love The Legend of Zelda. It is perfect. The remaster is also really good. It adds a sort of “build your own dungeon” via Dampé’s shack. Although this mode is extremely limited, it is pretty fun to be given the keys to make your own dungeons. There is no reason not to play this game. Just do it.
So now, I have to rank Link’s Awakening among its peers. Now this is a hard one. I love love love this game, but I just cannot put it of A Link to the Past. So, the ranking goes:
- A Link to the Past
- Link’s Awakening
- The Legend of Zelda
- Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link