| Booyah! I just beat Zelda II: The Adventure of Link on the Collector's Edition disc, and that means I've beaten all ten Zelda games released for Nintendo consoles. Finally, the little voice in the back of my head that kept reminding me that I still needed to beat Zelda II is silent... *listens to the A Link to the Past ending theme* Such calm...such peace...I saved Hyrule. ^_^
Now, to my comments on the Great Palace, the end bosses, and the ending! Some are good, some are bad, and there's one thing I found to be highly amusing.
First off, the Great Palace: This was, by far, the hardest part of the game even though I had all three stats at level 8 and my life and magic meters at 8 bars each--in other words, I was as powerful as you can get in that game. Even just getting to the Great Palace is hard, and I lost a few lives on the path. (Curse those flying eye things combined with lava pits!) One thing that halted the flow of expletives directed at the Great Palace's difficulty, however, was the fact that if you get Game Over it restarts you at the entrance to the palace instead of all the way back in the Northern Palace where Princess Zelda is.
Surpisingly, I actually made it to the Thunderbird on my second attempt at the palace. However, I didn't last long. If the Great Palace is the hardest dungeon in the game, then the Thunderbird is the hardest fight in the game. I can't even imagine doing it without your levels and life/magic meters maxed out, as I just barely scraped by with about one and a half boxes left on my life meter. I think it took about ten lives to finally beat it, too.
Well, when I finally did beat the Thunderbird, I knew I still had to defeat Link's Shadow...and I was thinking, "There's no way I'll be able to beat it. I'm on my last life, my life bar is almost empty, and I only have enough magic to use the Shield Spell. I just hope that when I get Game Over, the Thunderbird won't come back." Well, it turns out I did manage to beat Link's Shadow, though only barely. I think I only had a tiny sliver of life left when it died.
Now, I have to say, for being the end end boss, Link's Shadow is incredibly easy to beat. All you have to do is crouch in a corner of the room and constantly swing your sword. Once I started doing that I only got hit once. It just keeps running into your sword over and over until it dies... It was pitiful, lol. Though I do have to admit, if you tried going toe-to-toe with it, it would be incredibly hard. It's just as fast as you are, and it just goes all out with its attacks.
About the ending...this is where that highly amusing bit comes from. After Link uses all three Triforce pieces to wake Zelda from her magic-induced sleep, the curtains on the ceiling start to descend until they're covering the top halves of Link and Zelda's bodies. Then it pauses, and you see Zelda lean over towards Link like she's giving him a kiss, and then the curtain continues to drop. This actually made me laugh out loud--here I was, thinking the only time Zelda actually kisses Link is at the end of a linked Oracle of Ages/Seasons game, heh.
Oh yeah, and I ended up getting Game Over 25 times over the course of the game. I still stand by my belief that half of the damage I took in that game was completely unavoidable. I don't think I've ever seen another adventure game with so many cheap hits.
So, I bet you're wondering what I'm going to do now that I've finally beaten every Zelda game, like I set out to do years ago. Well, I'm not going to Disneyland... I'm going to play the other two Zelda games on the Collector's Edition disc! Whee, I'm obsessed! | |
