Link’s Awakening: Switch Thoughts

I was disappointed to get The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening as my very first video game. I’d never played anything but platformers and Tetris, and this weird top-down adventure was completely new. It had never occurred to me that a video game would let you explore a map, play a mini-game, or unravel a narrative mystery as you obtained new tools. I didn’t understand how gameplay worked.

Fast-forward decades later, and there’s a special place in my heart for Link’s Awakening. Its creepy story*, its weird location, and its clever puzzles bring me back to being twelve and discovering what games could do.

Which is why I finally decided it was worth paying $90 (taxes included) to buy the remastered version on the Switch.

How does it measure up? Glad you asked…

(some spoilers based on already knowing the game from its previous versions, but no major plot/puzzle solution stuff)

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THE MAJOR

+ It’s so stinkin’ cute!!!

Link is adorable. Marin is adorable. Even the bosses are adorable. All the characters look like little dolls wandering around a dollhouse, except the dollhouse is a bunch of outdoor environments in addition to interior rooms and temple-like dungeons.

Every detail has been lovingly considered. The cottages have flowers and vines growing on them. The sunlight shines realistically on the grass. Each house contains decorative props like portraits of the family that lives there and the belongings that they use.

+ The clues in the text are actually helpful.

The original game had some “helpful” text hints that were infamously opaque. For example, a “hint” in the second dungeons referred to some enemies by names that were nowhere in the game or the North American game booklet, making the hint completely useless.

The Switch version tweaks these formerly cryptic clues to make them more user-friendly. For example, instead of talking about the “Stalfos”, it refers to the “skeletal Stalfos,” giving you a descriptive detail that helps you identify which enemy it’s talking about without Googling Zelda lore.

Admittedly, the game has added a bunch of new hints that feel more hand-hold-y. It’s difficult for me to tell whether the new text gives too much away, since I already know the solutions to most of the puzzles. Still, you don’t have to seek out any hints if you don’t want to, and Grandpa Ulrira is still maddeningly unhelpful, so that’s stayed the same.

+ Tons of quality-of-life improvements.

The (re-)designers have updated many of the little annoying details in the controls, map screen, etc. for a smoother player experience that takes away some of the unnecessary hurdles from the Game Boy version.

For example, since the Switch controller has more buttons than the Game Boy did, the designers have added dedicated buttons for things like your sword and shield, which frees up the two assign-able buttons to hold whatever tools you want. In the Game Boy version, when you were trying to select an item on your menu screen, if you moved your cursor over an item that had options, it would force you to scroll through every option before you could move the cursor to select the next item; in this version, you don’t have to scroll through the options unless you actually select that item.

Similarly, the map screen lets you zoom in to see details or re-play any cut scene you’ve already encountered, in case you forgot whatever vague and eerie thing the obnoxious Zelda owl told you at the last set-piece. You can also toggle the map to show everywhere you’ve found Pieces of Heart or Secret Seashells, and you can add symbols to mark places for later.

One of the little updates I particularly appreciated is that now when you fall into a hole/pit, you re-spawn at the edge of the pit where you fell, not at the place where you entered the screen.

There are plenty of other things that I’m sure I’ve noticed and then got used to as a matter of course

+ More useful saving function.

In the Game Boy version, saving let you start your game from the last doorway you entered. In this version, not only is there auto-save, but you can save anywhere on the map and start there when you pick up the game again. (The only exception: dungeons. If you save in a dungeon, you’ll pick up at the entrance to that dungeon. Which sort of makes sense, since you don’t want players to accidentally screw themselves over by saving after making a mistake mid-puzzle.)

THE MINOR

– The Trendy Game has (more) realistic physics.

In the village in which you start the game, there’s a Trendy Game in which you control a claw over a field of prizes, some of which are moving. With a little skill, you can grab various items you might want/need to proceed in the game. (At least one is only available through this game.)

In the Game Boy version, the controls took a little while to get used to, but once you positioned the claw in the right place at the right time, it would always grab the prize, and once it did, you had that prize for sure.

In the Switch version, the claw’s physics are more realistic. The tines of the claw can knock over prizes or fail to close around the shape of the prize if it’s at the wrong angle. The other prizes can get in the way and hold the claw open. Even if the claw picks up the prize you want, if you didn’t get the grip exactly right, the prize can fall out before the claw gets to the conveyor belt.

It’s more challenging and kind of annoying. I got used to it by the end of the game, and I even started to enjoy the difficulty when I was tooling around for collectibles, but it was really frustrating to have to figure it all out at the start of the game when I actually wanted a tool to move forward.

+ Music that’s easier on the ears.

I mean, how could it not be? The music actually sounds like instruments instead of the Gameboy’s chiptune beep-boops.

– Some slowdown/lag.

Even though this game was designed for the Switch, I found a couple screens where it took the hardware a few moments to get up to speed. Nothing during important events like boss fights, but the game definitely slowed every time I passed Bow-Wow’s house in Mabe Village at the start of the game.

+ More even boss fights.

I was surprised to find myself challenged a bit more by bosses that had been a breeze and relieved to find some bosses that had been frustrating less so. Once you know what to do — which items to use, what weaknesses to attack, and so forth — it’s unlikely you’ll die in a boss battle, and if you’ve powered yourself up, you may take out later-game bosses in a second or two, so the little bit of extra challenge is welcome.

Overall, the new boss designs remove difficulty for the sake of difficulty, keep interesting challenges intact, and add some new interesting challenges to easier Nightmares.

+/- A bajillion more Secret Seashells.

There were 26 Secret Seashell collectibles hidden around the map in the original Game Boy game (thanks, Google!). There are almost double in the Switch version: a whopping 50 obnoxious little suckers to find (thanks again, Google!). It’s easier to run into them accidentally but more difficult to actually find them all.

Also, I liked the item text better in the old version that promised me that if I collected enough “something good is bound to happen.” Felt a little more mysterious than the straightforward new version that tells me that there’s “something in it for you.” Like, yeah, ya-ha-ha, that’s how games work.

+/- Dampé’s weird dungeon house.

Brand-new for the Switch version, you collect dungeon rooms–some automatically by beating a dungeons, some through bonus games/feats of skill/collecting enough rupees–and string them together in dungeons of your own. You do this in the weird little hut of Dampé the gravedigger.

It was fun to mess around with at first, but I got bored of it quickly, and I was definitely not down to 100% the game by slogging through every task and grinding for rupees so I could buy every dungeon room.

THE WHY-DO-YOU-EVEN-CARE-ABOUT-THIS-SARAH

+ Fairy bottles exist now.

Fairy bottles are my favourite Zelda item because I like to be over-prepared for everything and like the idea of having a bunch of extra hearts on tap just in case I need them (I didn’t need them).

+ The magic mushroom reappears.

This used to bug me as a kid: if the Magic Mushroom just grows in the forest, and you can pick it and bring it to the Witch to make Magic Powder the first time, why can’t you go find another mushroom when you run out of the powder instead of having to buy more at a shop?

Well, now you can, twelve-year-old Sarah. *sniff* Now you can.

* This game legit scared me as a kid. Not, like, in the way where I was afraid that monsters in the game would get me in real life or anything like that. But its atmosphere freaked me out. I enjoyed playing it, but whenever I put down the Game Boy, I found myself extra-vigilant, as though I’d just walked through the woods in the dark.

Not gonna lie: there’s a part where a ghost starts following you around after you complete certain unrelated events, and the first time it happened, I was maybe 50-50 on whether it was a part of the game or whether it was an actual ghost haunting my game à la Ghostwriter except for video games instead of words.**

** Look, it happened EXACTLY LIKE THAT in a book I read.