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So I mastered Zelda 2. Then I did it again with Zelda 2 on GBA. No more ports, thats it, right? ): Well what about romhacks?? This is a Zelda 2 romhack by GTM604, and it’s often considered the best Zelda 2 romhack of all time. This was also my FIRST Zelda 2 romhack, so I have nothing to compare it to. Though uh… hmm… Okay so, I can see why people love this. There’s a lot to love. It’s a well crafted hack.

It pissed me off beyond belief.

All of the reviews of this hack proclaim how it’s impressive that they made a good solid hack but didn’t make it impossible like all the other Zelda 2 hacks. I’m TERRIFIED to play other Zelda 2 romhacks now, because this is hard in a way I don’t appreciate. Zelda 2 is hard, yes, and I like a good challenge, and I know people will disagree with me here, but Zelda 2 is fair. This hack is not fair in a lot of parts. But we’ll get into it…

Game

Set as a sequel to Zelda 2, Ganon is defeated, Zelda is wakened, all is good and happy. However, Ganon can still be resurrected on the day his spirit is strongest, the WINTER SOLSTICE! Link must go out, power up the triforce from 6 temples, and then defeat Ganon’s shadow once and for all!

It’s a complete rework hack. The graphics are changed a lot, including giving Link a cute hood, but the main change is the layouts. It follows the same GENERAL ideas, though you get items and upgrades in a different order. Also, you start the game with 3 bars of health and 1 bar of magic. Yeah, that’s what I mean when I say this game is a little unfair and mean, right off the bat. Zelda 2 is actually pretty easy at the start, it eases you in, lets you get used to things, build up a small amount of spells, then it kicks you in the dick with Death Mountain. THIS game has Death Mountain literally RIGHT AT THE START. It’s the first thing you do, after getting shield. And it’s TWO TIMES AS LONG. I called it Deather Mountain. So yea, you’re fighting Dairas at like, level 1, trying to find your way to the first temple. With less health and magic than usual.

The bullshit doesn’t stop there. A lot of the level design is built SPECIFICALLY to be rude and mean. Lots of hard battles of crumbling bridges, lots of bubbles to knock you in pits, lots of Dairas. And since everything is new, you don’t know where to go to get your upgrades, so it took me FOREVER to get Life. Some things are VERY well hidden.

Another thing is that the map is too big. Like, its the same size as the normal zelda 2 map, but the way it’s set up is that to get from one area to the next, you need to travel through large spots with no path, so a bunch of random encounters, and several caves. Then you get to the spot you need to be at and explore, die cause oh shit every encounter has a blue daira, and then walk aaaalll the way back. There ARE shortcuts you can find, which help, but they’re barely helpful, and require you to usually beat an area first. Some areas are fucking HUGE. Maze Island is a NIGHTMARE. One thing that this has going for it is every temple has you start in the temple when you die, like the Great Palace does in vanilla Zelda 2. This is SUPER helpful, and the game would be impossible without it.

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Is it bad? Well no, it’s Zelda 2. But like I said, Zelda 2 is both fun, and ramps up the difficulty rather well. This game is a wall, then a plateau after you get a lot of items (though it’s still hard), theeen you get to the final dungeon. Which… wow.

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This is Thunder Bird. In Zelda 2, he’s by far the hardest boss. His attacks are erratic and hard to dodge, he attacks all the time, and his pattern is wavy and hard to follow, especially when you’re dodging a bullet hell. You also need to use thunder to make him vulnerable, which, okay. You still have enough to cast shield and jump, which are basically required. How can we make this harder? How about we make it surrounded by water, so if you’re hit once, you’re prolly going in the drink and dying instantly. Okay, that’s pretty bad… but let’s make it worse. No spells. At all. Other than Thunder. No heal, no shield, and CERTAINLy no Jump. And this is at the end of a dungeon, so you prolly have like, 1.5 lives left.

This drove me up the wall. I was willing to ignore all of the earlier mean and bad design as just challenge that wasn’t QUITE for me but was still good, but no. This actually sucked. I could not stand it.

In the end, I wish I could, but I can’t recommend this hack. But if you’re like, a speedrunner of Zelda 2, MAYBE you’ll get more enjoyment out of it. Again, a lot of my friends loved it… but they were also all speedrunners lol. Ah well… This kind of killed my desire to play Zelda 2. I’ll try more hacks at some point, but… not for a while ):