The Legend of Zelda The Minish Cap (Game Boy Advance, 2005) – First Impressions
I’m not a great player of Zelda games. I tried Ocarina of Time at a friend’s house, and thought it was cool. I wasn’t very good at it. I played A Link to the Past on the SNES, but I got stuck on one level (which was fixed in a GBA re-release). I can’t remember which level it is but if you perform certain actions in the wrong order, you can’t beat the level. I digress.
I think the first Zelda game I remember being able to play through without looking up help was probably Windwaker, Nintendo’s 2003 Game Cube release. This game was beautiful, using cel-shaded animation. I think this makes the game rather timeless in terms of how it looks today vs. 20 years ago. Another game I remember completing was Link’s Awakening for the Game Boy – I own the DX version, and have been re-playing that for a bit1.
Overall I’d say I’m a Zelda fan. So when The Minish Cap came out, I picked that up for my GBA and was excited to play it. I never finished it, though. I picked it up again this week and started it over from the beginning, again.
I haven’t got very far with the game, only finishing the first dungeon. But I’m remembering why I didn’t get too far with the game. But before I get to the negatives, I will celebrate some positives.
The graphics are great – very reminiscent of A Link to the Past, with some upgrades. It’s your standard Zelda game – mow down grass and shrubs with your sword, smash bottles in people’s houses, that kind of thing. What I like about this game is you can pick up and move objects immediately, you don’t need to wait for the right power-up (I keep getting a warning message in Link’s Awakening telling me I can’t move something with my bare hands as soon as I bump into it accidentally). Being able to use 4 buttons (L, R, A, B) for things is a breath of fresh air compared to the Game Boy’s two.
It has interesting game play mechanics as well, like when you use an air blower thing to propel yourself on a lily pad to get to a different part of the dungeon. The Minish Cap transforming you into a miniature form so you can explore different areas – that’s really cool too, and brings new layers to dungeon and world map puzzles.
But what draws me out of the game are little things, like the transformation process from Regular Size to Minish Size; you get a basic cut scene every time to show the magic sparkles around Link and then as he falls through the tree stump and bounces to the miniature world. But when you go from miniature to regular, it’s a much quicker process. I could do without that cut scene every time I need to make a switch.
It’s also not as enjoyable to me because I find myself needing to consult a walkthrough to figure out how I’m supposed to get from A to B in some places. It’s possible I’m just not thinking of puzzles the same way I do for a game like Donkey Kong, but it’s somewhat annoying to stop and consult a walkthrough every few minutes.
Increasingly I find myself turning back to Link’s Awakening DX, which is just as great to look at for the visuals, but has a much simpler game play and requires less walkthrough help. Maybe a little. But it’s a bit more intuitive than Minish Cap.
However I need to play more of Minish Cap to give it a fair shake before I give up and take a trip to Microplay. Stay tuned for more!
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I think it’s amazing that the team behind Link’s Awakening wanted to make the game “feel like the television series Twin Peaks”.↩︎