It's a really well-made game. Besides learning about how
Nintendo achieved the top-down look (which isn't all that heinous, just a bit weird when you occasionally experience it in game), water looks especially nice, plenty of faithful recreations with original enemies, trees, environments, and still plenty of deviations. Those deviations are especially notable in dungeons. The intro dungeon is different. Desert Palace is not a Light World dungeon
or maybe it is, hehe, locations and dungeons themselves in Dark World are different each having their own musical theme as is method of access for most all dungeons.) Some great boss ideas too, while there are maybe just as many misfires. Some additional minigames -- nice touches that I appreciate very much though they lose their allure once you get the heart pieces -- Rupee challenges which are cool, sidequests like Maiamai collecting, Challenge Tower or whatever it was called. They did what they could beef up the game and you get the impression that they chose just the right amount of additional stuff.
Yes, the dungeons are generally
very easy. I don't think there was a single dungeon of the main ten that was all that challenging on the whole. You're going to lose health, you're going to expend some brain power on puzzles. If you're a completionist, you'll occasionally get stumped. But this isn't all that bad. I probably would have liked the game more if puzzles were more challenging and dungeons were longer.
The developers working on this game, in my opinion managed to do something pretty remarkable - it didn't sloppily ape its inspiration. Despite all the callouts like Misery Mire and Kakariko Village and the similarity in world maps, it's significantly different enough that my opinion of the game while playing it wasn't "man I should just play Link to the Past." I managed to lament the lack of difficulty without constantly recalling its reference--It legitimately feels like a different game. The execution is such that the similarities end up being mostly superficial. There's a nice touch with the Thieves' Hideout...
It's not like with Luigi's Mansion 2, a game where I appreciate the desire to change the structure of the game's core (with missions and such) and the additional things like multiplayer, but end up longing for the original more: "one large mansion is better" / "this boss really sucks" etc.
It's astonishing in my opinion that Nintendo managed to do this. A game with the appropriate challenge level for casual players, yet I'm not inclined to demolish it. this game isn't GOTY for me, but I will probably do a Hero Mode run later. Honestly, I do think that it owes partially to the game's accessability what with it's length and incremental sense of progress (dungeons being short, decent amount of stuff to do in the overworld.) But it's not a knock against it either, it's an enjoyable game. It didn't rock my world, but I almost never played it and I think if I didn't, I would have been missing out on something worth a try. As far as reviewers are concerned, I mean I suppose nostalgia could factor into it, alongside the lifestyle of game reviewing which perhaps lends itself to shorter or easier experiences what with having to divvy up your time so brutally (one day I plan to check out The Wonderful 101 to see what it is that frustrated the media). But it's not like the game doesn't have merit. I would give it something like an 8 or 8.5. The one thing this game did better than lttp was the plot, and minimal as it was (appropriately so, given the game's structure) it was nice.
I would recommend checking it out.
