Retro Review: Legend of Zelda – The Minish Cap
In 2003, Nintendo unleashed a new face of our beloved hero Link (or was it?) to the world with Wind Waker. With great reviews of the game, and mixed critics on Link’s new look, Nintendo decided to take a chance and bank on the fact that every Zelda game has been a best-seller. In 2005, Nintendo kept the new Link getup, and teamed with Capcom to create the next installment in the Zelda series. Releasing it for only the Game-boy Advance, the game was greeted with amazing reviews but passed through the gaming world swiftly and quietly. Click below to see my retro review on probably the most underrated Zelda game up-to-date.
To give you a little idea about the story, you start off as Link, being awakened by Zelda in hopes that you’ll join her in a little date to the town festival. After asking your sword-making uncle permission, he agrees and gives you a sword to relay to the King. Link is then dragged back and forth between carnival shops and games. After a few minutes, you enter the castle and talk to the King, when suddenly the castle is attacked by an evil wind mage known as Vaati. He destroys a powerful sword containing different elemental forces, and turns Princess Zelda to stone. To make a long story short, Link must find the elemental powers strewn across the map, and must speak with the magical creatures known as the Minish to speak with him. A little further into the game, Link is joined in the quest by Ezlo, a wizard that was transformed into a hat by the evil Vaati.
The graphics are better than to be expected. They give somewhat of an old-school gaming feel of Link To The Past, and mix them well with a new Game-boy Advance feel you got from games like Pokemon: Leaf Green or Fire Red. The character art and styles are much like those from the Windwaker. The game-play is also a lot like the Super Nintendo adaptation of Zelda, but they also take the weapon selection feel from Ocarina of Time by assigning different weapons to different buttons. The music is typical awesome Zelda/Nintendo music, and the sound effects are taken from the newer games, giving Link grunts, yells, and whines. This can get a little annoying with the amount of times you slash in this game, but it isn’t too bad.
There are lots of cool side quests added in the game, which gives you some more playing time on an already short game. Well…I wouldn’t exactly say short, but definitely shorter than most of the other Zelda games I’ve played. Collecting kinstones throughout the game is a good way to take up time, and figure out a lot of the secrets you may have missed or were unable to access at other parts of the game. The map is also a lot smaller than pretty much every other Zelda game I’ve played, but I found this to be less aggravating than wandering hopelessly on a never-ending map. Some of the puzzles were challenging and there were several parts where I was stuck, but that is what I expect in one of these games.
By far my favorite part of the game is the items. Minish Cap has some of the coolest items out of any of the other games. My personal favorite would be the mole mitts. The mole mitts are huge mole-clawed gloves that dig fast through the sand and other movable objects. There are tons of other kick ass items including the Gust Jar (much like the leaf in Windwaker), and the Cane of Pacci (which turns items and enemies upside-down.). The game also keeps a lot of great old ones like the classic Bow and Arrows, and Boomerang. Speaking of classic, don’t you wish that you’d gotten the rare Zelda edition Game-boy Advance? I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t think I’ve even seen one of these since the game came out.
What We Love:
- The storyline, graphics, game-play, and music!
- The mix of old-school and new-school Zelda.
- The really cool, creative weapons.
- The stray away from Gannon/Gannondorf and introduction of a new evil do-er.
- Another fantastic Zelda game!
What We Didn’t Love
- The short length of the game.
- The sound effects can get a little annoying.
- Some parts were extremely easy to get stuck on.
The Zelda series is my favorite series in all of the gaming world, so it would seem I would be bias toward any game…but I didn’t care for Majora’s Mask, and Four Swords became very boring, very fast for me. This is the best Game-boy exclusive Zelda game I’ve played. The storyline didn’t hit me as well as Ocarina, Link To The Past, Wind Waker or Twilight Princess…but I would say I liked it just as much if not more than Phantom Hourglass, or Link’s Awakening. Bottom line, just a great game, and if you’ve got a GBA or a Nintendo DS, this should most certainly be in your possession.
1 Comment
I love this game, I'm really glad the Gameboy and DS versions kept the Windwaker style, as Windwaker is in second place as best zelda (OoT being the first of course). I loved Majora's Mask as well though.