LoZ: Link's Awakening

This is a game I first played as a kid and could never beat it (until I was 12 and went back to it and beat it in a week or two). It's one of those more fetch-quest oriented zelda games, and much like the original Zelda and Zelda 2 it has a few somewhat hard to figure out secrets. As a kid, I honestly got tired of trying to figure out how to get into the 3rd dungeon and gave up, but when I went back I went with a far more persistent approach and after many hours I did finally beat it. I went back to the game this weekend to play it since it's been over 8 years and I will say there's definitely a few very well hidden secrets in this game, and the final boss requires some trial and error (or looking up a guide like I did, but I did do it legit back when I first played through it 8 years ago). I have now realized that I basically beat the game the hard way all those years ago, and that his final form can literally be one hit with the boomerang if you got it (otherwise it takes about 20 arrows to the eye, and your quiver only holds 30 so you can only miss 10 times, while you jump and dodge his flailing arms).

Honestly I'd say it's probably one of the better 2D Zelda games made (it's up there with ALTTP), but honestly the fetch quests do get annoying after a while and there is a lot of backtracking (including a boss that literally sends you back to the start of the dungeon if he hits you with a certain attack that has a ridiculous hitbox to the point where if he hits your sword in mid swing while you're standing off to the side of him it'll hit you, which I'm calling complete and utter bullshit). But yea if you have the patience to endure that stuff it does have a pretty good story (a helluva lot more story than Zelda 1 or 2 anyways). It's also the only Zelda game I can think of where Zelda doesn't actually appear (asides from maybe Majora's Mask). Instead the female lead for this game is a young girl named Marin. What sets her apart from Zelda is that unlike Zelda, she doesn't get kidnapped. Actually there's kind of a romantic interest between Marin and Link in this game, but it is never really formally expressed, and the end of the game basically cock blocks any chance of it happening. For those who haven't played it before you may want to ignore the next few words because basically the entire game is a dream. Not just any dream, but a coma induced dream that begins when Link's ship is destroyed in the opening animation of the game. So yea you end up feeling sad for all these cool characters and the village of bunnies and other animals that end up disappearing as a result of Link waking the Wind Fish and thus ending the dream.

As far as the whole confusing Zelda timeline goes (where Zelda 2 is supposedly the official end of the timeline), this game could take place in theory after Wind Waker. I say this because that entire game was basically travelling from island to island via boat, so once Link saved Zelda who knows where he set sail towards next. It could also be a prequel to Wind Waker since if we examine the Wind Waker storyline, Hyrule was submerged due to a flood or some shit like that and so Link may have tried escaping the flood waters by boat, where he met with the storm that starts Link's Awakening. Before anyone argues against any of this speculation, remember that the Zelda timeline stretches for generations of Link's ancestors, so while some games do use the same Link, Link is simply an ancestor of the original (which according to Nintendo, A Link to the Past is the starting point so that Link is the original). This is also one of the few Zelda games where Link starts with what we assume is the Master Sword (Zelda 2 is the only other I can think of but keep in mind I haven't played through Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, or the Oracle of Seasons/Ages, or the DS ones... spirit tracks doesn't count because it was a monumental piece of shit), so we know that this cannot be the first. Instead it falls somewhere in the middle. It could very well be the same Link from the Ocarina of Time/Majora's Mask era, who as I said before left on a boat to escape the flood, making this game a few generations before Wind Waker on the timeline. What makes the timeline so confusing is the fact that Link's parents are never mentioned (asides from his father in ALTTP, who was only in the game for the first 10 minutes and a few seconds in the end credits). Because we have no knowledge of his parents or their accomplishments, we can never be completely certain about the timeline outside of what the story/premise of each game gives us. However, setting it up like this has left it completely open for fans to debate about so I guess it's Nintendo's way of keeping the fans talking. I guess that makes every ridiculous setting Nintendo creates for a Zelda game their way of trolling the timeline (where trains fit in the timeline, I'll never know but probably also before the flood meaning that link is an ancestor of Majora's Mask link meaning that the train conductor link could very well be the Link on the boat, or it's an ancestor of train conductor Link).