The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords (Anniversary Edition)
Released on: GBA (Anniversary Edition released on 3DS)
Played on: 3DS
Released in: 2003 (Anniversary Edition released 2011)
Aah Zelda. You and I have a chequered relationship.
(Before I go any further, I'm referring to Zelda the game series, not Zelda the princess. I have never had a chequered relationship (or indeed, a relationship of any kind) with any video-game princess. Clear?)
Regardless of my previous feelings though, I felt strangely positive about trying out Zelda: Four Swords - as it shares a lot of DNA with A Link to the Past (partially, one suspects, due to the fact it was released on a cartridge with the GBA port of Link to the Past, as seen in the boxart above), and that was one of the few Zelda games I spent a lot of time with as a youngster.
(Incidentally, how old am I, using the word youngster? Quick, order me a zimmer frame!)
Sadly, though, I was disappointed. For the second game in a row in this blog, I am playing a game of a genre I don't normally enjoy. The last one (Speedball 2, for those of you with a short memory) was sports games, and this is RPGs.
I may have mentioned this before, but I don't like games that give me too much choice. I'm a fan of linearity in games - I like it to be obvious what I'm doing and where I'm going, and Zelda traditionally doesn't do that. Don't get me wrong, Zelda games can be a lot of fun (and I have at least two more to play at some point in this playthrough, so hopefully some of them will entertain me more), and Four Swords has it's moments. But it seems really badly designed as a handheld game. I know it comes from an era where handheld games were something you played for an hour, rather than 5 minutes, but even so, the fact that the game has no save option until the end of an area means that, if you are like me, then when you get stuck at a certain point in the level, you are loath to turn it off and try again later, because you know that you'll have to play all the way through that level again to get to the point where you were stuck.
And yes, I am aware that the previous paragraph makes me sound like I have the attention span of a gnat, but in my own defence... is that a squirrel?
*Rushes away from the computer and spends five minutes being distracted by things that are outside, until Neety points out that I was mid-way through a blog, and that I should finish it.*
Anywhere, where was I? Oh yes - Zelda: Four Swords.
I think that it is a well-made game. The graphics are cute and very well drawn, and as is traditional, the Zelda music is absolutely superb. And I know that as a Nintendo Fanboy (I am, I don't deny it), I should absolutely love Zelda games. But it's just not the game type for me.
Yes I will always play Zelda games - but I seriously doubt I shall ever complete one. And part of this circles back to my earlier paragraph. The fact that the games are non-linear and open-world (to a certain extent), and they often don't give us easy signposts as to what needs to be done next - in fact, Four Swords is one of the more linear Zelda games that I have played - and therefore, if you haven't played it for a couple of weeks, then (if you're like me) you load up the saved game, wander around the game world for 20 minutes and then realise that you have absolutely no memory of what the hell it was you were trying to do.
I know this blog post has wandered into a discussion about my lack of interest in RPGs, rather than a comprehensive discussion of my playthrough of Four Swords, so I'll bring it back full circle. Four Swords was originally designed as a multiplayer experience, so the single-player experience will always be a little bit of a letdown, but even so, while the feel, graphics and entertainment values are high, I ran into puzzles I couldn't solve, or situations I couldn't get out of, and I just became overwhelmed with frustration.
Rating: 6/10
Time Played: 45 mins
Would I play it again?: I may do. It's not high on my list though.
So it's good, but not great. And I'm sure I'll get flamed for this, but I can't wait to get back to a platformer - which coincidentally, is what I'm playing next time - it's Sonic Generations on the Xbox 360!
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