The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds review – Is there such a thing as a perfect game?

There are no perfect games in the world, the same way there are no perfect people for you to just fall in love with and marry. However there are games (and people) that come pretty close, and The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is one of those.

Set six generations after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds has many similarities to its spiritual prequel, but is no less a game for that. Save the Seven Sages and all that jazz? We’ve done that all back in 1991, and you’ll do it again here, with the same mentors too. But although it may feature a nearly-identical storyline, A Link Between Worlds is a brand new reimagining of The Legend of Zelda for today’s gamers, and Nintendo has done a bang-up job.

More importantly, it seems to have realized that there’s no need for fancy graphics, a dynamic camera, or a very good looking Link and Zelda. There are just three elements I strongly believe make a Legend of Zelda game – the top-down camera, the story, and the dungeons – and A Link Between Worlds has nailed them all.

The game starts with blacksmith’s assistant Link having his destiny thrust upon him when he stumbles across the story’s villain, a magical fop named Yuga, while on an errand to deliver a sword. The long-haired, beauty-obsessed Yuga has a mysterious power to seal living beings into walls and paintings, and does this to Link early in the game. However Link — being the hero — can’t be trapped in the wall forever, can he? He develops a unique ability to turn two-dimensional at will, adding an extra layer of problem solving to this game series known for its confounding puzzles.

In spite of this already-familiar mechanic, A Link Between Worlds is no Paper Mario. The game returns to its roots as a hack-and-slash puzzle RPG with a very familiar overworld, and some other nostalgic elements like a top-down camera, an energy bar in place of ammunition stacks, and dungeons that make me want to tear my hair out. Dungeons in A Link Between Worlds are extra tough, since Link’s ability to merge into walls gives the game an added level of trickery.

You not only have to figure out what items to use in the dungeon, you also have to consider that sometimes, you can stick onto walls and get onto platforms not reachable by hookshots or hammers. This new dimension makes A Link Between Worlds possibly one of the toughest Zelda games around. Fortunately Nintendo has remembered the era of gamers they’re catering to (a babied, pampered lot we are), and they’ve done good.

Where previously you had to tear your hair out and bewail the fact that Nintendo Power’s hotline was never available in Asia, you can now put on a funky pair of glasses and look for the Hint Ghost. This studious Ghost gives you pretty obvious hints in exchange for Play Coins, and this is useful because there are new elements in the dungeons you might not be able to figure out otherwise.

It’s worth noting that fighting in this game is easy-peasy, as if to make up for all the hard work your brain has to do. The boss fights in A Link Between Worlds are simple to figure out, and the bosses take only a few hits before going down. Considering the actual combat difficulty, I find it strange that Nintendo has been particularly generous with hearts in this game, with pieces of hearts sprinkled liberally around the world on top of whole heart containers dropping from bosses. It does help when you enter the other world the game’s title references and monsters start hitting a lot harder.

Speaking of the other world, it’s around this point in the game where you’ll start to draw a lot of parallels with A Link to the Past. But don’t let that discourage you from continuing with the game. The addition of an alternate world – Lorule – accessible only at certain points in the map, adds some interesting content to the game, and it does make a nice change from looking at happy, brightly coloured environments. After all, the world’s not all sunshine and laughter; there’s always the rain (and brimstone and bad guys, you get my drift) and Lorule fits very nicely into the game’s story.