What are your thoughts on Zelda II, Holla Forums? How do you think it compares to other games of it's style...

What was wrong with it?

Yeah, but they'll probably never make a game like that again because of how many people disliked it for being too different. Come to think of it, has there been any game like that since the 80s? Popful Mail maybe?

Grow a brain.

It reminds me of a much shittier Ys 3, which I already didn't like very much.

Great game.
It's not as cryptic as some make it out to be, it's just right in that regard.
Could use another respawn point because FUCK going all the way from the starting shrine when you die near the end.

It'd be fun if they gave this game the Link Between Worlds treatment. Side scrolling revivals are hot these days anyways.

Fucking love Zelda II

I think it was an oddman out because at the time, Nintendo didn't feel right about making Championship Edition tier sequels. Also, It was handed off to a different internal development team outside of Shiggy and Kondo and Tezuka.

I love the challenge and the focus on swordfighting. I felt it got pretty cryptic at parts at around the 4th quadrant of the world map, but nowhere near the level of Zelda 1.

Dark Link is an absolute poorly programmed shitter, and because he like's to slide over as he's slashing you (he oughtta freeze in place when he stabs), I usually don't feel bad about resorting to the cheap SWEEP THE LEG strategy if I'm taking him and the Great Palace on for the 4th time in one sitting.

Soundtrack is god tier, and felt really, really loud for an NES game.

Gooma is best boss fight

I honestly liked Battle of Olympus, but I have my gripes

>Some stupid enemies at the start of the game, like the just below clubbing range worms. I feel like they interrupt the flow of the game
>The 2D sidescroller maze has never been done well, and that includes games with very copy and paste background graphics. No landmarks to be found on some of the more annoying labyrinths.

Other than that, it's an alright game. Also has a pretty boss soundtrack.

Much like castlevania 2, a lot of its issues could be (and have been with fan patches) solved with a decent translation.

It's not as good as 1, but then few Zeldas are. I liked having the rpg elements. Death mountain and the final dungeon are kind of a bitch though.

Also, I know carpe fulgur is a bit taboo round these parts because towels, but if you really liked Zelda II's gameplay I wholeheartedly recommend fortune summoners.

Yeah it's cute, but it's a very nice 2D sidescrolling platformer adventurer. Damn difficult, too.

Battle of olympus was great. It had great concepts, great music and design and the story was decent too, following the myth. I expected God of War to be something along the lines, but they went full retard with that edgy shit.
Solid 9/10 because if you're bad you will have to grind, but that happened like in 2 specific Gods. fukken Hephaestos was hard yo reach
Only game NES I played more than this one was Willow and it's still fun to beat every now and then.

The leveling system is also kind of a bitch. When I played this game as a kid, I never expected I'd have to grind so much, and I didn't realize that killing a boss would fill the gap in XP in need to the next level. Wasted so much points because of this. I like the game, but I definitely wasn't in love with it.
That said, I don't like the franchise, only the first game

something being cute is a bonus, you don't need to follow it with a but.

I like Zelda II a lot, but that isn't to say I'm not frustrated by some of its design. I don't like the random enemy encounters that spawn on the overworld map as you traverse. The frequency is too high, it's difficult to avoid or escape combat, and often it's not worth the time to fight enemies when you just want to get form point A to point B, especially when you don't really net all that much experience from some enemies that are a pain to defeat over and over again. I feel like the grind for experience is too extreme. Some of the dungeons can be difficult to traverse because the enemies that you defeat will just respawn. As long as you're in a dungeon, you're in a constant state of weariness brought upon by what is essentially a very lengthy combat scenario, and it can wear on you when you're expected to navigate a maze while staying alive long enough to collect necessary items, uncover integral secrets and find and kill the boss.

Zelda II would be more interesting if it were more similar to Ninja Gaiden. In this game, the player is pitted against a series of linear levels that are comprised of a gauntlet of enemies and traps that the player must learn to deal with in order to traverse the level and reach the boss. There are no keys to find, and the experience is very fast paced, which works perfectly fine for a game that revolves around fluid and precision movement. Ninja Gaiden offers a series of harsh but surmountable challenges that ask the player to truly test their mettle. Players don't have to worry about navigation in a geographical sense, although they'll still have to maintain their situational awareness in order to make precision movements between platforms, and the game is better off for it. I know Zelda is traditionally a series centered around exploration, but exploration is not facilitated well when the player is constantly berated by an endless barrage of relentless aerial and grounded foes.

If the designers would rather not take the Ninja Gaiden route, they could have given the player some more down time to explore between combat scenarios, perhaps something more similar to Metroid, a game whose combat takes a slower and less aggressive pace in order to give the player some room to breathe while they explore. It also would've been an improvement in my eyes if the game maintained its 2D side scrolling perspective throughout every level and simply removed the overworld map. They could have made a series of 2D non-linear levels a la Castlevania.

I still like the game, though.

If you want to play a Zelda game with an arcade philosophy in the design, you could always try Nazo no Murasamejou. Also by Nintendo, for the Famicom Disk System.

Can you or someone explain to me how I can use VirtuaNES emulator to play Famicom ROMs? It should be able to play them, but when I run the ROM (both the English patched version and the Japanese only version) the emulator tells me that it's an unsupported format. If not, do you have any suggestions for another emulator I may be able to use?

I like NEStopia and FCEUltra

Zelda 2 is fun because even though it's not it does feel like an open world. Enemies can be avoided by walking next to a road or by bumping on the less powerful enemy instead of the big one. Dungeons are fucking hard but also fairly easy once you learn where the enemies are and get enough spells or sword tricks.

That said I love Ninja Gaiden and love pic related. Wall climbing, kicking is just too satisfying.

Batman is probably my favorite platform game, great music, gameplay and the sprites look pretty perfect for the time.

Sunsoft was ahead of the times.

With a couple of gameplay reconsiderations, it could be a great game. As it stands now, it's still a pretty decent title. Dramatically changing the design philosophy for a follow up sequel was a ballsy move, despite the series not being defined at that point. It's more akin to what turn-based RPGs like Final Fantasy should have enventually evolved into instead the genre stagnating like it did. The first LoZ was a unique and fresh experience within itself, so it really was a waste they they squandered what could have been a interesting and underutilized idea for a series that might have evolved into its own sub-genre of 2D ARPG.

Things that could rebalance the game to make it GOAT are as followed:

All these changes would retain the difficulty of the game while also removing the tedium of it.

Like I said, decent title that could have been great with a select few changes. Could have been a real game changer for 2D RPGs that would have had a legacy to this day, it's a real shame it didn't

Please leave.

Rambo is my least favorite Zelda II.

They really stepped up their game between when they entered the video game scene and the NES golden days. Super Spy Hunter, Batman, Gimmick, Journey to Silius, Blaster Master. God damn.

You know the term kusoge? It was coined in a review of a Sunsoft title.

is it ok if I derail the topic into a NES jewels thread?

You forgot about the Batman games.

Fuck yeah dude. Also check out Gimmick! it came later in the life cycle but has amazing gameplay and awesome level design.

Little Samson is another one.

I did mention Batman. Never liked the beat-em-up too much, though. I mean, it was quality, but not to my tastes. Never really got into anything from the genre that wasn't more akin to Battletoads.

That Gremlins game was breddy gud, too, from what I remember. The NES one, not the Game Boy one.

my niggas. I remembered Gimmick because of the catchy music.

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Early Nintendo art was chockful of goofy 1970's style art, which I love.

The Gundam guy also made chill as fuck fan art of Zelda 1.

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By all means.

That's from the character designer of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, though to be fair, he did work on some Gundam OVAs later on.

That's some quality animation. Never played this game but looks really cool.
Now in for some puzzley games.
beating this game as a kid was extremely satisfying

Back to cuckchan

Up+A counts as a death on the start screen though.

I should have said file select screen anyway.

Bleh, I forgot that Zelda 2 did that, when Zelda 1 didn't.

Not really the greatest Zelda game but It also still a good game. I would have liked to see more games in its style. Wish they would have iterated and refined the formula. Wouldn't mind seeing a modern remake of it (like AM2R).

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Zelda 2 is a good game, (but it's a fucking horrible Zelda game.) It actively punishes for exploration, and it forces you to explore.
The 2D fighting and blocking is pretty good, but it all fails to flying nonblockables and too hard dungeons, with bosses way faster than you can react. Though with some grinding and leveling, you can clear the game, no problem. (this shit is the epitome of modern rpgs)

Play it. Best thing I could tell you. It ain't great, but it wasn't bad, and it was unique in a lot of ways and still very relevant in the context of other games that came out that year.

Now we mention Ninja Gaiden, this guy should have been playable.

This is why I love coming here. Holla Forums truly is a free exchange of ideas. And lewds.

It's definitely one of the things I miss about not having my copy of The Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for Gamecube anymore.

if only modern zeldas had challenge too

Played it when it first came out in 87, I think I beat it when I finally bought my own copy in 89

Fantastic game that still holds up, it and Solar Jetman were probably the first games I ever played where you had to control your timing of movements with the eventual chaos taking place on screen, though Solar Jetman is far more complex Zelda II still has you timing jumping sword strikes, enemy placement, shield management

Only thing I didn't like about it was the leveling system, don't bother with the second palace until life and magic are 6 and sword is 5, then you can just let beating thet palaces to you to the finish

heres what i think about zelda 2

This would be a lot funnier with the 8 bit font found in NGII.

shoo shoo alphablaster

Bump

Admit it anons. If Zelda II didn't have the Legend of Zelda coat of paint it would be buried in the pile of other nes titles and just as easily forgotten.

Fucking bullshit. And that's saying that the nes is mostly forgetable titles too. So much garbage in your statement. The nes is filled with classics. A vast array of them. I legit feel sorry for you if you can't get that the nes was and is one of the best systems ever.

More like if it didn't have the Zelda coat of paint it would be regarded as an obscure masterpiece that was just too ahead of it's time to be popular in it's day. /vr/ would regard it as the single best game on the NES.

Thoughts on Zelda II? I think it was a good idea in theory, but based on the fact that they had only one flat layer for everything and didn't have Link going into the foreground or background, etc, having multiple layers of gameplay it resulted in a game that was just too weirdly different from its predecessor.

I never finished it, though, I just didn't have the patience.

Truely how many nes games or franchises are you even aware of? I'll be impressed if you could name of the top of your head a hundred. Somehow I don't think you know the other six hundred and that's my point. Without it being made by Nintendo, without it being a Zelda coat of paint it would be in the pile of forgetable games because that's the power of a brand. Zelda is to gamers what Gucci is to fashion consumers.

Debatable. Hard to know if that is really the case because your opinon has already been tainted by the brand. A test should be done replacing the zelda brand on a new generation of people that has never experienced a zelda game to see what they think of it.

Are you saying that in reference to LoZ as we know it today, or just as a sequel to the original LoZ? Either way, it would at least be memorable. There are a lot of standalone games that are obscure but still have their place in the sun. Fucking Rygar and Kid Icarus got sequels. If the Zelda franchise ended with this game, it would still be remembered, short sword and all.

I was just making a joke about hipsters.