I still remember

YES! That's exactly what you are suppose to do.

Surely there is some kind of strategy I'm just too dumb to figure out?

Oh, well, that's pretty shitty.
So yeah, the feeling I'm getting is they wanted to take Zelda in an exciting new directions which turned out to be some kind of standard JRPG X Castlevania type abomination.
I'm almost tempted to see how far this terrible rabbit hole goes.

There's three types of stats you can level.
Life which is defense.
Magic which is wisdom (makes spells cheaper).
Attack which is strength.
You can choose which to level or reserve experience for a different stat.You will loose all unapplied exp if you game over or when you save and quit.
Fortunately each stat only has 8 levels. Most people grind it out at Death Mtn.

It would be fine if leveling up replenished your health but it does not.
The one good thing I can say is that the candle is automatic so you don't fuck around in an inventory to make it work.

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If I fuck the town lady everything will respawn.
I can't go back to the fairy room for the same reason.
I don't have the heal spell because that seems fairly later on.
Problem is barely beating a knight and then not having enough hp for the 2nd.
I explored, figuring there has to be some way to get the hammer at the bottom of the map so I can get rid of the boulder but I ran into a literal wall in a cave that was too high for link to jump.
That is some Simon's Quest level of bullshit as far as I'm concerned.

Step - save state, step save state….

You need to level up Life to max and try to find as many heart containers as you can.
Would you like a map?

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Fuck I hate this image.
I can't wrap my goddamn mind around this

That's one of the reasons I don't normally play jap games, especially old one's.
Or why I'll pick up one every now and then.
shit gets crazy to absurd levels and nothing seems to make sense. It's a whole other level of "what were they thinking" because it's more acurate to think "what were they smoking"

that's kinda racist fam

Fucking nigger

That's kinda rude fam

I finished this game when I was 6 years old and you retards are struggling with this?
Here's the basics:
Selecting to upgrade your health at level up will restore your health.
Putting the crystal in the statue will give you enough XP for the next level no matter how far away it is. Abuse this to pay for expensive level ups.
To defeat a darknut, just spam attacks high and low and focus on countering their attacks. You have to block low by pressing down, and doing nothing will block high. Blocking is automatic but you only block if you're not attacking.
An easier way to fight knights is to jump in and hold down and time the jump attack so the blow sweeps over the top half to the bottom half when you land in a crouch. 90% effective.
Talk to all the townspeople. They give clues on everything. Touch every tile on the world map, the are hidden treasures everywhere.
Beneath Death Mountain you can see the entire world map from the first Zelda game in mini, Zelda 2 is canonically fucking huuuge

For years I wondered why the fuck that kid told you to go west.

It then occurred to me: The game came with an instruction manual that had a fairly detailed map IIRC. Parapa Palace was listed on the map. So the kid assumed you had a basic knowledge of where the palace was, so go there, THEN go west, as in go west towards the town of Ruto and then south through the dark cave.

But fuck everyone who didn't have a map, right?

there we go. Yeah, the kid assumed you had knowledge of the layout of the first area at least. Coupled with an odd translation, it was just confusing if you didn't have the manual.

Truth. It's not reflected in the game, obviously, but in the lower left of Zelda 2's map you can see how all the geography matches up almost perfectly with Zelda 1's geography.

Ah back when manuals meant something. Good times.

Why do you trust what retarded little kids say? Your sense of direction what probably shit too when you were five.
You can clearly see it if you look at the ground.

Is this the latest ironic shitposting meme or is this place infested with reddit cancer?

That's how I do it as well. That's one of the cool things about this game, there is more to fighting enemies than just countering their telegraphed patterns.

This is why all modern re-releases (i.e. paid ROMs) like Virtual Console and NES mini are shit. They just give you a ROM on you which they didn't even dump themselves but downloaded off the internet instead. There is really no additional value beyond what you would get if you downloaded a ROM. The only company that got it right is GOG where you get all the documentation, and sometimes extras like the soundtrack or concept art. You can take the game files and play it on whatever you want since there is no DRM either.

It's easy. Just connect the dots.

Link to the Past is a smaller version of Zelda 1's map. Where the waterfall is like 2/3rds to the east in Zelda 1, it's the northeast corner in Link to the Past.

Ocarina of Time is even smaller still, with the northwest and southeast corners cut out.

There are changes, but you can justify them. OoT Castle Town became the LttP Sanctuary and Kakariko Village became the LttP graveyard. Lon Lon Ranch became the new castle, and became a run down dungeon by the time of Zelda 1. LttP Kakariko Village then became the graveyard from Zelda 1. That place just can't stop dying. The LttP Lost woods are a dead forest in Zelda I. I can buy that the Lost Woods actually move since they're magic. The OoT Lost Woods are likewise a dead forest with brambles and animal skeletons left in LttP.

Twilight Princess fucks everything up by having Death Mountain east of Zora's domain. I can buy a lot of changes to the terrain over the years but I don't get how a river and a mountain can switch places. I know it's autistic but fite me nigga.

You do get the documentation, though, at least on Wii U and 3DS.

Did I do good?

Something tells me this wasn't how it was intended.

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Hey I remember that one.

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Cool nopan, Link. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more boypussi like you to be traps. It's what makes Hyrule great.

Close, but you got his mustache wrong.

So I did it OP.
Took a lot more hours than I feel comfortable admitting.
It was a lot of
They should have made the starting point a more central location.
Fast travel to dungeons would also work.
I'd call fast travel unreasonable if the first damn Zelda didn't absolutely have fast travel.
This shit had a lot of flaws but there were some cool things.
Some of the bosses were awesome.
I loved "helmethead".
I loved the sort of miniboss on the horse you fight 3 times.
Generally I liked the few bosses that changed their strategy mid fight.
For "Gooma" I had to rush in, strike and back off 16 times because I didn't grind enough, that was annoying.

Everything after the dragon is the most ridiculous ramp in difficulty I have ever seen in a videogame.
This un-fucking-bearable gauntlet just to get TO the final dungeon.
Then you get to the final dungeon and it is the longest most unforgiving part of the game.
Fuck the thunderbird.
You get to Dark Link and he is a spastic jackwagon like the blue bird knight things leading up to the 2 consecutive bosses.
There is a large jelly that splits into smaller ones that is seemingly only used in 1 room in the entire game and that saddens me.
So you stick to the corner like a bitch and dark link becomes you're bitch just like they say.

The thing I found so strange is that link brings Zelda out of her coma and they stand there, the curtain falls, but you see Link and Zelda's sprites nudge closer to each other to insinuate a kiss.
That pissed me off.
I'd rather they kissed and then the curtain falls.

One last thing.

In the 2nd to last dungeon I explored everywhere and I couldn't figure out where I hadn't gone yet?
I eventually figured out it was this pit that sends you to a room with no floor that I assumed was the exit of some other room.
Eventually I figured out it wanted me to turn into a fairy in mid air.
I was proud of myself for figuring it out but the time it took me was excessive.