| the_dengle said: It's a pointless room. They do not all have enemies in them, I only remember a few being filled with darknuts but it really doesn't matter. You can just ignore them and go for the stairs anyway, in which case there might as well be no enemies and no blocks at all. Like many very old games, Zelda 1 is designed to slow the player down in ways that don't add difficulty. Like forcing them to spend 30 seconds pushing random blocks until they find the right one... 11 times in a single dungeon... or like, upon death, returning them to the start of the dungeon they're in with only 3 hearts -- late in the game, this is a death sentence. Time to leave the dungeon and take a detour to the fairy pond. Or by making rupee drops extremely scarce and mostly one at a time (ocassionally five), while most of the secrets hidden in the overworld are old men who will take your rupees or play random-guess minigames that will also take your rupees, meanwhile when you actually find a great secret, instead of being rewarded for finding it by receiving a great item, your reward is the ability to purchase that item for 250 rupees, literally 98% of your wallet capacity. The rupee grind in Zelda 1 is so ridiculous, it's far worse than the experience grind in Zelda II and yet people complain about that. This game is absolutely terrible. If a modern Zelda game was released with any of this bullshit people would tear it apart. Hell, Skyward Sword got shit for having a couple of recurring boss fights that play out completely differently each time. Meanwhile people can't stop drooling over original Zelda which reused the same stupid room gimmick 16 times. And as I said, Zelda has very few puzzles to begin with. It is now and always has been an adventure game. You know, use bomb on wall. Use candle on tree. Use raft on water. These weren't puzzles 30 years ago and they aren't suddenly puzzles now just because it's a whip instead of a bomb and you're using it on a lever instead of a wall. You are playing an adventure game, exploring the game world by interacting with it. If you remove the action from Zelda you get a game that has more in common with Grim Fandango than with Tetris. Zelda 1 is just a shitty adventure game, but it is an adventure game nonetheless. |
You are greatly exaggerated. If you're moving blocks to open doors 11 times in a single dungeon, that's 5 1/2 minutes wasted in one dungeon. That's it. You'll be in that dungeon for a much larger amount of time if it's your first time through. That time sink is inconsequential.
The game is still amazing. That doesn't mean that it perfectly holds up today, but it still plays better than some of the most modern Zelda games. Zelda has plenty of puzzles now. Don't pretend that all the puzzles in modern Zeldas are simply "Pulling a lever with a weapon" because they aren't. They are an integral dungeon element now, and you won't find a single dungeon in modern Zelda games without many of them. Zelda may not be a puzzle game, but it's dungeons have way too many. The dungeons should be testing your combat skills, not your cranial ones. And not your ability to pull a lever.
I wouldn't mind three or so separate and fully dedicated "temple" that were focused on extremely tough and intricate puzzle design throughout, but leave puzzles out of the eight or so standard dungeons.
