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The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons
Something I'm doing this year is trying to play through the entire core Zelda franchise in release order. It's been very cool in terms of being able to track recurring elements, whether they're game mechanics or story-related. Oracle of Seasons was the seventh game (out of nineteen total) - it came out in 2001 for the Game Boy Color, and I played the Virtual Console version on the 3DS.
Oracle of Seasons was released simultaneously with Oracle of Ages, with the intention that the games could be played in any order and that you could link your save files. Basically, each game can be played as a standalone and they can be played in any order, but when I move on to Ages I'll be able to play a version of it that knows I already beat Seasons and will incorporate some information about what choices I made and what items I had, and I'll be able to play through the true ending. Which is wildly impressive to me, both in terms of it being something a Game Boy game pulled off 20 years ago and in terms of how impressive it is that they developed two completely separate games that fit together like this. When Zelda games think outside the box...that's the good shit right there.
I absolutely LOVED the Rod of Seasons impacted the game. Almost every Zelda game has some kind of core gameplay gimmick (so far: parallel worlds in A Link to the Past, time travel in Ocarina of Time, masks and the repeating three-day cycle in Majora's Mask, and I guess existential morality in Link's Awakening??? IS IT MASS MURDER IF THE VICTIMS DON'T EXIST IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD???) and in Seasons, it's that the land of Holodrum has been thrown into chaos because the seasons are all out of whack - you're in the woods and it's summer and you walk over one screen and suddenly it's winter. Eventually, you receive and upgrade the Rod of Seasons to the point that you can change the seasons at will, which changes the way you interact with the universe. Among other things: Trees that block your way shrivel up in the winter so you can pass them, creeks dry up in summer so you can find secrets that were underwater, impassable pits fill with autumn leaves so you can pass over them, flowers that bloom in spring will propel you up onto high ledges. It's just a VERY cool way of interacting with the world and thinking about how to get around, beyond the Zelda standard of "I can't get over this gap but I assume later I'll get a tool that helps me do it." It's also impressive because it means there's four completely different versions of every section of the map - sometimes the differences are just cosmetic but it's just very cool to fuck with the seasons and see what happens.
Structurally it's very similar to Link's Awakening, and it uses the same engine, which was actually super interesting rather than feeling repetitive (also I don't know when Roc's Feather stopped being a thing but I was SO excited to get it in Seasons). I have the Virtual Console version of Awakening but when I played it through I actually played the Switch remake, which was super interesting because it looked very much like a 2019 game, and it made a lot of quality of life improvements that felt appropriately 2019, but I was always aware of the 1993 Game Boy bones, mainly in terms of how the map was laid out - it's got the same open-ish world vibe of most Zelda games, but sometimes the route from Point A to Point B makes no fucking sense until you remember that the map was designed as a grid made up of 256 individual screens - you were never supposed to see more than one screen at a time, and a route that felt fairly normal in that sense looks fucking stupid when you have a bird's eye view and can see how indirect and restrictive the path is.
So basically, after seeing 1993 bones on a 2019 body, it was cool to see fairly-similar 2001 bones on a 2001 body and experience a map like that in the context it was designed for. Navigating can still be confusing as hell compared to a game with fewer artificial boundaries, but you get the hang of it pretty easily (or at least I did because I backtracked about five times as much as I needed to).
I did SORELY miss all of the Switch QOL improvements once I was in the dungeons (being able to drop icons on a map to remind myself to come back to things...invaluable), but I was overall super proud of myself for how little I used walkthroughs on this one. There were a couple of times when I checked one basically to confirm that I was right about X before I devoted a ton of time to it, but there was only one instance where I had no idea what was up and had to check. That was on the final boss because you HAVE to use a spin attack and I have never in my LIFE remembered in Zelda combat that those are available to me. I tried EVERYTHING ELSE, I even tried playing my little flute to call the flying bear who helped me get through the wastelands, but once I'd tried every single item I had and not even landed a single hit I said fuck it and looked it up...spin attack. I'm sure the exact same thing is going to happen to me at the end of Oracle of Ages, because I will NOT remember that spin attacks exist by then.
Connections to other Zelda games...I don't have anything to say about the similarity between this map and the Awakening map but I'm going to mention it anyway. NO, WAIT, I DO. Completely different map but who cares, the beach in Subrosia where you find Rosa was SO reminiscent of the spot where you find Marin in Awakening...the LONGING I felt, wow.
Din and Farore appearing as Oracles was nicer than just introducing random new characters to the mythology. For some reason I was full on BEYONCE? when Twinrova showed up??? Like I know Holodrum (that NAME wtf) is a country that is NEAR Hyrule, and there were Deku Scrubs and Gorons and Zora and whatnot and it wasn't a new world in the way that Koholint was, but for some reason I was just super surprised by the Gerudo coming up so late in the game. Maybe "Ganon(dorf) is a Gerudo" just became franchise canon after OoT used it? THINGS I WILL FIND OUT OVER TIME! The Maku tree is a useless and pale imitation of the Deku tree. I remain fascinated by the "owl as hint-giver" motif although I'm glad that fucker didn't show his face after what he did to me in Link's Awakening.
OH one thing I super loved: There is this monster king that you defeat, and he ends up taking refuge in a nearby town with some of his minions, where he holes up in a cottage and cries and makes bombs in a non-sinister way, and I was trying to figure out if you're supposed to DO something about it. I kept trying different things until finally I just dropped one of my own bombs on his pile of bombs, and when it went off the screen went white and I got Game Over. 😂 Something similar happens in Turnip Boy and there is just something so FUNNY to me about a game breaking away from its own internal logic to be like "well what did you think was going to happen when you fucked around with explosives???" One finding out for every ninety-nine fucking arounds...a perfect ratio.
Ultimately, now that I think about it, almost everything I have to say is about the game's mechanics and not the story, which is fine! It's just a very standard "get these eight things from eight dungeons and then fight the big boss" Zelda formula with the seasons as the main differentiation, but they can't ALL send me into a weird emotional spiral like Awakening did, and as I said before the seasons are a GREAT feature and really made this stand out. I'm psyched to play Ages because I hear that's got a completely different vibe, which is so cool to think about. (It is kind of a bummer that it's impossible to read up on Seasons without getting spoiled for Ages but SUCH IS LIFE.)
Next up I'm playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice For All, because once I gave up on the idea of catching up to Skyward Sword in time for the Switch release this summer, I figured it was better to alternate Zelda games with non-Zelda games because a) I apparently can't manage playing two games at once and b) I want to maintain momentum and keep things fresh in my mind, but I can't just put EVERYTHING ELSE off until I finish this entire franchise, that's madness.
Oracle of Seasons was released simultaneously with Oracle of Ages, with the intention that the games could be played in any order and that you could link your save files. Basically, each game can be played as a standalone and they can be played in any order, but when I move on to Ages I'll be able to play a version of it that knows I already beat Seasons and will incorporate some information about what choices I made and what items I had, and I'll be able to play through the true ending. Which is wildly impressive to me, both in terms of it being something a Game Boy game pulled off 20 years ago and in terms of how impressive it is that they developed two completely separate games that fit together like this. When Zelda games think outside the box...that's the good shit right there.
I absolutely LOVED the Rod of Seasons impacted the game. Almost every Zelda game has some kind of core gameplay gimmick (so far: parallel worlds in A Link to the Past, time travel in Ocarina of Time, masks and the repeating three-day cycle in Majora's Mask, and I guess existential morality in Link's Awakening??? IS IT MASS MURDER IF THE VICTIMS DON'T EXIST IN THE PHYSICAL WORLD???) and in Seasons, it's that the land of Holodrum has been thrown into chaos because the seasons are all out of whack - you're in the woods and it's summer and you walk over one screen and suddenly it's winter. Eventually, you receive and upgrade the Rod of Seasons to the point that you can change the seasons at will, which changes the way you interact with the universe. Among other things: Trees that block your way shrivel up in the winter so you can pass them, creeks dry up in summer so you can find secrets that were underwater, impassable pits fill with autumn leaves so you can pass over them, flowers that bloom in spring will propel you up onto high ledges. It's just a VERY cool way of interacting with the world and thinking about how to get around, beyond the Zelda standard of "I can't get over this gap but I assume later I'll get a tool that helps me do it." It's also impressive because it means there's four completely different versions of every section of the map - sometimes the differences are just cosmetic but it's just very cool to fuck with the seasons and see what happens.
Structurally it's very similar to Link's Awakening, and it uses the same engine, which was actually super interesting rather than feeling repetitive (also I don't know when Roc's Feather stopped being a thing but I was SO excited to get it in Seasons). I have the Virtual Console version of Awakening but when I played it through I actually played the Switch remake, which was super interesting because it looked very much like a 2019 game, and it made a lot of quality of life improvements that felt appropriately 2019, but I was always aware of the 1993 Game Boy bones, mainly in terms of how the map was laid out - it's got the same open-ish world vibe of most Zelda games, but sometimes the route from Point A to Point B makes no fucking sense until you remember that the map was designed as a grid made up of 256 individual screens - you were never supposed to see more than one screen at a time, and a route that felt fairly normal in that sense looks fucking stupid when you have a bird's eye view and can see how indirect and restrictive the path is.
So basically, after seeing 1993 bones on a 2019 body, it was cool to see fairly-similar 2001 bones on a 2001 body and experience a map like that in the context it was designed for. Navigating can still be confusing as hell compared to a game with fewer artificial boundaries, but you get the hang of it pretty easily (or at least I did because I backtracked about five times as much as I needed to).
I did SORELY miss all of the Switch QOL improvements once I was in the dungeons (being able to drop icons on a map to remind myself to come back to things...invaluable), but I was overall super proud of myself for how little I used walkthroughs on this one. There were a couple of times when I checked one basically to confirm that I was right about X before I devoted a ton of time to it, but there was only one instance where I had no idea what was up and had to check. That was on the final boss because you HAVE to use a spin attack and I have never in my LIFE remembered in Zelda combat that those are available to me. I tried EVERYTHING ELSE, I even tried playing my little flute to call the flying bear who helped me get through the wastelands, but once I'd tried every single item I had and not even landed a single hit I said fuck it and looked it up...spin attack. I'm sure the exact same thing is going to happen to me at the end of Oracle of Ages, because I will NOT remember that spin attacks exist by then.
Connections to other Zelda games...I don't have anything to say about the similarity between this map and the Awakening map but I'm going to mention it anyway. NO, WAIT, I DO. Completely different map but who cares, the beach in Subrosia where you find Rosa was SO reminiscent of the spot where you find Marin in Awakening...the LONGING I felt, wow.
Din and Farore appearing as Oracles was nicer than just introducing random new characters to the mythology. For some reason I was full on BEYONCE? when Twinrova showed up??? Like I know Holodrum (that NAME wtf) is a country that is NEAR Hyrule, and there were Deku Scrubs and Gorons and Zora and whatnot and it wasn't a new world in the way that Koholint was, but for some reason I was just super surprised by the Gerudo coming up so late in the game. Maybe "Ganon(dorf) is a Gerudo" just became franchise canon after OoT used it? THINGS I WILL FIND OUT OVER TIME! The Maku tree is a useless and pale imitation of the Deku tree. I remain fascinated by the "owl as hint-giver" motif although I'm glad that fucker didn't show his face after what he did to me in Link's Awakening.
OH one thing I super loved: There is this monster king that you defeat, and he ends up taking refuge in a nearby town with some of his minions, where he holes up in a cottage and cries and makes bombs in a non-sinister way, and I was trying to figure out if you're supposed to DO something about it. I kept trying different things until finally I just dropped one of my own bombs on his pile of bombs, and when it went off the screen went white and I got Game Over. 😂 Something similar happens in Turnip Boy and there is just something so FUNNY to me about a game breaking away from its own internal logic to be like "well what did you think was going to happen when you fucked around with explosives???" One finding out for every ninety-nine fucking arounds...a perfect ratio.
Ultimately, now that I think about it, almost everything I have to say is about the game's mechanics and not the story, which is fine! It's just a very standard "get these eight things from eight dungeons and then fight the big boss" Zelda formula with the seasons as the main differentiation, but they can't ALL send me into a weird emotional spiral like Awakening did, and as I said before the seasons are a GREAT feature and really made this stand out. I'm psyched to play Ages because I hear that's got a completely different vibe, which is so cool to think about. (It is kind of a bummer that it's impossible to read up on Seasons without getting spoiled for Ages but SUCH IS LIFE.)
Next up I'm playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice For All, because once I gave up on the idea of catching up to Skyward Sword in time for the Switch release this summer, I figured it was better to alternate Zelda games with non-Zelda games because a) I apparently can't manage playing two games at once and b) I want to maintain momentum and keep things fresh in my mind, but I can't just put EVERYTHING ELSE off until I finish this entire franchise, that's madness.