THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LEGACY OF A PRINCESS
by Red Jett

Review: Greg Boettcher


This is one of the longer games of the year, and a lot of effort obviously went into it. Unfortunately, there are enough flaws with the game that I didn't find myself getting involved with it. If you are familiar with The Legend of Zelda, and you like a hard game, then you might want to try this game. If you're not familiar with the Zelda universe, then you may be not all that interested in it, since it's basically fanfic IF. Even if you are interested, you might run into the same problems I did. I found the game halfway interesting at first, but the more I played it, the more I became aware of its flaws. Some puzzles seemed nearly impossible to me, due to both guess-the-verb problems and puzzles that are difficult without knowledge of the Zelda universe. I finished the game, but only by resorting to a walkthrough.

The game opens rather well. You are Link (the hero of the Zelda games), and you start out in the cave of Impa (the old woman from the Zelda games). Impa has just finished writing the tale of your last adventure, when suddenly there is a message from Princess Zelda. It turns out her father, the king, was kidnapped. Now you and Zelda must rescue him.

Some of these things rang a faint bell. Many years ago, I did play the original Legend of Zelda game, the one that came out for Nintendo in 1986. I also vaguely recognized such references as Ganon and Like-Like the Shield-Eater. From what I could tell, this appears to be an authentic depiction of the Zelda universe, one that is well conceived, but not always very well executed.

I'm going to run quickly through some of the weaknesses of this game:

* There is a major bug right at the beginning of the game, where if you act in a way the author didn't anticipate, you not only get locked out of victory; you get locked out of seeing anything beyond the first five rooms, and you don't know why you can't go on. This is a really unpardonable flaw, and it happened to me the first time I played the game.

* There are some truly heinous guess-the-verb moments and guess-the-syntax moments. One of them was bad enough that it basically caused David Whyld to give up on the game. Another requires you to use a nonstandard verb rather than the more obvious and equally logical standard verbs. Both of these would have stumped me if not for the walkthrough.

* The NPCs are non-interactive, responding to very few topics of conversation. In this regard, it seems as though the author wasn't even trying. On the other hand, at least the character Zelda is better implemented than some of the others.

* There are a few little problems. For one thing, there can be anywhere from zero to two blank lines between a room's name and its description. Also, when Zelda follows you into a room, there is no mention of her at all -- neither "Zelda is here" nor "Zelda follows you in."

And now for the game's strengths:

* The writing is pretty good. As I said, the game begins well, and the major events of the game are well-described.

* The game makes great use of ADRIFT's auto-map feature. This helped me a lot.

* Most of the items mentioned in room descriptions are implemented. The game

* The puzzles are entirely appropriate for the Zelda universe -- although, as I said, this may make them very difficult for those who aren't knowledgeable about that universe.

* The story is consistent with the Zelda universe, although I can't say how well it fits in with Zelda as a multi-game saga.

* It's admirably long and ambitious, especially considering that I think it's the first game by this author.

So if you're interested in Zelda fanfic-type IF, this game might interest you. Also, if you'd like to try out a rather long and difficult puzzle game written for ADRIFT, feel free to try this out. If you need a walkthrough, and you very well might, you can find one at David Whyld's web site.

Review: David Whyld

I've never actually played any of the Zelda games - on which this is based - so I'm not sure if I missed out on something and enjoyed the game far less as a result. Or, on the other hand, if it just isn't that remarkable full stop.

It starts off reasonably well. You leave the cave of Impa - some kind of chronicler from what I gather - to be informed that the King of Hyrule has been kidnapped by a strange creature in blue armour. Princess Zelda has demanded your presence and off to the palace you go to meet her. Here, unfortunately, things start going rapidly downhill.

Zelda wants to accompany you and so you set off to find the King with her. Figuring out what to do next is the hardest part. Most of the time I spent wandering around the town which seems to comprise the bulk of the game, not having a clue what I was doing. There were a few NPCs scattered about - the Windmill Man, a librarian, a few guards, some others - but all were very poorly done and had next to no depth about them. The IF equivalent of cardboard cut-outs? It would seem so. Interacting with them was difficult: they react only to "ask [name] about [subject]" and while I was able to garner a few responses from them, nothing I discovered was in any way useful. Most attempts ended in the default message that such-and-such "does not respond to your question".

The few items I have - a sword, a hookshot, a shield and an (empty) money pouch - I was hardpressed to find a use for. The hookshot I eventually managed to use to get some information out of the moblin I discovered in the palace dungeon but the others so far I haven't discovered anything to do with. In fact, I no longer have the shield. Some monster with the seriously unscary name of Like Like swiped it in the graveyard and I don't know any way to get it back. If I need that shield to finish the game, I'm clearly screwed...

The town itself is fairly empty and lifeless. The few NPCs don't so much add depth to the game as merely emphasise just how desolate everything is. Descriptions of the various things you see are basic and to the point without any effort expended to make them feel real; often they don't tell you anything more about the item in question than you had already seen in the location description.

Difficulty wise, Legacy Of A Princess is a hard game. Few games come without so much as a few hints somewhere along the way. Unfortunately this is one such game. It's also not the sort of game where hints are unnecessary as I soon discovered when, after several hours of playing, I still hadn't managed to make any further progress than I had made in my first five minutes. To date I've achieved precious little: I've recruited Zelda to my side, spoken to the Moblin and been attacked in the graveyard while searching for a boat (why is there a boat in the graveyard? I wish I knew.) And about that's it. Okay, there's also the shop which sells a mask I might need but as I don't any any money (rupees) I can't buy it and stealing doesn't seem to be an option. One location in the game contains gazillions of rupees but is no longer available to me and, reloading from a previous save, I was told I couldn't take the gems anyway! There's also the lake I'm unable to cross without a boat - the idea of swimming the lake obviously never occurred to the writer as there isn't an option for it. And that really is it. There could well be a fairly reasonable game past the points I'm stuck on but I suspect not. Most reasonable games start out that way and few of them start bad and then dramatically improve somewhere along the way.


Errors (Obvious and Otherwise)

Not too many but they are annoying.

There were obvious ones at the start in which you're told there you can see some bookshelves; however, trying to examine them hits you with the unhelpful message "Which shelves. The books or the shelf?" The books can be examined but the shelf/shelves can't. You get an ambiguity error each time you try.

The conversation system is unhelpful but never more so than when you try ask certain characters about certain other characters and run into a flaw in the design system. "Ask Katie about Impa" produces "Impa isn't here!" Strangely, "Ask Zelda about Impa" works fine.


Conclusion

This isn't a terrible game by any means and it even looked like it might be worth playing from the opening paragraphs, but lack of hints and depth just persuaded me I'd be far better off trying something else instead.

4 out of 10

Review: Emily Short

This appears to be largely a parody/expansion/fanfic/something based on The Legend of Zelda. As I never played the original, it didn't mean much to me. There were a number of rooms where there was nothing to do, and the initial several moves of plot were of the variety where X tells you to go somewhere and see Y, and then Y tells you to go and see Z, and Z tells you to visit X again. So I wasn't terribly enthralled, and quit. Someone with nostalgic feelings towards Zelda might have a different experience. Or not.