The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

System: Game Boy Advance
Release Date: 2005
Published By: Nintendo
Reviewed by: Darien
Rating:

As wary as I am of the concept of letting outside studios develop Zelda games - one must remember those CDi games, after all - it's undeniable that this one turned out well. The general "look and feel" of the game is nearly identical to that of A Link To The Past, heralded by many fans (though not, it must be said, by me) as the best entry in the series, and, indeed, the game plays more like LTTP than do any of the other Zelda games.

The game's central mechanic - its gimmick, if you will - is that Link has a magic hat that allows him to shrink. Through the magic of the hat, Link is able to go places and interact with characters that he would otherwise be much too large for. As lame as it sounds, the execution is quite good and gives a good feeling of "smallness."

The gameplay model follows the standard Game Boy setup, allowing any two items to be assigned to the A and B buttons rather than giving you dedicated sword-and-shield buttons. The number of equippable items is decent, and features both classic Zelda items such as bombs and the boomerang, and new items. The new items are interesting, by and large, and the game provides plenty of clever ways to use them.

If the game has a failing, it would be in the "stained-glass windows and slow music" that it uses for the intro and the important revelation scene. This seems like nothing so much as entirely derivative of Wind Waker's "ancient mosaic" cutscenes, and comes as quite a surprise, given the inventive nature of the rest of it. Also, I can't help but complain that the game recycles the town music from Ocarina of Time, and, quite frankly, I hated Ocarina's town music. But that would be a nitpick.

The "kinstone fusion" catch-'em-all mechanic would seem to be a nuisance, but is actually quite well implemented; other games could learn from this. How is it made non-annoying? The stones drop at random - frequently - so one needn't search the world over for the one particular stone needed for a situation. Also, it's never necessary to get involved in the fusion system at all (except for a few special easy-to-find cases), and you'll find plenty of treasure both as drops and in chests that is NOT kinstones. This last bit is important.

In all, what we have here is a worthy entry in the illustrious Zelda series. Not perfect, but plenty of fun, especially if you've been yearning for a return to the old SNES-style. Just pretend the giant octorok boss doesn't exist.

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