The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening for the original Game Boy was one of the first games that I ever owned, and it left an indelible impression on my tastes, with its thoughtful, less-is-more approach to character building and ambiguous storytelling setting a standard that many other games are now judged against. I loved it so much that I still have the cartridges for both the original and DX versions. Don’t take that to mean that I’m fanatically devoted to the original Link’s Awakening, though—there are numerous quirks and hassles that haven’t aged well, leaving ample room for the Nintendo Switch remake to thrive. Regardless, this remake of the classic 1993 adventure isn’t as polished as I expected, sporting a new physics system and camera angle that introduce entirely new problems. It’s wonderful to think that Link’s Awakening on the Switch will introduce one of Link’s most intriguing adventures to a new generation, but it’s obvious that the goal was to replicate the aesthetics rather than the feel.
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Link’s Awakening on the Switch shows great respect for the original script
One of the biggest draws of the Switch remake is its faithfulness to the original Link’s Awakening, and its dialogue benefits from this. Most conversations are identical to those in the Game Boy game, with the few changes either being additions for clarity or subtractions because an entire mechanic has been reworked. The original Link’s Awakening had to say a lot and establish character personalities without being too wordy, and this lent a surreal quality to the script that’s matched only by The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, so pairing that same dialogue with updated art and music only enhances its lovable strangeness. The fisherman in Mabe Village is the only character in Link’s Awakening on the Switch who I felt was dialed back, losing his distinctive criticism when you end the fishing minigame, but fishing’s been changed and has a lot of new dialogue.
Being able to detect nearby secret seashells in Link’s Awakening makes finding the tricky ones easier.
You play as Link, as always; after the events of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, he sets sail and is quickly overtaken by a storm that destroys his ship and causes him to wash up on an island called Koholint. The game starts after he’s been rescued by a young girl named Marin and taken in by her father, Tarin. Following the advice of a mysterious owl who urges him to venture into dungeons and collect 8 mystical instruments related to an enigmatic figure called the Wind Fish, Link explores the island and comes to blows with its monsters in search of hidden truths and a way back home.
Back in 1993 when the original Link’s Awakening first released, games had limited amounts of space and often had to say as much as possible in very little space. This conciseness usually necessitated creating over-the-top personalities, and yet Link’s Awakening was—and still is, thanks to the Switch remake’s near-identical script—defined by how unexpectedly easy it is to become attached to the island’s characters. Marin and Tarin both weave in and out of the main story (and the trading sidequest that runs parallel to it) often enough to be frequent presences, with Marin even spending part of the game as a tagalong, culminating in such memorable scenes as her capturing the Trendy Game shop owner using his claw machine. Small moments like that imbue Link’s Awakening‘s bittersweet conclusion with an emotional resonance that doesn’t feel unearned.
The Nintendo Switch remake adds in several fantastic quality of life features
The original Link’s Awakening forced you to equip everything onto the Game Boy’s A and B buttons to make up for how few buttons were available, and this is one of the remake’s better changes: your sword is permanently mapped to B, your shield is permanently mapped to R, Pegasus Boots (which let you dash once you’ve found them) are permanently mapped to L, and power bracelets are contextually mapped to A. That still leaves several items that need to be mapped to X and Y manually like in the original game, but having access to the items that you’ll use the most reduces the amount of inconvenient menu-related downtime you’ll encounter while exploring Link’s Awakening‘s overworld and dungeons.
The dungeons are faithful recreations, but the camera angle and art make later ones extra confusing.
Speaking of which, one of the big changes is that the overworld (and some dungeon rooms) no longer function on a screen-by-screen basis. The overworld is now continuous rather than being broken up into little chunks, and while this will take a little getting used to for those who grew up with the original Link’s Awakening and its discrete screens, the world is recreated so faithfully that you’ll easily recognize landmarks.
Link’s Awakening‘s dungeons retain the original game’s screen-by-screen area traversal (with one or two exceptions where rooms have been consolidated), and I found the combination of familiar layouts and a brand-new art style unexpectedly disorienting. A lot of effort has been put into making each dungeon look incredibly unique, which threw off my memory just enough to cause some problems later on. The underlying gameplay is identical, however—you still move from room to room solving puzzles, platforming, and acquiring small keys and Nightmare Keys to unlock regular and boss doors.
Changes to the physics leave the Link’s Awakening remake feeling clunky
It’s not all sunshine and roses, unfortunately. Everything from basic swordplay to jumping feels worse in the Link’s Awakening remake than it did in the original game, and many of the boss fights have been reworked in a way that makes them even less intuitive. Sword slashes are fast, yes, but they lack the satisfying chunkiness of the original, and the camera angle makes judging relative depths (and seeing certain bombable walls) a needless hassle. All of these things combine to make for some truly aggravating sequences that arguably ruin several late-game dungeons.
Only some of the grass in Animal Village respawns. Also, slowdown is a serious problem in this game.
Nothing feels worse than jumping, which isn’t great since the Roc’s Feather (the item that allows you to jump) is the first dungeon item you get and sees heavy usage afterward. Jumping is even more important now because height is a factor in whether your blows land when facing flying enemies and those on higher levels, and yet Link jumps like a half-full bottle of water that’s haphazardly lobbed across the room.
The camera angle is also angled compared to the original’s straight-down view, so ascertaining the precise locations of flying items and enemies requires guesswork. Flying items cast shadows, but these are merely unhelpful decorations that don’t accurately show which spot is directly below them.
Many boss fights have been reworked in a way that makes them worse. The miniboss in Catfish’s Maw, for example, can’t be attacked and knocked down until he winds up for an attack, which adds extra waiting around instead of difficulty. The actual boss is another weird case; you used to be able to Hookshot its mouth and then attack its weak point from the front, but now the front has collision and will bounce you back unless you walk over to its side and attack from there instead. Most bosses who have been changed have had their vulnerable points shrunken and invincible points either added or expanded, and it’s not uncommon to lose a ton of health trying to figure out whether a boss’ weak point has been changed or if the remake just messed with the angle you need to attack from. Again, this doesn’t add difficulty (especially since you always have your shield available). It’s just annoying for the sake of being annoying, not to mention far less intuitive.
The new art style in Link’s Awakening is great until it creates new problems
Turtle Rock is the eighth and final dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and one of my all-time favorites. I know the original game’s version like the back of my hand, which made it all the more puzzling when I suddenly lost my sense of direction in the Nintendo Switch version. I had similar problems in Eagle’s Tower, Link’s Awakening‘s seventh dungeon, as well. In both cases, I was missing a bombable wall because of either the lighting or the camera angle’s weird tilt (which makes seeing bombable walls a serious pain in the remake). That’s in addition to a multitude of occasions where I’d attack an enemy, only for the sword slash to miss because they were at a higher or lower level than Link, too. The art style does a lot of things right, notably making use of the same color palette as the Game Boy Color release, but it’s responsible for some dungeons feeling clumsier than they ever did in the original. Link’s Awakening on the Switch also suffers from a great deal of slowdown as the frame rate struggles and fails to keep up with areas loading. As for the soundtrack, my feelings are mixed; while the original Link’s Awakening has one of the best soundtracks of all time, many of the remake’s remixes range from pleasant to unremarkable. The intro song is also missing, and the song that plays when you play all 8 instruments at the end of the game sounds like the kind of thing pre-programmed into a cheap MIDI keyboard.
Story: 3/3 Gameplay: 1.5/3 Visuals: 1/2 Music: 1.5/2 ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ – 7/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening (Switch) Review Screenshots
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