What in the god damn?
It's the new year, and I'm crossing out games I've had my eye on for a minute now already.
A friend of mine plays a lot of Minish Cap randomizers, and one of my goals this year was to use the Switch Online emulators/virtual console/whatever they call it more, so this game was way up there on the list. Felt like the right time to finally crack it open and get more actually finished Zeldas under my belt.
I think the actual gameplay is the primary focus of Minish Cap, at least to me. You could pretty much remove the story entirely and it'd still function (don't). I honestly think, save for a couple severe annoyances, that it's a really really good ideal of what a 2D Zelda game should play like.
I absolutely love the items. Most of them are used in really fun ways and are used very often, so you feel like your arsenal growing actually matters. The Gust Jar had use with both enemies and travel, the Cane of Pacci felt like something that should have been dropped after its dungeon but they found more usage for it, and the Pegasus Boots, Mole Mitts, and Roc's Cape not only open up the world and secrets, but they all offer extra bits of travel/usage. I never really dropped anything and I loved that. The Boomerang and Flame Lantern were the weakest ones though. I think I maybe used the Magical Boomerang once to hit a switch, and the Flame Lantern honestly felt like it was the solution to a hindrance that never needed to be there (I don't really have any super feelings about the bow and bombs they're what they've always been (remote bombs were awesome though)).
With that, and this is probably because my first experience with this game was a randomizer, I feel like the exploration of the world and usage of items blend really well, it's a very well crafted experience and for the most part I was constantly feeling success and reward going back to things or using my tools to explore more. The core of the game really is just classic Zelda, so there's not too much to say, but having those core parts of the experience be so well executed brings me a lot of joy.
The map felt pretty small, but then you also have the shrinking mechanic; this definitely was the right play to actually put more into the world, making it feel larger and more in depth. I did feel a little exhausted by how much it limits your movement towards the end, but it is really cool. There's also the splitting mechanic, but honestly it was so slow to charge and finicky that I didn't care for it.
Now, this WOULD be the perfect 2D Zelda game. If it wasn't for the RNG. Kinstones are another core part of the experience, which are theoretically cool! Items that unlock secrets and quests. But they made the drops of them random, and what's even worse, they made where you merge some of them random. You also don't even get a list to track them. I wasted the last couple days of me playing this game just trying to find where my final kinstone merge was and I literally couldn't, so I gave up, which felt bad. If they were just consistent and not random/easier to track, it would have been perfect. There's also the figurines from Wind Waker; but instead of a guaranteed way to get them (not calling pictures perfect just calling them guaranteed), they're connected to an RNG gacha type nonsense. This would be whatever, but there's also a heart piece locked behind them! These two things soured my experience so much, and the gameplay would be near perfect without them.
This is probably fueled by my annoyance at these mechanics towards the end, but I really didn't care for the final boss. Theoretically, he represented the best part about this game; how it put together everything you've learned and gathered, using all your items and techniques; but instead it just felt not well telegraphed. I wasted so many resources trying to figure out what to do to kill him, and when I eventually did figure it out, it was really hard to execute. Almost feels like an analogy for the game; on paper perfect. But with bits that just really sour it.
It's not the strongest part of the game. Ultimately, it is "collect the four things and kill the bad guy" and that's about it. There's some cool parts of it, like Zelda and Link being friends, and the Minish as a whole; Vaati is cool, but that's pretty much the extent of how I feel about it. None of it is bad, it's just serviceable. I do like how this seems to be the origin of the Four Sword and Vaati, but since I never really played those games, I don't really have a connection to that as much as some might.
Can I just say, I absolutely loved how they translated the Toon/Wind Waker style to sprite form. So many clearly recognizable character designs from those games that I could actually recognize as the toon style. It also takes things from other games like OoT, the Oracle games, generally feeling like a sort of theme park, anthology, or whatever you want to call it, but regardless, that style adaptation into an "older" form plus the recognizable cast is part of what makes me look at Minish Cap as an ideal Zelda game, sort of like a "if you had to boil the series down to an ur-form, this would be it".
Also, like, the audio quality was surprisingly really good for a GBA game??? I'm someone who actually quite enjoys some GBA sound crust, but like, Link's hyaaahing felt crisp. The music was good (nothing too standout for me, lots of pretty general tracks), still managing to have a little crust to it, but something about Minish Cap shows that it really had a team that knew what they were doing.
I gotta say. 2D Zelda is like, the perfect game for randomizations, other than like, Metroidvanias. I went into Minish Cap with that past, and I definitely understand why. But that's not really what I want my like, final summary/reflection of this game to be about, just a thought.
I have to reflect more on this thought, to look back at other games I love, to really think about it; maybe I'll revisit it at the end of the year (if I remember), but in this current moment, I don't think RNG belongs in a single-player experience. I think it only serves to artificially extend playtime, which sucks hard. It soiled this game, which was otherwise a really fun experience (there were other issues (vaati) but that's not the core sin). But it does make me excited to delve further into 2D Zelda. I'm very glad I have this under my belt to understand it more, to understand why people love it more, etc etc, I feel a little more grown and complete.
Also, reviewing my text, I didn't even talk about Ezlo????? Dude is LITERALLY the name of the game and he was so nothing to me that I forgot to write about him. Come on man
7/10. A really great classic Zelda experience, with terrible RNG that soils it (and not enough of a story to get points back).