If you remember, a few months ago I said I was going to beat every Zelda game, spend the year taking in the series. But after putting up my thoughts on the original Legend of Zelda, I haven’t had anymore ready to go. That is because I was playing Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It had been nearly 20 years since I had last played Zelda II; I had only vaguely pleasant but confused recollections of it. Playing it again lately has been a largely frustrating experience. Not so much because Zelda II is a bad game, it has its problems but it is mostly well made, but because its flaws are almost perfectly suited to pissing me off.

Since I didn’t even come close to beating Zelda II, I only reached the second dungeon, I am only going to go over a few things that made me put it away. The first is the how slow getting information out of townsfolk is. This is something that only makes me mad because I am already kind of fed up with other things, but this doesn’t help. It’s like torture. Another is how the game gives out experience. Like the fact that not all enemies give experience or that some actually take it away. And last of all, is that Zelda II did not fix the unknowably arcane crap from Zelda I. That seems like all they actually kept, things like knowing exactly where to go in the woods to find Bagu or whatever his name is to get across the river. I only found out by using a guide, which I was trying to avoid.

It simply comes down to the fact that I just do not like Legend of Zelda II: Link’s Adventure. More power to the people who love it, I won’t say they are wrong but I’ll be damned if I’ll waste anymore time playing it myself. So there is at least 1 Zelda game I will not beat this year. On to A Link to the Past!