ZELDA II: THE ADVENTURE OF LINK (Pt. 2 - The End!) ⫽ Barry

[@BentoBrush]

Thank you for another great VOD, Barry. Happy New Year!

[@glowhazel]

happy new barr!

[@azurillkirby]

I don't have a particularly strong connection to Zelda 2 or anything, but I feel like save stating negatively affected a lot of your thoughts on this game, in particular the combat. If you were playing as intended, you would be forced to learn how to intricately deal with each type of encounter, making it take longer, but overall be less frustrating. By save stating, you've learned that you can brute force your way through every combat encounter. If the game makes it difficult to brute force, then it reasonably frustrates you. I've been thinking this a lot while watching the playthrough, but I think where this is most highlighted is the section right after the spider guy. They throw a lot of projectiles from the top of the scene, but you are eager to just run through it without putting effort into dodging, because save stating has taught you that this is a viable option. This causes you to get frustrated and immediately decide that it must just be bad game design. But, if this were a normal playthrough, you *have* to learn how to deal with it, which I would think might be fun and engaging. This isn't to say that you *shouldn't* be save stating through the game, especially if what you value from this playthrough is getting a taste of the game more than anything else, but I feel like you are a bit too judgemental on certain parts of the level design and the combat when you choose to play in such a way that allows you not to engage with the systems a lot. I'm not super familiar with this game, so maybe my entire opinion is worthless and the combat is still shit poopoo garbage when playing normally, and there are other parts of the game that are *undeniably* garbage which save stating did not effect (and maybe did improve), but I think the comical dismissal of everything that you couldn't just run through wasn't quite deserved, or at least you should keep it in mind when you consider your opinions on the game in the future.

[@chriswest6988]

Yeah I played this as a child and it's frustrating even with some guidance, but you scale pretty heavily with level and max mp/life increases which makes it more forgiving than it looked here. Most of the enemies are easy to learn to do safely if not quickly, and there aren't that many different types. So you get good at the knights and maybe you grind some and that's a lot of it sorted. You also, in the US version (which is all I've experienced), keep a lot of progress when you game over. So you feel like you're getting somewhere even if there's an unreasonable amount of runback time even by the poor standards of the time. If you're not streaming or speed running, it doesn't usually feel like you've hit a wall. I beat this game as a

[@Valkhiya]

Early on he says that he knows he should be patient when the blue darknuts are in berzerk mode, but then keeps rushing them down and taking damage multiple times without landing hits because he's impatient. The comparisons to dark souls in the first stream were very apt, this is a game that requires you to take your time and learn how the enemies function so that you can kill them safely. I'm not going to say that some rooms aren't bullshit because they certainly are, but one on one the darknuts are definitely very doable if you take the time to learn and to fight them.

[@daltonfreeman6551]

Happy New Year! Barry New Year? Happy Barr Year? Eh, we'll workshop it

[@TheComfyGeek]

Happy new Barry!

[@batfreeze56]

Omg barry still exists!

[@LuminousDecibel]

I'm a huge Zelda fan. Outside of remakes and remasters, I've played a version of every "mainline" Zelda game except Link Between Worlds and the Four Swords games. Of the games I've played, I've beaten all of them except the Oracle games (their low detail maps were hard to follow) and this game. I played Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 when I was probably around 16. Besides some frustrating Dark Knight rooms, Zelda 1 was challenging but satisfying. I got all the way through Zelda 2 but couldn't get past the road to the final dungeon, with all of its lava pits and hard enemies. I know about Thunderbird, the final boss and it's cheese strat, but I've never looked into the final dungeon itself. Glad I watched you play it and I'm fully satisfied with not trying to play it again. ALttP isn't in my top 5 Zeldas, but I'm so glad they went in that direction after Zelda 2. Hoowee