On Link's Weapon of Choice

Link's Awakening continues, and I continue forward. My pace has been steady, and things are going really nicely. But. I have met with a few hiccups.

As with any Zelda game (except for maybe Zelda II), I've found myself distracted by exploration. This didn't last too long, of course, but it, along with my subsequent dungeon crawling, did bring something to my attention.

Link's Awakening offers very little in the way of guaranteed basic equipment upgrades.

Obviously it's possible to get a better shield or two, and there is the hidden sword that you can get if you get enough of the Secret Seashells. But none of these things are as intricately tied into the story as they were in Wind Waker, Twilight Princess, or Skyward Sword. What I can't decide is whether or not this makes the game harder or easier.

It definitely makes them more manageable, as the sword's progress mirrors your own progress, but at the same time, being forced to use a weaker weapon is something that also forces you to strategize - to use your environment so as to best fight your foes while taking as little damage as possible.

So, perhaps tying these upgrades into points along the story (as has been the case since A Link to the Past) make it easier to progress and give the same sort of levelling feel to the later Zelda games that's common to RPGs (in both cases monsters from early areas of the game are rendered impotent by your power near the end of the game).

But along with this comes the lack of challenge, the lack of depth these earlier Zelda games still offer to this day. They'll always be video games, but there's something more visceral about learning how to get Link to use the sword well than about just having Link use a better sword.

Twilight Princess sort of remedied this with the sword techs, but even then, they aren't all essential, and so many are just, in reality, shortcuts. Not really power boosts.

A Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time are similar - sword power-ups are part of the story, but even more power is given to those players who seek it out (these games' best weapons, the Golden Sword and Biggoron Sword are hidden away). There's a reason why these two games are still on a lot of top game lists over a decade (almost two in A Link to the Past's case) after their release.

So how does Link's Awakening manage the sword power up problem? With item drops. Acorns give defense for a short time, and pieces of what look like the triforce boost offense.

These items are effective since more often than not they'll help you mow through enemies when you most need to. But are they as good as a solid armour or sword upgrade?

To figure that out I'll just have to keep playing.