2.5/5 ★ – JayTheCh1cken's review of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.

Bro, what a letdown this game is from the Oracle games😭😭. I was expecting an underrated gem here and all I got was a contender for worst game in the series. Out of everything, this game does do some things well like having some things well so I'll list them out all now. This game is pretty, and the pixel art is never not amazing to look at. In the same vein, seeing some familiar NPCs from thought the series return again (some for their last appearance) with new sprites is fun. Finally becoming tiny-sized is and having to navigate around people's houses is always cute (though it does have some major problems that I'll get into later). That's where the positives end though. The actual gameplay of this game shares waaaay too many similarities with the future of the series (specifically Skyward Sword) and if you know my thoughts on the future of the series, its NOT GOOD. Just to list off a few, progression is linear in a frustrating way and this game will ask you to backtrack constantly for the stupidest of things before every single dungeon. There's a lot of unfun sidequests in town that require even MORE backtracking too that don't really have any good rewards. A weird emphasis is placed on Link and Zelda's relationship while antithetically Zelda barely does anything in this game. The game is all about forging a mystical sword from later in the series. You also have a silly companion that you don't really interact with that has to have a emotional goodbye scene at the end despite Link really not having many scenes interacting with them. So which is it that I'm describing here, Minish Cap or Skyward Sword? Trick question, it's both. Also, just like BOTW and TOTK in the future this game does away with the Triforce and instead replaces it with the extremely similar McGuffin the Light Force for no reason. That's not even getting into Vaati, and WHAT A FRAUD this guy is. The fandom hypes this guy up like crazy only because he's a reoccurring villain other than Ganon which is good and all, but his actual showing in this game - his biggest game - is embarrassingly bad. We learn throughout the course of the game that Vaati became evil because he found a magic hat that could grant wishes and wished for power (this magical hat doesn't get explained btw). This makes him stronger than Link for the majority of the game so most of the game Link's traveling around trying to get stronger while Vaati doesn't really do much of anything in return. So basically, Vaati is a nepo-baby villain who doesn't work for anything, lol. Somehow the game wants me to believe at the end that Vaati can transform the entirety of Hyrule Castle into a darker version in seconds which is similarly ridiculous. All in all dude is a shallow replacement for Ganon that doesn't deserve the glaze he gets here. He's much better as a villain in Four Swords where he's more cartoony. On the topic of Four Swords and this game as a prequel to it, I want to complain about that for a second even if it's a little off topic. Having this game be the origin story of the Four Sword and Vaati seems really counterintuitive in the long run. Why would they put in all this effort to give a backstory to these concepts when they were only going to amount to being included in the silly multiplayer spinoff that few people had played (I'd like to remind everyone that it was only playable as a side game on the ALTTP GBA port at this point)? The effort seems wasted, especially since neither the Four Sword nor Vaati are bad ideas in concept. Having another villain other than Ganon and having another mystical sword that can act as a peer to the Master Sword is cool, but neither ideas are executed ideally. Having both concepts intrinsically tied to the weird silly multiplayer spinoff really hurts Minish Cap in yet another way. Getting back to Minish Cap, the actual gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. The kinstone system in general makes finding treasure chests not very rewarding and most 'rewards' from fusing them are just more rupees you don't need. Sword skills sound like an interesting system coming from Twilight Princess, learning new moves and all but compared to Twilight Princess's skills giving you new moves this game takes away moves you should have from the start only to slowly drip feed them back over the course of the game. For goodness's sake you can't even run with your sword out with the pegasus boots at first, that being a skill you need to learn. The only move that made the system feel worth it for once is the great spin attack, which melts through some annoying enemies. Speaking of the pegasus boots, they're an item here instead of being mapped to another button, and that's annoying in a game with limited item slots. Getting back to talking about going miniature sized, traveling as a tiny guy takes fooorever as you usually have to take specific routes because things like grass and rocks are too big for you to go around. Furthermore, rolling doesn't carry as much momentum when you're tiny for some reason so traveling in miniature size isn't very fun. Okay that's about all I have to say. Bad game :)