3.5/5 ★ – MajesticalLion's review of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.

The Zelda Timeline-Order playthrough continues. Fresh off Skyward Sword in september, (not actually fresh off, I played several Sonic games since then, but I digress), Minish Cap was basically my introduction to 2D Zelda. I played a couple of hours of the NES some years ago, but I hardly count that. I think Minish Cap was really charming! The world is larger than the world map makes it seem, and the puzzles were actually pretty engaging. I think the game excels in its world design and pacing, but it fails to create a Hyrule that I really want to get immersed in. The Kinstone system kind of undercuts a lot of what I would consider traditional side quests, leading to most of the characters in the game feeling less like characters and more like Kinstone receptacles. I never felt the desire to talk to any of the quest givers because most of them were written pretty flatly and were only there to unlock some chest with shells or rupees somewhere else on the map. Even Vaati doesn't escape the "hardly gets any characterization and is only here to serve an objective" disease. He only shows up in maybe three scenes aside from the final boss, and he only really talks in two of them. That being said, the final boss was really good. I was surprised at how difficult it was. In conclusion, I think Minish Cap is extremely good from a gameplay perspective, but rather lackluster from a story and writing one. Leads to it being a bit forgettable.