4/5 ★ – Sefferson's review of The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap.

Minish Cap is a mixed bag for me. I enjoyed a lot of it, but there were also a lot of parts of it that didn’t feel as polished as I am used to with a Zelda game. The dungeons and the bosses are definitely the highlight in my opinion, but everything else feels a bit off, I don’t know how to describe it honestly. Lots of overworld exploration is gatekept behind the new Kinstones mechanic, and that can make exploring just not very fun, and feel more like completing a checklist. Visually and sonically, this game is phenomenal. It borrows a lot of its visual identity from Wind Waker, but that’s not such a bad thing seeing how gorgeous that game is. Often times enemy designs are ripped straight from Wind Waker, and it really just feels like a great 2D adaptation of that visual style. There’s some really excellent tracks in the OST as well. Stuff that really sets the tone for the game. The story is pretty much on par with what you would expect from a Zelda game of that time, with a handful of really interesting and fun characters. Ezlo is probably one of my new favorite helpers that Link has had. He’s very charming and throughout the game has a pretty solid arc, especially when compared to other helpers in the series. Like I said previously, the dungeons are bosses are where it’s at with this game, and that’s not usual for a 2D Zelda game. Often times I feel like puzzles and dungeons kind of blend together in 2D Zelda games, but the theming here is pretty darn close to being on par with the theming of the 3D Zelda games. Dungeons are large and encourage multiple visits through the same large rooms to solve a variety of puzzles. Sometimes the puzzles were a bit vague and I found myself bashing my head against a wall for an extended amount of time trying to find the solution, but often times they utilized Link’s very unique kit in this game in a very interesting way. Unfortunately, for me at least, it was difficult to keep track of certain item’s usages, and this caused some pretty tough fights later on in the game where I would throw everything I had at a boss until I finally figured out the item I was supposed to be using. I’m used to Zelda bosses having their weakness be the item you found in the dungeon, but that’s not always the case here. Solving these puzzles and fighting bosses with Link’s unique kit was easily the highlight of this game for me. Where I feel like most Zelda games really shine is the overworld, and unfortunately in this game a large amount of exploration you can do on the overworld is locked behind the Kinstone mechanic. A new mechanic where you can find a variety of differently shaped Kinstones at random, and just about every NPC in the game wants to fuse matching pieces together with you. Sometimes when you fuse Kinstones with an NPC, a cave will open that has a unique items, other times a way to reach a Piece of Heart will open on the overworld, but more often than not it would just be some Rupees, Mysterious Shells (another really obnoxious collectible) or more Kinstones. It made it so you can’t really collect things as you explore, and instead you are forced to continually loop around Hyrule after fusing Kinstones, and often times the rewards would just be more Kinstones so it felt like literally nothing was happening. I went into this game with the idea of 100% completing it, and that just became a chore, so I didn’t even bother. That aside, if you focus solely on the main plot progression, I think this is a really solid Zelda experience with a cute story and quirky items. There’s not really another Zelda game that feels quite like this, and that can be a good thing and a bad thing at times. Going for 100% is a chore, at least in my opinion, and really held the game back for me, but it’s still a Zelda game at the end of the day.