4/5 ★ – craiglezzz's review of The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.

The Switch remake of Link's Awakening was my first exposure to this particular Zelda game, as I did not play the original Gameboy version. I have to say that I felt it was a really good experience, with just a few caveats. In regard to the story and lore, this is actually one of the more intriguing Zelda titles in my opinion despite being much simpler. The idea of the whole world taking place in Link's (and the Wind Fish's?) dream was super interesting to me, especially when it came to Marin. In my mind, Marin is such a unique case in the Zelda timeline in that she is Link's ideal version of Princess Zelda that he had formed for himself while dreaming. That makes the ending of this game kind of sad in that these characters felt real and it felt like this version of Link belonged in their world, but they essentially all "die" in the end when Link and The Wind Fish wake up. Very interesting stuff. The gameplay is also super strong, as it is in most Zelda titles. The combat is fun and the dungeons are really strong in both design and puzzles (aside from the 7th one - that one was just unnecessarily annoying). I also loved the art style of this remake, which may be a hot take. The cute toy aesthetic will allow the graphics to age well, which is similar to what we saw with Wind Waker, and I just loved how much the colors and animations popped. As I'm navigating my cancer situation currently, it was nice to escape to a fun and colorful world external to my current reality. My main issues were with the map layout itself and the progression. While this game looks beautiful and plays great, you can definitely still tell this is a Gameboy title that was released decades ago on a handheld with limiting hardware. The world feels super small and is made to feel even smaller when you consider the fact that so much of it is locked behind dungeon progression. There isn't much in the way of exploration due to this, and you therefore can feel very limited in what you can do and where you can go. Again, this issue is not big enough to take away from my enjoyment of this game, but it is something that holds it back from being a true standout Zelda title for me.