[NOTE: PLEASE DO NOT SPOIL THIS OR ANY GAME IN THE SERIES PLEASE THOUGH FEEL FREE TO LEAVE YOUR NON SPOILER OPINION BELOW IN THE COMMENTS]

Current FS status: Reached the end credits. Finished the game for now.

I’m done with Four Swords for now. I’ve cleared the basic game and reached the credit sequence (which is made so much more fun with its rupee collecting mini-game) and redid some sections to open up the final side quest dungeons but I’m not going to attempt those at this point because I don’t think I have any hope of appreciating them at this point. The nostalgia fuelled Realm of Memories just seems like a surrealist nightmare of games past without having played those previous instalments of the series. I lack the familiarity to navigate the experiences that dungeon offers in the way they are supposed to. The other dungeon, The Hero’s Trial, I am going to put aside and save for the time being. I am trying to put together some people I know to have a run at it together, so I can get feel for how the game was designed to be played.

So I can only comment on the single player story mode of the game for now. When I do get a chance to get through those, I will come back and add a couple more posts about Four Swords detailing those experiences. But for now, I’ll wrap up and move on for what I have.

I feel I’ve been too hard on Four Swords so far. I’ve had nearly only negative things to say about it so far. I feel especially bad about that because I’ve stuck to the jerryrigged single player mode. So I want to cut it some slack at this point.

For a free game that give you a couple hours of fun, it’s admittedly pretty solid. It hits as many of the LoZ notes as it can for a one sitting experience. You get your classic enemies, use the classic items and in the end you get to save Zelda from the clutches of another antagonist. Four Swords is kind of like one of those tiny pieces of halloween candy, tasty in it’s own right,. But no kid is going to even take a handful of them for a full sized candy bar.

But the main single player campaign certainly doesn’t meet the standard of other games in the series. Or even most work Nintendo has put out. Even some of the tiny Warioware games seem to have been polished shinier than this one. I think it feels the need to hit too many of the series conventions, and would benefit from a narrower focus.

The game’s overarching plot is a fine example of this. It tries to tell an entire Legend of Zelda story, but doesn’t really have the length or density to do that. Had the game taken place over the length of say a single dungeon, storming to the final boss encounter it could have felt a lot more organic as a story. I mean, Nintendo doesn’t have to explain why you’re saving Zelda, this is a game is pure fan service anyhow. Anyone who has come across any kind of game culture knows saving Zelda is one of those classic goals in the medium.

Because this game doesn’t feel like the kind of game LttP tells me the series is. Why have items like the finicky magnet, or the jumping cape that doesn’t really let you jump over anything that distract from the LoZ feel of the game. Pare the game down to a couple of classic items, maneuvers and puzzle styles and you actually increase the LoZ feel of the game over all. But, the game tries to have the item count of a 7-8 hour journey, and every kind of puzzle you’d imagine. And all of those elements suffer at the hands of that. Single player Four Swords is just rather directionless despite going in all the directions at once.

The existence of the DS re-release of this game has been characterized as a thank you to the fans of the series for the 25th anniversary of the NES game. Which I guess is true, it does bring Four Swords to a legion of people who couldn’t gather the amount of old tech to play it’s original edition. And the the Realm of Memories dungeon looks to be a kind of love letter to years gone past. But, at the same time, the game is also an ad of sorts for the Zelda brand. Get as many people into the love of the LoZ as they can so they can sell as many copies of Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Times 3D as they can. Can’t fault Nintendo for that, this is a free gift of a game to begin with. But taking that into account and one can understand the all-aspects approach Four Swords suffers from at time.

So yeah, if you have a DS, by all means play yourself some Four Swords one evening. I just hope the post-game content I have yet to attempt gives the game a little bit of a life of its own.

P.S. Sorry for no pictures this time. Can’t really think of anything appropriate this time. I won’t let a post be this long without one again.