Keeping with all things Zelda this week I must say that, unlike the Link To The Past manga, the recently released A Link Between Worlds certainly grabbed me by my nostalgicles and gave them a firm tickling! I can’t fault it in any other way than saying ‘I wish there was more to do!’ As you know I’m a compulsive gamer and in being so I most definitely had to collect all 100 maia mais, find the golden bee and all the glass bottles and set up my streetpass link as best I could. I even went back after completing the game as, after completion, it returns to your previous save which was before I entered the final dungeon, Lorure Castle. I couldn’t leave my streetpass link in the blue mail, I needed to repeat the final lair again and collect that beautiful red mail.

Upgrading your inventory at every 10 maia mais collected is a nice touch and reminds me of doing the same with the boomerang in Link to the Past. Even the fact that you can rent your items and eventually own them made me press on to own them all. As well as the dungeons we previously saw in the original, which have been altered to avoid repetition, the new additions are exciting, well thought out and, at times, puzzling. The puzzles themselves always seem to find a way of revealing its paths to completion without physically telling you. (unless you use the glasses that points you in the right direction.) My favorite dungeon was the desert palace, which has you weaving in and out of Hyrule and the swamps of Misery Mire in the world of Lorule, just to get to the entrance.

Unfortunately, all I have left to do now is feed my addiction of wandering the two worlds for a bit after my 3DS has stared at me and forced me to pick it up. There it is, my one problem again, I want more to do. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying its a short game! I’m just craving something else to do. The content itself is time consuming yet so fun, I will be playing it again in hero mode but when the story ended for the first time, it was like a friendship had ended. Probably because I grew up playing Link To The Past, and revisiting the same map and style of gameplay reminded me of the hours I spent on my SNES…. I was sad it had to end….

STEVE JILLINGS