I recently played the Nintendo Switch version of The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and enjoyed it. After beating it, I have some comments on how to improve it based on my experience with the game. While I don’t believe that these comments will be addressed by Nintendo now since the game has been out for almost 2 years, it doesn’t mean that they should be ignored. My comments are in two categories:

1) User Interface Changes

  • The Start screen should have also accepted A or + as inputs to go to the Load menu. Multi-button inputs just to start the game are annoying.
  • The game needs a faster text speed option. While you can press B to fast forward through the text, it has the downside that you may accidentally go through the important text that doesn’t get recorded in the memories menu.
  • While I do appreciate that the B button goes to the last option in a menu, it would be more useful if it also closed the menu when pressing B on the last option.
  • The Game Over screen needed to have the “Load” option as well rather thanb only the “Retry” and “Save and Quit” options. While I understand they want to keep track of deaths for the ending, I would like to be more easily start back from a know good point and not have to worry about getting back more fairies or items to have a chance of beating the point where I failed.
  • The power ups should have stopped giving their descriptions after the first time they were obtained. It is annoying to have to deal with them when the other major items like keys don’t interrupt you like this.
  • It is surprisingly weird that I have to mention this issue. It is a major oversight that the markers on the maps was not a toggle. It is annoying to have to hold a button for a simple change on the map.

2) Mechanics Changes

  • Given that the original game was on the Nintendo Game Boy and there were limited buttons, it made sense why the original had an item switching problem. I am glad that this was fixed in this version for items like the Sword, Shield and Pegasus Boots but I would say that it wasn’t fixed in regards to the Roc’s Feather. Given that jumping is important to progressing through the holes in the dungeons and dodging enemies, I would say that it should have been given a dedicated button. The one problem is that I don’t know which button to assign this to since L and R are duplicated by ZL and ZR respectively and I don’t think it would have been comfortable to have to switch between L and ZL to do a successful long jump.
  • While Tracy’s Secret Medicine was given the reviving effect in this game, I would have liked if the fairies were given this effect similar. While this may affect the purchases from Tracy, it would have been a nice modernisation to that would have made the behaviour in line with other Legend of Zelda games.
  • While this one is a nitpick, I would have liked if both of the power ups could have been active at the same time.