The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages Review

“The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages” is one of the best, yet most unsatisfying games I have played this year. I loved the mechanics and puzzles, but have some less enthusiastic thoughts on the story.

The first major selling point of this game is the three new mechanics it showcases. The first of which is the ability to travel through time. I enjoyed this mechanic, but it brought up some problems in the game’s story that I will talk about later on. The second mechanic in this game is the vast amount of rings you can wear and collect. The way rings work is you have to find “Magic Rings” by planting Gasha Seeds. After you kill a certain amount of enemies, the seeds will grow into Gasha Trees with Gasha Nuts on them, which you can collect to get different rewards, the most common being a ring. The catch here is that you can only plant these seeds in special locations with “Soft Soil” in them. Usually, these spots are hidden and you have to go out of your way to find them, which adds good incentive to exploring and digging in different spots. Plantable areas that are harder to find also give better rings. The third mechanic, and the largest selling point of this game, is its connection to “The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons”. Once you beat Oracle of Ages, you get a special passcode that you can enter when starting a new game in Oracle of Seasons. Once you’ve started a “linked game” some of the choices you made in Oracle of Ages will take effect in Seasons, plus you’ll get special secrets along the way for both games. [I’ll talk about this more in my upcoming Oracle of Seasons review.]

One of the things that were very different in this game compared to Link’s Awakening [another Zelda game I’ve played that’s viewed to be a more “traditional” entry in the series] was its more puzzle-focused dungeons and gameplay. There are still puzzles in Link’s Awakening, but it’s more “Push a block over to this tile that looks different” kind of puzzles. More often than not Link’s Awakening would just have rooms full of enemies for you to kill instead. Oracle of Ages, however, has more difficult puzzles and more of them, while also having a lot fewer enemies. I thought this change of pace was super cool and I found myself dying a lot less because there weren’t as many rooms just clogged with enemies. The puzzles also felt more challenging, and as a result, I felt smart when I figured one out.

As fun as this game is, it has its fair share of plot holes. When it comes to making a story that involves time travel, you have to be extra careful to keep your timeline in order. Something this game fails to do time and time again. At the start of the game, you are warped to a forest by some mysterious power and encounter a maid that tells you she’s trying to get to Nayru. After going through the forest for a bit, you find a barrier that only you can move. Upon moving it and finding Nayru, she tells you that she senses something bad is approaching, and that you are here to stop it. The maid then reveals she was being possessed by Veran, and that Nayru is the Oracle of Ages. Veran then goes on to possess Nayru and uses her powers to travel to the past to build a tower that will spread darkness. The immediate problem with this is that Veran allegedly travels 400 years into the past to build her tower. But throughout the game, NPC’s in the present will say things like “Is it just me or is that tower getting bigger on its own” this is not how this would work, as the tower should already be fully built, not growing gradually on its own. This is just one of the many plot-holes in this game’s story, but you get the basic idea.

I had an outstanding time playing this game. I loved figuring out puzzles and finding secrets, and it was overall just a really good time. The only thing about this game that bugged me or left me unsatisfied was its storyline. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to find all the inconsistencies that I did, but what matters is that the game is fun, which it is. This game has given me good times, and some of the best inside jokes. I highly recommend this game to any retro game enthusiast.

Gameplay ★★★★☆
Story         ★★★☆☆
Visuals       ★★★★★
Soundtrack ★★★☆☆