Minish Cap Conclusions

This morning on the bus to work I finally beat the final boss of Minish Cap. He has three phases and I'd died to the third phase a couple of times before I finally got him. He worked pretty much the same way as every other boss in the game. He was invulnerable to damage but had one Achilles' Heel. Use the right special item in the right way to knock out his defenses for a short period of time at which point you could beat him up with your sword. The trouble I had with the final stage is how much damage he put out. I couldn't try all the items I had on all his different bits to find out his vulnerability before he'd kill me and force me to restart from the beginning of the zone. Once I put it together and found the way to actually damage him he went down like a ton of bricks.

In all the game was pretty fun. It had several new items I hadn't seen in a Zelda game which was a nice change of pace. It had lots of secrets to find. It was a decent length. Not too long, not too short. It did suffer by being a GBA game. It didn't use enough of the buttons and required entering the menu entirely too often to change items. The instructions on what to do next were not always clear and it wasn't possible to get a reasonable recap from your annoying buddy. I had to turn to the internet a few times when I got stuck. I believe this was mostly because I was playing the game in short chunks while tired but I feel like a handheld game should take that into account. Also, twice I had to bomb unmarked walls to progress and that really makes me mad.

It was definitely worth the price I paid (free!) but I do think it was a fair bit worse than Link to the Past and Ocarina of Time.

More Minish

Ultimately I caved in and looked up on the internet what I had to do to progress in Zelda: Minish Cap. When I found out what I'd missed I was really sad at myself. It turns out there are 4 ways out of the main town: 1 that you can come in through and 3 that are guarded by guards. Apparently if you talk to one of the guards in particular he'll let you out. I'm not sure if I talked to him earlier and he wouldn't let me out (you need to learn spin slash) or if I'd talked to the first two and assumed the third guy was the same.

Very shortly thereafter I got stuck again. I was exploring a mountain and couldn't find another way to go. It turns out you need to use your vacuum cleaner thing on globs of white goo to reveal a cave. I'd swear I'd used every item in my inventory on the white goo. It wasn't that I didn't think to use the vacuum cleaner... It's that I thought I already had! This is likely an issue with playing the game in 10 minute chunks on the bus/subway. Sigh.

I just had to look something up for the third time. In this case I was pretty sure I'd explored all of a dungeon. There were big sand dunes all over the dungeon and I could see treasure behind some of them. I couldn't find a way to get through. This time I double checked all my items to no avail. It turns out you need a special item to dig through the sand dunes. That item was found in the dungeon. Behind a wall you could explode with a bomb. An unmarked wall...

This reminds me a little bit of Final Fantasy Adventure. That game was filled with unmarked walls you had to knock down in order to progress. I ended up playing that game with a map open on my computer as I got so fed up with trying to knock down unmarked walls. I hate the concept. Now, if it was a sidequest or something I'd be ok with it. Want to hide a quarter-heart of a gold skulltula behind an unmarked wall? Fine. Annoying maybe, but fine. Forcing me to explode every wall on the off-chance it's the way I need to go in order to make progress? Terrible.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

I'd been doing a lot of reading on the bus recently but having polished off the Ender's game series and the Hunger Games series it was time for another change. Nintendo recently gave me 10 VBA games through the 3DS virtual store (because I was an early adopter and they reduced the price a couple months after release) so I thought I'd play around with those. One of them was a Zelda game I hadn't heard of and I figured I'd give it a spin.

It feels a lot like a Zelda game. It's a straight port so it doesn't make use of the extra buttons or touch screen on the 3DS which is a little annoying (I have to enter the menu way too frequently to change items) but can be dealt with. I've already met Zelda (she is apparently the main character's best friend as opposed to just a strange princess), I've found my annoying sidekick (a talking hat), I've cleared out a dungeon, and acquired a cool item. It feels a lot like a Zelda game.

I've also gotten hopelessly stuck. I feel like I was told precisely where to go early one morning and have since forgotten what it was. (I'm not exactly awake on the bus in the morning.) I've wandered to every NPC I can find to talk to them but none of them are willing to let me know precisely what I need to do. My hat tells me I need to visit some blacksmith in the hills but I don't know where the hills are. The hat won't tell me. The map doesn't tell me. I've wandered completely around the world that I can currently access with no luck. I did recently acquire bombs so it's entirely possible that there's something I can blow up that I haven't thought to attack. Also I've uncovered some musical panels which which I can't find a way to interact.

I've spent 2 days stuck at this point (I've cleared out some side quests in the meantime) and am at the point of giving up. I can quit the game or I can turn to the internets for help. I'm leaning towards the internets but I hate looking up what to do in puzzly games since it really feels like cheating.