Retro Review - The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons / Ages

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It is well known that the saga of The Legend Of Zelda, is one of the most important sagas in the video game industry, being one of the representative games of Nintendo and also, being one of the longest and most successful video game sagas of all time. Each game of this successful saga always brought something new and revolutionary, not for nothing, most of these, they were always a success worldwide and had the best reviews in many specialized magazines. However, despite the fact that Nintendo is the mother house of The Legend Of Zelda, there are two games that were developed by Capcom, with the purpose of remaking the old game of the saga, although lowering the difficulty in them a little, even thus, although these two games were developed by another study, it was supervised by the teacher Shigeru Miyamoto, father and creator of The Legend Of Zelda.

Today a new Retro Review of two of the best games of this great saga: The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons / Ages.

These two excellent games came out for the GameBoy Color and are two games that are related because after finishing one of the two games (Ages / Seasons) regardless of the order, upon completion, they will give us a code which we will introduce in the other game, this will give as secondary options, new bosses, transfer of items and also, thanks to the connection between these two games, we can unlock the real ending of this small saga that consists of two interconnected games.

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It is well known that The Legend Of Zelda's timeline is a bit complicated to understand, but it is known that the events of The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons / Ages happen after The Legend of Zelda: A Link to The Past and before The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening, in a timeline that is formed after the defeat of our protagonist at the hands of Ganondorf in the events of The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The Legend of Zelda Timeline

This game starts with Link, being teleported by the power of the Triforce into a kingdom called Holodrum, in that kingdom after our protagonist explores the place, he meets a group of people where a young girl named Din is found, After a while Link and his new friends find themselves having a good time, dancing, singing and playing musical instruments, but suddenly they are attacked by the villain of this game, Onox, the villain reveals that Din, is actually the oracle of the seasons, whose powers are to control the seasons and the climate of the whole kingdom, the objective of Onox is to kidnap Din and he does it easily after defeating our protagonist, the kidnapping of the oracle causes the temple of the stations to sink in the earth, causing a total lack of control of the seasons and the climate in the kingdom of Holodrum. Now, the mission of Link and therefore our mission, is to rescue the oracle from the seasons to restore peace to the kingdom, for which they entrust us with the mission of obtaining the 8 essences of nature, these essences will make the old Maku tree Get your powers back and therefore, put a check on the disaster that Onox has caused.

This new Link adventure is full of great moments, we will visit many places, with many secrets to discover, we will meet characters with different personalities that will make every place in the kingdom where we go feel totally different and they are characters that contribute a lot to the situation and to the game argument, in most cases.

Seeing the title of the game we can assume the main theme on which this new story will be based, in Oracle of Seasons, the whole plot and story revolves around the change of seasons and the weather, meanwhile, Oracle of Ages will be based especially in time travel. In this new story, which starts exactly like the previous one, we have our hero again, being teleported by the Triforce to a new realm, totally different from the previous one. Link is teleported to the kingdom of Labrynna, where he promptly saves a woman who is being stalked by some creatures of the forest, this woman is called Impa and after saving her she tells our hero that she is looking for a woman named Nayru, and being Link a gentleman decides to accompany Impa in the search of said woman, when he finds her, he sees Nayru surrounded by several animals, each one of them, is enchanted by the woman's singing, even Link is amazed by his voice, but the problems will not be long in coming, it turns out that Impa is being controlled by the sorceress Veran and just as it happens in Oracle of Seasons, Veran kidnaps Nayru that turns out to be the Oracle of the Times, which has the ability to manipulate time. They will see in the same way that they possessed Impa, they do it with Nayru and use their powers to travel to the past, in order to change it to their benefit, and just as in Oracle of Seasons in the kingdom of Labrynna chaos is formed in each of its corners, therefore Link also travels to the past, and as a new mission must collect the essences of time for the Maku tree to obtain the necessary power to return everything to normal.

As you can notice these two games have many things in common, but at the same time, each of them maintain their own personality, being two excellent games, that no matter the order in which they play, since each is a totally different experience, although maintaining its great similarities.

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These two games are visually wonderful, they are very colorful games and they have scenarios that perfectly recreate a fantasy world and that in each of its corners you can see the magic and love that they gave him at the time of his development. Both Oracle of Seasons and Oracle Of Ages are games that were released for the Gameboy Color and it is something that is quite noticeable, not so much because of the graphical limitation that we can notice (which nevertheless nowadays looks pretty good), and is that the color palette used in this game is appropriate and is representative of the saga of The Legend of Zelda, although these two games were developed by a studio by Capcom and not by Nintendo, they knew how to maintain the visual scenario that characterizes to this long-lived and beloved videogame saga.

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The sprites of the characters, from common enemies, bosses and NPCs overflow personality and good drawing, many of them with great details that makes us feel that each of these characters are full of life and although many times we will find scenarios Where there is no NPC or enemy, this will not make you feel empty, since many of the objects that are decorating the stage, have some kind of animation, as well as leaves that move with the breeze or very colorful flowers, no doubt They did a great job with these two games in the visual aspect, so much so that despite the years, the old games of the Legend of Zelda saga, are considered the best and it is totally right.

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The music is very good, they do not stand out too much but if they help to immerse the two new kingdoms that present us with these two excellent games, many of the melodies are catchy and they accompany us in our journey and in our mission to save the kingdoms that are they find in chaos, in addition to which great part of the songs used in these games, are now representative and they are used like reference for all the saga. But if you notice the limitations of the Gameboy Color in terms of the sound aspect, especially in the sound effects, which are not bad, but in many cases they do not sound as we could imagine, however they fulfill their purpose.

Video Author TantrisOST

Although these two games were developed by Capcom, they maintain the essence of The Legend of Zelda saga, adventure, riddles and exploration, although it is necessary to mention again that these two games were supervised by the great Shigeru Miyamoto, the father of the saga, even so Capcom had under his shoulders a very important responsibility and in the end they managed to make two excellent games that keeps all the characteristic and everything that makes this saga great, besides adding new aspects that makes games totally fresh.

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In Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons / Ages the classic exploration is maintained to obtain certain objects that will help us throughout the game, it also has the typical dungeons, that despite not being as difficult as other games of the same saga, still maintain a certain level of difficulty, but if to a lesser extent, they have a perfect level to not be difficult enough, but not very easy either. We will have the help of several objects that will allow us to overcome certain obstacles or to solve some riddles, for example, we have at our disposal a magnetic glove that will allow us to cross certain areas using its power, which will make us move to certain places where there is some metal and also it will serve to move objects, in the same way we will also have boots that will help us to jump areas where there is a hole in the ground, and also these boots will help us fight with some final bosses. Something also characteristic of these games is that sometimes we can use certain animals, such as a kangaroo or a flying bear, that will help us overcome some situations and obstacles.

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But the strong point of the gameplay of these two games are the two exclusive objects that have both Oracle Of Seasons and Oracle of Ages. In Oracle of Seasons we will have in our hands a magic staff that will allow us to alternate between the seasons, that is, to change the seasons of summer, autumn, spring and winter. Therefore, when we use the staff to change the season to winter the waters will freeze allowing you to go to places that previously we could not go, but also some areas will be blocked due to snow and for example in spring will appear some flowers of which we can use as a sort of trampoline to help us reach certain areas and places that we can not reach at other stations.

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Meanwhile in Oracle of Ages, we will have a magic harp that will allow us to travel through time, taking into account that the actions we do in the past will have repercussions in the future, therefore we must be alert of every action we are taking. in our adventure to be able to use it to our advantage and to facilitate the obtaining of certain objects or to fulfill more easily any mission.

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Both Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages remain as two of the best games that can be found in the saga The Legend Of Zelda, although these two games developed by another company, continue to maintain everything that makes this saga so wonderful is loved and remembered by many people around the world, a colorful game, with good moments of action, adventure, secrets and music.

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