The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

After my disappointing experiences with Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword, I have all but given up hope on the Zelda franchise recapturing what I once loved about it so much. That’s why it was nice to play a Zelda game that helped to remind me, and maybe even restore a little faith. Sadly, the game came out in 2004.

I first played Minish Cap not long after its release and dismissed it pretty quickly, somewhere during the first dungeon. Why? Well, it starts off pretty simplistic. I can see why I thought the game wouldn't hold my attention for too long. However, I’m glad that I gave it another go, as what I discovered is a game in love with its predecessors and that most closely resembles Link to the Past and the Oracle games. This is not too surprising, as the same director worked on the Oracle series and Minish Cap was also developed by Capcom. Minish Cap uses music that has not been heard in other Zelda games for a long time, like the cave theme from LTTP. It has some of the cooler items that, again, don’t appear too much, like the Roc’s Cape. Seriously, why is this series so averse to letting Link jump? It improves the game 100% of the time in practice.

The shrinking sections and friend stones are new mechanics added to Minish Cap that I can go either way on. Shrinking is nice, but often just something you do when you can’t progress further any other way. More could have been done with it, but I can’t really complain either. It’s effectively the same as the Rod of Seasons in OOS. The friend stones add a lot of NPC interaction to the game in one sense, as you have to try merging them at every opportunity. However, since you end up ignoring what the NPCs say and instead just merging stones, I guess it’s counter-intuitive to character development too. Overall, these features just contribute to making exploration more rewarding. I enjoyed that, and it’s a shame that Skyward Sword, directed by the same man, removed the focus on exploring.

If you’re interested in playing a slightly retro Zelda title that doesn’t take too long to finish, Minish Cap is pretty satisfying. It’s not the best game in the series, but in my opinion it’s the last good one to come out since 2004.

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