Oracle of Ages is part of a set of two games released in 2001 for the Game Boy Color. These two Zelda titles were developed by Capcom instead of Nintendo's normal Zelda team. This shows, as the more finicky puzzle design and focus on throwing in lots of powerful enemies differ wildly from what one expects to see in the Zelda series. As a result, the Oracle games feel fairly distinct from other Zelda games, which isn't a bad thing, but it still feels like something is missing. I guess I just like Zelda games to focus more on exploration than combat, but that's an entirely subjective matter. I respect what Capcom was going for with the Oracle games. They wanted to make two Zelda games with a similar vibe but enough differences to feel distinct from one another. I think they succeeded for the most part, but with the benefit of hindsight, Oracle of Ages doesn't hold up as well as its brother.
The primary difference between the two games, aside from the aesthetic of time travel vs. changing of the seasons is that Ages focuses more on the plot and villain (Veran, who has a pretty cool design, mind) while Seasons really focuses on the gameplay. This makes a whole lot of sense when you consider that the two N64 Zelda games were about time travel. Ages wants to be a game that fans of the 3D games will enjoy while Seasons is aimed at lovers of classic Zelda. What holds Ages back in that respect is that the plot's a generic Saturday morning cartoon story: bad guy possesses the girl, you separate the girl from the bad guy, you kill the bad guy. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's hard to get excited about the new characters and their extended story scenes when you know how it's going to end from the very beginning.
Perhaps more problematic is the fact that Link's quest to get eight Macguffins feels unrelated to the rest of the story. In the end, the Macguffins are used to show which door of the Black Tower is not an illusion. It's necessary to finish the game, but it's a major letdown that the entire length of the game was spent essentially solving the equivalent of a single puzzle in a dungeon. This is entirely transparent: Capcom made up a flimsy excuse for Link to have to travel to eight dungeons. See, it worked in The Legend of Zelda because assembling the Triforce was needed to hurt Ganon. It worked in Link to the Past because the seven maidens were characters you might have cared about saving. The Macguffins in this game are just "essences of time" that magically make a door reveal itself. There is no connection between those two things, and it ruins the illusion of narrative that the game tries to set up. I normally don't nitpick about story in games like this because it's usually not my biggest concern, but I feel like this one is especially hacked together and dumb.
For the most part, the gameplay holds up. The usual Zelda trappings are there, and they work as well as in any of the other games. The seeds with different effects are a great upgrade from Link's Awakening's magic powder. While the Mermaid Suit is hard to control, I like the idea of Link having more freedom in water sections. The Roc's Feather is always always always a welcome addition, though it's a lot better in Seasons and Minish Cap than in this game. I did not like how the animal buddies were so underused in Ages, but they were a cool idea nonetheless. To top it off, the Cane of Somaria (which creates a block) returns in this game, which is probably only second to the Roc's Feather as my favorite Zelda item. All of the items are used well throughout the game's eight dungeons and overworld. If it weren't for bad design decisions in other aspects, I'd say the gameplay is just right.
But of course, there are some really questionable design decisions, and they all basically boil down to tedium. The game has two very painful fetch-quest missions. One involves gathering all of your items on the Tokay Island early in the game. I like segments where the hero loses his equipment and has to gather it back, but I didn't care for having to trade one for another over and over to enter different parts of the island. This added a lot of padding to that section of the game that felt hugely artificial. Later in the game, the player has to solve an elaborate fetch quest chain in the Goron village, which is surprisingly labyrinthine in its design. I seriously burnt about a week getting through this place on my most recent playthrough, mostly because I got tired of backtracking across the mountains. The seventh dungeon, Jabu Jabu's Belly, is atrociously designed in a similar manner. Link has to adjust the water level of the dungeon and traverse sections in different depths. This wouldn't be so bad if the dungeon felt streamlined, but I found myself changing the water setting over and over again, which requires backtracking to a very far corner of the place. It is needlessly complicated and frustrating, and it's probably the worst water-related dungeon in the entire Zelda series. This is a quite a feat, by the way.
The most tedious aspect of the game is the time travel, though. Warping between the two eras is basically like warping between the Light and Dark world of Link to the Past since the game only rarely allows you to change something in the past that affects the future. This saps away most of the fun involved in a game about time travel. Almost all of the puzzles involving jumping through time are just used to help you get to parts of the map you couldn't reach before. I was left wanting more, and was even more disappointed that the final dungeon and boss had nothing to do with time travel either.
Oracle of Ages is fun in most of the same ways that Link's Awakening is, but I still think Link's Awakening is a more tightly constructed game. All of the sections in that game felt like they had a purpose, while Ages feels like it has dungeons and stuff just because it has to. It's worth a playthrough or several, but it's lacking a cohesive sense of design that would make me put it above most of the other Zelda games. If you're looking for a Zelda game about time travel, Majora's Mask is the one for you, not this. Of course, Oracle of Seasons is quite a bit more fun and you'll probably want to play the two games together, so if you plan on doing that, Ages is a must-play. Still, I have to recommend playing with a guide in the tedious sections I outlined above just to save yourself a lot of unneeded frustration.
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