Pasq nominated this one for me to play over Halloween! This game has a rather spooky story behind its inclusion on my backlog- midgi found the cart abandoned in the street one day and brought it home, only to find the savefiles were all titled YOU WILL DIE. Okay, that last part’s a lie, but it was a rather haunting way for a game like this to drift into our lives.
I’ve previously tried to play the Mario Kart Bonus version of this on the Gamecube, making it some distance in before the game crashed and I lost hours of gameplay, thus ragequitting and never looking back. It’s apparently a fairly common occurence on that version in particular- something to do with the game being difficult to emulate. Regardless, I wanted to give it a second chance on 3DS where that problem was presumably fixed.
The tone sure is on-point for the spooky months, with the townsfolks’ differing reactions to the impending end of the world. Something that really struck me was the way that, rather than time-travel enabling Link to solve many problems, it actually ensured NO problems were solved- with everyone I help along my journey undoubtedly needing that same help again on my next loop. It was a surprisingly bleak futility that I’ve not felt in a Zelda game before.
(In gameplay terms, it means I have to solve the same puzzle multiple times and that’s aggravating. But that’s a minor gripe and a necessary weight to bear in order for the game to work.)
Fin or Bin:
I’m already, like, 15 hours into the game. I started playing it while I was away from home and intended to write this up when I got back, and then spent all that time playing the game instead of writing about it. Obviously a Fin, then, although having to watch that business scrub fly away every time I give him a title deed is… wearing thin.