The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds [3DS/2013]

System Played: Nintendo 3DS

Year Released: 2013

Year Reviewed: 2021

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is a semi-sequel to the 1991 SNES classic, A Link to the Past, with similarities including the world map/layout, controls, mechanics and music (basically a longtime Zelda fan’s wet dream!).


The main new mechanic involves becoming a painting, going inside walls and travelling left or right along the surface, shimmying along and through cracks to reach otherwise inaccessible areas and puzzle solving.

Being a sequel to A Link to the Past, the doppelganger “dark world” also returns, now dubbed Lorule, complete with its own princess Hilda. Transitions between the two worlds now works through wall cracks you find, tying it in with the “becoming a painting” mechanic.

It’s an ability that sounds more like a fit for a Paper Mario than Zelda game, but as always with Nintendo, they manage not only to make it work, but to get so much variation out of what seems to be, on the surface, a pretty basic mechanic.


A change from the usual Zelda formula is that instead of finding items/weapons one by one in dungeons, here you can “rent” them from the shop.

Each rented item has a small rupee cost, but no limit on how long or many you can take at once, so you can be almost fully equipped right from the outset. The only limitation is that if you die, then you have to go back to the shop and rent everything again.

You might expect the fact that you can rent most of your equipment up-front, and so gain more freedom to explore and tackle dungeons in a less linear order, might be a significant shake up to the tried and tested Zelda formula ...but surprisingly, for something so mechanically and structurally central, I didn’t really find it made much difference.

Not all equipment is rentable. The likes of the Pegasus Boots, Flippers and Power Glove are still “found”, so the designers retain some control over how you progress. And later in the game, you get the option to just buy shop items outright.

All items/weapons now work off a recharging energy meter, which makes things more streamlined. Another welcome addition are numerous Weathervanes, which dually act as savepoints and fast travel points, making it very easy to get around once you’ve found/activated a few.


Dungeon design sticks close to series tradition, with compasses, chests, locked doors, big keys and a boss who gives you an additional heart container on defeating.

A Link Between Worlds does more with verticality than most other “2D” Zelda's (since it’s really 3D), especially in the dungeons. In Hyrule castle in the SNES original, you had rooms where there were above and below paths on the same screen (seperate from the fact that you could go up and down staircases to between floors). Here, there are more “tiers” to each floor, which also works with the “wall walking” ability, since you can only travel along them horizontally, not vertically.

This gives the designer something new to play with, where you have to enter a wall at a certain height, travel around the wall perimeter, and emerge somewhere else in the room where there’s a door or platform at that same height which you couldn’t get to any other way.

As with many a Zelda game, it's the tight dungeon designs which shines brightest. Having said that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that they all seemed smaller and less elaborate than usual.


Being critical, I found A Link Between Worlds to be much too easy in general.

Maybe it’s Nintendo trying to accommodate younger players again? Maybe it’s a byproduct of the less linear dungeon ordering (whereas normally they can make them incrementally more difficult)?

Eitherway, I didn’t die once the whole game, so mechanics like having to re-rent items never had any bearing.

I just seemed to get through it very quickly and without any difficulty. This might be a testament to how intuitively it is designed, or how much I was enjoying it ...or maybe it was just made to be easy?

There is a “hard mode” unlocked after you clear it, but I would have preferred it if they’d just given the first playthrough a bit more bite instead.


Admittedly, there was a fair bit of the game I never used/couldn’t be bothered with:

Early on, you learn about an interesting hint mechanic, whereby the world is filled with ghosts (only visible when donning a special pair of glasses) who can instruct you on how to bypass certain progress blocks. To receive a hint, you have to pay them in coins you acquire by walking around, 1 coin gained for every 100 steps. I never used it though.

The most numerous collectable are these little crustacean-things called Maimai’s. There are 100 of them hidden (to varying degrees) throughout the two worlds, which you’re supposed to collect and return to their mother. This number was just too big for me to even entertain the idea of seriously looking for them, but apparently I misunderstood, as you can upgrade an item/weapons for every 10 you rescue. I must have missed that.

Aiding the hunt, you can stick (up to 20) pins in the map displayed on the touchscreen as reminders of places you might want to come back to later. I didn’t.


Production-wise, I’m not really a fan of the “chubby midget” artstyle the game has, or the new soundtrack, which features many reinterpretations of the classic SNES game tunes. They’re very hit and miss.


Maybe it’s an obvious thing, but A Link Between Worlds didn’t feel like the most original Zelda game, reusing locations, enemies and bosses from A Link to the Past. That should have been a good thing, and Nintendo are usually experts on preying on Nostalgia, but it felt a bit flat for me this time.

Don’t get me wrong, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is still a very well designed game and extremely enjoyable to play (you can’t go wrong with Nintendo EAD!), but maybe just a bit less than normal. Too easy, too short and less memorable than usual Zelda fayre.

7/10