The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - January 21, 2005

The Daily Cardinal
By Jason Ducat

The Zelda series has been a Nintendo staple since the mid-1980s. So, it comes as a bit of a surprise that it took four years for Nintendo to make a new Zelda game for its über-popular Game Boy Advance system. The wait was worth it, though, as Nintendo once again delivers a fun and satisfying adventure.

The Minish Cap captures everything that was great about the last half-dozen Zelda games and condenses it into a handy, travel-sized edition. The classic top-down perspective returns, and players will initially notice the similarities between this game and the Super Nintendo Zelda. Character and background animations are fluid and vibrantly colored, making the game a joy to see. The cel-shading style from the Game Cube Zelda returns along with classic characters from the Nintendo 64 edition.

Like most other games in this series, the protagonist, Link, must go on a quest through Hyrule to rescue the Princess Zelda. Along the way, our hero meets a mysterious hat with the power to shrink both itself and Link to miniscule sizes. This is Cap's main gimmick and divides the game's world in two; regular size areas and "minish" areas. The game designers exploit this idea to its fullest, and you as a player have to constantly transform sizes to solve the multitude of puzzles thrown at you.

New items are in order too, such as the gust jar and mole mitts. Although these items aren't earth-shattering in terms of changing the tried-and-true Zelda formula, they do add some variety that keeps this game feeling different than other games in the series.

If there is anything bad that can be said about The Minish Cap, it is the length. It is shorter than most games in the series, especially if plowing straight through the main dungeons. For the most part, the pacing is superb, but once in a while it will slow down to a crawl as you attempt to accomplish seemingly meaningless tasks. And figuring out these tasks can be a bit confusing sometimes with the unclear objective goals to start the game.

Another problem arises because the world is just too small. Apparently the handheld nature of the game dramatically shrunk the size of Hyrule.

But every cloud has a silver lining. Each area of the map is packed with things to do which will keep you coming back, especially if you take the time to do the excellent side quests that have you traipsing about the world in search of puzzle pieces called kinstones. It seems that everybody in Hyrule has half of one and if you find the other half new areas and items will open up throughout the course of the game.

Sometimes searching for these pieces are necessary and other times it becomes bothersome, but it's nothing that drags the game down to anything less than excellent.

Considering the pedigree Zelda games have, expecting greatness from this title is not unrealistic. Classic gameplay with new twists combined with always-fun dungeons, challenging boss fights and a storyline that departs from regular Zelda conventions, makes this game a must-play for casual and hard-core gamers alike.