It shouldn't come as much of a surprise that there's going to be a bunch of Zelda games on my Top 100 list, it's just that good of a series. With so many iconic and legendary entries, it may seem a bit strange that the relatively unambitious The Minish Cap ranks as one of my favorites in the series. It's a game that focuses on getting a few small things right, but nails those things to near perfection. It's also one of the comfiest gaming experiences I've ever had to this day.
The Minish Cap is the third and last Zelda game made by Capcom. Their first two games were the also great Oracle duology, in which one game focused more on combat and the other focused more on puzzle-solving. Minish Cap strikes the best of both worlds, capturing everything that I love about the Zelda series, starting with the story. In The Minish Cap, there's a society of tiny creatures that live amongst Hyrule called the Picori who only show themselves to children every 100 years in a festival. During one of these festivals, an evil sorcerer shows up to destroy the Picori's sword, petrify Zelda, and take over Hyrule Castle. Being a kid himself, it's up to Link to find the Picori to repair the Picori Blade and stop Vaati, with the help of a Minish-sage-turned-hat named Ezlo who can help him shrink down to the Picori's size. It's a pretty straightforward story especially by Zelda standards, but there are two elements that really elevate Minish Cap's narrative.
For starters, Ezlo is a stellar partner, one of the best in the series up there with Midna, Tatl, and Spirit Tracks Zelda. He starts off as a bit of a snarky jerk, but he warms up to Link over the course of the game in a very sweet way, and he also has a really interesting past with Vaati that slowly gets unveiled. He's everything you want a good companion to be, with a fun personality, entertaining banter with Link, a tangible role in the gameplay (helping you shrink, I'll get to that), and a compelling backstory. In addition, Minish Cap excels when it comes to its world-building and theming when it comes to the Picori. There are a lot of tiny Minish settlements that you get to visit throughout the game, and the way they incorporate real-life objects is consistently inventive and magical. I especially love the Hyrule Town settlements which use stuff like a bookcase, rafters, and a cobbler's desk as a place to stay. The whole concept of the Picori evokes this feeling of childlike wonder, taking that naive idea of a tiny civilization living among us and just running with it.
Right from the get-go, The Minish Cap controls incredibly well. While I love the fast movement speed of Link Between Worlds, I think Link's core moveset in Minish Cap is the best in any 2D Zelda game. As usual, you can run around, attack, and use a variety of items, but Minish Cap also introduces rolling like in the 3D games, helping you get around faster and dodge attacks. It's quick, snappy, and feels great to use. Minish Cap also introduces combo moves that you can learn by finding hidden dojos, not unlike the Hero's Shade in Twilight Princess. By the end of the game, you get quite the arsenal of attacks, making for easily the most fleshed-out combat in a 2D Zelda game. Link also gets the Four Sword, which he can use to split himself to solve puzzles, and it's used in some pretty neat ways in the second half of the game.
Then there's the items. Every Zelda game needs a good item roster, but I think Minish Cap might have my absolute favorite just based on how creative it is. Capcom has always been great at coming up with unique Zelda items but they went off here. There's the usual fare like Bombs, Bow, and the Lantern, but there's also the Gust Jar that lets you suck stuff in and blow them out, or the Cane Of Pacci that lets you flip pots to solve a variety of puzzles, or the Mole Mitts that let you dig through piles of dirt Dig Dug style, and the Roc's Cape which takes the feather from previous games and fleshes it out by giving Link a glide. It's really great stuff.
The big new hook is that you can shrink down to a smaller size using treestumps to solve puzzles and enter certain areas you couldn't otherwise. It's a quintessential Zelda mechanic, forcing you to jump between two different worlds and use spatial reasoning to figure out how one world affects the other and vice versa, and there are plenty of great puzzles that'll have you size-hopping to get through dungeons and even parts of the overworld, but what really makes the shrinking special are all the unique setpieces it allows for. There's entire small dungeons that you remain shrunken in culminating in standard-enemies-turned-towering boss fights, giant barrels to roll around in, leafs to use to travel across water, rainy areas where you have to dodge giant waterdrops, and as mentioned above, being able to uncover all of the secret Picori hideouts in Hyrule Town. And that's not even getting into all the other applications I mentioned, like how it allows Ezlo to affect the gameplay, and how the aforementioned Cane Of Pacci can create impromptu shrinking spots. It's simply a brilliant mechanic that's utilized super well and inventively throughout the game.
The world design is also top-notch, fairly small but incredibly tightly-knit. Every single screen feels purposeful, it feels like there's something new to discover, and the world feels compact without feeling cramped. As you progress through the game, you discover tons of shortcuts that make navigation increasingly easier, only aided by the welcome addition of fast travel. The dungeons are stellar too, all of which taking one or two central gimmicks and fleshing them throughout, from Deepwood Shrine's mushrooms to the Cave Of Flames' minecarts. The latter few dungeons even play around with the structure of a dungeon yourself. Temple Of Droplets starts you in the boss's chamber with the boss frozen, and you have to find a way to unfreeze it to get the element you need. The Palace Of Winds has an entire first half that takes place outside before the dungeon begins proper.
I'd also be remiss to talk about Minish Cap without mentioning the Kinstones, the game's most divisive element. As you play through the game, you collect Kinstones that you can use to trade with NPCs to make stuff happen in the world. Chests appear, doors open, secrets are uncovered, with a whopping 100 Kinstone trades to make, it feels like you're constantly getting new things at a fast pace. Of course, not everyone loves these things, some find trying to get the right Kinstones to trade tedious, and others only care about the important collectibles like Heart Pieces. Personally, though, I love the Kinstones. There's just something so satisfying about slowly unveiling all of the world's secrets and pleasing every single NPC in the game. And with a world as small yet dense as Minish Cap's, I think this is one of the few entries in the series where this mechanic could've even worked to begin with. They also do a lot to give The Minish Cap its replay value. Many seem to deride this game for being short as it only has six dungeons, but between the 44 Heart Pieces, Kinstones, Gacha sidequest, trading sequence that actually contains a postgame (one of the few Zelda games to have one mind you), and all the aforementioned upgrades, the side content more than makes up for it. (Then again, I think Minish Cap is actually around the same length of most other 2D Zeldas because there's more going on in between each dungeon, but that's just me).
But ultimately, I think what really solidifies Minish Cap as one of my favorite entries in the series is actually its presentation:
The GBA has always been one of my favorite consoles and I've always adored its chunky detailed 32-bit spritework, but it's no wonder many point to Minish Cap as the peak of this aesthetic. It takes the already phenomenal Wind Waker artstyle and translates it to 2D pretty much perfectly, with all the cute character designs and distinct effects recreated in beautiful lush pixel art. The visuals in Minish Cap have aged absolutely wonderfully, and the spritework and art direction is still some of the best I've seen in any game period. The color palette is so warm and soft, the character animation is fluid and expressive, the way sprite detail is used to indicate scale remains super impressive, 3D-esque effects are weaved into the 2D world super seamlessly, it all makes for a game that just looks and feels inviting and comforting. It's easy to claim that gameplay always comes first, but the fact is that sometimes the right visual style can heighten a game's appeal and The Minish Cap is a perfect example of that. The soundtrack is pretty amazing too, blending some great remixes of classic Zelda tracks with a ton of truly outstanding original themes, all with that lovely GBA fuzziness that fans of the console will get a kick out of. Highlights include Minish Woods, Minish Village, Hyrule Town, Temple Of Droplets, and Cloud Tops. Once again, it's just a really comfy soundtrack for me, that Zelda vibe in its purest form. Listening to any of Minish Cap's tracks is going to be enough to hit me hard with nostalgia.
Overall, I adore The Minish Cap. It's an incredibly tight Zelda experience that may not break any new ground, but it nails all the fundamentals, refining the 2D Zelda formula to a glowing sheen. It's short but dense and rich with content for those willing to engage with all of its systems, and the stellar presentation uses the GBA's capabilities to its absolute fullest. With fluid gameplay, compelling and creative puzzles, stellar dungeons, a series best item roster, an enthralling sense of wondrous adventure, and a heap load of collectibles, The Minish Cap is everything I want from a Zelda game and then some.
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