I have been recently replaying NES Zelda after a long time and level-5 kicked my ass good.I managed to beat the blue dark kunts without the magical sword because I only have 10 hearts. The question would be if there's a way of knowing where the other heart containers are or any remote clues for it. I looked them up and it's quite fucking bullshit that the game clearly expects you to have it at least by level 6 because one of the heart containers is hidden behind the most random bush. There's another one in a cave hidden within an isolated rock, which I bombed at least twice, but it just wasnt the exact tile that needed to be bombed.Just exploring around you can find many other things, blue ring included. But man, the spongy enemies become too much without that sword.
I mean I would agree that some of the stuff is pretty well hidden. But it's also a game that has virtually no hand-holding and you're expected to explore, both to your benefit and your annoyance, like the door-breaking-fee guys and a few bombable dungeon rooms that are filled with enemies but nothing else. A lot of that has to do with how absurdly complex this game is for the NES and how much shenanigans they had to do to get it to fit on the cartridge in the first place. But a lot of it is also just the intentional design of, essentially, expecting you to bomb and burn tons of stuff without ever "100%ing" the game.
I always get confused when people talk about having difficulty in combat in this game. I mean it's not trivially easy or anything but... those knights are so slow. Does it really matter that much if you have to hit them extra times??
>>12644010>The question would be if there's a way of knowing where the other heart containers are or any remote clues for it.NES games are notoriously cryptic when it comes to their various secrets. Sure, you might find them by relentless searching. I know I spammed bombs on every rock trying to find secret caves and torching every bush in sight. Do that long enough and thoroughly enough and you might uncover everything.But the better solution is to consult a player's guide or GameFAQ or something. Back in the day there was some Hotline you could call to get answers. I think Nintendo and other companies made games purposely cryptic just to get people to call the hotline so they could make more money off that. Before the internet that's pretty much what you had to do. But now you can just look it up for free.
>>12644117>Does it really matter that much if you have to hit them extra times??Eventually your fingers will get tired and you might slip up and get hit by them. So being able to kill them faster is better. Plus it makes the game less of a slog having to land a million hits on enemies to dispatch them (plus they just reappear again when you leave the screen and return).
>>12644010I don't think the game expects you to have the magical sword by level 6, to be honest.
>>12644019>le programming shenanigansYou mean like using more memory? Love it when people say "fit on a NES cartridge" as if there's only one size they all use.
>>12644010Use bombs to kill knights
>>12645054When Zelda released on japan they had to release it on disk system, and it definitely wasnt free memory or enough for all they had in their vision. >>12644376Definitely they expected that much. Enemies become obnoxiously annoying and in level 6 you need to complete several enemy gauntlet rooms at the very beginning each time you respawn. Without the magical sword, the room with blue and red wizrobes, likelikes and energy balls is absolute cancer. If tou dont think this is the case i dare you pick the game up again and get to that point, for which you will have had to put through 2 in a row blue darknut gauntlets in level 5, which is unreasonable enough. The difficulty curve without the magical sword in level 5 is already absurd. Levels 1-4 with the white sword is almost reasonable because the white sword is obtainable with just the dungeon extra hearts. But level 5 is just bullshit because of the obligatory blue darknuts.
idk i mindlessly finished it in a single afternoon it's so basic and braindead
>>12644010tighten up those graphics on level 3
>>12645102The wizrobes are hard but I think it's more about having the magical shield so that you can block the wizrobes. Then maybe using bombs to help kill them. There's only five heart containers in the overworld, so to have the magical sword by level 6, you'd need four out of five heart containers (if you aren't sequence breaking), and I don't think Nintendo would expect that level of aggressive heart container harvesting. Clearing the darknuts in level 5 is more a question of skill.
