Five minutes and three seconds, to be precise — that’s how long it just took me to get to the tutorial dungeon in The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, which comes out for 3DS on November 22.
Using my iPhone stopwatch app, I started recording the second I hit “new game.” Including the opening cut-scene, with no detours, it took me three minutes to get my sword, and five minutes to hit the first dungeon.
The dungeon itself took two minutes to beat.
For comparison, via this Gamasutra article, it takes 70 minutes to reach the first dungeon in Skyward Sword. It takes 20 minutes to hit the first dungeon in Ocarina of Time. And it takes 2 minutes to get to the castle basement in Link to the Past, the predecessor to Link Between Worlds.
In other words, this game is more like those older Zeldas — the Link’s Awakenings, the Link to the Pasts of the world — than it is like the newer, slower, tutorial-packed Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess. Thanks to the item rental system, this game feels totally different, too. I’m a few hours in, and I’m totally charmed so far.
Stay tuned for our full review of Link Between Worlds, which is coming in the near future.
Comments
5 responses to “It Takes Five Minutes To Reach The First Dungeon In The Newest Zelda”
I miss how Wind Waker had over an hour before the first Dungeon. While I love Zelda, I’ve always firmly believed that the Dungeons are the worst part of the games (still good though). But I also feel that the series needs Dungeons, because completing a Dungeon usually opens up more of the overworld, so you can explore more.
It’s all about how the effort and reward. Putting in effort to make it through a Dungeon makes the reward of being able to explore more and more overworld all the more satisfying.
Can’t wait for this one!
Pre-orderd this morning got hyped for it over the last couple of days 🙂
Going to be awesome
I’m really looking forward to the musical remixes in this. I loved LttP.
Did I mention they better have a nod to Misery Mire in this? I’m pretty sure I did…multiple times… *twitch*
I’m not really sure what to make of a generation where these kinds of articles need to be written. Back in my day we were happy just to get a game and play it without worrying about how long it took. Of course, back then we didn’t have save points so most of the time games were designed to be completed in an afternoon, or had passcode screens that restored the game to a preset configuration so you could stop playing and not have to do it all again the next day. /oldManHat
I still have a VHS tape of the first LttP run I ever did with no saves or deaths. Of course, I don’t have a VCR player anymore… 🙁
Is it as hard as A Link to the Past?
Played it recently, and I died over 100 times during that castle/dungeon.