There's a certain irony in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.
Popularly known as one of the hardest games ever made, it actually contains the easiest level in the history of video games.
Here's what happens if you get ambushed while on the road:

That's the entire level. It's no larger than a single screen and there are no enemies to fight at all. You simply walk off of either side - so you can't even screw that up - and back to the Overworld map where, I guarantee, each and every time, you will get right back to doing whatever you were doing before you got ambushed in the first place.
The whole process takes less than 5 seconds, so it's hardly infuriating. Still, if you play the game, you will have to make this completely pointless action dozens upon dozens of times throughout the course of the game.
To me, this little detail exemplifies Adventure of Link's problems.
I wonder, did nobody say, "On second thought, this road ambush is pointless. The gamer won't enjoy performing that action over and over again, regardless of whether it's simple or not. Let's just take it out and replace it with one of those quick NES fart sounds, just to tell the player that the monster's ambush failed,"? That's such an obvious - and obviously better - design decision that I have to believe the team thought about it and deliberately chose not to do it that way. Why? I have no idea. It's very unlike Nintendo.
Time and again in Adventure of Link I felt I was banging my head against seemingly arbitrary design choices like that. Why do I keep getting kicked back to the beginning of the game when I die? Why do I lose all of my experience? Why so many cryptic secrets? Why this and not that? Why why why?
I suspect I know the answer to most of those questions. The design philosophy seems to have been to favor challenge over every other reasonable consideration. Maybe they felt that gamers simply wanted the hardest Zelda game possible. Well… mission accomplished, guys. Mission so accomplished.
In theory, I like the idea of a Zelda game that hits you with steep punishments for failure. But what this means in Adventure of Link, practically speaking, is that the game rewards you for playing conservatively. You want to be able to take on the Swamp Palace? You better farm yourself some levels first. Low on health? You better backtrack, pronto. Death Mountain? Better look at that map in Nintendo Power. Most of all, don't take too many risks because you're not going to like the penalty. Slow down. Be deliberate. Be cautious.
Sound like fun? Well… at times it really
is fun. That's what's so frustrating about Adventure of Link. Despite some pretty clear flaws, it certainly toys with greatness. I'm not going to give a detailed rundown of everything that happens - the game is old enough and familiar enough that you probably don't need to hear it from me - but I can tell you what I liked. I appreciated the sword and shield battle system, even though it was unforgiving. I adored the boss fights. The Palace Theme is up there with the great musical Nintendo classics. I liked some of the quirks of the overworld, at least when they weren't so cryptic that they drove me to the Internet for help. Mostly, the game just seems to be crammed with ideas, from hidden palaces to endless pits to bags with the letter "P" on them. And I will absolutely defend the decision to make Adventure of Link a sidescroller. Why was that ever accepted as a legitimate criticism? Yeah, it would have been cool to see what Nintendo, at the height of their 8-bit powers, could have done with an evolution of the Top Down approach from the first game, but the shift in playstyle isn't a flaw. This is the NES we're talking about. Sidescrollers are what it did best.
But I can't think of another game I've ever played that mixed so much fun stuff with so much stuff that wasn't. It's like the S&M bar of Zelda games - some twisted combination of torture and bliss.

Oh, so that's what's going on in there.I'm sure I'm not the first to make this connection, but Adventure of Link reminds me a lot of Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest. They're both sequels that try to evolve the gameplay of their classic predecessors with sometimes head-scratching results. They both contain a load of NPC's who spout cryptic nonsense and they both have final bosses who can be defeated using cheap tactics.
And they're both pretty well shunned for being total weirdos. Right now, if you search the word "Zelda" in the Negative World Games Database, you'll find Adventure of Link sitting comfortably at the bottom of the list of main series games, with a score of 8.6. If there's any Zelda that could be considered overlooked, it's this one. More than anything, the phrase "black sheep" gets thrown around when discussing it.
But every now and then you hear an enthusiastic fan defend this game against the usual criticisms. Fair play to them, I say, because I absolutely understand what is lovable about Adventure of Link. There's a lot of good, here. But I also understand what doesn't work. So my attitude is simple: You can't adopt every underdog. Despite the positives, this is still the least essential Zelda game I've personally played and quite a let down after the joy of going through the first game.
I'm glad I played it, but I can't recommend Adventure of Link for everyone. If you love Zelda and care about its history, you'll want to play this game through to the end (and probably already have). If you're simply an NES enthusiast, it might be worth your time to give it a shot, just to see what the fuss is about. Steel yourself for a challenge, though. But I don't think its a
necessary gaming experience if you're just an average gamer looking to scratch a retro-gaming itch in 2012. In that case, I say stick with the original.
(Note: This is a short review, based on an incomplete stub I put together last year, just after finishing the game and just after writing a far more extensive discussion of the original Zelda. Since I didn't leave a major outline for myself to follow on this one, I've elected to present the review more or less "as is", with just a few edits. Too bad I didn't finish it, though.)