Nintendo has just dropped two new titles onto the NSO service. As of tonight you can now play The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons on your Nintendo Switch system. Both titles were developed by a Capcom subsidiary and released for the Game Boy Color in 2001.

Two classic The Legend of Zelda games are now live for #NintendoSwitchOnline members!#GameBoy – Nintendo Switch Online:
☑️ The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages
☑️ The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons pic.twitter.com/4DhIxf5QzG

— Nintendo of America (@NintendoAmerica) July 27, 2023

 

[RAHelllord]

In what order should I play them to get the best ending?

The ending parts are effectively the same regardless of the order they're played in, however you get the most content and a more natural difficulty curve if you start with Seasons and then play Ages afterwards. Seasons is objectively a little easier for the most part than ages, and it introduces all of the mechanics quite well. Ages on the other hand has more convoluted puzzles that require out of the box thinking.
You'll also unlock the hardest dungeon of the two games only if you bring your save from Seasons to Ages.

But for the story itself it doesn't matter which way around you play it. You also get an extra password after finishing a full playthrough to experience the way around, and get a special symbol on the save for your efforts if you do.

 

[Scarlet]

Funny to see people wishing for remakes, but if it were going to have the terribly inconsistent framerate of Link's Awkewing remake I'd rather just play the originals.

I’m with you here. I also don’t understand why they locked your analogue stick to 8 directions but also decided to not let you use the D Pad for movement??

I think aesthetically they absolutely nailed it, but between the framerate and controls, it’s just been sat on my shelf.

 

[hippy dave]

The ending parts are effectively the same regardless of the order they're played in, however you get the most content and a more natural difficulty curve if you start with Seasons and then play Ages afterwards. Seasons is objectively a little easier for the most part than ages, and it introduces all of the mechanics quite well. Ages on the other hand has more convoluted puzzles that require out of the box thinking.
You'll also unlock the hardest dungeon of the two games only if you bring your save from Seasons to Ages.

But for the story itself it doesn't matter which way around you play it. You also get an extra password after finishing a full playthrough to experience the way around, and get a special symbol on the save for your efforts if you do.

Great info, thanks. Interestingly, I saw someone else say to do puzzle-focused Ages first because it makes combat-focused Seasons easier, so maybe it's not so objective.

Post automatically merged: Jul 27, 2023

Link's Awakening remake ran really nicely with overclocking, the fans spin up when you're in a lava room but not too many frame drops. This was on Erista, can probably get it perfect on Mariko.

 

[Ligeia]

If Nintendo cared they'd finish the third Oracle game and release it on NSO alongside the two others. Now that would actually be newsworthy.

 

[RAHelllord]

I’m with you here. I also don’t understand why they locked your analogue stick to 8 directions but also decided to not let you use the D Pad for movement??

I think aesthetically they absolutely nailed it, but between the framerate and controls, it’s just been sat on my shelf.

The frame rate drops were on purpose, the original Link's Awakening also had massive slowdowns on original hardware every time the screen got a bit more busy.

Great info, thanks. Interestingly, I saw someone else say to do puzzle-focused Ages first because it makes combat-focused Seasons easier, so maybe it's not so objective.

I can't say combat is harder in Seasons, to be honest. Particularly if you put effort into getting the upgrades from the trading sequence and stuff you can just plow through almost everything rather easily.
You can also get access to some rings in seasons fairly early to make things even easier, but over all I feel Seasons is better balanced as the first entry, and the extra dungeon in Ages is worth far more playtime than the little extra dungeon in Seasons that's just a 5 minute distraction during early game.

But neither game is early 90's Nintendo hard, they're both fairly forgiving regardless of the order they're played in.

Except for the Goron rhythm game in ages. Fuck that mini game in particular.

 

[Marc_LFD]

If Nintendo cared they'd finish the third Oracle game and release it on NSO alongside the two others. Now that would actually be newsworthy.

Seems Nintendo is now only interested making Zelda games in the style of BotW.

 

[Scarlet]

The frame rate drops were on purpose, the original Link's Awakening also had massive slowdowns on original hardware every time the screen got a bit more busy.

I assume you’re taking the piss, but if not that is perhaps the stupidest design decision I’ve ever seen in a game.

 

[Bladexdsl]

Except for the Goron rhythm game in ages. Fuck that mini game in particular.

thank fuck for save states on emulation or i would never play that game again. it's not the only annoying mini games your force to do to progress either in these games.

 

[Metoroid0]

Why not just do a remake like with zelda links avakening.

 

[Lostbhoy]

So are these what the rumours of more zelda content on switch this year are are these just a silent drop for the vc library?

 

[VoidStarbreakOfficial]

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Nintendo has just dropped two new titles onto the NSO service. As of tonight you can now play The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons on your Nintendo Switch system. Both titles were developed by a Capcom subsidiary and released for the Game Boy Color in 2001.

https://twitter.com/NintendoAmerica/status/1684368518874013696

*Guardian music starts playing* oh god, NO, AAAAAAAAAAA!

 

[AttackOtter]

Having said all of that, I guess Fire Emblem Fates is the more modern take on this kind of formula.

If only the writing had actually been good lol

 

[ChronosNotashi]

Remember Nintendo kill support off Nintendo Shop on Nintendo Wii and eShop on Nintendo Wii U/3DS means people can't get their games back.

To be fair, it is still possible to redownload any games you have for the 3DS and WiiU eShops. It's just that you need to have actually purchased them prior to the eShop being closed. And it not be a game/software that was removed from the eShop server entirely, like with YouTube 3DS.

 

[RAHelllord]

I assume you’re taking the piss, but if not that is perhaps the stupidest design decision I’ve ever seen in a game.

Definitely taking the piss here, but on the other hand the slowdowns in the original non-DX version are real and pretty bad at times.

People just need to remember that Nintendo has always been this way with more involved games, they regularly push their hardware to the limits and few of the most popular games ran perfectly on their original hardware.

The switch remake isn't much worse than the original version with how often it slows down, and unlike the original version it usually only slows down when it doesn't matter all that much. Sure it sucks it happens in the village, but at least it doesn't regularly happen in dungeons during fights like in the original.

EDIT: However I'm not defending their stupid hardware decisions this generation, chances are if they had sucked it up and doubled the RAM of the switch most of the performance problems in this generation could have likely been avoided altogether. The 10 bucks more to buy it would have been well worth it.

 

[impeeza]

Got excited for a moment, thought these were going to receive the Link's Awakening treatment.

me too, the realize NSO...

 

[LuigiXHero]

Great info, thanks. Interestingly, I saw someone else say to do puzzle-focused Ages first because it makes combat-focused Seasons easier, so maybe it's not so objective.

Post automatically merged: Jul 27, 2023

Link's Awakening remake ran really nicely with overclocking, the fans spin up when you're in a lava room but not too many frame drops. This was on Erista, can probably get it perfect on Mariko.

I also agree seasons then ages. It just flows better plotwise for me (plus it's the order the mangas follow) though seasons 2nd has a cool plot payoff but it's something you'd know already. My personal pick is go all in and do seasons to ages to seasons again lol

 

[Desconocido90]

You'll also unlock the hardest dungeon of the two games only if you bring your save from Seasons to Ages.

If you're talking about the Hero's Cave, you're wrong: you can always play that optional dungeon in a save linked from Ages to Season.

The tiny tutorial Cave from Seasons gets expanded in the linked game, matching the size and difficulty of the Oracle of Ages counterpart.

 

[Jayro]

The two mediocre Zelda games for GBC.

 

[RAHelllord]

If you're talking about the Hero's Cave, you're wrong: you can always play that optional dungeon in a save linked from Ages to Season.

The tiny tutorial Cave from Seasons gets expanded in the linked game, matching the size and difficulty of the Oracle of Ages counterpart.

They're not identical, and the difficulty in the Ages dungeon is a good deal higher compared to the joke puzzles in Seasons counterpart.

I very much stand by it that the season's counterpart isn't worth the time it takes to play through it. Sure the reward is nice and needed for 100% completion, but the puzzles are trivial apart from a single curve ball.

 

[DragonMals]

One of my most favorite Zelda games that I have yet to play to this day lmao

I watched this game a lot as a kid, and I guess I have a new way to playing it.

playing it a la emulation