For the past couple of months i've been playing a lot of GBA games, making the most of my most recent console purchase (an AGS-101 with it's amazing screen!) and the EZIV. However, after the amount of love slavered on some of the GBA's catalogue i've been left distinctly unimpressed with some of the essential games i've played. Golden Sun was, let's face it, pretty tedious, so much so there's ZERO way i'll be embarking on more of the same with The Lost Age. It added nothing to the pot of charming RPG's of yesteryear, and whilst it's USP of Psynergy was OK it didn't make up for everything else. Chain Of Memories was actually mostly OK, and whilst i'm relatively pleased i've played it it still felt like some massive let down given the broken mechanics of the game (yes i finished both stories....) Something i did enjoy was Minish Cap which i've just finished...however, that's actually why i'm asking this question as i was eyeing up A Link to the Past and Mother 3 next. I actually started LTTP and lost my save a couple of hours in (the Desert Palace) but as far as i can see it seems like relatively shallow and repetitive gameplay with little of the charm and magic reviews suggest. I appreciate the limitations of the hardware, but having played Minish Cap it seems the earlier Zelda is essentially an expanded bomb cracks, push pots, spin attack fest, which without much narrative doesn't hold up in today's gaming realm. Now i'm well familiar with gaming of bygone days and have fond places in my heart for lots of older games, but do they stand up as fun today? Only marginally.
I suppose what i'm getting at is which of the GBA classics actually hold their gameplay fun given the advancements we've seen in the intervening years. It seems to me that the 2D Zelda games are essentially the same thing, albeit with differing gimmicks (and i'm a Sega kid so the DS was my first foray into Zelda and my recent Minish Cap play was the second game in the series i've played following Phantom Hourglass). Having played Minish Cap is LTTP really different or compelling enough to play? With as little bias as possible it seems that whilst it's something i'd have loved 15 years ago today it's slightly plodding. How about Mother 3, or any of the other GBA library of "essentials"? Which essentials have actually retained their fun, because as far as essential lists and reviews go, finding recent opinions on older classics without bias is tough.
(Yes i know this borders on "What are you expecting!" but having played some fun GBA games (Ninja 5-0, Chain of Memories counts in this category as it was unique) i feel slightly jaded about plodding through rose tinted memories of other people)
I suppose what i'm getting at is which of the GBA classics actually hold their gameplay fun given the advancements we've seen in the intervening years. It seems to me that the 2D Zelda games are essentially the same thing, albeit with differing gimmicks (and i'm a Sega kid so the DS was my first foray into Zelda and my recent Minish Cap play was the second game in the series i've played following Phantom Hourglass). Having played Minish Cap is LTTP really different or compelling enough to play? With as little bias as possible it seems that whilst it's something i'd have loved 15 years ago today it's slightly plodding. How about Mother 3, or any of the other GBA library of "essentials"? Which essentials have actually retained their fun, because as far as essential lists and reviews go, finding recent opinions on older classics without bias is tough.
(Yes i know this borders on "What are you expecting!" but having played some fun GBA games (Ninja 5-0, Chain of Memories counts in this category as it was unique) i feel slightly jaded about plodding through rose tinted memories of other people)