While everyone’s busy with breath of the wild part 2 I want us to go back for a moment to the original Legend of Zelda. Some people complain that Breath of the Wild is too much of a departure from the games main DNA, but for me, mucking about, wandering around, poking my head into corners, and generally not advancing the story at all has always been a cornerstone of my Zelda experience.

I don’t know if I Should even be doing videos about zelda romhacks at the moment considering how blood thirsty Nintendos being at the moment about hunting down individual people downloading Tears of the Kingdom. Calm down guys you have literally all the money in the world I’m sure some kids who can’t afford a switch aren’t going to bankrupt you by playing Zelda for free. Do you think Wizards of the Coast are flicking them a text saying something like, Hey if you need it, we can give you The Pinkertons number, We just rolled a dude for Magic the Gather cards and that worked out fantastic. And Nintendo just text back, we don’t need your uncouth cowboy debt collectors we’re much more refined. We’ve already hired samurai to go to each house, politely kick down the door and then cut a kid in half who’s too distracted finding a corrok.

Now let’s throw ALL THAT AWAY, and make Zelda a REAL game. No more freedom, just a grueling dungeon with wave after wave of enemy the way god intended. This is The Legend of Zelda: Ancient Dungeon released by arnpoly. Its A romhack that takes the original NES release and turns it into a truly randomised roguelike. You don’t know what enemy configurations your going to get. You might get lucky. You might get messed up. It’s 255 levels of unadultarated struggle for survival with an ugly dude and a princess waiting for you at the end. Difficulty ramps up as you go along and you have to pray to God you get the gear you need to properly handle the later stages. Honestly the entire review is in the title, just read “Zelda but it’s a roguelike” and then just close your eyes and imagine it and you’ve pretty much designed the whole game in your head without even having to waste the 300kb of data the game takes up.

The game doesn’t give a shit what door you take, every time you go through one it’s going to be somewhere new. If you want you can head canon that you’re actually in the office block of Control, or Stanley parable or something. personally I was more concerned about how long it would take the game to find out how much of a little dork I am after loosing half a heart of damage and losing my master sword ranged attack. This is a game from a time where boys were boys and men were emotionally repressed. It has items sprinkled throughout to help you on your delve. A bunch with tweaked abilities to be more game mode appropriate. the main run can be done in about an hour. Then I believe that quest 2 is for people who can’t afford a dom but still Want the punishment. Maps can be generated from a seed and your time is displayed at the end of a run so there’s definitely room for a proper competitive scene, if not just friendly rivalries with friends

I’d recommend putting on a zen playlist of your own before diving in for a proper run. So do I recommend this romhack to everyone? I don’t know if I recommend this to ANYONE to be honest, except the most dedicated Zelda and Roguelike fans. If you have no nostalgia for the original game you may find this game a little dry for your modern sensibilities. But I think there’s enough quirky strategy for how to deal with each opponent to make this a worthwhile remix of the original game. Consider it a supplementary reimagining that puts your skills Through a grueling marathon of wall to wall combat. I just love that even the oldest games can continue to be iterated on by it’s fans and given new gameplay loops. Just because the game is done with us doesn’t mean we’ll stop finding new ways to enjoy it.

I give this game infinite tears out of ten.