Piece of Heart: The Minish Cap (Ends 10/18)

[SilentSnake]

Perhaps a more readily available handheld Zelda is in order.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
Flagship/Capcom | GBA | Shrinking Adventure | 2005

Think small!

[Bongo]

The last time I got a hankering to play this game, I discovered that I had lost my copy. I think this counts as desperate times, such as what calls for desperate measures.

[Tanto]

As far as I'm concerned, this is easily the most forgettable Zelda game. I've gotten hundred-percent completion on it twice and still remember virtually nothing about it. Its strategy guide is actually more memorable to me, because I picked it up from a clearance rack for a buck and used it as bathroom reading material for awhile. It's not bad, by any means -- but it completely failed to stick with me in any meaningful way.

At any rate, M&L3 is done, I don't feel like going back to Pokémon at this time, and I'm dead broke, so this seems the perfect time to give it another shot.

[Nobuyuki]

I made it fairly far, to the sky dungeon, but just kinda lost interest. This to me felt like the first Zelda that was just going through the motions.

[_L_]

Apart from this and Harley's Humongous Adventure (SNES), how many other entries in the Shrinking Adventure genre are there?

[Bongo]

It's going through the motions, true, but this game is reminding me just how satisfying said motions can be.

Then again, I'm still early. Trying to get up Mount Cremel. I've forgotten how to do this part. Business scrub says his friend in a cave in Trilby Highlands has the clue, but there's only one cave currently accessible there and it's obviously not got anything I can use. I feel I'm missing something obvious.

[Kishi]

There's a very incidental part in this game where it rains, so it plays a GBA-ized version of the track "Time of the Falling Rain" from A Link to the Past. But that track is an abridged version of the prologue theme from the same game, so it carries all sorts of portentous connotations and dramatic weight. But, again, it only plays here because the scenes in both games have common weather. It's like they saw an opportunity for fan service but completely missed the point.

Which is a pretty good microcosm of the game in general.

[Violentvixen]

I remember liking this one quite a bit, but it's been years. Time to see if my memory is any good.

[Rosewood]

This was actually the first Zelda I got any ways through, and that quite recently. I choked on the final boss rush for a couple reasons, which I'll white out the second one just in case

(1) I found only one bottle for a fairy and that wasn't enough considering
(2) I never figured out how to efficiently deal with the big armored guys.

I may refer to a FAQ for the second part so I can finish MC up for good. I didn't use a FAQ for much, if any of the rest of it, which makes me think that overall it's easier than other Zelda games.

[BrianC]

I just played through to the first dungeon to remember what this game was like, and I have to say that it's pretty fun! This and the other Capcom Zeldas have gotten mixed reception over the years but I still like them a lot (At the very least, they're a lot better than Phantom Hourglass, which really felt like going through the motions for me). Also, I think that Minish Cap has one of the best hub towns in the game. There's just so much to do and they do some clever things with the shrinking mechanic.

Regarding the music, you have to give it a little credit as I believe it is the only Zelda to contain a remix of a Zelda II song (The reference was of course missed at first by me and probably others too because it comes from the Japanese version).

My favorite song in this game has to be the this, though.

[Sanagi]

Originally Posted by Bongo Bill

It's going through the motions, true, but this game is reminding me just how satisfying said motions can be.

Then again, I'm still early. Trying to get up Mount Cremel. I've forgotten how to do this part. Business scrub says his friend in a cave in Trilby Highlands has the clue, but there's only one cave currently accessible there and it's obviously not got anything I can use. I feel I'm missing something obvious.

I think that's as far as I got before losing interest.

[McClain]

I liked this game, but it wasn't very memorable for some reason. I think it's best feature was looking amazing for the time. Some of the details when you shrink down are really cool.

I don't like how rarely when you are shrunk do you actually feel small, though. I wish the dungeons had somehow revolved around this more. Maybe there should have been more the town or something.

I think one thing I do like about this game is how I didn't feel like I had to do all of the side quests without missing something. TP's gold bugs always, ahem, bugged me because I knew I was just a few off and the prize was good. I didn't feel that way about the kinstones, etc.

[reibeatall]

This is in my top 3 Zelda games, mixed in with LttP and TP. I don't know the order, but those ones were them.

[MetManMas]

While I enjoyed Minish Cap from start to finish, there's something about that game that left a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. Maybe it was due to it having 2/3rds of the normal Zelda dungeon count (1/2 of LttP), or the somewhat random nature of the Kinstone fusions (which I 100%ed -.-, or the grindfest for getting the shells for those last few figurines to unlock the sound test (Also 100%ed >_<, or only being able to get the Mirror Shield after it's outlived its use (Post-game fusion? WTF?!), or maybe it's just that I friggin' 100%ed the game.

It did have some sweet visuals, dungeon designs, and awesome remote-controlled bombs and boomerang, though. I might join in.

[Calorie Mate]

Originally Posted by Nobuyuki

This to me felt like the first Zelda that was just going through the motions.

More or less. And with Phantom Hourglass delving even further into that category, I am very concerned about the current state of portable Zeldas.

[Grignr]

Minish and the Oracle Zeldas always made me claustrophobic with their carefully-partitioned world maps. With Metroids, you can look up to the ceiling and think "Someday I'll spider-ball all the way up there." With Minish Cap, you think, "Someday I'll be able to cross to the other side of that really short fence."

I did like how it built the backstory for the fake-GBA-continuity games that they started with Four Swords on LTTP GBA.

[Kazin]

Last year, I played through Minish Cap and compared it to Phantom Hourglass, and discovered I preferred Minish Cap. This surprised me, because, much like Tanto, I remembered almost nothing about the game, and assumed that because of this it wasn't very good.

It really did highlight for me how much I hated Phantom Hourglass, though.

[Tanto]

I think the game should wait at least an hour before forcing you to hunt down unmarked bombable walls. What is this, 1986?

Also, Ezlo is by far the most intolerable secondary character in any Zelda game, which is saying something in a series containing Navi and the King of Red Lions. I'd forgotten how annoying he is, and he never shuts up.

[Donny]

Minish Cap is excellent but the kinstone and seashell sidequests can go right to hell and die. So friggin' tedious. The kinstone rewards are for the most part worth it but tracking down the last few combinations can get really grating. And the reward for the seashell sidequest just simply isn't worth it.

[MetManMas]

Originally Posted by donnyfightworld

Minish Cap is excellent but the kinstone and seashell sidequests can go right to hell and die. So friggin' tedious. The kinstone rewards are for the most part worth it but tracking down the last few combinations can get really grating. And the reward for the seashell sidequest just simply isn't worth it.

As awesome as "Legend of Zelda" and "sound test" being in the same sentence is, I have to agree that the tedious shell grinding isn't worth unlocking it. I don't know what's worse, that I actually got all the Goddamned sprites with flavor text for that sound test room access, or that I know that using the Rupee-boosting Picolyte and slashing up grass to get Rupees to buy the fucking shells is faster and a better monetary deal than doing the same with shell-boosting Picolyte. ME BRAIN HURT LOTS THINK BOUT. @.@

[Kirin]

I enjoyed Minish Cap, but I just played it a year or so ago when I was catching up on GBA games via my Lite, so I don't think I'll be popping it back in right now. I agree with BrianC that the hub town was pretty great, and I'm also in the same boat as Metal Man in that for some god-forsaken reason I was compelled to 100% the game even though the figuring grind almost killed me. Kinstones I didn't mind so much, as opening up little snippets of stuff on the world map was fun, though I did use a check-list to help track down the last several stone pieces.

[Violentvixen]

Originally Posted by Tanto

Also, Ezlo is by far the most intolerable secondary character in any Zelda game, which is saying something in a series containing Navi and the King of Red Lions. I'd forgotten how annoying he is, and he never shuts up.

Yeah, I started playing last night and man... he's awful.

[alexb]

Yeah, he was a big reason why I never quite finished this. The other was that the kinstones interface is a real pain in the ass. Actually, the entire kinstones concept is tedious.

[Patrick]

Ugh, this is another game where I got to the last boss but gave up before beating him. I can't remember whether I couldn't figure out how to beat him, or if I figured it out but didn't care by that point. I thought the rest of the game was pretty fun, but it's towards the bottom of the pile of Zelda games overall.

[Violentvixen]

I really like the look and music of this one, but as with most Zelda games I just stop caring about the puzzles and get annoyed in the dungeons. Meh.

[Tavir]

I got this game at the end of my sophomore year of college. With nothing to do in that time after my last final but before moving back home and with all my friends and roommates already gone for the summer, I plowed through this game in a single day. I remember really enjoying it and being really drawn in and addicted to it (one of those "oh shit, it's 7 hours later, I guess I should eat something" moments), but like a lot of others, I don't remember too many specifics about the game. I've oddly never played it again. Now might be a good time to do so.

[Phantoon]

I didn't mind it at all. Vaati's a nice change from Ganon, the Four Sword gave interesting new mechanics (and I liked the White Sword reference) and most of all it added a lot to Link's attacking repertoire - the Sword Masters gave you good new moves which were fun to use. The roll slash especially.

Also, it contained this piece of music.

All in all I found it fairly forgettable (for a Zelda) but it did enough new stuff to be worth playing.

[Tanto]

I hate how restrictive this game is. Virtually every building and area in the game is blocked off until the exact moment you need to go there to do plot-related stuff, at which point it's silently unlocked. Whenever you become stuck you have no recourse except to wander around to all the areas that were blocked off before and see if anything's changed in the meantime.

[Dhroo]

I'd really like to join in and play this game through a second time(like others, I remember virtually nothing about it), but I lent my copy to my little bastard younger cousin a few years ago and never got it back.

I do remember it being pretty by-the-numbers, but I always like seeing new items such as the mole mitts.

[Alixsar]

WHAT WE STARTED THIS AND NO ONE TOLD ME WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT SNAKE YOU NEED TO TELL ME THESE THINGS

Minish Cap is the best portable Zelda. Period. It's world may not be big, but the dual world dichotomy has never been done better in any Zelda game before or since. The Kinstones lend the game a "gotta catch 'em all"-mentality. Whether that's good or bad is debatable, but I think it's good. It adds an extra layer to exploring the small overworld. New areas and paths open up as you progress through the game and trade Kinstones, giving this Zelda an almost Metroid-like sense of progression. Pretty much every memorable Zelda NPC makes an appearance (not all of them, but a great deal of them), and the Wind Waker-inspired art style works perfectly on the GBA. The dungeons are challenging without being brutally hard, and the final boss fight is one of the more unique final encounters in the series.

Handheld Zelda games are great because, generally speaking, they like to do new things with an old idea. While the console games have moved into the third dimension, the handheld games are still being made in the top-down mold of the original. They keep that old school gameplay alive while adding new ideas. What if Link could change the season? Alter time? Minish Cap asks what if Link could shrink, and then goes one step further. What if, instead of exploring two worlds (like in LttP or TP), you explored the same world in two different ways? And bam. There's Minish Cap. As if that's not enough, there's the Pokemon-aspect of the game as well. It's three new twists on the still-fun old school Zelda format.