Oracle of Ages/Seasons

Oracle of Seasons and Oracle of Ages are two games that were developed to be linked together on the Game Boy Color. After beating one game, you get a code to input into the other that turns it into a sequel game (and you’ll get extra items and perks that will carry over). After beating both, you fight Twinrova and Ganon.

These are both complete games in of themselves, but obviously if you’re going to play one you’ll play the other. Both games had some really fun dungeon design that were quite enjoyable.

Oracle of Seasons in my opinion had much weaker design overall, and I found myself bored with some of the dungeons and such. Seasons also had more complex sidescroller sections which were awful. Link’s Awakening had sidescroller sections but they didn’t push it, because the developers recognized that the sidescroller controls weren’t great. In Seasons they make you do a disappearing block puzzle like in megaman. Those are aggravating in megaman and that has good controls!

Oracle of Ages was great with some really fun dungeon designs. That is, until you get the mermaid suit and then the controls are absolutely dreadful for two dungeons. You have to tap a direction to move a bit, so in order to do anything, you essentially have to frantically tap the D-pad to move.

Both games have a trading sequence but they aren’t that silly, which I partially attribute to the lack of furries. There are significantly more extraneous NPCs in these games which can make things more difficult to process.

Both games also have animal friends which are essentially vehicles. They all control pretty poorly and are only used in like one sequence so it’s pretty strange that they bothered. But the weirdest part is the flute. Depending on how you get the flute, it will be linked to one and only one of the three animal friends. Whatever you link to will change the layout of one of the areas to require that friend. This is all invisible to the player, so you’ll probably just assume that you can’t link to other two, and that layout is always like that. It’s incredibly weird.

The games use an upgraded engine of Link’s Awakening so I wonder if Nintendo will remake it. I don’t think the Oracle games did well financially or handle a nostalgia fix so maybe not. Fixing the mermaid suit and sidescroller stuff would be pretty trivial to do I would imagine.

I would think they would overhaul the secret system that allows the transfer over. Personally I would make it similar to Broken Age where it’s two simultaneous games and upgrading your sword/shield will affect the other. You could drop the codes entirely that way and make a pretty cool experience.

I have no idea how you could fix the animal friends and bizarre flute thing though.

Overall I think these games are fun but with some weird design choices.