Played on GameBoy Advance

I want to make it clear right off the bat here that this is just going to be a review of The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords. I’m aware that A Link to the Past is also included in this game, but I didn’t ever wind up playing it. I’ve played through the original game for SNES, and I’ve even already written a review for it that you can check out if you want to. I go far more in-depth about how amazing that game is in that review, so it would be redundant for me to talk about it again here. So, this is just going to be a review of Four Swords, which was the whole reason I got this game to begin with.

Four Swords is still your typical, bare-bones Zelda story, where Link must rescue Zelda. Instead of Ganon, though, this time he has to stop a new villain named Vaati (who also went on to be the villain in Four Swords Adventures and Minish Cap). All of this is just set up for the pure reason of giving Link a new adventure to go on, though, so there’s not really anything else to say about the story.

The gameplay is the whole reason Four Swords was made in the first place. Four Swords is unique among the Zelda series in that it’s a multiplayer-only Zelda game, and all of its mechanics are designed around co-op play. This might be a barrier for some players, since I understand not everyone has someone that’s willing to play it with them. If you don’t, then I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to play Four Swords. There is also a barrier to entry here in terms of cost and necessary hardware. You can play Four Swords with up to 4 players, but you only need 2. However, that means at minimum that you need to have two GameBoy Advances, two copies of the game, and a link cable. Nowadays, especially, this might be sort of hard to come by. I had spent about $100 on Ebay to get all of the necessary equipment, and it’s hard to justify recommending other people to do that.

But anyway, if you are able to get someone else to play with you and all of the necessary equipment, Four Swords is a pretty fun adventure. The co-op elements are really well-implemented especially. Sometimes it’s as simple as two players needing to stand on a button at the same time to open a door, but other times it can be as complicated as a pathway only being visible to one player, requiring them to communicate to the other player(s) about how to proceed forward. I thought this was all really fun, especially when it came to things like a boss battle where each player has one weak point that they can hit on the boss depending on what color Link they are.

However, the flip side to all of this is that because of the nature of what the game is, it’s also easily the shallowest Zelda game on a mechanical level. I think the biggest example of this is that in most Zelda games you continue to acquire new items on your journey and build up an inventory in your adventure, while in Four Swords you are only able to hold one item in your inventory at a time. So, if you want to use a different item, you have to actually encounter it in the world and trade it for the one that you currently have. This ends up making it so that the solutions on how to proceed end up being a lot more obvious. Speaking of that, there aren’t any “true” dungeons like there are in normal Zelda games. You’re actually entering levels, and these levels are just giant maps that you have to figure out how to get to the end of. It’s a much different approach to what most Zelda fans are going to be used to, but I actually did think it worked for what it was.

On a technical level, I think that this is probably one of the most standard Zelda titles. I think the game looks decent graphically, but there’s also hardly any areas of the game that truly blew me away. The same goes for the music. While I can easily recall how something like the Gerudo Valley tune from Ocarina of Time goes, I really don’t remember any of the music from Four Swords. It all sounds fine and aids the adventure, but there isn’t any standout music here.

For better or worse, the game is actually incredibly short. There are five “worlds” you can go to in the game, and each world has two levels and a boss fight. So, you’ll typically spend under an hour in each world. My partner and I beat the game in under 4 hours. Game length is always a weird debate among gamers, but I think that because Four Swords is a co-op only experience, it needed to be as short as it is. It can be hard for a lot of people to get them to play through an entire game with you, so I think Four Swords has the benefit of being more accessible due to its short length.

I ended up liking Four Swords for entirely different reasons than I normally like Zelda games. I think that Four Swords probably has some of the easiest puzzles of the Zelda series, and the game really doesn’t have a ton to offer in terms of depth for gameplay. However, it’s inherently designed to be played as a co-op experience, and it shines in that department. A co-op Zelda experience is pretty unique for the most part, and I ended up having a lot of fun playing this with my partner. If you’re a fan of Zelda games, have someone that’s willing to play with you, and can get your hands on all of the necessary equipment to play the game (I know that’s a lot of “if’s”), then I think Four Swords is definitely worth trying out.

3.5/5