Overall i don't think this game is any better than Link's Awakening (LA) due to the map feature being really useless here in Link to the Past (LttP). The map appears as an all black expanse giving little insight as to where you are, other than your relative distance to the dungeons. The second main factor that took away from the gameplay was not being able to defend with my shield. The shield instead is a passive item that cannot be toggled and doesn't actually function for defending physical attacks, all the pathetic shield in LttP actually does is deflect projectiles when facing them, weak sauce, Links Awakening corrected this flaw. The huge variety of items to collect are pretty cool, and set the precedent for all the rest of the Zelda adventures though here many of them are optional to complete the plot line and there are several pretty cool items in Lttp that never reoccur in the zelda series. The plot is much thinner in Lttp than in the games that came after it but what little plot there is here plays the exact same way as Ocarina of Time (OoT). The dungeon items, themes, soundtracks and order are very similar to OoT. I dont want to ruin anything for proscpective players, but yea, the dark world idea is awesome, very Oracle of Ages (OoA) type gameplay, awesome. At points the enemies can be really annoying with this stupid laptop key setup where the left arrow down arrow and right arrow are in a line with the up arrow above the 3 on top of the down arrow making a kinda upside down t configuration as apposed to the plus sign arrangement of the good old d-pad. laptops are weak. But thats not the softwares fault so it didn't effect my rating of this game.  Moldorb was the only really hard part for me because of this stupid key setup i'm using, buuut otherwise the enemies and bosses weren't all that challenging. Similarly to all the other Zelda games the bosses are just punks once you figure out how they move and how to hurt them. Moldorb wasn't trying to fight me though, i would wap him 5 times and he would push me off the edge. Any who, I digress. This game set the standard for all the Zelda games to come after and is a must play for any Zelda fan. Then, afterwards, go play Link's Awakening because that game is the better gameplay, more amusing plot, version of this game.        Way i figures it LttP=OoT+LA+OoA. You basically are getting the beta of all 3 of those dope ass games in 1 frustrating pass, do it up

I like the review though I think you should've paragraphed it!