Brilliant B Games: Legend of Zelda: Dark Dreams

A game does not always have to be 'well-made' to be 'fun'. In fact, I would argue that some of the most enjoyable games out there are some of the most poorly made. Like a good B movie, a good 'B game' fails spectacularly in one or more areas, such as in aesthetics, level design, balancing, controls, and/or writing, yet does so in a way which is neither frustrating nor boring. Thus I present Legend of Zelda: Dark Dreams, an RPG which crosses the Zelda series with the Kingdom Hearts series and fails on nearly every front; I have played it for about a dozen hours and enjoyed every minute of it.

So, how bad are we talking here? Well, this should give you an idea:

Cropped to perfection

  Right, so let's start with the plot. Sora, Donald, and Goofy appear mysteriously in the world of Hyrule and all come down with a bad case of plot amnesia before becoming friends with Link. Then 'Dark Dreams' appear and the group decides to stop them, but then Organization XIII show up too and then Ganondorf gets thrown in there somewhere. To say that it's a mess would be an understatement, but the game certainly does try. The writing 'quality' is where the plot truly shines though as rarely does a textbox go by without a few spelling and grammar errors ranging anywhere from the infamous 'i' to consistently using 'horrids' in place of 'hordes' and incorrectly spelling 'resurrection' no less than three times in a row with a different misspelling each time. The writing alone is likely worth playing through the game for, but Legend of Zelda: Dark Dreams has far more to offer.

Progression is completely broken. While players can walk to any dungeon from the Hyrule Fields hub, each boss gives a different 'Element' item upon defeating it which is used to open the door to the next dungeon; which dungeon the 'next' dungeon actually is is rarely indicated so this becomes a game of guess and test. But that's entirely fine since you can just skip most of the game anyway. One of the very last areas in the game is not actually sealed off and can be accessed at any point after the first dungeon so it's entirely possible to powerlevel off of the enemies in the area and kill its boss in order to simply skip over half the game. The events meant to delete boss fights are also broken, so any boss in the game can be refought infinitely simply by backtracking to its room.

Ability and gear progression is equally as broken. As a nice touch, there is a new subweapon to be found for Link in just about every dungeon. However, these subweapons can only be used in combat and are utterly useless as the abilities Link learns through simply leveling up are significantly stronger. Link's abilities in general are a mess though as ones which are learned earlier and cost lower amounts of MP frequently deal far more damage than supposedly stronger skills. Sora gets an absurd amount of keyblades to wields, probably at least as many as all the weapons the other three party members get combined, and some of these have interesting gimmicks attached to them, such as having a chance to double the party's experience or granting an increase in gold drops, but many of the gimmicks are also worthless, such as ones with extremely low damage and an element attached to them. Sora also spends a good chunk of the beginning of the game being nearly worthless, but he becomes astoundingly useful at level 25 when he learns Wind Raid, the first and only multi-target skill the party will have between them for quite a while. Donald has an absurd amount of skills with three spells for just about every element, all the healing spells in the game, and multi-target versions of every single status ailment for a grand total of 34 spells; Donald learns all ten of his status ailment spells at the same time when he hits level 30. In contrast, Goofy barely gets any weapons at all, though his weapons grant an extremely useful boost to his defense, and learns all of six spells throughout the game, all of which are damage-based, so thre is never any reason to use an older spell once Goofy learns a newer, stronger one.

You may be wondering about just what you're looking at in the picture above. Well, let me introduce you to the joy of basic design in Legend of Zelda: Dark Dreams. The Minish Cap sprite of Link is easy enough to discern, though the back end of his cap magically wraps around to hit him in the face while he's walking around, and Sora's sprite is fine too, but where are Donald and Goofy in all this? Well, the very blue man wearing yellowish-brown shorts is Donald, presumably because Donald tends to wear blue, and what looks to be a zombie soldier is, in fact, Goofy, presumably because pale green skin is the equivalent of wearing a green shirt in the world of this game. Ah, but where is this very square, vaguely demonic, and somewhat cave-like place with doors in front of doors and some questionably-attached stairs? Why, it's the inside of Hyrule Castle of course! Yes, the map design is frequently nonsensical in this game and more than once I had no idea what I was even looking at as floor tiles and objects are flung about haphazardly. Dungeons are generally very short, usually consisting of only about three to five rooms, and just about every room in the game, dungeon or otherwise, is a giant, mostly empty square with objects and treasure chests thrown about seemingly at random. Dungeons are also very formulaic as almost without exception they will have a narrow bridge near the end with a very easy miniboss fight consisting of three slightly strong-than-usual (though on some occasions far weaker than usual) enemies and after defeating the boss of a dungeon players will be teleported to a very empty field where they will encounter and immediately fight one of the many members of Organization XIII. It's atrocious and repetitive level design, but is so astoundingly mesmerizing that it becomes outright amusing.

Combat is broken, but in a way which is actually quite fun. Even the earliest bosses in the game tend to have skills which can one-shot a party members or even outright wipe out the whole party. However, this is balanced out by the fact that, aside from some bosses near the very end, any status ailment will work on just about any boss. Does the boss have an attack which can slaughter the entire party in one round? Just have Donald cast Blizzard on it for a chance to Freeze it for several rounds and have Sora and Link use their respective skills which have a chance to inflict Stun to ensure that the boss never gets a chance to do anything at all. Does the boss have several hundred thousand health? That's fine too, just have Donal use Mass Venom on it and it will lose about 10% of its maximum health per round while your party focuses on defending and healing. Nearly any physical skill in the game can one-shot party members, but Full Tonics both revive and heal to full and are quite cheap while Donald's second resurrection spell states that it revives an ally with 75% health, but really rings them back with full health anyway. Late game fights unfortunately devolve into everyone spamming their strongest skills while Donald constantly full-heals the party, but until that point there is a surprising amount of odd, horribly broken depth to the combat as bosses and normal enemies with cheap skills must be countered with equally overpowered abilities in order to stay alive.

Yes, the entrance to this 'pyramid' is marked by cacti

Lastly, this game actually has quite a bit of stuff to do. For example, there is a blacksmith which can upgrade shields and weapons into much stronger pieces of gear as long as you've found the appropriate crafting materials. There is also the pyramid arena, which consists of nine set of ten fights; completing the most difficult of these sets grants access to the Expert set and, upon beating all ten rounds of this one, players can access to a miniature dungeon filled with great treasure, high-level enemies, and an optional boss. There are even several (often broken in one way or another) sidequests scattered throughout the game and three very challenging (unbalanced) optional bosses which can be fought at any time. Furthermore, finishing the game grants access to the massive 'Cave of Remembrance' which contains rooms related to each of the dungeons in the game, stronger versions of every dungeon's boss, and literally dozens of new bosses as well as four different boss rushes.

The final thing which really skyrockets this game into the realm of B game perfection though is something not even within the game itself. The site which this game can be found on only has one review for it. Said review is titled "Good Game!", the reviewer gave it an 8 out of 10, and the review in its entirety reads as "This game by far is probably one of the greatest i've played". Said review is also marked as being submitted by Duncanrpg2011, who also just so happens to be listed as the developer of this game.

Legend of Zelda: Dark Dreams can be found at rpgrevolution.com here
The working download for the newest version of the game can be found at RapidShare here
A fight I recorded against an optional boss can be found here