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I've played and I have enjoyed most of the main Z2 hacks to various extents, but I think Winter Solstice is still the best. The design is great, the overworld is freaking awesome. The secrets are reasonable. It's difficult, but as far as Z2 hacks, WAY reasonable. I literally made an account just so I can leave this review. Winter Solstice is awesome. I hope there'll be more from the creator.

Wow.... This is one of the best hacks ever created for any game. So good. Making it winter is one of the best ideas I've ever heard of. It's harder than the original which I love. It's a totally amazing new overworld. Everything is moved around and found in a different order. Palaces are totally new and absolutely beautiful. The 3rd palace Entrance & Exits might be the most beautiful piece of Zelda 2 I've ever seen. Some music is changed and sounds nice. I could go on an on. Everything is different and it's an amazing adventure completely changed.

This is as close to a perfect game as I've ever seen. It is definitely hard tho. But I was able to beat it with lots of practice. It took me like 40 hours at least because I die a lot on the hard hacks and have to walk all the way back to the same places over and over. This game gets the highest recommendation I can give. Hoping this hacker will make us a SUMMER SOLSTICE!!! Or any more Zelda 2 of any kind please. I'd love to see more ideas where the whole world is in a different season or something like that. Perfect Game

This hack poses a small challenge, and the artwork is beautiful.

I've ran through this game several times and still have fun with it.

Not going to lie, it did give me a few problems at first but I found talking to town folk, and writing down the hints really helped me out a lot.

The final palace is a bit challenging, but as to be expected.

Whoever put this hack together definitely took a lot of time, and put a lot of love into it. This hack is by far my favorite out of all the ones I have tried.

The artwork, the story... its so well done.

It reminds me of a Zelda 2 remake, one made by Nintendo because of how well done it is. If you are looking for a unique Zelda 2 hack approach, with a brand new experience, I'd definitely recommend to try this one out.

The little puzzles are great and not too difficult, the combat is fun and not too overwhelming, and the fact that it is open world but it still gates you in a way and guides you through it. You can tell the creator of this hack put a lot of thought into how an average player would walk through and act while playing it for the first time.

Thank you for making such a wonderful hack GTM or whatever your name is lol.. this hack kicks ass

A great adventure for Zelda II enthusiasts!

# Difficulty:

+ Quite Higher than the original, at least by four or five times.

+ No guides required, no save states required.

- Too many game overs, most of them at the first half of the game. Half of them fighting Thunderbird. The single time it can feel really unfair when playing blind is the Thunderbird fight, needing to learn how Thunderbird moves, otherwise madness is guaranteed.

- Added platforming sections are very fun but, contain a couple of unfair death pits. On these an unseen enemy will get on screen when jumping to throw the player into a death pit, requiring to replay the section. These could have been easily ironed out.

# Graphics and design choices:

+ Overall graphics and design choices for the overworld, towns and palaces are simply stunning.

+ The white winter theme can be felt though the color palette. Graphics and design of the whole game are cohesive.

+ All bosses have been modified in some way that make the fight feel fresh. The fight with Dark Link is both tense and fun.

- Non-telegraphed overworld places are probably the worst part of Zelda II. This game is no exception.

# Music:

+ Themes quality ranges from good to great.

+ The final Palace theme.

# Gameplay Balance:

+ Continues at palaces.

- Grinding is sometimes needed to level up since experience is not saved. Since experience given by enemies has been halved grinding takes longer.

This game got a ton right about Zelda 2 and if you are skilled at that game, you'll find a ton of fun in this one. However, it has a few flaws that really should get ironed out since this hack borders so close to perfection.

Before I complain, the positives. This game absolutely nails the atmosphere and look of the game. The winter setting looks great and it feels as cold as it looks. Link's hooded cloak being up when he's outside and down in towns is a nice touch. The snowy mountains with lava flows, the frozen dunes, the full moon peaking through the forest; the Overworld is just great to look at. Some of the palaces have really interesting themes and gimmicks, like the backwards entrance in the River Palace, everything crumbling in the Sand Palace, the catwalks over the trees in the Forest Palace and all the tricks and trips of Carock's Lair. There isn't a lot of custom music, but when it's there I really liked it. The ruins of Kasuto, the little fishing village with no name, and the cemeteries of Mido are great.

People are mixed on the difficulty curve, but I think if you've mastered Zelda 2 you'll be okay with the stiff challenge. Z2 is infamous for starting hard and leveling out and this game feels the same. It's not easily survivable to stray too far from the first town you find until you've grinded a bit. The Lost Woods area is very tricky with so few heart containers and pumped up enemies at first. You'll end up wandering around sometimes not sure of where to go and having to face tough resistance while doing so. This was exactly my experience searching every nook and cranny in Z2 when I was young, so that was fun for me to experience again.

Now the nitpicks: There are rooms you face that are very deadly and rather than having these be one-offs or sprinkled in, they repeat over and over and over. A great example is in the Sand Palace with a room where you have to run across disintegrating bridges to grab a key from a block and back in one go. This is a very tough task and you have to do this for almost every key in the palace, I think like 5 times. It's way too much. It's a cool idea but there needs to be more variety or it just feels like getting beat over the head.

The bosses are pumped up in different ways, but only the first boss is dramatically different. I wish that the other bosses had more interesting changes like that. I will say that the key falling into the sand if you don't grab it fast enough against Barba is total baloney; it's a troll moment and not a fun one. A fun troll in the game is a one-way door in Carock's lair where a little fireball won't let you pass. It's clever and it doesn't just make you have to commit suicide.

The entire Thunderbird fight is really ridiculous. I would probably give this game 5 stars and say everything else is forgivable if this one thing wasn't so downright cheap. Getting one-shotted into a pit is goofy enough, but why prevent all other magic from being used? The first time I beat the Thunderbird I fell into the pit right after the final blow. When I restarted the room, the Thunderbird was already dead but the key never dropped. I had to just keep jumping into the pit until I got a game over and had to do the fight over again. Really frustrating for no good reason.

All in all, it's such a great work that I hope these things get fixed in time. I really give credit to the people who worked on it because it's the best Zelda 2 hack.

I've tried a few hacks of Zelda II that have been near impossible to complete, so this version was a welcome addition. To be clear it is more challenging than the original game but is still fun to play. I really liked the atheistic and winter theme throughout the overworld. The initial start in the maze is probably the one downside as you face some tough enemies right off the bat. However the leveling up is fair and you can easily up your magic/defense/attack a few levels before entering the caves.

I found the palaces to be well designed. Make sure to take heed of hints from townfolk as there are a few tricky puzzles that would be confusing without them. Most of the required spells and items were reasonable to find using hints throughout the town. There was one that I couldn't figure out later in the game that required downthrusting an invisible block in a town to fall into a basement.

Overall this was a a really fun hack for anyone whose looking to breath some new life into Zelda II.

Having beaten this hack, I have to admit that it has potential, but sadly, that potential is ruined by the fact that for every thing this hack does right, it does that many more things wrong. Throughout my live streams of this hack, I found myself constantly saying iterations of, "Was that really necessary?" and "Oh, c'mon!" as I found myself confronted with a variety of bad design choices including, but not limited to: Unbalanced and punishing Overworld enemies that have much higher health and yield half or less of their normal XP values (these battle scenes were so unrewarding that I found myself fleeing instead of fighting because they were more trouble than they were worth), Mario Maker-esque trolls and unfair deaths (such as a runaway Daira in a beginning cave that body slams you out of nowhere into an instant death pit mid-jump, a Mu you can't really see in the dark that trips you into lava, along with the repeated use of overall generally frustrating enemy placements near said death pits), several cases of enemy / hazard spam, numerous one-way passages that send you back to the beginning (although I can't really hold a grudge against that given Zelda 1 has done this often in the 2nd Quest), clues that were either too vague or misleading, a HorseHead in Palace 1 that's been so buffed (and now has a Blue Iron Knuckle as a bodyguard) that the World Record strat is to SKIP it entirely until much later into the game (likewise with the two containers found in the Lost Woods that most likely shouldn't be near the beginning of the game), needless restrictions on an already challenging Thunderbird fight (more on that later), and just generally not fun level designs for the most part. A lot of this I feel could've been offset by treating the player more fairly and giving the player a higher number of starting lives, perhaps 5, to minimize the repetition that results from the inevitably high number of Game Overs players will get (unless they cheat and use Save States).

Despite its flaws, the world map is fun and rewarding to explore if you have the patience to deal with the above stated issues. Various unlockable shortcuts make returning to a part of the Overworld you got Game Over in less painful. You can continue in a Palace if you get Game Over.

Eastern Hyrule is where the designer seems to warms up and the Palace designs start to become fun and engaging, along with having more vivid themes, with my personal favorite being Palace 5 - the Sand / Seashell Palace. Honestly I wish every palace in this hack could've been as rewarding as Palace 5 (although I feel the Barba fight might be near impossible without "jackhammering", plus the boss key has the potential to fall into the "quicksand" and screwing the player if they broke the collapsible ground near the center). Palace 6 was good too despite making me rage in the moment from being sent back to the beginning one time too many. The Carock fight in said Palace is much more interactive and fun than his vanilla Z2 counterpart. The Great Palace was actually relaxing and perhaps the easiest palace to navigate despite its scope, with my only complaints being the Thunderbird fight given the addition of both instant death pits and the inability to cast any spell OTHER than Thunder (no shield, no reflect, no life), and the lackluster music that replaced the Great Palace's theme.

Speaking of music, I can't write this review without praising how amazing the new Shadow Link battle theme is.

While this last part is mostly just a nitpick, I'm also really disappointed by the fact that despite the story claiming that Ganon "has taken physical form once more", Ganon is no where to be found in this hack except the Game Over screen which hasn't been edited at all (Return of Ganon? You just said he's already back...). You hear an ominous Ganon laugh several times in Great Palace, hoping for a new boss fight instead of just Shadow Link, but alas, Ganon is nowhere to be found. Where is this physical form we were promised? This just defeated the entire lore and point of the hack. Link braves the elements and more to fight a threat that never existed...

To conclude, I hope some day that this hack will get some much needed polish. Until then, I cannot recommend it.

Winter Solstice is an entirely new, and amazing, Zelda 2 experience. Everything is modified: the overworld, towns, caves, palaces and graphics. It also introduces new puzzles, new dialogues and original music. On top of that, the winter theme is perfectly respected throughout the entire game, and an incredible attention de details makes the player truly feel a part of the world. It's obvious that a lot of love has been poured into this project.

All of the palaces have a different theme that gives them charm and personnality (Fire, Forest, Desert, etc.) Those themes aren't simply aesthetic, but also affect gameplay elements and level design.

The game is slightly more challenging than the original, which is the point of most hacks on this website. However, the difficulty is far from overwhelming and the overall balance is excellent. The secrets are all designed fairly and the characters in towns have truly useful hints, making it so you don't have to wonder around aimlessly while searching every single overworld tile. Also, unlike other hacks of Zelda 2, grinding isn't extremely tedious.

So if you love The Adventure of Link and are looking for a new challenge, you should definitely give Winter Solstice a try. It is the most complete hack for Zelda 2 and truly feels like a new game.

Right off the bat, the redone graphics are really well done. This game feels like a love letter to Zelda 2. When playing Zelda 2 as a kid, I remember it as a very difficult game and this definitely brings back that nostalgic feeling for me. This game is tough, but it's definitely beatable.

As a Zelda 2 speedrunner and a fan of Kaizo Mario hacks, this feels kind of like the first solid example of a good, difficult Zelda 2 hack. I wouldn't really consider this a kaizo hack, but like kaizo I would say that this hack isn't made for everyone, and that's okay. To enjoy this hack, expect it to be difficult, expect some trolls, expect to get stuck on some of the puzzles - take your time and just enjoy it.

I've seen people complaining that this game can only be beaten with save states - if that's how you can best enjoy the game, do that, but it's by no means necessary. The game feels difficult but overall fair. Knowing that the creator of this hack is also a Zelda 2 speedrunner gives some insight into the design and difficulty of the hack.

The palace designs were very creative, especially on Eastern Hyrule. I love how the different map sections blend together almost seamlessly so it feels like a much larger map than it actually is instead of the 4 distinct areas that there are in the vanilla game. For a game that has so many more limitations on what you can do in a hack (compared to SNES games, for example), this game has some very good and creative puzzles.

I hope this hack inspires more people to make complete Z2 hacks.

I gotta say that the pics on here don't remotely do this justice. The game is so well-designed and I generally dislike graphics hacks on old games, but this is all so tasteful. The difficulty is higher than the original, but not that bad. You just have to take your time as you go. I'm stuck trying to find the town that will give me the Jump spell, but after playing a couple of hours, I'm very impressed. The whole atmosphere is wonderful and I would recommend this to anyone, even if you just want to play it for an hour or whatever.

EDIT: I just wanted to add that if you aren't using save states, this hack is going to be too hard for 99% of people. I'm also still stuck because I can't find an item I need.

The original Zelda II was a fairly difficult NES game with occasional cheap deaths and an excessively punishing game over system. Despite the somewhat negative description I gave it, Zelda II is not without a solid difficulty curve. For the only Zelda game with an experience system, the grind isn't that noticeable (barring game over mechanics).

I preface with this because I cannot possibly comprehend the mentality behind complete Zelda II hacks like this that spend so much time and effort on redesigning the map, UI, and graphics but then go to relish in irritating grinds, horrible difficulty from the get go, and gigantic treks through ruthless areas combined with the original game's frustrating game over system. It's such a waste of energy.

There was a time in my life where I had the patience to put up with hacks that practically forced you to use save states, but nowadays I just call them what they are: poorly designed. I can only hope some day someone will have the ambition to build a hack that thoughtfully takes on Zelda II's structure with greater care and consideration for the player. Today is not that day.

I don't understand the hype. Very overrated. Bad cave and level design with not much thought put into it at all.

A very cool hack with great balance that doesnt add difficulty with cheap deaths. Helpful hints from NPC's and the palace design is awesome. When you get to the last palace you get a great treat too :)

Play it!

This mod of LOZ2 is very well done. It has an interesting storyline and keeps you involved. It is a total remake! The towns, palaces, caves and overworld are completely reworked. The GFX are also completely reworked and really set the mood for the cold/winter theme. The difficulty is somewhat higher than the original game, but not so difficult as to make it less fun. It does take some skill.

If you're a fan of Legend of Zelda 2, you will love this project! Download, apply and enjoy!

Winter Solstice is a full game edit, complete with custom graphics, some new music, overworld and sidescrolling sections.

Graphic edits in particular are extremely detailed and consistent throughout the game. It feels like a brand new Zelda game that is simply based on the Zelda II mechanics.

Combat difficulty is increased from the original game (especially early game), mainly due to more and tougher enemies and more tenuous platforming sections, but milestones are rewarded and backtracking is minimized. "Nintendo Hard" at its best.

If you thought you were good and enjoyed Zelda II, Winter Solstice is commended to you as a masterpiece.