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This hack claims to give you Ocarina of Time in the Zelda II engine, on which it more or less delivers. The overall setting is about as faithful to that of OoT as could be expected, right up to the final palace. Some parts required ingenious tricks, like how you get through the Gerudo Desert to the Spirit Temple (at least insofar as how I did it; it's possible that I missed another way). Other places, like the trek to recover the Cucco, were downright nasty. Probably the hardest thing to do in this hack is to go on the trail to get the Cucco and make it alive back out of the area.

I found that a minimum of grinding was necessary. In Zelda II hacks, this is invariably a good thing. Perhaps Miralupa could have found a use for the magical key, which doesn't make an appearance here. There were just enough graphics and music changes to give this the feel of a different game. If you're looking for a crossover between Zelda II and OoT, I would definitely recommend this to play.

This is one of the most clever Zelda 2 hacks I've ever played. It's been redesigned to be as close to the N64's Ocarina of Time as possible. With inventive use of vanilla tiles, level design and a ton of great 8-bit music mixes it comes closer to this goal than you'd believe. I particularly loved the redesign of the Death Mountain area to be Gerudo Valley, complete with overworld music change. The Raft becomes the Ocarina and it takes you to the future Hyrule, which is genius. The bosses are rearranged such that Barba is the boss of the Fire Temple, which is interesting because "Barba" is a poor translation of what was supposed to be "Volvagia," the actual fire dragon boss of the Fire Temple in Ocarina of Time.

Unlike most reviewers, I don't have a problem with challenging monsters and the brawling aspects of this hack. I like that you are put in some tough situations like multi-tasking axe throwing Darias and respawning birds, for example. What I don't like is that the primary design choice for the entire game is closer to "little thing pops out and you fall in lava and die." Every level, every cave and every temple finds a way to repeat this same frustrating premise. The best Zelda 2 hack I've ever played, Winter Solstice, has some of this too, but not every single level. In the later game when you need to find the chicken, it becomes every single room. Tricky jumps with bats overhead, fall in lava, dead. Running across crumbling platform, fish pops out, fall in lava, dead. Invincible Myu falls from the ceiling with no warning, fall in lava, dead. Over and over and over. It's just cheapness masking as challenge.

Also the consensus is right that the overworld enemy rate is way too fast. You can't step more than 3 paces before an encounter and it becomes extremely tedious to go anywhere. Especially because after you level up, you will typically just run to the right/left and skip it.

All in all, a memorable and very inventive hack that experienced Z2 players should check out. But even if you like tough hacks, you may find the gameplay closer to annoying than satisfying.

Ngl, Generally speaking I enjoyed this hack. It had some nice features I haven't seen in other Z2 RomHacks, so kudos for that!

But...

(SPOILERS AHEAD)

I consider it has some many flaws and plenty of room for optimization and improvements. I made a list of things I personally think it would make improve the experience:

ENEMIES & ENEMY ENCOUNTERS FEEL ODD

• Reduce the starting timer for enemy encounters to default and make their sideview maps bigger with non-respawning enemies.

• Make Tektites (jumping big spiders) non-respawning. I exploited a grinding spot with 2 Tektites and 1 red Basilisk to max my Sword Level to 8 in like 15 - 20 min.

• Persistent Red Stalfos instead of Blue Stalfos

• Respawning Blue Stalfos on strategic places in Palaces

• Invulnerable Myus into very resistant Myus.

• Non-Jumping Orange Fokkas.

• Make colored Moas non-respawning.

SPRITES & DESIGN:

• Z2 Redux sprites and UI would make the experience more pleasant overall

• The lack of background in sideview maps make the game look lame. I know the main purpose of this is to hide invisible floor or obstacles, but some designs just look plain lazy and boring.

• There's a room in the Desert Palace with floating blocks moving vertically up and down that act glitchy... Just no.

SPELLS & MAGIC COST

• Light spell should cost 4 mana at Max Magic Level

• Shield spell should cost 8 mana at Max Magic Level

• Work with 4, 8, 16, 32, 40, 48 spell cost instead of odd numbers like 5, 10, 30...

• Raise spell is almost null. A one-time use to get a Heart... Why?

• Guard (Shield + Reflect) and Haste is the way to be!

I think this idea is brilliant and deserves more! That's it for now.

Overall Personal Rating: 6/10

As a fan of both Z2 and OOT, this hack scratched my nostalgia itch big time. It also hit the difficulty sweet spot for me, which is hard to do with a Z2 hack. I felt one of the maps in the Gerudo Training Grounds was a bit unfair and unfun, but that was really my only complaint.

The ingenuity and creativity with the concept, the combat challenges, the sprite changes, and the plethora of OOT Easter eggs made me want to see it improved. Porting over the music from OOT would be epic, for instance, and while custom ASM is hard, the cool factor could be much enhanced with some little custom mechanics here and there.

This inspired me to take more seriously my own hack I've been wanting to work on. Good work, looking forward to more from this creator!

[EDIT] The hack has music now! And the unfair room has updated. Life is good B-)

Like one of the other reviewers, I hate to not recommend this as I absolutely love the idea and creativity that went into rethinking a 3D Zelda game into not just 2D, but Zelda II's 2D RPG platforming. However, this game is just absolutely unbalanced.

I'm quite fond of Zelda II at its core and enjoy a challenge but this was just too much. Whether it's overworld battle 'monsters' spawning in what feels like 3 times as fast as vanilla, or the late game enemies with huge amounts of HP being scattered around absolutely everywhere, often times with companions that make getting out of an encounter with no damage range from very hard to impossible the game just isn't fun.

I feel like a reconsideration of enemy placement and maybe some temple redesigns could really make this game shine.

The concept of an NES version of Ocarina of Time is an interesting one, but not only basing it off one of the most difficult games on the NES, but *increasing* said difficulty has the downside of limiting access to only Zelda II veterans.

My experience with Zelda II is limited to vague memories of the first few dungeons, but I recall the level balancing being reasonable enough for what was the beginning of the game. Right off the bat here, the difficulty seems dramatically increased from the very start, to the point that trying to progress to any location is barely manageable if you haven't mastered the OG Zelda II.

And even if one is skilled enough, the random encounter rate is ridiculously frustrating for a hack that prioritizes a completely redesigned map as a core feature. It's very intriguing to try to explore a 2D 8-bit rendition of Ocarina of Time, and enemies trying to halt that every 3 seconds contradicts that.

I regret having to leave this as 'not recommended' because it shows so much creativity in how it recreates Ocarina of Time. The overworld is full of fun nods to the game like the Lost Woods and uses the second map in a clever way to represent the future Hyrule.

That unfortunately is where the problems start to show. The moment you leave the Temple of Time the hack goes completely overboard with enemy placement, with even normal random encounters bombarding you with so much that just escaping is a huge challenge. The dungeons after this stray further into bad design choices, with the forest temple throwing late game enemies around like they're out of style and the fire temple featuring multiple-screen stretches of nothing but disappearing platforms (with enemies regularly spawning in, of course) and an unavoidable death if you go the wrong way at the beginning.

This is a hack I'd love to see improve because there's a lot of clear passion toward both of these games behind it. But it's too much of a hassle to muscle through and see the good parts as it is.

As this hack's name implies, this hack is a recreation of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in the style of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link. I didn't think this combination would work, but this hack made it work in style! The overworld map is quite faithful to OoT, even down to the correct route through the Lost Woods to get to the Forest Temple and the mechanic of sending you back to the entrance if you go the wrong way. It also implements a very clever time travel mechanic using the Temple of Time as a raft spot that takes you to Future Hyrule with the Fairy Ocarina in hand.

Even the dungeons themselves were designed with their N64 counterparts in mind, with the Shadow Temple's invisible floors and hidden passages, having to go through the Spirit Temple twice (once to get the item needed for the Jump spell, and then using said spell to finish it later), and the mini-dungeons based on the other temples in Ganon's Castle. Also, thankfully the Water Temple was made much easier in this hack!

This hack also restores a dungeon that was cut out of the final product of the N64 game: the Light Temple. In the N64 game, the scrapped Light Temple was supposed to house an obtainable Triforce, and in this hack it gives an item needed to remove the Triforce icon guarding the entrance to Ganon's Castle the overworld map. Clever little reference there.

Difficulty-wise, this hack felt a bit harder than the OG Zelda 2, but not to the extent of other hacks I've played like Winter Solstice or Nightmare of Ganon. Still a fresh challenge for those who have played Zelda 2 to death!

Any fan of either The Adventure of Link or Ocarina of Time will enjoy this hack, and as someone who enjoys both, I had a blast with it!

Its one of the best Zelda 2 romhacks I have ever played, really clever way to simulate the time travel, it was really fun to play, however some parts were a bit frustrating like the Gerudo Training Grounds. The Shadow Temple was also really cool, the Future Hyrule was my favorite part of the romhack, the temples were really well made. In my opinion, it needs some of the Zelda 2 Redux Improvements, and instead of getting the Fairy Ocarina in Jabu Jabu, I think it would be a good idea to have Ruto there, changing the "Kidnapped Child" sprites, and having Shadow Link as a boss in the Water Temple.