Blossom Tales: The Sleeping King

A good Link to the Past Zelda-like. Good puzzle variety in dungeons, bosses have some interesting abilities with a little challenge without being over the top. Minimal post game content, but a good amount of map to explore with things to find. The tools and combat upgrades you unlock have good variety, but most of them and up being pointless outside of solving their specific puzzle.

excellent game, buy it regardless of the pirce.

This is a fairly decent 2D Zelda clone, but it's really lacking some polish, and it shows. It's not a terrible game, but I feel like it currently has a much better rating than it warrants. First of all, the graphics are gorgeous. Nothing to complain about there. Really scratches that Minish Cap GBA itch. The story is okay - it's nothing special, but it doesn't need to be either. Some funny moments. Soundtrack is pretty good too, if a little repetitive. The game is pretty easy (I didn't die once), but that doesn't reallly bother me. But it's just not that fun to play. Some of my main annoyances, off the top of my head: - All weapons except the sword use an energy meter. While I usually like this approach better than having a limited amount of bombs/arrows/etc, most items use a significant amount of energy, and you end up constantly waiting for the energy meter to refill. You do get some meter upgrades, but they're tiny and don't really help much. - The sword is basically useless. Enemies that die in one hit from bombs/boomerang can sometimes take 4-5 hits from the sword. Combat just isn't very fun, and often boils down to throwing the boomerang three times then running for cover while waiting for the energy meter to refill. After three dungeons I finally got a sword upgrade, and it's just a sword beam when you have full hearts. No damage upgrade. Ugh. - The inventory is sorted by whatever order you get things, with no way to organize it. - The overworld map is pretty useless. It looks like they just took the full-scale sprite world and scaled it down in MS paint, so you can't really see anything. It doesn't remember your zoom setting, and since the map is mostly illegible, you never actually want the default zom level. And the dot showing your location is a single tiny pixel, which you'll spend a lot of time trying to locate. - Almost all the puzzles are the same three types, and (with a few exceptions) they're all easy enough to feel more annoying than challenging. - Movement feels very floaty and imprecise. Mostly not a big problem, but there's some platforming segments that just feel really unfair because of this. - Walking is also kinda slow. You do get a dash item after a while, but it uses up a third of your energy and moves you about three squares ahead, so it's pretty much useless. - When using the bow you have to spend half a second drawing it back before firing. More realistic? Yes. Is it fun? No. - Most enemies respawn instantly when you leave their screen, even in dungeons. Which is really annoying when the dungeons have you moving through the same room several times and you have to avoid all the enemies you just cleared out. - Theres a "travelling salesman" character which apparently is locked to the system clock and only appears at "working hours". The only reason I know this is because I read it in another review. The game doesn't really communicate this to you, so you could potentially spend a long time wondering why he hasn't showed up again (I did). - There are a million generic NPCs everywhere, who all draw dialogue from the same pools. It does make the world feel more alive, but there's no way to tell which of the NPCs are actually important. And in this type of game my first impulse is to talk to everyone and everything so I don't miss any hints. - All the houses also look the same, so good luck remembering where to find that one NPC who wanted to trade you something for that mushroom soup you just found. - There are treasure chests everywhere. And the reward is pretty much always some coins, a heart piece or an energy meter piece. And. since you have more than enough hearts by the time you reach the second dungeon, and energy upgrades (as I've mentioned) are pretty useless, none of those are particularly exciting. Exploration just doesn't feel that rewarding, because none of the upgrades really matter all that much. In the end, there's a few dozen small-ish things that bring the game down, and there's nothing really exceptional to make up for it. The game just feels kinda unsatisfying. Which is a shame, because it could have been pretty good with just a little more polish. Is it worth the 2 dollars or whatever it costs when on sale? Probably. Is it worth your time playing this instead of just replaying ALttP/Link's Awakening/Minish Cap/ALBW, or finding another Zelda clone? I'd say no.

Love the ambiance, a cute twist to classics like Legend of Zelda A link to the Past. Will play for sure the second one when I'm finished :D.

Just beat it, solid 8/10, like others have said I really messed with the bosses, and the overworld is quite charming too. lil side quests are cool and the npcs are funny sometimes, dungeons are solid and provide challenge but some sections are lwk enemy spam, but not the biggest issue whatsoever. charming ass zelda like game.

What a game! Must have been made by devilishly handsome devs.

Plays just like Zelda a Link to the Past for the retro systems. I played a lot of those 2D Zelda games and really enjoyed them. This game scratched that itch. Worked great on Steamdeck -- designed for booting up, play for 5-20 minute, then put down. It has auto-saving, summarizes the story to catch you up again, and the HUD/map tells you where you need to go next. Still allows you to explore a lot and rewards you for it. I explored a lot, and it made the main storyline that much easier -- exploration gives you bonus hearts and bonus weapons. While not required, they make the main storyline much easier.

I appreciate the "we need more zelda likes" ideal. Not to reduce this down to solely that. Fun, if almost too easy. Short but packed with enough to keep my interest. It is a short maybe 10 hour affair if you spend your time looking around for things. I actually replayed it as I saw that I had the second game and couldn't remember much from when I first played it years ago. I hope that the second is as good as this one if not better.

The game's cool, but some design choices worsened my experience, and these may bother you if you're picky like me. Controller customizability: It lets you assign items and gear to A, B and X. For instance, the sword could be assigned to X, the shield to A and the shovel to B. The thing is: It doesn't let you assign them to other buttons, such as RB, which would be nice for the shield, for instance. You do have the option to force RB to work as A via Steam Input, but the game's own interface doesn't adapt to it, of course, and it gets a bit confusing when you need to press the A button, yet it's you're pressing RB instead. Item descriptions: When you find a new item or piece of gear, the game gives you a brief description of it. The problem is: It never shows this description again, neither does it show the object's name, so it can get a bit confusing after a while. Dialogue: The game lets you check every previous piece of dialogue, or documents that the protagonist has read before. Literally everything. The bad part about it is that it's all a huge text, which is thankfully separated by dialogues, but you just scroll through it all. There's no way of filtering it, searching for key words, or even choosing between dialogues that took place in one part of the kingdom or another, which is a really bad choice. ----- My verdict is that the game is cool, the gameplay and story seemed good overall, but those design choices that I spoke of made it unpleasant to my taste, which is why I stopped playing the game and don't recommend it.