Lenna's Inception

For a randomized Zelda Link's Awakening, it's a fun time easily worth the price tag. Had a great time/.

I was referred to this game by CalhounMKZ, a fellow streamer. Throughout my experience, I found myself consistently impressed. Almost all of the maps are procedurally generated, but the only times I got stuck were my fault. The items are mostly what you would expect from a top-down Zelda experience, but they tie into the way you interact with the world in a really enjoyable way. The puns, references and writing in general made me smile and groan in just the right ways. Once the regular playthroughs are done, they have additional challenge modes, leaderboards and endless replayability through different world seeds. I am so glad I played this, and will definitely be checking out other games from this team!

I played the original Zelda on the NES and A Link to the Past on the SNES. I understand these titles tend to be VERY light and laconic in establishing their setting, but there's at least SOME attempt to leave your immersion not too badly battered. Link is in some sort of wilderness, away from the trappings of society. There's distance between major locations and events. In this game, there's a murder scene *literally* one screen away from a street vendor, with pedestrians wandering aimlessly back and forth, and nobody does anything, it doesn't occur to the protagonist to inform anyone. I barely played for an hour and I killed two bosses. This game feels like it's terrified of losing the audience's attention and it just has to vomit its main beats at them. Awful pacing. No joypad support. That's a great sign right there, but everything feels low quality and "off". Controlling the character doesn't feel smooth or "juicy". Every other bush awards you a health heart. Enemies are nuisances rather than threats. This is not a world to lose yourself in, like the original Zeldas were.

More than likely, if you're reading this over five years after release, you're here because of Cassette Beasts. So, put briefly: Cassette Beasts is a much better Catch-'Em-All than Lenna's Inception is a Zeld-'Em-Up. It's not bad, it's just not great. The game procedurally generates a world and dungeons like a Zelda randomizer, but the worlds don't really feel particularly different, because every item pretty much amounts to a new way to get around a different, specific one-tile obstacle, and the game just swaps those obstacles into the world in the order you're going to acquire the items to overcome them. Are there a bunch of rocks nearby? The next dungeon will probably be the bomb one. Do you see a lot of water? You'll get the swimming upgrade next. The dungeons themselves are also not particularly interesting, because they're built algorithmically. They often don't flow in a way that makes sense (for example, I feel like I got the dungeon map once I'd explored over 75% of the dungeon more than half the time), and just kinda feel like tedious checkboxes more often than not. The final dungeon is the only one that's handcrafted, and somehow that one feels worse, like it's purpose-built to waste your time. On the plus side, it's pretty short (15 hours got me through two full playthroughs), the boss designs are clever and all feel very different from one another, the music is pretty good, and the plot does have a fun little twist that encourages playing it a second time.

It's just alright. Its basically an early Zelda clone but a little more boring. The story is meh. There are side quests but they didn't seen mostly worth doing. Theres tons of items to collect for certain quests and upgrades but its very grindy and requires too many items. The game is mostly running between dungeons and getting an upgrade that allows you to get to through the dungeon and be able to get to the next dungeon. Every dungeon boss is gimmicky and can only be damaged by the item or throwable you got in that dungeon which is cheesy. The overworld is annoying to navigate as you are constantly blocked from getting to the next dungeon because of the randomness of upgrade because of the procedural-gen (which adds little-nothing to the game). Plan to waste a lot of time running around the map looking for the single way you may have missed to progressed forward. The hit detection is wonky as well. But the game does a serviceable enough job as a Zelda clone as it has all the stuff required, and it could be worse. 7/10.

This game is absolutely my favorite game I've played in so long. I grew up on the OG zelda and this is something similar but also ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing. I love the exploration, and story. The puzzles and combat could be a bit better but each world is generated on the spot so I get it. If you love old Zelda games than this is for you.

Quite a fun Zelda-like game with fun humor and 4th wall breaking skits