From the word go, The Minish Cap feels comfortably familiar yet enticingly new. It boasts the 'toon-shading' graphical style from The Wind Waker, the top-down 2D perspective of Link's Awakening, familiar locations and characters from across the Zelda dynasty, and tops it off with Link's shrinking ability and new gadgets galore. Even after just a couple of hours, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap's superbly structured gameplay had us grinning from ear to ear.
So join us as we dive into Link's latest adventure, and check out the video link above for highlights of our first hour's adventuring.
The story begins, as always, with Link fast asleep in bed. His grandfather, Hyrule's resident blacksmith, receives a housecall from Princess Zelda, asking if Link can accompany her to the town's Picori Festival. "Don't let anything bad happen to her," advises grandpa as the kids set off. If only...
Every year, it is revealed, the people of Hyrule hold a party to celebrate the Picori - the tiny people whose magical powers helped banish darkness long ago. The most popular part of the festival is the sword fighting competition; the winner of which is allowed to touch the legendary Picori Blade - the weapon crafted by the Picori which now acts as a seal to a Pandora's Box of evil.
But the contest winner, a mysterious man named Vaati, has other plans. Seeking something within the box, he smashes the Picori Blade and unleashes its creepy contents upon Hyrule. However, whatever he believed to be inside is missing. Then, spying Princess Zelda - whose ancestral blood carries the power of light - Vaati seals her in stone before making his getaway.
Hyrule's elders quickly formulate a plan. A warrior must be sent to seek out the Picori and get them to restore the blade to its former glory. The problem is, Picori only appear to children. So, armed with his grandfather's best blade, Link volunteers for the job.
It's here that the game proper begins. As usual, Link's sword and shield are mapped to the A and B buttons, but he now also has a context-sensitive R button command. Hitting R while walking executes a forward roll. Later, Link will use R to pull switches or operate gadgets.
Link first finds himself in Hyrule Field, where he must head east into the Minish Woods. Not far on his journey, Link stumbles upon a strange green creature being picked on by Octoroks. When Link comes to its rescue, it introduces itself as Ezlo, who also has a bone to pick with Vaati after he turned him into his current bird-like form.
With no legs, Ezlo hitches a ride on Link's head as a rather fetching hat, and agrees to accompany Link as a guide (by pressing Select, Ezlo offers game hints). He begins by demonstrating his unique ability: to shrink Link to Picori size. In this form, Link is shown on screen by an arrow indicator, as he is only a few pixels high. But walk into a crack in the wall or a hole in the ground and the view switches to a new Picori perspective, where acorns are the size of trees and puddles become lakes.
In his new form, Link soon finds the Picori and - after eating a magic nut that allows him to understand their language - he discovers their real name: the Minish. They agree to re-forge the Picori Blade, but first they need the power of four elements scattered across Hyrule.
The first element - Earth - lies within the nearby Deepwood Shrine: the game's first dungeon. Inside, monsters and puzzles await the mini adventurer. One of the cleverest concepts we came across was a barrel (giant-sized to our tiny Link) in which he can run - hamster ball style - to roll to new areas.
Defeating Deepwood Shrine's mid-way mini-boss bestows Link with his first gadget: the Gust Jar. This magical piece of pottery works akin to a vacuum cleaner: clearing cobwebs blocking doors, blasting items at enemies, and sucking up dust from the floor to reveal hidden treasures. And when Link finds an expanse of water with seemingly no way across, he just jumps on a lily pad and uses the Gust Jar as a motor.
Once the boss key is within his grasp, Link faces off against his first end-of-level adversary, who will be familiar to fans of The Wind Waker. Remember those Chu Jelly creatures that you could dispatch with ease? In Minish Cap, just one Chu Jelly becomes a giant to little Link. How does he defeat it? Well, that would be telling...
Suffice to say that we survived to tell the tale, and headed back home to Hyrule Town for a quick snooze before commencing the rest of our journey. On the way, we met a man who sold us a Kinstone. These rare artefacts form a large part of Minish Cap's collecting side-quest, and you'll be hearing a lot more about them, and the rest of the adventure, in the coming weeks...
