The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past No Damage/Eff. Minimalist Run - Eastern Palace

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Master Knight DH

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Published on October 14, 2020 8:52:36 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcVkLoMHtpk

Game:

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991)

Duration: 18:28

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-Non-free items needed for primary objectives: Bow with 6 Arrows (3 Red Eyegores requiring 2 Arrows each)
-Non-free items needed for secondary objectives: none
-Demonstrations: Bow 1HKO on green Eyegore, Lamp usage on torches in darkened rooms

The Eastern Palace, as the first dungeon in the game, is basically a starter level as far as Link to the Past goes. It's already showing how Link to the Past has more depth in its pinky with the dungeon design than the NES Zeldas did in their subscription to their seemingly random for their own sake design, Zelda 2 being the worse offender by the way. While the worldbuilding within the dungeons isn't that developed at this point in the series, what we get is still good enough when they're bound to be more focused on gameplay.

Here, well, concepts such as the Big Key are new in this game as far as the Zelda series goes, and the swordfighting gets actual polish thanks to the spin attack providing added options. The Stalfos enemies will be happy to use their jumping back to highlight those added options, and although there's no penalty right now to causing the jump backs, it does signal to the player to want to consider the deterrent attack, the spin attack, and some actual tactics thrown into the mix if they aren't doing that already. Eyegores also suggest to the player to consider using the inevitable dungeon item for at least some convenience once you have it, with the red ones even outright forcing the usage of the Bow to eliminate them.

Guarding the Pendant of Courage is a scare factor in a Wolfpack Boss known as the Armos Knights. Since the Bow uses ammo in addition to being a range weapon, I will not consider it free at all, and for that, obviously, I can't go with the option of 3HKOing each of them that everybody milks for what it's worth in the 90s game balancing involved here. I'm having to use the Sword, which requires significantly more blows to bring down. As a note, the Boomerang can actually hurt the Armos Knights, though for less damage, but it's ranged and bordering on optional as a whole for this full Self Imposed Challenge (I actually would need it at certain points to preserve more important rules), so Sword it is. Fortunately, since the Armos Knights have predictable behavior with significant blind spots and their line formations can be disrupted, they aren't too bad.

Something of note, though, that I only found out post-recording, is that the developers decided to have the regular and deterrent attacks from the sword deal MORE damage than the spin attack, not the other way around, because the spin attack would be obvious group busting. Funnily enough, this applies only for the Level 1 Sword, so if we were able to SOMEHOW fight the Armos Knights with a better Sword, or end up rematching them in, say, a Boss Rush with some additional complicating factor, after getting a better Sword, the spin attack would no doubt be the attack dealing more damage instead.

Oh, and if you're wondering, the final Armos Knight in his Turns Red phase DOES have his HP restored to full upon the transition. I had thought otherwise at the end because I was using regular attacks.

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