I loved this game growing up. I beat it without any assistance, which made it very rewarding. I remember skipping school once to try and finish this game. You should grind early, especially building up your attack, to make life easier in the later dungeons. Fighting dark link for the first time was awesome!

Don't plug in any of the Crystals until you're six levels or less from maxing out your levels (8/8/8) and don't touch any of the 1-Ups until you're ready to take on the Great/Final Palace.

Watch out for the Glitch Gremlin.

I have gotten to the last dungeon, but I have yet to beat the game.  Just walking to and entering the last dungeon was a challenge to me so I rage quit.

I might have to give the game another shot because I recently aquired the original FDS version of the game.

Played through this a few weeks ago and found that my enjoyment/appreciation of this title has risen quite a bit. I didn't find it nearly as difficult as I remembered from the days of yore, and actually would pick this one over the original if I had to choose.

I'm a huge fan, it's one of my faves. When I play, I grind out XP on some of the floating skulls, since they're worth 50 xp each. And like others have said, go back for the orbs later.

I was never a fan of Zelda II back when I was a kid. Definitely was and still am a fan of the original Zelda (and style as I'm currently playing Link to the Past on the SNES). Granted, because I did not like it then I have not bothered to pick it up. Once I finish the SNES version, I might give it a whirl. Are any of the hacked/home brew versions of Zelda for the SNES worthwhile?

The way stairs work in Castlevania is generally pretty irritating.

The speed of the character's movement is slow compared to any other scroller I can think of.

And counter to that the acceleration due to gravity is quite high (once you start falling you just drop)


The momentum in that game could have used some more tuning, IMO.
But the games are playable, you just have to figure out the "rules" and that they don't work like any other game series. (other than stuff like 8 Eyes)
 

Agreed.

Each of the hard spots in the game is immensely satisfying to overcome.

 

I love Zelda II and play it at least once a year. I would play Zelda II over Ocarina of Time any day of the week. Love the music and choice of "instruments" in Zelda II as well.

If you're willing to grind a little bit up front, Death Mountain and the rest of the game is more reasonable. In the first palace, there is a floating skull at the beginning of the room near the elevator going down to B2. Grind that guy out for an hour - always choosing to level up the sword. Beat the rest of the dungeon and make sure to level up something else before inserting the crystal to get another sword level before moving on towards Death Mountain. If you do this properly, you'll be at sword level 4 - 6. The orange axe alligator guys (Daira) will take max 2 hits and orange ironknuckles go down in one.

Secret Best Zelda.
 

"I gots glitches in me britches!" hahaha

 

You don't hear this too often about Zelda 2 but compared to what was on the NES up to that time, the graphics are amazing and very detailed (especially the enemies). And all things considered Zelda 1 also did a pretty good job in that department too.

This game is ruthless. It's like not even fun haha

How far did you make it?

 

That's called Nintendo Hard™

Correct. The beauty of "Nintendo Hard" titles, is that they not only get easier with practice - but they also get more enjoyable!

Battletoads is a prime example of this.

I'm on the third palace. I'm gonnna try and tough it out though.
 

The more you play, the better you'll get.  You got this!
 

I prefer the first one. It's not as bad as people make it out to be, but it's not my cup of tea

Even as a kid I never thought of it as a hard game. What's giving you trouble, and what levels are you? If by hard it turns out you really mean "Iron knuckles are dickheads" then yes, yes they are.

I've gotten better. I realized after every six bots you kill they drop something. They keep coming back when you leave the screen so I just find an area with a few of them in a Palace and kill a bunch until I get enough magic for the life spell.

What is giving you the most trouble? Also I didn't know that about the bots. Lol

Did you beat the third palace?

It's been years, but I don't remember Zelda II feeling hard until very late in the game, when there are invisible eyeball enemies and projectiles flying at you from every direction.

Death Mountain is kinda tough but no more than the usual NES game of the day.

There's two kill counters, large and small, both drop on the 6th item.  Bit and bot are both small counters.

On a small counter, kill 6 foes, and you have a 1/8 chance of 50 p bag, otherwise it's a blue jar.  Large groups, 50/50 chance red jar or 200 point bag.

Counters are seperate, so kill 4 small foes, then 2 large fores, you still need to kill 2 more small foes for the small drop.  This means drops are not random, and will always happen at the same spot when you kill the same foes.  So if you get a red jar at one spot, and play thourgh it again, you have a 50/50 chance of a red jar at the same spot.

Some of the large foes you can jump over, but you need to trick them.  They read your dpad. so run at them, jump, and let go of the D pad, then they will stop and let you jump over them.  Iron knuckles don't work quite like that, rather than read your pad they wonder aimlessley when you're not pressing anything, but you can down stab their heads to bounce over them.

When fighting iron knuckles, learn to hop at them, and stab their face on the way down.  In small hallways this won't work, you can sometimes do a tricky down stab on them then (a jackhammer), or just jump and stab one after each other.  In fighting games it's almost a A~B motion.   Blues don't get hit by this though, you need a couching jump generally.  Or fairy through them

Down stab also has no cooldown.  You jump, down stab, and mash downstab, you can actually attack many many times in mid air.  It's tricky in most cases, but great for killing bubbles when you learn how.

The fairy can pass through locked doors without a key, and in the US version, can pick up items.

Red jars give you as much magic as your max meter.  Each bar is 16, so with 4 bars, you have 64 magic points at max, and red jars give you 64 points magic.  So if you have 30 points of magic already, you'd waste 30 points of magic from the red potion.  So cast life before you grab it, or while it's filling. Magic lady in town give you 255 magic

If you leave a room right when your XP hits a new level, the game will lock up.  And if you leave a room after killing a monster, you do not get XP for it untill your counter moves.  Meaning you kill someone, see 100 float, and leave, you didn't earn the 100 xp until your exp counter moved.

Gems in palaces give you enough EXP for a level, so you want to skip a few low level ups before you place gems.  For example, skip the magic and life upgrades once or twice, then when you place a gem, you get a bigger boost.  Or wait till you're near the end of the game and already leveled up before you place them.