The desire for retro consoles and retro games never seems to diminish, even as the consoles themselves become ever more sophisticated.

The game borrows heavily from Zelda games

Blossom Tales II: The Minotaur Prince is more than happy to show its indie retro pedigree, even if much of what the game consists of borrows incredibly heavily from Zelda games, so much so, that I am surprised it didn’t fall foul of Nintendo. Far from falling foul of Nintendo, you can now buy the game on the Switch.

The framing is that of a story within a story. Around a campfire a grandfather is telling a fantasy tale to his two grandchildren Chrys and Lily, who also double as the main protagonists in the game. In the story it is a time of celebration, a celebration of the legendary Minotaur King. You play as Lily who successfully finds enough coins to enter herself into the fighting competition. All appears to be going well until Lily becomes so annoyed with her brother that she calls for the Minotaur king to appear and steal away Chrys. Much to Lilys amazement this is exactly what happens. Distressed at what she has caused, Lily starts her quest to find and bring back her brother.

Lily calls for the Minotaur king

As the story progresses both Chrys and Lily interrupt the narrative or act as agents when the player has choices to make, although I am not sure that the choices have any deep impact on the outcome.

The game is presented top down and plays exactly like a Zelda game. You have your hearts which denote the number of lives you have, only a handful to begin with, but these can be added to along the way though mini quests and occasionally finding or buying them.

The world consists of large open areas with much to explore and mini quests to undertake, as you progress you also come across cauldrons where you can make some beneficial potions. I can’t say that I really needed to use this as is just as easy to run away from fights. The fights I did have at the beginning didn’t seem to provide any benefit from winning, so I just stopped doing it apart from the boss battles. The game also contains three well designed dungeons and a final labyrinth.

The world consists of large open areas with much to explore

Objects within the world persist randomly even if to go to the next screen, another way of getting out of fights. This mechanic can be beneficial, finding a particular seashell along a beach is just a case of exiting and entering the same screen. This also means you can never truly clear an area of monsters and as you don’t really gain anything from killing them occasionally, they just become an annoyance.

The 16 bit design is nice but some of the locations lacked originality. The game is challenging, but not hard and given its theme this is aimed at either a younger audience or die-hard Zelda 2D players.

7

Charles Packer