Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
Introduction
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link was developed and published by Nintendo, released on the NES in Japan in January 1987 and reaching North America later that year as the direct sequel to 1986’s The Legend of Zelda. The game took the series in a markedly different direction from its predecessor’s top-down overworld exploration, adopting a side-scrolling action format for combat and dungeon stages while retaining a top-down view for traveling between locations on the overworld map. Link gained an experience-point leveling system for the first time in the series, letting players allocate points earned from defeated enemies into attack, magic, and life stats, alongside a genuine sword-fighting system that required blocking high or low depending on an enemy’s stance rather than simply mashing the attack button. Its departure from the first game’s formula divided opinion both at release and in the years since, but its ambitious blend of action, role-playing progression, and genuine swordplay technique made it a formative and still widely discussed experiment in the Zelda series’ early identity.
