Zelda II hasn't aged well, but it is interesting enough that newcomers to the series could give it a try.
The Bad: Terrible gameplay – Uninspired soundtrack – Death animation can provoke seizures – Just plain boring
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Introduction:
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Zelda II: The Adventure of Link is, of course, the sequel to the legendary game that started what could be the best game saga ever, it wasn't well received and many still consider it the black sheep of the series. And with a good reason because it's a pretty mediocre game and could be the worst in the series.
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Presentation: 6/10
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Presentation is rather on the mediocre side, Link's Adventure hasn't aged well at all and it can be painful to look at sometimes, nothing is quite as memorable as the original game.
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Story & Characters: 7/10
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Shortly after the events of the original game Link sees a weird mark on his left hand, he seeks out Impa, who takes him to a castle in Hyrule. In that castle lies a sleeping maiden. Impa tells him that her name is Zelda, the original princess from long ago and she was sleeping because a wizard had cast a spell on her and her brother took her to that castle because he was unable to reverse it.
Because of this tragedy is that every female born in the royal family is called Zelda and Impa tells him that the mark in his hand means he is the chosen one to awake the princess, which mean he has to seek the Triforce of Courage by placing six crystals in six different castles around Hyrule and fighting a doppelgänger of himself known as Dark Link.. Meanwhile Ganon's servants are trying to kill Link because his blood would bring Ganon back to life. The story is decent enough to keep you interested, however the game will not explain much of it and if you don't have the original game manual you will be wondering why the hell Link is trying to save the sleeping beauty, is better to go online and know the full deal.
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Gameplay: 5/10
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Adventure of Link is an interesting mix of top-down gameplay and side-scrolling, more of the later though, it also includes RPG elements in it. This mix is not successful as the gameplay can get incredibly boring.
When you start the game you'll be playing in a side scrolling view, this is the most common in the game and where all the action takes place. In the overworld you still get the to-down view of the first game and whenever Link enters an are (caves, towns, castles) the game goes back to side-scrolling.
When you enter a cave or dungeon you'll be avoiding traps and killing enemies, but Zelda II lacks the puzzles that makes the series so good. And it's incredibly challenging too, enemies are tough to beat because your sword is ridiculously small, so you have to get really close to them. Besides, nobody ever tells you what to do or where to go, not even a small hint, and since this overworld is considerably large that will be quite annoying, so be prepared to go online and get a walkthrough.
Another annoying thing in the game are the random encounters, once you get to the overworld, black silhouettes appear and will follow you and if they get to you, you're forced to fight them, these random encounters can kill the whole experience, so overall you'll have a much better time avoiding them.
To it's credit Zelda II did introduce several new things to the franchise, such as the NPCs, which were present in the original but they weren't very important, after this game all Zelda games included non playable characters who play an important role in the gameplay. Zelda II is also the first game to include magic, experience and upgrades in the series and necessary items to advance.
Btw there's a guy named Error, and he is awesome.
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Visuals: 6/10
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This was probably the best looking game on the NES back in 1988 and the graphics still have some charm to them, but they haven't aged very well. Some things do look good however, animations while not great are done right and several little details that pop up sometimes are good. That being said the death animation screen is horrible, it includes flashing colors that can be really painful in the eye, in fact i think they could provoke seizures, never happened to me, but after a while your eyes start to hurt a lot.
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Sound: 5/10
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Since Koji Kondo was not involved in the project and none of the songs from the previous game were used this soundtrack is very poor, it is a departure from other Zelda soundtracks but it isn't very well done and that's probably why it hasn't been featured in any other game with the exception of the Palace track being in Smash Bros. Melee.
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Performance: 710
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It's an NES game so there are little to no loading times, but the save system is broken, you can save at any time but if you die you'll have to start from the beginning, you still have every item and upgrade you've collected but now you have to go again to the place where you were killed.
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Replay Value: 7/10
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It does take some time to beat, between 5-10 hours, but most of the time you'll be lost and confused because as i said before the game doesn't give you any clue on what to do next.
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Fun Factor: 4/10
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The game is really boring, from start to finish, and it's not because it is slow paced, that never hurt the other Zelda games. This one just lacks many elements that make the others so fun to play.
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Appeal: 6/10
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It's Zelda after all, so many people have or will play it. And if you didn't like Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess or A Link to the Past and you like RPGs, you might as well give it a try because it is so different.
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Tilt: 5/10
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Zelda II is the worst game in the series, the story is not amazing, the gameplay sucks and the overall package is quite boring. The game has created a lot of debate, some people love it and others hate it, i'm clearly with the second team and it's not because it's different, Majora's Mask was different and it was great, but Zelda II is just...not great and all the other Zelda games (with the exception of Four Swords Adventures, which is equally as bad as this one) are amazing. That being said, is not hard for me to understand why other people like it, after all it did introduce several cool things to the series and those who are interested to see the beginnings of the franchise could give it a try, just know what you're getting into.