The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, développé par Capcom Production Studio 1 et édité par Nintendo, est sorti le 4 novembre 2004 sur Game Boy Advance, avant de connaître des rééditions sur Nintendo 3DS et Wii U. Ce jeu d'aventure et de réflexion propose une vue de dessus et raconte l'origine du maléfique Vaati, déjà présent dans Four Swords. L'histoire suit Link, qui assiste impuissant à la métamorphose de la princesse Zelda en pierre par le mage Vaati lors d'un festival. Mandaté par le roi, le héros part à la rencontre des Minish, un peuple de petits êtres, en s'alliant avec Ezlo, un chapeau parlant capable de le rétrécir à leur taille pour explorer Hyrule sous un nouveau jour. Contrairement à l'orientation multijoueur d'autres opus, le titre retrouve l'exploration et les donjons d'A Link to the Past, avec le retour de personnages comme Malon et de mécaniques telles que la Spin Attack, tout en introduisant la fusion de Kinstones et le rétrécissement. Sa durée de parcours principal est estimée à quinze heures et demie, et à vingt-cinq heures pour une complétion intégrale. L'agrégat de notes atteint 87,23. La presse a salué un titre visuellement réussi et intense malgré une durée perçue comme courte, GBA Central évoquant des instants à couper le souffle, tandis que GameSpy relevait son rendu superbe sur l'écran de la DS. Certains joueurs sur Metacritic ont apprécié son atmosphère féérique, ses innovations de gameplay et son mécanisme de rétrécissement, tout en le décrivant comme une expérience distincte de la trame principale.
Médias
Avis des critiques et joueurs
Critiques de la Presse (Metacritic)
« The game may be short by the franchise's standards, but every minute of it is breathtaking. »
« What better way to make good use of your new DS system (with its lacking library) than by popping this game in? It looks absolutely stunning on the DS's screen. »
« The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is pretty amazing. I have an Xbox 360 and I just got a shiny new PC. I'm on the cutting edge of technology. But when I think of all the games I've played over the past six months, The Minish Cap-a Gameboy Advance game-rises right to the top of my list. It's just that good. »
« All of the quests, big and small, add up to an quest that belies the tiny cartridge's size. This "Zelda" game packs in the fun. »
« Arguably the best GBA game ever released. It's addictive, ingenious, and makes no mistakes. »
« The Minish Cap does virtually nothing wrong. It's an excellent and faithful Zelda game, and one of the best Game Boy Advance games to date. »
« The music in The Minish Cap is simply wonderful. Around 70 percent of the music is composed of previous Zelda music, but redone to fit the new game. »
« The overworld map -- while bearing minor resemblance to the layout of previous games -- is much larger than you'd think and the dungeons are as big, fiendish and ingenious as ever with a perfect learning curve. »
Avis des Joueurs (Metacritic)
« this Zelda game was just a special game different from the main story. But it's atmosphere makes it really feeric and the gameplay system has cool innovations that makes it fun to play, different from the ohter episodes. Please make a new one, Nintendo ! »
« This game is just really fun. The art style is charming, the dungeons and bosses are all fun, and the shrinking mechanic is one of my favorite gimmicks in a Zelda game. Like most people I think the kinstones aren’t super well implemented or thought out which makes it a 9/10 instead of a 10/10. But it’s one of if not my favorite Zelda game. »
« Its one of the best Zelda for me, from the graphics to the added gameplay mechanics. It of course still have that old zelda formula but with new added mechanic of growing and shrinking and also the disc mechanics, it turns the game into a super fun one. Not too mention exploring for secrets always rewarding and fun process. Some puzzle might confusing but its a puzzle not some crazy artificial difficult mini game. »
« TL;DR: I give it a 7/10, it's a very solid Zelda game with snappy combat and fun gameplay, although some experiments definitely failed hard in this one. Some to like and some to dislike, but not enough to not recommend playing, especially considering how accessible it is nowadays. I will break my review into 7 parts; 1. The Art Style. 5/5 This game has aged beautifully, despite being a GBA game, IMO. I played it on the 3DS XL's top screen, which meant I was getting a bigger and better view of the game than natively on the GBA, and it was more striking and awesome because of this, not less. It has a mix of ALTTP's art style and Wind Waker's art style, of which I am particularly fond of. It's an awesome pixel art game; i'd study this if I was an pixel artist. The shading, details, and overall color palates are dope. The animations are also quite good and I never felt anything looked janky or bad. 2. Controls. 2.5/5 Controls are *fine*. The GBA has basically the bare minimum for comfortable and diverse gaming, IMO. I really wish they had stuck two more buttons on the GBA for items, though. It's actually why I stopped playing Ages and Seasons; I felt I was having to switch items in my menu every 30 seconds, and on top of also having to look at the map every few minutes too, it was very grating. They luckily designed the dungeons in this game to overall minimize how much menuing you had to do in this game, though. 3. Gameplay/Combat. 4.5/5 Combat is pretty snappy in this game, like ALTTP, and the addition of rolling and new combat techniques you can learn make combat rewarding and fun when you can get the hang of it. It feels like the most fully realized version of top-down Zelda combat. That said, one big gripe I had was how short the hitstop and immunity frames are in this game for Link specifically. You can take damage upwards of 6 times a second, I think (I didn't actually count, just going off feel) and it means you can very easily get swarmed by enemies and killed very quickly if you misplay even just a little bit in some rooms. Rooms in the latter half of the game were especially guilty of this, throwing upwards of 12 enemies at you at once. It becomes frustrating quickly to be just being thrown around a room like a ragdoll. Luckily, I didn't encounter this problem *terribly* much, but it was still noticed. The enemies are also super diverse and interesting, making for a fun gameplay loop. The final boss fight was also really challenging and fun, really using the four sword mechanic to its full potential. 4. Puzzles. 3/5 The puzzles are pretty easy in this game, and none of it is terribly hard to figure out without a guide. Usually, if you just keep moving around and trying new things with your arsenal, you will find the solution. Nothing terribly offensive or impressive here. 5. Minigames. 2/5 There are a few minigames in this game, but unfortunately, they are kind of trash. One of them is a Cucco chasing minigame, ala Ocarina of Time, but it is a timed minigame and the chickens positions on the map change every time. It's not too bad for the first few rounds but it goes on for 10 entire rounds to get the heart piece, getting increasingly harder, and I personally found it just kind of infuriating to play. I'll admit that when I did get a successful run, it did feel really good, but the lows are very low **** next game of note is one where you get stuck in a room with like 25 enemies you have to kill before they kill you. It's a **** nightmare and makes my already named problem with the combat ever more noticeable. I'm glad this one only required one successful run to get the heart piece because it was just kind of insane.Finally, and the most generally maligned minigame, is the figure collection minigame. 136 in game "collectibles" ranging from enemies to random NPCS and even scenes. The idea is interesting but the fault comes in the fact that to get the heart piece associated with the game, you *have* to get the first 130 figurines. It's mostly just tedious as all hell and boring to **** yeah, the minigames are experimental, but not great. 6. Story. 3/5 It's fine! I didn't dislike it of course, but it was fairly cookie cutter Zelda stuff. More than good enough to make the gameplay shine! 7. Sound design. 5/5 Frankly, it's just flawless. The music is great, the sondbanks have so much character and charm, and they really manage to make the GBA sound as if it weren't MIDI. They knocked it out of the park. Never had a problem with how the music or sound effects sound. Volume sliders would have been nice but it's not a big deal at all imo. SO yeah, my overall rating rounds to a 7/10, which is accurate in my mind. I liked the game although it has some duds here and there. It's probably the only 2D Zelda pre-2005 I'd really recommend other than ALTTP. It's for sure a must-play for any Zelda fan like myself. »
« Esse é o Zelda 2D definitivo. Eu tenho um apego absurdo por OoT, mas seria insanidade não reconhecer o quanto esse jogo com sua simplicidade entrega uma experiência única. Eu tenho a impressão que tudo aqui é tão mais intuitivo sem necessariamente ser fácil demais que acaba te incentivando muito mais a buscar coisas pra além da história principal. A arte do jogo é algo impressionante até dos dias de hoje, parece até um indie que sairia na steam em 2018 ou perto disso. A dedicação da Capcom em tornar esse Zelda a amálgama perfeita de tudo que havia de melhor nos jogos 2D da franquia chega a ser palpável. Talvez esse seja meu LoZ preferido até o momento, mas o futuro da saga dirá. »
« A niche Zelda game packed with hours of fun. Really the shrinking gimmick is great and the pixel art is a treat for the eyes. However this game is held back the most by how much of a chore all the kinstones sidequests and how you need to gamble to get all the figurines. Still those chores aren't too detrimental due to being optional. »
« Nice fun, short Zelda game, one of the better 2d handheld zeldag games for sure. »
« have discovered this game in 2025, was really surprised how good it is. Best GBA game for me. »
