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Why Everyone Hates It: By popular opinion, The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons is related to The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages in the same way that Pokémon: Red Version is related to Pokémon: Blue Version. On top of which, it's an irrelevant little portable game.
Legitimate Issues With the Game: Development of both Oracle games, and The Minish Cap, was handled by Capcom. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, I always feel compelled to flag games developed without their original creator when possible.
Why I Like It Anyway: As it turns out, Capcom can do Zelda pretty darn well. I would love to be able to make a quick joke about Okami here, but a huge part of what Devil's Advocate is all about is education, so in full disclosure, it should be noted that while Okami was created by Clover (a studio that will be getting some much deserved attention in a future article), these portable Zeldas are from Flagship. No real overlap between the two. Of course, both have now been dissolved, so what we really have here is yet another example of why this industry desperately needs it's own resource along the lines of the Internet Movie Database.
Getting back on track, one might wonder how it is that a feature highlighting obscure and underrated videogames could possibly end up discussing any Zelda game. As a series, they represent some of the best known and best loved games ever created, consistently, and have been for over twenty years now. The odds of anyone reading this being unfamiliar with any of the non-handheld Zelda games are too low for any description of them to be needed, Link's Awakening was the first game to really show what the Game Boy was capable of doing for a fair percentage of us, and even Minish Cap has a nice respectful following. The only games in the series it's likely anyone may have missed are the Oracle games.
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Firstly, these two games are exclusive to the Game Boy Color. For those who may not recall, the GBC was the awkward transition between the original Game Boy, and the Game Boy Advance. The selling point was that games developed with it in mind could deliver an experience similar to the NES in terms of an actual, proper, color palette. This feature would be more impressive if the Super Gameboy didn't already exist, enabling color palette enhancements on select games, the ability to fully customize the 4 color palette of any other Game Boy game, and of course, the appeal of playing games on an actual TV with an actual controller. To hedge bets some, most games developed with the GBC in mind were standard Game Boy games, with enhancements available when used with the newer hardware. Only late in the system's life were a few titles released that fully embraced it, sacrificing backwards compatibility for full color visuals. These games were, of course, fully playable on the GBA, essentially creating an established library in advance of the system's launch, but the DS cutting back on compatibility shut them out once more.
Aside from the odd hardware restriction in place, the Oracle games were severely hampered by being marketed as, well, "the Oracle games." At the height of Pokémon's popularity, at least in terms of other developers trying to cash in on the success, releasing two games with similar names, box art essentially differing only in color, on the same date, and boasting a connectivity aspect were perceived by darn near everyone as a single game, with a lame trading gimmick. Even the press spent a large chunk of time confused over the matter.
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The reality of the situation is about as far from this as possible. The connectivity angle was actually that finishing both games unlocked additional content, particularly at the end of whichever was played second, more along the lines of Resident Evil 2's A and B games, or the extended ending of Eternal Darkness after playing all three branches. Developing the games with the intention that a given player would play them back to back encouraged the developers to make a conscious effort to make them stand out as different experiences, so in reality, it can be said that there is less shared in common between Oracle of Ages and Oracle of Seasons than any other two Zelda games out there... at least so long as neither game is Zelda 2. If a classic boss puts an appearance in for one game, it won't be found in the other. The items showed significantly more diversity than series fans have become accustomed to (all the standards and the token item the game is named for). Even the visual style differed between the two, down to the look of treasure chests.
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Most significantly though, is the difference in the feel between the two games. Oracle of Ages, as the title suggests, had very much the same vibe to it as Ocarina of Time. Very story driven, time travel as the main gimmick, and the look of the game was taken more from downgrading the polygonal graphics as opposed to updating the art from older 8-bit games as Seasons did. It was also a fairly linear game, with a huge emphasis on abstract self-contained puzzles, and plenty of them. Having to step on every tile in a room exactly once, for instance, came up more than once.
Seasons on the other hand was more of a love note to the original Zelda than anything. Much more of an open world feel, greater potential for sequence breaking, more action, and the boss from the original game's first dungeon being recycled for the first time since. The puzzles were presented with more subtlety, and relied more on item swapping. Plus the central world-changing gimmick item, again, as the title suggests, brought about a change of seasons, yielding four variations on any given location, with much more obvious effects than the light world/dark world switching or time travel from other games in the series.
Obviously, in writing this, I am showing some preference to Oracle of Seasons over Oracle of Ages, but both have their charms. The very fact that they don't share the same strong suits is really the entire point. They are two very very different games, both of which are worth attention. So, if you passed one over in favor of the other, or skipped both outright, you may want to do some hunting and see what confusing marketing may have caused you to miss.
