Bought Link Between Worlds with a Gamestop gift card and it's AWESOME. Perfect balance of familiarity and freshness. Having played the shit out of Link to the Past (I've gotten 100% in one sitting on multiple occasions), it felt so good to be able to re-visit a familiar world full of new challenges.
While it's nice to have the freedom to go wherever I want whenever I want, I have to admit I get annoyed when I can't figure out how to access a certain part of the map. I'm also baffled that, after passing several dungeons, I have yet to find the sprint shoes. I feel like I must have missed something obvious or skipped something I was expected to do earlier. All in all an outstanding game, though.
It's been a while since the topic was mentioned, but I also subscribe to the "Zelda timeline is bullshit" train of thought. The grand majority of the Zelda games were designed to be self-contained titles that shared themes, gameplay elements, enemies, etc, but they were clearly never intended to work together as part of a unified timeline. It's one thing when fans waste time trying to put things together that were never meant to go together, but it's more annoying still when Nintendo feels the need to release an "official" timeline that's awkward and adds nothing to the mythos when they should have just said "They don't officially connect and they never did. Get over it."
