What is The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap?
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (Minish Cap going forward) is the 12th entry in the Legend of Zelda franchise. It came out on November 4th, 2004 for the Gameboy Advance. It is also available on the Nintendo Switch, Wii U, and Nintendo 3DS through Nintendo’s Online services. Minish Cap is a top-down isometric Zelda game that follows Link through Hyrule and his adventures with the titular Minish as he tries to save the world from Vaati, the evil sorcerer. I played this game on the original Gameboy cartridge through an Analogue Pocket. It takes around 16 hours to beat the main story.
Game Review:
Minish Cap is a 2D top-down isometric Zelda game in the same style as Link to the Past. The game differs, however, in game mechanics, story, and controls. The selling point of Minish Cap is its use of scale. The Minish are a group of magical people that are tiny, living outside of the awareness of people in their ceilings, rafters, and walls. They also live out in the wilderness in their own tiny villages that they’ve built. Throughout Minish Cap Link not only meets these people but gains the ability to shrink down to their size and grow back to normal size. This change in scale adds layers to the world, giving Link another environment to explore. It also changes how Link can explore the regular sized Hylian world as being small gives him access to areas he wouldn’t otherwise have access to but also makes him less physically strong so certain objects are bigger impediments to his shrunken self. This ability to shrink and grow is the main gimmick of Minish Cap and makes it a unique Zelda experience.
Most of the structure and bones of Zelda gameplay is similar between Minish Cap and other 2D Zelda games. There are a few new items introduced and certain items that don’t make an appearance in this game but generally, the combat and gameplay is the same.Â
Minish Cap does add some features that I have not seen done in any other Zelda title. The Kinstone system is one of the major features that makes this game unique. Throughout Hyrule there are these medallions called Kinstones that you can collect, but you only collect halves. NPCs throughout the game will have their own Kinstones as well. If you find someone with a Kinstone you can check to see which one they have, if they have a matching one then you can fuse them. Fusing Kinstones has some effect on the game world. Some effects are minor such as making a chest appear across the map on the overworld while some effects have major changes and can cause hidden passages to open or people to do a particular action. Not all of these fusions are required but there are some that are required to progress and actually beat the game. So it creates this game of going out in the world to find these collectibles and try to match them with NPCs. This can be a little cumbersome but the small size of the overworld map helps alleviate some of the tedium of this activity.
Controls are one of the big differences I noticed in Minish Cap compared to Link to the Past and older 2D Zelda games like it. Minish Cap uses the shoulder buttons on the Gameboy Advance for a lot of the controls. This doesn’t seem like the biggest thing since most modern games use the shoulder buttons all the time. But the Gameboy Advance and my Analogue Pocket’s shoulder buttons are a little harder to press than any of the face buttons, meaning I felt I had to hold my hands in slightly more uncomfortable positions during my playthrough of this game. The controls aren’t bad but they do feel weird for a 2D Zelda game.
Minish Cap is the second game chronologically in the Zelda timeline so it is supposed to set up some backstory for the rest of the franchise. I don’t really see much overlap outside of its connection to Legend of Zelda: Four Swords. That being said, this story is a pretty standard Zelda story. There’s a big bad who wants to take over the world and tries to use Zelda and magical powers to do so. I do appreciate that this game isn’t just another Ganon/Ganondorf game. I love Ganon but it is nice to see a new villain used that gives some variety. I don’t have too much to say about the story, it wasn’t particularly moving but wasn’t bad either.
Pacing is something that I think Minish Cap does really well for the most part. The game world is generally small and doesn’t take long to travel across. There are only 4 dungeons before the final dungeon leading up to the final boss. Each dungeon is long and takes a decent amount of time but generally don’t overstay their welcome and also have good checkpointing. Pacing does take a downturn towards the end of the game, the final dungeon leading up to the final boss is a bit of a slog that ends in a mandatory boss rush where you need to defeat three groups of powerful enemies before the final boss. If you fail and die, the checkpoint only takes you to the entrance to the boss rush so it still requires you to make it through all of that and then defeat the final boss who has 3 long phases. It honestly requires some planning and gathering resources before you start the boss rush because the final boss sequence is a bit long in the tooth, but overall I find the pacing to be pretty good.
Family Friendliness:
Minish Cap is a family friendly kids action/adventure game from Nintendo in the early 2000s. There isn’t really any iffy content. There is cartoon violence but it’s not graphic at all and typically you are only fighting monsters. It doesn’t have any internet connection, which is a nice change from essentially every modern game that has some sort of feature requiring online connectivity.
Features for Parents:
Minish Cap doesn’t have accessibility features since it’s an older game developed for the Gameboy Advance but it does have a good save feature that lets you pick up right where you left off, except for in a dungeon where it will load you in at the entrance. The Analogue Pocket also has a great sleep feature that makes pausing the game to take care of parental responsibilities easier so I recommend that system as well.
Final Verdict:
Minish Cap is a solid and unique game in the Zelda franchise. It isn’t the best in the franchise at anything but it tries some new things with its use of scale and Kinstones. It distinguishes itself with the use of a new villain as well as the introduction of the Minish but it doesn’t feel like a must-play in the franchise. It’s a game I would recommend if you are really into the Zelda games and have a way to play older Gameboy games.