The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap is Fun, but With Tons of Minish-Sized Problems
The Legend of Zelda series is almost never afraid to try something new and shake up its own formula, and what better way to shift gears than to hand over their precious IP to Capcom? The Minish Cap is the end result of said experiment, being worked on by members at Capcom and the studio Flagship (who previously created the two Zelda Oracle games). While it is impressive in a number of ways, the title also has its fair share of bizarre pacing issues and obtuse game design that holds itself back from being the series’ best 2D romp.
Opening in one of the many iterations of Hyrule, you play as Link (of course) and are quickly thrusted into a quest to save Zelda from a mysterious sorcerer named Vaati. Previously just a generic final boss in the Four Swords games, Minish Cap acts as an origin story for him — though don’t expect too much out of the game’s plot. You travel around the kingdom, explore dungeons, and meet fun side characters along the way.
This is all very standard, but the key element that helps Minish Cap stand out is, well, the Minish Cap! Along your journey you encounter a sentient hat by the name of Ezlo, acting as Link’s companion, tutorial, key item, and fashion choice. He allows you to shrink down to the size of Minish, who are small pixie-like creatures only visible to the eyes of children. The game builds itself around constantly swapping between normal and Minish-sized, both in the overworld and dungeons themselves.
The world map is fairly small for a Zelda game, yet the compact nature of it thanks to being able to swap sizes has it feel just perfect. Nothing is too far away to where going across the map feels like a trek, and no map sector felt like it was just skipped over to get to the next checkpoint.
Dungeons are in a weird grey area, because I’d say the first half of them are fun mechanically but boring visually, while the latter are somehow the exact opposite. However none of them stand out too great, barring two dungeons where you shrink down and explore a Minish-made area. They still look pretty typical, though at the very least are a slight shake-up.
It also doesn’t help that there are very few dungeons in the game; six in total. While a small number of dungeons isn’t inherently an issue (Majora’s Mask is phenomenal in spite of only having four), they’re too simplistic to actually feel impactful and somehow just feel like filler for the main event, with the only exception being the final confrontation.
Bosses are actually one thing the game handles fairly well, although they’re definitely on the easier side compared to previous 2D titles. All of them are fun to figure out and counter, especially the final battle against Vaati as it makes use of nearly every major item and mechanic in the game.
Despite the decently-sized emphasis on story, the writing quality itself is shockingly pitiful and barely leaves an impression. Side-characters and random NPCs are full of life, yet the main hook came across as a rough concept that somehow made it to the end of the process without getting a draft or final copy.
Vaati is evil because he is, the four elements you need to collect are important because they’re strong, the Light Force is important because Vaati needs it to do…something. All of these are hammered into the player, however never really get fleshed out enough to be a driving force. Having a lower focus on story is fine, but I’d argue that the story would be better if they just left it as minimalist as possible instead of constantly bringing it up and never doing much with it.
One of the game’s biggest issues is the shrinking system itself, and how the game almost forgets that it’s meaningful around halfway through the game. While you start off by interacting with the environment to make new areas accessible in both large and small forms, it eventually devolves into turning tiny to merely grab a key and head back; nothing more.
The shrinking gimmick is quickly phased out by splitting yourself up via the Four Sword, which would be easier to swallow if that didn’t amount to just pushing obvious big blocks or hitting 2–4 switches while avoiding a single annoying enemy. It becomes less about problem-solving and more so going through the motions. The earlier puzzles weren’t particularly challenging, but after it devolves into little more than block-pushing and using a dungeon-specific item, it’s hard to get invested.
Speaking of poor engagement, the Kinstone Pieces. You can find them out in the world, both randomly and a few pre-determined pieces, and can be fused with a character’s piece to unlock something in the world. This can range from new shopkeepers, money, heart pieces, seashells (more on that later), etc. They were a novel idea to get players to talk to every NPC, however the execution is all over the place.
For starters, some give random rewards. That’s stupid. And most of the time they’re pretty minor, except for the unindicated moments where they are. Golden pieces are required for progression and can’t be missed, green generally give out rupees and light bonuses, blue are equally minor rewards, and red fusions are usually important ones that unlock heart pieces and new moves. Usually. As in, there are critical green and blue fusions as well, so you basically have to try them all out. This wouldn’t be the end of the world, if it weren’t for…
…absolutely no indicator regarding who you’ve traded with. None. There are 100 fusions with NPCs all over the world map. All it would’ve taken was a text list or something. This was a very bad decision.
When a game is very heavily leaning on its side-content to make the players feel invested, it needs to be done in a careful manner to avoid having it not feel relevant, break the pacing, and come across as unrewarding. Often, the system fails on all three of these levels.
The good rewards are few and far between, with the best option being to just look up a guide so that you don’t waste time. You always have to go to a completely unrelated area if you want your prize, so unless you bang out a bunch of fusions beforehand and happen to be in the area, it will always disrupt the pacing. And worst of all, the good things you do get mostly feel meaningless.
Zelda games have almost always struggled with giving out too many rupees, and in Minish Cap it’s almost a joke. There’s nothing to buy! The most you’ll ever spend is 1,600 for vague in-game hints. Everything else you could probably purchase in 500, if not less. You’d have to intentionally limit yourself to not break that threshold in record time.
The trophy room is another great idea soured by the execution, because the whole thing is tainted by how you get them: seashells. Okay not the shells themselves, it’s actually spending them. You have to talk to a salesman, sift through his dialogue, move over to pull a rope, and then you get a chance at one trophy you don’t have. One. There. Are. 130. Total.
This entire process takes around 30 seconds if you’re rushing, not to mention that the odds decrease for every trophy you have, making you pay more seashells for better odds. It’s needlessly tedious, making seashells as a common currency almost worthless if you don’t care about trophies, and a heart piece is locked behind getting all of them. Sure, you could ignore this entirely and miss very little, except when a major reward is seashells and the game is lacking in main content, was it really worthwhile to dedicate resources towards this?
And none of these issues would be a major problem if the game had something to offer other than Kinstone Fusion and six short dungeons! It’s okay to have jank filler here and there, but it’s like the developers didn’t know when to stop (or what to add), leading to a scatterbrained game full of loose ideas and few threads connecting them. Like someone made up a constellation by connecting stars and had no story to tell with it.
Minish Cap is far from a bad game. It looks great for the GBA, has tight controls, and a fun world to explore. The problems lie in its overly simplistic design and lack of replay value, leading to a dull experience in spite of what could have been an amazing game. I’d love to see the concept of Kinstone Fusions revisited, though for now, it’s left in a disorganized title with too many great ideas left to the wayside.