Man, what a regression. I do respect the attempt to strike out and innovate rather than tweaking the first Zelda. Unfortunately, that attempt did not pan out. The exploration aspect of the game remains, but without the solid dungeon crawling it really falls flat. Not only does the side scrolling gameplay not work with the format as well, but it also brings in the artificial difficulty the first game managed to avoid. The mechanics still hold up as a decent 8-bit adventure, but the essence of the first game is lost.